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The bell over the door chimes merrily, and Draco nearly slams his head against the underside of the front counter.
He’s down on his hands and knees, trying to fish out a bottle that rolled underneath but the damned thing is out of reach. His left hand aches with pent up helpfulness but without his hawthorne conduit, he’s as good as a first year. Worse, maybe. First years are at least allowed to carry wands.
With a frustrated huff, he pushes back to his haunches, bracing a hand on the shelf before levering up to his feet.
“Welcome in,” he begins, and then freezes when he sees who’s entered his shop.
The curls greet him first. Wind-swept and full of life, wholly unimpressed by the chopstick stuck through to tame the top half of the mass. A reflexive flick of amber greets him next, body already aimed for the wall of tinctures, and then she freezes and turns on her heel.
This time when their eyes meet, hers go wide.
“Malfoy?”
God. He hasn’t heard her say his name in years, and certainly not with so little derision.
“Granger,” he returns, paying her the same courtesy.
She steps closer and a small part of him relishes the fact he’s distracted her from what was evidently a single-minded pursuit.
“What’re you doing here?” she demands.
“In my shop?” He leans his hip against the counter and crosses his arms over his chest. “Commerce, I expect.”
“Your shop,” she echoes. “Since when?”
“Since forever.”
Snark aside, it’s true—he’s owned the shop since it opened five years ago. A little ‘congratulations on getting out of prison’ gift from friends, the joke at his new fallen angel status underlined by genuine care. Confined to the manor, he’d have gone mad without something to set his mind to. Sourcing and organizing an apothecary via owl, staffing it in his absence—it had been a life-line. With the shop, he knew he might be alright.
“It can’t have been ‘since forever’ because only a few months ago I came in for eye of newt and you were nowhere to be seen,” she rebuts. “And I happen to know that the proprietor of this shop is a lovely woman named—”
“Gladys,” he supplies. “Yes, she did a splendid job running things for me while I was away.”
Satisfyingly, her eyes narrow.
“Away.”
He nods blithely.
It’s the nicest way he can think to describe his prior six-and-a-half years. Azkaban first—briefly—and then three years of house arrest followed by two of mandatory Muggle integration, stuck in a woefully small cottage in the Cotswolds.
It looks like she wants to argue further but then, with a gusty sigh, she marches toward the shelves.
“Well,” she says, back to him and face upturned as she searches for her quarry. “In that case, this one will be on the house.”
He scoffs but any retort is lost when she goes up on her toes for a bottle just out of reach, dainty fingers straining upward. Against all reason, he’s swinging around the counter to help her when she huffs a little breath and reaches for the chopstick in her hair.
No, not a chopstick.
Her bloody wand.
A deft flick and the bottle—Acromantula venom—glides down to her waiting hand.
The casualness with which she flaunts it—her wand, her magic—makes a knot tighten in his gut, envy mixing with soul-deep yearning. Sometimes not using magic hurts, like when a limb falls asleep only to wake with a million tiny stabs.
There’s a determined little smile on her face as she strides to the door, loosened curls flouncing. It’s a look he’s deeply familiar with and seeing it now feels a bit like flicking through a photo album, back to a time when wiping it off her face was the best feeling in the world.
The nostalgia of it burns in his gut, hot and uncomfortable.
She waves the bottle at him then slips it into her bag.
“Consider it a reparation,” she says.
The bell chimes as she yanks the door open.
He gapes at her for a moment, at the unapologetic impertinence, before barking a laugh.
“I’ll add it to your tab,” he calls after her, and catches a glint of narrowed amber just before the slam.
Three days later, Draco is in the backroom waiting for the kettle to boil when the bell chimes.
Customers this close to Christmas are far and few, the pre-season rush having taken care of any requisite holiday brews. Nothing will be done before the holidays at this rate and so it’s been mostly the odd sale amid hours of solitude.
Leave it to the very moment the water’s ready that someone interrupts.
“Just a moment,” he calls, attuned to the roil of bubbles and density of steam that puffs out the kettle. He’s got it off the base at the first hint of readiness, filling the teapot where it sits ready.
