Blood Boundary [A DRAMIONE fanfiction]

17 | Hermione's Birthday Part 2

"How about we play a game?" she asked him.

He stopped chewing. "What?"

"Let's have a normal conversation," she perked up, putting a leg on top of the other on the sofa, her feet almost touching his thigh. "Forget about who we are. Forget about our unfriendly history together for ten minutes, and just...talk."

What does she hope to accomplish in this game? Malfoy didn't know, but he agreed anyway. "You start."

"Ask me how my day was."

He looked at her expectant face. No bitterness. No anger towards him. Just a person trying to make small talk. "How was your day?"

She placed the finish plate on top of the table. "My day was great, there's work, but Harry and Ron threw me a birthday party during dinner," she said. "How about you?"

Draco broke away from her gaze. His mind kept telling him that what he was doing was wrong. That it simply just doesn't go parallel with the universe. Even so, her very presence attracted him, and he was revolving around her, like she was the Sun and he was the Earth.

You're a normal person. You're not Draco Malfoy.

"I'm stuck in this place," he replied. "So not much happened."

"What were doing the whole day?"

"Just waiting."

This time, it was Hermione that looked away. It was a completely unfinished statement. But the missing words hung in the air above her.

"Tell me more about this birthday dinner," Draco said, shifting in his seat.

Nine minutes. He saw the pupils in her eyes grow bigger.

"Well. . ." she exhaled slowly. "Molly cooked a lot of dishes. It was a bloody feast." She smiled when she remembered. "Harry and Ron told me it was going to be just us and the Weasleys, but our Gryffindor friends were there, too." A pregnant pause. "Luna Lovegood, Seamus, Dean, Cho, Neville—and oh, did I tell you that Neville and Luna are already going out together?"

Draco was amused by the information. "Really?"

"Yeah." She had that absent-minded look on her face. "Apparently, Neville's been smitten with her ever since. And he finally got up the courage to ask her out."

He didn't know why, but her words felt like a stab to the chest.

"Anyway, we had rounds and rounds of Butterbeer, and we were just talking, huddled up in a big circle in the living room. We caught up to each other." She tucked her knees again in a foetal position, shivering a little bit. "It was fun. Everybody was there."

Everybody was there.

Part of him didn't believe her. Clearly, not everybody had been there. The yearning etched across her face told him enough, and she tried her best to disguise it with a smile. He knew, because he had that same look on his face for three years.

He didn't want to pry or bombard her with questions. After all, this is just a game, right? A foolish way to avoid the simple truth that, even in any alternate universe, he knew that fate wouldn't allow them to have this kind of conversation—sentimental, intimate, normal.

Seven minutes.

Draco saw the happiness growing smaller in her eyes, and her face was a different mask altogether. He knew that there was more to what she was saying, that there was an unspoken thought, and so he just kept quiet, in fear of scaring that thought away.