Title: Full-frontal Accolade pour an Ashtray Slurping Callipygian Witch
For: *****
Rating: NC-17
Couple(s): Hermione/Draco
Summary: Potter was his new replacement cohort. Regardless of the fact that the dateless Boy Wonder came round the manor thrice a week for a match of pickup Quidditch, the crux of the matter remained that Draco Malfoy wanted his old partner back.
Warning(s): NC-17
Authors Note(s): I don't own anything, it's all JKR. Also, I really struggled with this piece… First time doing an exchange.
[Work.]
Scanning the dense foliage below, he dimly noted that his scuffed hessians needed a good polishing.
Magicked leather, by and large, required a tremendous amount of maintenance. Otherwise, one would find themselves in possession of nothing more than grungy, lusterless Dragon hide. A no-sheen appearance that his favourite auntie, Dromeda, oft referred to as "ratty tatty."
The same sort of ratty, he mused, that one would associate with the Weasel.
Yuck.
He still could not believe that Pansy Parkinson – spiteful, catty, socialite Pansy – would stoop so low as to canoodle with Weasel the Wet Noodle's doodle.
Putting such perverse, disturbing contents of cognition into obtusely framed, fatuous prose tended to quell his rather colourful imagination.
Damn Pansy for fueling his ragingly superfluous thoughts.
If he got drunk enough, which would most certainly be the case seeing as Weasel had insisted on providing the alcohol, he just might remind Pans that she used to shove dirt and flobberworm bits down her frilly knickers.
……....
Nail varnish.
The pathetic excuse of an alcoholic beverage tasted as if it had been supplied by that cheap, vile tavern Theo had rented out four months ago on behalf of his gent's night, The Happy Bacchus or whatever, and the reason he knew that the elderberry tasted like cosmetic lacquer was because when he was eight years and three quarters, he and Zabini had clambered onto his mother's prized rosewood Chippendale, tipped over the entirety of her Celestina Warbeck Beauty Batch satchel and found the swirling, iridescent contents of the vials to be endlessly fascinating.
And apparently, appetizing.
Needless to say, he'd blown chunks of Obscenely Opal for two days straight.
Shaking himself of the unbidden bout of nostalgia, he shifted in his seat and threw back the revolting contents of his glass.
He smacked his lips unbecomingly and shot Potter a derisive look, mentally adding 'atrocious seating chart arrangements' to his ever-increasing list of complaints that he would unleash upon Parkinson's disgustingly deliriously happy person just as soon as she'd be available.
Upon closer examination of his table, he discovered that Neville, who slouched in the seat across from him, was sporting a very interesting accessory on his left hand while Theo was engaged in a heated conversation with Potter on the cons of murtlap essence, tempting the bored persons of Zabini and Dean Thomas to migrate toward the congregation at the open bar.
Raspberry taffeta, creamy skin, slender legs, and a dainty arm curled around Roger bloody Davies pranced by his table, and that is the precise moment when Draco Malfoy's mood was shot straight to –
- "Hell," one slightly inebriated Blaise Zabini so eloquently intoned as he slid into the chair next to Potter.
Scarhead nodded emphatically. "She looks nice. What d'you reckon, Malfoy?"
"Spiffing," came the stiff reply.
……....
The chairs were ugly.
Well.
It wasn't so much as their appearance, more so the ghastly picture they presented.
Encased in too-slick satin the most impossible shade of golden beige and fuchsia, the splat was wrapped tightly in copious layers of lurid flamingo-coloured ribbon, and the backs of the Dantes displayed a bombastically ostentatious, gold-trimmed bow.
That meant six per table, fifty-four tables, and three hundred and twenty-four of the most repulsive, unsightly pieces of furniture he'd ever seen.
Not that he was surprised.
The betrothal shindig of Ronald Weasley and Pansy Parkinson was bound to be filled with peculiarities, but really now. Hideous.
Something not so repulsive was Roger Davies' Botticelli arm candy who, right at this moment, was flouncing toward his table.