Gladys had gifted him the electric kettle upon her retirement and though the thermometer’s accuracy is about as good as Ireland’s current Chasers (read: not very), he can’t seem to part with it. It’s a bit like her, maybe. Stout and cylindrical. Magical-but-not. A bit like him.
He twists the timer to exactly four-and-a-quarter minutes and then hurries to the front.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he begins, then falters when he sees who it is. Granger; again.
“Where did this come from?” she demands, brandishing a small bottle.
He looks at it, then her, and then points to the wall of tinctures.
She follows his forefinger then tsks.
“No, Malfoy. The venom—where did it come from?”
Sunshine and roses, as ever. He arches a brow. “An Acromantula, I expect. And hello to you too, Granger.”
She waves him off. “Don’t be cute. I’m asking which one, specifically.”
The lack of preamble—no adherence to basic social etiquette, just straight to demands—makes him want to smile. He smothers it behind a carefully indifferent expression, mostly because he gets a sense it will only antagonize her further.
“I’m not sure how you expect me to know the exact spider. My supplier handles the details.”
The bottle makes a dull clink when she sets it on the front counter: empty.
“And who is your supplier?”
“Are you dissatisfied with the product?”
The hard line of her mouth suggests she wishes the answer was yes. Instead, she shakes her head.
“It was the best bloody venom I’ve ever used. Now, where—” She marks the word with a sharp jab to the counter “—did it come from?”
“There are only two known clusters of Acromantula in the world,” he says mildly. “Were you aware?”
Her eyes narrow and his pulse thickens at the challenge in them.
“So,” he drawls. “The logic carries that if it’s not the one you’re used to, it must be from the other.”
Her eyes flare, a slight furrow forming between her brows.
Being deemed special has always been a weakness of his—the carrot dangled at the end of the proverbial stick, guiding so many of his missteps—and so Draco can’t help the way that her little pout sends a thrill up his spine. He’s done what others haven’t—pushed back.
She recovers quickly, expression chastising. “I hope this isn’t how you usually treat your customers. It’d be a wonder you had any at all.”
“Customers pay,” he says sweetly. “If I recall, you absconded with this.”
He taps the empty vial with a forefinger, tutting.
“What’ve you been brewing that requires five-milliliters of Acromantula venom in three days, Granger?”
“None of your business.”
He inclines his head in a wry if you say so, then rests both hands on the counter, putting a bit of weight on them so that he’s looming across the surface toward her.
“I can think of several highly irregular uses for it,” he muses, then drops his voice to something placating. “But there are perfectly innocuous applications as well, of course. Anti-venom, for one—that’s the nicest.”
Rather than be cowed, she juts her chin up, brow arched. “Why are you assuming it’s one of the nice ones?”
The edge of his mouth pulls up against his will. God, but she’s always been fiery.
He hums slowly. “Of course—foolish of me. You’d think I’d have learned not to underestimate you by now.”
It’s subtle but he’s fairly sure her breath catches.
“Yes, well, you were always a bit of a slow learner.”
It’s a weak retort, in both content and tone.
His smile spreads, curling up on one side in a way he knows does him only favors.
“Not anymore,” he murmurs.
They’re close enough that he can see the way her eyes flick between his. Can see the tiny creases that highlight the plushness of her bottom lip, accentuated when her mouth parts in soft surprise. Can feel the energy radiating from her as he shifts his weight forward on his hands, just barely encroaching into her space.
Anyone else, and he’d be flicking a glance up before leaning all the way in.
But it’s Granger.
Not only does she definitely not want to kiss him, she very likely wants to hex him. Which—yeah, he’s sort of getting off on. The spoiled little boy in him loves the provocation of having something withheld; of having to earn what he’d normally be given freely.
Granger won’t back down easily and fuck, he loves the defiance.
He’s about to press his luck to see just how far he can push, when, from the back room, the timer dings.
He blinks then eases back until he’s firmly on his side of the counter, feigning an apologetic expression though his heart is racing.
“Terribly sorry, Granger, but something urgent’s just come up. By all means, help yourself to another bottle. I’ll pop it on your tab.”
