A Wonderful Fortuitous Love

38. You and Her

It took more self-control than Draco knew he had not to bang his head on the table. “Make a mental note for me,” he said grimly. “If we marry, lets move out right away.”

He did not notice his mistake. Might never have, had it not been for Ophelia’s lack of response. Mentally, he cursed, and before he could explain, the waitress appeared with their order, oblivious to Draco’s discomfort.

“That’ll be all, then?” she asked. 

Ophelia smiled, a smile that looked so real Draco wondered how long it took to perfect something like that.

She took a long slip of her coffee, too long really, because Draco’s was far too hot to even attempt drinking it, and when she set it down softly, she spoke just one word.

“If?”

It was his turn to fall silent.

“Why mightn’t we marry, Draco?” she asked. She did not sound accusing, or even hurt. Only curious.

“Your mother could decide she doesn’t like me. That’s what I meant to say,” he lied.

Ophelia brought the china back to her lips and drank. Draco mimicked her, and in silence, both chose to ignore the lie.

***

He saw her again after that. And again and again – until afternoon coffees with her became a regular occurrence. It was mostly because of his mother’s delighted expression when he’d informed her of his first afternoon spent with Ophelia that motivated Draco to schedule another meet up. After the second one Ophelia called the shots and they began arranging at the end of every coffee the next time they would meet. 

He didn’t hate seeing her. On the contrary, he thought maybe he could really begin to like her if only Draco could forget the nagging voice in the back of his head reminding him who she was, that he would be marrying her, that it was essential to like her. And it was these thoughts which got in the way of truly enjoying her presence. Draco could see himself becoming friends with her, even go as far to see each other simply because they liked it. But he could not imagine a lifetime with her.

He didn’t really know the whole reason behind that, aside from the fact that they were being forced together, but somehow he felt it went deeper than that. She was missing something. And for a long time he had no idea what that something could be, until one day they went to sit at their usual table, only to find someone had left their book there.

Without much thought, Ophelia picked up the book and tossed onto the next table. Draco could only stare at her, wondering why she hadn’t looked more closely at it, why her eyes didn’t light up at the sight of it, why she didn’t try reading the back to see what it was about or why she didn’t sniff the pages. He imagined the look on Granger’s face if she saw such little regard for a book and snorted out a laugh. Ophelia shot him an odd look, he sobered quickly, and it was only much later, when he thought back on this small and seemingly insignificant moment, did it dawn on him that maybe he secretly knew what she was missing all along. 

On their seventh meeting, Draco left later than he normally would have done. The sun was setting, shops were closing, people were going home, and the temperature was dropping rapidly to a frosty chill. Still. It was nothing unusual. Nothing to suggest anything would happen.

He was walking along, hands in his pockets and boots crunching in the snow as he thought over what Ophelia had said earlier, about how she was going to Longbottom and Lovegood’s wedding.

“You aren’t going?” she’d asked him.

“No.”

“Don’t you like them?”