The Alkahest

Chapter Twelve: Activate The Pods

The dress was another simple affair, with capped sleeves and a hem that ended just below her knees. It fit her rather snugly, though, and she inspected herself in the mirror for a long time, until Draco had finally knocked on the door and asked what the bloody hold-up was.

"I don't know about this dress," she said.

The door opened, and she rolled her eyes. No sense of propriety or personal space at all. Draco sauntered into the room, his hands in his pants pockets, and eyeballed her thoroughly. "What's wrong with it?"

"It's just rather... form-fitting," she mumbled, reddening a bit.

He looked at her a moment, and then grinned. "You think your hips look huge," he said, pointing at her. He started laughing as she glared at him through the mirror's reflection, her face burning red. "What did I tell you about letting my mother's little comments get to you?"

She remained silent, glaring at him steadily. His laughter calmed, and he stepped up behind her. "Look. See all this fancy embroidery up here?" He reached around her, drawing his finger along the collar and the sleeves. She held her breath a bit, feeling like a randy teenager for a moment. And she certainly didn't miss his self-satisfied smile as he noticed her reaction. "It's there to draw attention up, away from your hips. To balance you out. My mother picked this out; she wouldn't have picked out something that didn't make you look good."

"I wish I could stop thinking about these stupid hips," she muttered.

He stepped up, his body flush against her back, and put his hands on her waist. She stared at their reflection as he spread his hands down, fingers first, pressing his palms over her hips. He leaned in, pressing his lips up to her ear as he whispered, "I quite like these hips."

"Keep it in your pants, Malfoy," she said, although her voice was a little airy. She gasped as he dug his fingers in a bit, pulling her hips back against him.

His voice in her ear murmured, "Draco."

"Draco," she corrected, in an even breathier tone. She was going to look back on this moment when she was more herself and want to smack herself. She felt like Lavender bloody Brown.

Smirking a bit in victory, he released her, and in turn she released the breath she hadn't realized she'd still been holding. "We should really go. We're going to be late as it is," he pointed out, heading for her hallway.

Hermione stared at her flushed reflection. God help her.

0o0o0o0o0o0

The restaurant defined "haute cuisine." Hermione had actually balked at the door upon going in; her hair was still a bit of a mess and she hadn't put on a bit of make-up. All she had between her and the judgmental stares of every patron in that restaurant was a dress.

Draco, of course, wasn't hearing any of it, and dragged her in by her hand. They earned some curious looks as they were led to their table, which he (naturally) ignored utterly.

She was still red by the time she sat down. "I still wish you'd let me go back to at least put on some mascara."

"Your eyelashes are dark enough."

She put her napkin in her lap, rolling her eyes. Men. Even when they were as knowledgeable and fashion-conscious as Draco, they were still bloody idiots. Opening the menu, she perused it, considering the options carefully.

When the waiter arrived, Draco started to order, in French. When he ordered for her, though, she jerked her head up.

"That's not what I want," she said, blinking.

He stared at her. "Can you read that?" he asked, incredulously.

She made a face at him, turning to the waiter and speaking in fluent, if somewhat accented, French: "Actually, I would love to try the duck confit. Is it good?" Feeling smug at Draco's taken aback expression, she engaged in a lovely conversation with the waiter and ordered her own dishes before handing him the menu.

"I..." Draco paused. "Did not know you were bilingual."

"Tri. I speak Spanish as well," she said, glibly. "Honestly, Draco, what did you think a 'swot' like me filled her time with, if not snogging all the boys in school?"

"Did you snog any boys in school?"

She pursed her lips. "I had some kisses," she said, with a shrug, looking around the restaurant.

"With?"

"None of your business."

"So, no one," he drawled. When she just shrugged again, his eyes narrowed. "I'll guess, then. Krum."

She smiled, but refused to dignify it with an answer.

"Weasel."

She blinked slowly, batting her eyelashes at him as she continued to smile silently.

"Tell me," he demanded.

"No," she said, calmly. "My kisses are mine and I don't like sharing."

