This ficlet was written for the hp-drizzle fest 2018 and was published first on AO3 under my penname sarena. You can also find the aesthetic there :). The story is finished and will be published in three chapters with a few days inbetween updates. Please feel free to go to AO3 and read the completed version there :).
Many thanks to the mods of this fest! It was a lot of fun to participate :).
Eternal thanks to my fantastic alpha and beta HeartOfAspen who not only corrected my mistakes, but also improved my story stylistically. Without her never-ending encouragement and relentless work I wouldn't have made the deadline in September.
Dear recipient, I took your prompt and my muse decided to go wild... I hope you like it!
Prompt O67:
Prompt: It's hailing. Inside.
Suggested Character(s)/Pairings: any
Any optional extras: Some days it doesn't pay to work at Hogwarts/The Ministry/The Leaky Cauldron.
Warning: Explicit smut but this definitely IS porn with plot ;).
oooOooo
It started with a small snowflake. A white, little something which, given their extraordinary line of work, usually didn't upset people that much.
It was only a snowflake, after all.
The growth in the size of those snowflakes wasn't much reason to worry, either. They were pretty with their glittering, dainty structures, and the receptionist for the Department of Mysteries always looked so adorable with them in her dark hair.
"Oh, it's just a bit of snow," she would say with a careless wave of her hand. Then she would reach for her big cup of scalding tea, while the other one tugged her scarf away from her neck.
oooOooo
"But you simply cannot assume you can compare Edian's Law with Grumpol's Theory of Magical Similarities! They're based on completely different theorems of paradoxes!" Granger threw her quill onto her desk, still carefully enough not to smear all the ink on the parchment in front of her.
"Of course, I can. See, Granger, that's the problem with you. You can ruminate on all that you've ever read, to no end. But you can't think outside the box just a little bit!"
"I beg your pardon? It was me who connected Beedle The Bard and the Deathly Hallows!"
"Yeah, lucky guess."
She shot up from her seat and propped her hands on her side of the big desk they were forced to share. The air started to flicker around her, just like Draco had observed it doing again and again, in the past few months. When his coldness and her heat met in the literal middle of their desk, the air made interesting meteorological movements, which would probably amaze any inclined scientist. But Draco was only watching the way she inflated and got ready to launch a fiery reply. In every sense of the word. His body instinctively decreased the temperature around him in pure self-preservation.
"It was no lucky guess," she hissed, and he swore little drops of spittle fell on his side of the desk only to turn into small specks of ice immediately.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm ineffably grateful you read that book and were able to lead the Dunce Duo to the right conclusions with that big, bushy head of yours." His eyes lingered on the little curls which always escaped her neat bun when she got upset. It made her look softer, along with the attractive pink on her high cheeks—he dragged his mind carefully out of that line of thought.
"Malfoy, I'll flay the blond right off your head if you don't stop taunting me this very instant!"
Little ringlets of smoke had developed on the part of the desk where her hands touched. She'll repair that later, no doubt, he thought. Regardless, he still kept an eye on the magically fire-proofed parchment.
"In no way I am taunting you, Granger. I don't know why you always feel personally attacked when I prove you wrong." He leaned back in his chair, feigning an air of nonchalance even as he felt the humidity around him freeze.
"You know very well that you are!" Her chair began to smolder from her fierce demeanour.
With a quick jerk of his hand, Draco sent a cooling wave toward it, counter-working her heat. At the same time, he winced a little when he saw thick snowflakes falling down around him.
"Losing control of your inherent magic again, Malfoy?" she sneered. It was probably his last favourite look on her.
Rolling his eyes to the ceiling, he only retorted, "Just saving your chair from incineration, that's all."
Granger glanced down at the dark shadows of scorching wood beneath her fingers, and then over her shoulder, before she fixed him with a sharp glare again. "My magic wouldn't act so weird if it weren't for you," she grumbled, and thawed the ice from her chair before taking a deep breath and sitting down again. "I'm serious, that comparison makes no sense at all."
He rubbed his cold hand over his face, grimacing at the sensation. "The connection is not based on the similarities, but on the opposition of the magical cores casting the spells for full effect."
"But that would counter-effect the goal of the spell. Making it less efficient instead of enhancing its potency by logs."
He pushed a small book across the desk. "Courtesy of the Malfoy library. You're welcome. I don't think there are many prints of it available, and all of them are in private possession. Simmler here describes the connection of magical cores as a tightly-wound rope-structure, enhancing their durability, efficiency, and power."
