Chapter Text
Hermione’s restless.
She packs angrily, cursing Draco for making her feel like an idiot, while internally reciting a lecture on how he can’t go kissing women and making them breathless if he’s a Priest who cannot be in a relationship.
But when she lies down in a futile effort to force herself to sleep, her anger melts into embarrassment. She’d kissed him, well, kissed him back, but she did so knowing full well who he is.
Tossing and turning, Hermione tries desperately to push it from her mind, to force the electricity of his lips against hers to fade and forget the feel of him pressed against her.
But she can’t, because it was like nothing she’d experienced before. Because Draco makes her heart soar with the way he says her name, makes her laugh with his stories and the way he can’t dance.
He makes her believe that life has meaning when he stands in the rain.
She knows she needs to see him before she goes, but is still terrified when she knocks on his office door.
“Come in,” he coughs out, and she wonders if he also spent half the night awake, or if maybe she’d never noticed the way his voice sounds first thing in the morning.
His eyes widen when she opens the door. “Hi—Hermione—I’m sorry—”
“Please—” Hermione shuts her eyes and sucks in a long breath. “I need to tell you something before I go.”
He’s clearly uncomfortable, but he nods and gestures towards the single seat in front of his desk.
Hermione looks at the chair as though it’ll sprout a mouth and swallow her up. “I think I’ll stand.” Looking down, she rubs her hands together and presses her fingertips along her jeans, biding time.
She meets his eyes the moment she lifts her head, forcing herself to forget the way they’d darkened when he’d kissed her the night before, the way the silver reflected the dim light when they danced.
“I’m sorry about what happened last night,” she starts, raising a hand when he opens his mouth to interrupt. “Not—I’m not saying it was my fault. But I’m sorry it happened.
“We became friends, didn’t we? It’s strange to admit, but I think I’ve spoken more to you in the last two months than I have anyone else in the last ten years. And I’ve come to quite like speaking with you—”
“I do too,” he cuts in.
She offers him a chastising smile. “Please.” She’s terrified that if he interrupts she won’t get it all out, and she needs to get this all out.
“I was so angry when you left last night, so embarrassed, and I thought the world was terribly unfair. I thought for a moment that if I felt something for you—” she hitches a breath “—and you for me, then antiquated vows of celibacy shouldn’t matter. That this costume you wear shouldn’t matter.”
He flares his nostrils so she takes a step forward, running a finger along his desk as she continues.
“But then I realised, that’s not right, is it? It’s what you’ve been telling me for weeks with all of your stories, showing me every time you stop for five minutes just to colour with a child. I think I understand now why you’ve made that vow, why you wear that cloth. You’ve become such an amazing person, Draco, and I’m so proud of you. And it took me a long time to see that I can’t separate you from that vow you took. That it’s not as simple as a piece of cloth.
“When I first got here, I used to try and put you in boxes: there was Hogwarts Draco, now Draco, and the Draco from between. I was looking at you like a puzzle to solve. But I see now you’re all of them, and you’re better for it—” she sucks on her teeth, sniffling back tears “—you understand pain in a way so many never will, and you’re kinder for it. You are thoughtful and—”
The tears drip slowly down her cheeks and she tries to smile. “I understand I could never compete with this, what you do here. You’ve created this incredible life from nothing, and I could never stand in the way of that.”
His face is masked in anguish, his eyes glistening and his fingers white from where his hands are gripped together. He looks desperate to speak but she shushes him.
“I just need you to know how proud I am of you—oh gosh I already said that didn’t I?” She’s flustered, unable to stop the heat from gathering against her cheeks, but wills herself forward.
“I may have come here to break a curse, but you’ve done more for me in the last months than you could possibly know. Before I came here, I was content to simply be. I did my job, supported my causes, and I ignored the pervasive loneliness that’s etched its way onto my bones. I convinced myself that one day, if I was patient, I’d find more.”
She wipes a few tears from her cheeks. “But you showed me that life can be beautiful. That I need to stop living for some nebulous idea of tomorrow and appreciate what I have today. And somewhere along the way, between tostadas on a fallen tree trunk and standing in the rain, I fell in love with you—” Draco’s eyes go wide at her confession and she shakes her head “—I know, I know. It can’t be. But I wanted you to know, and to thank you, for all of it.
