Roulette.

roulette.

draco malfoy x gryffindor!reader

*requested

it’s an accident, the way she falls, the way he burns.

prompt list.

x

Draco meets his match on a nippy October morn. It’s a blur of lurid, cherry lips, fleeting palpitations, splinters digging into palms, and broomsticks stitched across bleeding hearts. She‘s standing in front of the line up with a knife-sharp glare intact and a knee-jerk grin on the ready.

He thought Potter was the enemy.

He just hadn’t met her.

x

She plays rough, dirty. All crimson caked knuckles and midsummer thunderstorms bursting in color across cheekbones.

She gave him his first black eye. He almost thanked her.

“You know, Malfoy, perhaps you should consider trying. That way practice could actually be worthwhile.”

Draco grits his teeth and digs his nails into the neck of his broomstick and squeezes, squeezes, squeezes his eyes shut till his vision bleeds of titian fireworks and shooting stars.

“Well, perhaps you could try winning for once instead of talking big like you Gryffindors are known for doing.“

She smiles, molasses-slow and honey cloy.

He swallows, thick and audible.

“You haven’t won yet, Malfoy.”

It’s not a race. It’s a game.

And Draco intends to win.

Whatever it takes.

x

The opening match of the season takes place on a frostbitten morn in early November. Thick, silver tendrils weave their fingers through Draco’s hair as raindrops hang heavy on his lashes and the earth bruises his cheeks.

As if Draco believed in miracles, Potter split the bones in his wrist mere hours before. He doesn’t know how this came about. He suspects Flint is behind it.

“We need you to take Harry’s place,” Angelina says storming into the Great Hall before the game is set to begin, voice shrill and nerves visibly disheveled. “He managed to break his arm this morning, and you’re the next best on the team.”

He doesn’t expect her to be good.

He doesn’t expect to lose.

x

His heart is pounding in perfect tandem with the crowd, wrought iron veins in a twist beneath the gossamer veil of his wrist. He can feel thunder coiling beneath his feet. The applause is deafening, defeating, bruising, bleeding. Draco believes he might be drowning.

When he finally catches sight of the snitch - hair-trigger and razor-sharp and gold, gold, gold - she’s diving nose first towards the ground. The crowd comes to an asphyxiating standstill.

Draco tells himself she can’t make it, she won’t. She’s going to crash, and she’s going to burn, and she surely won’t, no, she can’t -

She does.

He watches, mesmerized, as gilded gold melts between her fingers, dribbles up her arm, and seeps into her veins. She swerves around, stares him down, smirks, winks, then turns the other way.

Draco never did believe in miracles.

No, not until today.

x

She snatched the snitch and stole his heart, the once bruising palpitations kicking his chest now nothing more than a tender, bated breath.

“You’ve been distracted, Malfoy,” Flint says one evening after practice. The sound of metal kissing metal grates against Draco’s eardrums and makes him shiver.

“Yeah? How so?” he replies, too tired to look up.

He does anyway.

Flint angles his head and squares his shoulders disproportionately. He’s smirking, the crimson crusted over his lips begins to gleam.

“It’s the girl, isn’t it.”

It’s not a question.

“I’ve hardly noticed her.”

Flint wants to laugh. Draco can see that in the superficial lilt of his lips and the dimple puncturing the center of his right cheek.

He doesn’t believe him.

Draco doesn’t care.

X

Draco tells himself it’s an accident.

Draco knows it’s not an accident.

Knows this because of the glint in Flint’s eye and the way Goyle chuckles just a little too hard after the bludger has been sent flying across the pitch, ending in a breathtaking kiss. He knows it’s not an accident, no. Because she’s fading, falling, spiraling into an abyss. Endless and black and ensnared between the tangled web of space and time.

Draco knows the feeling all too well.

X

When she wakes, the sun is seeping through the filigree and permeating the sheets. Her eyes are bleeding, and her head is spinning, and her ears are ringing, and -

“Good, you’re awake.” a woman says.

She turns her head. Her eyes have stopped bleeding, but the ringing -

God, the ringing is incessant.

“What happened?”

“You had a bad fall during Quidditch practice this morning. Just a couple of bumps and bruises. Nothing to worry yourself over.”

She sinks her teeth into her lips, tastes something bitter, but not blood, no, not exactly.

“That note there is for you, dear. A boy stopped by earlier. Suppose he wanted to check in and see if you were alright.”

“A boy? Was it Harry?” she says, eyes catching fire as the room begins to spin. The words inside her head hardly make sense.

“He was gone before I could get a good look at him, but from what I could see, it wasn’t Mr. Potter.”

She knits her brows, studies the penmanship, knows it’s not Harry’s, no.

She recognizes who it belongs to, yes. Can distinguish languid syllabus and tender vowels dipped in curlicue ink and swiped away in ebony streaks.

Harry never signs his name in cursive.

X

The words are sweaty in her palm, draped across lifelines and stamped into her bloodstream.

Meet me in the Astronomy Tower at midnight, the note reads, vivid, obsidian ink coiling in the late November breeze.

She stumbles across the cedar planks leading to the Astronomy Tower balcony. Stops, stutters, stalls when she sees a sliver of moonlight steal beneath the swell of his lips and the slope of his clavicle.

