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Habits take between sixty-six and two-hundred and fifty-four days to form.
Draco knows. He’s checked.
He also knows he’s nowhere near even the lowest measure and exhales a deep sigh at the realisation.
He’s not ready to call it— her —a habit.
Not yet. Not really.
Once he accepts that Hermione is, in fact, a habit, then commences the messy business of pushing it off into the subjective subcategories of good or bad.
And, really, out of every single person in the entire world, Draco bloody Malfoy is not the person to make such determinations. There’s no defined line between one or the other, for him, there never really has been, and even with years between objectively ‘bad’ decisions and now, he knows he is no expert in differentiating one from the other.
So, it’s good, really and truly, that he’s less than a third of the way to forming a habit—that is, if he counts the days as individuals and doesn’t let himself focus too long on the broader subject of the time elapsed since that first too-late night at that seedy Muggle pub.
There will be a finishing point, he knows, at some time in the hopefully not-too-near future. But he’s well-aware it exists and is looming in some nebulous place over the expanse of late-night Floo calls and continued bad decisions.
Even with her curled against him, and his arms wrapped around the dip in her waist he swears has moulded to his form over the last few weeks, he knows what is and is not good—who is and who is not.
This shouldn’t feel right.
It shouldn’t feel good because only one of them deserves something of that sort and it certainly isn’t him.
But it does. It does, and he can't deny it.
Carding lean fingers through the mass of curls splayed across his chest, Draco thinks that it's good she doesn't realise who he becomes in these waning, wary moments of doubt about his ability to uphold the integral Malfoy trait of vigilant self-preservation.
He is dangerously close to being absolutely, utterly, irrevocably fucked.
She yawns, stretching her bare legs down to the tips of her toes. They tickle, skimming over the curve of his calf, and his hand trails lazily to the swell of her hip like a well-worn route.
Six.
This is the sixth time they've woken up like this. Barely a fraction of forming a habit.
Good thing, Draco thinks. His fingers flex, and her breath puffs across his chest.
That hollow, sinking, stupid, irrational feeling tugs at his chest.
Draco Malfoy has never been respected for his ability to make wise choices.
Hermione Granger is no exception.
It started out as a game, a little poking and prodding, and working her up over glass after glass of Muggle whiskey and something she called sour that actually tasted sickeningly sweet.
He remembers drunkenly examining the irony of the mixer, and determining that if inanimate objects could have existential crises, it would be worthy of one. She'd laughed in a way that burned the sound, the image, into his brain. To be the subject of her whole body, roiling laughter, with her head tossed back and her eyes leaking tears…
Well, he decided then and there.
He decided on her.
Nine times in forty-five days was reasonable. Perfectly divisible and slightly more than once a week on average. When he added the numbers up they equated to her words—casual was her favourite he'd swear.
Fucking casual.
Draco Malfoy is a lot of things, but being casual is an insult he's never had to contest.
Draco doesn’t do casual.
But he’d do just about anything for Hermione Granger.
His own brand of designer drug that keeps him coming back time and time again.
His place. Her terms.
Those are the unspoken rules and he follows them to a tee.
Fifty-nine and twelve are not quite as easily associated.
Neither are the lack of quantifiable boundaries or definitions or talks to anything they’re doing. But they keep going. And if he adds in another variable—the exact expression for the way her half-hooded eyes make his heart thump extra hard in his chest—well, then it makes even less sense.
Fuck it.
Arithmancy was never his strong suit anyway.
"Mmmm that smells divine." Draco's arms slide around her waist and his fingers slip under where his faded Quidditch jersey tickles the tops of her thighs.
They don’t go out, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t seen her dressed up. She came through the Floo in heels and a tight black dress that barely lasted a few minutes before it met his floor in spectacular fashion. Her work robes only hide her figure long enough for him to strip them from her shoulders on nights she works long past any decent hour and he has to owl her at the office with some flimsy excuse for her attention.
He’s seen her dressed up, dressed down, and without a stitch of fabric on the supple curves of her body, and as much as he appreciates each and every version he’s permitted undivided access to, even if only in the privacy of these shared, stolen moments, he thinks this might be the way he likes her best.
