Draco's bruises heal, and his wounds close.
But so does he.
When Ginny hears about the confession — the real, if drowsy and sedated, confession — she all but demands that Hermione return to the infirmary and get down on one knee. Preferably both.
But by the time she builds up the courage to visit him again, he's in retreat. Polite and withdrawn. He thanks her for dropping off Potions homework, for bringing him a treat from Hogsmeade. He doesn't tease her. He is calm. He is friendly.
Just as she's realized she doesn't want to be his friend.
As she arrives to visit one day, she sees Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy by his bed, talking to him. From a discreet distance, she watches as they stand rigidly next to his bedside, speaking in low, blasé voices. Not sitting down on their son's bed. Not holding his hand or feeling his forehead.
They seem embarrassed, rather than concerned.
She can only imagine the effortless lies Draco is weaving for them about why a group of students Stunned him, drugged him, and threw him down the stairs.
The sight of the Malfoys also reminds her of what he's been taught, and what he will surely return to.
***
The gossip in the halls has found a new Snitch to chase. After Draco shocks the school with his "confession" that he "is" as "pure" as a new-hatched snowball owl, he once again expertly manipulates public opinion back in his favor. When he sets foot in the Great Hall two weeks after the attack, magically mending but still frail on his feet, he begins his new campaign.
"You, there," he says affably to some first-year Hufflepuffs staring at him in fright. "Know who the common whores all are here? All of you. I'm holding out for passion and fireworks like a right romantic while you all throw yourself into whatever disgusting, filth-encrusted, unwashed teenage bed will warm your backsides for the night. Pathetic. I encourage you all to think more highly of yourselves. And to take more showers while you're at it. Be sure to clean everywhere."
He sits down to his breakfast with a virtuous smirk. Within minutes, the newest narrative is that Draco Malfoy, a beacon of sexual purity, is saving himself and his unsullied flesh for the right angel. Within hours, it is established that he is wasting away from love for said angel, a cruel teenage beloved who will not reciprocate.
As speculation bubbles, Hermione never hears her name come up. Once.
She sighs. Why would it? He's the only one who's ever seen me that way.
***
After the Potions classroom empties one day, she takes a deep breath and approaches him. As usual, his Dreamless Sleep Potion was the best in show, fine purple silk where the rest of the class (including her) produced mauve sludge.
He looks at her levelly, still the worse for wear. His hair is a little longer, mussed around his ears. Dark circles ring his eyes. She isn't surprised when he pockets the purple vial instead of placing it on Slughorn's shelf.
"Someone will see you with me," he says at length.
"Since you're now the Blessed Virgin of Hogwarts, that could only reflect well on me. Spiritually, I mean."
A smile flickers, but he continues putting his things away. "It's just public opinion, Granger. Easy to Transfigure. Easy to change into whatever you need it to be. I've done it before and I'll do it again, whenever it makes life easier to bear."
His words are glib, but behind them burns something bitter. Harsh. Frustrated.
"Word is you're pining away for somebody," she tries, rashly. "Shall I hex them for you? Slip them Amortentia?"
His face twists. "Tell them they can do better — and to stay away from me. For their own sake."
This impossible fucking boy.
"Draco," she pleads. "We need to talk."
"Angry I didn't pay you, Granger? I'll make sure you're properly compensated. A Malfoy doesn't break a business promise, even if we break just about everything else."
"Stop it! It's not about the money. Or extra credit. Or your reputation. Or mine," she grinds out.
"Then what the fuck is it about?"
She's seconds away from hexing him herself. "What you said, in the infirmary — "
"I was drugged out of my mind," he says carefully.
"Liar. We know mind-altering drugs don't work on you. You remember every word." Her voice rises. "You chose every word."
"Would it change anything if I did?"
Her anger flares fully. "What is it, Draco? Am I the Dimmest Witch of my Age or not? You cut your entire fucking heart out of your body and placed it in my hands, then fell asleep before I could do the same. You've talked about wanting to have a choice. But you're taking away mine. Stop it."
She steps forward and palms his cheek. Coaxing his body to speak the truth his brain will not.
His hand finds her wrist, like the first day in Flitwick's classroom. His breath catches. And then his mouth lowers to hers.
But before their lips touch, he shudders and rears back. Snatching back his hand as if bitten. Grabbing his bag and darting for the door.
