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“I’ll be forty next week.”
Draco looked up from his desk, side-by-side with hers, and she tried to slow her heart at the sight of his reading glasses and the slight silver at his temples. He wore age like a fine wine, complex and heady and expensive.
She couldn’t afford him ten years ago when they’d started working together in International Magical Cooperation, and she still couldn’t now. Whatever currency the market for his affection operated in she didn’t have.
“Doing anything?” he drawled, leaning back in his chair and stretching his arms behind his head, showing off biceps that still made her mouth water.
“I’m not sure I want to,” she confessed.
Forty was—not old, but not young. Solidly middle-aged. Old enough to have reached the end of the first marriages and the beginning of the seconds, old enough to have more friends getting divorced than getting together, old enough to have less and less hope of having children without help.
Hermione wasn’t ashamed of her age. She’d grown into prettiness in her twenties, confidence in her thirties, and now—she rather thought she was heading into dignified. If she was lucky, she’d mature into the sort of intelligence and wisdom Minerva exemplified.
But it had to be acknowledged that this wasn’t what she’d expected forty to look like: single, not dating, childless. She had a career she was proud of, friends she loved, an officemate she quite tolerated, liked even (more than liked), and yet, Hermione from ten years ago would have been disappointed, she thought. At the very least, Hermione from ten years ago, sure that she was heading into the best decade of her life, the one that would set up everything left to come with the remaining vigor of youth and the burgeoning wisdom of experience, would have thought that present-Hermione would have more bravery than she currently did. Hermione from ten years ago had been ready to chase after anything and everything.
Hermione, now, had learned that some things were too hard to lose, that some things one could become accustomed to so not to lose the things one already had.
Like Draco.
“Nothing for such a big milestone? I’m surprised Ginevra isn’t trying to throw you something.”
She rolled her eyes. “Believe me, she tried. I had to threaten her with her own bat-bogey hex three times.”
He studied her with that same gaze, a pool of moonlight on the forest floor, that had captivated her for the last ten years. She knew he would never peek into her mind, and yet his eyes always seemed to see the things she could easily hide from others.
“What don’t you like about forty?” he asked at last, taking his glasses off and running a hand through platinum waves, always perfectly styled no matter how much he ran his hands through it. She wanted so badly to see if she could muss it up.
“Forty is...” she began, leaning back in her own chair. How did one explain to the object of one’s affections that one had hoped to gather the gumption to ask said object out approximately ten years ago? “I thought it would be more different from thirty.”
He raised a brow. “Your life is certainly different from ten years ago, is it not? You’ve been promoted twice, Ginevra and Potter popped out a surprise fourth baby, Pansy and Neville finally stopped being idiots, Theo and Blaise stopped their on-again, off-again, and Weasley shacked up with what’s-her-face. Daisy.”
“Lavender.”
“Right. So what do you mean?”
“Thirty was...” Hopeful. Optimistic. Naive, even, after the reconstruction and the post-war political bullshit and the parading around of the Golden Trio and the many, many hours of therapy to combat her raging PTSD and anxiety. “I could see so far ahead,” she told him, looking down at her desk, at the stack of papers in front of her, words and tables blurring together. “I can’t see anything in front of me, now.”
Draco’s mouth quirked up at the corner, like he knew exactly what she meant, and she wondered what he could see in front of himself.
“What would you like to see?” he asked quietly.
Was it the admitting that was the hard part, or the imagining? No, she’d long since admitted it to herself during work dinners, while she and Draco had an after-work drink, after the monthly dinner parties Harry and Gin threw with the friend group that had grown to include him and the other Slytherins.
It was the imagining that did her in. Him, in her space, or her, in his. They’d been to each other’s flats before, on their way to other things or on the rare occasion one of them hosted something, usually a birthday, and once, she’d fallen asleep on his couch after too many glasses of wine. She’d woken up in her own bed with no memory of getting there, but Ginny had assured her that he’d lifted her easily with his “big Quidditch muscles.” It was a real shame she couldn’t remember that part.
Little things made her heart heavy, filled it bit by bit with pebbles of longing. Every time he had tea ready for her in the morning, every time they went out to lunch and he knew exactly what to order for both of them to share so she could try more than one thing, every time he scooped Harry’s kids up in one arm and swung them around—she could scarcely get her heart to beat then, weighed down by all the things she couldn’t have.
You, was the answer she wanted to give. I want to see you in front of me, forever. Not just for forty, but fifty and sixty and seventy and until we die.
“Maybe I should start dating again,” she said instead, sounding as thrilled as when her GP had mentioned it was time to start getting yearly mammograms.
