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To Be Himself	By : RavieSnake Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Draco/Hermione Views: 11253 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the characters from it. I make no money from the writing/publishing of this story.

Chapter List
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Hermione bit anxiously at her thumbnail as she peered out her front window. She quickly pulled the finger away from her mouth and frowned down at the small chip she’d caused in the red enamel.
“Damn it,” she cursed to herself, rubbing at the tiny imperfection in what was an otherwise beautiful manicure. She huffed, lowering the hand in defeat as she turned her attention back out her window to see a car slowing to a stop before her house.
Hermione narrowed her eyes at it.
“Of course he would,” she sighed as she watched Draco step out of the expensive luxury car, “why wouldn’t Draco Malfoy arrive in a Muggle car that costs more than a house to bring me there?”
She watched him come up her front walk, hands in the pockets of his perfectly tailored, black pea coat, then went to the door when he knocked. With a giant inhalation of breath she opened it.
Draco, perfected signature smirk already in place, looked up at her. “Good afternoon,” he said pleasantly.
“Malfoy, what the hell is that?” Hermione demanded without greeting him. He merely turned his head in the direction of her pointed finger to look at the parked car. He slowly turned back to her and arched an eyebrow.
“It’s a car,” he said, slowly enunciating each word to her as if she were a toddler.
Hermione frowned at him. “I bloody well know it’s a car.”
Draco gave a confused shrugged. “Then why are you asking?” he said and then shivered. “And… am I to stand out here all day in the cold or can we perhaps continue the useless Q and A indoors?”
Hermione simply stood to the side and held the door open wider to invite him in. He stepped in and shook off the cold as she shut the door.
“Good afternoon, Draco,” he drawled at her sarcastically. She rolled her eyes.
“Do you really expect me to call you Draco all weekend?” she said, crossing her arms.
He gave her a tiny pout. “Do you refer to all of your boyfriends by their surnames?”
“You are not my boyfriend,” she said surely.
Draco merely shrugged, hands still in his pockets as he looked around. “I am until Monday morning according to our deal.”
Hermione pursed her lips. “I suppose so,” she agreed reluctantly. “Just make sure you remember the rest of it as well.”
Draco’s mouth tugged up into a sly grin. “Oh, don’t worry,” he said, pulling his hands free to grab for her coat that was hanging on a hook beside the door, “I know exactly what I’m doing.”
He held up her coat with a gesture for her to come and put it on and she narrowed her eyes at him.
“What are you doing?” she asked suspiciously.
“Helping you with your coat,” he answered as if it were obvious. “It’s cold outside.”
Hermione remained in place and stared at him. “I think I can manage to get on my own coat,” she said.
Draco merely smiled and held the coat a little higher. “What kind of boyfriend would I be if I didn’t offer to help? Now stick those pretty arms of yours in so we can be on our way.”
One of Hermione’s brows arched up into her scalp, but she slowly, cautiously stepped toward him. Her eyes kept a guarded watch on him over her shoulder as she slipped into her coat in his hands. She froze in place when Draco went the extra step and lifted her hair to pull it free from the collar.
"Your hair looks nice," he said, "Sleekeazy's?"
Hermione shrugged away from him and cast him a calculating look as she buttoned up the coat.
"Yes," she answered uncomfortably. Draco appeared not to take notice and pointed to a travel bag sitting on a side table.
“Is that what you’re bringing for the weekend?” he asked. At Hermione’s nod he picked it up and slung it over his shoulder.
“Malfoy,” she said with a sigh, “I don’t know what game you’re playing, but stop.”
Draco gave her a confused look. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”
Hermione frowned and pointed at her bag. “Why are you carrying that?”
He glanced down at the bag he was holding and then back up at her. “It’s your bag,” he said, suddenly looking concerned, “are you feeling alright?”
Hermione stepped up to him and pulled the bag off of his arm and threw it over her own. “I’m fine,” she answered as she did so.
Draco merely shrugged. “Are you ready then? We ought to be off if we’re to make it there by meal time. I understand it’s rather a far drive.”
“Yeah, about that,” she said, looking suspicious again, “since when do you drive?”
“I got my license three years ago,” he answered easily, tugging a wallet from the back pocket of his trousers. He flipped it open to show her his very legitimate-looking Muggle drivers’ license. She squinted her eyes at it and then hummed.