Draco stared at her sullenly, wanting desperately to pull a Longbottom and sprawl in his seat in an undignified manner, limbs akimbo.
It occurred to him that he should be slightly worried about the fact that this witch made him feel so uncomfortably lugubrious just by her presence with another bloke, but he was too soused at this point to care much.
She plucked the booze from his fingers and downed it swiftly.
"Why aren't you twirling your skirts with the Magpies' latest Seeker? Indulge me Granger, because I'm curious – do you possess a fetish of some sort for the poor, unsuspecting eminent figures of our society's crème de la crème? "
He was a chatty drunk.
It was astounding how he was able to keep pace with his sesquipedalian narrations while thoroughly plastered.
She looked at him strangely.
"Well, you fell for it, didn't you?"
Whatever people fawned over her about, he would never know. She was a right snotty bitch, that Granger.
He cocked his head at her.
Gruffly, "You didn't answer my question."
A raised brow. Then, "Jealous?"
"Like you can't imagine."
And much to both their surprise, this was delivered with nary his usual dry, sarcastic tone.
……....
Draco stared at the flimsy scrap of lingerie in his hand.
He'd always pegged her as a virginal-white panty girl.
Then again, never in his wildest fantasies had he imagined her following him and then pinning him against the stall in the loo.
For Merlin's sake, his trousers were still around his ankles.
"Mm," she moaned, rubbing her breasts against him.
The door was locked, he was alone in the toilets with a highly aroused Granger, and he was pretty sure – scratch that, he knew that she wanted to bang him.
She placed wet, sucking kisses on his neck while he struggled to clear his head and figure out what the sober voice at the back of his head was saying.
Draco hesitated and then cleared his throat, whilst she eagerly pulled at his clothes.
Maybe he should make his intentions clear to her.
This isn't going to be a one-off thing, Granger. I like you too much, and I think that we would be good for each other.
Okay, no sounding like a poof.
"I don't want to be sappy or silly or corny -"
"- So, right to the point, let's do it, I'm horny!"
……....
He was pretty sure that no one had brought an outsider to see the family.
Certainly not the entire clan, anyway.
Not since seven years and four days ago when his distant third cousin once removed (from his father's side, naturally) ran away to Lima and started a Peruvian textile import facility that specialised in these darling, plaited teal-wool ponchos. Last he'd heard, Lyds and her Cuscan husband were doing swimmingly for themselves and were well on their way to becoming galleonaires.
Seeing as the poor bint also happened to be the great-great granddaughter of Draco's self-righteous, ill-mannered, sour puss of a great aunt, Elspeth, every raucous, drunken mess of a family reunion was met with smashed, sadistically gleeful Lydia-bashing. Oh, Great Aunt Elspeth still lamented with the numerous other wrinkly, liver-spotted Malfoys about the family's dwindling patrician gene pool.
Clamping his hand around her elbow, the unbidden paralleling of Granger to a sacrificial lamb
came to mind.
After all, Lydia had Alejandro - who, now that Draco thought about it, looked more like a saucy cabana boy more than anything really, which was probably why Elspeth always simpered to his face and bitched behind his tanned, brawny back.
His fiancée had Crumpled-Horn Snorkack shit going for her.
He wasn't going to bail her out of the Malfoy Inquisition.
What'd he look like? A martyr?
Draco most assuredly was not Saint Potter and so if his family were to desire roast Granger with their afternoon java, they could go right ahead and grill her.
He wouldn't do a thing.
….
Nibbling on a biscuit, he slanted his gaze toward the center of the table where he could just barely make out a bright pink Alice band.
He sure hoped she wasn't claustrophobic, and if she was then too late because the intimidating, svelte figures of his aunties were clustered around Granger tighter than nifflers on a sickle.
At seven minutes and thirty-eight seconds past eight, Draco was unceremoniously jerked out of his seat on the sofa and told to bid his farewells to the kinfolk who had raised him.
And just when it had been getting fun.
No really; dear cousin Mildred had been telling him of her latest dalliance with an Egyptian Urine Specimen Collector.