Draco’s mouth twitched, jaw tightened. “What for?” His tone was casual, and she missed the way his hands came down from behind his head to grip at the fabric of his trousers, too distracted with her thoughts.
“I thought I’d be married by now,” she confessed. “I’d like to be married. Soon. I’d like to have a partner, and...well, we’ll see.”
“You hated dating last time you tried,” he reminded her, which was true.
She’d gone on twenty first dates, five second dates, and two third dates the year before, and they’d ranged from tepid to horrid. He’d heard her complain about all of them.
“A bunch of people have gotten divorced since last year,” she joked weakly, and he scowled.
“Don’t date around just because you think you should be married by now.”
She blinked at him in surprise, both at his words and at his tone. “I don’t want to get married because I think I should, Draco. You know I don’t do anything because people think I should. I want to get married because I want to be married.”
“Right. Of course,” he muttered. He smoothed a hand over his face, as if rubbing a thought away. “And what are you looking for in a husband?”
It was a dangerous question to answer with him right in front of her. Blond. Grey eyes. Tall. Obscenely wealthy but famously philanthropic.
“Intelligent,” she said. “Kind. Someone who can challenge me, who won’t be intimidated by me or my career. Someone who will take care of me, who will let me be weak and soft at home but help me be strong and sharp outside. Someone who will spoil me, but in the right way.”
“With books,” Draco interjected, smirking.
“Someone who won’t tease me about how many books I have,” she retorted, unable to keep a matching smirk off her face.
“I wish you luck. Any person in their right mind would tease you about how many books you have.” His words were softened by the twinkle in his eyes and the fact that they both knew his collection rivaled hers.
She looked away, sure her face was pink and revealed more than she meant to. “It doesn’t seem like much to ask for,” she mumbled, rubbing the cuff of her blouse.
“You should ask for more. More than intelligent, kind, able to keep up with you. That should be the baseline, Granger.”
“How can I ask for more when—” She broke off. —when I can’t have you.
The room lay still and silent, but her thoughts felt loud, as loud as his, if only she could hear them. Would it be easier if he did read her mind? Saying it felt like a death sentence, but keeping it inside only hastened the death knells in her heart.
His gaze drew hers, and his—his was full of riddles.
She’d thought age would make things clearer, reveal secrets to her that her younger self had always wondered at, and sure, she’d learned all about working her way up in the world, but this—deciphering Draco—still eluded her, had only gotten fuzzier with time. Sometimes, like a trick of the light, his eyes seemed to hold something tender and precious when he looked at her, but then she’d look again and see only silver stoicism.
“I always seem to be asking for more.”
She blinked, and he seemed to come into focus again.
“I can’t seem to stop,” Draco sighed, flexing his hands on his thighs. “I thought by now I’d be fine with how things are. I thought the universe would stop giving me chances, but instead, it’s taunting me with opportunity. I’m a coward. Always have been. And even when I’m handed happiness on a silver platter, I push it away before I can drop it and ruin everything. I’d thought that by thirty-nine, I’d have learned the same ruthless manner of taking whatever I wanted as my father, but apparently I’ve swung hard in the other direction. So—here I am, craving whatever crumbs I can scrounge, but unable to take the platter.”
“Draco—what are we talking about?” Her voice came out shaky, like her heartbeat.
“I wish I knew,” was his measured reply, as if he’d already decided that today would follow the pattern of the last ten years.
She didn’t have another ten years.
“Draco.” Swallowing hard, she repeated, “I’ll be forty next week. Is it too late—? If there’s more than crumbs—”
Nearly forty years had not been enough to prepare her for what she saw in his eyes, clear to her at last.
“I’m in front of you,” he said hoarsely. “Can you see me?”
Her answer was shaky. “I’ve seen you every day for the past ten years.”
Perhaps her currency was good after all. Perhaps she’d never needed to buy his affection at all, because it had belonged to her nearly as long as hers had belonged to him, if the look on his face could be believed.
Their desks were only a few feet apart, a distance that had felt both short and long over the years, and now, Draco crossed it in a few deliberate steps, as if it had been a trivial boundary this whole time, each step loosening a pebble from her heart.
“Hermione,” he whispered, kneeling in front of her. His large, warm hands slipped around hers, squeezing tenderly. “Could you see me? For a long time?”
Later, they’d say more. They’d talk about the future, about weddings and children and careers. They’d kiss for long, glorious minutes, every press of their lips revealing another year of longing. They’d confess in just three words the depths of their devotion, and in a few more, the fears that had held them back for so long.
But now, there was only Draco in front of her, looking up at her with such openness.
“For another forty years, at least,” she whispered back.
Then later, after everything, she asked, “Spend my birthday with me?”