In his old jersey, he can almost fool himself into believing she’s his. But Hermione Granger is many things, and capable of ownership is not one of them.
He is selfish, though, and greedy, too, so as long as she allows it, he’ll stay right here and add the days up, one by one, so when it ends he knows what the variable was.
Some factors are maddening though.
Like the complementary angles of his chin and her exposed collarbone when his jersey hangs off her shoulder like this. Her breath stutters when his lips graze the column of her throat, and his tongue slides around the fading marks decorating the curve of her neck.
"Stop that." It's a bit breathy, and as she swats his hands away from the band of her knickers and leans back, the force behind her protests is laughably weak.
If he really tries, he knows he can convince her to burn breakfast and spend the morning in bed, but the lure of this moment, and the simple, sweet domesticity of her waking up cooking the Muggle way in his kitchen is something even his strongest resolve can’t deny.
Draco is weak around her— for her.
It's startling. He's still mystified this is happening. Not when the seventeen times before exist. He refuses— abso-fucking-lutely refuses —to be the one to fuck this up.
When she's gone, and he convinced it's a when, not if, because she's Hermione fucking Granger and he's Draco bloody Malfoy, and he's never even seen her fucking flat, and—
"Tea is on the table if you want a cup." Her bright eyes pull him from the spiral of shame and self-loathing he succumbs to when he thinks about being some hidden, taboo thing to her.
It happens more and more often as of late.
Her smile is generous when his eyes dip to her lips and he tries to triangulate the exact angle of it, if only to replicate for the sake of memory, but she's kissing his riotous thoughts quiet before he lands on the right number.
"There's a show on Saturday at some new pub in Diagon."
Draco drags his fingers over Hermione’s bare hip. “Planning on compromising my beauty sleep again? I’ll keep the Floo open if you want to come over after, but I might be—”
“Actually, I…”
It takes a second for him to realise she’s nervous.
It really shouldn’t, neither of them are wearing any clothes, and they couldn’t be any closer if they tried, but whether his stubborn sense of self-preservation has finally kicked in or disbelief is standing in its place, he doesn’t quite register her apprehension until her eyes drop to his chest and she watches her finger trace runes across the bare skin.
“I know it’s not really what we do, or we haven’t yet, and that’s okay, we don’t have to or anything. I just thought that maybe, I don’t know, it’s been a while, and if you wanted to, that is, we could… I mean, we could go. People will be there, but we could do other things, too. It’s a band, but if you don’t like music, we could eat somewhere. Everyone likes food and, well—”
“Breathe.” It’s not exactly a command, but she does it on instinct anyway, laughing halfway through and shaking her head. “For the record, I do like music. And as you said, everyone likes food.”
Hermione’s glare is much less intimidating when she’s naked. “Draco.”
“Of course, I’ll go.”
He kisses her then, partially because he can’t wait another second, and partially because he just wants to.
It feels like something has shifted between them in the last few minutes on a molecular level.
The room still looks the same, yet the air feels different—electric with a sense of anticipation.
He can’t quite put it into words, so he channels it into actions: the swipe of his tongue, the nip of his teeth, the press of his fingers.
Draco digs bruises into the swell of her hips when he drapes her body over his, angling her just so until their chests are pressed together, the lips of her cunt cradle his cock, and there is no hope determining whose air they’re breathing in the stolen seconds between kisses.
Sex and intimacy are not one in the same, but never before have they been so closely aligned. Her body accepts him like she was made for this very purpose, and it takes every ounce of self-control he can summon not to end in an embarrassingly quick fashion.
Ever a good student, Hermione studies his cues as she rocks her hips. He watches her eyes flutter and her chest heave with each change of angle and pace. The smallest adjustments yield the largest results. He doesn’t think he will ever tire of experimenting with her pleasure like this.
She comes first, with his name on her lips, and the way her cunt clenches forces him to follow quickly after. As much as Draco wanted it to last, he is anything but disappointed. Hermione curls into the curve of his arm, and he holds her close, pressing a kiss to her temple.
Rather than dividing or searching for a derivative on the path to find the variable and solve the equation of their inevitable demise, Draco thinks he’s had it all wrong from the start.
What comes next for them is innumerable.