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Draco drops his quill and flexes his hand, stretching the overworked tendons, and Hermione’s pulse thuds. She can’t look away. Her officemate’s fingers, large and pale and well-manicured, dwarf the dainty peacock-feather quill.
His grip is perfect. Textbook.
Not the frantic, off-kilter positioning Hermione uses. She’d bet her life that Draco doesn’t get indents in his middle finger from resting his quill on it while he writes.
He continues transcribing his report, the soft scratching of quill on parchment filling the silence of their shared office. Hermione reaches for her mug, needing a sip of hot tea to keep her mind clear, but in her bid to study how Draco’s hands wrap around the quill—and how they might feel wrapped around her—she knocks it over.
“Fuck.” She scrambles for her wand and casts a hasty vanishing spell, though she isn’t quick enough to prevent the pale brown stain that now blooms on the corner of her notebook.
“Language,” Draco scolds from his side of the office.
Hermione rolls her eyes. As if he doesn’t swear like a sailor when he’s upset—always a surprise coming from his prim, aristocratic mouth.
“Fuck you,” she says.
Draco’s tongue pokes the inside of his cheek. His grip tightens, the quill threatening to snap in half.
Sometimes she loathes Draco, even though she generally tolerates—nay, enjoys—his presence.
They’re friends. Not great friends. A step beyond acquaintance. Their friendship spawned when Draco joined the Department of International Magical Cooperation. As the two most junior department members—Hermione having recently transferred from the DRCMC herself—they were forced to share an office.
There are worse officemates.
But the way he writes is so goddamn proper and enticing. Not to mention his handwriting—talk about picture-perfect calligraphy. Hermione’s tried her hand at it, but her impatience renders her cursive sloppy and her lines uneven, the letters bleeding into one another, whereas Draco resembles a character from one of her historical romance novels. Some modern Mr Darcy, all dolled up in cashmere jumpers and sideswept hair and peacock feather quills sourced from the Malfoy estate.
(She asked.)
Hermione glances at the charmed calendar on her desk and freezes. It’s May 29. Which means that in less than a week, it will be Draco’s birthday.
She needs to buy him a gift.
Something to end her abject misery.
“Happy birthday, Draco.”
“What are these?” he asks, frowning as he unwraps a box, carefully unfolding each corner so as to not wrinkle the paper.
“Muggle pens. They’re a lifesaver, honestly, it’s insane that the magical world still uses quills and ink. This way you don’t have to pluck your poor peacocks ragged.”
He examines the box of pens—sleek, hefty, and refined. “I don’t have much to compare to, but these seem high quality. Are they expensive?”
Hermione flushes, because yes, she splurged on the best pens she could afford on her Ministry salary. If she spent more on Draco’s gift than on her parents’, Harry’s, and Ron’s combined, that was nobody’s business but hers.
“I asked to engrave your initials on them, just near the tip, see? That way everyone will know they’re yours.”
“And how do I…?”
(Honestly. Wix would be helpless without muggles).
Hermione hurries over and shows Draco how to twist the cap to expose the pen nib.
“Genius.”
She glances up from her position crouched over his desk, suddenly realising how close their faces are. For a moment, her gaze lingers on the pleased curve of his lips, the way his hair swoops over his forehead, and his insanely biteable Adam’s apple.
Bite it, her brain says. Just a little nibble.
Not. Helpful.
She stands up in a rush and clears her throat. “Go on, try it out.”
Draco signs his name with a flourish, and Hermione is relieved to note that all resemblance to Mr Darcy has vanished. Satisfied, she returns to her desk and prepares to shed her fixation with Draco’s hands once and for all.
She spoke too soon.
Because Draco… God, she can’t even say it.
The pens backfired—that much is clear. Instead of moonlighting as Mr Darcy in her fantasies, Draco turns into a rugged, sensual musician. Far more hip than his cashmere jumpers—an affront to humanity, because honestly, no one should look that good in navy wool—would suggest.
Because… he drums. With the pens, on the desk. With his thumb and forefinger, against the pens. Little rat-a-tat rhythms that expose the dexterity-speed-skill of his fingers.
Hermione can’t focus. It’s nearing the end of the quarter, which means tedious reports and endless filing and sorting. It’s not her favourite part of her job, but Hermione takes pride in creating order from chaos.
Her system is thus: she spreads each legal analysis, international travel report, and piece of government correspondence in separate piles on the floor between their desks, arranged by topic and then date.
