shadu-kiam:

“Oh, what do you know, you’re gay,” Ginny huffed, when Draco looked pointedly at her outfit and shook his head. “I don’t need your approval. I’m going to go find a straight bloke and ask them.” Flipping her hair theatrically over her shoulder, she headed into the living room. Moments later, Hermione heard the Floo crackle to life.

Ginny and Pansy were getting along like a house on fire. Normally, that development would have scared Hermione shitless, but so far the only negative result of their friendship was the crazy things Ginny wore, these days. Most of them were Original Pansies, and absolutely none of them could be classed as tasteful or even approaching the ideal of “normal.” She was sure they were perfect for the Milanese runways or whatever, but in Diagon Alley, well… 

Well. That thought didn’t really even need completing. 

“You know she’s going home to change,” she drawled, feeling her lips tug upwards a bit in amusement. Ginny prized Draco’s opinion when it came to fashion, for whatever reason.

She supposed it was better than prizing Harry’s, since Harry wore essentially the same jumper every single day.

“Oh, I know,” Draco huffed, picking up her mug of tea and setting it beside her on the kitchen table. Ever since he and Harry had officially started living together – in the Black ancestral home, of course, and there was something oddly poetic about that – he’d become quite obsessed with the idea of homemaking. Two years ago, when they’d started dating, Draco would have sooner thrown the teakettle on the floor than offer anyone tea, and now it was impossible to politely decline a cup from him.

She took a cautious sip, since it was still hot. Lemon and a little sugar; he knew her tastes, which was equally shocking, when one really thought about it.

“I’m not, you know,” he said, suddenly. He set his own mug down and sat beside her.

She didn’t look up from her book. “Not what?” she murmured, absently.

“Gay.”

“I know. You’re bisexual,” she agreed, in that same absent tone. She turned the page, frowning a bit at the sentence she was currently reading. “You told me already.”

He paused. “Right.” He curled his fingers around the mug handle. “So’s Potter.”

She shot him a strange look. “I know,” she repeated, patiently. Harry was her best friend, for God’s sake. She knew how he identified sexually. Besides, he’d dated Ginny for over a year and from what she knew, that attraction had been entirely genuine. 

Draco looked a little frustrated, and covered it up by taking another sip of his tea. Hermione squinted at him a bit, not quite sure what he was trying to drive at. Eventually, she just returned her attention to her book.

---

“Here you go,” she declared, dropping a bagged lunch on the counter at Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes. 

Ron gasped and clasped it in his hands, holding it up to the ceiling light like he was bathing in the light of God. “Oh, the beauty,” he announced. “For the good Lord hath gifted me with the Divine Leftovers.”

“Oh, good God,” she muttered, turning to leave before he embarrassed her any further.

George leaned over the second floor railing. “Why does he get lunch twice a week and I’m left with nothing?” he demanded, his face twisted in mock offense. “I’m beginning to think you’re not even really in love with me.”

“That’s a good thing. It means the delusion is fading,” Hermione sniped back, and he gasped and clasped a hand over her heart.

Ron had opened the bag and was inspecting the contents with glee. “Hey, maybe when she becomes your ex-girlfriend, she’ll start including you,” he said, smugly. “Out of the splendid ashes of our fiery love, she crafts me only the finest of lunches–”

“Alright,” Hermione interrupted, turning around to point at him. “You get leftovers because cooking for one is impossible, and if you keep that up, I’m going to start writing George on those bags instead of Ron.”

“If you bring George lunch, I will set it on fire,” he promised. “I am a jealous ex-lover, Hermione. I’m very passionate.”

“You’re ridiculous. I’m leaving,” she sang, heading out the door to go to work.

---

“Hey.” She looked up from her desk and smiled at Harry. He grinned back. “What are you up to, tonight?”

“Home, tea, leftover curry, and reading until I fall asleep,” she answered, promptly, her eyes narrowing a bit as he groaned. “Oh, and snuggling with Crookshanks, the only male left in my life with even an ounce of good sense.”

“Alright,” he rallied. “Allow me to propose an alternative. You run home and feed Crookshanks and put on a dress–”

“No.”

