Chapter Text
If someone had asked Draco Malfoy how he would envision a perfect birthday for himself, he’s not sure Flourish and Blotts would have made it on the agenda.
Flying, sure. Going to a quidditch game, absolutely.
But spending time in an unimpressive bookshop in Diagon Alley? Him?
No.
Certainly not at first, anyways.
But, he has to concede, there is a certain charm to his current visit to Flourish and Blotts.
They have time before their lunch reservations, and Hermione refuses to let him have ice cream before eating (“I’m the birthday boy” apparently means nothing these days), so at her behest they wandered in and grabbed some books to read to pass the time.
Tucked away in one of the labyrinthine rows, he and Hermione sit in one of the bookshops’s reading corners, two plush, dark brown armchairs facing one another under a warm, cozy sconce. Piles of books surround the chairs, and the corner has that smell—books and ink and lavender and lemon—that Draco could happily curl up in for hours, like a well-sunned cat.
She’s wearing a dark green wrap dress that he gave her as a graduation gift, the burgundy bow from her Christmas present tied into her braid, and Draco thinks about giving her the necklace he bought for her birthday this year early, just so he can be represented in all her fashion choices.
Oh, no wait. Shoes. He needs to get her shoes. He adds it to the list and goes back to reading for a moment, not really seeing the words as his eyes scan.
She might like a new pair of Oxfords. But real, quality leather—dragonhide. Not those ratty old things she wears all the time.
Yes, shoes and the necklace. Perhaps this weekend, after his birthday celebrations conclude with a party at Harry Potter’s dreary townhouse.
(The townhouse that should be his, by all rights, but that Draco wouldn’t deign to take if it were the last house on earth. Let the Chosen One and Nott have it, he says.)
Pleased with these resolutions, Draco goes back to his book, an intriguing text about Celosia Cruicks’s contributions to the field of Potions.
Maybe he should send a copy of the Ferlet journals he has to the author. Help them along in their quest to unseat Golpalott as the Father of Modern Antidotes.
As he reads and considers, Draco feels Hermione’s attention on him—a little, prickling heat that wanders over his cheeks, his mouth—and looks up.
Brown eyes study him openly, blatantly, wantonly.
Naughty thing.
“Granger.”
She blinks. “Hm?”
“You’re staring.”
One side of her mouth curls up. “Oh, I know.”
Oh, she knows?
Draco folds a finger into the book he’s been reading, letting it come to a rest on his knee while he narrows his eyes.
“So.”
Hermione’s brows lift, arch, her mouth pursing into a cheeky little moue. “So…?”
“So, if you don’t stop,” he opens the book again, feigning disinterest, “I might have to come over there and do something about it.”
“Oh, in that case.”
He lifts his eyes to watch her pointedly close the book she’s been pretending to read and set it aside, resting her elbow on the chair so she can cup her chin in her hand.
It’s all unbearably adorable. She is being a minx. A coquette, even.
Draco discards the book in a careless toss, watching, with great pleasure, as Hermione lifts her chin in defiance, eyes sharpish with challenge. It takes very little effort on his part to rise from his chair and lean over hers, his hands bracing on the armrests.
“You are trouble,” Draco tuts, and Hermione nods.
“I am. You love it.”
He does. So very much. His little lioness cannot be tamed.
(Not that he’s going to tell her that. Not while she’s behaving badly.)
Sighing as though he’s very put upon indeed, Draco asks, “What am I going to do with you?”
“Oh, I can draw up a list, if you’re taking suggestions?” She smiles, all teeth. “I was sort of hoping you’d follow through on your threat, but if not, we both know you also take instructions beautifully.”
The back of his neck is suddenly quite hot and Draco leans in further.
“You are—” (Her lips are so—) “—a complete and utter menace, with absolutely no regard for propriety.”
“Is it my fault you’re sitting over there looking so yummy with your beddable hair? Have you seen you today?” She lifts a brow. “You’re lucky I haven’t clubbed you over the head and dragged you off.”