She kneels on the floor, her knees curled to the side, skirt smoothed over her thighs. A peppermint sugar quill keeps her company—red and green swirls, for Christmas. She sucks down the sugar as she sorts through paperwork.
Norway travel log.
Legal brief on French cauldron trade ruling.
Meeting minutes, International Confederation of Wizards.
(Tragically small-minded name, that.)
All throughout the long hour, as she flicks her wand to direct the papers to and fro, Draco drums. First it’s his fingers tapping out a rhythm on the pen. And then his cadence grows more frantic. Louder. Almost stressed.
She slurps on her sugar quill extra obnoxiously in response.
He raps the pen against his oak desk, and Hermione cannot abide by it.
Heat builds in her chest. Her pulse thrums in tune with his drumming, because all she can think about is Draco tapping his fingers along the back of her hand. Between her shoulderblades. Down her thighs, right to—
Lunch. Lunch with Ginny. She has lunch with Ginny today, and that will save her from the absurd, wandering nightmare that is her brain.
Abruptly, Hermione sits up on her knees, chucks her sugar quill in the rubbish bin and peers up at Draco. “Did the quill dye my tongue?” She sticks her tongue out, probably replete with cranberry and evergreen stains.
“Jesus—fuck. Don’t do that.” His drumming gets louder. Faster.
“Excuse me for bothering you, Your Highness.” Just when she was starting to tolerate him.
She pushes to her feet and rolls her eyes, directing the now-organised paperwork into its proper folders. Reapplies her lipstick and slides on her coat.
“Why do you wear that stuff anyway?” Draco mutters.
“Why not?” Hermione shrugs and sticks the tube back in her purse.
“You don’t need it.”
“No one needs it. But it’s pretty and fun. It doesn’t have to be any deeper than that.”
Draco grinds his jaw and stares at her lipstick like he smells something horrid. Like he wants to burn it off her face.
A wild response, since this is a perfectly innocuous berry colour. Perfect for autumn. “If you’re quite done insulting me, I’m off to lunch.”
“Hot date?” Draco scowls.
“Scorching,” she says, closing the door behind her and purring with satisfaction at the murderous look on his face.
With Christmas approaching, Hermione resolves to fix her pen-related snafu, because what a fiasco.
She drops the hefty box, adorned with a massive gold bow, on his desk with a thud.
“What is this?”
“Your Christmas present, idiot.”
“It’s December 7.”
“I can return it, if you’d like.”
Draco scoffs. “Nice try.” He coaxes it open, as precise and fastidious as ever, and turns it over in his absurdly large—and probably very warm and firm—hands.
Jesus fucking Christ, Hermione, get a grip.
“Thank you,” he says. “I’ve never used one before.”
“I thought it might be good for your note-taking. Typing is so much faster than writing, and that way you can save your pens for simpler things, plus you can access the internet—do you know what that is? I can show you—”
“Granger. I know what the internet is.”
“So you do know how to look up answers to your inane questions about the muggle world instead of asking me.”
“Maybe I like bothering you.”
That much is for sure.
In lieu of setting up his computer, Draco elects to continue transcribing reports by hand all afternoon. More drumming, more tapping, more flourishy signatures.
Can’t a witch catch a break?
She squirms in her chair when he strikes up a particularly enticing rhythm.
“Stop fucking wriggling,” he says without looking up.
“I’m not wriggling.”
“You are.”
“Maybe I have a good reason to.”
“Don’t care. Knock it off.”
“Which annoys you more, the wriggling or the cursing?”
He pauses. Sighs. “The wriggling.”
“Excellent fucking choice.”
Draco’s fist clenches atop his paperwork, Hermione bites her lip to hold back a laugh, and he snatches up his new laptop and leaves the office, ending the conversation once and for all.
The laptop was a mistake.
Hermione seethes at her desk, unable to tear her eyes from Draco’s fingers as they fly over the keyboard. He types like court stenographer blood runs in his veins.
“How did you get so good at typing? You’ve had that for a week.”
“Theo showed me a site to search for videos. Did you know there’s a video for everything? The other day, I learned how to replace a plumbing shut-off valve. I don’t even know if my house has one, but I know how to shut it off.”
Hermione can’t stop the amused smile that creeps onto her lips. “Figures it was Theo. His new thing is trying to turn me onto ASMR. If I hear one more soft-spoken woman whispering me to sleep while she runs her nails over a wooden xylophone, I’m going to riot.”