“And then you come to mine to meet up before we head out–”

“No.”

“To this wonderful little restaurant Draco discovered. They do seafood,” he said, quickly, when she opened her mouth to refuse again. “And it’s supposed to be the best seafood any restaurant has produced in the entire history of the world. You’d be pretty silly to pass that up.”

“A seafood restaurant?” she asked, incredulous. “That sounds like a date. And you know Ron and Ginny can’t maintain any sort of manners when they’ve had wine, are you sure you want that to be your evening?”

He grimaced, chewing on the inside of his cheek a second. “Actually, I figured it could just be the three of us,” he said, with a shrug. “I think Ginny is going to Pansy’s fashion expo, anyway, and Ron’s closing tonight. Draco’s always complaining about how we don’t do anything ‘nice’ as a group. I figured I could shut him up, once and for all.”

Squinting, she hesitated. “I don’t know. That’s a date situation, if I have to sit there by myself while you get all doe-eyed with each other–”

“I swear you will not be the third wheel.”

“You can’t swear that,” she protested, laughing. “It’s going to happen subconsciously! And then I’ll be trapped until dessert by the social confines of politeness.”

He exhaled roughly, and then shot her a winning smile. “Please? Draco’s treat.”

Hermione groaned. “I was going to read.”

He rolled his eyes, the movement so forceful that his head rolled around with it. “Ugh. I want you to sit there, and just for a second think about how inane it is that you – a person who reads literally every second of every day, and has since she was four – would rather go home and read some more than spend a nice night out with her best friend–”

“Oh, my God,” she intoned, throwing her hands up. “I surrender. Alright? I give up, I am your captive for the evening.”

He grinned widely. “Dress nice.”

“How nice?”

“Nice enough that Draco won’t be inclined to say anything rude,” he said, after a moment of deliberating.

She threw her hands up. “That’s impossible.”

“My house by seven,” he said, cheerfully, and then he turned and was gone.

---

She fed Crooks, yanked on her nicest dress – it was black and nondescript, and she was sure Draco would sigh loudly when he saw it and then continue to look at it and sigh some more throughout the evening – and headed to Harry’s after pinning her hair up in the cleanest bun she could manage. It was only a matter of time before her hair slipped out, but she could usually keep it confined for at least a couple of hours.

“I’m here,” she called, as soon as she stepped out of the Floo. Harry appeared at the top of the steps, fiddling with his tie and holding up a finger to indicate he needed a minute. She nodded, and he disappeared again. 

Heading for the kitchen, she opened the fridge to root around for something cold to drink.

“For Merlin’s sake, do I need to take you shopping?”

“Wow, it’s so nice to see you, too, Draco,” she said, sweetly, pulling a bottle of apple juice out and opening a cupboard to grab a glass. “And there’s nothing wrong with an old classic.”

“Old classic,” he huffed, bitterly. “I’ll accept ‘old.’ Classic? I think not.”

After pouring the juice into the glass, she turned to smirk at him. “You don’t want me to dress up, anyway. You don’t want anything competing with you for attention,” she informed him, crisply. “If I wore anything that earned more than a passing glance, you’d probably crumple up like a newspaper and die on the spot.”

He plucked the glass out of her hand, and she squawked indignantly as he took a leisurely sip from it. “You vastly underestimate me.”

“Give me that,” she grumbled, and he let her snatch the glass back. “Honestly, you are so annoying. Harry should be inducted into sainthood.” She drained what remained of the apple juice, putting the bottle away and rinsing the glass off in the sink.

“You drank out of the glass after I did,” he said, after a long pause.

When she turned to look at him, he was staring at her with an intensity that left her bewildered. “What?”

“You drank off the same glass,” he repeated, slowly.

Blinking, she left the glass in the sink. “So?”

He was still watching her. “You never did that, before,” he said, seriously. She just stared at him, trying to remember if she had or not. As a general rule, she didn’t share glasses with people, but that wasn’t something she cared about as much with friends. She didn’t remember going out of her way to avoid Draco’s ‘germs,’ but then, she clearly didn’t keep track of it was closely as he did.

