A/N: Happy Valentine's Day!

YES

February 14th

Hermione sighed from her spot at what she'd dutifully dubbed "The Singles Table." She watched from afar as small cherub shaped forms fluttered around the large Ministry ballroom while smoothing her hands in circles over the rather loud pink and white tablecloth before her.

A ball. Always a ball. Why was there always a ball?

Perhaps, Hermione thought tartly, if there were less funds being allocated into these miserable Ministry social functions and more being pushed towards new employee wages for the number of individuals needed to properly dissect the laws currently barring entire communities of magical creatures from being bestowed their proper rights and, therefore, appropriately funding the manpower required to establish a truly equal society for wizard, witch, Muggle, and magical creature alike, the Ministry MIGHT be a touch more respected.

But no. Instead of hiring more workers for her department there were half naked gnomes with bum fattening charms, curlicue hairdos, and wings fashioned from goose feathers pinned to rose colored tunics flying about her head while her coworkers got pissed off of the company coin.

Brilliant, she thought. Bloody fucking brilliant.

Hermione raised the glass of expensive Ministry alcohol – when in Rome – to her lips and downed what remained. She relished the burn of it as it trickled down the back of her throat all while wondering idly if she were to get thoroughly sloshed before the speech that they always found some reason for her to give, if they would think twice before making her attendance for the next one mandatory.

Gods she hoped so.

Her hands whipped out the next time a waiter wandered too close to her table and she snagged a glass in each hand for which to begin her experiment.

"Is this seat taken?"

Somewhere in the middle of her second and third glass of spite, Hermione was interrupted by a smooth and familiar polite voice. "Mngh-!" She tried to speak mid swallow and dribbled the golden colored liquid down her lips and chin.

The man let out a soft chuckle and produced a pristine folded handkerchief from his pocket, shook it out, and offered it to her without hesitation.

Hermione took the proffered cloth from Percy Weasley and blotted her face, neck, and neckline of her dress demurely. She made sure to swallow this time before speaking. "Percy, thank you." She nodded her head at the seat across from her at the small table. "Please, have a seat."

Percy deftly unfastened the single closed button of his blazer and slid into the chair with the practiced ease of a socialite. Hermione felt a brief spike of jealousy at just how fluid the movement was compared to the stiff way she always felt whenever she wore one of these slim, lightly corseted gowns that were so fashionable at the Ministry events; she took another swig.

"What brings you to my corner of fun?" Hermione asked with a smirk that was maybe a hair too quirked to one side and a head that wobbled and weighed just a little touch too much for her neck.

Percy raised a manicured ginger eyebrow, smothering his grin to the point where just the edges of his lips twitched up. "Is that what we're calling it now?"

"Ss'what I'm calling it." She sipped.

His previous grin faltered at the sound of her slur and both of his brows went up in surprise this time. "Miss Granger, you are drunk."

She snorted and held up a finger. "One, we've known each other far too long for you to insist on still calling me that. It's Hermione." She held up a second finger and continued, "And two, I am hardly drunk. Not yet anyway, although hopefully soon." Raising her mostly empty glass to him in a toast, Hermione made to down the rest of it only to have the flute plucked from her fingers and on the farthest point of the table from her reach. She let out an indignant huff. "Percy! What do-"

"To answer your earlier query, I came over when I spotted you here alone with hopes that you would be willing, and sober enough, to discuss work in an attempt to liven up what is otherwise another dreary mandatory party."

Hermione blinked owlishly at him. For any other witch or wizard the prospect of discussing work at a social event would have been an offensive sort of lunacy and the person suggesting it would receive a rather unpleasant beating; Hermione grinned and her eyes brightened for the first time all evening. "You are a man after my own heart."

Percy coughed into his hand, the lighting in the ballroom too dim to properly highlight the coloring to his cheeks. He cleared his throat and nudged his glasses up his nose before taking up Hermione's previously confiscated drink and having a sip, his tongue coming out to lick off what he could only imagine was the residue of the shiny gloss she was sporting on her lips. She tasted like his favorite flavor of sugar quill, he mused. The simple thought brought his smile back in an instant and he rumbled warmly, "That a yes, then?"