Although… Hermione never understood Theo’s fascination with those videos. Until now.
Because now, as Draco’s fingers fly over his keyboard, their tip-tap sounds lull her into a relaxed state. The noise tickles something in her brain. Makes her think of Draco’s hands. His protruding veins jump with each movement—his broad wrists move so surely, so precisely, not wasting an ounce of effort.
Hermione’s never been attracted to men’s wrists before, but there’s something so delicious about Draco’s. She could run her finger along them and follow the contours of his tendons and muscles, curving towards his elbow and defined biceps.
She leaves him to his typing—terrific for her libido, terrible for her self-respect.
Her thighs clench together on instinct, against her wishes. How unfair that she had to get stuck with a hot officemate. Never mind one who scowls at her whenever she so much as hums or bites her lips. If only he didn’t despise her so much.
Draco taps out a melody on the bottom of his keyboard. It’s familiar, but Hermione can’t place it. Instead, it hangs on the tip of her tongue in the most excruciating fashion.
The familiar-but-not melody, the clickclack of Draco’s typing—it’s suddenly all too much.
She snaps. “Why must you insist on doing that? Do you moonlight as a drummer in your spare time?”
He looks at her funny. “No. I play piano.”
Piano. Good lord.
Hermione promptly withers away at her desk.
Tap tap tap tap tap.
Only two hours stand between Hermione and the holidays. A full week and a half off work. A week and a half to laze around her flat, cuddle up with Crookshanks, and happily drown in the stack of books that have been languishing on her nightstand for weeks.
Tip tap tip tap.
Hermione rolls her lips together and grasps the edge of her desk to relieve the building frustration. She is done with Draco’s typing. Done.
Tiptaptiptaptiptap.
“Could you,” she grits out, “please. fucking. stop.”
Draco looks over, guileless and infuriatingly gorgeous. A new jumper today—pale grey with an emerald trim.
Festive.
“Stop what?” he asks.
“The incessant typing. It’s so fast. So loud. Are you trying to murder the laptop? I swear to fucking Merlin, if you don’t stop in the next thirty seconds, I’m going to chuck my leftover tuna salad at you.”
Draco shrugs, unperturbed. “That’s fine. I’ll give it to my cat.”
“You have a cat?”
No. No, no, no, no, no. Draco cannot have a cat. Because cat people are hot. Cat people understand consent. They respect boundaries.
Draco should be a dog person. It fits—lack of imagination, believing they’re entitled to affection, and a general air of disdain when faced with the aforementioned cat people.
But he has a cat. And Hermione can’t help herself—
“What’s its name?”
Draco sighs. “I don’t want to tell you.”
“Well now I’m dying to know. Is it wildly pretentious? Ostentatious?” Anything to humanise him.
“It’s stupid.”
“Tell me. Please. I’ll do your paperwork for a month.”
“Draco.”
“Well done. And I’m Hermione.”
“Are you touched in the head?”
“Are you?”
“The cat’s name is Draco.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“The cat’s name is Draco.”
…
Oh. Right. Sure. Why not.
“And…did you name the cat? After…yourself?”
“Theo did,” Draco sighs, with all the world-weariness of someone who’s told this story a thousand times.
Hermione snorts. “Say no more.”
She chuckles to herself as she works through the rest of her legal brief. A cat named Draco.
The next hour passes in relative, genial silence. Until Draco decides to ruin the sanctity of their shared, sacred space.
With more. Fucking. Typing.
Those little flutters pick up, low in Hermione’s stomach. Unbearably lascivious.
Absolutely not.
“I can’t wait for a break,” she mutters.
“From work?”
“From work. From you.” She gestures vaguely.
“You annoy me too. Incessantly.” Draco flexes his hands—why?—and resumes typing.
Hermione doesn’t reply. She’s too busy cataloguing the thick, blue veins tracing the back of his hand. Her tongue darts out to wet her lips.
“That!” Draco says, pointing at her mouth. “Right there. It’s obnoxious. Splurge on some chapstick for once.”
Hermione harrumphs and pulls her tinted lip balm from her pulse. She uncaps it and—
“Not that one,” Draco groans.
“What’s wrong with this one? It’s perfectly nice.”
“It’s—distracting.”
She pushes back from her desk. The chair legs protest, digging into the thin Ministry carpet. Hermione storms over to Draco and braces herself on his desk in what she hopes is a menacing fashion.