Granger's reverent fingertips stroked the imprint on the old leather. Looking up at him, she asked, "How is it possible to achieve that? I wouldn't let anyone so contrary to me close to my magical core. And I don't think my inherent magic would, either."
He shrugged, playing with the edge of the scroll in front of him. "Simmler's research is mostly theoretical. He did, however, claim one case where a married couple who hated one another to the bone, managed to protect their children through core-ropes, for a lack of a better word."
She squinted at him. "In Muggle literature—" She held her hand up at his scoff, and continued when he swallowed his words down, "—there are many cases described where parents grow above themselves to save their children. It might just be a similar effect." Granger started to leaf through the booklet, trying to decipher the faded script.
Draco almost jumped off his chair when their office door slammed open to admit a frazzled Potter. "You two!"
"We didn't—" Granger rose to defence, and Draco noted with a low hum of satisfaction that she included him, too, this time.
"Half of the department is smoldering, and the other half is wet with thawing snow!" There were red spots on his face, making him even uglier than usual. "This is the last time, I swear. You'll get separate offices. At the opposite ends of the floor!"
Granger's eyes were wide as she looked up at the Boy-Who-Lost-All-Dignity.
"Effective as of now," he added with a vicious snarl and stomped through the door, back to his own office. Draco could hear the forceful shut of that door echo in his ears. He barely repressed a flinch.
Granger looked at him, an undecipherable expression displayed on her face first, followed swiftly by triumph. "At last, he's come to his senses."
Her words stung.
oooOooo
But when the first pellets of hail started to come down, the employees at the Ministry of Magic began to worry just a little bit. Even more as they discovered their increasing size over time.
And Harry Potter cursed the day he'd separated his best friend and his dearest nemesis, as he'd already had to defend his budget raise, twice, to be able to send most of his staff to meteorological training. It was the only way to keep the ever-changing effects of inherent magic in check.
Not to mention the deserted middle part of his department, where random tornadoes made their appearance.
oooOooo
"Granger." He set his glass and plate in front of the free chair across from her.
"Malfoy. Please do take a seat, despite not being invited."
He ignored her barb and her surprisingly rosy cheeks, planning to get his food down as soon as possible so he wouldn't have to eat it all frozen again. "Any progress on Erbletz's set of journals?" The little ice crystals displayed on the outside of his glass of water slowly melted away, forming drops of condensation in their place.
"Afraid not." She sighed. "The wards are very complex. I assume it's a mixture of blood wards drenched with old magic, and they're a bit dark, too."
Draco pulled a face and unfolded his napkin to place it on his lap. "Sounds as bad as the Russian bracelet I'm working on. It's no horcrux," he spat the word with all the disdain he could manage. "But there's something dark about it. It's attributed to Rasputin who was rumoured to have planned to give it to Tsarina Alexandra."
"Ugh. Sounds awful."
"It is beautiful, really. A detailed piece of silver, rubies, and diamonds. But the infused magic is completely rotten."
"Was that some sort of allegory on 'all shiny outside, totally rotten inside'? Because it strongly reminds me of somebody." She pushed her smoking green beans from the middle to the rim of her plate where the sauce had stopped boiling as soon as he'd sat down.
"Harhar, Granger. You're a never-disappointing fount of jokes and fun."
"No thanks to you," she bickered back, cutting her too-well-done meat with a little more force than necessary, but he could have sworn she suppressed a smile.
He picked at his potatoes. "Potter came to me yesterday."
Granger hummed, chewing on her food while she watched him.
"Apparently, as Tolwyn was leaving your office due to 'unbearably hot working conditions,' he tried to apparate through the marginally unsteady weather between offices 945 and 955 and splinched himself."
She snorted. "It took me thirty minutes to heal Kerry's frost blisters when she came around yesterday afternoon. She was shivering the whole time."
Draco shrugged his shoulders. It was not his fault that his office partner sucked at warming charms.
"I can't help it," Granger whispered. "I wish I could."
He swallowed around a too-big piece of lukewarm meat, but kept eating without answering.
oooOooo
With uncounted months passing, the layer of hail on Malfoy's side of the department—as they called it now—reached ankle-deep in periodic intervals, whereas on Granger's side, 40 degrees Celsius was considered an average working temperature. Some people tried to get as much work as possible done during the lunch hour, and sometimes were lucky enough to also get half an hour of reprieve around tea time.
Fed up with the whole situation, Harry Potter finally began to sort through the classified documents only the heads of the department would ever be allowed to see. He read the innocent list of eligible locations first, before paying attention to the corresponding, brittle master scroll.
