during
Kissing Blaise became all of her days. He'd come up behind her as she wiped counters in an attempt to be more than a recovering victim and press his lips to her neck, trace his tongue along the lines of her throat, kiss her until she wasn't sure whether the weakness in her legs was because of what she'd suffered or what she reveled in. He'd scoop her up and press her back against a wall, her legs wrapped around his waist, as he tasted her whimpering mouth.
Draco just laughed at them both. She waited for him to jealous or spiteful or vindictive, but all he'd do was smirk at the way Blaise ran a hand possessively down the length of her back. She realized, however, how much they'd censored their own daily affection with one another in her presence now that they stopped, as if Blaise deciding she was there to be kissed meant he and Draco could now be more open in their own relationship. Blaise slid a hand across Draco's arse with the same casual air of ownership he did with hers. He walked up behind Draco and wrapped his arms around the other man and kissed his neck with the same relaxed pleasure he did with her. She expected to feel jealously that this very new beau was just as affectionate with Draco as he was with her but instead watching them together just made her happy.
There was so little joy left in their world. To reject any opportunity for happiness seemed like finally giving up.
after
He stopped her in the foyer and she made a show of rolling her eyes and playing the aggrieved housewife as he tugged her into a kiss. She pretended she wasn't cataloguing the ways he was still recovering, or checking for injuries as she ran a hand along his back, and he let her pretend. Things were still fragile. It was better not to push too much. Better not to probe too deeply.
during
She hadn't given thought to the way they had been effectively celibate since she'd arrived. The cottage allowed almost no privacy and with her in the only room almost all the time they'd been left to steal moments in the toilet or when she made a point of going out and sitting in the garden with her back to the windows.
Once Blaise was kissing her, that changed as well.
She walked out of the bath, her hair still dripping down her neck and soaking into her borrowed shirt and found herself staring at Blaise, naked and sprawled across the one couch, Draco's head at work. She forced her eyes to move back up across Blaise's torso, along muscles she'd run her own hands along, up to his face. His skin was perfect. Unblemished. He remained free of all the scars she bore, all the scars Draco bore.
She resented that a little even as she appreciated his appearance.
He smirked at her and she immediately dropped her gaze to her own bare feet. "I'm sorry," she mumbled. "I'll go… recondition my hair or I could - "
"You could watch." Blaise drawled out the invitation with delight and she jerked her eyes back up in surprise only to discover that Draco had pulled his head away from Blaise and she was greeted by the site of… she flung her gaze back at Blaise's face, sure she was redder than she'd ever been and feeling grateful she wasn't as pale as Malfoy, whose skin betrayed every blush. Blaise was more visually impressive than her admittedly not extensive previous experiences had led her to expect from a man.
"I," she began then stopped. She had no idea how to respond to that invitation.
"Oh, Granger," Draco said, "I'd be insulted if you weren't at least a little interested.
"Please stay," Blaise said. "Surely a little cock sucking isn't anything new to you." His coaxing tone didn't even try to conceal how much he was enjoying how awkward she felt and she squirmed at his amusement.
"I just," she said and yet again fell silent. Usually, in her experience, she hadn't exactly had a view when this had been going on around her because it had been her mouth.
"If you're really uncomfortable, we can stop," Blaise offered but, after a brief, guilty hesitation, she shook her head.
She still didn't move until Draco asked, "Afraid?" in his mocking voice and that was how she ended up sitting in her chair, licking her lips and trying to act like this was ordinary and unexceptional. Watch two men? Oh, that's something I do every day. This isn't at all uncomfortable. When she looked at Blaise's face he lifted a hand to his mouth and blew her a kiss and that little gesture brought a smile to her face and eased some of the tension in her shoulders. By the time Blaise fisted those hands in Draco's hair and lost himself in the other man's touch her own mouth was open and her breathing shallower as she watched. Her heart pounded and tingles danced along her nerves that, for once, weren't part of her ongoing struggle with the aftermath of her ordeal but a reaction to the scene playing out in front of her.
later
Hermione tossed the knife to Draco who caught it and said, "Do you have to be a walking menace?"
"Just chop the mistletoe berries and stop complaining," she advised, ignoring his exasperation. The man had been an athlete before he'd been a soldier. He knew how to catch things. "We're running low on Potions and you promised Blaise and me you'd help."
"Nag, nag, nag," Draco said as he chopped. "If I'd known rescuing you meant I'd endure twice the scolding, I might have reconsidered."