“What is your problem with me? I’ve been nothing but kind to you. I got you a Christmas gift—”
“Kind?” Draco scoffs. “You’re a lot of things, Granger, but kind isn’t one of them.”
“You still haven’t answered my question.”
Draco ignores her. He keeps typing, and that goddamn clickclack tiptap sound burrows into her brain, lighting her up with buzzing anger and desperate, aching want.
Hermione doesn’t think. She leans across his desk and grabs his hands to still them.
He stares at her.
She stares back.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Your typing infuriates me.”
“You got me the laptop.”
“A dreadful mistake that I regret every day.”
Draco pulls his hands free. She retreats towards her desk, but Draco follows her, not letting her escape. He walks her backwards until her back hits their office door with a thud. Towers over her, skyscraper tall.
“You alright?” a voice calls from the hall—the department assistant.
“All good, Leanne, thanks!” Hermione casts a quick silencing charm to prevent any further eavesdropping.
Draco’s eyes flash carbon. “Why do I bother you so much, Granger? You bought me a gift. A nice gift. Multiple nice gifts. That’s not something you do for someone you hate.”
He’s so close. Caging her in against the door.
She nearly squeaks.
“You’re an obnoxious typer,” she chokes out. “You’re loud and fast and it’s entirely unfair that you learned so quickly. Didn’t give me a moment’s rest. I thought the quills were bad enough, with the flexing, and the veins, and the— And then the pens! Such a simple instrument and yet you ruined them. You ruined me.”
He steps even closer. They might as well be touching, but they’re not, and that draws even more attention to their proximity. If she inhaled a little more deeply, maybe their chests would meet—
“You ruin me,” she whispers.
Draco’s nostrils flare—he’s finally cottoned on to what she’s confessing.
“Have you been existing in a state of perpetual agony for the last six months like I have?”
Her mind stalls. “Why are you in agony?”
His eyes drop to her lips, still plump and shiny from her berry lip balm.
“I think about your mouth all the time,” he drawls, and warmth settles low in her belly. “These lips. That fucking lipstick. Like ripe cranberries.” His lids flutter to half-mast, eyes hooded. “I wonder how you would taste. I think about your tongue, wrapped around me. What you might do with it.”
She licks her lips on instinct and delights in the way Draco’s hand curls into a fist by his side.
“It’s your hands for me,” she gulps. “I think about them—touching me. Squeezing me. All that dexterity. What you could do to my—what you could do.”
Draco hums. “And what is it you’d like me to do? Shall I touch you here?” He skims a few fingertips down the length of her arm, making her shudder. “Or here?” His fingers splay across her belly. “Or maybe…here?” Then trail along her thighs and dip between.
“There,” she gasps. “Definitely there.”
His fingertip glides over her trousers, just firm enough to titillate, but not enough to soothe. Hermione whimpers and grabs his hand, bringing it to her waistband.
“So demanding,” he tuts.
“Not demanding. Just very, very into this.”
Draco likes that answer. In a flash, he has her trousers unbuttoned and her knickers pulled to the side.
His nostrils flare when he drags his middle finger along her slit. “This wet for me already? Just from arguing?”
“I’m always—fuck—wet when you’re around. You know you’re pretty, and those forearms and hands—”
Draco boxes her in and leans one forearm against the door, above her head. His forehead hangs against hers, his lips a mere whisper away.
The motion of his left hand between her thighs is so casual, almost unintentional, like he’s swirling and rubbing and teasing her clit from sheer muscle memory. No thought involved.
And he wasn’t wrong—she is wet. Soaked, even. His fingers don’t catch on her—there’s nothing but the slick, sweet glide of honeyed arousal welcoming him in.
“God, you feel incredible.” He rests his lips against her temple, just above her ear. His breath tickles, only adding to the growing heat between her legs. “I’ve thought about what it would feel like to slip inside you.”
Yes, please. “Fuck.”
“And I despise the way you curse,” he groans. “Filthy fucking mouth. Makes me imagine you pinned beneath me as I coax those swears from your lips. Because you wouldn’t let me get a moment’s peace, would you? You’d be loud, if I fucked you. Responsive.”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she teases, but the breathy desire in her tone mitigates the intended effect.
“Always squirming in that chair, too,” he continues. “And I felt like a lecher because I kept imagining you were turned on—”
“I was.”
“—and then I got to thinking about how I wanted to make you squirm like that. And then pin you down and hold you still and force you to be good for me.”
