Hello, everyone!

Thank you so much for all of your wonderful reviews for my other story, "A Drop of Water." They really make my day! I am currently working on another Severus/Hermione one-shot, but I thought that I'd post this one too, since Draco/Hermione is also another favorite pairing of mine.

So. I watched the movie 'Delta of Venus' recently for the first time... and even though it was a little outrageous at times it was still really erotic and beautiful and I was really intrigued by the plot. It became the inspiration for this story.

I hope you enjoy!

JK Rowling owns it all... I own nothing. :)

A State of Fire

"He was now in that state of fire that she loved. She wanted to be burnt."

-Anais Nin, from Delta of Venus

Prologue

Married. He was officially married.

Her eyes fell on the Prophet and she tried not to gag as she watched the moving photograph on the front page restart over and over again. Draco and Astoria Malfoy... all blonde hair and shiny, perfect smiles.

Married.

Married, married married.

And shopping for furnishings for their lavish new flat in Paris, where the young Malfoy heir had recently accepted a job as a financial consultant at the French equivalent of Gringotts.

Hermione's lower lip trembled a bit, but her eyes remained dry. They were so swollen and tired that they literally couldn't shed another tear. Even if she had wanted to.

And she did. She wanted nothing more than to crawl into her rumpled bed and cry under the covers until it was all over. Except it wouldn't ever be over. The man that she loved had signed his life and his love over to someone else. To her.

Two worried pairs of eyes studied her from the two chairs on the opposite side of her cluttered kitchen table. Ginny Potter shot a worried glance over at Pansy Parkinson (soon to be Weasley), which the taller woman returned. Times had definitely changed. It had been years since Hermione and Ginny had run into Pansy at a party and made amends, and the three witches had grown into a dysfunctional and loving little family.

"Hermione," Ginny sighed, reaching out to rest her hand atop of her grieving friend's. "I know how badly this must have hurt. I know that it's awful. But everything is going to be okay."

Hermione covered her face with shaking hands and sighed. It was not going to be okay. It had been months since the slimy prat had broken her heart and she still hadn't recovered. She had known this day was coming and still, for some reason, hadn't been able to prepare herself for it.

Pansy leaned her elbows against the table and gave Hermione a sad smile. "He's a fool, Hermione. And for what it's worth, he doesn't love her and he never will. You know that."

Hermione let out a sound that was half barking laughter and half sob. "And yet she's the one that he married. I know that you're trying to make me feel better, Pans, but it all boils down to the fact that she is his wife. I begged him to stay and he didn't. He didn't have to go through with this arranged marriage, but he did. I wasn't enough for him. Even after all we've been through, I still wasn't good enough for him."

She covered her face with her hands held her breathe as the ache in her chest throbbed painfully. She should have known that he would only end up hurting her. She should have run the other way when she saw him coming. She should have known that being with him would only end in heartbreak.

Things had been so good before.

After the war, Hermione had accepted a job at the Ministry of Magic in law. Her job was to research and write drafts and proposals of new bills that would be approved or rejected by the Wizengamot. She loved her job, loved that she really seemed to make a difference and hoped that someday she would have a seat on the counsel herself.

In her spare time, she wrote. Her main project was working on a book about the war... painstakingly interviewing participants and compiling research. This she worked on publicly... often meeting with her editor and her publisher.

Privately, however, she spent long evenings and lazy Sundays writing short stories or poems. These she wrote for her own pleasure... never publishing. She had stacks upon stacks of scribbles and drabbles written in notebooks and hidden away in a minimized box in her closet... some that dated back to her early teens. Her writing was one of her quiet joys, and not many people had seen her work. It was an artistic outlet she indulged in only for herself... even though Ginny and even Harry had often encouraged her to take it further. She always smiled faintly and answered with the same: "Maybe someday." She was perfectly content with her life as it was.

Everything had been wonderful. She was up-and-coming in the Ministry, She had the best friends in the world and she loved her little London flat. She was happy.

And then he had come along.