"Also twice the blow jobs," Hermione said as she grated the long-silenced mandrake root.
"You do make an excellent point," Draco said.
during
"How did you like watching us?" Draco teased. Hermione could feel her face start to burn again and she twitched her hip away from his fingers in irritation. Draco laughed and ran his hand back along her side before settling it back at her waist. This time she let it rest there without real any real objection.
"You're a jerk," she said.
She could almost hear him grinning in the darkness. "You say that as if it's some sudden revelation, Granger. When have I not been a jerk?"
"Prat," she said, but she inched toward him in their bed, unsure of whether she'd be truly welcome. They didn't cuddle, she and Malfoy. She sometimes cried on him, and he sometimes let his hands brush against her, but they didn't do anything as mutually vulnerable as cuddle. He seemed to freeze for a moment and then used the hand on his hip to pull her toward him and they shifted and settled until she had her head on his shoulder and her feet something akin to entwined with his.
"Not my fault you're a bit of a voyeur," he said once they'd turned to each other. His voice kept the same mocking lilt it often had but she could hear his heart racing.
"Well," she said. "Blaise is pretty."
"He is," Draco agreed.
She waited for him to say more, to do more. This seemed like the perfect opportunity for the man to kiss her if he were so inclined and when he didn't, when he just agreed that their mutual love interest was attractive, she felt a lurch of disappointment. That turned to annoyance when he added, "He doesn't quite need as much looking after as you, either."
"I don't need looking after," she said. Her feet took that moment to twitch, one of the periodic muscle spasms that lingered, and Draco snorted. She kicked him for real in retaliation.
"So violent," he said. "Did the good guys know how violent you are?"
"They were aware," Hermione said, her irritation at his heavy-handed desire to smother her tempered by amusement at the idea that a participant in a war wouldn't be violent. They were all violent now.
He took a deep breath. "You know you'll probably never be well enough to… I wouldn't want to send you out into a battle," he said. "If you twitched at the wrong time and lost control of your wand, or the fight went on and your stamina - "
"I'm not broken," she whispered into the darkness.
"No," he agreed, his voice sad and soft and so gentle she wanted to cry. She could handle Draco Malfoy mean and teasing and pratty. When he became kind, though, it was too much. "You are fragile now, though. More fragile than you were. Just…" He stopped, took another breath, and then, when he spoke again he was back to being obnoxious and smug and the tears that had been threatening to choke her slid back away and left her in peace. "You're just a pain in the arse who wants to fight all the evil Death Eaters."
"Evil Death Eaters like you?" she asked, keeping her own voice light.
"No, the really evil ones," he said and for a moment the darkness was weighed on her again.
"So, you then," she said and Blaise made a kind of choking laugh from the other side of the bed and Draco groaned and tightened his hand on her and a grin pulled at her mouth.
"You're going to be the death of me," he said. "Go to sleep, brat."
She did. She lay and listened to Draco breathe and to the sound of his heart and then she fell and fell and fell into the quiet and the darkness and there was nothing.
When Hermione's breathing had become the soft, regular pattern of sleep, Draco untangled himself, rolled onto his back, and reached for Blaise. When the other man had laced his fingers through his, Draco said, "I don't know how to do this."
"Me either," Blaise said. The lay there as the moon rose and the cold light reached across the room until it shone on the pair of them.
Draco spread a hand across Blaise's abdomen and felt the taut muscles Hermione had admired earlier. He looked at the way his pale skin contrasted to the other man and said, "I guess I have a type."
"You mean people who will put up with your shite?" Blaise asked. At Draco's half-swallowed agreement, he added, "So that's all of the two of us."
"You were easier," Draco said.
Blaise took the pale hand and lifted it to his lips. "Not really," he said. "You were just as bad at starting things with me."
"What if she says no?" Draco asked. "She's next thing to trapped here. I don't want her to feel - "
"She won't say no," Blaise said.
"I'd do anything to keep her safe," he said. "She's the light, Blaise. Saving her is only thing I've done in years that wasn't about survival and I… she makes me more than… I'd change hell to keep that true, even a tiny bit."
"I know," Blaise said. "I know who you are."
before
"We're never getting out," Draco said. He folded his face down into his hands. "You should take that portkey and go."
Blaise ran a hand along the back of Draco's neck. "It will be okay," he said. "Somehow it will all work out."