Hermione, buoyed by his confession and the way his fingers are currently breaking her down, channels her bravery and arches into Draco’s touch. She pushes onto her tiptoes, panting when Draco’s fingers chase her, and whispers in his ear. “Want to make me be good?”
It’s so gratifying, the way he breaks.
His first two fingers plunge deep inside her, making her gasp and squeeze around them on instinct. Draco groans into her temple—a broken, helpless sound.
“I do,” he says. “I want to feel that.”
“Yes,” she gasps. “Yesyesyes, please do it.” She fumbles for his belt, her movements rushed and clumsy. Draco assists her with his free hand, and they stumble through undoing his trousers together.
She squeezes his thick length, warm and rigid beneath her touch. “God, you’re so hard already. Does it hurt?”
Draco huffs a laugh and chokes out a halfhearted Fuck you.
“Come on,” she says, grasping his forearm to remove his fingers from her cunt, “this’ll make the ache go away.” She wraps her hand around his cock again, moving her wrist up and down and adding a little twist over the tip, where she spreads around his precum.
Draco groans. Loudly. “Somehow I have a feeling you’re only going to make it worse.”
She lines his cock up with her entrance. Thick, is all she can think.
All rational thought flies out the window—for her, but also seemingly for him, because he groans into her hair and gasps when she rubs his tip against her cunt, gliding it through her slick. He babbles a string of unintelligible words that make her feel so proud.
What a marvelous time she’ll have, ruining him.
She doesn’t care that she’s about to have sex at work. In their shared office. While their colleagues finish up pre-holiday work right outside the door.
That’s what silencing charms are for.
Part of her insists she must be hallucinating, that this is an elaborate concoction her brain dreamt up as a natural progression to her hand-related fantasies.
But Draco hikes one of her legs up around his waist, and Hermione stretches onto her tiptoes for a better angle. And it’s real like this, with one of his hands resting on her thigh. His grip is proprietary. Arrogant. His other hand wraps around her ribs, his thumb coming to rest just beneath the swell of her breast.
He doesn’t need a hand to guide his cock inside her.
She’s so drenched, he slides in with no problem.
It’s immediately so so so good. Beyond any wild fantasy because it’s real. Draco is fucking her and his breathing is ragged, his cheeks are flushed; his hands tremble where they hold her.
Her head falls back against the door. “Fuck.”
“Are you doing that on purpose?” Draco grits out.
Right. The swearing. “What—no. I forgot, just feels—fuck—too good.”
“Even better than I imagined. Christ.”
Hermione wants more—wants all of him—but he only deigns to give her little teasing passes. Works himself in and out a few inches at a time, all the while she babbles and curses and begs for more, more, more. Her nerve endings alight, and Hermione thinks she might come from this alone. Just the head of his cock, teasing the opening of her cunt to orgasm.
But on a particularly blissful manoeuvre, she bites her lip, and that is what pushes Draco over the edge. He drives into her fully, sliding home—sliding deep—like he was always meant to be there.
“Fuck—ah—” A mortifying little whine slips out—a squeak, really. Unprepared as she is for how much Draco fills her up, she can’t contain her reaction.
Because he’s so good. Feels so good. Stretches her. Fills her. Deep, deep, deep—soothing like cold water on a midsummer’s day.
“Did that,” she gasps, “help with the ache?”
Draco forces out a choked sound—half laugh, half moan. His lips fall open and press against her throat. Up and down they drag, tracing her tendons and pulse points. He bites down on the side of her neck, and she whimpers.
“I could die here,” he mumbles against her skin. “Can’t believe I’m inside you.”
Oh god. She clenches around him.
The urgency of their coupling—the frantic thrusts against their office door, the fact that they’re mostly clothed—only adds to her desire. Like they’d both die without this.
Hermione runs her hands over Draco’s shoulders—broad, muscled forms camouflaged beneath cashmere. Her fingers tug at the hair near his scalp, needing to make him as messy as she feels. To create proof of his undoing.
She never wants this to end. Will it always be like this, with them? Because there will absolutely be another time. Many more times if she has it her way.
Sharp thrusts pin her hips to the door, forcing her to feel all of him. To feel the curve of his cock pressing against her front walls, his belt buckle hanging open and digging into her flesh. His punishing grip on her thigh.
“Touch me,” she gasps, dying to feel his hands touch her there. To play his incessant tiptaptiptap rhythms on her body for once.
