Alpha'd by jamethiel

Beta'd by Pidanka and jamethiel

This follows from another common and natural necessity: a prince is always compelled to injure those who have made him the new ruler [...]

– The Prince, Niccoló Machiavelli

Draco Malfoy was halfway through seducing his wife on the kitchen table when the owl arrived.

It would not be ignored, despite Draco's swearing and threats.

"It's from Potter," Draco said, ripping the wax seal with his teeth. His other hand was otherwise occupied. He nudged the parchment open with his nose and perused the contents.

"What is it?" Hermione asked, breathlessly. This breathlessness was possibly because he had two fingers buried inside of her and had been edging her to orgasm for the last ten minutes, give or take a second or two.

"I am being summoned. I put a request in with Potter last week, and it seems to have come to fruition. I shall have to deal with this today. Which does mean," he said, looking down at her through seductive and heavy-lidded eyes, "I will not be able to take the time I wanted to this morning."

"If we need to stop –"

She moved to sit up, but he pushed her back down, Potter's letter falling from his hand.

It astounded Draco that not even injury or sickness could stop Granger mid-shag, yet one missive from precious Potter could have her calling the whole thing off.

"Oh no," he said, and he slid his fingers out of her. "You are not going anywhere. I am not about to have Potter prevent me from shagging my wife." He took hold of her waist and pulled her towards him until his cock was sliding along her entrance. He pushed into her, and felt a little dizzy from the wet warmth that engulfed him.

No one quite had a cunt like his wife's.

"Why didn't you reply to my owl?" Potter barked at him the moment he walked into the Auror's office. Barked really was the only way to describe the snapping, snarling tone of Potter's voice.

"I was otherwise occupied," Draco said, thinking back to the delicious half an hour he'd spent in his wife. She was fast becoming his favourite place to be on Earth. He spread his hands, presenting himself. "I am now here."

"It's about your father." Potter was scowling. It seemed that being a hero was not only a tremendously weighty responsibility, it also led to wrinkles and premature aging.

Draco refused to scrunch his nose. Malfoys, like wine and whiskey, always aged well. "Well, I presumed it was. I didn't think this was going to be a social visit."

"I put your request through to the Minister," Harry said, sitting and shuffling through piles of paperwork. Potter's filing system seemed to consist of stacking all the papers, like stalagmites, into heaps. Judging by the papers which littered his floor, a few of these heaps seemed to have given up the ghost and acquiesced to gravity.

"Are you looking for something in particular?" Draco asked, crossing his legs and balancing one foot on Harry's desk.

"No." Harry didn't look up from the pile he was excavating. "Remove the foot, Malfoy, or lose it."

Draco lowered his foot.

Potter seemed to be in a more than usually bad mood, and Draco would prefer not to be on the receiving end of whatever was pissing off Mr. Potter. Although Draco would be willing to bet that it might be She-Potter and whatever mad midnight cravings she was having.

Hermione would never be like that. Hermione would plan ahead for any cravings and problems she might have during pregnancy. No. There would be no midnight dashes to the deli for pickles and ice-cream for Draco Malfoy.

"What did the Minister decree?" Draco rested his foot on his knee.

"You can see him tomorrow." Potter's irritatingly firm chin firmed even further, even more irritatingly.

"Who? The Minister or my father?"

Draco was aware he was being provoking, and the slightly less generous of nature might dub him a prat, but there was something so delicious in making the triad of veins on Potter's forehead protrude further until they resembled what can only be described as a 'personal triumph'.

Maybe if Potter hit him, he could claim compensation? Or sell his story to the tabloids for a ridiculous sum of gold? Or perhaps, on seeing his battered and bruised face, Hermione would fling aside any tender feelings she had towards Potter, and place him in the centre of her affections.

Then again, Potter might just bang him up for disturbing the peace (the peace in this case, being his peace of mind), and Hermione might just say he'd deserved it and commend Potter for not causing Draco even more bodily harm.

"Your father." Harry's eyebrows snapped together like two caterpillars going through their teenage goth phase.

Draco heroically resisted the urge to pass Potter a gift certificate to a beauty salon. "If I may ask, what did you have to do in order to allow this to occur?"

"No." Potter folded his arms repressively.

"No?" Draco raised an eyebrow, refusing to be repressed.

"No, you may not ask." Potter closed a folder with a heroic snap and sat back, fixing Draco with what Draco recognised as an Auror's Stare, his mouth pressed together as if to mimic the hard line of the law. This is not to be confused with the Cop Stare, which is purely an American creation seen most acutely in Muggle daytime television movies. During Hermione's illness isolation, he'd come to see more than a few of these supposed entertainments. Hallmark had a lot to answer for.