Squinting, she was about to ask him what he was going on about when Harry appeared, looking quite dashing and excited in his suit.

She forgot about the strange moment as he herded them both through the Floo.

---

True to his word, she didn’t feel like the third wheel during dinner. In fact, they’d both been paying an odd amount of attention to her; it seemed disproportionate to the amount of attention they were paying each other. A few glasses of wine helped dull her paranoia (what were they angling for? She hoped this wasn’t another chat about her potentially becoming their surrogate, again), and all in all, she had a fun evening. 

“Your hair’s already coming out,” Harry murmured, as they got their coats on and headed out. They were so full from dinner that they’d decided to walk a bit of it off.

“Oh, really?” she sighed, reaching up to fiddle with it. 

“Here.” He carefully undid the bun, and she fell dutifully still as he gathered her hair back up. Draco had taken a step or two forward and had turned, and was watching them intently. After a few seconds, Hermione realized it was taking Harry an awfully long time – not that she was going to protest to the obvious care he was putting into it, but he usually just slapped it back together with a few bobby pins and called it good.

His fingers carefully combed the hairs off the nape of her neck, the touch delicate against her skin. His fingertips lingered there for a long few seconds.

She frowned. Uncertainly, she glanced at Draco, and was frozen for a moment by the sheer intensity of his stare. Blinking rapidly, she tried to will the dull haze of the wine away; she felt like her thoughts were more sluggish than usual. 

“Harry?” she finally asked, her confusion apparent. 

He let his hands fall away. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Kept losing the strands.”

“Oh.” She felt the bun. It was almost as good as when she’d put it in earlier. “That’s okay. So what’s around here to walk to?”

“There’s a playground,” Harry suggested. Hermione always loved playing on swings, which was amazing considering that she wouldn’t get on a broom that was lifting her three inches from the ground without having a panic attack over it. 

She brightened. “Really? Is there–”

“Yes, there are swings,” he answered, chuckling. 

They flanked her as they started walking again, and she thought she saw them looking at each other behind her. That was awkward. She hoped she wasn’t getting in the way of anything. Then again, it wasn’t as though she’d insisted on coming along, so really, if they were hoping to be alone right now, that was their own stupid fault. 

When she saw the playground, she exhaled a quiet “Yay!” and began to jog towards it, careful of her heels. The sandy ground slowed her down some, but she threw herself into one of the two swings greedily. They would have to take turns on the other one.

Backing up a bit to get a good head start, she watched Harry seat himself in the remaining swing as Draco sighed dramatically. “Children,” he muttered.

“Oh, kettle, black,” she huffed, lifting her feet and swinging forward.

She was startled when she felt hands on her back, pushing her, but was soon laughing as he pushed her higher. “Don’t push me too high,” she called back. “I’m going to end up toppling off this stupid thing.” He gave her a particularly hard push, and she squealed as she went flying up. “Draco!”

As she swung back towards him, his arms circled around her middle, and she grunted as she was suddenly pulled to an abrupt halt. “Yes?” he asked, politely.

“You prat,” she wheezed. “You almost broke my ribs!” She kicked her feet a bit. The toes of her shoes barely even scuffed the sandy ground from where he was holding her. She sucked in another breath, vaguely aware of Harry getting off his swing.

“Alright?” he murmured, standing in front of her. She hoped Draco didn’t let her go; she’d end up bowling him right over.

“No,” she huffed. “Your boyfriend is an arsehole.”

“Oh, I’m aware.”

“Still present and with working ears,” Draco intoned, pointedly. 

“He got me right in the solar plexus,” she complained, reaching down to pinch Draco’s hand. His grip on her tightened a bit in surprise, but he didn’t release her. 

Harry reached forward and brushed his fingertips across her lower ribs. “Breathing alright, now?” He didn’t move his hand away.

The situation and its oddness finally registered, and she frowned at him. He looked strangely serious, and suddenly she got the impression that they weren’t really horsing around, anymore. “What–”

He took another step forward, tucking his hands into his pockets, and tilted his head up a bit.

