Disclaimer: This is not written for profit. I don't own Harry Potter, which is copyrighted by J. K. Rowling.
A/N: Written for dramionedrabble's Valentine's Day 7 Kisses Challenge - first, dirtiest, bittersweet, public, forbidden, shy, goodnight kiss.
A Merry and Desperate Drought
by Terra
They'd replaced the slabs of wood and scuttled openings on the doors with bars that grew colder the longer he held on.
He acted like he was too proud to reach through them, so his mother always stayed a careful step away. But it was the helplessness he couldn't forget when his neighbors had jeered and called his mother dirty names the first time she'd visited and pressed herself so hard into the bars that it had looked like she was trying to melt through them. He remembered the pictures of Sirius Black during his imprisonment in the Prophet, and he almost felt cheated when they led him instead to this airy space, roomy and uneven enough to be two cells collapsed together.
There were no more Dementors and everywhere was better lit and everyone better fed. Every, day, better. It was a brave new world, announced Kingsley Shacklebolt every other week.
He was sitting on a rusty stool behind the teetering workbench that served as his desk when he saw her. Granger laid a hand on the metal bar separating his cell from that of the slumbering man next door, tilted her head and let her eyes rove over his prison as if determining the best angle to snap a photo.
When her gaze finally included him, she said, "Your mother's sentence came down. Just fines and house arrest for a year."
Good. All right. Yes. He didn't know what she wanted.
"You have Harry to thank for that," she continued, with a small smile and a smaller slouch. Everyone else stood taller, threw their shoulders back, heaved up their chests when they said Potter's name, but not Granger. She spoke his name like it was a relief being able to say it aloud. Alive, he's alive! sang her every shrug and fidget and grin.
But he was only alive because of Draco's mother. "I have Potter to thank for a lot of things."
Granger gave him a hard stare. "Yes. You do."
"I'll write him a letter, then, shall I?" he said curtly.
"That's not all. They've also shortened your sentence. Harry managed to get house arrest for you, too."
Something about the way her eyes honed in on the ruined skin of his collarbone, exposed by the tattered edge of his ill-fitting cotton shirt, triggered a streak of phantom pain. It scaled the length of his scar on the same path as her downward glance, tracing a wound he knew she couldn't see.
"He needn't have," he replied, voice tight. "I wasn't keeping score."
"Weren't you?" she asked, cocking her head.
"Cut the cryptic bullshit, Granger. What are you really doing here?"
"Harry didn't think you'd want to see him. Ron would rather swallow flobberworms whole than give you good news. That left me."
"All right. I'm going to try this again. What do you want?"
Something unreadable flickered across her face, and then her expression smoothed into familiar condescension. "Some answers, I guess."
He couldn't quite mask the anger. "I've already told the Aurors everything. Twice."
"No, it's not about that." She waved the notion out of the air like an interrogation, two of them, by grown, muscular men with massive chips on their shoulders and spilt blood in their homes was on par with crossing the street to grab a fucking coffee. "It was just bothering me, and since I was coming here anyway—"
"I don't really give a shit. Ask your damned questions or get out."
"Why did you do it?" she asked in a rush of breath, leaning closer until she was almost propped against the bars. "With what your mother did for Harry and what Harry did to you in sixth year—he hasn't forgotten it, you know . . . they would've let you off with a slap on the wrist. But you told them no one made you take the Dark Mark. You told them you snuck out and volunteered for it. Why?"
He laughed, and it snapped the air: brittle, hoarse, sharp. "That's what was bothering you?"
Two dots of hard red welled in her cheeks. "Well, it just didn't make any sense! And if there's anything these seven years have taught me, it's that you know how to look out for number one better than anyone else."
Draco wasn't aware of standing up until momentum had shoved aside his workbench and he was clasping the cold bars above her shoulders, hissing in her startled face. "Just what do you think they would've done to my father if I'd told them he delivered a sixteen-year-old to the Dark Lord to be fodder for his mistakes? Do you think they would've taken his word for it that he only did it because he had to? Well?" he spat. "You're so smart, you tell me what you would've done!"
