Work Text:
once there was a prince.
was the prince you?
and he fell in love.
was it hard to do?
before
Forced proximity turned out to be the answer to Draco Malfoy’s fuckery and bullshit.
It started with a condition of his probation – something about being humbled in order to get past his prejudices by working for the bureaucracy and with an innocent muggleborn, blah blah blaaaah.
Hermione Granger volunteered.
Did they think she was innocent?
Draco assumed that they made her do it, and she screamed up and down the halls of the Ministry in protest only to be smothered. On his first day he was shocked to discover that she did in fact volunteer.
She had looked up from her desk, her expression bleary, looking even more haggard than she had when he spotted her in the Great Hall during the battle of Hogwarts.
“Oh, you’re here. Good,” she sighed, and he didn’t think anyone had been so happy to see him since his parents had found him alive at that same battle.
Granger put him to work.
He shadowed her at a lowly job that she had no right doing. Even he could admit that it was below her.
The Ministry was determined to make her life miserable. There were still too many higher-ups of the old guard who claimed to be progressive per the outcome of a war won by children. They weren’t.
But post-war Granger was so tired. As was Draco. So they worked in silence with the occasional acerbic comment here and there.
Then eventually… well, they got used to each other.
They were parchment pushers with nothing to do except push in silence. It was a monotonous waltz to the scratch of quills, Granger’s annoyed little hisses and clucks, the scrape of their uncomfortable chairs against the stone floor. There was peace in it. Though he could feel restlessness crawling and pricking at his skin.
Sometimes he wanted to say something, anything. He was afraid to speak but he told himself she didn’t deserve his words.
One day, she began speaking. Small observations about redundancies in the reports they signed off on, how annoyed she was. This grew to larger observations of the department they worked in.
Honestly, he wasn’t really sure where they worked. Some obscure off-shoot of the DMLE. Granger called it purgatory.
Draco had a vague notion of the idea of purgatory. The Malfoys had…er, dabbled in that aspect of the muggle world.
Draco sneered at her while he cocked his head. Granger of course took it as a gesture to keep going.
Which led to a rant about muggle religions… It was grating. Awful. Stupid. Fascinating. And then she just kept talking as if so much of her had been bottled up and yeah, he supposed it had.
It went on this way for a few weeks.
Then on a Tuesday, she trailed off awkwardly while she was in the middle of talking about their job and the philosophical concept of nihilism with all the hissing vitriol that was always music to his ears.
He hummed in response, like he always did, while poring over form 187D.
Then the room went quiet.
He looked up at her and saw she was red-faced, a full-body flush. She was drawn in on herself, her eyes darting around even as her hands moved in perfect synchronicity to complete the task before her.
“Sorry,” she mumbled. “I get carried away. I– I have been. I’ll stop.”
Ah, a rare moment of self-awareness from Granger. Finally.
Draco shrugged and said nothing.
She did stop. Completely.
Granger would get started again, he assured himself.
One day became two, became a whole fuck a lot of days.
—
then somebody bends
unexpectedly
Now he was glaring at her over his piles of parchment while she worked and worked, her stupid pretty brown eyes blank of … anything. “Talk!”
Granger startled. “What?”
“Just… talk to me. Like you did. About things.”
“You weren’t even listening,” she said.
“I was, actually. Not all the time because you do go on, Granger. You know that. But, yes, for the most part I was listening.”
She went another shade of pink, different from before, pleased and pretty. She bit her lip. “Well, I watched an interesting movie the other day.”
“What the fuck is a movie?”
And then he picked up his quill and let her voice flow over him.
She started talking to him about more muggle things because he was, much to their surprise, genuinely curious.
Toasters, telephones, turnstiles. At first, he didn’t think he could offer her any new knowledge in return.
He thought perhaps she knew everything interesting about his world — she was a witch, after all.
“What was your childhood like? How did you have fun?”
Draco looked up from document 1122.C and saw that she was watching him with an imploring look in her eye and fuck, he’d forgotten. Granger was a know-it-all because she wanted to know it all.