The heat spreads to his cheeks and ears and then Draco is kissing Hermione, fiercely, hotly, before she can say another word.
It’s self-preservation to do so, really.
He has to kiss the little taunts from her mouth, bite them off her lips, lick them away. If he doesn’t, she might just say more things and then he’ll have to let her drag him away to some destination unknown (her flat) where she will do whatever she wants and he will gladly let her.
“Cruel witch,” he whispers between little nibbles to her lower lip, and she answers him by arching her back, bringing them closer together, tangling her hand in his beddable hair and mussing it further.
(A real pity because he did spend quite a lot of time giving it that “just shagged” look this morning.)
“Well, I never!”
Draco and Hermione fly apart as a middle-aged witch gives a high-pitched hmph!, stomping away from the corner where they’ve hidden themselves in a flurry of purple robes and graying hair—and then they laugh.
“One might think,” Draco says, his voice low, a little rough, eyes stuck on those kiss-swollen lips as his ego swells with pride, “that you were trying to get forcibly ejected from every wizarding institution in the isles that provides access to books.”
Hermione shoots him a look of complete innocence. “Is a witch not allowed to have hobbies anymore?”
Despite himself, Draco huffs a laugh, delighted to find her eyes sparkling with amusement. He leans in and gives her another kiss, although this one is a bit more chaste.
The look he gives her, however, is anything but.
“Aren’t you worried?” (Another kiss. He’s really never going to stop now.) “What if the Prophet reports on your immodest public behavior? Shames you for having a snog?”
“And what exactly—” She tugs him down until their lips brush again, taking a little nip at his lip before biting her own and smiling. “—am I supposed to be ashamed of? My handsome, wonderful boyfriend who dotes on me? And drives me so wild that I have to snog him or else I’ll expire?”
Mm. She tastes divine. Truly.
Draco brushes their noses together because he is disgusting and ridiculous and completely obsessed.
“‘Wonderful,’ hm?”
“Utterly. I’m madly in love with him.”
Grinning, Draco replies, “Convenient, since I’m madly in love with you.”
“Good. That’s settled then.” Hermione’s tone becomes businesslike, pragmatic. She pushes him back so she can stand, tidying the books she had pulled with a flick of her wand. “Now, if there was a book you actually wanted, it’s the time to get it.”
She’s brisk in that way she gets when she’s got loads to do and very little time in which to do it.
Draco glances at his watch with a frown. “We’re not set to meet your parents and my mum for another hour and a half.”
“Yes,” Hermione says, picking up her bag before shooting him a look, “which gives us just enough time to go back to mine and behave really badly before we need to meet my parents at the apparition point.”
He is absolutely, without doubt, going to marry her. As soon as possible. Yesterday, if he could.
Smiling wide, he abandons the book he was reading and takes her hand instead.
“Whatever the lady wants is my pleasure to provide.”
They walk, looking at each other more than the path out of the shop.
“Are you sure?” Her brows inch towards those curls, eyes playful. “Whatever I want? What if I want a bookshop that we can’t get kicked out of?”
“I’ll buy you a hundred bookshops. A thousand.”
“Mm.” She thinks for a moment. “I wonder if I’d like owning a bookshop. Not sure I would want to do that for a living, despite my childhood daydreams.”
“Of course you wouldn’t work at them, Granger. Nothing so plebeian.”
“What if I wanted to work at them?”
Draco sighs. “I suppose, if you must take a shift every now and then, I could be convinced to come gaze adoringly at you there rather than at the house we will eventually have together.”
“You bear your burdens so bravely.”
“Truly, I am the very model of longsuffering.”
Hermione holds open the front door, which he takes from her hand, sweeping his arm in a grand gesture to get her to exit first.
“Alternatively,” she looks up at his face, expression gone a little wicked, “you could just take me back to the library in France and shag me there. Cut out the middleman.”
Draco hears another exclamation of shock behind him—Founders’ sakes!—and grins.
“I thought you’d never ask.”