For @enselius. <3 I stopped breathing for a medically inadvisable time when i saw this and just had to write something for it. Thank you to the always lovely @ifyouwereamelodymeg for the beta read!
“I even triple checked my essay!” Granger had been fuming the entire time as they walked down to the Quidditch pitch, her shoulders shaking from the cold as she wrapped her arms around herself. Draco often found himself to be an exclusive member of the Hermione Granger Is Mad About Things club, and this was no exception, except for the fact that this time the HGIMAT topic was focused on him.
“I still can’t believe you scored higher than me,” she continued, likely unaware that he was, once again, having his Daily Existential Crisis About Granger (DECAB; Draco had many acronyms). “Well done, you, but I must know how it happened or I’ll go spare.”
“I’ll give it to you tomorrow and you can salivate over my parchment to your heart’s content,” he offered.
“Ew,” she said, dismayed.
He couldn’t help the smile that lifted the corners of his mouth. “You’re the one that gets off on well-written essays.”
She didn’t object, to his continued amusement.
Held awkwardly in Draco’s clumsy hands was his jumper—the Slytherin one he usually wore during colder days when he’d fly—and while he’d been fumbling over how best to chastise this impossible witch for failing at the art of Not Freezing Your Arse Off whilst she was also on act III of her tirade, he found that the only thing he could do was smile. Like an idiot.
“There is just no way that—would you stop grinning?” Granger said, rounding on him as they stopped a few feet from the pitch.
Draco could not stop grinning, because Granger was going off in her customary Granger way: her swotty voice raising itself a decibel each time she lifted her haughty chin, accompanied by her windswept mass of dark curly hair.
She was looking at his broom as if it were some great harbinger of doom; it was altogether a hilarious sight for someone who’d withstood the machinations of war.
Eyes narrowed, she pulled out a note.
“My obituary, should I fall to my mortal peril,” she explained when he gave her a questioning look.
He snorted. “And you say I’m dramatic.”
He laughed, then kept laughing even as she sent fire at him with her eyes. Her glare was…combustive? Radioactive? Something science, whatever that was.
“I would never let you fall.” Though his words were simple enough, her eyes widened, and, for once, she seemed lost for words.
They stared at each other for one long moment.
Oh, he thought, then dismissed the idea entirely.
Surely Granger didn’t—no, quite impossible. It was Granger, after all, and she would never even consider—he looked at her again. Her rather adorable mouth had stopped gaping, but she was studying him now, arms crossed as she narrowed her eyes at him.
Thinking. Deliberating. A dial on a safe anticipating the satisfying click.
I’m an open book, he thought, though didn’t say. Instead, he smirked and said, “Ready?”
“Malfoy,” pleaded Granger, and oh, she was good. That pout was doing something ruinous to his insides, but he denied her.
“Come on, up-up, Granger—”
“Malfoy,” a whisper, a second attempt at pleading.
“Malfoy,” a warning, as she took hold of his offered hand and he hoisted her to sit behind him on the broom. She was disconcertingly close.
“Malfoy,” a squeal, when he readied his broom to take flight.
“Draco fucking Malfoy,” a scream, as they took to the sky.
“A potty mouth on this one,” Draco said and was rewarded with a death grip around his waist.
A slicing hex had nothing on the brute force of her arms around his middle.
“I wouldn’t scream if you knew how to fly this thing—”
“I’ve been flying since around the time I could walk, actually—”
“Oh my god, will you shut up and stop laughing—”
“I’m not even going that fast—”
“Oh my god, I can’t even look. How you could possibly ride this death trap is beyond me—”
“Press tighter to me, Granger. I’m sure if you asphyxiate me in mid-air, you’ll improve your chances of death exponentially.”
A gasping laugh. “You’re incorrigible.”
“Just—” He dropped his hands to hers for a moment and squeezed in what he hoped was reassurance. “You’re doing great,” he said. “Just breathe, I have you.”
Her fingers spasmed against his. They were cold and he had to resist the urge to bring her small fingers up to his mouth and blow hot air to warm them.
After a few long moments, Granger seemed to relax, her hands less tensive around his waist and her body behind his less stone-like. The softness of her was suddenly distracting. He felt her warm breath against his back as she sighed, trying and failing to ignore the way the fine hairs on his neck shivered at the sensation. The area around his abdomen where she was clutching him felt reminiscent of a chocolate frog wanting to take flight.
They were high in the air now, enough that they were level with the ramparts of the castle.
Hogwarts, clothed in darkness and stars, constellations glinting in welcome as the pair glided through the sky, left Draco feeling wondrous.
“Look at that— a whole new world,” he said, looking at the familiar starlight, feeling that same rush of freedom he’d always felt while flying.
“It’s beautiful,” Granger agreed. “I’ve been in the air before, though it was usually spoiled by a life some life or death affair.” A pause. “I suppose I’ve never really taken in the view.”
He chuckled. “I suppose it’s a good thing I beat your potions score.”
She pinched his side, and he gasped, feeling the intermingling of pain and nerves at the intimacy of her touch. “Dirty play.”
She hummed in feigned annoyance, then pressed her face into his back again.
“You’re warm,” she said, and it was unhelpful, really. His nerves fluttered like delicate butterfly wings. He could feel her smile against his back.
“Shall I take you up to your tower?” Draco asked, not wanting to make her stay up here long enough that she might faint from the stress of it.
