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"I'm not coming home."
"Malfoy?" she says, fingers clenched around the device in her hand. She'd seen his name flash on her screen when her phone vibrated, bleary eyes focusing on the source of light, and confusion had fought its way to her sleepy mind. She sits up in her bed, facing the darkness. "What's happening? Are you okay?"
"I'm not coming home." He repeats it again, as if it would make any more sense. There's a slight slur to his words, something off about his usual eloquent speech.
This doesn't answer anything, and Hermione stumbles out of her bed in confusion. "Home?" She's pushing the door of her bedroom open, clumsily turning on the lights around the different rooms of the flat as she searches for him. Something in her head reminds her that, when she went to bed the night before, he still wasn't back. She checks the flat anyway.
"Home," the voice down the phone confirms, almost like he's resigned to the fact.
The flat is empty.
"Malfoy," she says, stopping at the sofa in the living room. She leans against it. Crookshanks, awoken by the noise, comes out to rub against her leg. "Where are you?"
"Out." Hesitation. A pause, but she waits. Tries to decipher his words, when he's tripping over them. "A bar. Somewhere. Well, in the bathroom; the bar was getting loud. There's a couple making out beside me." There's a crash and inaudible scuffling, followed by swearing.
"Do you need me to pick you up?" Under normal circumstances, she'd tell him to piss off and let her sleep. That's what she did the first time he got wasted since moving in, and it'd be Blaise Zabini who had dragged his friend back.
"No. Granger. You're not listening to me. I'm not coming home."
The third time he's repeated the same sentence, and something about it makes her feel itchy. "Malfoy, it's four in the morning. Give me the address of where you are and I'll come pick you up."
"No!" The sound is louder than she expects, causing her to violently jerk the phone further away from her ear. More banging and movement down the phone, brief moments of loud music, and then --- silence. He must've gone outside. "I can't come home, okay? I can't come back to the apartment, and I don't want to. I'm not asking you, I'm telling you."
"Listen, you're very drunk, it seems, where---"
"Granger, let me talk!" Desperation seeps into his voice, mingling with stumbled speech. Hermione can't see his face, but she presses the phone closer to her ear, trying to listen to his every ragged breath. "You're always fucking talking, let me speak! I can't come home, and do you know why? It's because you're fucking there, it's because everything about our stupid apartment reminds me of you. Your demonic cat is always staring at me, and your shampoo smell fills the whole bathroom, and I can't open the cupboard without your healthy cereal bars placed right at the front."
Hermione tries really hard to keep her mind at the topic on hand, to concentrate on what he's saying, but she can't help but saying, affronted, "They're good for you, but if you don't want me to put them there, I can just move it---"
A shaky laugh is blown out, but it's not amused, more bitter. "For fuck sake, that's not even the point. You're so clueless sometimes, you know? And I don't understand, do you do it on purpose? Do you go out of your way to compensate for your lack of people knowledge with actual knowledge?" He's not talking to her anymore, doesn't so much as wait for an answer. "Of course you don't, because that's not who you are. You just don't really see it, do you? You're everywhere, Granger. You're all I can fucking think about all goddamn day, and I can't go back home, where everything I see --- it's all you. It's -- it's ruining me."
"What are you saying?" she whispers, her mouth ghosting over the speaker.
"I think. I think I'm falling in love with you." Draco chuckles, drunk and breathless and without hope. "That's why I can't come home. I can't deal with that. I don't know how to."
And just like that,
the
world
stops.
The silence that follows is long. She can hear a muffled sound of his hand rubbing his face, can hear the uneven breathing. She's aware of Crookshanks mewling in the absense of noise. Her own hand is trembling. She wants to think that she never saw it coming, but --- that's not true, isn't it? There have always been moments. And she'd be a liar if she said she never thought about it herself.
"Where are you?" She can't believe her voice is this steady.
"I'm not coming home." It sounds dejected. Pathetic. "Don't come find me."
"I'll call Blaise to get you. Where are you?" Hermione doesn't even think she has Blaise's number, but she can't think about that right now.
"Blaise is at his annual visit to his mother in Italy." To be completely honest, she's not even surprised that he's a coherent drunk thus far. The slur in his voice is still there, but he just sounds tired more than anything.
"Theo, then. Look for a sign of the street road or something. Where are you?"
"I don't know. My eyes are closed."
Hermione waits.
Draco sighs.
"Tell him I'm drunk and he'll know."
"Okay."
She doesn't move, and neither does he.
"You're going to make me talk about this when I'm sober, aren't you." Statement, not a question.
The silence is answer enough.
"I'm not going to. I'm not coming home."
That stupid sentence again. Hermione inhales sharply, too confused to be entirely mad. "I'm going to hang up now. Don't move, please wait for Theo."
A grunt of acknowledgement, pitiful to her ears. She moves her phone away from her ear and ends the call with a shaky finger. It takes her two tries to press the button.