A Wonderful Fortuitous Love

46. Alexis Moore

"Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

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Draco waited until he heard a door close from somewhere upstairs, and then he pressed his palms over his eyes and swore. Loudly.

He sat down in the nearest seat and repeated the scene. He had arrived at the flat; heard Potter yelling; had thought about Disapparating and coming back later when his name was mentioned, quickly followed by Granger defending him; he had felt gratified that she was sticking up for him, then angry because he should not be feeling that at all and then even angrier because of what Potter was saying; he tried taking his resentment out on her; Granger had went into a long speech that basically said he was a git, and then she’d admitted she liked him. A lot.

It’d made Draco feel startled at first, then amazed. Amazed by the guts she had, looking him directly in the eye and admitting to such a thing. It was not like he’d thought she hated him before that, of course. He knew that whatever hate they’d shared at the beginning was gone. But still. Saying the words out loud made it real, and hearing them spoken did something to Draco, had made his head almost dizzy with what that meant for them now that they were no longer pretending their relationship was ordinary. And then his body had moved of it’s own accord, closer to hers until there was nothing but them and them alone, and suddenly it was like he knew what he was doing, knew how close their bodies were, but was far too gone in the moment to care.   

Her courage was contagious, he decided. The way she’d looked up at him and spoken so clearly had made him want to be brave too, and he’d found himself telling her something he’d never planned to – disrupting the silent agreement between them to never openly acknowledge whatever friendship they had struck up.

Draco ran his fingers through his hair. Friendship. With Hermione. That’s what it was. They were friends – had been for a while now.  

But… the word ‘friends’ didn’t sit right. It was, dare he think it, more than that. With Astoria he had always viewed her as Daphne’s little sister, the person he talked to and had felt comfortable with. And it had only ever happened once, but one night he’d been watching Tracey Davis flirt with Blaise, seen how they talked and talked and how at ease they seemed. Draco remembered wondering if maybe what he had with Astoria was love after all, only he just couldn’t see it. Wasn’t communication the key to relationships? He had that better with Astoria than anyone. She understood him. He remembered wondering what if he loved her, and he just didn’t know it yet? But as he had been thinking, Pansy had came up and kissed him, and then she’d mentioned the idiotic move she’d seen Weasley do that day during Quidditch practise, and he had laughed and almost forgotten about anything and everyone else. Later, he wondered about how Astoria never made him laugh like Pansy. Didn’t they say laughter was also important?

Except, there was a lot of maintenance with Pansy. She was always wanting him to prove he cared and have him convince her she was the prettiest girl in Hogwarts every few days. Or she would talk to him about things he did not care about, like some Hufflepuff who got a bad perm but would say it was still better looking than Hermione Granger’s.

It was only a year after the war Draco concluded he had never loved neither women.

But the word ‘friends’ had always felt right, with both of them. It did not fit what Granger was to him. Felt wrong. Or was that just because she was someone he had once hated?

Only… when he kissed her, it didn’t feel wrong. He knew that it should be wrong, had told himself over and over again that it was in the hopes it would sink through, but the fact remained it felt… well, right. As though he was finally doing the correct thing for once in his wasted life.