“Why, thank you, chauffeur,” Granger said, and he was happy for the teasing tone to her voice.
They turned towards the tower, and suddenly Draco wished it wasn’t already about to be over. He half-contemplated re-routing, but it was getting colder outside and so, with a sigh, he came to a stop outside Granger’s window.
If watching Granger climb onto his broom was amusing, then watching her try to get off was enough to send him into a tizzy.
“I can do it,” he heard her say under her breath, and, taking pity on her, he deposited her like one would a small child over the window ledge, delighting in the feel of her waist as he put an arm around her and guided her to step into the tower.
Once she stepped down, she didn’t face him for a moment, only leaned down with her hands on her knees.
“Mmmhmmm,” she answered, then turned around and glared at him. “I am never doing that again,” she proclaimed vengefully.
Draco laughed, raising his hands up in mock surrender.
“Don’t—” she started, reaching a hand towards him worriedly, blushing when he glanced at her with surprise.
“I just mean…” She wrung her hands together. “You should be more careful.”
Draco felt his cheeks go painfully red. “Are you afraid I’m going to fall?”
“No,” the beautiful, lying Granger said, and when she smiled at him he knew he could never win against her.
He pushed his broom down slightly until Granger was out of sight, and then got to his feet, balancing his weight on the middle of the handle in a way he’d done so many times before.
His broom started lifting him—he felt the buzz of its magic through his veins as he came up to Hermione’s eye level again.
She gave him a look of warning. “This is so dangerous—”
He feigned falling off, tipping his feet just so that it would seem as if he were about to fall off the edge.
It was stupid. He was stupid. Granger let out a strangled yelp and grabbed him by the shoulders, and he winced when the blunt edges of her nails clung to him for dear life.
He couldn’t help but court the worried expression on her face, couldn’t help but savour the incandescent rage set upon him when she levelled him with her perfect brown eyes: dark and lovely, never the mud he’d so foolishly thought of them as before.
“You’ve always been a pernicious, pestering ponce,” she said breathily.
“I should’ve known your love language was alliteration, you swot.”
She was rankled; he was delighted.
Her dark eyelashes and flushed cheeks were unbearable.
“I find it funny that you even know what alliteration is.”
“I do listen to you, you know,” he said, taking in her flushed face. He’d always thought her prettiest when she was angry.
She made a doubtful noise but smiled, seemingly less angry now.
He felt like he was floating, in more than one way.
“Will you tell me, then?” he asked after a moment.
Her cheeks were a ruddy red, freckles standing out like stars in the moonlight.
“About what you would’ve made me do if you’d beaten my score.”
“I shan’t,” she said, but then she looked down at his mouth, and Draco felt his own cheeks colour at the thought that Hermione Granger might be more salacious than he’d even thought himself to be.
He looked up at her, meeting her doe-eyes, the warm glow of the fireplace behind her framing her curls and pretty face.
He couldn’t look away if he tried.
“My intentions were quite innocent,” he declared.
“Innocent?” she demanded, brows knitted together in comical disbelief. ”I rather thought you might be trying to kill me when you suggested we go flying.”
“Fair is fair when one thinks no one can surpass her in a single academic subject—”
“Well, I did think I was better than you, I admit,” she interjected teasingly, placing her hands over the ledge, crossed, her expression more inviting now.
“I concede, you are. I just wanted it really badly.”
“And why is that?” she asked, her expression a mix of curiosity and… was it longing? Her gaze travelled from his eyes to his lips, lingering.
“Because,” he said dumbly. He wasn’t really paying attention anymore. Granger staring at his lips meant that he was now looking at hers, and did she want to kiss him as much as he wanted to kiss her? He would have thought himself absurd, but then she was leaning closer, and he was tipping his broom up so he could meet her and—
Funny, that feeling that permeates one's insides when kissing someone: the tentative brush of their lips, innocent in the first few swipes; the way he could feel Granger tremble against him as she fitted her fingers in his jumper. His nerves were galvanic as the taste of her mouth filled him up to bursting.
He hadn’t even noticed his hair falling forward in his face until she lifted a hand up and brushed it away. Somehow that felt even more intimate, but that didn’t mean he refused the second kiss as she leaned forward again.
They smiled against each other’s lips, and he savoured the hitch in her breath when he kissed across her jaw and down the slim line of her neck before she impatiently pulled him by his hair back to her lips. She’d become fast and firm with her mouth; her hands were lightning against his skin, his shoulders. He thought he could stay there forever.
Eventually, due to lack of air or something else equally ridiculous, they parted from each other.
There was a long moment of awkwardness, an obvious crossing of a boundary Draco thinks neither of them was really aware of being there before.
“I am positive that I will never go on a broom ride again,” she said after a moment.
He felt himself deflate, wondering if this was all down to some post-flight rush, but then he looked up at her again and saw the shy smile she sent his way. Something inviting and promising. Her lips were red and bruised and he had to stop himself from reaching for her again.
“Never again,” he smiled, then cracked a full grin when she beamed at him.
“I should go to bed,” she said after another few moments.
“You should,” he agreed, his words dumb and heavy on his tongue. His brain had flat-lined; there was nothing for him now except for the taste of her mouth and the memory of her fingers on his ruffled jumper.
He supposed that even if she didn’t end up wearing it, he wouldn’t complain over the alternative.
As he left the tower with the taste of her on his lips, it crossed his mind that he couldn’t remember the last time he felt dizzy flying.
