Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or Crest White Strips or anything else you recognize.
Chapter 1: Of Dismal Dreams and Many Moods
Lucius Malfoy was in a good mood.
The sun was out and the grass had been meticulously mowed, he observed as he paced one of many walkways carving a path through the sprawling gardens of Malfoy Manor. The brightly-coloured tents Narcissa had chosen from Witch Weekly's Summer Catalogue had been set up on the grass, comfortable lawn chairs artistically arranged around them, and several tables piled high with sandwiches, cookies, firewhisky, and teacups were scattered at strategic intervals alongside the walkways. And the cake. The ginormous, magnificent, banana chocolate cake that was to be the centerpiece of this entire set-up was due to arrive in two hours, just before his guests would begin to arrive. Lucius threw back his head, his long golden tresses swishing gloriously through the air as he shouted up to the skies,
"This is going to be the best tea party ever!"
His moment of puffed-up pride was interrupted by a house elf suddenly popping up from behind a large blueberry bush.
"Master Malfoy!" he squeaked, his watery blue eyes... watering, though with passionate adoration or terrible fear was as of yet unclear.
Lucius growled in annoyance and sent the house elf a cold glare. "What is it, Dinky?" he snapped. "This had better be important."
"You is receiving a floo call, sir!" the house elf replied, his blue eyes still watering and his hands earnestly clasped before him. "From Master Mikhailov, sir!"
"Zhenya, eh?" Lucius mused to himself, waving his hand to dismiss the elf and missing Dinky's look of disappointment. "If he's calling to tell me that there is a problem with the banana chocolate cake, that he is going to ruin my precious tea party, he will quickly find himself missing his special wand – ha! Wand! I really am quite clever, aren't I, Dinky?" Dinky had already vanished, however, leaving Lucius to pout over the lack of audience applauding his sheer brilliance. With a sigh over the harsh realities of life, he (elegantly) plodded back into the manor to hear what Zhenya Mikhailov had to say.
---
Draco Malfoy was in a terrible mood.
For the ninth time that month, he had dreamed about Granger. More specifically, he had dreamed about doing naughty, lewd things. To Granger. And worse, no matter how many times he tried to deny it to himself, he knew deep down that in those dreams, he had thoroughly enjoyed the entire situation.
Much to his good luck, Blaise Zabini had floo called and woken him from the dreams before they progressed to the particularly blasphemous part this time. Much to his chagrin, however, Blaise had chosen to do so at a quarter to four in the morning.
"What the bloody hell do you want?!" Draco snarled into his bedroom's fireplace, the fire sizzling and Blaise's face wrinkling in disgust as both were introduced to authentic Malfoy saliva (incidentally, most members of the female population – and perhaps some of the male – would not have objected terribly to such a predicament).
"I want you," Blaise grinned, winking cheekily and wholly unperturbed by the glower of death Draco was shooting at him.
"You have five seconds to give me a reason why I shouldn't douse the fire and go back to bed."
Blaise's dark skin glowed eerily as the floo-powder-green flames licked his face, his seemingly severed head bobbing gently in the fire.
"All right," Blaise said lazily. "One, I just saved you from continuing to dream about a certain sexy, bushyhaired, Potter-loving Gra-"
"Next reason!" Draco roared, pointing his wand threateningly at the fire and hoping fervently that Blaise would assume he was turning red from anger, and not another reason.
"Two," Blaise continued unhurriedly as though he hadn't been interrupted, "I require your help."
"At bloody four in the morning."
"Yes, Draco."
"You don't sound like you're dying, so this can wait. I'll be heading back to-"
"Draco, if you don't listen to me, I will personally pay Potter and Weasel-child a visit myself and tell them all about your naughty little dreams of Granger." Blaise smirked. Draco's throat tightened in mortal fear. He had no doubt over whether or not his Slytherin best friend would keep his word – leaving Draco with one choice only, if he didn't want to find himself castrated.