While being friends with Pansy was something that she enjoyed more than she ever thought she would, it did have its drawbacks. Pansy had been friends with Draco Malfoy since they were children, so it was inevitable. Seeing more of Pansy meant seeing more of Draco. His father had died in the war, and he and his mother had been pardoned by the Ministry. In the six years since then, he had been steadily working at cleaning and polishing the Malfoy name. He was respectable and hardworking and it was quite obvious that he had set his father's prejudices aside and changed for the better.

This did not make him any less of a self-centered git.

Once they had renewed their acquaintance, it quickly became obvious that even though he no longer threw around hateful slurs, annoying Hermione was still his favorite pastime. Hermione was not amused. After Pansy and Ron started dating, it only got worse. He had, miraculously, made amends with Harry, Ron and Ginny and was quickly becoming a staple in their small group of close friends. This made him impossible to avoid. He was at parties, he was at group dinners... he was everywhere.

Their verbal sparring was strenuous and exhausting, if not a bit exhilarating. He had a sharp tongue and a sharp wit to match it. A person with an intelligent mind equal to her own was hard to come by... and she often found herself bickering with him for hours with no clue how the conversation had started or why she always seemed to gravitate to him during gatherings.

Their friends shared amused glances and affectionate eye rolls. The two were always at each other's throats... but it was hard to miss the flush in Hermione's cheeks and the look of longing on Draco's face as he watched Hermione flounce away in anger.

This went on for months.

Then he started showing up at work. He often made trips to the Ministry in his work as a consultant, but Hermione had never had to deal with him before. After a particularly fierce argument at Pansy's birthday party wherein she had called him an 'arrogant tosser,' however, he began turning up in her office once or twice every week for "amiable visits."

These visits consisted of him annoying her to the point of distraction until she blew up. He would smirk, deliver last parting shot that would make her blood boil and then leave her spluttering in her office, trying desperately to come up with something adequately scathing to say.

One day, however, everything changed.

"Granger."

"Get out, Malfoy. This is not a good time."

"Please tell me that you're drafting a law that will make wearing that particular shade of orange illegal."

Hermione huffed, glancing distractedly down at the blouse that her mother had given her for Christmas.

"Leave Malfoy. Now."

Smirking, he settled into the chair across from her desk and made himself comfortable.

Thinking that she would ignore him until he gave up and went away, Hermione refocused on the new proposal that she was proofreading. After re-reading the same sentence 8 times, however, she sighed angrily and glanced up at the handsome git who had merely been eying her calmly for the past 7 minutes.

Handsome...

She dismissed the thought before she could analyze it and arched a brow. "Malfoy. What you came to say today cannot possibly be more important than Centaur relations, but the sooner you spit it out, the sooner I can get you out of my office... so out with it."

"Centaur relations? Kinky, Granger. I never took you for that kind of girl."

"WHAT DO YOU WANT, MALFOY?"

"I want you to have dinner with me tonight."

Hermione's jaw dropped and her eyes widened. He smirked. "As attractive as that may be, Granger, I'm rather hoping that you will be able to compose yourself before dinner. We will be out in public, you know."

Hermione snapped her mouth shut and cleared her throat. "Dinner. Like a date?"

His expression was all cool confidence, but the fingers of his left hand drummed on the armrest of the chair distractedly. Hermione zeroed in on this uncharacteristic gesture. Malfoys did not fidget. He was nervous.

"Why, yes, I do believe that is what the kids are calling it these days."

"You've got to be joking."

"I assure you that I am not."

"But you hate me."

"I think that it is quite obvious that I don't."

"How?"

"I don't make a habit of asking people that I hate out to dinner."

Hermione cleared her throat nervously. He was serious. "But... we're always fighting."

Draco smirked. His fingers drummed once more and then stilled. "Have we been fighting? I rather thought that we were flirting."

Hermione mutely stared at him in disbelief and Draco sighed and stood, running a hand over his blue silk tie. "It was an invitation to dinner, Granger, not a marriage proposal. If you don't want to go, it's no big deal."

He turned to go and Hermione suddenly remembered that she did, indeed, have a voice.

"Yes."

He turned back, one hand on the door knob. "Yes?"

"Yes. I'd like to go."

He smiled the first real smile that Hermione had ever seen and she knew that she was in trouble.