Granger's muddy eyes widened, and she pressed her lips together, considering. She started to reply when the sound of creaking springs jerked her closer to him. He followed her line of sight to the unkempt figure bundled up on the bed in the neighboring cell, and tensed. Draco had never bothered to learn his name after the filth had crudely propositioned his mother on her last visit; he found it easier to imagine mutilating a stranger, someone the guards talked about in the same breath as hurt and women.
The man tottered to his feet, a bent smile curling his thin lips when he saw Granger. It only took him three steps to reach through the bars and yank her towards him. Instinctively, Draco wrenched Granger out of the man's grasp, twisting her away in the crook of his arm, and slammed a fist into his cellmate's jaw. The man pitched backwards, his cry of outrage abruptly silenced by the metal railing of his bed meeting the back of his head.
They stared at his crumpled body for a long, wrought moment. Then Granger whispered, "Do you think he's . . . okay?"
He turned to inform her exactly what a stupid, careless, bloody waste of space she was when he realized he was still clutching her so tightly against the bars he could almost taste her whisper. "He's a rapist," he heard himself snapping, releasing her brusquely.
"Oh. I see. Um, thanks," she mumbled, dark eyes flitting over him.
"You can thank me by leaving."
"I mean it, Malfoy. That was—I just . . . thank you," said Granger, swallowing, her calm voice belied by the pulse jumping erratically in her neck.
She swayed back from the bars, a fluttery and hesitant motion that felt all at odds with the steadfast, always barreling somewhere mental image of her he'd been carrying around since the year she'd slugged him. "What?" he said, harsher than he'd intended.
Whatever she saw in his expression decided her, and she propelled forward, reaching through the bars. Clenching a fistful of his shirt, she pulled him to her and swept a hand along the nape of his neck. He only had enough time to brace his arms against the bars before the crazy girl pressed her lips, warm and dry and smearing him with softness, against the corner of his mouth. Vaguely, under the muffling wool of shock, he realized that she had been aiming for his cheek, and might have made it, if he hadn't been turning to yell at her.
She jumped back like he'd burned her. "What the hell was that?" burst out of him in one stunned breath.
"I didn't mean—it was supposed to be your cheek!" Granger gestured wildly at the space between them, deflating the stinging tension with every nervous swipe. "—it's just that a handshake seemed so inadequate!"
"A handshake," he repeated, unable to look away from her mouth now that she'd forced him to notice its every quivering motion.
"Yes! I just wanted to show my gratitude—"
"By kissing me?"
"I'm sorry!" A flood of red stained her face and neck. "No. I'm not sorry! I didn't do anything I need to apologize for. And – and don't you dare tell anyone!" she finished fiercely.
"Tell anyone?" The incredulity of the situation, on its face the most ridiculous thing that had ever happened to him, tickled his throat, and he gave a bark of laughter. "Why would I tell anyone that you assaulted me—"
"Assaulted?"
"—no technique. It was the worst—"
"How dare you?" Granger dragged in a lungful of air and jabbed a finger at him in emphasis. "I-I'm never thanking you for anything ever again!"
Then she spun on her heel and stalked down the corridor to the stairway leading outside, narrow shoulders flung back rigidly in temper.
"Is that a promise?" he called out to her retreating form, unable to suppress a disbelieving chuckle, and slumped against the bars, forgetting the chill of the metal, wondering if the Dark Lord was currently ice-skating in hell.
*
February the eleventh saw his release from Azkaban with the clothes on his back and a too sharp quill in his pocket.