"Fine. Deal. This had better be important, you snarky asshole. So tell me, again, what was so urgent you had to wake me at four in the morning?"
Blaise's long, slanted eyes crinkled as he grinned widely, revealing a set of brilliant white teeth. "One word, my friend. Cake."
---
The next day.
Hermione Granger was in a thoughtful mood.
In her Hogwarts days she had always been a little fascinated by Blaise Zabini – or rather, by his family history. What was it like to grow up with a mother who married one rich man after another, each eventually disappearing and leaving a conveniently large sum of money behind for the Zabini inheritance? What was it like to grow up with so many fathers or – when you really thought about how short a period of time each one hung around – without a father at all? Poor Zabini, Hermione thought, his latest stepfather had just gone missing. The news had come in that morning, and she had been assigned the task of investigating the case.
Hermione sighed, leaning back in her swivel chair and stretching as she felt weariness overcome her. She hadn't been sleeping well for months now, because she'd been plagued by nightmares of a certain chiseled, grey-eyed blond. More specifically, she'd been plagued by nightmares of that chiseled, grey-eyed blond stealing her stuff. And every night he stole something different, dammit, and every night he got away with it too! Take last night's dream as an example: Hermione was in her flat's kitchen, cheerfully making home-made waffles, when her front door burst open and in strode Draco Malfoy, in nothing but a towel. That was the other thing – he was always in a towel that looked like it was about to fall off, and his really nice biceps and abs were always illuminated by light no matter how dark it was everywhere else in the dream. So in this particular dream, towel-clad Malfoy had walked up to Hermione, unplugged her waffle-maker (never mind that the real Malfoy probably had no clue how to do this) and announced,
"I am taking your waffle maker!"
In her dream, Hermione was aghast. "NOOO, NOT MY WAFFLE MAKER!" she had screamed, in capslock.
But Draco had merely flashed her his perfect Crest White Strips smile and licked his lips, sexily, before whining, "But I want it," and Hermione had gazed at him enraptured and said, "...okay."
That was it. Okay. He complained that he wanted her waffle maker and all she did to defend it was to say "okay!" This, more than anything, infuriated Hermione. She was called the best witch of her age and yet night after night, she dreamed of herself being reduced to a useless pile of mush with one seductive look from Malfoy while he robbed her of her precious belongings. Such as her waffle maker.
"If I ever meet Malfoy in person and he dares to smile at me like that, I will rip his head off," Hermione muttered to herself, scowling darkly at the files and papers stacked neatly atop her desk. The thinnest file containing her most recently-assigned case topped the pile, and was open revealing a photo, a list of names, and some auror reports.
"Zhenya Mikhailov," Hermione mused to herself, picking up the photo to examine a handsome middle-aged man with fair skin, white-blond hair, and blue eyes. "Billionaire wizard born and raised in St. Petersburg. Moved to England a year ago to marry Maria Zabini, mother of spoiled brat Blaise Zabini, age twenty-two. Blaise reportedly does not like Mikhailov. Mikhailov opened a small bakery in Diagon Alley called Castle of Cake after arriving in London. Was last seen at his bakery the day before yesterday, at approximately half past five in the afternoon."
Hermione checked her watch. Her lunch break would begin in ten minutes. She decided that she might as well grab her clipboard and quill and head down to the bakery for a bite and some questioning.
---
"What in Merlin's underpants is that?!"
Startled, Draco's head snapped up at the exclamation from Blaise, but then he grinned. "This, Blaise," he said with a flourish, "is my masterpiece!"
Blaise looked at the flour-dusted table in front of Draco, currently sporting a pile of oozing grey mush that somewhat resembled roadkill. "Is that roadkill?" asked Blaise, with genuine curiousity.
Draco, who had picked up on quite a few Muggle terms since his Hogwarts days, looked highly offended. "You stupid ass-"
"I mean," Blaise hurriedly interrupted, "it is, er, beautiful! It looks just like... just like... er, what is it, exactly?"
"This is my chocolate cake!"
There was an awkward silence.