Though why Millie would go for a bloke like that was beyond him, and –
His metaphorical train of thought abruptly came to a screeching halt as the normally dulcet tones of his beloved lady friend harped and squawked at him.
When she had uttered a particularly emasculating insult that almost stung physically - like that one time when he'd been dumped with feisty little Teddy Lupin who had bitten Draco's unfortunate person on a full moon – he simply had to draw the line.
He held his hand up, stopping her mid-rant.
"Men," he smarmed, "are rugged, dapper, perspicacious, clever, and extremely awe-inspiring among countless other things that I cannot seem to come up with at the moment and I would thank you not to compare my wide, multi-faceted emotional range to a teaspoon."
She bared her teeth at him viciously, and he recalled a rather unpleasant occasion that had involved him, Pansy, and a popped cherry.
But not Pans' cherry.
That would just be so gross.
He was rudely yanked out of his inner debate on how exactly the cherry had been popped by Granger's loud, incessant harping.
"Men," she seethed, "are like laxatives. They irritate the shit out of you."
He stared at her, bewildered.
"What's a laxative?"
She threw her arms up and stomped off.
….
Fifteen minutes later, he found her pilfering about in the second smallest library located four corridors and three kitchens away from the main foyer.
Upon questioning her, in true Malfoy fashion, on her presence in said library, she indignantly shrieked that no, she was not filching the latest edition of Hogwarts, A History nor was she there for a late evening of philandering with his grabby, lecherous Great Uncle Octavian, but she was lost and would he please – and this was said in a more sheepish, subdued tone –help her find her way back and Draco, she'd be ever so grateful, really.
Uh huh.
"Okay," he replied with a long suffering sigh, "but you'll have to make off with your seven centimeter ceramic centaur. I have yet to find a suitable gift for Weasel's bachelor party."
Silence.
Frustrated, she pulled at her thick, cognac curls.
"Fine. Which one?"
"The checkered one you got from Acapulco. Organza lava-lava included."
Granger reluctantly acquiesced, and he reminded her that the negotiations were to benefit them both, weren't they?
She did not yet have the Malfoy name, meaning no Apparition in or out of family grounds, so he had had to lead her through the maze of a mansion all the way to the front doors.
He really didn't want to tell her that she'd been four lefts and six rights away from the entrance.
She probably wouldn't be too thrilled.
……....
As Teddy squirmed in his lap, Draco squeezed his eyes shut when he came to the agonizing conclusion that he should have used her current job as a bargaining chip instead.
"…we are gathered here today to witness – "
He opened his eyes to a silvery grey pair identical to his own, except the ones before him were larger and had a mischievous sparkle to them.
Teddy clutched Draco's cravat in his chubby hands, threatening to cut off his air supply.
"Uncle, they're not going to kiss are they?!" he whispered, scandalized.
He politely told Theodore to shush, handed the bambino a lolly, and went back to the dilemma at hand.
Granger had quit the Auror Office months prior to pursue her near hopeless crusade in the promotion of elfish welfare. She had been his partner, then jolly Potter just had to go and give their department a damned Christmas bonus, and here they were now.
Oh well, he'd fix it.
So what if her misconstrued, jaded dreams were to be sacrificed in the process of getting him what he wanted?
Now, one may be wondering as to what far-reaching extent that Draco Malfoy's selfishness exceeded.
As the Prophet had liked to claim fifty-two months ago, 'he truly was a dastardly man.'
No shit.
After ruminating on the matter for quite some time, he decided to simply just ask.
He turned to his left, where the plague of his ponderings sat, dabbing her face.
"Granger," he hissed, shaking her arm. A blotchy, tear-stained face turned to him.
Oh great. She was all emotional.
"Yes?" she sighed breathily.
"You may now kiss –"
"– Will you –"
"– the bride."
"Yes," she gasped, clutching the front of his once crisply-pressed robes.
What he'd been about to inquire was if she were willing to re-trade out Weasel's poofter pony toy for a renewed partnership.
What? Did she think he was going to propose again?
Daft bint.