He knew that but her interest had never been turned on him before. It was, for a boy who always coveted attention, an incredible feeling.
“Well. Did you know peacocks have magic?”
“The peacocks on your estate?”
“No, just in general. Impossible to be that beautiful without having magic, Granger.”
“Wait, what—”
He interrupted her, told her about the peacocks and the very angry selkie that lived in the pond on the west side of the manor (wait, what?).
Draco told her about his mother’s roses, her true legacy to the topography of their acres and acres of the estate. How they bloomed anywhere and everywhere at random and matched his mother’s mood.
“How on earth did she manage that?”
“It wasn’t really intentional. The Black and Malfoy’s magic combining was odd, unprecedented. And my mother is a powerful witch.”
Draco looked away, back at his quill, which he spun in his hand. “The roses aren’t doing too well at the moment.”
He met her gaze again after a beat and Granger was smiling. Not pitying, not with sympathy. It was an eager, creepy, greedy grin accompanied by a bounce and squeak of her chair. She saw in him facets, curiosities, and trivialities, and she wanted more.
So Draco kept talking.
—
now
Draco was going to die. He was literally going to fucking die.
“Not long now,” Granger chirped.
Merlin, she was such an insufferable bitch. This was terrible. Everything was terrible.
She grabbed his wrist and smiled, pulling him forward… about one foot.
“Almost!”
A child wearing a Goofy hat, long ears and the bill adorned with buck teeth, grinned at him. He was several rows away. Much closer to the front of the queue.
He had to smile. A little. Goofy was his favourite. But could he kill the goofy child and jump ahead?
Fuck this place.
Granger nuzzled his shoulder.
Fuck her.
He kissed the top of her sweaty head, anyway.
—
before
He said he’d like to see a movie.
Granger invited him over to her flat on a Saturday afternoon. It was situated in the muggle world, not far from Diagon Alley. It was small, cozy and cluttered with books and blankets, dirty laundry hiding in some corners. There were dirty dishes in the sink of her tiny kitchen and he realized he’d never seen an abandoned dirty dish in his life. It didn’t smell, this space. He would have expected it to. It smelled like her – citrus, apple, things worn down and worn in.
“You do realize you have magic to clean up this mess, right? I can send over a house-elf, pay them triple to tackle this for you.”
She stiffened. “Sometimes I just want to be normal. If it’s too much for your delicate sensibilities, leave.”
Normal?
What wasn’t normal about magic? She’d been a witch longer than she’d been a muggle, hadn’t she?
Draco cleared his throat. “I’m just teasing.”
She peered at him suspiciously for a moment, then her expression cleared into something hospitable. It was the expression his mother wore for the entirety of the time the dark lord resided in their home. Careful, fake.
He opened his mouth to…to say something, he didn’t know what but she’d already turned away from him.
Granger moved to view a shelf that was flush against a cheap wooden stand. On top of it was a black mirror. He stared at it, at his reflection that was warped around the edges.
“I don’t want to break your brain. I wonder how you’d do with how we all started…” she murmured.
She pulled one of the boxes from the shelf. This one matched several others — white stiff edges. Granger opened it to reveal another black…box? Block? And inserted it into a machine below the black mirror.
Granger pressed and prodded things and the mirror was no more.
“Now. I think you can handle this one. It’s about a prince lion.”
“Okay…” he said, blinking while she ushered him to her sofa. Draco sat and sank. She dropped down next to him and when she curled her legs underneath her, her toes grazed his thigh. They were painted pink.
“You do know what lions are, don’t you?” she said.
“Yes, Granger, I am not a fucking idiot.”
“I never know! Anyway. Well. Let’s just watch.”
Watch they did.
—
“It’s a slight retelling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet—”
“That was Gryffindor propaganda.”
Granger burst out laughing. “How’s that?”
Draco glared.
“The bad guy was a lion too!” she said, still laughing.
“Scar was very ineffective as a leader and a monarch."