Then he was kissing her.

She froze in shock. It was, possibly, the strangest feeling in the world – Harry’s lips on hers but Draco’s arms wrapped around her. She was suddenly hyper-aware of his breath on the back of her neck as Harry’s lips parted, gently testing her to see if she’d let the kiss go deeper.

She made a noise. It was kind of like a questioning squeak lodged in her throat. Looking back on it, she supposed that they took the lack of actual protest as some sort of sign, because Harry yanked his hands out of his pockets and settled them on her hips as he snogged her. She felt Draco’s mouth, hot and wet, against the back of her neck, which contrasted sharply with the goosebumps rising all over her body. 

When Harry finally pulled back for a breath, she stammered, “What–?”

“Come home with us,” he offered, abruptly.

“What?”

“She’s stuck in a loop, Potter,” Draco murmured into the shell of her ear, and she felt a shiver travel down her spine like pure electricity. 

Harry shot him a half-hearted glare and then turned his attention back to her, trying to figure out the best way to phrase it. “We like you,” he said, slowly, and Draco snorted a bit, earning another glare. “And if you were… interested… we’d want to… uh–”

“Shag.”

“No,” Harry muttered, narrowing his eyes at Draco in dark promise as the blond chuckled. “Stop helping. Please.”

“Well, you’re just dancing around it–”

“Oh, because you were so getting the point across, reminding her every couple of weeks that we both liked girls, too,” Harry exclaimed, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “At least I actually got her on a date.”

“Some date, she didn’t even know what it was.”

“What is going on?” she screeched, and began kicking in earnest until Draco finally released her and she was able to get back on her feet. She found herself tangled in the swing a bit and stumbled a few feet away, twisting around to stare at them. 

They shared a look, and Harry raised his eyebrows. Draco shook his head, and Harry grumbled. “Oh, look who doesn’t want to help, all of a sudden.”

“Shut the hell up, Potter–”

“Harry,” she hissed. She knew her face was bright red, and the goosebumps hadn’t gone away at all. They could not be seriously proposing what she thought they were proposing. “What is going on? You– you’re dating each other.”

“Yes,” Draco drawled. “Well spotted.”

“I thought you loved each other.”

“We do,” Harry said, promptly. Draco made a considering noise, like he wasn’t entirely sure he agreed, and Harry twisted on his heel to glare at him again. “We do,” he repeated, firmly. 

Draco smothered a smile. “If you insist.”

Hermione shook her head. “I don’t underst– what?”

“Sit back down,” Harry pleaded, grabbing the chain of the swing. Hermione shook her head, and he sighed. “Listen, we also like you. That’s not that hard to understand, is it?”

“Is this some sort of weird experiment to revitalize your sex life?” 

“No!” they exclaimed, in unison.

“Because I do not appreciate being used as some sort of–”

“No,” Draco repeated, growing exasperated. “This isn’t us proposing a one-night stand, Granger. We’ve talked about this a lot.”

“What?”

“If you say ‘what’ one more time–”

“Draco,” Harry interrupted, sharply. Draco rolled his eyes, but relented, putting his hands back in his pockets. Inhaling carefully, Harry looked at Hermione for a long moment. “We really have, you know. I know it’s kind of strange and out of the ordinary, but we both have sort of realized that we have strong feelings for y–” Draco made that noncommittal noise again, and Harry pressed his lips together. “Now is not the time to protect your fragile masculinity, are you serious?”

Draco looked away, refusing to acknowledge the idea of it at all, and Harry looked up to the sky as though praying for strength. 

“Hermione,” he murmured, softly. “This isn’t a sex thing. It’s… it’s a… it’s a date thing. We want to… date you.”

She stared at them, wide-eyed, for several long moments. Then, slowly, she turned on her heel and began walking awkwardly across the sand, her heels making her balance a little shaky. Or rather, she preferred to believe it was just the heels. Harry sighed behind her, and she heard Draco mutter something that made Harry exclaim, “I ruined it? You must be joking–”

Tuning the rest of it out, she made her way home, her brain completely unable to understand any of what just happened.