Pairing: Draco Malfoy x Hermione Granger
AU: Modern, non-magical, drummer!Draco + college student!Hermione
Word Count: 3,581
Written For: slvthrins + [#payback2k15]
They’re fourteen when Pansy makes her newest stepdad buy her a neon pink grand piano for no other reason than ‘I bet Kylie Jenner doesn’t have one yet’ and they’re fifteen when Vince’s parents finally let him permanently move into the guest house on the opposite side of the saltwater infinity pool and they’re sixteen when Daphne almost gets a spot on The Voice but misses out because her weird Swedish cousin is apparently a low-level producer on Dateline and they’re seventeen when they smoke most of Blaise’s pot and Greg levels a glassy-eyed stare at Draco’s dusty fifth-grade drum kit and manages to slur—
“We should totally start a band.”
Pansy and Daphne unearth a flyer for an open mic Battle of the Bands at this gross grimy dive bar that the Dead Kennedys had played at, like, once in 1982 when they’d mistaken it for that Dollhouse shithole in east Anaheim and there are Minus the Bear stickers on all the bathroom mirrors and overflowing ashtrays shaped like animal skeletons and Adrian Pucey is backstage with a clipboard and a bullet belt and Daphne is using the key to her Mercedes to tear holes in Pansy’s fishnet stockings and it’s loud and it’s messy and the floor is gummy and the air is hot and Draco’s jeans are really fucking uncomfortably tight but it’s fun, it’s good, it’s electric, it’s more about what it isn’t than what it is—because it isn’t the hollow marble echo of an empty house or the stomach clenching sweaty palmed anxiety of an SAT Saturday or the sleek potted palm tree in the corner of yet another psychiatrist’s office, a farfetched two-thousand-dollar diagnosis to fill in the questionable blinking cursor blanks on a panic-drenched college application—
“What’s your name?” Pucey asks a little after nine, waving a lime green colored pencil and gesturing to the sign-up sheet. “Like—what should we call you guys?”