Her mouth forms a perfect O of disbelief. He wants to stay and savor it for as long as possible, but making his getaway is crucial to solidify his new persona in her head. No longer is he the sneering, pointy nuisance from school. Now, she’s facing off against an equal—and vice versa.
It’s an important distinction.
He wants her to remember it.
The shop door slams before the bell’s clapper can do anything more assertive than click against the bow.
As he pours a perfectly brewed cup of tea, Draco’s smile is broad and unquellable.
Sparring with her feels almost as good as magic.
All things considered, the years have been good to Draco.
Despite the shaky start, he’s made an honest man of himself. Diverting from the typical Malfoy family business—bullying, blackmail, and bribery—took some doing, but there was nothing more powerful a motivator for change like living a wandless life with one’s equally hamstrung parents. If that was what his father’s legacy would get him, then Draco was having none of it.
Though he’d deny it if asked, he’d enjoyed the Muggle cottage in the Cotswolds. He’s used to open spaces, having the run of the land. Being closed up in Azkaban had nearly done him in, even in its newly ethical state sans Dementors. An hour a day outdoors had almost been worse than total confinement; the taste of wind and rain like a droplet of water on a parched tongue. It only made him thirstier.
As he watches Granger roam the displays, gathering bottles and pouches with the uninhibited eagerness of a Second year at Honeydukes, he experiences a similar feeling.
Her attention on him had been so fleeting—barely a glance before she was off ransacking his shelves—and he knows her presence within his tiny world will be so temporary, that he almost wishes she’d never graced his doorstep.
It’s best he pretends she doesn’t exist, so that when she’s gone he won’t die of starvation.
But when she goes to the door with nary a glance back at him, the bell announcing a bold goodbye, he can’t help himself. Not in the face of such gorgeous audacity, robbing him so brazenly.
“Those are very expensive ingredients, Granger,” he calls out. “Are you attempting to bankrupt me?”
She sends him a wry smirk over her shoulder. “If this is all it’d take, then I suppose you’ve been more generous than most.”
Now that he’s broken the seal on their silence, he can’t stop.
“I’m always more generous than most, love,” he drawls, then inclines his head permissively. “But, no. Rest assured that you’d never be able to nick enough to make a dent.”
She turns to face him and he gets a sense that if her arms weren’t laden with his merchandise, she’d have her hands planted squarely on her hips.
“If I wanted to bankrupt you, I would, Draco Malfoy,” she asserts.
The use of his full name makes him bite the inside of his cheek, to control a grin or a groan or both.
“And furthermore, it would be well and truly justified for me to do so, considering, well—all of it. But.” She pauses. “For what it’s worth, that’s not my goal.”
He quirks a brow invitingly, disastrously on her hook.
“My goal,” she continues, taking an unconscious step closer. “Is restocking the potions cupboard with as little impact to overhead as possible.”
“The potions cupboard,” he echoes, smirking. “What, yours?”
“The school’s.”
Naturally, his mind goes to Hogwarts first, but the potions stores there have always been well-afforded. And if it’s not the thing he knows, then it must be…
“You’re running a school?” The moment he says it, he nearly barks a laugh and takes the question back—of course she is.
Perhaps his expression demonstrates as much because her demeanor softens.
“You can write this all off. Charitable donations to a Magico-Muggle Immersion primary school would look very, very good on your books.”
An immersion primary school. His stomach twists with longing, grief. What sort of person might he have been, were he given the chance?
The little kernel of respect he feels for her swells so rapidly, it’s almost a physical sensation.
“So in a way, you’re actually doing me a favor,” he surmises, eyeing her loot.
“In every way,” she corrects, and then graces him with a fleeting flash of a grin. “Bye now, Malfoy.”
The bell tinkles again, a cheeky little ta-ta as she saunters below it.
As he watches her stride down the pavement through the front windows, he considers that this year is shaping up to be the best of them all.
“How can you find anything back here? I’m just going to—”
The sound of a box falling brings Draco’s head around, squinting through the doorway to the back. She’d invited herself to his stockroom under the guise of finding a larger pouch of asphodel, something she’d developed a bad habit of doing in the past two visits.
“Granger, what are you—? Salazar below.” He grumbles the last as a second box thunks to the floor.