"Promise?" Draco asked, but the bleak tone didn't invite an answer.
during
Draco never tried to so much as kiss her. He just watched her and Blaise with some of the same happiness she felt when she watched them but under that there was a wariness she couldn't slip past. Whenever she tried to breach the wall he slid away, off to work, off to do some chore he'd made up, off to kiss Blaise. Days passed and she kissed Blaise and waited for Draco to indicate he wanted more, which he never did. They were friends, she supposed. It was more than she would have ever expected.
before
She lowered her wand and let out a slow breath as she looked at the body on the ground and waited for it to twitch or start to get up It didn't. Death had taken another one. "You okay?" Ron asked.
She shrugged. "I'm alive," she said.
He touched her shoulder and said, "The only really Unforgiveable thing would be letting those bastards, win. You know that, right?"
during
"You're cheating," Hermione said in outrage as Draco scooped the cards up after winning another hand.
"Technically," he said, "I am exploiting a loophole in the rules."
"Cheating!" she said again and turned to Blaise for support.
Instead of backing her up, however, he just laughed and pulled her onto his lap and after nuzzling her he whispered in her ear, easily loudly enough for Draco to hear, "He's a Malfoy, Hermione. They cheat at breathing. If you expect any of them to play fair, you're a fool. If Draco tells you the sun rises in the east, double check."
She laughed in delight and grinned across the table at Draco, who grinned back. They'd been playing cards since dinner and as the sun had gone down and they'd lit the lanterns their spirits had become lighter and lighter. Draco had survived another month; he'd wrangled being sent back to Hogwarts to continue cataloguing the accumulated and badly organized debris of centuries. That no one was in pain or preparing to go out on a murder spree felt almost like happiness.
"Nothing but a cheater? You make me sound the villain," Draco mock complained as he began to deal the next hand. His teasing laugh was cut off when his eyes fell on the Mark burned into his arm. He froze for a moment before laying the first card out in front of Hermione. "Of course, I suppose that's what I am."
Hermione set her hand on top of his and pressed it to the table.
"I think interfering with the dealer is against the rules, Granger," he said.
"I don't think it's mentioned, actually," she said. "So I'm exploiting a loophole."
"We are, then, at a bit of an impasse," he said, "as I can't deal until you remove your hand."
"You aren't a villain," she said.
"Do you want to know how many people I've murdered?" he asked her. She opened her mouth but before she could speak he said, "Seven. I have pointed a wand at someone seven times and uttered an Unforgivable Curse and seen a beam of green light end a person's life. The boy who shook at Hogwarts, afraid to kill an old man who had actually wronged him, he's gone, Granger. I'm gone and what's here is - "
"Not a villain," she said. "Not to me."
He took a deep breath. "Maybe," he said. "But I think we've already established you're a fool." He yanked his hand out from under hers, the violence of that motion at odds with the deliberate way he put the deck of cards on the table and the careful way he stood up. "I'm tired," he said. "I think I'll go get ready for bed."
He was halfway across the small, single room when Hermione caught him. He stopped when she put her hand on his back. "Do you think I fought for so long and never killed anyone?" she asked. He shook beneath her touch and she went on as ruthlessly as she ever had. "It might not have been avada kedavra, but they're just as dead. Tell me, Malfoy, am I a villain?"
He took a step away from her and she raised her voice. "I know you think I'm a fool and filthy and all the rest of it but tell me, Draco Malfoy, am I a villain? Because if you - "
"I think I'll take a shower," he said, still without turning.
"I will follow you," she said even more loudly and with that strain she could hear the rough burr in her voice emerge, the legacy of the damage she'd done to her throat screaming the night Draco Malfoy had brought her to his home. Draco visibly flinched at the sound. "I will follow you until you answer me. Am I a villain?"
"Hermione," Blaise began, but Draco had turned and she reached up the heel of her hand to wipe at the tear on his face.
"Because if you are," she said as he stood there. "I am."
Draco summoned a cocky smile that was perhaps a little bit tremulous but still managed to settle onto his face. "Would you really follow me into the shower, Granger?" he asked. "Doesn't seem quite your style."
When she nodded, her eyes glistening with her own unshed tears, he smirked, turned, and walked away with an affected, jaunty spring in his step. She gaped at his retreating back until the water began to run and he yelled out, "So about this wet discussion of my villainy? I'm waiting."
"I did warn you," Blaise said to Hermione as he began to pick up the cards. "But you keep assuming you can trust him to play fair." She looked at him, almost helplessly, until he added, "He also tends to hog the water, so don't be afraid to be pushy."