"You can't possibly dream of this," he bites out. "So stop forcing yourself. Stop wanting something you literally had to be paid to do. Something you'd never be proud to tell the world about. Something — "
And the knife.
"Thank you for your dedication to teaching, Granger."
He slams the door and is gone.
That night, Hermione locks herself in with Ginny and cries for hours. Then she asks for a lesson of her own.
And a favor.
***
The long-awaited rematch of Seekers Ginny Weasley and Draco Malfoy at Saturday's Gryffindor-Slytherin match is not to be. Pomfrey won't yet clear Draco to return to sports. So he sits in the stands alone, Dreamless Sleep still rattling in his pocket.
Now that he is a famously celibate martyr for love, he draws even more interested stares than before. He doesn't return any of them. Instead, he watches behind sunglasses and sips a hot chocolate, wincing every few minutes at the lingering pain in his ribs.
Ginny instead faces off against Daphne Greengrass, known for her speed and her light touch on the broom. The two girls are at each other's heels all match, neither yielding an inch as the Snitch hurtles just out of their grasp.
Draco watches, but finds he doesn't care. He nurses his drink and aches for a distraction. Nothing has felt the same since he spilled his guts to Granger — physically, or otherwise. Nothing ever will again.
And everything fucking aches because of it.
He's caught off guard when the distraction arrives. At first merely intrigued, he removes his sunglasses. He pushes his hair impatiently out of his eyes and stands up to confirm what he is seeing. Because mid-match, something is happening that the school will be talking about for decades to come.
"Merlin's glittering balls," he chokes out, his drink crashing to his feet.
With great effort, a student is slowly flying up into the middle of the field. Someone who is not a designated player on either team. Someone who, without permission or warning, is deliberately disrupting the match.
Huffing and puffing, with numerous jerky stops and starts, like a little train straining up a hillside, a witch known throughout Hogwarts for her extreme fear of flying awkwardly glides to the center of the pitch and, sick with vertigo, hovers unsteadily in the middle.
A whistle blows and the match comes to a stop.
"Miss Granger?" says the referee uncertainly, flying to her side.
To her other side flies Ginny, hovering expertly next to her with wand in hand, since Hermione's trembling fingers are clutching the borrowed broom with a death grip.
"Ready?" asks Ginny kindly, taking Hermione's arm with her other hand to stabilize her.
"I'm — I'm ready," Hermione gasps, everything swimming below her. With Ginny holding her upright, she risks a quick look down into the stands.
Draco is on his feet, his eyes absolutely wild. He's shaking his head furiously and mouthing something to her.
"Let's do this. Sonorus," says Ginny, casting the spell over a ten-foot radius and slipping her wand back into her boot, but keeping her grip on Hermione's arm.
"HELLO, EVERYONE," says Hermione in a shy but firm voice that thunders through the stadium. She feels it crackling unpleasantly in her throat.
"Ginny, can you adjust the sound?"
Ginny casts an equalizing spell and Hermione's voice becomes clearer.
"I'm sorry to interrupt the match, I know this is not the venue or the occasion, but there is something very important that I have to say in front of all of you. And I really do mean all of you."
The entire school, professors and students, blinks back.
"I need to get an important message to someone," she plods on, "and I want everyone to hear it. And I want HIM to know that I want everyone to hear it. As most of you know, you've been laboring under a false impression that Draco Malfoy is — for lack of a better word — "
"GRANGER!" he shrieks from the stands in a pitch that would blow out the Royal Opera House.
Draco has stood up and and is making his way down the rows, climbing over seats and jumping over spectators. Gasping with every movement of his healing ribs. Even stepping on people when necessary, because he's still a little bit Malfoy, after all.
He's moving as fast as he can, which means she needs to move as fast as she can. She takes a deep breath and presses on.
"Let's just say that you all spread some rumors about him that aren't true. And now, you're fanning the flames with some more untrue things. Including — erm — the lie that he's in love with someone who doesn't love him back."
She gives another quick glance down. The wind tumbles his hair as he tosses his coat, his scarf, and his tie to the side, descending into the players' area wearing just his school uniform.
"I want every one of you to hear and understand, in this most horrifyingly public and exposed way, that the person he loves...loves him back."
