Draco Malfoy seemed to have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed one Thursday morning.

Being useless at house spells, he had obtained and learned how to use a Muggle coffee machine and relied on it to jumpstart his system every morning.

Only today, the normally-reliable machine wasn't cooperating.

Draco spent the majority of his morning trying to get the coffee machine to work. When nothing he tried did any good, he tried brewing the coffee by magic, and when that didn't work either he tried doing it the manual way.

Out of exasperation, he jabbed his wand at the offending machine...which promptly burst into flames with a loud BANG!

"Buggering fuck."

He barely had time to rush in and out of the bathroom to make it on time for work at the Ministry.


~*^*~


Harry Potter strolled into the Auror Offices, coffee mug in hand, ready for another day at work. He frowned thoughtfully at the quiet atmosphere; it was never quiet in this part of the Ministry at this time of day.

Harry threw a questioning glance at the nearest person, who happened to be Neville Longbottom.

Neville grinned and mouthed, "The show's about to start."

Harry made his way toward his desk. Everyone in the office seemed to be waiting for something. He started counting the seconds under his breath, waiting for the (usual) morning explosion coming from cubicle eleven.


Three. Two. One.


"I'm not a fucking orderly, Malfoy! I did NOT spend five years studying how to be a fucking Auror just to get you your bloody coffee!"

"If you even have half the brains to become an Auror, why can't you remember to get freaking sugar to go with my coffee?"

A woman screamed exasperatedly from inside the cubicle. "Screw you!"

And then there was a sizzling sound followed almost immediately by a tinkling one.

Harry managed to sidestep the door only split-seconds before it was blasted open by a very angry and very wet Draco Malfoy. Harry knew better than to ask questions, and let his irate colleague storm past him.

He poked his head into the office door. Ginny Weasley was standing in the middle of the room, her glare still fixed in place. A coffee mug was steaming happily on the table, and another lay broken somewhere where Draco had been only moments before, and brown coffee was slowly staining the carpet.

"Morning, Gin," Harry said cheerfully. "Want some coffee?"

He managed to duck out of the way as the second coffee mug went flying.


~*^*~


Ron Weasley was hiding behind piles and piles of papers at his desk at the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office. To an ordinary person, it would seem that he was poring thoughtfully over important documents, but in reality he was poring thoughtfully over the crossword in the Daily Prophet.

His door swung open without ceremony to admit a certain Draco Malfoy, who slammed the door shut just as brashly before striding over to the desk.

Ron didn't even look mildly surprised.

Who would have thought that Malfoy and Weasley would ever get over their differences and would even go on to be close friends? By now, Ron was used to Draco barging in on him, bemoaning something that Ron (more often than not) could fix. After all, the mountains of documents on his desk disappeared every night sorted, signed and sent off courtesy of Draco.

"What did you do this time, mate?" Ron asked without looking up from the paper.

"It was her turn to get the bloody coffee and she forgot the bleeding sugar and then we started yelling each other's ears off and next thing I knew she was hurling the coffee mug at me hard enough to break my skull." He said it all very quickly and very heatedly.

Ron gestured to the chair in front of his desk. "Gimme a minute, mate. What's a six-letter word for 'caffeine fix'?"

Draco stared at him dumbly, his mouth tight.

"Oh! Right," Ron said brightly. "Coffee."

Draco's lips thinned into a line that was in danger of disappearing into his face, so Ron stopped fooling around and focused on the matter at hand.

He sighed. "You're not gonna get anywhere with her if you keep biting her head off, you know."

"I know."

"So what now?"

"I'm trying my best to be nice to her," Draco said with an air of someone who had been suffering for a long time, running a hand through his ash-blonde locks. "I asked her very nicely not to forget the sugar. I asked her very nicely where my sugar was when she got back. I didn't start yelling until she did this morning."

"Okay. Ditch the first plan. Time for Plan B," Ron said.

"What's Plan B?"

"Don't take it slow. Surprise her. Maybe it's best to just go out and say it, since trying to get to her gradually isn't working."

Draco pondered over the words for a minute. Then, his face lit up, clearly screaming "Bright idea coming through!" Wordlessly, he picked up the piles of paper on Ron's desk and picked his way out.

"Oh yeah, Malfoy?"

Draco turned. "Be nice. She is my baby sister after all."


~*^*~


Ginny Weasley was not a happy camper that afternoon.

She had a fight with her officemate that morning (big deal, it happened everyday), Kingsley Shacklebolt had told her off for the coffee stain on the carpet, there was a tremendous amount of paperwork on her desk, the Holyhead Harpies had lost the last Quidditch match of the seasons to the Falcons, and to top it all off, she hadn’t had a sip of coffee all day. Yes, Ginny was fuming.

She had her back to the door, but she heard it open anyway.

“If I hear the word ‘coffee’ one more time—” She swiveled in her seat. “Oh. It’s you.”

She turned back around. Draco subtly slipped a tiny white envelope onto her table.

“What is this?” Ginny still refused to look at him.

“Look…” Draco began, his eyes casting everywhere except on the woman he was speaking to. “I just wanted to apologize for this morning."

Now Ginny turned around. “Draco Malfoy? Apologizing? Now I’ve seen everything.”


“I’m sorry, okay? That’s all I came to say.”

“No, you’re not. You don’t know how to be sorry.”

“Well, I am now, aren’t I? Maybe if you hadn’t such a temper we wouldn’t be like this every day.”

“So you’re bloody blaming me?”

“No—"

“Maybe if you weren’t such a fucking girl about the littlest things I wouldn’t have to rag on you!”

“I am NOT a girl!"


“Stop yelling at me!”


“You’re yelling at me!”


“You deserve to be yelled at, you bloody arse!”


“Would you please keep your voice down?”


Ginny’s voice hit new decibels. “I bloody well won’t!”


“Are we really going to argue again?”


“Well—”


She never finished that thought on account of Draco Malfoy’s lips smashing into hers.


~*^*~


Hermione Granger was lounging on her favorite leather seat by the fireplace in her library. She was deeply absorbed in a trashy romance novel, a far cry from one of her usual books about some boring, intellectual subject or other. Almost unexpectedly, the fire in the hearth glowed green and a sooty Ginny Weasley stepped out of it.


“’Evening, Gin,” she greeted warmly. “What brings you here?”

“Draco Malfoy just kissed me.” The expression on her face was a mix of disbelief and shy wonder.

“I think I’m going into shock. He fucking kissed me,” she repeated.

Hermione stifled a giggle. “Somehow I don’t think the word ‘kiss’ should be described by the adjective ‘fucking’.”

“Mione.”

The older girl turned serious. “Right. Sorry, Gin. Well, I don’t see the point of you coming here telling me that. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted in the first place?”

Ginny sank down on the floor, ignoring her sooty robes. “I know. But Hermione, he kissed me. It was a bloody good, thorough, intoxicating kiss.”

She passed the tiny envelope he had put on her desk earlier to Hermione. The latter went over the contents of the envelope, a smile spreading across her face.

“I’d say...mission accomplished, Ginny.”

~*^*~



Ginny,

I’m sorry about this morning. And every morning as well for the past three-hundred and eleven days that we’ve shared an office. Please let me make it up to you. Can I take you out for coffee tomorrow after work?



—D.M.







Fin.

~*^*~