Her attention had been distracted, the tiny motion of Percy Weasley's tongue sliding over his lip to taste her causing a pleasant trickle of warmth to work its way through her extremities. He caught her staring and she only noticed this much by the shape his mouth made when it said her name. Hermione blinked back up to his face, eyes wide. "Sorry?"

He chuckled. "You are sober enough to talk about work, aren't you?"

Hermione's eyes flickered from his eyes to his mouth and back again and she shook the fuzziness out of her head. "Yes, actually…unfortunately?"

"Or fortunately," Percy said with a shrug and what passed for a thinly veiled look of hopefulness. "I was very much wanting to ask you about your newly proposed task to dissolve the Regulation of Magical Creatures laws 214 through 228 and their related amendments. I'd heard about it through the grapevine and was wondering what the specs of pushing something of that magnitude through looks like." He leaned forward in interest, an intense look coming into his eyes. "I've a similar issue, you see, in needing to move to abolish some equally archaic Transport laws still currently in effect and you're the first of any witch or wizard that has ever attempted to take on such a project!"

With the topic change and subject matter, Hermione felt the rest of her light buzz receding as all sorts of facts and figures came to the forefront of her mind before he'd even really stopped speaking. Her brows went up when Percy had leaned in and her head canted to one side curiously. "Expensive," she spoke the first word that came to mind, then gestured around them. "At least that's what they tell me immediately before informing me I am to attend such ludicrous and extravagant social debacles." Hermione scratched a nail over a snagged bundle of threads in the tablecloth in front of her while sporting a small grimace. "If you're looking to stir the pot, Percy, I can recount my experiences and the work hours I've put in just to have the proposal snubbed for another 'revision' time and time again, but my professional advice would be to just not. The Ministry is not…shall we say…very forthcoming with change to those so obviously archaic rules that you and I apparently take issue with."

Percy loosed a scoff that was aimed not at all at her and every bit at the Ministry finance and marketing departments. "They need to reevaluate their priorities, then!" Hermione smiled at that and it bolstered him to continue even if he'd shocked himself a bit at his own outburst. "The work you do, Hermione, it's truly invaluable whether or not they choose to recognize that appropriately. I, for one, would love to hear and see all the efforts you've put in towards your cause." At the way that smile of hers widened, Percy felt the flush return to his cheeks and cleared his throat again. "Perhaps we can…combine efforts and…suss out some sort of plan that would…"

"Would you like to come in my office?" Percy's head snapped up from where it had drooped so he could get a better view of his twiddling thumbs and it was then Hermione's turn to go red in the face. "Ah—I mean-TO. TO my office. I've got—th-the files. I've got them there. The files. In my office." His tongue came out in a quick flick across his bottom lip and she was entranced by the bobbing of his Adam's apple and how it shifted the neat, perfectly symmetrical knot of his silk tie. "I can…um…show them—those files—to you."

"Yes," he said quickly. "I would like that very much."

. . . . .

"Thank you everyone for joining us this evening! I hope you've all enjoyed yourselves thus far at our yearly Ministry Valentine's ball! There's a great deal of partying left to be had but, before everyone is too far gone, I'd like to welcome everyone's favourite speaker and esteemed war heroine, Hermione Granger to the stage to speak on our plans for this year!"

A smattering of applause mixed with a few inebriated murmurs of neutral enthusiasm carried throughout the room for an awkwardly long time. The emcee continued clapping his hands, eyes searching the crowd for a bushy head of hair making its way to the stage but noted a distinct lack of movement. His claps petered out several long moments after the rest and he fidgeted, frowning briefly before plastering a wider smile than before on his face.

"What I meant to say is that we'll hear from Miss Granger in just a minute, of course! First, shall we hear from one of our OTHER most beloved speakers? Yes, that's right, all! The BROTHER of most esteemed war hero, Ronald Weasley—" A collective groan rippled throughout the crowd. "—Percy Weasley!"