"Your job," Harry said, "is to find out information about the illegal Portkey activities and whatever your father might know about that bull statue."

Draco pursed his lips, noticing a small scuff on his shoe. "And if he requires something in return?"

"This isn't a negotiation, Malfoy." Potter's Stare intensified. "If your father isn't going to talk, then there's no point in you seeing him again."

"What if I told him –" Draco lifted his hand to do some airy wave to accompany his suggestion of harmless information and light gossip which he might pique his father's interest with when Potter interrupted him.

"No." Harry didn't shout – his voice was too low and controlled for that – but he looked like he wanted to. "Listen to me. The point of this is not a family visit. It is to find out information. Nothing more. If your father doesn't cooperate, then you're to leave."

Draco raised an eyebrow. "Am I allowed to tell him about myself?" he said with matching frostiness.

"You can tell him whatever you want about you. I don't care. But beyond what you need to say about Paris and Berlin, you are not to give him any information which he could use."

"How can he use anything? If you have failed to notice, which I doubt considering you were at his sentencing, he is in Azkaban. Probably shackled with some very strong anti-magic chains." Draco raised his hand again, but this time he flicked his wrist and lifted his palm in a shrugging motion. "What do you expect him to do? Swap secrets with the guards? Or barter extra rations by whispering gossip between the prison bars?"

"Shut up. Now." Harry looked like he wanted to slap the desk. Or perhaps just slap Draco. The effort of refraining was making his eyes bulge slightly, inducing him to look like a bespectacled goldfish.

Draco wished Potter wouldn't.

His heart was pounding, and he could hear the blood rushing through his ears like the beat of a Muggle rave.

He would love it if Potter hit him.

Just one hit.

Perhaps, then, Draco could return the favour.

No.

Draco lowered his hand and placed both of his hands on his lap. Palms down.

For one thing, Draco thought, as he watched Harry's fingernails bluntly scrap at the top of the desk, the Ministry would be down on him faster than he could say 'Quidditch'. For another, he would never get to see his father as he was sure that privilege would be revoked if he punched The Chosen One on the chin. A third reason to not play fisticuffs with Potter was that his wife would kill him. He wasn't even exaggerating there. He would be dead and buried before the day was out, and he doubted anyone would ever find his body.

"I understand," Draco said and rose from his chair.

"Good. Get out."

Harry pointed to the door, which seemed entirely unnecessary as Draco was obviously already leaving. However, if it made Potter feel any better, then Draco supposed he could leave the office without uttering the last word.

As he closed the door, he caught the slightest tremble in Potter's outstretched hand.

As a fairly accomplished potions master, Draco diligently read the instructions three times before starting. However, he still glanced at the book one more time to check just how many times he needed to stir the liquid anticlockwise.

As he'd expected, it was indeed twenty-eight times. Draco counted under his breath as he smoothly moved the copper rod around the cauldron.

The potion had started as a milky grey, but as it simmered, it was changing to a shade of blue. Cerulean might be the best name to give the shade. The colour might be appealing, but the smell was awful. A mixture of boiled seaweed and socks. He was quite thankful he wasn't the one who was going to have to be drinking this stuff. Although he'd just bet that Granger was going to be in an even more foul mood once she'd chugged this back every morning and night.

"Is it ready?"

He waited until he'd finished his count before turning around. She really was a beautiful creature. Her hair loosened and messily dragged back away from her face, and her strict work robes swapped for Muggle clothing which clung to her hips and thighs in a way which made Draco want to ignore the brewing fertility potion and take her up to bed.

"Not quite," he said, stoking the fire and letting the potion simmer. "But the complicated part is complete."

"Great," she said, sounding anything but. She leaned against the kitchen doorway, surveying the mess he'd made of the kitchen.

"How are you?" He started to wave his wand in the direction of the countertops. Slices of mandrake root, droplets of evening primrose oil, the glittering grains of powdered unicorn horn, and the scattered remnants of pomegranate seeds, open and bleeding, flew into the sink.

"A little tired." As if to prove so, she rubbed a hand across her eyes. "I'm meant to go over to Ginny's and help build the crib."

"Beg off it." He approached her until only a foot of tiled floor separated them.

Her eyes widened a little, but settled back into their usual narrowed suspicion. "I can't."

"I am sure you can." He stopped himself from adding 'because you're Hermione Granger'.

"I said I would."