He'd learned more about war in prison than he'd ever known as the Dark Lord's eyes and ears and unwilling, fucked up, hopelessly incompetent assassin. The thought of home left a copper taste in his mouth, and he didn't think the Manor would ever feel like his again, not after herds of Death Eaters had stampeded through its corridors and the Dark Lord had fouled up the parlors and dining rooms and dungeons (screaming, lots); even his bedroom appeared foreign, oppressively spacious.
"We're only allowed three permits a month," his mother said that night, across the too-large dining table.
He set down his snifter of brandy. "You take two, then. I think Father would much rather see you."
"Draco," she said sharply. "It's just your father's pride—"
"I know. But you'd be a comfort to him, and I . . . well, I'm a reminder of things he'd rather forget."
Mother dropped her hooded gaze to his hand, skin spread white over the glass. "My love, he may not have acted like it when you made that absurd confession during the trial, but I know he was proud that you tried to help him."
"Yes, threatening to disown me unless I recanted," he said with a snort, "that's always been my personal favorite of his affectionate gestures."
"Your father only wanted to do right by us. He knew what it would do to me," the lilt of her voice trembled, "to - to see you locked up next to those filthy criminals!"
"It's worse for him," he said flatly. "At least I had an ocean view. Those bastards keep trumping up the charges to find excuses to send him to solitary. A dank little hole with no light—" he smiled viciously, "when this is over, I'm going to hunt every one of those sorry fuckers down and make them eat glass for this."
It was a testament to his mother's fraught state of mind that she didn't even stir at his foul language. His conviction rearranged the soft set of her features into something hard and unyielding. "Not so soon after your release. We'll need to . . . rebuild our social credit first."
Draco tapped gently on the edge of his armrest, a grim and somber melody. "Believe me, Mother, I can bide my time. It's all I've got now."
She stood, thin and small against the backdrop of the yawning room. "When I was signing the forms, I saw your visitor log. What did that Granger girl want?"
"Nothing. Just showed up to shoot her mouth off."
"Then you didn't ask her to visit?"
His brows arched precipitously. "Good god! Why would I invite that Mudblood to—"
"I thought perhaps you were trying to cultivate her friendship. In these new times," she paused, a distasteful bent to her mouth, "it might be wise to make some new allies."
"Not bloody likely. Granger hates me, and I wouldn't spit on her if she were on fire." The words came out familiar, mechanical and meaningless, and he resisted the urge to shake his arm until he vanquished the feeling of cradling her ridged shoulders. And then there was—but no, he banished all thought of their almost-kiss, awkward and pitiful and disgusting, yes, disgusting. "Besides, our paths aren't likely to cross, what with me being confined and all."
Draco should've remembered that she had a spectacular way of overturning his most basic assumptions. When Granger tumbled out of his fireplace the next morning and threw the house-elves into an uproar with the careless, not entirely unintentional, way she left a trail of scarves and mittens in her wake, he didn't know which emotion was stronger: anger or bafflement. Anger, as usual, won out.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he roared from the foot of the staircase overlooking the foyer, after he'd been tussled out of bed by a frightened house-elf jabbering inarticulately about some girl with all-over-the-place hair and pockets bulging with socks.
"Mr. Weasley gave me permission to Floo over," she announced perfunctorily, like invading his home was something she did everyday.
"Gave you—" he said, disbelieving. "I don't give a rat's arse if the Minister of Magic wrote you fifty permission slips by hand. Did it even occur to you that this is private property and you haven't got my permission?"
Granger tossed her head back, pert nose in the air. "Don't need it. Not while you're under house arrest at least."
"This seems to be a recurring problem for us, Granger," he managed through gritted teeth. "I ask you what the hell you're up to and you evade with the subtlety of a stampeding rhinoceros."
"All right," she snapped. "So I might have lied to you yesterday about why I came. The truth is . . . I've got your wand."
"What?"
She sighed impatiently. "Don't you remember? Harry disarmed you the last time we were here. He wanted me to return it if I thought you weren't likely to be the next raging megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur."