“What a concept, a megalomaniac being short sighted in the worst way,” she said with a roll of her eyes, but he could see she was deeply amused. Draco wasn’t sure why.
“Clearly he should have been more attentive to the needs of his hyenas, at the very least– Granger, what the fuck is so amusing about this?”
“It’s a children’s movie,” she said with a shrug.
“…Is it? I thought it felt bigger than a children’s story.”
Of course now he was blushing and veering on the edge of humiliation.
The grin on her face faded but not in a bad way. If anything her features softened, transforming into something unknown to him. Sweet, proud, perhaps surprised.
Granger lifted a hand as if to touch him but she seemed to decide against it. She grabbed a rather ratty pillow instead and held it against her chest.
“It— well, you know as well as I do children’s stories can be so impactful. Or do you?”
“What?”
“Nothing. Did you like the music?”
He did still have the song where the little lion sang about being optimistic about taking over the throne stuck in his head.
“Yes. Yes, I did.”
Now she was smiling once more. Draco felt better.
“… Can we watch it again?” he asked.
—
i can see what’s happening (what?)
and they don’t have a clue (who?)
“Sunday?” Theo asked, pouring himself a very expensive amount of whiskey into a wine glass.
“Mm, no. Granger and I are spending time,” Draco said. “What the fuck, Theo? Were you raised by peasants? ”
“Sticking it to the man,” Theo said. He raised his glass and took a deep pull. He smacked his lips, looking like he’d accomplished something.
“What does that mean?”
“Muggle term I enjoy.”
“Ah! Don’t tell me. I’ll ask Granger.”
“I thought that was just Saturdays? You and Granger,” Blaise said from on the chaise he lounged on.
“Well, yeah, but she asked if I’d go shopping with her for a new sofa and I have a vested interest in that decision.”
“Do you now?” Blaise asked.
“Yes. Granger has no respect for my comfort,” he sniffed.
“And she should, shouldn’t she?” Theo asked.
“Obviously.”
“So, just the shopping, then?”
“Well, we have to test out the sofa, of course.”
“Oh yes, of course. Really need to know if it’s up to standard for… your viewings.”
Draco nodded with great enthusiasm. “She really has no idea. Daft little thing. Not sure what she would do without me.”
“So daft,” Blaise said.
“Helpless!” Theo opined.
“Clueless,” Blaise agreed.
“Delusional!” Theo exclaimed.
“Blind, truly out of her depth,” Blaise pontificated.
“You both get me.”
Draco had good friends.
—
now
Draco blinked. They were on a boat. It was even hotter here than it was outside in that fucking queue. It smelled weird. Like stagnant water and unwashed bodies and despair.
He watched creepy little dolls sing.
It’s a world of laughter, it’s a world of tears
He knew in theory he was supposed to be learning something.
It’s a small world after all
Oh. Well. He now got that reference. Scar didn’t like this song.
“Granger, I am going to fucking scream. I swear to fucking Merlin I am going to scream and drown everyone here, including that doll thing from South America.”
“Spoken like a rich white man, darling.”
—
before
i just don’t know how a world that makes such wonderful things
could be bad
It became a weekly meet up at her flat. Draco watched all sorts of things that boggled his mind.
“You shouldn’t sit so close to the TV,” she said.
There were cats playing trumpets and saxophones on the black mirror. “Why?”
“I– well you know, I was told it would ruin my eyes but now I am second-guessing that. I’ll have to find some peer reviewed—”
“Not now.”
The well-bred cat was so pretty and the tomcat was so charming.
—
More and more and more.
—
Draco pursed his lips so they wouldn’t tremble. He blinked rapidly. It had been a long time since he’d felt the urge to cry. Probably when he was in a bathroom and shortly almost bled out.
And there she was, sitting next to him on her nice new sofa that he had convinced the store owner into saying it was cheaper than it was so she would buy it. Then he slipped the owner the difference.
Granger was prattling on about something like she hadn’t hurt him immeasurably.
