“Give it up, Draco. You found what people spend a lifetime searching for, and you just let her leave without you.” Blaise fell back onto the leather sofa and crossed his ankles, looking pensively into the fire. “What I don’t understand is why. You keep saying that if anyone will win, it’s her. And yet here you are.”
Draco opened his mouth to deny, deny, deny. But what was the point? Blaise had seen them together in the prefects’ bath, and later, when Draco tried brushing it off as a casual hook-up, Blaise had only shaken his head and said, ‘I saw your face,’ as if that was supposed to override any lies that came out of Draco’s mouth.
His stomach had been a tangle of nerves since Granger had kissed him goodbye and disappeared with Potter and Weasley to save the world. That was the issue with Gryffindors, forever killing themselves over the next big heroic deed. He wasn’t like them.
“What would you have done?” sniped Draco. It was easy to cast judgement from afar, but Blaise wasn’t living it. “Would you just turn your back on your mother? On your friends? To hell with everyone if you’re in love?”
Blaise gave him a side-long look, grinning. “Are you in love?”
“You seem to think I am.”
“Do you see a future with her?”
“If the world wasn’t so fucked up?”
“Yeah.”
Draco didn’t really have to imagine it because it’s all he’d been thinking about since he first kissed Granger nine months ago.
It wasn’t just her physical being—the charged, tantalising pull of their bodies like opposing magnets—but a vision of what their life could look like. Granger didn’t need pure-blood persuasion to pave her way into the world. She could be self-made. And Draco would stand proudly beside her, as he did best. He could manage the accounts, pursue his hobbies, while ensuring Granger never felt alone navigating her mountainous ambitions.
Draco lived a satiated life, but with Hermione, all he knew was starvation. She was the one thing he didn’t want to barter or consume in small bites. If he had her, he was going to feast.
“It’s not that simple,” he concluded. “It’s not some playground romance anymore. She’s out there risking her life. I can’t afford to love her how I want if she’s just going to wind up dead.”
“Take this from someone who’s buried seven fathers—death is preventable.”
Draco looked up at Blaise, surprised.
His friend had an eerie look on his face, made worse by the fire casting strange shadows over him, but Draco knew the Zabinis had a complicated relationship with murder. And that’s what he meant: murder was preventable, not death.
“What makes you think I could protect her any better than Potter could?”
“The Dark Lord trusts you, you’re a sneaky fuck, and you’re in love. Nobody will fight harder to win.”
~
Donning a backpack full of survival gear, his wand, and the warmest clothes he owned, Draco used their matching bracelets to Port-Key to Granger the next Saturday morning.
She had woven the bracelets with colourful thread—red and gold for him, green and silver for her—and the next week, Draco had adhered matching charms to them. She didn’t know that he could sense her through it. That when she fingered the cool metal engraved with his constellation at night, he felt her presence. Or that it was a gateway to each other using the right spell.
Maybe he’d known he’d follow her all along.
The bracelet transported Draco to lush, crawling hills and enormous, craggy rocks. The sky hung bright white above him. He could sense Granger’s magic in the air, or maybe it was her perfume drifting in the breeze. He inhaled deeply, feeling closer to her already.
There was nobody around when he heard the gasp directly behind him.
He turned and saw the air wobble. The ward he hadn’t realised was there descended. Granger stood two feet away, eyes wide and lips parted. She was thin and pale and seemed afraid.
Regret washed over him. He should have come sooner.
“How do I know it’s really you?” she demanded, wand clutched tightly by her side, a combination of fear and hope flickering in her eyes.
Draco dropped his bag by his feet, taking three strong strides forward. He framed her cold cheeks in his hands, hoping she saw the look on his face and remembered how much she meant to him. He said, “Because nobody else knows how much I love you.”
He kissed her, and a second later, Granger threw her arms around his neck and kissed him back, sobbing.
“I’m here to stay,” he reassured her, holding her tightly. “I’m here to fight.”
And he thought of Blaise in the Slytherin common room, the only one who knew of Draco’s whereabouts, and their discussions of love and death. And he thought of the future he’d seen with Hermione, and he thought he could have it, maybe even a better version of it. One that didn’t involve him at home, pursuing hobbies, but being worth something, too. He could be that. He wanted to be that.
Draco wanted to feast.
(873 words, inspired by Don't Swallow The Cap by The National)
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"Oh, you haven't read the classics..." I'VE READ THE CLASSICS
✨Dramione edition✨
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