“You know,” Hermione chuckles, “I don’t think I am sorry about last night anymore. It may have made things messy and awkward, but I’d rather have that one kiss than nothing at all.”
“Hermione,” he stutters. He’s gaping and she thinks there’s a few nascent tears making their way to his lip.
“You don’t have to say anything.” Hermione tries again to smile. “I just needed to say it, for you to know that, regardless of how this ended, how glad I am to have gotten to know you, and how remarkable you are. Please take care, Draco.”
He’s silent, his gaze finally shifting from her to his hands and she nods, turning to leave. Just as her hand presses to the doorknob he starts, “Hermione.”
She freezes, turning back slowly.
“I’m glad to have gotten to know you too. Have a good trip.”
She manages to hold her tears in until the door slams behind her.
Hermione expects everything back home to feel foreign, that after the months she’d spent in Guatemala, she’d see the world in a new light. But her flat’s the same lavender walls and overflowing bookshelves that she’d left, the scent of smog and petrichor after a rainfall still familiar.
She digs into the familiarity, picking up coffee from her usual cafe and grabbing sandwiches from the small shop with the kind cashier across from her office. It works for a while. The time away means there’s more than enough work piled up in her inbox, and the return of magic to her everyday gives her a palpable comfort.
But sometimes when it rains, if she’s beneath an awning or standing on her balcony, she imagines Draco standing a few feet away and his smile as the rain beats down. Without meaning to, she’ll find herself barraged with memories of sitting on the bonnet of his beat-up car eating pupusas, or listening to “Lay Lady Lay” with the windows rolled down as they drove slowly through the city.
It’s when she’s sitting at her meticulously organised desk two months later that she falls apart. She’s rifling through her drawers, searching for her notes from a lecture she’d attended in Oxford, when she comes across a rain soaked scrap, something that must have fallen out of her bag and into the drawer by accident.
It’s incoherent, and possibly not even from the Mayan ruins, but all at once, the wall she’s built, the one painstakingly held together with sellotape and routine, comes crumbling down.
It’s been two months, and still she swears she can feel the press of Draco’s fingertips along her neck and his tongue sweeping her lower lip. A sob escapes her throat at the memory of his throaty laugh and the way his eyes sparkled when he danced.
She casts a Muffliato and breaks down completely, letting every feeling she’s swallowed and memory she’s tried to forget take hold of her.
Because try as she might to move on, to forget, it’s always been right there, waiting in the rain or in the lyrics of a Bob Dylan song. The ache in her chest, which she’d assured herself would fade with time, is still searing, like an impossibly hot fire somehow burning brighter.
And she feels idiotic, like a lovesick teenager unable to let go of a crush. Only it’s somehow made worse by age, because she knows she’s never felt this before, and can’t imagine it happening to her again.
She sits on the aubergine carpet of her office for the rest of the afternoon, ignoring missives and Patronus calls, all of which seem entirely trivial. It’s only when the tears finally fade and her limbs start to shake that she remembers Draco beyond her own heartbreak.
She remembers how he grew from nothing, how he managed to take the dregs that life had handed him and build something remarkable. How when he looked into the rain, he didn’t see the dirt turning to mud or a spoiled picnic, he saw something miraculous.
“They can’t all be your favourite.”
“But they all are when I’m there.”
She wipes the last of her tears and gets up, determination finally overtaking her melancholy.
Whether or not Draco Malfoy could be a part of her life, she could still live for now, and she could still find happiness.
Four months later
Hermione's rummaging through paperwork in her kitchen when a slight knock at the front door jolts her.
But all thoughts of office space and incorporation vanish at the sight of Draco Malfoy standing in front of her door wearing a pair of torn khakis and a faded maroon jumper.
It’s impossible , she thinks, that he’s here and dressed as an ordinary Muggle, but as much as she pinches herself, he doesn’t disappear, he simply stands, his eyes piercing into hers.
“Hi,” he says finally.
She’s sure she should respond, but she’s gaping, trying to figure out how Draco Malfoy could be standing outside her flat in wizarding London.
“Do you want to grab a coffee?” he asks and something clicks in mind and she starts to laugh , recalling a long forgotten thought, that she’d never be able to grab a coffee with Draco Malfoy. He smiles slightly, though the side of his eyes begin to wrinkle with worry when she doesn’t stop.