The waiter returned to pour their wine, and Draco considered her across the table. When the waiter poured the little tasting portion in his glass, he picked it up – not taking his eyes off of her – and smelled it. Then he nodded, and the waiter turned to pour her glass before filling Draco's the rest of the way up. After he left, Draco said, "What's your favorite wine?"

"Brunello."

"Italian," he scoffed. "Always overdoing it. I like to be seduced by a wine, not punched by it."

She took a sip of the wine he'd chosen – a Bordeaux. "I suppose French wine is vastly superior?" she asked, with a faint hint of mockery, and smiled when he nodded somberly. "Well, if I must limit my favorites to a single country, I prefer the Rhone."

"Really. I thought you would be a Burgundy girl."

"Oh, I hate Pinot Noir," she said, wrinkling her nose. "The Chardonnay is alright, I suppose. I like red wines better. Why did you think I preferred Burgundy?"

He shifted his shoulders a bit in a faint shrug. "It's light and refined."

"I am certainly not either of those things," she said, laughing. "You know, someone once told me they had a saying about French reds. Want to hear it?"

He inclined his head, watching her with a faint smile on his face.

"So, it goes, Bordeaux is the girl your parents want you to marry," she said, slowly. "She's structured and refined and perfect in every way. But Burgundy's the girl you fall in love with, the artist, the wandering spirit – she's kind and gentle and delicate, like a little bird. And the Rhone." She smiled, a little wickedly. "Is the woman you cheat on them both with."

Draco's own smile widened. "And why is that?"

"Because she's wild, and sexy, and hard to ignore. She's the kind of girl who swears in polite company and wears short skirts and bright lipstick." She settled back in her chair.

"You are certainly no Rhone."

"No," she agreed, readily. "Ginny would be the Rhone. But she set her sights on Harry and he didn't have any parents to disapprove of her, so..."

Draco chuckled, warmly. "Then what are you?"

Hermione hesitated. "I don't know. I guess I'm not any of them," she admitted. "I'll be a German Riesling. Frosty and difficult."

He sobered. "No. I think you were right the first time. Brunello. That's you. A wine that can be a little rough around the edges, but it's bright and full of sunshine and appealing to almost everyone."

Wow. She inhaled sharply, and cast him a suspicious look. "You know, I almost don't know what to do with myself if you're not insulting me."

"I'm sure I'll manage to do so before the evening is over."

"No rush," she assured him, throwing her hands up in surrender.

0o0o0o0o0o0

After dinner, she'd been so stuffed she decided to walk home, and Draco – acting the part of the gentleman he insisted he was – walked with her. "Draco, did you date a lot before this law?"

He frowned a bit. "Somewhat. But it's different than what you do. It's not dating, it's courting. It's a little more formal. You still go out to dinner, but usually you have to go with another pair of adults – typically married – to act as guardians to the girl's virginity. You can still meet up alone, but only at your house or theirs, so someone's always watching to make sure you don't do anything inappropriate. I've been on normal dates, too, with girls of less refined breeding, but my parents always made it quite clear that marrying them was out of the question."

"Too bad for them about this law, then," she joked. "I wish I had a snapshot of their face when they walked into that conference room and saw me."

He opted not to respond to that. "Did you?"

"Go on dates? Sure, plenty of them. I always hate the first couple, when you're still awkwardly getting to know each other. But the later ones can be boring, too. My favorites are the fourth through the eighth ones, when you're still getting to know each other but you're familiar enough that it doesn't feel strained."

"That's very specific."

"When have you known me to be less than specific?"

He inclined his head. "Touche."

"So when you went on normal dates, what were they like?" she wondered. She was curious to know if his idea of 'normal' was the same as hers.

Looking up at the night sky, he thought for a moment, lazily picking out some of the constellations. "We'd usually go out to eat, or perhaps to a coffee shop. Maybe a play. Usually we didn't have chaperones, so there was a fair amount of snogging and having frantic sex in coat rooms – don't look at me like that, Hermione. Do you know how hard it is to have a shag when you live with your parents?"

"Poor thing," she said, sarcastically. "Why don't you just move out?"

Draco shook his head. "You can't. Purebloods don't move out until they're married. It's how it's always been."

"I swear, it really is like you're all stuck a few centuries behind the rest of the world," she murmured. "I can't imagine how you live like that. I'd go absolutely mad."