Gryffindor bravery won out over common sense and she found herself perched on the edge of the toilet as Malfoy acted liked showering in front of his house guest, or whatever it was she was, was a normal thing to do. She could see every last line of the man's body and she gave up even pretending she wasn't ogling him. Scars traced across his torso. He had as many, if not more, than she did, and the white lines seemed like the marks of an artist sketching out a history. That one was from school. That one from the time he'd come home, nearly fainting with blood loss, after Neville had attacked him. Others she didn't know.
He'd been slim in school, a wisp of an athlete. She'd known he'd filled out. Merlin, he'd dropped his trousers and waved his arse at her not long ago. Seeing the planes of his muscles as they rippled under the streams of water, however, was a different experience than helping him wash blood from a wound or even lying next to him in their bed. She wanted to splay her hands over the way his hips curved in toward… she yanked her eyes back to his face.
She was unsurprised to discover he was smirking at her.
"Getting in?" he asked.
"You are a presumptuous, overbearing - "
"Very cute."
" - arrogant, ridiculous bastard," she said. "But you are not a villain."
"You believe this why?" he asked her as he took a bar of soap and began lathering his torso and she thought that that really was rather unfair. How was she supposed to marshal her thoughts while he was doing that?
"Well, for one thing," she said, keeping her eyes above his waist. "No one's ever accused you of being one of the lower classes, even in the nearly feudal system the Malfoys seemed to still live within."
She tricked him into a laugh. "You are such an unbelievable, fucking swot," he said but the words sounded more admiring than anything else. "Fine, you win. I am not part of the lower social orders of the Middle Ages. Right." He pointed at the floor of the shower. "Now get in here."
"And you complain Blaise is bossy," she said, but even as she cursed herself for being so easy to manipulate, his sly comment that if she was afraid to get wet with the big bad Death Eater he'd understand had her shucking off her clothing and dropping them to the floor. The hot water made her jump a little and she almost slipped and Draco caught her. For the briefest of moments she saw his teasing, cocky facade drop and worry flash across his face before he edged back and ran a hand over her hip.
"You aren't as scrawny as you were," he said. "You didn't eat much on the run, did you?"
"Couldn't trust anyone," she said.
He ran a finger over the scar on her shoulder and she shivered. "You aren't a villain," he said. "Not you, Granger. Not ever you." He piled her hair on the top of her head, using several sticking charms to keep it tucked away and she laughed as he swore at yet another lock that sprang free. She didn't tell him the wandless magic impressed her but it did.
Draco Malfoy impressed her in a lot of ways and she didn't want to think too deeply about any of them.
Her hair somewhat mastered, he ran his hands down the length of her back and she gasped as they settled on her arse. "Blaise," she said, half in protest, half in worry.
Draco laughed and ran his fingers along her in a way that shocked her with the casual intimacy even as it made heat coil in her belly and moisture that had nothing to do with the shower appear between her legs. "You have the wrong one," Draco said. "Blaise is the dark one. I'm fair."
"Fair is what you aren't," she muttered.
"Mmm," was all he said to that as his fingers continued to explore and his mouth met hers. She lifted her hands, unsure and nervous because this couldn't be happening, and wrapped her arms around him and pulled him as close to her as she could manage as he thrust his tongue into her mouth and tasted her. To kiss Blaise was to melt into someone who combed out her hair and fetched her potions and teased and cared. She loved kissing Blaise. To kiss Draco was to be conquered.
She wasn't sure she cared for how much she liked that.
She pulled herself away from his mouth and his fingers and reached her own hand down. "Yes?" she asked him.
He opened his mouth and then closed it and leaned up against the wall. "I would never tell a lady no," he said. She watched his face as she slid her hand up and down the length of him. His smirk slowly faded as he closed his eyes and gave himself over to her touch and at last he came in her hands with a groan and she thought to herself she could own him as much as he could her.
"Are you two done yet?" Blaise asked from the door she'd left open. Hermione could feel guilt coil around her and start to squeeze until Blaise held out a towel for her. "You do have the best breasts," he said. "But, fuck, Draco. What did you do to her hair?"
Draco peeled an eye open and reached down to turn the water off. "It wanted to kill me," he said. "Her hair is a menace."
"You're a menace," Hermione muttered as she wrapped the towel around herself against the cold air.
"Yes," Blaise agreed. He took her hand and kissed it, his eyes on Draco. "But he's our menace."
. . . . . . . . .
A/N - If you are enjoying this, please let me know…