"Good. I'll pick you up at eight."

That had been a year ago. A year since the night that he took her out for the most delicious meal she had ever eaten. A year since he had held her close as they had twirled on the dance floor, the skirt of her red dress tangling about both of their legs.

A year since he had kissed her goodnight at the door of her apartment building, his breath catching on a nervous inhale as he leaned in to press his lips to hers.

They dated for six months and Hermione had been in a state of ecstasy. THIS was happiness. This was what it was like to have it all. A job that she loved, friends that she loved... a man that she loved. For it soon became clear that she was, in fact, very much in love.

All of those months of heated arguments and half-hearted insults had built her up to impossible heights and that one, gentle kiss goodnight had been just the thing to knock her over the edge.

And He loved her too.

He said it with his eyes every time he looked at her. He kissed the words into her every time they said goodbye. He whispered it against her skin the wonderful night she gave her body to him for the first time, and said it again every time after that.

And those times had been numerous.

She could not get enough of his body and of the things that he did to hers. Hermione had not been a virgin but she hadn't had a lot of experience and Draco took great enjoyment in pushing her boundaries and instructing her in the ways of pleasure.

He tied her up and teased her until she begged him to fuck her.

He would drag her off to the bathroom in the middle of dinner with friends and take her hard as he bent her over the sink... both of them returning to the table disheveled, flushed and giddy.

When, after a particularly strenuous evening, she told him that she didn't have the strength to make it through yet another orgasm... he had smirked, buried his blonde head between her thighs and didn't resurface again until he had given her two more.

Every fantasy was fulfilled... every desire granted. It got to the point where she was in an almost constant state of arousal and she loved it.

It had been beautiful, the sex had been amazing and, in her opinion, things couldn't get much better.

Until that night. That horrible night when he had shown up at her flat looking so sad that she thought that someone had died.

The night when he told her that he couldn't see her anymore.

That he would be marrying another woman.

It had been a marriage contract that had been drawn up back when he was still a boy. With the death of his father and the end of the war, he had considered the contract null and void and hadn't given it a thought since.

The Greengrass family, however, came calling once it was obvious that the Malfoy name had been restored and Draco's mother had pushed for the match.

Bound by his affection for his depressed and broken mother and by his duty to his family name, he assented.

Hermione was desperate with grief. She screamed at him, hurling foul names and various knick knacks at him until they both collapsed in tears. He held her until she cried herself to sleep... and when she awoke he was gone.

He and Astoria announced their engagement a month later, and Hermione had been too prideful to fight it. She was determined to keep her dignity. Any letters of apology were returned unanswered. She would not embarrass herself any further.

Yesterday had been the wedding. Pansy had had to attend, but Ginny came over to stay with her as they watched the clock. Hermione became more and more desolate by the minute.

When the clock struck 4 and it became obvious that, yes, he really was getting married and, no, he wasn't going to make a grand romantic gesture and call it off to be with Hermione instead... she stood up from the sofa and went into her bedroom without a word. She didn't come out for a full 24 hours.

It had been the worst day of her life...

Until today. When the wedding photos were plastered all over the Daily Prophet.

Which brought her back to the now... with her two best friends staring concernedly at her from across the table.

"What can we do, Hermione? What do you need right now?" Pansy asked, leaning forward as her devastated friend stood up from the table and started heading back to her room.

"Nothing," she replied grimly. "That's it, isn't it? I will just have to pull myself together and move on. At least he's moved to Paris and I won't have to see him on a daily basis. I will be fine. Eventually."

The two women in the kitchen watched helplessly as their friend went through the bedroom door and softly closed it behind her.

As Hermione crawled into bed, she pictured Draco doing the same thing... settling under the covers next to his new, perfect bride. She choked back a sob.

Sleep would be a long time coming... and she wasn't sure if she would ever be 'fine' again.

TBC...

That's it for now! I know that this may have seemed a bit rushed and that you had a lot of exposition thrown at you all at once... but I really wanted to story to be less about the break-up and more about what happens after. That's what's important.

And don't you worry your pretty little heads... there is definitely smutty goodness to come!

Thank you again, so much, for reading!

-C