"I'll cook. You can put your feet up, and maybe," he waggled his eyebrows in a salacious manner, "maybe read a book." He glanced back to the potion, which was bubbling nicely. "The potion is going to have some nasty side-effects."

She sighed, and he knew he'd won.

"How did your meeting with Harry go?" She swivelled her fork into the spaghetti bolognese.

Draco had opted to try out one of the recipes by an acclaimed Muggle chief; however, Draco had chosen to take the book's title 'The Naked Chef' as figurative rather than literal. The idea was not unappealing, given the right sous chef, however.

"Very well," he said. Technically not a lie. For him and Potter it had been a very cordial meeting. "Potter valiantly stopped himself from causing me any physical harm." Draco gave her a thin-lipped smile. "You would have been very proud of him."

"Did he manage to sort your request?

"He did," he said, but seeing her questioning eyebrow he continued, "I am unsure if I am allowed to divulge any other information."

Hermione gave him a Look. It was underpinned and emphasised by the violence she was visiting on the pasta. Draco was almost proud that his wife's Look had even more of a profound effect than Potter's Stare.

"Then again, thinking about it," he said, quickly swallowing his mouthful, "I'm sure he wouldn't mind me telling you. Potter has been kind enough to inquire if I might pay my father a visit tomorrow."

"What?" she said, and her mouth fell into a perfectly shaped O.

"Potter feels, and I agree with him, that if anyone is going to have knowledge about all the goings on in Paris and Berlin, then it would be my father."

"I see," she said and looked down, studying her meal with an intensity which she usually reserved for books, paperwork, and when she went on top and rode him to orgasm.

"Do you see an issue in that?"

"No," she said, looking up at him and biting her lower lip. "It makes sense."

He raised a manicured brow. "I sense a 'but', Granger."

"I...I'm surprised," she seemed to fumble for words, "that Harry wanted your help."

"I have been assisting the Ministry for some time."

"Yes, yes, I know, but this is..." She broke off. The sound when she put her fork down seemed uncommonly loud. It was probably too much to hope it was the laying down of arms. "This isn't researching or visiting someone like Mr. King."

"Visiting is putting it mildly." Draco briefly recalled the punch he'd received from Kelpie. The one that had knocked him unconscious. To him, the term 'visit' implied tea, cake, and the exchange of empty, yet pleasant conversation, not the foul company of Kelpie King and his smelly hound, and the only exchange being between his face and King's fist.

Hermione frowned again. "This is acting in a Ministry-approved official capacity."

"Do you not think I am up to scratch?"

She considered the question for too long, particularly as he'd meant it rhetorically. "It's not that," she said, "I don't doubt you, but –"

"Then what, Granger," he said, shifting his jaw until he heard a crack. "Forget about your diplomatic speaking and spit out whatever flaw or protest you have."

She tucked her hair behind her ear. He knew that gesture. She did it when she was trying to buy time. Buy time for one of her conciliatory turns of phrase. "It's your father."

His grip on his fork tightened. "I am aware."

"It's Azkaban."

"I am also aware of that." Draco forced the words out through an increasingly tight jaw.

"People," she said, "never want to go back to Azkaban, even for a visit."

Azkaban: the wizard prison which stood on some godforsaken rock somewhere in the Irish Sea like a carbuncled sore oozing on some dying animal. Aesthetically ugly with its grey walls and grey towers, its spiked and extended silhouette imprinted on the eyes of whoever rowed towards its shores. That greyness was the last colour that a prisoner saw before they were swallowed into the bowels of the fortress, where sunlight would become a distant memory, and their own screams would replace birdsong.

Draco swallowed, suddenly aware of just how dry his mouth was. He grasped for his waterglass. His fingers felt weak, and he dropped his fork, supporting the underside of the glass with his other hand. This two-handed grip also stopped the glass from visibly shaking if, and there was no reason why it should, a shudder ran through his body. He stiffened his shoulders; tensing for potential muscle spasm.

"I can sympathise with their sentiments," he said, forcing a jovial tone. "However, it cannot be helped." As if saluting the commander of a coming war, he tipped the glass at her. "I am a reformed man, after all, and my country is calling."

"Draco," she said, and he felt his hackles rise at the too soft tone of her voice. "It's Azkaban."

"You are repeating yourself, my dear." He bit back a retort, settling for one of his cooing epithets which drove her to distraction in any normal conversation.

"Why are you going?" she said, parrying his raised glass by lifting her chin.

However, seemingly not in this conversation.

"As I said, to speak to my father."

"Why, Draco?" She wielded his name to more effect than he had 'my dear'.

