Always Something - Dramione

Chapter Seven

The night was restless. Hermione stayed awake long after Draco fell asleep, intending to extricate herself from his hold and leave to sleep somewhere else, even if it was just on her own pillow. But whenever she moved, he stirred, and she'd wait a little longer, until she fell asleep herself.

When the morning dawned, she began to awaken, confused at the state of herself. Though she had fallen asleep in control of her sleeping situation, on her back with her arms around Draco's neck and his around her waist as he slept on his side, she was now rolled onto her side to face him, his arms closed around her shoulders and back, his fingertips beneath the hem of her T-shirt, on her skin. Her arms were tucked between them, in a sheltered, protected position, their legs threaded together near his knees.

More mystifying, he had got out of his t-shirt somehow and his chest was bare and warm against her face and hands. She flexed her fingers against him. The texture of his skin was different from what she remembered of touching Ron Weasley's chest, less baby fine, the grain richer, a man in his thirties, not his teens. She closed her eyes again. It wouldn't do to keep comparing him to Ron, the happy father of Lavender Brown's Australian children.

No, Draco Malfoy -- time to think of Malfoy, this beautiful, sad, reeking, drunken mess clasping her in his arms as she slept in his bed. The options for her future were still unsettled, still caught up in so many things. If she never recovered her memories, the extremes of her options were to leave him and raise the children together but apart, like all separated parents do. Or maybe she could stay and learn to love him.

Since some things only come with practice, she closed her eyes and pressed her cheek against his chest, imagining being in love with him. There was a thumping behind his pectoral muscle, his heart beating slow and strong. She turned toward it, letting her closed mouth rest against it. She felt her own pulse in her lips, faster than his heartbeat, and gaining speed, as if...

She tipped away from him, far enough to see his face, twisted with the hangover he was sleeping off but still beautiful. It was really him her heart had beat for just now, the nastiest boy she knew, the father the children who lived here, the ones who looked like her. In the quiet early morning, she sighed as she untangled her legs from his, and he rolled onto his stomach, sliding his arms under the pillows. She rose out of the bed and quit the room.

In the kitchen, she brewed a hangover remedy potion. New recipes developed during the past twenty years had made these kinds of medicines more palatable, but memory-injured Hermione didn't know those recipes, and the one she made for Draco was pungent. She brought a steaming mug of it up to the bedroom, opening the curtains and humming to wake him.

He groaned into the mattress, clenching his eyes shut against the daylight.

"Here, you need to drink this while it's hot," she said.

He fought to sit up, cradling his head. "Goyle," he said. "Bloody Goyle. I never drink like that."

She smirked. "Clearly."

He rubbed his temples. "How'd I get back? All I get when I try to remember is a crazy dream, complete with Potter himself."

She sat on the edge of the bed, holding the hangover potion at the ready. "Did you dream that you offered to snog him?"

Draco responded with a spectacular cringe. "Maybe."

She was laughing at him.

"Did he really -- was he here last night?"

"Yes, I'm sorry. I didn't know who else to call when you didn't come home."

"Hermione..."

"It's alright. You didn't kiss him and you did make it home. Now drink this. Go on."