A/N Hello lovely readers! This is just going to be a silly, smutty little three shot. Strictly for lols and procrastination purposes.
Warning: This story will contain some, or all of the following: explicit sexual content, dubious polyjuice hijinks, BDSM elements, voyeurism, ménage à trois and all the smut. I have taken certain elements from the premise of Play Cissy For Me and turned it on its head. You'll see what I mean in the second part. (However, it is not, I repeat NOT! a sequel to Play Cissy.) Mature readers only, please! Hope you enjoy the first part. Would love to hear your thoughts.
xox artful
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A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC
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The whole evening had been a total disaster, if she were honest.
Hermione didn't know why that should be a surprise: it was, after all, an event which combined three of her least favourite things: dancing, social mingling and Lucius Malfoy. Of course the smug arse just had to volunteer his ballroom for the Ministry's inaugural Fundraiser for War Orphans, sliming his way back into their good-books as if he'd spent his entire life devoted to kind deeds and great works.
Even before she arrived, things had not started out very promisingly. Getting stood up by her date, for example, had been a tremendous beginning to the evening. She reminded herself to jinx the prick the next time he dared show his sorry face.
Discovering she was the only person not wearing a floor-length hoop-skirted ball-gown was another interesting revelation, if by "interesting" one meant "mortifying", and if by "revelation" one meant "fiasco".
She had thought it was supposed to be a charity dinner-dance, but apparently hadn't got the memo that, in pure-blood society terms, that actually translated to, Historically Accurate Re-enactment of the 17th Century French Court. Her red cocktail dress certainly didn't blend very naturally into that aesthetic.
Hermione sought immediate relief in a glass of champagne, then fled to safety behind a large marble column which seemed especially placed for lurking and spying purposes. From this vantage she could see both of her "gracious hosts" working the room, one gracefully sashaying, the other elegantly sauntering, like butter wouldn't melt in their smirking mouths. What hypocritical prigs they were! Swanning about like they'd never even heard the term "Death Eater" in their lives. It hadn't even been five years since their fall from grace, for crying out loud! How was it that, not only were they not in prison, but they had the entire Ministry eating out of their hands like pet puffskeins?! Why was it that every single work-day Hermione was forced to encounter Lucius Malfoy stalking along the hallway like it was his own personal cat-walk?
She managed to avoid them successfully for the first hour, venturing out of her lurking-place to zig-zag between the bar and tables of fancy canapés and vol-au-vents, loitering on the periphery of groups of chatting colleagues, then slipping away at the first hint of approaching blondness.
But at some point, possibly after the third glass of champagne, her vigilance slipped, and she had found herself cornered between an enchanted dancing yucca plant and a plinth of vol-au-vents she had been single-handedly demolishing, by none other than Narcissa "Ice-Queen Condescending To Converse With The Commoners" Malfoy herself.
"But darling, you look absolutely adorable in that charming little outfit!" the beautiful blonde witch exclaimed with a kind of dazzling insincerity. "Did you make it yourself?" Then, without waiting for Hermione's reply, "How terribly clever of you! Is there nothing you can't do?"
Unfortunately, all the sarcastic snark that Hermione had planned on wielding in defence, deserted her in her hour of need. All in a fluster, her mouth still half-filled with pastry, she blurted something about finding it in a sale bin at Debenhams, at which Narcissa gave her a pitying look and murmured, "Oh, how nice," the way someone might respond to the incoherent ramblings of a half-wit. She herself was alluringly arrayed in a ball-gown of jewel-studded ivory silk, next to which Hermione's short, red-nylon cocktail dress looked woefully cheap and informal.
"Where's your plus-one, darling?" Narcissa then asked, looking pointedly at Hermione's not-entwined-with-anyone's arm. "I should so love to meet him...or her," with a—was that a wink?
Hermione rather painfully swallowed the last bit of vol-au-vent and brushed the crumbs from her fingers. "He...um, er, he had to cancel at the last minute," she fibbed, wincing at her unconvincing tone. She really was an abysmal fibber, but there was no way in Hades that she would admit to having been stood up. "He was suddenly called in for work...at..." (she sought about for something plausible, anything but the Ministry would do) "...the...Ministry..." (ugh, you idiot!)