By the time he makes it back to her, she’s got her fists on her hips, shrewd gaze scanning the now-empty shelving rack.
“What have you done,” he laments, taking in the pigsty his perfectly tidy stockroom has become. “This was perfect three minutes ago.”
“Perfectly ramshackle,” she tuts disparagingly. “Half these boxes were stacked two-deep and not of the same items. These were unlabeled. And you weren’t using the top shelf at all.”
“Gladys couldn’t reach it.”
She gives him a significant look, eyes flicking from his shoes to his head.
“And besides that, you can just Levitate things up and down,” she adds, to her nonverbal assessment of his height. “Or Accio them. Honestly, I can’t believe I’m explaining this to you, of all people.”
Pins and needles buzz down his arm to his wand hand. His fingers twitch, antsy, and so he shoves both hands into his trouser pockets.
“I can’t, actually,” he says, as casually as he’s able. “Not for another six months or so.”
Her attention flicks to him. “You can’t…what, use magic?”
“Mm.”
She frowns, hands falling from her hips to hang on either side. “Why not?”
It’s his turn to give her a significant look.
She makes a disgruntled noise, clearly perturbed, then tucks her wand into her pocket and folds her arms over her chest, eyeing him.
“How long?”
“I’ll get my wand back on—”
“No.” Her head twitches in a half-shake, eyes on him. “How long have you been without?”
Being made to say it embarrasses him, which was perhaps their objective. Having his magic withheld—it’s a nuanced, multifaceted punishment.
“It’ll be seven years,” he says evenly. In his pocket, his barren hand curls into a fist. “All told.”
She inhales slowly through her nose. “God.”
“Mm.” He rocks forward on the balls of his feet, and then can’t take her intense eye contact any longer. “So what’s your plan then? Just leave everything on the floor?”
The way she rolls her eyes feels performative but he appreciates the gesture for what it is: agreement to move on.
“Yes, naturally that’s my brilliant solution,” she says, then sighs. “What you really need are about twenty clear tote bins, so you can see what you’ve got at a glance.”
The words, though meaningless to him, fill him with distaste. “I think I might actually prefer things on the floor.”
She laughs, and there’s nothing forced about it. Any residual tension melts away like ice on his tongue.
“Oh, come on. I’ll even label them for you—you’ll love it, I promise.”
The chance to spend more time with her is easy to agree to, though he feigns reluctance with an aggrieved sigh.
“Fine, but you’re buying.”
The look she sends him keeps him warm for a week.
It takes her half the time he’d expected to march into the shop. As such, he’s still up on the step ladder, dusting A-through-F when she comes to a swift halt below him.
“The school’s foundation just received a massive anonymous donation,” she says. “And a ridiculously generous ongoing pledge.”
It’s hard not to react while looking at her, so he focuses on his cleaning.
“Congratulations, that’s brilliant news.”
She huffs.
“Malfoy.”
He makes a show of flicking the duster around then climbs down. Her mouth is a firm line, eyes determined. For all the world, it looks like she’s holding back tears.
“Thank you.” The words are definitely wobbly. His stomach flips. “You’ve made a huge difference to so many children, and expanded the programs we can offer, and—just. Thank you.”
“Oh.” He wants to fold her into his arms, half so that she won’t see the prick of emotion threatening to show on his own face but mostly because he wants to tuck her close. “It’s my pleasure. A privilege, really, to be able to contribute.”
An agonizing moment stretches between them and he very nearly steps forward to hug her, just to give himself recourse against her earnest expression.
“I’d hoped to repay you by bringing you your wand,” she confesses.
His heart clenches. Only Hermione Granger would dream of accomplishing such a thing.
“And they denied you?” He exaggerates his incredulity so that he doesn’t do something mortifying.
She rolls her eyes. “They’re a work in progress.”
Merlin spare them.
The Christmas week is even slower than the former.
As he peruses the past year’s ledgers, bored but curious, he’s reassured that the dearth of business appears to have little to do with him—Gladys had been equally unfrequented.
Though truth be told, Draco’s only missing one particular patron.
He knows she’s going to the Burrow for the holidays—she’d informed him of as much during her last visit a few days ago—but the reality that he won’t see her again until the new year makes him surly.