“Why?” she asked with genuine curiosity.
He smirked as he put the wallet away. “So I can drive all my girlfriends around,” he quipped.
“That!” Hermione said, pointing at him. “More of that. That’s what I’m paying you for.”
Draco gaped at her. “What?”
“The snark,” she explained, “and the arrogance. Like you do.”
“If I remember the arrangement correctly,” he said, “you requested that I ‘be myself’.”
Hermione smiled. “Exactly.”
Draco’s smirk got wider. “I did make a binding vow to ‘be myself’ didn’t I?”
“You did,” she said, looking smug and missing the way Draco’s eyes flashed with amusement.
“This is going to be an interesting weekend,” he said as he leaned over and opened the door.
“I’m counting on it,” Hermione said, allowing him to hold the door as she passed through into the cold. Draco waited for her then stepped out himself and closed the door behind him. After Hermione cast a quick ward on the house, he held his arm out to her.
“My lady,” he said cordially. Hermione rolled her eyes at him and walked by him toward the car.
“Let’s go,” she said over her shoulder. Draco grinned after her and then hurried up to the car to pull open her door with a slight bow.
“I could’ve gotten it,” she said, though she slid into the plush seat.
Draco pointed to her right hand. “Wouldn’t want you to chip any more paint,” he said.
Hermione glanced down at her thumb with the almost imperceptible missing fleck in its red polish and then looked back up at him in silent shock, but he was already closing the door to walk around the car to his side.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Sal, Imogen, Jude, Peg, Len, and…and…” Draco furrowed his brow slightly as he drove. “Who were the others again?”
“I really don’t expect you to remember them all,” Hermione said as she casually inspected her nails again beside him in the car. “It’s not as if you’re ever going to see them again after this.”
“You never know,” he said.
Hermione looked sideways at him. “You won’t want to see them again,” she said surely.
Draco’s brow creased a little more. “If they’re so awful, why bother visiting them?”
Hermione turned her gaze out her window. “They’re the only family I have.”
“What about Potter?” he asked. “Or Weasley?”
There was a long pause before Hermione sighed. “They have their own families.”
Draco cast her a quick glance to see her staring gloomily out at the barren winter landscape as it passed. “You could just stay home,” he suggested.
She shook her head. “No, I…Christmas is time for family,” she said weakly.
“And you thought of me,” Draco teased. Hermione’s face pulled into one of indignant surprise at the comment and he laughed. “How long have we been together anyway, my dearest?” he asked.
When Hermione simply stared at him he cocked an eyebrow and shot her an amused smirk.
“Won’t old Aunt Imogen be curious?” he asked playfully. Hermione rolled her eyes and opened her mouth to retort when a deer suddenly bounded out into the road before them.
“Watch out!” she screamed, pointing at the windshield. Draco snapped his eyes back forward.
“Shit!” he shouted as he slammed on the brakes. He flung his left arm out across Hermione’s chest as his right hand clutched, white-knuckled to the wheel and the car came to a screeching halt mere inches from the animal frozen with fear in the road.
Hermione and Draco both panted slightly with their sudden rushes of adrenaline as they watched the giant stag standing in front of the car slowly regain its awareness and then walk off.
“Are…are you alright?” Draco asked, lowering his arm from before her. She nodded mutely, her eyes tracking after the arm as he moved it. They sat in awkward silence then in the idling car in the middle of the otherwise deserted road for a minute until Draco finally changed gears to start off again.
“Fucking deer,” he muttered. Hermione quietly watched him rather deftly change gears several more times until they were at last traveling at their previous speed and then shifted her gaze back out the window.
They spent the next hour in silence as they drove through the increasingly more rural landscape. It was Hermione that spoke first.
“Six months,” she said out of nowhere.
Draco kept his eyes on the road as he replied. “Six months?”
“How long we’ve been together,” she explained, turning toward him, “I think six months would be believable. Long enough that we’re definitely a couple but short enough that they won’t be suspicious that they haven’t heard about you before now.”
“Six months, huh…” he said thoughtfully, “so we’re fucking then.”
Hermione choked on her own saliva. “What?”
Draco looked entirely unperturbed. “You don’t think we’d be having sex after six months together?” he asked coolly.