The pads of his fingers flattened, the tips growing white, as he squeezed the breath out of the waterglass. "You came to harm."

Her chin went higher. He'd need a grappling hook and a few meters of rope to scale it now.

"I can handle myself," she said, her voice tightened and hardened as she projected the statement at him.

"You are my wife, and they tried to kill you."

He clenched his jaw, until his teeth hurt, as a convulsion shuddered through his torso. He felt cold. It was as if he was catching the flu. Light-headed, with his thoughts fluttering behind his eyes, and shivers rolling up his shoulders and down his arms like the changing of the tide.

"Just because I'm your wife –"

"Hermione," he uttered her name with an enduring patience which he was not feeling, "you are going to have my child. You're going to be the mother of my child. Regardless of my feelings towards you, I owe my child enough to see that their mother is not in mortal peril everytime she walks out the front door."

"You're being ridiculous." She threw her hands in the air as if to signal to some imaginary audience that she'd had quite enough of him. "I'm not in mortal peril."

"We don't know that." His stomach rolled, threatening to upturn its contents. As if in collision with his stomach, his mouth filled with saliva. He tried to swallow, but his throat felt dry, and he almost gagged as his own cooling spit hit his epiglottis.

"I did not survive a war, assassination attempts, curses, and torture to be coddled by anyone." This time Hermione waved her hands in his direction; a flick of her wrists which now suggested to the hypothetical spectators that she was dismissing his entire presence.

He took a deep breath through his nose. It wasn't particularly calming as he sucked the air in like he was doing a line of Fairy's Dust, but it gave him a moment to compose his thoughts and squash the mental image of throwing down his napkin, storming out, and swearing into the void. "I made a vow to protect you," he said, low and precisely. "The ceremony may have lacked all the fundamental things which should go into a marriage, but I am not about to disregard what I promised."

"They were words. Nothing more." She looked down her nose at him. "Just used to dress up a sham ceremony in some kind of tradition."

"Not to me." The bile rushed up his throat, causing him to gag the last word. Turning it into a cough, he hurried the glass to his lips. He couldn't bring himself to drink, and instead, the water lapped against the seal of his mouth.

She snorted. It was derisive and not at all attractive. "You owe me no loyalty, Draco."

There was a strange familiarity to her. Strange in the way that she could so easily pronounce that he owed her no loyalty – the woman who bore his name as her own, whose very life would be entangled with his irrevocably if she had her way – and yet, yet she capped off her prosey pronouncement with his name. It would have disquieted him less if she'd said his surname, which she uttered like a curse word, instead of his given name. He liked how she said his name. She softly cooed it, although that was just due to the name itself, as phonetically she had to coo the end of his name.

He sipped his water – little sips as a mother would instruct an invalid child to do after a bout of stomach flu.

"You are mistaken," he said, lowering the glass to the table for the first time in as many minutes. "I believe the registar used the term 'faithful'."

"What, are you telling me you also intend to 'love', 'honour' and 'cherish'?" Her voice sliced the inverted commas around those ceremonial pronouncements as effectively as a hot knife through butter.

"Ah," he said, breathing in the sound. "I thought of it as more of a pick-and-mix your own vows."

She scowled at him. However, as she was the second person that day to scowl up at him, he took no notice of it. Potter's scowl was far more pronounced and detestable to the eye. Hermione's scowl, on the other hand, was almost endearing. Her lips pouted out, her eyes narrowed into cattish peaks, and her chest heaved and swelled as if filling with all the accusations she wished to fling at him.

He suddenly found himself feeling almost happy: much calmer in any case. Or was that just because he was staring at his wife's breasts. He wondered if any enterprising Muggle had done some sort of study into the mental benefits of looking at a beautiful woman's breasts. If not, he would happily fund any such study. He may even offer to be one of the human test subjects, just as long as his wife could join him.

"I doubt we shall never have to deal with the 'richer or poorer' dilemma." He smiled in a deliciously annoying manner. "It is only a shame that we cut the 'obey'."

"This isn't funny," she said, her cheeks pricking with colour as she continued to scowl.

"I disagree; I'm finding it quite hilarious."

"You shouldn't be doing this for me or Harry"

"Well, I can without a doubt promise that I am not doing any of this for Harry Potter. Potter, the Ministry, and the whole greater Wizarding World can frankly fuck off."

"What's happening is wrong." As she didn't expand, Draco presumed she meant the illegal Portkeys and not her complete inability to see that he wanted her safe and well.

"The fact that you are happening to let your perfectly palletable dinner go cold is something which is also wrong," he said, raising his eyebrows. "Unless you were referring to another happening."