“Good, isn’t it? This one was always a favourite of mine—”
“Why would you show this to me? No. Don’t tell me why. Point fucking made, Granger,” he snapped, standing.
She stood as well, a quick leap, wartime reflexes still there. She looked absolutely baffled. “What?”
“I don’t know how I forget you can be so cruel.”
“Cruel?”
“We’re not going to end that way.”
“I—”
“I won’t allow it.”
“What way?” she said, only looking mildly alarmed.
Draco waved at the mirror, the telivasion, “Like the fucking fox and dog.”
She blinked and watched the names roll by. All the people who were also determined to break his heart. “Oh— I mean, yes there are larger themes–”
Draco spun on his heel and stepped across the room. He pressed a button and removed The Fox and The Hound from the VQT or whatever the fuck it was.
“You don’t get to just tolerate my existence separate from you like that’s some hopeful fucking end— to…to whatever the fuck we are,” he bit out.
The tape melted and disintegrated in his hands.
Granger gaped.
He heaved out a deep, rattling breath, a long exhalation, like everything that burdened him was leaving his body and cutting him on the way out.
“In another life—” Draco swallowed and ran his tongue across his teeth and looked at the picture of her, Potter, and Weasley that did not move but there was magic there. “I think I could have met you on the train and we would have been best friends and it might have been something like that fucking disney movie because of … everything,” he said, motioning a hand in between them.
“Draco–”
“But not in this fucking life. I earned you,” he snarled.
“Earned?” she whispered, blinking like a dumb, fuzzy owl. Or fox. Or dog.
“I’m better now and what would any of that have been worth if I didn’t get to keep you?”
“I–”
“So yes. Friends for fucking ever. I won’t let you go. And I expect you to think on that!”
Then he left with a slam of her flat’s door.
—
when this moment has passed, will that friendship last?
The force of it vibrated under her bare feet and up her spine.
Hermione did think on it. It made her chest hurt, while at the same time something good started to bloom inside her.
Something delicate and beautiful.
—
now
“Dishonour! Dishonour on everything, on you! DISHONOUR.”
He whirled in circles screeching the words of— of— He couldn’t remember right now! Draco moved his hands in jerky motions toward the universe around him, the whole of fucking reality for damning him to this moment.
A small world, after all.
People were staring. Let them stare.
He pointed his finger at a family and yelled, “Don’t go in there!”
They did anyway, the fools. He shook his head.
“I love you, Draco,” Granger said softly from somewhere behind him. A whisper, words so precious and vulnerable that Draco knew she didn’t want to be heard.
Draco had had many tantrums in his life. It was a well known fact that they simply must be waited out before he was capable of rational thought. That was the reality, the rule.
But he paused mid-tantrum (and he had so much more to wish dishonour on. What character was it?) and turned around.
Granger was just as sweaty as he was but her damp skin glistened in the late afternoon light. Her hair was plastered to the sides of her face and her neck. Her cheeks were flushed, burnt a dusty rose.
So perfect.
“What?” he croaked. Draco cleared his throat and attempted to look nonchalant.
“Nothing!”
She shook her head and cracked a grin. Devious, manipulative, brilliant brat.
“So, there’s a thing called a Fast Pass… ”
As Granger explained the concept and why she didn’t make it readily available right away (you needed to suffer a little), he wanted to strangle her.
But then she held out her hand to him. “It’ll be fun. Do you trust me?”
“Yes?” he said, taking what she offered.
—
She got him ice cream and a syrupy drink, which he gulped down gratefully. Then she won him a Joanna doll. She swore she didn’t use magic but she was full of shit.
“And there she goes into your Mary Poppins bag,” he said idly, watching her. She’d also won a headband with Minnie Mouse’s ears and bow and immediately put it on. She looked ridiculous.
She looked up at him in astonishment.
“Bag with an illegal extension charm, Draco,” she said slowly.
He waved a hand at her in dismissal.“Whatever. Is there an umbrella in there?”
“… Yes. A few, actually.”