“Hi,” she manages eventually. “Are you really here?”
In spite of all evidence indicating he is here, it seems impossible.
“I am.”
“Oh,” Hermione says, squeezing her hand to her side to keep from clutching her chest. Because he’s here, and his eyes somehow look the same but different at the threshold of her flat, and the dimples along his cheeks and the curve of his smile still send a pulse of warmth through her. “Coffee, yes—” she stumbles on her words as she imagines sitting with him in the Muggle cafe down the road, chatting with him as though they’re just two friends catching up. It doesn’t seem right, so instead she says, “I have coffee I can make? If you want to come in?”
He lets out a breath. “I’d like that.”
There’s a thousand questions stuck to the tip of her tongue but somehow she’s speechless. She watches his every move, afraid if she turns away he’ll disappear or she’ll wake up from whatever dream she’s having.
“Are you okay if I use magic?” she asks.
His jaw tenses but he nods. After spelling the coffee to brew, she urges Draco to the sofa, bemused as his eyes dart around the room and widen at her cluttered bookshelf and a half-painted wall that divides the sitting room from the kitchen.
“So,” she says, taking a seat on the opposite end of the sofa and nervously fiddling with a loose hem over her lap. “What are you doing here? And why are you dressed like—” she twirls her finger towards him “— not like a priest?”
His drawn eyes and slumped shoulders seem somehow out of place without the black cloth. “I uh—” he cuts himself off and brushes a hand over his trousers. “I’ve voluntarily defrocked.”
“Meaning—?” she asks, forcing herself not to be presumptuous.
“I’m no longer a priest.”
She’s frozen, and is once more terrified this is a dream. “What happened?”
He scratches the back of his neck and the familiar gesture warms her. “After my assignment in Guatemala City, I came back to London—Muggle London—and spent some time with my mentor.”
She wonders how long he’s been here — so close and yet simultaneously so far away. He tells her about translating old tomes and responding to correspondence from refugees, his slight smile fading and his neck reddening.
“My mentor, Father Matthew, could tell something was wrong,” Draco explains and Hermione’s eyes widen at the admission. “Everything I was doing, it felt hollow, like I was simply going through the motions, doing them because I had to.”
“There was no meaning?” Hermione asks, her voice barely a whisper.
“I think—” he wets his lips “—that meeting you and confronting my past, made me realise I’d never truly reconciled who I had been and the things I’d done. I’d simply buried them in cloth and devotion.”
He tells her about long days spent with his mentor, discussing scripture and assignments, philosophy and God. “He told me not to let my faith hold me hostage, that my calling may have simply been a stepping stone. Religion will always be a part of me, but I think, for now, my path lies elsewhere.”
“Oh,” Hermione mumbles, trying to find her place in this story. She knows it’s selfish, but she desperately wants to know if he’s thought of her in the six months since they last spoke, if he’s been as affected by her absence as she has been by his.
“I lied,” he says, a slight smile spreading over his lips. “When you asked me if I’d ever come back to the wizarding world, I told you it wouldn’t matter. But in reality, I was just scared. I think I needed to meet you again, to earn your forgiveness, to realise that I’d been acting out of fear.”
A knot sits at the base of her gut, and she roughly nods. “That’s good,” she manages.
“It is,” he says. He’s staring at her, like he’s willing her to say something but she has no idea what. “You never wrote to me.”
“What?” she clips, entirely thrown by the question.
“After you left, I figured one day an owl would drop by,” he explains.
“You didn’t write to me,” she points out.
“Well, yes, but sending post from Muggle Central America to wizarding Britain is nearly impossible.”
She’s scared to tell him the truth, that she’d sat with a parchment and quill night after night, that she’d looked up the price for an intercontinental owl again and again. Swallowing, she admits, “I was scared of what you’d write back.”
His eyes widen.
“I was afraid I’d tell you I missed you and then you wouldn’t write back. Or I’d tell you I wanted to visit and you’d urge me not to. Or—” her breath hitches “—that you’d say everything I wanted to hear, and I’d still feel terrible. Because I know how important your faith is to you, and I didn’t want to get in the way of that.” She bites the inside of her cheek, trying desperately to avert her gaze, but something keeps her eyes locked on his.
“You know, there’s another reason I came back. Why I could no longer be a priest.” He scoots infinitesimally closer to her, his finger running a line across the sofa’s seam.
