Tango * dramione

Chapter 37

"If I were the rain. . . that binds together the Earth and the sky, whom in all eternity will never mingle. . . Would I be able to bind two hearts together?"
~Tite Kubo

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Chapter 37: A Four Letter Word

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Center Stage: Draco and Hermione

Setting: Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes

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"Hermione."

"Not now, Draco."

"Hermione."

"I said not. Now." Hermione sat with her legs crossed on George's office floor, placing incantations on shoe after shoe to transfigure themselves to any size foot. Draco would pass her a new box when she finished, hanging sideways off George's sagging, leather chair in an 'I don't care' sort of way, even though he obviously did. Everything about his aura screamed tense, from the crease in his brow to the way his feet kept tapping the air.

"Fine," he muttered, accio'ing a new box and sliding it over her way as she levitated the old box onto a pile stacked clear to the ceiling. "So we're fighting now."

"I'm not fighting," Hermione said cooly, opening the new box of shoes. "I'm working. This would go a lot faster if you helped."

"Maybe I'd be more inclined to help if we talked." From the corner of her eye, she spotted him making a grimace as if he'd just stuck an entire lemon wedge in his mouth. "Merlin help me. I want to talk? About...feelings?" His face soured again. "Might as well put me out to pasture. I've lost all sense of familiarity."

"Stop being dramatic." Hermione rolled her eyes.

"Dramatic?" Draco popped his head up, thinking it over. "A Malfoy is never dramatic."

"Oh, please. Your family could put on an entire production of Cats and no one would bat an eyelash. They'd just look and say, 'there goes the Malfoys, doing what the Malfoys do.'"

"I'm not even sure what you're talking about, but I'm sure I'm supposed to feel insulted, so I'm taking it that way."

"Good."

After a few moments of silence, Draco groaned audibly. "I shouldn't have said it! There! Are you happy?"

Hermione kept her head down in her work, refusing to meet his sure to be withering gaze. "Not in the slightest." It sparked a tiny glimmer of joy within her to see, out of the corner of her eye, him fidget in his chair so much that he nearly fell out of it. Eventually, he sat upright in it and strummed his fingers along the arm rests. - Okay, so Hermione was maybe taking this a little far. But that didn't mean he shouldn't squirm like the worm he was. What he said...about if he'd known how to dance in the first place...it struck a chord in her. And she wasn't the only one to have felt the chill. The entire room had fallen flat at his words.

A part of her (not the logical side, of course) wondered if he really did regret it all. She'd taken it for granted that they'd fallen into each other's laps - quite literally at times. But really, if they hadn't found each other again through the Tango, would they even have crossed paths at all? She'd built this idea in her head that, somehow, they were meant to find each other. But what if this all was a fluke?

Stealing a glance at Draco, who met her gaze with stern worry, she tucked her head down and hastily set back to work. She couldn't bear the thought of admitting she was the one being dramatic, but...well, it had hurt her.