Still jittery the next day, he wrote out a mission for two of his employees first thing in the morning.
oooOooo
Draco strode with wide, confident steps along the road leading to the northern part of the excavation, his glance moving between the old map in his hand and the landscape surrounding them.
Granger, whose shorter legs were no match for his long ones, gasped as she tried to keep up. "I still don't like the fact that Harry sent us all the way to Knossos to investigate about the Labyrinth of Crete."
"You've told me only approximately thirty-six times so far; please repeat it once more, so I'll finally remember your resentment against being sent on a mission with me."
"I have nothing against… Have you even checked the file? Somebody's been sent here every nine years for the past two-hundred centuries, and all came back empty-handed. There is nothing to investigate!"
"Does 'nine years' ring a bell, Granger?"
"Of course it does! And I've checked with the MLE and the Greek Agency of Magic. There weren't, and aren't, seven male and seven female virgins missing. It's a fluke." She was panting when she finally caught up to him, her view sweeping over the dusty but impressive scene before them.
Ignoring several signs and barriers, Draco climbed up the final couple of meters to the western part of the entrance hall, and heard Granger groan behind him. The excavation site was still empty this early in the morning, littered only sparsely with workers who were busy readying the paths that would lead masses of tourists through the conglomerate of buildings. Occasional foreign bird calls reminded him of the distance to Britain, while the outer walls of the half-destroyed buildings were already blazing in the rising heat of the early sun. From the corner of his eye, he saw that single tiny curls had already managed to free themselves from Granger's sensible braid, sticking to the damp skin of her face and neck. He could feel her heat radiating off her and automatically increased his coldness to compensate.
"If they need virgins, why would we be sent?"
Putting his hand on his heart in faux-shock, Draco turned to her. "Pray tell, Granger, are you no virgin anymore?"
She looked up at him, and raised an eyebrow. "I'm not sure it's flattery if you think a thirty-four year old woman is still a virgin, Malfoy."
He chuckled. "Yeah, I keep forgetting you're older than me."
"I just wished you'd show some respect to your elders ."
His lips twisted into a wry grin. "We're the best Potter has. And you know that as well as I do." Changing the topic and pointing to a cross on the south-eastern part of his map, he said, "The spot should be over there. Let's have a closer look, shall we?"
Granger shrugged but climbed down the stones and marched towards the South-East House, adjusting the strap of her atrocious bag and the official excavation team badge hanging from a lanyard around her neck. Despite the ever-present chill of his lowly brimming magic, a gentle breeze cooled Draco's skin, and he welcomed both it and the shadow provided by the roof over the ruins.
"Aha!" she exclaimed, when a few of her spells revealed a magical sign on the top of a broken wall. "This way. How thoughtful of them to guide us."
"As long as this doesn't turn out to be some sort of magical scavenger hunt…"
"Blame Kramer and Selwyn for not updating the map."
He shrugged. "Might be necessary to pass certain spots to get to the final destination."
"They still could've mentioned it in their report. But they didn't find anything, just like all the—"
"Yeah," he interrupted her. "You've already bemoaned the lack of results from the investigations before us. A hundred times, at least."
Granger stuck her nose into the air, all high and mighty. "I, for my part, plan to leave a very detailed report, so this can be put to rest for once and for all."
Draco didn't answer, instead reaching out with tendrils of his magic to try and get a grip on the subtle underlying currents of the place. After a handful of revealing spells, they passed across the Central Court and stood in front of the Grand Staircase. Another magical arrow pointed downwards.
Granger only looked at him and jerked her chin towards the steps. Feeling slightly uneasy in light of her obvious ignorance of the latent magic around them, he followed with a barely audible sigh. As they passed along a row of red pillars, he sneered at the blatant destruction of the original structures caused by the reconstruction efforts, "If you leave anything to Muggles, they're sure to mess it up."
"Malfoy," she growled, stopping mid-step. Turning around to him, she snapped, "What it is now that Muggles can't accomplish to your oh-so-elevated satisfaction?"
He gestured around them. "Just take a look! Can't you feel the magic underneath it all? They've twisted it and put up something which pleased their eyes, instead of re-establishing the original purposes."
"They took pictures and made drawings of it all before they reconstructed everything to their best knowledge. Of course, they can't put magic into the cement they've used! They're Muggles ."
"Just use your magic and see. Reach out."
She huffed, but stilled for a moment, focusing her eyes on a wall to their right. Draco directed his magic to the same area, feeling her heat licking along the rough surface, and when their tendrils of magic touched, they immediately began to curl around each other.
The world tilted.
I had so much fun writing this story. Please let me know what you think! :)
