Serpent in the Lion's Den

19. First Words

Soft beams of light trailed through thin curtains into a small hotel room in Muggle London, where two wizards slept as a knot of limbs, unsure where one ended and the other began. The rays of sunlight exposed the weeks of dust that had accumulated due to a combined lack of cleaning on the landlady's part, and areas that missed the scourigify charm on Hermione's part. Her blonde companion rose first, slipping a hand out from underneath his fellow witch's body to shield the light so he could see her properly. The sun pooled her face and danced along the freckles that sat along her cheekbones, her bushy hair caught the light and made it seem as though strands of gold were laced throughout her brunette curls.

"I love you"

The words were no louder than the faintest whisper. The silence of a Remembrall filling with scarlet smoke would've been louder. But they'd been said none the less and it was one of the first things Draco would never label as a mistake. What he did label as a mistake was not checking that the witch that shared the single bed with him was, in fact, awake. A smile wider than the Cheshire Cat grew on Hermione's face as her eyes fluttered open and she placed her hand on the wizard's jaw.

"Did you say something?" she teased, a tactic that had ended up with her lying in bed with a Slytherin with only his jumper to cover her in the first place. She begun to recognise the pattern of intense emotion followed by withdrawal with Draco and was trying desperately to keep him from falling back into the darkness. It had been a tug of war between years of conditioning on one side, Hermione on the other and Draco in the middle for the past few weeks, until one side was bound to start to break.

Draco sat up in the bed and looked her dead in the eye. 'You might not get another chance so what the hell' he thought to himself before taking the biggest leap in his life.

"I have loved you since the Fourth Year Hermione Granger, I love you when you scream at me, I love you when you correct me which is at least twice a day, I love you because you try to bring out the best version of me, the version I didn't know could still exist or be loved. I love you and I think I always will."

Hermione sat upright. She'd always imagined that the first time the words 'I love you' were spoken that she'd have to be in a beautiful dress, her hair perfect and fireworks to be set off into the night sky. Instead, she was wearing a dark green jumper that had moth damage from years of neglection in Harry's drawer, her hair was like a bird's nest and she was in a dusty hotel room barely bigger than the potion supply cupboard at Hogwarts. But it was perfect.

"I love you too Draco Malfoy" she said whilst smiling up at the wizard, and she meant it. She wasn't sure when she had realised that she loved him, perhaps it was at the start of sixth year when she'd caught herself staring one too many times. Perhaps it was the first time he'd held her close and she'd looked into those grey eyes, swirling with emotion and felt his hand hold her so possessively yet gently against him. The witch was never able to pinpoint the exact moment she'd fallen in love with the Slytherin Prince, but she knew she had. His eyes went wide with shock and a smile of pure joy spread across his face,

"You do? You mean it?"

"I mean it Draco, I love you. When you're being rude and sarcastic, when you pretend not to know about muggle things, when you can't admit you don't know how to cook. Not so much when you're bullying my friends but definitely when you hold me close and make me feel safer than anyone has before. I love you," Hermione laughed as she cupped his face with her hands and planted a kiss on his lips between each sentence,

"And I think I always will."