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It had started off as a joke.
(That was how all terrible stories started, Draco thought.)
He could do better than that.
Deep within the overlooked bowels of the Ministry's Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, the notoriously sexy and intelligent Draco Malfoy shared a tiny (imhumanely so, in his opinion) office with Hermione Granger.
(Better)
It hadn't been as bad as he had expected, in all honesty. After a few weeks of glaring daggers and hissing curses and making one another's inkwells explode, Granger finally began to start treating him like a human, and Draco finally managed to string together an apology for, well, everything. (Not necessarily in that order). They spent most days up to their eyeballs in paperwork, venturing out occasionally to investigate a report of illicit magical-creature-related activity, after which Granger would return with the swotty do-gooder equivalent of an afterglow, and Draco with a headache.
But for the most part, Draco found he didn't mind the enforced proximity. He didn't mind listening to her rave about her latest project, or discuss the latest Gryffindor gossip, or complain about Weasley (sometimes she even let him join in). Better still were the moments she got carried away with the friends who stopped by to chat, bestowing Draco with intimate knowledge of her thoughts on life, love, and the female orgasm.
All in all, not too bad.
(Kind of mind-blowing, actually, that last one).
But anyway. All this to say, he could deal with her being her; bold and uncompromising and idealistic and difficult and earnest and argumentative and (brilliant).
And it turned out that what he couldn't deal with was… anything less.
He should have known as soon as the office door opened with a feeble squeak instead of the resounding crash that usually heralded the arrival of his colleague and her bright new idea of the day.
He didn't bother looking up from his desk, instead sending a coffee cup and a paper bag floating towards her with a flick of his hand. "I had to confund Peakes from Transportation to get you the last almond croissant this morning," he said, "so I'm hoping you can repay my boundless generosity and selflessness by doing all the shit that I don't want to do today."
He had expected a witty reply, usually a well-observed insult or a remark about inbreeding in his family line, but instead there was just silence. He glanced up to see Granger frozen in the doorway, looking stricken.
Oh, shit.
"On that note, I've just decided that I don't want to sit down and eat a dishonourably-obtained pastry," he attempted lightly. "So that's your job now."
Her lower lip trembled.
"Alternatively," he said quickly, "you can tell me to fuck off, and fuck the croissant, and I'll still buy you coffee tomorrow morning because I'm kind and giving like that-"
"Ronald cheated on me."
Draco opened his mouth and then closed it again.
Oh, shit.
Granger clutched the coffee to her chest like a lifeline, silent tears pouring down her cheeks, while Draco helpfully continued his impression of a concussed Hufflepuff.
"You buy me coffee every morning," she said quietly.
"Slander and libel," Draco said, because he didn't know what else to say, and turned back to his desk with his heart pounding.
Hm.
That went well.
Even after the shock of it faded, he was still at a loss for what to do.
Seemingly overnight, Granger had transformed into a tiny, broken-down wreck of herself. She stared listlessly at her desk for hours on end, made spelling errors on important Ministry forms, and tolerated Draco's attempts at lighthearted teasing without so much as an eye roll.
It was distressing to watch.
And what made it even more pathetic was the fact that it was Weasley who had done this. Weasley who had transfigured the strongest woman Draco knew into a limp flobberworm. Sure, the Daily Prophet had contributed, with its nauseating four page feature on Weasley's sordid behaviour (some of those photos had been, frankly, unecessary). But for the most part, it was him.
It made Draco want to be the sort of kind, supportive coworker who could wrap an arm around Granger's shoulders and tell her that her ex boyfriend was a waste of space, and that she deserved so much better, and that there were plenty of (less ginger) fish in the sea.
But because he was Draco Malfoy, he decided to ignore her all day and then send a gift to her ex-boyfriend instead.
Listen: he had a plan.
"Draco," Granger cried the next morning, as the office door swept open and his chest leapt at the way she made his name sound. "You won't believe this!"
Draco's many years of performing rude impressions to rapturous applause at the Slytherin table paid off as he looked up, widened his eyes, and exclaimed in false disbelief, "No?!"
"A toilet seat!" she cried. "Someone sent Ron an enormous, oversized toilet seat, with a note - guess what it said?"
"What?"
"For the biggest arsehole I know!"
And maybe it would have ended there if it weren't for the way she threw her head back and laughed.
Draco had gone seven years of magical education without becoming intimately acquainted with that sound, and now just one day without it had left him in withdrawal. He was spellbound by way she threw her hands over her mouth, wide-eyed and delighted.
"Someone's looking out for me," she giggled eventually, beaming at him.
And Draco decided right then and there that he would do whatever it took to keep her laughing.
It took time to plan his next move, but oh, it was worth it.
Because when a blazing orange dildo bearing the words 'you flaming dickhead' made its way to Weasley's office, it resulted in such a commotion that the Ministry was forced to record its lowest day of productivity since October 1839, when the Minister at the time was found to have been Transfigured into a hamster, and no one had realised for four days.