The emcee clapped all the harder that time around as if to drown out the previous failure of an announcement. Percy had never let him down before…he would just have to do until he found out where the hell Granger had disappeared to after being practically glued to her table all evening. The man didn't realize how long he'd been clapping, waiting for his most reliable Weasley to show when…he didn't.

The crowd shifted with some agitation at being promised a monkey show that was not, in fact, happening.

"Where the bloody hell IS everyone tonight?" the emcee groused suddenly and stormed off stage, whispering harshly to another pair of workers to the side of it who looked like they were doing their best to disappear into the floor.

. . . . .

The journey to Hermione's office was short but filled with a painful bout of strained conversation carrying over from The Singles Table and regarding various bits of information about her approaches to wrangling the necessary data to present her cause to her superiors for consideration. The pair hurried into the modestly sized space and Percy shut and locked the door behind them.

Hermione took several calming breaths as she took the few steps needed to her desk to locate a stack of paperwork that she'd been pouring her heart and soul into over the past few months. She snatched it up and turned on her heel, finding that Percy had made quick work of the distance separating them as well.

Momentarily surprised at being eye level with his nose and being able to feel his breath tickle along her skin, Hermione shivered, swallowed, and wobbled. Percy's hands came up automatically, resting on her hips, steadying her, and simultaneously making her mouth go dry. Hermione licked her lips and brought the papers up between them. "One of my copies of my proposal. This one is not the latest revision but—"

Percy took in all the pretty lines of her face, admiring the delicate curve of her jaw and the thick, dark lashes framing half lidded eyes and he, rather unapologetically, interrupted her. "Not to be rude, Miss Granger—"

"Hermione," she corrected, head tilting slightly one way when his began to tilt the other.

"-Hermione," he repeated in a notably huskier tone, "but I don't bloody care about the reports." Percy paused in the descent towards her lips to give her a thoughtful look. "Well, truthfully I do, but at this moment I'd really rather hoped you would agree to being bent over your desk and thoroughly shagged."

Hermione let out a loud, sudden sigh of relief and chucked her papers back over her shoulder. "Oh GOOD." She moved to thread her newly freed fingers up through Percy's hair, secretly delighting in mussing up his neatly slicked 'do. "That was bound to get embarrassing if I had to pretend to give a damn about the paperwork any more tonight."

"That's a yes, then?"

. . . . .

They never made it to properly bending her over her desk.

In fact, they somehow overshot it completely and Hermione was currently pressed against one of her office walls, the skirt of her dress hiked up to her waist with her legs draped over either side of Percy's, and her arms looped tightly around his neck. Hermione had never pegged him as an overly strong individual – he certainly didn't look it at first glance – but, at present, the ginger haired man was having precisely no trouble at all balancing her weight in his arms with his hands gripping the underside of her thighs.

Percy was nose to nose with her, his eyes darting all over her face, taking in the gorgeous flush to her cheeks and the way her lips parted with breathy pants. He swallowed and shut his eyes, inhaling the lovely subtle scent of her soap and fragrance he supposed she'd worn for the event. "Too long have I waited to do this," he murmured, nosing his way into the crook of her neck and shoulder. His nuzzling awarded him a sweet mewl from the brunette in his arms and a less innocent rubbing of her hips against his.

Hermione's fingers clenched in the cloth his blazer when he ran his tongue over her exposed skin then drew it sharply between his teeth, shocking her with a sudden wave of delicious tingles that made her thigh muscles twitch.

Percy Weasley was a biter. Who would've thought it?

Her head knocked back ungracefully against the wall at her back and she tightened her legs around him, trying to relieve the sudden spike of pleasure caused by his bite. "Percy-" His name came out a moan and it earned her another firm nip, one that she was sure would bruise come the morning. She salivated, her mouth stinging with the sudden gathering of moisture in anticipation of more of that and more of the prominent hardness pressed flush to her knicker covered center.

