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Professor Slughorn’s instructions were nothing more than muffled noise as Draco stood off to the side of the classroom with his friends. Hermione’s hair was far more interesting. He braced one arm with the other, chewing at the pad of his thumb as his eyes followed a springy curl, watching the way it coiled evenly from root to end. It hadn’t become any less beautiful, but her hair used to be much frizzier. Had she improved at Potions and perfected something of her own to manage it? He wouldn’t put it past her.
Absolutely brilliant, she is.
Not that it mattered. Her waterfall of curls still bounced down her back all the same. When she walked too fast, it swayed like dark, heavy silk. It was a cascade that began as a deep auburn, lightening as it fell. On windier days, she used her wand to twist it away from her face, revealing the delicate freckles scattered across her cheeks.
Oh, Merlin, her freckles… like little stars—
“I know the answer, Professor.”
Of course you do, you swotty, gorgeous witch.
“It’s supposed to smell different to each of us, according to what attracts us,” Hermione explained. The steam rose from the cauldron, turning a light green as she walked closer. “For example, I can smell freshly mown grass and new parchment and—”
Her whisky-brown eyes widened, her sentence cutting off with a soft gasp and stepping back into the crowd of students. Harry blinked at her like the fumes made her lose her mind, wondering why she was acting weird all of a sudden. Lavender moved forward to smell the Amortentia, and as she passed, Draco just barely caught Hermione glancing his way. When their eyes met, she shifted in a split second from paranoid to aggravated.
“What are you looking at, Malfoy?”
There it was—that scorned tone that made him fire back every time.
“Your hair, Granger,” he said coldly and, ironically, accurately. “It’s a fire hazard. Slughorn should be docking Gryffindor points for that.”
Hermione scoffed, crossing her arms and pushing out one hip. That little stance always did things to him, sending an infuriating heat racing beneath his skin.
“Oh yeah? And the blonde fringe hanging in front of your eyes is safer?”
Pansy stepped out from behind him to stand in front of him, unnecessarily protective.
“He needs to cover his eyes so he doesn’t have to see you, Mudblood.”
She turned back to Draco with a smugness that said she fully expected him to praise her loyalty. His reaction was instantaneous, but not at all what she’d hoped for. The charged tension between him and Hermione flatlined. For a fleeting moment, they shared a synchronised eye roll over Pansy’s head before returning to their projects.
Draco turned to his potion station without another word, shoulders rigid, a sickening hollowness yawning in his chest.
Well done, you prat. Another bloody conversational victory.
Stung by his own idiocy, he channelled his fury into his cauldron and kept his hands busy. He recalled a tip Snape had mentioned in a private tutoring session last year—something about the cellular structure of Sopophorous beans. He drew his silver dagger and, instead of slicing, used the flat of the blade to crush the beans.
The juice ran clear and plentiful. When he stirred it into his brew, the lilac liquid vanished, leaving the cauldron filled with a shimmering substance that could put a troll on its arse in seconds.
"Good heavens!" Slughorn bellowed as a test leaf dissolved upon contact with the Draught of Living Death. "Truly perfect! I daresay even Professor Snape would be impressed. The Felix Felicis goes to Mr Malfoy!"
Draco stepped to the front of the class to claim the tiny glass vial, but as he caught Hermione’s eye, brimming with annoyance and a hint of hurt, the Liquid Luck felt like lead in his hand. He felt like a loser, not a winner.
"Think of the possibilities, Draco," Blaise said that evening in the Slytherin common room, lounging across a green velvet sofa. "You could save it for the end of the year. Drink it before your interview with the Wizengamot. Seal the deal."
"I already have the job, if my father has anything to do with it," Draco muttered, twirling the vial around between his fingertips, its contents glowing gold in the firelight.
"Then drink it tomorrow before Duelling Club," Blaise suggested with a scheming smirk. "You could finally knock Potter off his pedestal in front of the whole year."
"I can win against Potter all on my own," Draco snapped.
"The Quidditch House Cup match against Hufflepuff next month?"
"If I got caught, that’s a sure way to be disqualified and lose the cup anyway."
Draco left his friend and retreated to his dormitory for some privacy. He sat on the edge of his four-poster bed, settling into the quiet around him. He had the grades. He had the status. He had the future everybody wanted laid out for him. But he was miserable.
He thought of the way Hermione had looked at him in Potions. The way she always looked at him—like he was a nuisance. He didn’t know why he pathetically sabotaged himself. He didn’t care about blood purity the way his family or friends did. But he seemed to feed off that mindset, pushing her away to deflect from the truth that he was completely consumed by her. He’d spent the last six years building a wall between them, and now he was trapped behind it.
He didn't need luck for a job or a game. He needed luck to survive a single conversation without being a prick.
"Just twelve hours," he whispered to the empty room. "Twelve hours where I don’t say the wrong thing."
He uncorked the vial, chugged the glass bottle in one hopeful gulp, and suddenly the way ahead unfolded before him. The world snapped into focus, warm liquid coating his insides like a physical sense of calm. His thoughts organised themselves into a line from most to least important. And his one priority was finding Hermione Granger.
