It's a nice home, she says, and some unseen vise at the back of his neck and in the set of his shoulders quietly loosens, some tension he hadn't even known he'd been holding.
Draco has always grown up surrounded by history, for better or worse: family heirlooms; matching furniture sets that have been in his blueblood family for generations; portraits and decorative pieces that were selected literal centuries before he was born and which he had zero input into, and never would. The Wiltshire estate would be his someday, but it also would never be his. It was the Malfoys', and when he was there, he could practically feel the whole weight of the family and its expectations waiting behind his left shoulder, their grey eyes (so much like his) watching from the walls.
A separate flat, though. Not just a convenient pied-a-terre for evenings in London, but a place to live in full-time. His father had kicked up a fit about it, but Draco had insisted, and so the man had eventually sighed and loosened the pursestrings to help with the initial rent.
And now Draco realises the benefit: he gets to take a girl home unseen, unnoticed, unjudged. He gets to marvel at the sound of his actual name on Hermione's lips, rather than the usual jabbing and volleying they do with surnames. Have been doing for years. But neither of them are the children they were at Hogwarts, are they?
"Bossy as ever, Hermione," he says — but there's a smirk in it, and he's trying out her name, too — and then he's kissing her again, hands going for the bracket of her cheeks, diving into it as if they're still in that closet.
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Draco has always grown up surrounded by history, for better or worse: family heirlooms; matching furniture sets that have been in his blueblood family for generations; portraits and decorative pieces that were selected literal centuries before he was born and which he had zero input into, and never would. The Wiltshire estate would be his someday, but it also would never be his. It was the Malfoys', and when he was there, he could practically feel the whole weight of the family and its expectations waiting behind his left shoulder, their grey eyes (so much like his) watching from the walls.
A separate flat, though. Not just a convenient pied-a-terre for evenings in London, but a place to live in full-time. His father had kicked up a fit about it, but Draco had insisted, and so the man had eventually sighed and loosened the pursestrings to help with the initial rent.
And now Draco realises the benefit: he gets to take a girl home unseen, unnoticed, unjudged. He gets to marvel at the sound of his actual name on Hermione's lips, rather than the usual jabbing and volleying they do with surnames. Have been doing for years. But neither of them are the children they were at Hogwarts, are they?
"Bossy as ever, Hermione," he says — but there's a smirk in it, and he's trying out her name, too — and then he's kissing her again, hands going for the bracket of her cheeks, diving into it as if they're still in that closet.