Hermione found herself pushing him away just enough to practically claw his jacket off, hands snapping back between them to curl around the slim suspenders draped over his shoulders and using them to roughly jerk his mouth back to hers. Percy grunted into her sloppy kiss, tilting and turning his head as he needed to alternate between kissing and the suckling and nibbling of her lips until her body was practically vibrating with the need to have more of him exposed. She dragged her nails down his front, earning her a low rumble of a growl and pawed at his belt buckle as best she could in a messy effort to have him as naked as possible as quickly as possible. Even in her lust addled haze, though, Hermione felt the wash of magic rush over her and noticed a significant weight seeming to lift off of her. She couldn't place what it was for the briefest moment until both of Percy's hands joined hers with unbuckling and unzipping his damned trousers; she was floating.

"Not just useful for floating feathers," Percy half explained his wandless, nonverbal use of the charm in an entirely shameless fashion while freeing himself from the confines of pants and proceeding to cast a different charm to neatly sever one side of her panties so he could swipe them off and tuck them into his back trouser pocket.

Hermione felt a renewed flush of want that had little to do with the hard, hot length of him now pressing to her thigh. Her hands tangled in his mussed ginger hair and she practically snarled, "Fuck me. NOW."

Percy, ever the gentleman, did precisely as the lady asked.

. . . . .

February 15th

After what she felt had to be several hours of resisting acknowledging the sounds of twittering birds and the insistent light of the mid-morning sun shining against her eyelids, Hermione cracked open her eyes. Her plans for the day after the Ministry Valentine's ball nonsense had originally involved nursing a terrible hangover from too much expensive booze but the unforeseen factor known as Percy Weasley had gummed all of that up.

And how wonderful that had been.

Hermione grinned to herself remembering just how thorough Percy had been in fulfilling her demand the night before. Even just the thought made things low in her belly tingle and her thighs clench and she sighed before slumping back more heavily into the mess of sheets and pillows she'd woken up in. Shutting her eyes again, she relaxed into the plush down beneath her head and only then smelled the faint smell of cooking food. Before she had much longer to ponder on it, the door to the bedroom creaked open, a shirtless, bedheaded Percy Weasley holding a tray of breakfast fixings and juice greeted her.

"Morning," he said, voice still a little heavy from sleep. "Sleep well?"

She let her gaze rove over his pale, freckled chest and the lean, unassuming muscles she vividly recalled mapping out with her tongue the night before. Her stare lingered at the dusting of red hairs that formed a trail from his navel to the delight that was - apparently - partially alerted to her presence, resting below his waistband; she gnawed at her bottom lip lightly before catching his eyes behind their usual horn rimmed glasses. "Very much so." Hermione watched him settle onto the bed beside her, waiting for her to wriggle into a more upright position before he placed the tray between them. Percy reached out to smooth her curls from her face and she leaned into the touch. "You?"

The wizard smiled and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "Absolutely." Percy basked in the fond look she gave him a moment before nudging her towards the food.

Hermione hummed pleasantly when Percy fussed enough to get at her back and attempt the impossible task of trying to plait her hair first thing in the morning. She was about to warn him against it when she heard him murmur a spell she'd never heard before and then felt his fingers combing through her curls more and more easily with each pass until he could properly separate them and get on with his task. She practically purred her pleasure, eyes half lidded, smile watery. "Percy Weasley, are you actually perfect or are you currently just a dream?"

He smirked and pressed a kiss and then a nip to her bare shoulder. "No and no. I think over the course of time," Percy hesitated before continuing carefully, "if you are so inclined to…entertain more of my company, you would find that I am anything but."

Hermione let him finish the braid before she leaned back against him, nestling her cheek comfortably against his neck and trailing the fingers of one hand down his arm to find and link with his. "I think I'd like that. Very much, actually."

Percy rubbed his thumb in warm circles over hers where their hands were clasped, kissed her again, and asked, "S'that a yes, then?"

She grinned. "Yes, Percy. That is, most ardently, a yes."