"So Muggles are like you? They live by themselves, all of them?"

"Well, most of them. It's normal to move out from your parents when you become a legal adult," she said. "Or maybe after you finish uni. And then you can live with roommates, people who share the rent with you, or sometimes you live with your boyfriend or girlfriend."

"You'd be allowed to live together, even if you weren't married?" he asked, surprised.

She blinked. "Sure, people do it all the time. Marrying is a big step. Sometimes you're ready to live with each other but not quite ready to become completely legally entwined."

"Did you live with the Weasel, when you were dating?"

Hermione cleared her throat, embarrassed. "No. Actually, it was something of an elephant in the room with us. He hinted at wanting to move in a lot, but I didn't want to have to give up my space. I can be rather selfish, I suppose."

Draco fell silent, thinking that over as they walked. She was happy to fall into a companionable silence with him, enjoying the cool night air.

As they turned onto the street with her flat, she said, "When Muggles have dates, usually it's to go out to eat or to the cinema or something. You go out and do the activity, and then usually the bloke walks the girl to her door, or drives her there, depending."

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, and saw he was watching her closely. She continued.

"Usually, when they reach her door, they have a good-night kiss. Sometimes, she brings him inside and there's more than that."

"I see," he murmured. She let him into the building, and they walked up the stairs to her flat. As they reached her door, she turned to face him. The intensity of his gaze stole her breath, and she chewed her lower lip. He leaned in a bit, propping his hand against her door and crowding her a little. "How does he know if she wants to bring him inside for more?"

She swallowed. "The kiss is really, really good, and she opens the door and pulls him inside."

He leaned in, brushing his lips against hers. "Does it go something like this?"

"That's a good start," she breathed, and grabbed his shirt to pull him the rest of the way in. His mouth opened, tongue teasing at her lips until she opened up, too. He pushed her up against the door, groaning softly in his throat as he flattened his body against hers.

She pressed back, arching her back a little, until she knew she had to open the door and let them inside before they did something indecent out in the hallway.

Still kissing him, she scrambled to unlock her door blind, and managed to get it open, stumbling backwards into her flat. He gave her no quarter, following her closely and kissing her frantically, his hands exploring anywhere and everywhere they could reach. Hermione kicked the door shut, and walked backwards down the hallway, towing him along with her. She pushed his robe off his shoulders, leaving it crumpled on the floor outside the kitchen.

Then they were in her bedroom, and he was pushing her onto her bed, his palms smoothing up her legs and gathering the material of her dress as he pushed it upwards.

She had to break the kiss to reach behind herself, trying to undo her own zipper. Finally, he helped her, and she shrugged the shoulders of the dress off before pulling his head back down for another heated kiss. Then she worked on getting his clothes off, too, and managed to divest him of his shirt moments before he was able to pull her dress completely off.

His lips traveled down her neck, his hands roughly roving over the newly bared skin of her ribs. He pressed a few hot kisses against her collarbone and then further down.

Then he stopped. "What is this?" he asked, lifting a small brown pod from her cleavage. It seemed to be hanging from an invisible wire.

She gasped, horrified. As he pressed on the pod curiously, she exclaimed, "No! Don't!"

Too late.

"RAPE! MURDER! ARSON! SOMEONE HELP ME PLEASE!"

Draco stumbled back, his eyes going wide as he fell to the floor on the side of the bed. Cursing, Hermione scrambled to find her wand in the pile of their clothing, as the pod screamed bloody murder. Finally, she found her wand and turned it on the pod, muttering a short phrase to get it to stop.

The silence that followed was deafening. Hermione sat on the edge of the bed in her underwear, stricken with mortification as Draco stared up at her with his jaw hanging open.

After several long moments, he asked, "What the bloody hell was that?"

0o0o0o0o0o0

The mood was effectively ruined after that. She'd explained that it was something she'd bought from George, sort of like a Muggle rape whistle. Then she'd had to explain what a rape whistle was.

Finally, he'd asked her why she'd felt the need to purchase a wizarding rape whistle.

