Dramione One Shots

13. This Time Tomorrow

By this time tomorrow, everything will be different.

The windowpane is cool against my temple, reflecting the shapes of the room behind me, too dark outside to see anything beyond the glass. In all black, my reflection is practically invisible, safe for my hair, but I tire of staring at myself so I watch the flames in the fireplace. They glow over Pansy, sprawled on the oriental rug, her head in Longbottom's lap, surrounded by an explosion of rainbow streamers. He's staring at her all bedazzled, as if she'll vanish in a wisp of smoke if he quits looking.

Behind them, Theo's asleep on the armchair, mouth parted, snoring softly even though he insists he doesn't. I look over my shoulder as a shadow approaches and see Granger, a natural smile on her lips, holding a beer bottle in each hand.

I swing my legs down to make space, our fingers brushing as I take one.

She sits opposite me, crossing her legs on the window seat. "Recently found out Stevie Nicks is a witch."

I take a swig. It's oddly pecan-flavoured, definitely Weasley's choice. He'll never hear it from me, but not half bad. "What are you on about?"

"The band," she says, gesturing vaguely towards the charmed gramophone. Earlier, when Loony played DJ, we listened to a whole soundtrack of cows mooing in a field. "They're called Fleetwood Mac."

I breathe out a laugh. "Granger's Fact of The Day can't take a breather on the last night of school?"

"I can't turn off who I am," she says indignantly.

"I know," I say. I love it.

Her gaze lowers, index finger circling the bottle thoughtfully. I take advantage of the moment to admire her tight black trousers, how they hug her legs like denim skin.

She lifts the glass to her lips, tipping it back. Our eyes lock.

"How was your night?" she asks.

"Unsatisfying," I say, realizing it's the truth. "We built up tonight so much and now it's over and it was just alright."

She grins. "Hey, just alright for a party with Gryffindors is miraculous. You'd have used a hundred other words to describe it at the top of the year."

"You're not Gryffindors to me anymore."

"What are we then?"

"Classmates," I say. "Friends."

Her brows nearly shoot up to her hairline. "Friends?"

"Especially you," I tell her, picking at the label on the bottle. A boy on a broom thunderbolts into a star-speckled sky. I ignore his uncanny similarity to tween-Potter. "I'll miss you, Granger."

"Is this goodbye then?" she asks. "Won't we see each other after this?"

"Of course, we will." I roll my eyes. "But not like this." I wave my hand around the festivity-drained room. "There'll be business meetings. You'll bug me with proposals to invest in some needy creature fund and I'll give you a hard time about it because I enjoy riling you up. But ultimately you'll get what you want and we'll catch up from time to time so you can tell me where you've spent every knut I've contributed to the cause."

"You've thought about this." There's a tiny streak of mascara beneath her left eye and I'm tempted to lick my finger and swipe it clean.

"I think about you all the time," I say, fixating on how her hair spills down her shoulders, partially flattened against the stone wall.

"You do?" She leans forward, a curl falling over her brow. "In what way?"

I stare at her mouth. The dip at the centre of her lip. I never paid attention to that part of the mouth before, but Granger's is plump and shaped like a heart with edges instead of curves.