Granger had practically staggered into the office with news of the morning's events, holding her sides, while Draco pretended to be innocently watering his desk Flutterby cutting. She told him about how Weasley's face had turned as red as his Auror overcoat, choking out the words between fits of giggles, and Draco had not been able to breathe for all the right reasons when she pulled him into a rough hug and declared that nothing could get better than this.
(That sounded like a challenge, in Draco's book).
And it was with smug pride and a heart that skipped every time he thought of the hug, that Draco set off several days later in search of supplies.
The Magical Menagerie was louder than Draco remembered - filled with animals in cages, squawking and grunting and hooting and squealing in response to his arrival.
Giving a quick nod to the wizard behind the counter, Draco squeezed past several rows of enormous cages and made for the aisle stocking pet foods and medicines, where he crouched down to get a better view of the products on offer.
Rat muesli... snake vitamins... troll ointment? What on earth...?
He reached out to read the tube. 'For improving clarity of vision in trolls and other large beasts. Apply one small blob daily as required,' it said sunnily. Huh.
"Draco? Hi!"
Draco got to his feet so suddenly that he hit his head on a protruding sign reading 'HALF PRICE OWL TREATS' and knocked four tubes of troll ointment onto the floor.
"Granger," he said, breathless for several reasons at once, and she smiled at him.
"What are you doing here?"
He looked rapidly between her earnest expression, the enormous bag of cat food in her arms, and the scattered tubes at his feet. "Er- just picking up a few bits," he declared, and bent down to scoop them up with a self-satisfied grin at the play on words.
"I didn't know you had any pets!" said Granger, missing it entirely.
"Oh, well - I'm getting ready for one," he said evasively, and immediately regretted it.
Her eyes widened. "That's brilliant! What are you going to get?"
Say something boring, he thought. Anything boring, preferably with a short lifespan.
"A...kneazle?"
Granger looked absolutely delighted and Draco decided that Stupefying himself would have been a better response.
"Really?!"
"Yes," he said unhappily. "I've been wanting one forever."
Granger dropped the bag of cat food and grabbed his arm. "But that's brilliant!" she cried, while his heartbeat skipped into double time. "I had no idea you liked them! I've been thinking how good it would be to get Crooks used to meeting other felines - this is perfect! We'll have to introduce them. You know, I've been reading up on kneazle behaviour and I think as long as the two of us seem to tolerate one another then they will too."
"Sounds like a difficult pretense to keep up," Draco remarked.
Granger rolled her eyes, and he had to fight not to grin.
"This is brilliant," she enthused. "Do you need any help picking things out? I really like the toys they do here - Crooks never gets tired of chasing them about the house. Oh, but you'll want to start with the basics... Have you thought about feeding? There are so many brands it can be impossible to choose-"
But Draco wasn't really listening, because Granger was back, his Granger, the one who rambled and went off on tangents and got excited about new projects every five minutes, who laughed and joked and chatted with him like he was so much more than he was. Her eyes were bright and her smile was intoxicating, and Draco realised that despite the fact that they had spent every work day together for the last eighteen months, he would still choose to be here in this shop above anywhere else in the world, because it meant being with her.
When Draco finally returned to his flat that evening, weighed down with a hundred kneazle-related products that he had previously never had any intention of buying, the image of her smile was still imprinted on his eyelids, and he was still just a little bit breathless.
The door to the office opened quietly the next morning. Draco scribbled a nonsense word onto his jotter and grinned.
"We've got eight relocation request forms to get through before lunch," he announced, "but I thought it might be more fun to slowly pull our fingernails out one by one. What do you think?"
"Draco," Granger said quietly, "was it you?"
Oh, crap.
"I don't know what you mean," he mumbled, putting his quill down and watching it drip black ink onto an important Ministry document.
"The troll ointment, whatever that is," she said. "And the note. 'You must have been blind. Hope this helps'?"
Any last attempts Draco might have made at protesting faded, and he sighed. "Must have been blind to miss what he had in front of him," he clarified. There was a silence and he wiped his clammy hands on his robes. "Not my funniest, I'll admit."
"It was hard to beat the previous two," Granger agreed, and something soft and warm began to glow in Draco's chest. She pulled up a chair and sank into it, studying his face.
"Why did you go to all that trouble? You could have been written up, or worse."
He shrugged, but she made an impatient noise in the back of her throat.
"No. Tell me."
This was an entirely inappropriate time to think about how much he enjoyed it when she was direct like this, so he only entertained it for a brief moment.
"I couldn't stand what he did to you," he explained carefully. "And I wanted to make you laugh."
She seemed to think about this for a moment before becoming embarassed, lips pursing in a pleased sort of way. "Did you?"
"I think I managed it, yes," he quipped, and she really did laugh then, curls shaking back over her shoulders as she shook her head.
And he hadn't planned on it, except for the fact that it had been all he had been thinking about for months, but he found himself leaning in to press a kiss to the corner of her mouth. And she tilted, shifted, placed a hand over his, and then she was kissing him in return, and Draco's heart was making an escape attempt from his chest.
"Oh," he said, after. Because she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, and that was as close as he could get to saying it.
"Oh," she said, too. And they grinned at one another.
He already couldn't wait to spend more time with her outside of work.
He supposed he had better get a kneazle.