Draco walked past her. “Well, there you go. Keep Joanna safe. Don’t let any of your books fall on top of her. She deserves—”
Granger jumped on his back and he instinctively bent forward and grabbed her by the biceps to keep her on top of him.
It was where she belonged, really.
She draped against him, loose limbed, giving him all her weight, and pressed a kiss to his temple and he could feel her smirk, her delight.
“Onward!” she said.
People were looking.
Draco grinned and off they went to the next attraction.
—
Draco did not like the next attraction.
They sat in some sort of rendition of teacups. They could have at least modeled them after delicate bone china while they threw him around like a little bitch who had no concept of gravity. Draco held on for his life. She cackled at his distress and screeched about centrifugal force.
He hated her.
—
The roller coasters were more to his speed and he whooped. Not as exhilarating as being on a broom, but the unanticipated twists and turns were very fun and novel. Granger screamed bloody murder.
He felt better seeing her wobble and whimper after every ride (heh), her hair even more of a mess than usual. The mouse ears held on because he had discreetly spelled them to stay. He liked them. A lot.
Draco steadied her after the last ride and told her she was pretty, so pretty.
She really was.
She told him she hated him.
Draco kissed her cheek.
“More?”
She laughed breathlessly. “More.”
And then they were on the move.
—
before
you’re so sweet, goodness knows
you are so precious to me
baby of mine
Of course his father would die on a Saturday, the fuck.
His mother retreated, somewhere. He didn’t blame her. That was how the Blacks handled grief. She needed space and room to lose her mind.
But he still felt so alone and he didn’t have the energy to reach out to his friends. That was how Malfoys grieved, he supposed. Alone but without the spark and fury of his mother’s family.
Useless.
Draco slumped low on the sofa he sat on. He didn’t even have the energy to get up and pour himself a drink.
Then Granger was there, just as he hoped she’d be.
Draco wasn’t surprised when she sat next to him on the other end of the sofa and tugged at his arm.
Then his head was in her lap and they both looked at the unlit hearth in front of them. Nothing to see there.
He thought she might light a fire — there was always something to distract them, in front of their eyes. Endless parchment and black mirrors come to life when they spoke. The lack of that buffer had him shuddering, his breath hitching. There was nowhere to hide.
Granger just ran her hand through his hair and cradled him.
It was so quiet and Draco wanted to jump out of his skin.
“Your hair is so soft,” she murmured. “I’ve always wanted to touch it. Exceeds expectations, in the end.”
“It’s Outstanding and you know it. But always? Bit creepy,” he said against the skin of her bare thighs. She had those little shorts on that drove him insane watching her prance around her flat.
“Since the first moment I saw you.”
“That’s something.”
It was everything.
Silence again. Unbearable.
“I’m sorry, Draco.”
“No, you’re not.”
She said nothing for a breath. “I’m sad that you’re sad.”
“He was a bad person but he wasn’t a bad father. Does that… is it okay for me to think that?”
“Draco–"
“He loved me. And my mother. In his way. But I can’t grieve him, I can’t. Right?”
“You get to be sad. Please be sad.”
“That’s a strange request, Granger.”
“Be sad.”
So he was.
—
He didn’t go to her flat for three Saturdays.
—
On the fourth Saturday, he showed up at her front door.
“Oh, it’s you.”
She was such a fucking mess. He had no words to describe what a disaster she was (ok he had some) — stained clothes, waxy sheen to her skin, sunken eyes. Merlin, her hair couldn’t be fixed by magic. They’d have to tap into another source of power to get those curls untangled.
She was so beautiful.
“Granger, have you been pining for me?”
She went to slam the door but he pushed forward. Draco kicked the door closed behind him.
Granger didn’t have interest in the chase like he did. Not during these moments.
She stopped in her tracks and he pressed forward. She pushed him back, her palm spread wide against his chest.
“You could have sent an owl.”
“I needed quiet. I’m sorry,” he said.
“Next time, let me know. Please.”
