Dramione One Shots

27. Mixed Signals

This is posted on AO3 as 3 chapters because it's long. But I'm posting it here as a one shot. Rated E for explicit content!

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Hermione entered her flat on Saturday night to find Draco Malfoy sitting on her sofa, holding his fingers out for Crookshanks to inspect. The half-Kneazle prowled the mustard yellow cushions suspiciously and sniffed. His golden eyes flashed, teeth bearing into a hiss as he pounced, bushy tail springing up in the air. Malfoy yanked his hand away and hopped onto the other sofa, seconds aways from becoming a scratching post.

Atta boy. Hermione grinned at her ginger soulmate, and called out with a petulant sigh, "Are you going to be here all the time now?" She removed a high-heeled boot while balancing herself against the wall, then shucked off the other. Dropping them a little too heavily—thump—and a little too sharply—thump—on the ground.

Malfoy turned around to greet her with surprising composure, "Alright, Granger?"

A cup of tea was steaming on the old-trunk-turned-coffee-table where Malfoy had been sitting, a black hardcover tented beside it. Hermione couldn't make out the title, but wondered none too happily if it was one of hers.

Crookshanks leapt off the sofa and curled around her ankles, purring at his highest and most loveable volume. She scooped him up like a baby and kissed his squishy snout.

"Since I'm no longer a dirty little secret, I figured, why not?" Malfoy shrugged, watching as she gave Crooks a thorough cuddle before setting him back down.

"Please," she shuddered, "spare me the memories I have desperately tried to burn from my brain."

Last Tuesday, she'd had the great misfortune of walking in on him shagging Ginny in the sitting room. She had heard the commotion the moment she'd entered the building and had initially thought someone was getting robbed. And then she'd seen Draco Malfoy naked, doing things to Ginny. Ugh, it was all coming back to her now. Make it stop.

"Hot date?" Malfoy asked, eyeing up her pleated skirt and sheer stockings with interest, not even slightly abashed by Hermione's disgust. If anything, he seemed proud of himself.

"I had a lovely dinner with Mum and Dad," she replied coldly, checking her reflection in the thrifted, full-length mirror and rejuvenating her fringe with her fingers. She tried not to feel so tense, but the years of animosity between them hovered thickly in the air, making her claustrophobic.

"Are all these books yours?" Malfoy made a show of looking up and around the sitting room at the books placed colourfully on floating shelves around the perimeter. Hundreds of colourful, embossed spines drew the eye straight up to the ceilings in the hallway, the sitting room, and Hermione's bedroom. Ginny had spent an entire afternoon rearranging them from yellow to orange to red, and so on. It wrecked Hermione's genre/sub-genre/author categorisation method, but she let it slide because it was pretty.

Not that any of it was Malfoy's business. If Ginny wanted to shag him to explore her sexuality, all the power to her. Harry was dating some airhead popstar, Amor Tensha, and this was Ginny's way of evening out the playing field. Hermione understood the allure of a healthy revenge plot, but she had not personally signed up for this Hogwarts reunion and would appreciate it if certain people realised that.

"Ginny's books are in her room," she said, hoping that by her tone he would understand to stop talking to her now. She'd been civil. Hadn't even given him a hard time for using her Flourish and Blotts' Bookworm of the Month mug—that anyone could see had her name printed on it except him, apparently. She deserved a modicum of peace after all that self-restraint.