Draco slapped his knees and pushed himself up to stand, a wide smile on his face as he walked back down the stairwell and through the common room to search the castle. He didn’t exactly have a plan, but his feet knew where to go. He headed toward the library, the most logical place to find her. But, out of the corner of his eye near the Great Hall, he saw a flash of bushy hair disappearing around a bend.
His heart flipped in his chest, pulling at him as if it were attached to a leash. Oblivious to his surroundings, fixated on Hermione at the end of the corridor, he nearly walked into Neville. Normally, Draco would have made an insecure comment about Neville’s clumsiness, even though it was his own fault for not paying attention. Instead, he picked up a book he’d knocked out of Neville’s arms and stepped aside after placing it back on the stack.
With a polite tilt to his head, Draco said, “Pardon me, Neville.”
The gangly boy froze, his jaw dropping. “Uh…thanks, Malfoy?”
“Don’t mention it,” Draco said easily, already moving on.
Picking up the pace, he took off in a light jog to catch up to Hermione. He found her standing in front of the statue of the One-Eyed Witch. She checked around her, making sure no one was watching, before tapping her wand on the old artefact.
“Dissendium!”
The statue slid aside, revealing a dark, narrow passage, and Draco’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. Gryffindor’s Head Girl was breaking curfew and sneaking out of Hogwarts? What an absolute treat, he thought to himself as he followed in behind her.
He’d expected stairs but got a very steep, very smooth stone slide. He went down fast. There was no time to scream before he landed at the bottom, colliding directly into something soft and smelling of cinnamon and old books. They tumbled together farther into the tunnel.
Draco ended up sprawled half on, half off Hermione, his face inches from hers in the dim light of her Lumos.
“Malfoy?!” she gasped, untangling her legs from his and scrambling to sit up. “Did you follow me? I swear, if you tell McGonagall…I was only going to Honeydukes—”
“I’m not going to tell anyone, Hermione,” Draco said simply, still feeling light as a feather even with a wand aimed at him.
She stopped mid-rant. “You called me Hermione.”
“It is your name.”
She lowered her wand and squinted at him. “You’re acting…strange. Are you feeling alright? Maybe I should take you to Madam Pomfrey.”
Hermione knelt beside him and pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. He heard her breath hitch when he leaned into her touch. If he hadn’t drunk the Liquid Luck, he might have been embarrassed and insulted her for daring to be so near him. But he enjoyed it, and the potion gave him the courage to show it.
“I don’t mean to be strange. I was actually aiming for ‘normal.’”
Hermione withdrew her hand slowly. “Stalking me is normal for you?”
“Yes,” he answered honestly, without shame. It was freeing. “Normal for me involves watching you, because when we speak, I’m an idiot and don’t know how to.”
Her eyebrows scrunched up as she tried to understand, her wand light casting long shadows against the tunnel walls.
“I drank the Felix Felicis.”
Her mouth fell open. “But why? And so late in the day?! You’re going to be like this all night now, y’know.”
Draco propped himself up on his elbows and looked up at her, her amber eyes glowing under her Lumos. She was breathtaking.
“I drank it because my brain doesn’t seem to know how to not say the opposite of what I’m actually thinking when I’m around you. I needed all the help I could get, and I couldn’t wait another damn minute to tell you.”
“Tell me what?” she asked, her voice small in the large underground space.
He didn’t waste another moment.
“That I love you, Hermione. I love you so much. You’re brilliant, the smartest person I’ve ever met. You’re so damn beautiful it hurts to look at you. You challenge me in every way others can’t, and sometimes I think you like it when I challenge back. But then other times I think I’ve just made you hate me.”
“I don’t hate you, Draco.” Hermione let out a long, shaky breath, shifting her body to sit next to him on the ground. “I thought you were a bit of a git, sure. But I mostly thought you despised the sight of me.”
“Never.”
The Liquid Luck was practically singing now, a melodic pulse of electricity running through his veins. Draco did what he’d always wanted to do. He touched her hair. Simply tucking a wild lock behind her ear had him soaring, especially when his fingers lingered against her temple. When she didn’t move—her eyes darting between his, not in panic, but in anticipation of his next move—he leaned in.
“I don’t need luck to know I’ve wanted to do this for far too long,” he murmured, looking at her lips at the same time she did.
The kiss was soft and hesitant, but not in a clumsy, awkward way. This wasn’t his first kiss, after all. It was only one of the most wonderful, long‑yearned‑for and hard earned kisses he’d ever have. So he took his time, feeling her move in closer just as he moved away. He stole another, and another, and Hermione returned them just as willingly.
When they finally pulled away, the world felt different and better than before. There was only ever going to be a “before” now—before her. She rested her forehead against his, breathing him in.
“I thought you took the potion to find a way to talk to me?”
“This is a lot better, don’t you think?”
“It is,” Hermione laughed, a bright sound he’d once only hoped to almost make her do. She grabbed the front of his robes and yanked him back to her. “You usually drive me nuts when you love to hear yourself talk.”
“I know,” Draco smiled against her lips. “I’ll work on it.”