Her fingertips pinched together and she clutched his shirt so tightly he could feel it pull against his back and shoulders. They were both anchored to each other, weren’t they? Granger didn’t let go but she didn’t meet his eyes.
“Please,” she said again.
“I will.”
Draco loved her.
He stepped forward.
“What movie are we watching tonight?” he muttered against the devastation of her hair.
“You’ve watched all the ones I have. There’s nothing left.”
This surprised him. “So what now?”
Granger let go of him.
He kissed her.
—
now
when you wish upon a star as dreamers do
fate is kind
she brings to those who love
She was naked, stunning. She went to take the ears off with an embarrassed giggle.
“No,” he said, covering her hand with his. “Keep them on.”
“Oh? Minnie does it for you?” she asked.
Draco grasped her by the hips and pulled her forward.
“You do it for me, you happy like this.”
She grasped his hair, nails scraping against his scalp. She pulled his head back and looked at him, needing and wanting answers.
“Draco?”
He ran his palms up her sides, stroked his thumbs under the weight of her tits, traced the shape of them while he lifted, reveled in the sensation of the drag and slight pull of her skin there.
His eyes were on hers all the while. “Yes?”
Granger straddled his hips, knees wide, cunt just brushing against his cock. Her breasts were now in front of his face and what could he fucking be expected to do other than lean forward and suck on her nipple. A hard press of his lips, a pull, suction, a flick of his tongue. A rhythm while he ground his cock against her soaked cunt, slipping, sliding in between her folds.
She mewled, greedy, slutty thing she was for patterns and paperwork with all the i’s dotted and t’s crossed.
Then she reached between them and notched the head of his cock at her entrance with a firm grasp. Granger wriggled. They both hissed.
“Oh,” she purred like his cock was a revelation as she settled her hands on his shoulders.
She took her time with him. Her knees pressing into the mattress as she pulled up and away, and then took him inside her tight heat again. Up and again but not all of him. Nowhere near.
Granger was so wet and perfect and he was fucking miserable. He might come this way, with just the tip of him inside her while she swiveled and twisted.
“Fuck.”
“Do I feel good?” she panted.
He glared at her but she was looking at him in earnest.
Draco grasped her by the hips and pulled her down while thrusting up. She sank down on him, every inch. They both moaned.
“You feel amazing,” he panted.
Granger rose on her knees and he meant to suckle a nipple into his mouth but his mouth landed right over her heart.
And here was everything. He felt the beat of it just slightly, it pounded.
He banded his arm around her back and hips and looked up. Granger ran her fingers through his hair.
There was that trepidation and confusion in her expression he often spotted. Like he hadn’t taken to the things that made her irrevocably her, like she hadn’t changed him, like she wasn’t the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen and therefore the most magical with those fucking mouse ears.
“Hermione–”
Her name was enough for her to fuck him.
She came on his cock and he came so hard inside her, he caught glimpses of their first born (a boy, very cute, very terrible).
Later he told her he loved her. He told her this was his happily ever after.
She babbled about socioeconomic status and it really wasn’t fair he got a happily ever after in the grand scheme of things.
She fucked him again and he promised her he’d steal from the rich and give to the poor. He promised her the world.
They stared at each other in a post orgasmic state, panting, wide eyed.
She licked her lips, “Okay, but hear me out — fox Robin Hood is super hot, right?”
—
and away to her castle we’ll go
to be happy forever, I know
years later
“‘Let it Go’ really resonated with me, I’ll have you know.”
“Did it, Draco? Did it really?”
“I am much misunderstood and beautiful. And I put up with things that were insurmountable to the point of a cathartic…er, release, yes.”
“CATHARTIC RELEASE!” their child howled, startling everyone around them.
“Very good, baby, but that’s what we call redundant language,” Granger crooned.
“…CATHARTIC RELEASE?!”
She sighed the sigh of every tired woman in the universe. “I love our life.”
A resigned but deeply sincere statement that filled him with pride.
Draco grabbed Scorpius by his collar before he ran into the street all the while beaming at his wife.
“You’re welcome.”