By the time she fell silent, his fingers were tingling, and he fisted them in the pockets of his silk pyjamas to hide his trembling. His wand! thumped his heart gloriously. No more cheap knockoffs that he couldn't use to charm his way out of a paper bag. Hawthorn, ten inches, whip sharp and humming warm in his grasp. "Where is it?" he demanded.
He saw her hand hover uneasily over the tote bag she had slung across her shoulder. In the next instant, he was diving for it. She cried, "Don't!" and stumbled, tripping over a snag in the carpet in front of the hearth. Granger's arm shot out, her fanned fingers clamping around his wrist for balance, and she would've made it if he hadn't already been running towards her. They went down together, clipping his shoulder against the marble chimneypiece as he crashed over her, stray elbow tipping over the urn of ashes his house-elves had apparently been collecting before Granger Flooed in, and they fled her blasted socks and scarves.
Grimy cinders rained down, most of it upended on Granger's head, splashing soot in his bone-white hair. She coughed and clawed the dust from her eyes, leaving trails of charcoal that gave her the appearance of a raccoon. "Get off!" she yelled in his ear.
He favored his throbbing shoulder and glared down at her black-streaked face, skin flushing puce when she saw that he was spread over her like a blanket, tangled in bony limbs and sharp corners digging into his ribs—probably a damned book, knowing her. For an unhinged moment, he wondered how far down the blush went, the beat in his wrists rioting at the glimpses of skin he caught above the neckline of her cashmere jumper. At this angle, it was impossible not to see that her mouth was still warm and dry and soft.
"Not until I get my wan—"
"I don't have it—"
"You're a horrible liar," he snarled, and smashed his mouth against hers.
It wasn't an accident this time. She went dead still underneath him; the clash of their teeth was painful, and that made it all right somehow. He kissed her harshly, gliding across slackened lips, not caring that he was smearing ash on his face because of course kissing Granger would be dirty business. Her mouth parted in surprise when his tongue swept along her lower lip, tracing the swelling warmth. He sucked on it once, twice and then bit her bottom lip. That got a reaction. She bucked beneath him and shoved, the palms of her hands splayed against his ribs, clawing black marks on the gray silk of his pyjamas.
He rolled obligingly to his side, clutching the strap of the bag she'd forgotten in her panic, but he didn't count on her quick reflexes. She caught the bottom of the tote, and when he wrenched back, the seam split; two books, several scrolls and a long, thin black box tumbled out. He snatched the box and popped off the top. His eyes widened. "What—?"
"I told you I didn't have it!"
He ground his teeth together. "Is this a knitting needle?"
Granger tore the metal rod from his hands. "That's none of your business, Malfoy!"
"Who the fuck keeps a single knitting needle in a box?"
"Apparently not lunatics who go around attacking people!" she yelled back.
"That wasn't an attack," he pitched his voice shrill, mocking, "it was a show of gratitude—"
She tried to stab him, and it was by the merest inch that he avoided getting knitting needle in the shoulder. "You crazy bitch," he breathed.
"That's right. Keep trying to slay me with your wit. I'll nick you, see if I won't, and it'll be no less than you deserve," said Granger, seething.
Draco watched her heft the needle like a dagger, looking like a deranged Amazonian smudged with war paint. Her feet were spread and knees bent prepared to lunge. He chuckled when he realized he was her reflection, barefoot in pyjamas and defensive stance, ready to dodge Granger's next demented jab. Then he thought about how they'd look to someone just walking in, two dirty combatants determined to draw blood in an arena of marble and glass and socks and scarves, and he laughed. It started quiet and wry, swelling louder when Granger lowered her arm, bewildered, until he was choking with mirth.
"What's so funny?" she demanded, incensed.
"Do you have any idea," his voice was almost indulgent, "how ridiculous you look?"
"You're one to talk!"
"Oh? At least I have the decency not to gatecrash your Muggle hovel and try to skewer you to death with a sewing implement."