Her silence was damning. He'd stared at her, his expression slowly changing as he realized, and then he'd muttered a curse and started gathering his clothes. She just sat on her bed, pressing her face into her hands while in her underwear, as he got dressed and stormed out of the flat.

The next morning, she got an owl explaining that he wouldn't be able to make it to coffee that day.

The morning after that, she got an identical one.

She didn't see him for the entire week. And she wasn't prepared for the realization that not only did it hurt, she also missed him and his stupid spoiled brat attitude. She tried sending a tentative owl asking if he was free for lunch, but the terse reply had simply apologized and explained that his schedule was completely full.

Hermione didn't try again after that.

0o0o0o0o0o0

"You are in a foul mood," Ginny observed. They were both swinging on the swings at a park near 12 Grimmauld Place as James played tag with Albus on the grass. "Are you even listening to a word I'm saying?"

Hermione blinked, turning to her friend as she struggled to figure out what the last thing said was. "Uh, yes, you were... Talking about the snitch?"

"Nice try," Ginny grumbled. "Come on, where's your head at? I didn't bring you out with me so I could talk at a dummy."

The curly-haired witch sighed, leaning back in the swing until her hair skimmed the ground. "It's Malfoy," she finally said, in a miserable tone. "No matter what we do, we always seem to bollocks it up with each other. He's not speaking to me right now."

"Do I even want to know what you did?"

Hermione straightened, and explained everything – she'd kissed Malfoy last Sunday, the drawing room, their intense conversation on Monday and the snogging session that followed it, then the date, and then the almost-sex.

Ginny's jaw was hanging open by the end of it. Then she leaned over and started smacking Hermione on the shoulder and arm.

"Ow! Ginny, stop it!" she complained, trying to push her swing away.

"I can't believe all of this has been going on and you haven't even told me!" Ginny yelled, outraged. "I am your best and only girl-friend, and you have just broken the Sacred Girl Code of sharing."

"There's no such code."

"There is, and you can ask any girl in the whole world and they'll know exactly what I'm talking about," the redhead insisted. "You snogged Malfoy. That is humongous news that I had a right to the second it happened. And you failed me."

Hermione twisted her swing around, letting the chains tangle up with each other over her head. "Well, now he won't even return my owls, so you didn't miss much."

"You shouldn't take advice from George, anyway. What were you thinking?"

"It was Bill's idea to ask George!" Hermione defended, scowling. "And I was scared. That was before I got to know him, and he was being a scary prat."

"Well, now he's a prat with hurt feelings."

"I don't actually need to feel worse," she snipped, glaring at Ginny. "You don't have to be on his side to try and help me understand why I'm mean. I already know. I get it."

Ginny pursed her lips. "I'm just saying, no one likes being accused of being a rapist. Former Death Eater Draco Malfoy probably dislikes it more than most people. Wasn't that something they were said to do at those 'revels' they had? He probably saw it more than once."

"You don't think he participated?" Hermione asked, sharply.

Ginny shrugged. "I can't see him participating," she said, thoughtfully. "He was just a kid, then. He was probably sick to his stomach. Malfoy's always been a git, but he wasn't... I don't know. He wasn't evil like that."

"But you don't have to be evil to do evil things." Unsettled, Hermione diverted her gaze to James and Albus playing. "You just have to be appropriately susceptible to peer pressure and running with the wrong crowd, and by all accounts Malfoy seemed to be both of those things at the time."

"Well, I don't know. I try not to linger too long on thoughts of the Ferret's inner workings. Weasleys and Malfoys just don't understand each other," Ginny said, shaking her head.

Hermione lifted her feet off the ground, letting the swing spin her around as it righted itself. "I don't think anyone understands the Malfoys. Every time I think I might understand him a little, I see something else and I realize I never really understood him at all. I can never tell if I'm looking at some persona he created or the real him."

"Maybe there is no real him, and it's all just a bunch of personas. Maybe you're going to lift all these masks off him one by one, and finally, underneath every mask, there's just a big, fat nothing."

She shot Ginny a glare. "You have a real talent for being the least comforting person possible. Honestly. You should open up a stand on the street selling the world's most negative therapy."

"They always say: Do what you love, and the money will come," Ginny said, grinning.


TBC...