"Oh, that's too bad, darling. But—silly me!—I thought the Ministry was closed on a Saturday night?"
"Oh, he doesn't work inside the Ministry!" Hermione laughed rather manically, thinking oh god, shut up you tipsy fool, please, just shut up! "He's... a...gardener." (What the fuck?) "Of nocturnal plants. Obviously."
There was quite a long pause, during which the two of them merely stared at each other. Then, just as Hermione was thinking that at least things couldn't get much worse, they immediately got much worse.
In a bright, let's-just-change-the-subject-shall-we? tone, Narcissa said, "Well, if you get stuck for a partner when the dancing begins, I'm sure my husband will be more than happy to 'take a turn' with you."
"Did you summon me, my love?" Lucius's suave voice was soon joined by Lucius's stately form as he materialised behind his wife, his large, heavily-jewelled hands resting on her creamy bare shoulders in a complacently proprietorial way. "What will I be more than happy to do?"
The husband and wife, each rather intimidating on their own, were positively devastating as a pair. Hermione wasn't used to being confronted by so much glittering and sparkling and glossy tumbling of manes. She felt rather like a shabby little pony beside two thoroughbred palominos.
Lucius's silver gaze swept over Hermione's cocktail dress, one eyebrow arching with disapproval at her short muggle hemline. Hermione glared back at the Malfoy patriarch. If they'd been at work, she would have hissingly told him to go stick his pointy nose in someone else's business, but somehow, here—on their turf, with his wife all politeness, and three glasses of champagne numbing her tongue—she couldn't quite summon her usual snarky impertinence.
"I was just saying to Miss Granger, that you would take a turn with her." The blonde witch raised one ivory hand to meet her husband's fingers, and began to play coyly with his rings.
Hermione rather expected Lucius to sneer, or flinch, or look faintly ill, but much to her alarm a gradual smile spread over his chiselled features and a strange gleam ignited in his eyes. She noticed his thumbs stroking Narcissa's delicate skin, and for some reason it caused a deep blush to creep over her cheeks. "I should be delighted," he drawled with so much satin sibilance that Hermione momentarily thought she had started to understand Parseltongue. "That is, if Miss Granger would permit me the...pleasure."
She wondered how to refuse without specifically using the words "would", "rather", and "die", but failed to come up with anything.
The pair were smiling at her so intently, so exactly like a pair of albino crocodiles, except prettier, that Hermione could bear it no longer. "I need to use the ladies!" she announced to at least everyone within a twenty-foot radius. She made to push past them, but was jerked violently backwards by her hair, causing her to yelp.
Twisting around, she was dismayed to discover that the enchanted yucca plant had snagged a long tendril of her tresses, and was currently employed in voraciously devouring it. This discovery was followed by a most undignified display, in which a scarlet-faced Hermione found herself punching at the plant, trying to rip her hair free, and grappling for her wand, all at the same time.
"Allow me, Miss Granger," Lucius said at last, his voice fairly dripping with disdainful amusement.
Stepping in front of his wife, he made a complex little swirl of his wand, and Hermione was released so abruptly that she was sent hurtling against the wizard's alarmingly hard chest. She ricocheted violently, and would have fallen had he not caught her, pulling her up into an almost lover-like embrace, and Hermione was suddenly awfully, horribly, disturbingly, undeniably, overly aware of his scent, and his strength, and the fact that he might very possibly be the handsomest, nicest-smelling man in the world. But also the biggest arsehole! her mind quickly appended as she inelegantly detangled herself from him, desperately trying not to purposefully sniff him, even if she accidentally couldn't help it.
She had just about managed to regain a semblance of dignity, when suddenly the yucca began to make the most ungodly, deafening series of hoiking, gurgling and retching noises, drawing an immediate circle of spectators evidently wondering who or what was choking to death in the middle of the Malfoy's ballroom floor.
Then, with the entire room of magical glitterati watching on, the plant suddenly spat a good six inches of Hermione's half-chewed hair and slimy plant-vomit onto the floor with a resounding SPLAT. The onlookers gasped. Narcissa made a dainty little scream of revulsion.
Not waiting one humiliating moment longer, Hermione turned and fled, skittering blindly away as fast as her high-heels would allow her...