"No, what you have is enough stupidity to believe I'd have your wand on me," said Granger, scornful. "It's the only bargaining chip I've got—of course, I wasn't going to bring it with me."
"What are you on about now?" he said, exasperated, raking a hand through his ashy hair. "I thought you were here as Potter's little errand girl."
"Hardly! He only suggested I give it back."
"Let me understand you. You weren't trying to psychoanalyze me in Azkaban, and you're not here to give my wand back," he recapped slowly, like she was hard of hearing. "Shit, Granger. If all you wanted was to provoke me into earning a return trip to Azkaban, you only had to hand over my wand and stand still."
She made a disgusted noise. "None of this is even about you. I just need a book from your library, and I'll trade your wand for it."
He didn't know what he was expecting, but this non sequitur was not it. "What?"
Granger held out the knitting needle. "You're unbelievably dense. Obviously, this isn't a knitting needle. I transfigured it to make it easier to carry."
"I was supposed to understand that you wanted to borrow a book," he said, incredulous, "from pestering questions about my father and you breaking and entering at an ungodly hour with mittens and a needle?"
"Okay, maybe not when you put it that way," muttered Granger.
"Here's a novel thought. Why don't you try stringing together words sane people can understand?"
She shot him a dirty look, like he'd assigned her a Herculean task. "Three months after we found the last Death Eater, I got a package in the post. It was from Dumbledore," she ignored his flinch and the tightening of his jaw, "and when I opened his letter, I found out it was a piece of Poseidon's trident."
"A what?"
"Dumbledore found it in Tutunendo, Chile while he was searching for Voldemort's Horcruxes. This is only the spear part." She pulled her wand from the torn tote bag and tapped the needle. It elongated into a silver pole tipped by a sharp arrowhead. Below it were two round holes, one bored into each side. "At the time, his highest priority was Horcruxes, so he never found the other two prongs."
A familiar knot twisted beneath his neck at the mention of Dumbledore, old and swaying and crinkled, pleading, dead blue eyes. Hearing the Dark Lord's name in the same breath—did Granger even know how close she was to tilting the room?—set off a shiver down his left arm, and he barely restrained himself from cupping the scar. He focused on the safer words. "Why Tutunendo?"
"I don't know. Maybe because Chile's along the coast and Tutunendo's the rainiest place in the world. It could be what the trident does," she shrugged, "make rain or something."
Draco made his voice placid, uninterested. "And you want the other two pieces?"
Granger nodded, absurdly casual, like she was agreeing to tea and scones. "In his letter, Dumbledore wrote I'd get this in the post if . . . if something happened to him and someone tried to use the other pieces."
"Why you?"
"I don't know," she answered, worrying her lip. "But I think someone's found another fragment and is trying to figure out how it works. Sometimes when I hold it, I feel so angry. I keep seeing flashes of a flat and once, I thought I saw the Restricted Section at Hogwarts."
"If all it can do is make rain—"
"That's all this part can do. But Dumbledore thought that each piece would have its own power. One of the missing bits could start a hurricane, for all we know." Granger took an eager step towards him. "That's where you come in. He listed a book in his letter, Relics and Artefacts from the Age of Gods. There're only three extant copies, and he wrote that your grandfather bought one at auction."
"And you want it to find the other pieces," he deduced flatly.
"Of course. The trident's dangerous!"
Draco snorted. "But it wouldn't be with you? You're assuming this other person's intending to kill people, you're assuming you're incorruptible and you'd never use it, and you're assuming that I'm going to help you. Those are a lot of assumptions, Granger."
It was almost comical how predictably she puffed up in outrage. "There's a reason Dumbledore trusted me with this," she pointed to herself; as opposed to him, loud and clear in her disdainful glance, "and the book's useless to you anyway. You didn't even know it existed until I told you. Let me have it and you'll get your wand back."
"And give you the power to start tsunamis? Not a chance in hell!"