Even the color-coordinated labels do nothing to improve his mood, though he goes back at least once an hour to gaze up at the rows of plastic boxes anyway, meticulously labeled in her unexpectedly messy handwriting.
He could redo them with his own neat penmanship, to kill time.
He traces his forefinger over her horrific little g’s instead.
It’s during one of these diversions that the bell above the shop door chimes. He startles as if caught doing something he oughtn't, which is silly because he’s a grown man, and able to do whatever he likes with his own things.
“Be out in a moment,” he calls, then scrubs a hand down his face to dispel the flush of heat that’s pricked there.
Maybe after he sees to the customer, he’ll close up for the day and trudge upstairs to his flat for a proper drink and the last half of his novel. Surely anything would be less depressing than what he’s currently doing.
Straightening his jumper, Draco emerges from the back, plastering a friendly it’s-Christmastime smile on his face.
The sight of her draws him up short, fake-smile flagging.
Dressed in a chunky cream jumper and jeans, curls dusted with snow and eyes bright, she’s like Christmas made corporeal. Or the feeling of it, anyway. Suddenly he’s awash with carefully-contained anticipation.
To remark on how unexpected it is to see her feels trite, considering every instance has been unexpected, so he gives her a genuine smile and raises his brows interrogatively.
“I brought you something,” she says.
“Oh?” He steps closer, gaze falling to the parcel in her hands. “Brought or bought?”
When he looks up, she’s bemused.
“Brought. I harvested it myself, actually.” She extends the little gift to him almost shyly. “Open it.”
He takes it from her with low-simmering trepidation, not for what may be contained inside but what he might do after having received a Christmas gift from her. Hopefully nothing more mortifying than mooning over the echo of her presence in the stock room, but there’s no telling. Historically, he’s a bit of a weeper when it comes to sentimentality.
The parcel is tied with plain kitchen twine but even so, when he eases the loop off, he slips it over his wrist rather than let it fall to the floor. The wrapping is parchment paper, sealed with a little strip of Spellotape. Carefully, he works the edge up with his thumbnail.
“Good lord, just tear it, Draco.”
He compresses a smile, glancing up at her, then does as bid.
The paper rips apart easily, revealing a sprig of something leafy and green. As he lifts it up, the white berries make his stomach swoop.
Mistletoe.
She’s given him a sprig of mistletoe.
Without needing to look, he can visualize the display he put together of the very same, one of his recent best-sellers.
He doesn’t need mistletoe, which means…
He meets her eye.
“Where should we hang it?”
The breath that leaves her is part laugh, part relief. She was nervous, too.
“It’s your gift,” she says. “You decide.”
He snorts. “As if something being mine has ever stopped you before.”
“Oh, please.” She holds out her hand and, obediently, he places the sprig in her palm. “Come on then.”
She marches around him to the doorway that leads to the back room then sends a regretful look to him.
“Sorry,” she says, then draws her wand and levitates the mistletoe, sticking it to the lintel with a whispered charm.
For once, the use of magic doesn’t pain him.
The sight of her, standing in the doorway, under mistletoe, waiting for him—nothing could hurt him in that moment.
She bites her lip. “Well?”
How many times has he crossed a room to meet his fate? Too many to count.
This time, though, he welcomes it.
Her cheek is soft in his palm, the rise of her cheekbone a steady sweep that draws him in. Warm amber eyes fix on his, hopeful, expectant. She smells of the outdoors, and jasmine, and the barest hint of mulled wine.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers, then dips down and kisses her.
She makes a contented sound against his mouth, pressing up into it, hand jumping to his shoulder before curling up around the back of his neck.
It’s a soft kiss, steady and searching. When they break apart, they stay close. He wants to kiss her again—and he will—but first he toys with a snow-dampened curl.
“It’s not snowing in London.”
The gust of her breathy laugh brushes against him. “Yes, well, I wasn’t in London, was I?”
The reminder sets loose a lazy grin.
“You weren’t. You were miles away with hoards of redheads.”
Thinking about me.
Her chastising pout confirms it—she presses a kiss to his thumb when he traces the shape.