“Malfoy,” she seethes, narrows her gaze and clutches the tea-stained scrap of parchment in her hand. She can feel crimson streaks racing down her palm.

“You came,” he says, sitting on the edge of the ironclad railing. His fingertips are pressed white hot against the intricate rods.

She thinks he might jump.

“I didn’t think you’d actually come,” he continues after a beat, a spell, a moment stolen, a moment lost, he’s hardly certain.

She crosses her arms across her breast, favors her left leg, says, “There are many things you think of me, Malfoy. But you forget, I prove you wrong quite often.”

He clears his throat, runs his tongue along his lip, can taste something vile and tangible, but not blood, no, not quite.

“Then let me ask you this,” his shadow spills across the floor, heels caressing the walls and hands slipping languidly between the silken threads of his pockets.

The mere conception of it all is vexatious.

“Why are you here?”

She looks up at him with indignation shining brightly in her eyes. When he looks at her the way he’s looking at her now, she doesn’t feel quite so brave or bold or much like a Gryffindor at all.

“I’m tired of pretending,” she whispers tenderly, tiresome, lungs rubbed raw and words bled dry, “It’s hard to hate someone you don’t truly hate.”

He’s quiet for one, two, three -

“I suppose it is rather exhausting,” he replies, shifts his weight from side to side, sees the stars align and then collide, fall, burn all for her, only her, always her.

“If you didn’t think I’d show, why did you even bother asking me to meet you here?”

Draco purses his lips and bites his tongue and digs, digs, digs his nails into his palms. He can feel the lifelines snap and the sapphires shatter. 

And it’s sudden how nothing else matters when he kisses her. All blistering rubies and glistening pearls and blood on his tongue that burns, bubbles, bruises. 

He presses her spine against the woodwork, fits his fingers to her hips, and spells her name across her lips. He can feel the Earth crumble beneath the whorls of his veins like the rubble running down the streets of Pompeii. 

He doesn’t know what it means.

He will.

for the romantic asks: 🕊 & 🌹

🕊 - What love song gives you wings?

young and beautiful by lana del rey. if you listen to the orchestral version with earbuds you will literally be transported to this whole other world. you can hear every bell and violin and lana’s voice is so angelic i swear she’s a goddess.

🌹 - Which three flowers would be in your perfect bouquet?

blush pink peonies surrounded by an assortment of wildflowers and delicate baby’s breath. something similar to this perhaps. this bouquet is equally as dreamy.

ask me romantic questions 🌹

Draco Malfoy x Reader

❝She snatched the snitch and stole his heart, the once bruising palpitations kicking his chest now nothing more than a tender, bated breath.❞

☁️ - Describe your idea of a dreamy date with somebody wonderful!

He picks me up in his Chevrolet, holds the door open for me and plants a kiss on my cheek. The kiss then blossoms and blooms, staining my cheeks a perpetual pink. My stomach flutters and I can’t stop smiling. We drive around town for a bit and talk. He tells me about his job and his dog and the music he discovered on Spotify in the last week. I ask him where we’re going and he tells me it’s a surprise. I ask him again, resulting in a laugh escaping his lips. It truly is a lovely sound. He takes me laser tagging because one of the very first things I ever told him is that I’ve never been laser tagging. He said everyone should go laser tagging at least once in their life, and he promised to be the one to take me. I didn’t believe him. We weren’t dating then.Afterward, we can’t stop laughing - like, the real kind of laughter. The kind that feels like a sugarcoated suckerpunch to the gut and makes your cheeks tingle. I won. He won’t admit it, but he knows it’s true because he’s grinning. He slips his fingers through mine and kisses each of my knuckles. My hands are cold - they’re always cold - but not when he holds them.Before he takes me home, he drives past the city limits, takes me to watch the stars and count constellations. I lay my head on his chest, clutch the cotton of his shirt, breathe in every beat of his heart - one, two, three, four. He’s okay, we’re okay, we’re alive and happy, and all is well, yes, everything is okay, he says, brushes the hair away from my face. He tells me I’m beautiful. I believe him.

ask me romantic questions 🌹

First of all, you have my heart. Your writing is divine. I could probably read your grocery shopping list, and still feel like I’m in this ethereal dimension. You are extremely talented. Second, have you ever read The Age of Innocence? (stupid question, you probably have) If so, would you ever write something inspired by it? I personally just reread the book, and I have found myself overcome with emotions. It would be splendid to see your take on it, if you’d like of course. Third, IJUSTLOVEU💕

wow, i am overwhelmed in the best possible way by this ask. i don’t think i’ve ever actually had someone’s heart before, so i am flattered you placed yours in my hands.

i know this may come as a shock, but i actually have not read the age of innocence. however, the other day while i was at the bookstore i picked it up and plan on reading it after i finish the novel i am currently reading. once i read the age of innocence i will try my best to fulfill your ask.

thank you again for your sweet words and patience. if there is anything specific you would like to see in this fic, feel free to send me another ask or message me personally :)

Holidays at Hogwarts ↠ Hufflepuff

You may belong in Hufflepuff

Where they are just and loyal

Those patient Hufflepuffs are true and unafraid of toil