"Shouldn't chocolate cake be, you know, brown?"
"Pffft, what would you know?" Draco sneered. "So the colour's a bit off-"
"Yeah, just a bit-"
"But I assure you it shall taste extraordinary!"
"Oh, I bet it will," Blaise muttered under his breath, bending over to examine the supposed cake more closely but reeling back from the sudden stench of burnt fish.
"Would you like to try the first bite?" Draco asked eagerly.
Blaise stared at him in mild alarm. The man was clearly off his rocker. Blaise could no longer remember why he had recruited Draco to help him run his stepdad's bakery until his stepdad was found again.
"Look, Draco," Blaise said, taking a cautious step back as his friend scooped up some mush with a spoon and held it out expectantly. "I really don't think that's a good-"
Ding!
"Customer!" Blaise exclaimed, and he promptly dashed out of the kitchen where they'd been attempting to bake as though worried for the preservation of his life. The door from the kitchen opened into the main customer area for Zhenya Mikhailov's Castle of Cake bakery, and Blaise had never been so glad to hear the ring of the doorbell announcing the entrance of a customer in his entire life.
"Welcome!" he greeted, skidding to a halt near the front door and quickly fixing his apron before he looked up to see a familiar face. "...Granger?"
Hermione stood in the doorway, wearing pinstriped trousers and a white blouse under open blue robes, an odd expression on her face.
"Zabini," she acknowledged, trying to hide her shock as she took in the tall dark-skinned man, the notoriously rich, spoiled mama's boy who was currently covered in flour and wearing a frilly pink apron. She shook her head slightly in disbelief, then pulled out a silver badge engraved with the letters DMLE from one of her pockets. "I'm here from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement to investigate the disappearance of your stepfather, Mr. Zabini. Would you care to answer some questions?"
"Hold on a minute, how did you even get in here?" Blaise asked, brow furrowed in confusion. "The sign over the door clearly says closed."
"And the door was unlocked," Hermione smirked. "Now, those questions, Zabini?"
"I don't believe I have much choice on the matter, do I?" Blaise replied dryly. "Well then, why don't you conjure yourself up a chair or have a look around, I'll be back in a few minutes." He turned and walked away, disappearing through a door at the back of the store that Hermione assumed must lead to the kitchens. She shook her head again, still slightly bewildered by the vision of Zabini in pink. With frills.
While she waited for Zabini to return, she walked around the bakery, inspecting it for any clues as to how or why Zhenya Mikhailov had disappeared. The open but cozy room was comfortably warm, decorated in an equally warm colour scheme: rich hardwood floors; brown signs with gold lettering enumerating the prices of many pastries and delicacies from which customers could choose; and the walls were a deep yellow, supporting candle-lit sconces on the walls that gave the whole room a golden glow. Sunlight streaming through the windows on either side of the entrance door lit up the display cases taking up the other three sides of the room. Much to the disappointment of Hermione's growling stomach, however, the display cases were currently empty.
"Ah, I see you've noticed the lack of food in here," Blaise said, returning from the kitchen. "We, uh, are still working on our... baking." If it can even be called that, he thought ruefully.
Hermione scowled moodily. She did not enjoy being hungry and then being let down about her expectations to satisfy that hunger.
"You don't have anything I could possibly eat for lunch?" she asked, now directing her scowl at Blaise.
"Oh, we have plenty of things you could eat for lunch," Blaise replied. "The question is whether or not you'd be willing to put your life on the line."
Hermione raised an eyebrow. "Would that be the reason behind the bakery being closed?"
"It's only temporary," Blaise reassured her. "Until we sort things out."
"Who exactly is this we?"
In response to her question, the kitchen door at the back of the store opened and a voice boomed out, "Damnit, Blaise, I need your help! Just who have you been yakking to for the last-"
There was a sudden silence.
Hermione turned slowly, dread creeping up her spine. She knew that voice. Oh yes, she knew that deep, sexy voice very well.
It was Draco Bloody Malfoy.