AN: just so you know this story is set in seventh year and Hogwarts is closed, Malfoy was working as a spy for the Order the whole time and now he needs protecting from Dumbledore lovers (people don't know he's innocent) and Voldemort (found out he was a spy), kind of complicated. Hope you enjoy. Review!
Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognise.
Draco Malfoy, Five Muggles, and a Love Triangle: Chapter One
"What are you doing Granger?"
Hermione Granger jumped so much that she dropped the saucepan she had been in the middle of washing, spraying water and bubbles everywhere. She turned quickly and glared at the tall blonde seventeen-year-old standing in front of her.
"What the hell are you doing in my house Malfoy?!" she shouted clutching her racing heart.
He smirked and casually leant against the sideboard in her small kitchen. "Language Granger." He tutted. "In case you hadn't noticed people think I killed Dumbledore, and now the Dark Lord knows that I was spying on him. The Order says I need to go into hiding for a while, which means I have to become a muggle and stay with you for the year since I know nothing about being one of them." His smirk was gone and he seemed to be sulking over his temporary fate, his eyebrows knitted together in a frown.
"That doesn't explain why you had to waltz in and scare the living daylights out of me, you moron." She huffed drying her hands on a towel and picking up the soapy saucepan and dropping it back in the warm water. "Did The Order not think it would have been polite to ask me if it were alright for you to come and live with me?"
"I'm very sorry Hermione but things have all been very rushed and I didn't get the chance to talk to you about Malfoy here before we needed to get him away from the wizarding world. I'm sure you'll understand." Hermione turned quickly to see the tired looking man who had spoken entering the kitchen.
"Oh yes of course Professor Lupin, I just wasn't expecting you, and Malfoy gave me quite a fright."
"Yes well I'm sure he did." He said glancing at the still frowning blonde "Would you mind if we went somewhere a little more comfortable so we can discuss some important matters concerning Draco here."
Hermione nodded and lead the way into her comfortable sitting room. Remus Lupin sat in the comfortable worn green armchair, while her and Draco sat as far away as possible on the brown leather sofa.
Half an hour later Hermione waved goodbye to her old Defence against Dark arts teacher, and went back into the living room to find Draco staring at a picture of her standing with a tallish boy with dark hair and a goatee, he had dark blue eyes and was dressed in a white t-shirt and tight black jeans, with a thick leather watch on each wrist. She was wearing a pale yellow strap top and knee length shorts, in the picture, with her curly, frizzy hair tied back in a loose bun. The two of them were standing with their arms around each other against a backdrop of blue sky and sea and pale sand. Both of them were laughing, staring into the camera, unmoving.
"Who's this Granger?"
"Oh that's Johnny, he's a friend of mine." For some reason she didn't mention that they had been going out for six months but had recently ended it, remaining friends. The picture had been taken when they were dating but she kept that small piece of information quiet. "You'll probably meet him tomorrow, we had planned to go the beach with my other friends, it's my friend Maggie's birthday you see, and I can't really cancel so you'll just have to come along. Besides it would do you good to meet some people."
Malfoy stared at her his eyes wide. "And what if I don't want to meet your stupid muggle friends Mudblood? You can't boss me about."
"Actually Malfoy while your under my roof you'll do what I say, which by the way means being civil to me, or I may just let the Death Eaters after you have you, I really don't see that it would be such a loss."
Malfoy scowled at her, but said nothing.
"Right now that that's settled, here is what is going to happen tomorrow, we will go to the beach and I'll tell everyone that you're an old friend from school who needed some help with housing, so I offered to let you stay at my house. But you better act like you like me Malfoy or they'll get suspicious, ok. So no more sulking, act as though you're enjoying yourself. Oh and by the way we left school a year ago, and since then we've both been working with an agency in Romania helping orphans. They won't ask questions, because every time they do I go off on a massive rant about orphans and they hate it. Got that?"
Draco scowled harder but merely muttered something inaudible under his breath. Hermione rolled her eyes; this was going to be a long year.
Draco slept on the sofa in her living room that night; he and Hermione hadn't talked much since she had told him about the next day's arrangements, and after making them a dinner of chips and sausages, eaten at the kitchen table, she had disappeared upstairs with a mumbled 'Goodnight'.
He had spent the rest of the evening looking through the books on the bookshelves that covered every wall. By eleven o'clock he had reached the final bookshelf, this was the one that had the picture of Granger and the guy she had called Johnny on it. On the bottom shelf Draco found two thick photo albums.
Looking through the first he found himself looking at pictures of Granger and her family throughout the years. There was one picture of her as a baby, with a clump of soft brown fuzz on top of her head, that Draco couldn't help but laugh at. After amusing himself with these images he opened the second album to find himself looking once again at the high-cheek boned, bearded face of the handsome boy named Johnny, who was this time giving a grinning Granger a piggyback. Next to the picture was a caption reading: 'Me and Johnny' with a small heart either side. Draco felt something inside him twist painfully. On the next page Granger stood between a boy and a girl who had to be twins. The boy was tall and muscular with a blond mop and light blue eyes, he was wearing board shorts and flip-flops, and his toned chest was bare. On Grangers other side the girl was short with long blonde hair, and the same blue eyes as her brother, she was wearing a loose, thin, white long sleeved top over a black bikini with shorts and no shoes. Granger herself was dressed in a blue bikini and knee length brown shorts; all three had wet hair and smiles, and he could see the water glistening on their skin as if they had just got out of the water. The caption read: 'Me, Neil and Maggie at Whitsand.' So the blond girl was Maggie thought Draco, looking at the still image of the three friends. On the next page was a picture of a girl with shoulder length black and red layered hair. The girl had two piercings in one ear, three in the other, her nose, eyebrow and lip were pierced, and her pointed tongue that was stuck out in a cheeky pose at the camera, Draco saw, was also pierced. She was sat on a rug, in a field with very long grass, a guitar by her side, and an open sketchbook in her lap. She wore baggy black cords, a black and white checkerboard t-shirt, a black jacket and red converse. Her eyes were rimmed with dark eyeliner that complimented her dark brown irises and her lips were painted a bright red; the caption beside her picture was a single word: 'Nat.'
The rest of the album showed the five friends Abseiling, Quad biking, Diving and Horse trekking up a mountain. In some of the pictures there was also a tallish boy, labelled as Matt, with dirty-blond Dreadlocks and a goatee, he had green eyes, which reminded Draco of a certain 'Hero', and he was always dressed in shorts and t-shirts and the same green converse. Draco guessed that he usually took the photos as he was in so few himself.
As he looked through the album Draco couldn't help but notice how happy and pretty Granger looked, made a change he thought, she was usually ugly and annoying. With that thought he put the album back on the bookshelf and used his wand to make himself a makeshift bed on the sofa. Later as he lay in his loose cotton trousers and bare chest he stared at his wand, wondering how he was going to survive without magic, it seemed savage and primeval to use your hands to do everything.
He thought of Granger and her friends and their way of life, but this only led him to think about the way his stomach had twisted every time he saw a picture of her and Johnny together. The worst had been the picture of Johnny standing behind Hermione, with his arms around her, and her face turned to kiss his cheek, both were wearing foolish love struck grins and Draco's stomach had clenched so horribly he had thought he was going to be sick.
Now as he lay in the dark he tried not to think about her, he hated her and her stupid muggle friends, but he knew he would just have to put up with her if he wanted any hope of living to be twenty. There were ways of putting up with people you hated; it was just the same as at Hogwarts with her, Pothead and Weaselbrain… only worse, a lot worse because he had no way of getting away from her. He sighed; this was going to be a long year.