“There’s a patch of mistletoe out in the woods. I took a walk and saw it.”
And then had left her cozy faux-family gathering to trek through dreary London, spiced wine still on her tongue and wrapping sourced directly from the Weasley kitchen.
The impatience of her melts through him, sweet as honey.
“I didn’t get you anything,” he says, regretful.
She tuts. “You’ve been giving me things all month.”
He cranes his neck back to peer down at her, bemused. “Oh? You helping yourself counts as gifting?”
“Well.” She loops her other arm up around his shoulders, bringing him close again. “It doesn’t not count.”
Even so, he’ll rectify the oversight as soon as possible. But first…
He kisses her again, languidly, hands slipping down to settle around her hips. She’s eager for it, more than he expected she would be. The swipe of her tongue across his lip is less ask and more demand, but he’d open for her either way.
Hunger, it seems, is a quality they share.
It’s not until the bell chimes, alerting them of a sudden unwilling audience, that they break apart again.
Her eyes are glassy and heavy-lidded, lips kiss-swollen. He wants to tell the customer happy Christmas, now kindly fuck off, but then she’s grinning up at him and stepping out from under the curve of his body toward the front.
“Hello,” she greets, all holiday cheer. “What can I help you find?”
He braces a forearm on the doorway and watches as she tends to his customer with easy confidence—she knows his merchandise as well as he does, after all—chest aching with something very close to joy.
On New Years, they hold out for three minutes past midnight before she’s giving him a look and he’s hurriedly making their excuses. Pansy’s expression is deeply knowing but she dismisses him with a quick peck to the cheek.
The walk to his shop is only a few blocks but even so, Draco considers asking Hermione to Apparate them. She’s in such a pretty dress.
The shop bell rings in the new year just as merrily as the church bells had, and then again when he presses her back against the door, palm coming to rest beside her head.
He kisses the tipsy giggle from her lips, other hand splaying at her lower back, pulling her close.
“Happy new year,” he murmurs.
She smiles against his lips. “You already told me happy new year.”
He had, whispered into her ear when he’d given her a perfectly friendly hug in Pansy’s lounge.
“Not how I wanted to.” Another kiss reinforces his meaning.
“You could have kissed me at Pansy’s." Fingers play with the short hairs at his nape, making him shiver. “I wouldn’t have minded.”
And neither would anyone else, her eyes seem to say.
The reminder is needed, and comforting. Pansy, who’d greeted Hermione with easy familiarity and then given Draco a look of deep exasperation at his clear surprise before remarking that just because he was a sad little hermit didn’t mean the rest of Wizarding society didn’t intermingle with regularity.
Somehow, in this new era, he’s allowed to have this, have her—whether he judges himself worthy of it or not.
“If I’d kissed you at Pansy’s,” he begins, hands sliding from her hips to the rounded curve of her bum. “I might have made a scene.”
She bites back a grin. “Are you going to make a scene now?”
“Might do.”
“Right here, against the glass door of your place of business?”
He wants to wipe the impish little smirk off her face; wants to replace it with gasps and the sound of his name, throaty and pleading.
She hums an amused sound, pushing closer against where he’s definitely making a scene of himself.
“Naughty,” she chastises softly, then tugs at his hair. “Take me upstairs.”
They barely make it to his bed.
She’s all sass and laughter and endless, blood-pulsing pushback, sweet when she wants to be but not docile, not ever. He learns this while on his back, her tongue in his mouth and her hips gyrating in torturous circles over the aching length of his cock until his boxers are damp from them both.
She kisses him after, lips soft on his cheek then throat as he catches his breath, staring at the ceiling in a dazed sort of euphoria. By the time she’s mouthing at the waistband of his pants, he’s back to himself and his new mission to always give as good as he gets.
Because Merlin, he’s been getting so much good.
Trembling under his tongue, thighs clamped around his head and fingers perfect agony in his hair, she does moan his name—desperate and plaintive and fond.
All the ways she’s said his name in recent memory have been healing, of a sort, but as he coaxes her through it with firm, affectionate pressure, he feels the shift within him.
If he can have this, then he’ll be alright.
More than alright.