"Stop pretending we're talking about you. Of course, I'm not keeping it," she said, annoyed. "I'm giving it to the Ministry after I find all the pieces."
"Is that right?" he said, arching a brow. "So why haven't you already?"
"Because Dumbledore gave it to me. This is just like when he wanted Harry to find all the Horcruxes. He's trusting me to see this through."
"And at last we get to the truth. Finally got tired of being the sidekick, Granger? Decided you wanted your own team name and cheerleading squad?"
"For the last time, I'm—not—you. Look, I don't have time for this. Are you going to let me have the book or not?"
"Sure," he drawled, "by all means, let's rummage through granddad's secret stash of priceless books. But I've got a couple conditions of my own."
"What else do you want?" asked Granger, suspicious.
"I want in on this heroic mission. I'll give you the book if we turn in the trident together, you get my mother more visiting permits and I have my wand back."
He was mildly surprised when she only lobbed another scathing look at him before nodding stiffly. He wondered what she was holding out on him; she'd given in too easily. "All right. Fine. Where's this . . . stash?"
"In the dungeons." Draco enjoyed her dark scowl. "Come along, then."
He spent a leisurely hour showering and getting dressed, savoring the mental image of Granger wearing a hole in the carpet downstairs with her incessant pacing. When he finally led her down to the dingy library his grandfather had hidden behind a wall, he had to endure her gapes and gasps at the sheer quantity of books on the Dark Arts.
"Take care what you touch in here," he advised snidely. "Old Abraxas wasn't much of a Muggle-lover."
Draco had known from the moment he'd shown Granger the secret library he'd have to Obliviate her. He was ready when she found the blasted book four and a half hours later, under The Little Compendium of Big Curses and Masquerading the Avada, and she had just enough time to flash him a brilliant smile, crooked and sappy and lit with triumph, before he snatched the wand from the back-pocket of her jeans and slammed her into the dusty shelves.
Angling the wand tip into her neck, he brushed aside the errant curls crowning her pale face and whispered, "You didn't really think I'd let you walk away, did you?"
Granger's eyes swept half-closed, her inky lashes quivering. "No. Not really," she said, and a sharp pressure hooked into his ribs.
The world exploded in white splotches, roaring pressure pulsing everywhere, and he didn't even know he'd collapsed to the ground until his vision lost its warble and the blurs around him became bushy-haired, brown-eyed, bane of his existence, Hermione Granger. "I guess," she said, crouched over him. "I forgot to mention the trident controls anything water-based."
"What did you do?" he croaked, body still tingling and ears buzzing.
"You know that feeling you get when your foot falls asleep? Well, I just did that. To all the blood in your body."
The bitch had the audacity to pat his cheek. Granger bent down and breathed into his ear, "I'm not so green you could pull one over me, Malfoy."
She pulled back, amused, and her eyes took on a devilish glint as they flicked down to his mouth, seeing lips curled over teeth in wrath. The bitch wanted to thank him again, lord it over him that she'd won. He read her intention a heartbeat before she kissed him, as soft and unrelenting as his kiss had been hard and punishing. He tried to turn his head, but she followed him, biting his lower lip to mock him. It began sloppy and wet, but somewhere between the burn of the first touch and the sting of her teeth digging into his lip, he felt her burrowing closer, deepening the friction of their grazing lips until he'd scraped and tugged and mapped every contour of her mouth with his tongue, sliding in and out, not caring that he was betraying what he really wanted, that this was only the preamble to how much closer he wanted to be.
Then the heat of her was gone. Granger scrambled to her feet and hovered wide-eyed over him, mouth lush and thoroughly kissed. Her throat worked convulsively. "You weren't supposed to—"
"Bit late for that, isn't it?" he said roughly.
She rocked on the balls of her feet, skittish as a doe, and then crushed her belongings—books, scrolls, trident, wand—against her chest. She swung away from him and darted out of the hole in the wall, the loss of her bittersweet.