“Oh?” she asks, trying to quell the pressure building in her chest.
“I couldn’t stop thinking of you.”
She can’t speak, can hardly blink. The drip from the coffee maker sounds in time with his words, like a melody playing over and over in her head.
“You’ll have to repeat that,” Hermione whispers.
His tentative smile broadens. “Since the day you left, I’ve thought of little else besides the way it felt to dance with you or eat lunch and discuss philosophy and geopolitics with you. Wherever I went, whatever I did, without you, it felt empty.”
She hesitantly reaches for his hand, sharply exhaling in relief when he pushes himself closer and wraps her hand in his own.
“Hermione Granger,” he continues, his eyes darting to her lips. “I think I had to go through everything I did, become a priest and discover religion, to be here today. All of it—the scripture, the philosophy—helped me understand the world in a different way, so that I could see you. Because somehow, without you, I can’t live a meaningful life. Without you, I can barely sleep, or think. You are strong and passionate and kind. And at some point, between arguments over moral relativism and stories of breaking curses for nomadic tribes in Kazakhstan, I fell in love with you.”
She should breathe, she should speak, but she just squeezes his hand tighter.
“You knew the worst of me, and yet still found it in yourself to love all of me, Hermione—” he says her name like a prayer and the tears she’d been holding begin to fall. “I’m sorry.” His smile fades and he’s pulling his hands back when she stops him.
“Don’t be sorry,” she squeaks, tugging their clasped hands to her chest.
His eyes light up but he shakes his head. “I should have told you before you left—”
“You couldn’t,” she cuts him off, her smile widening.
“I couldn’t,” he agrees, and they're only inches apart, so close she can smell a hint of sage from his aftershave and hear his quickening breaths. “I love you, Hermione.”
As much as she wants to lean into him, press her lips to his and see if he still tastes the same, she’s terrified. “What about everything else?” she asks.
“What about it?”
“I mean the wizarding world, my job—” she hasn’t even had a chance to tell him she’s quit her job and opened her own pro-bono firm, and that she’s started travelling simply to see the world.
He cuts her off with a kiss and the tension in her chest evaporates. Her fingers grapple at his jumper, and she’s relieved that in spite of losing his old vocation he’s still the same. His fingertips are still covered in calluses that gently scratch at the top of her back; his eyes still flicker when she tugs his lip with her teeth.
Pressing his forehead to hers, he cups her chin, his thumb brushing over her lip. “We’ll work it all out, together.”
“I quite like the sound of that.” She kisses him again, wondering if she’ll ever tire of his soft grunts hitting the back of her throat or the way his chest feels pressed against hers. She wonders if they’ll run out of stories to tell, but then she realises that they can simply make more of their own. “And Draco?” she says.
“Yeah?”
“I love you, too.”
Epilogue
Five years later
Life moves simultaneously fast and slow, marked by landmarks interspersed with the open road. But it’s the tiny moments in between that make it beautiful, the miles spent getting to where you’re going with the person you love.
She thinks about all of them, the big ones that she writes about in letters to her friends. She remembers their wedding in 2014 in a village Draco fell in love with in Zimbabwe, surrounded by people they didn’t know in a place she’d never been. And still, it had been beautiful, every dance and bite of maize utterly perfect, with Draco’s hand wrapped around hers the entire time.
She remembers re-introducing Draco to Harry and Ron, how they’d surprised her completely, without a hint of animosity or judgement.
“We’re not sixteen anymore,” Ron had reprimanded her with a teasing smile. “We can see how happy he makes you.”
But it’s not the landmarks that stick to her, that are etched into her bones. It’s right now, sitting in the 1974 Spider that Draco spent two years restoring, with the wind blowing her hair haphazardly. It’s the lazy Saturdays spent sitting on the sofa reading trashy novels with “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” playing on the record player in the kitchen.
It’s the first time they made love, late one night in a town just outside of Johannesburg, with nervous breaths and shaking hands. But it’s also waking up every morning tucked in Draco’s arms with a new sun just outside the window.
They turn off of the highway, pulling into a local restaurant that Draco swears has the best huevos rotos in the world. She misses the wind immediately, the freedom and warmth of the open road.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks her, tucking some of the stray curls behind her ear, his eyes penetrating.
“How beautiful our life is.”