And he does. He does touch her, he does, and good fucking lord, it’s so good. The hand gripping her waist drops down between them. His thumb finds her clit while he peppers sloppy, nibbly kisses all along her neck and jaw.
His thumbpad glides, slick and smooth, between her thighs.
“Fucking Christ, Draco, how can you even move that fast?” It’s overstimulation to the extreme. His thumb flies over her clit in an impossible rhythm, but it’s so gentle, and he keeps fucking her deep, pinning her to the door with each thrust.
Months of unintentional foreplay come to fruition. She claws at him like she can’t get enough, and they grab onto each other rabidly, desperately, as they near their peaks.
She rockets to orgasm impossibly fast, pulsing around him automatically; constantly. All the blood and oxygen leave her brain and pool between her legs. Her muscles don’t stop contracting, practically aching from how desperately they want to come, and she knows she’s past the point of no return.
With Draco’s thumb on her clit—
“Draco, I’m going to—”
“Fuck. Yes. Yesyesyes, Christ, need to feel you—”
She suddenly understands Draco’s fascination with her cursing.
“It’s so—you’re so good— Next time I want you in my mouth—”
He utters a string of unintelligible swears.
“I’ll take you down my throat. Swallow you.” Like his fantasies. The vision of Hermione on her knees for him, lips surrounding his impressive length as he loses himself in the warmth of her mouth is enough to topple her over the edge.
Her nails dig into the back of his neck and she holds on for dear life as tremors rack her body. Everything converges—convulses—around Draco. She cries out, letting the pleasure overtake her. A heated supernova flares to life in her centre and spreads outward, replacing every nerve and cell in her body with Draco, Draco, Draco.
Fuck.
She’s so full, and there’s so much pressure—on her clit; deep inside—everywhere Draco is. He chokes out a pained groan as she continues to flutter around him, squeezing his cock and holding him deep, her hips still wide open and welcoming.
Draco doesn’t relent. He presses his advantage, sprinkling soft praises with disbelieving swears and moans that sound like Hermione and he keeps thrusting, keeps fucking her, like he’s ensuring that he fills her, that she envelops every inch of him.
She’s still coming when Draco says, “I’m going to—”
“Inside,” she begs. He slams against her back wall on a particularly forceful thrust. “Do you feel that?” she whines. “That’s where I want you. Please.”
No thought. No reason. Only pure, animalistic instinct.
“Christ, don’t say please—”
“Please, Draco, pleasepleaseplease—you feel so good and I want you to fill me and I’ll keep it there, I swear—”
“Hermione, fuck—” Draco comes undone in her arms, pressing, holding, and staying deep as he shudders through his release, spilling himself inside her, liquid mercury and exactly what she needs.
She clings to Draco’s neck and shoulders to hold herself upright. They both come down with shaky breath and unsteady legs—like jelly, threatening to collapse on her at a moment’s notice. Sweat beads along her temple. Their minimal bare skin sticks together. It’s disgusting and delicious.
“Holy fuck,” Draco pants.
Holy fuck indeed. And they didn’t even take their tops off.
“Mmm.” Hermione runs her fingers through his hair, enjoying the sensation of the fine, silky strands. Almost slippery.
It’s nearly three full minutes later when Draco finally pulls out of her. They tug at their clothes and redress. Hermione casts a quick contraception charm but pointedly neglects a vanishing spell, instead pulling up her knickers over Draco’s mess.
His pupils widen, and that godforsaken tapping—this time, his thumb against his thigh—starts up again.
“You know,” he says, “my Christmas gift for you feels rather unnecessary now.”
Hermione finishes buttoning her trousers and grins. “What did you get me?”
“I wanted to end my suffering, so…”
Draco slides open his desk drawer and pulls out ten tubes of untinted lip balm.
She doesn’t see him again during the holidays. They left things open-ended, with both of them seeming to want more but unwilling to take the first step. At least not right away.
Spending the Christmas holidays with a new casual hookup—even if she does intend to make him more than that—seems unwise.
Hermione passes her time with her friends and Crookshanks. She does indeed work through the stack of books on her nightstand. And she tries not to think too much about the blond prat who shares her office.
Or the vision of bringing his fantasy to life.
The day after New Year’s, Hermione arrives at her desk to find a fresh tube of cranberry lipstick and a note containing the address of Draco’s flat.
She grins.
Apparates there.
And wishes him a very happy holiday.