“I, uh…I suppose we would be,” she replied uneasily. “Though I don’t see what it matters.”
“Believability,” he said, “I need to know what level of intimacy to portray. How shocking do you want to be?”
Hermione’s mouth opened and closed several times and then frowned at him. “To be honest…the extent of my plans stopped at you simply acting like a jerk the whole time,” she answered, twisting herself in her seat against the safety belt to face him. “I never considered that we’d need to act… that they might expect to see a certain amount of affection to believe our story.”
Draco’s lips pursed into a thin line as he glared ahead. “You thought they’d just accept that I’m your boyfriend without calling me by my given name and without touching me?” he asked.
Hermione considered him a moment. “My intention was to have them be so appalled at your behavior that they’ll be more accepting when I bring a real boyfriend around again. They’ve sent every bloke I’ve been with running. They’re brutally condemnatory and I’m tired of being alone and shamed. After you…they’ll consider anyone else a blessing.”
“Did it ever occur to you that perhaps you’ve just been dating uncultured pricks?” he asked. Hermione laughed.
“Uncultured maybe, but pricks…no,” she said, tilting her head up at him, “not until you anyway.”
Draco’s eyes narrowed as he drove. “That’s me,” he said shortly, “the prick.”
Hermione’s brow knitted together as she noticed the shift in his mood and the way he was glaring out the windshield.
“Always the prick,” he added in a voice so quiet she almost didn’t hear him. She slowly eased back into her seat but kept her eyes on him.
“Are you upset?” she asked sincerely.
Draco’s expression immediately morphed back into his normal smirk. “Of course not. Why should I be upset?”
Hermione shrugged. “You just seemed like you were just now.”
He shook his head. “Just thinking,” he said, “thinking about the wording of our agreement. I wouldn’t want to be accused of breaking it later.”
“Just be yourself and things will work out,” she reminded yet again. “Besides it’d be near impossible to break it with the binding vow. The pain would be too excruciating to try to.”
Draco’s fingers gripped a little tighter on the steering wheel. “I know.”
Hermione gave him one last wary look before resting her head back with a small whimper.
“What’s wrong?” Draco asked.
“I just hate this drive,” she sighed, closing her eyes tiredly, “it’s so long and tedious. I’ve grown so accustomed to Floo travel and Apparating that car rides like this always make me uncomfortable. My neck hurts and my butt’s asleep.”
That coaxed a smile out of him. “Push the button on the side of your seat,” he told her. She opened her eyes and looked perplexed.
“What?”
“The silver button,” he said, “it’s just on the left side of the seat. Press it.”
Hermione frowned as she looked down around her seat. “I don’t see a silver button.”
Draco made an annoyed grumbling noise, but carefully leaned over and reached his left arm across her. With his right hand still on the wheel and his eyes still on the road, Draco fumbled his fingers along the side of Hermione’s seat base.
Hermione tensed far into the seat back as Draco pressed against her as he felt for the button.
“Oooh!” she cried out in surprise when her seat suddenly vibrated to life. Draco grinned as he straightened himself upright again.
“Better?” he asked, amused at the small look of shock on her face.
“You have massaging seats in your car?” she said, moving her bum slightly against the pleasant sensation.
Draco chuckled. “Obviously.”
Hermione cast him a shifty look. “Explain the car thing to me,” she said, “why do you have one?”
“Don’t you have one?” he replied.
“Yes…but you’re a wizard.”
Draco cocked an eyebrow. “And you’re a witch….”
Hermione studied him for a moment. “True…I suppose I just never considered that a Pureblood would be interested in traveling like a Muggle.”
“Normally I don’t,” he admitted. Hermione frowned.
“Then why?”
Draco gave a resigned sigh. “If you must know…I have a bit of a thing for a Muggle-born woman. I thought it’d be practical to familiarize myself with the basics of Muggle life for her.”
Hermione looked completely taken aback by the confession. “You like a Muggle-born?”
He merely nodded and Hermione twisted her mouth in thought. “You got your license three years ago. You’ve been carrying a torch for this woman for that long?”
Draco’s eyes narrowed again. “How much farther?” he asked, avoiding her question. Hermione eyed the nearest street sign.
“We’re nearly there,” she answered quietly.
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To Be Himself