Scuffling and more shrieking erupt from below. Draco has grabbed a broom from a hapless Gryffindor and the player is not giving it up easily.
With Ginny's calming arm on hers, and the world spinning sickeningly below, Hermione takes her deepest breath yet and says, "That person is me."
She sees Draco haul off and smack the other player in the face, only to receive a stinging slap back for his pains. His colorful cursing peals through the stadium as players and coaches press around him and his adversary.
Hermione continues. "He's been afraid I'd be ashamed. That I'd be worried about my reputation, or about what you all might think if someone like him and someone like me fell in love. Which — fucking hell — we did."
Draco has finally wrenched the broom away and is arrowing toward her and Ginny.
In the few seconds she has left, she says, "How I feel about him is not a secret I want to keep. It's a fact I want to broadcast. When I brew Amortentia, I smell Draco Lucius Malfoy's lavender laundry soap, and I know that his mouth is the cleanest, mintiest mouth ever owned by a teenage boy. I know this because his first kiss was with me, Hermione Jean Granger, in Professor Flitwick's classroom. I kissed him again in Hogsmeade last month, and I did it again right here on this Quidditch field."
She decides not to mention what else happened on the Quidditch field.
"I want a fourth kiss, and a fifth, and a five-hundredth — if he'll only have me."
And with that, he's hovering in front of her and Ginny. His hair is wild, his cheeks are on fire, and his grey eyes are blazing with fury and panic and adrenaline and — is it amusement?
"Draco," she says.
"Granger, I'm touched by this performance but I need you to come down right now."
"It's not a performance and I'm not done — "
"No, you bloody woman, I believe you and I love you and I want to fuck your brains out and we will fucking talk about this on the ground!" He's nearly crying. "I just can't watch you cling to that broom like a starving rat on a mast, you're going to fall off and break every bone in your beautiful fucking face and you're going to be in the infirmary for months and my ribs are killing me and — and you're going to be the fucking death of me, Granger! So come down now!"
"I'm beautiful?" says Hermione.
"Draco, the Sonorus is still on," says Ginny.
He looks down at the entire school. The entire school looks back.
"It's Granger, everybody," he says shortly, the sound rebounding magnificently around the stadium. "And," he meets her eye with a sly grin, "as should surprise none of you, she's an extremely good teacher."
Hermione's heart leaps with hope, even as her stomach leaps with nausea.
He wraps his arm tightly around her and says, "We'll come down slowly, very slowly. I'll just hold you like this and you ride right alongside me. Okay? No sudden movements, love."
Love. She looks at him and sees what she's missed for weeks. His smile, peppery with annoyance and radiant with —
Just as she opens her mouth to respond, the Snitch whizzes aggressively past her nose like a deranged hornet, circling her head with a piercing, unpleasant whine.
Startled, Ginny releases her grip on Hermione.
Startled, Hermione releases her grip on her broom.
Startled by the shift in balance, Draco topples off his broom, taking Hermione with him.
Ginny and the entire school watch as Draco and Hermione plunge five stories, with no magical protection, toward the Quidditch field.
***
Without time to think or react, much less reach for her wand, Hermione watches the ground rush up at her, thinking unhappily about gravity, mass, acceleration, and how much time she is about to spend in the infirmary.
Falling in love wasn't supposed to be quite this literal.
But moments before they crash into the ground, a net materializes below them.
It's gigantic, the length of the field.
It's golden, light sparkling carelessly up and down the strands.
It's woven from magic — streaks of magic hurtling their way from every direction, simultaneously.
As they plummet into the net, Hermione looks up in amazement. Every professor, student, and spectator at the match has their wand out and has sent a spell their way to break their fall.
They protected us, she realizes with a pang.
They protected him.
Draco groans and rolls over in the net, holding his ribs. Ginny is the first to them, tossing her broom aside and helping him sit up, then Hermione.
"Are you two idiots all right?" she asks.
"I've been better," they say in unison.
Draco turns his head to Hermione and grins. "Is this the spot where I put my head up your skirt?"
She sighs. "I believe it is."
As the net gently lowers to the field and all of Hogwarts descends upon them, she feels his hand curling in hers, warm, firm, and without hesitation.
Without hiding.
Without holding back.
"Hermione," says Draco with dignity, "now we need to talk."