"The events of the past few weeks are wrong." She had a slightly far off look, and seemed to not have heard him as she started to speak, "The disruption of the Magical and Wizarding community, or communities, places all at risk of harm and exposure. To comply or be complicit with, is a crime where the damaging outcomes cannot be speculated."

She sounded as if she was quoting directly from The Rules and Ordinance of Magic in the United Kingdom. Which was impossible. He'd seen that book and had practically had the thing thrown at him during his trial. It was the approximate size of The Isle of Man, and probably weighed the same. Unless she had it stashed under the table cloth and was surreptitiously reading it from below her lashes, then she had memorised the bally thing.

"It's not only highly illegal and dangerous," she concluded, "but people might start getting hurt."

He felt like this time, it had been he who'd been hit with a stunning spell. He was momentarily lost for words, and was limited to dumbly blinking at her like an overgrown cod-fish.

"What do you mean 'start'?" he said, starting. "I am aware you were unconscious for most of this event, but do you not recall being stunned and almost plummeting to your death off the Brandenburg Gate."

"I was fine." She looked like she was going to raise her arms and wave off his concerns again as if he was a pesky wasp at her picnic, but then she caught his eye and seemed to think better of it. "If you're going to do this, Draco," she said in mollifying accents, "then you should be doing it because it's the right course of action. Not because of some misplaced nobility on my account."

"That is where you are bang out of luck. Because in this situation, Hermione," he said, mimicking her sentence structure, "you are the only person I care about."

"That's also wrong."

"For the gods' sake," Draco said, thoroughly exasperated. "What is wrong now?"

"It is wrong of Harry to ask you to do this," she said, her voice raising. "He knew...he knew that you would because of me!"

"That is the first sensical thing you've said. Of course I'm only paying my father a visit on your account. I'm certainly not doing it for Potter's. And" – he couldn't believe he was about to say this – "Potter did not come to me with the proposal; I suggested it to him."

Merlin.

He'd just defended Potter.

He thought he might be sick again.

"He should have refused," she said, folding her arms and glaring at him as if it was his fault that Potter had done something – anything – she disapproved of.

"That is utter rubbish, Granger." Next she'd be saying that it had been him that had led her precious Potter into such despicable ways. "Potter wasn't going to pass up on the chance to interrogate my father, even if by proxy."

Her colour rose, dying her cheeks a beguiling shade of dusky pink. Draco was sure that if she had wanted Potter at any point, then she would have got him. The fact that it was him, and not Potter, gazing into her face, would attest to this. However, this didn't mean that she wasn't blind to Potter's faults. Or, maybe, visually impared. Which is why she seemed to be struggling – with heated cheeks and flashing eyes – with the idea that Potter had done something that she didn't approve of. Particularly as this 'something' injured her husband, who she also didn't approve of. What a quandary this must be for her.

"He shouldn't have listened to you," she said, seeming to conclude her quandary by blaming both of them. He for talking, and Potter for listening.

Draco inwardly seethed at this. He knew his seething was inward, because he took great pains not to show any of the nettle he felt on his face. His voice, however, was a different story, and he almost hissed the words at her, "Then go and speak to him about it."

"It's too late for that now. We need to come up with another solution."

She placed her elbows on the table and slotted her fingers together. The position was one he imagined her conducting over a boardroom table when she was highlighting a hinch in an otherwise perfect scheme. The tired shimmering in her eyes had died, and once more with feeling, she tipped her chin skywards.

She had ascertained the problem, and she would not be the Hermione Granger if she had not already thought up a number of solutions with that keen intelligence of hers.

If Draco had been a wise man, he would have run from her steely set of lips. He would have cowered at the way the corners of her plump mouth stabbed at her cheeks. That, or, admit an early defeat.

"I'm going with you," she said with the same certainty that Dumbledore announced that Gryffindor had won the house cup.

The refusal was out of his mouth before he could consider the consequences of who he was talking to. "Absolutely not," he said, and it was this outright denile, this ill-advised rebuff, this monumentally stupid refusal, which demonstrated why he, Draco Malfoy, was not a wise man.

"Yes, I am." She seemed to consider the matter settled as she picked up her discarded fork and stabbed at the spaghetti in a way which would have offended Blaise's tenuous Italian links.

"Dear heart," he said in mollifying accents. "I don't believe this is the best course of action."

"I'm coming," she said, and he knew it was final.

Normally he'd love hearing those words utter from her pretty little mouth, however, today they didn't fill him with quite the same sense of satisfaction and pride.