A Mess of Sorts
By Charli Petidei
I had so much fun with this story!
Written in response to a prompt by Anonymous in Dramione Fanfiction Recommendations 2.0's Magical Mayhem Fest: 'Mrs. Skower's All-Purpose Magical Mess Remover'
So much love and thanks to Shamione for hosting such a brilliant fest, and a million hugs and thank yous to Leilah Moon for being the most wonderful beta and cheerleader! I also have to shout out my partner J for helping turn 'they both need the stain remover' into this melting pot of hen night shenanigans!
After
There were three things that Hermione Granger was aware of when she woke up on the morning of the most talked-about wizarding wedding of the century.
One: Her head was throbbing so hard that she could barely think.
Two: There was a bright pink wedding dress in her arms, and it definitely hadn't been that colour yesterday.
Three: She was the worst bridesmaid ever.
Staggering to her feet, she rubbed at her bleary eyes and tugged a shaky hand through the Medusan tangle that her hair had become. Her stomach lurched threateningly, and it was suddenly all she could do to keep the contents of her riotous guts in place.
She was on a balcony, that much was clear. And considering it was the day of Harry Potter's wedding to Pansy Parkinson, she could only assume that she was at the hotel venue. The downside of having opted for a cheaper room when she booked it with Luna was that she couldn't possibly pretend this balcony-adorned one was her own.
She had no memory of the night before. She remembered arriving at the bar, of course. But everything beyond that was just… blank.
Which begged the question: if this wasn't her room, whose was it?
Her head throbbed and she scrabbled for her wand, which she found mercifully tucked into the pocket of her navy-blue skater dress.
Said dress sported a variety of beer-scented marks that undoubtedly came from the previous night's hen do celebrations, as well as the same lurid pink splatters that adorned the no-longer-white wedding dress on the floor.
Shifting again, she realised something else.
She had no knickers on.
She cursed loudly, and not even remotely willing to bother conjuring a goblet, cast an Aguamenti directly into her mouth
How could she have been so stupid?
Flashback One
"I'm not going to be stupid tonight," Hermione announced loudly, to a chorus of disbelieving snorts and loud boos. "I refuse to wake up tomorrow with a hangover."
"Pft, there's at least eight different charms for that," snorted Ginny, setting a tray of deceptively innocent-looking shot glasses down onto the table and flinging herself into the booth with a grin. "I take it you won't be wanting one of these then?"
"I never said that," said Hermione quickly. Moderation was key, was it not? She grabbed a shot and held it aloft.
Pansy Parkinson, who was wearing a ridiculous 'The Chosen One's Chosen One' sash and a hat shaped like a penis, grinned at the circle of women (and one man) around her. They were an odd assortment of work colleagues, old school mates, and new friends that had come as a sort of a package deal with being engaged to Harry Potter. A proud member of the last group, Hermione beamed at the Bride-To-Be.
"Alright, I believe there's some thank yous to be said before we get to it," Pansy declared over the roar of the bar's music. The penis perked up, nudging at a string of sex-toy themed garlands which had been strung up around the booth earlier that evening by an excitable Padma Patil. "Thank you to all of you for coming along tonight!"
There was a chorus of whooping.
"Thank you to Luna for scaring off that weird dude with the moustache-"
Luna nodded graciously.
"And thank you to Draco for organising this evening."
Draco wryly lifted his glass as even more cheering exploded from the women around him, and Hermione narrowed her eyes at his self-satisfied expression.
"Alright," Pansy continued, the penis-hat now fully erect and winking proudly down at them from its perch. "I'm getting married tomorrow! Let's get shit-faced!"
They all crashed their shot glasses together and downed them in an instant.
After
Alright. Her memories were starting to return.
That was a good sign, right?
A hurried Hangover Charm contributed to Hermione's newfound optimism. She even allowed herself to entertain the hope that the stained wedding dress she had woken up with was somehow not Pansy's. Unluckily, a brief examination of the fabric soon had her squeezing her eyes shut in disappointment.
The deep, scooping neckline. The elegant lace at the wrists. The hem that glinted with several hundred Galleons' worth of sparkle. All Pansy's design.
The bright pink goo splattered across it?
Definitely not.
Oh, Pansy was going to murder her.
The pink stains covered the majority of the bodice and extended in great arching smears down the skirt. It almost looked like some kind of paint, and yet it had absorbed so thoroughly into the fabric that it couldn't be picked away or peeled off.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck.
"Aguamenti," she hissed, siphoning cold water over a particularly large blotch and rubbing furiously. "Scourgify." It didn't even fade. "Evanesco! Reducio!"
Nothing.
"Deletrius!"
The pink remained.
Shit.
It clearly wasn't any normal kind of stain. Wasn't paint, alcohol, ink, makeup…
Gingerly, she lifted the dress to her nose. Something bitter, acerbic. And a hint of lemongrass.
Oh God. It was a potion.
What on earth had she been doing last night?
Flashback Two
"What on earth are you doing?"
Hermione paused mid-shimmy. All the girls were dancing, the music blaring, but Draco was still sat at the booth, fingers wrapped delicately around a glass of Firewhiskey, laughter in his eyes and a smirk on his face. She hated what that smirk did to her.
"It's called dancing!" she shot back while Ginny giggled behind her. "We're in a bar! It's generally encouraged."
"Dancing, yes," he said, getting to his feet. "But that was some bizarre sort of" – he gestured to her – "body-wiggle."
She scowled at him. "Body-wiggles constitute about eighty per cent of the average population's dance repertoire, and the entirety of mine," she defended. "In fact, you'd do well to get off your high horse and do a few of your own."
He snorted. "Malfoys don't wiggle. We stand around looking sophisticated and making fun of the people who do."
"What a valuable service you provide," she deadpanned.
He was still watching her with those laughing eyes as he got closer, betraying an element of softness that told her he didn't truly hate her, not really. Hermione couldn't stand it, her heart beating at double the time of the music around them.
"Wipe the grin off your face," she ordered. "And get wiggling. Tonight you're not a Malfoy, you're a bridesmaid. It's practically your job."
"Excuse me, the official title is Man of Honour-"
"Bridesmaid," she repeated, and couldn't help but grin. "I can't wait to see your matching dress."
He bit his lip in restrained amusement. "Likewise."
Ginny wrapped her arms around Hermione's waist as Draco turned away to head over to the bar. "He's flirting with you again-" she sang into her ear, and Hermione rolled her eyes, extricating herself with an exasperated sigh.
It was bad enough that Harry and Pansy had gotten to know one another through their Auror training and begun a relationship so obviously perfect it was insufferable, meaning that Draco had consequently become a permanent fixture of Hermione's social life. It was even worse that when she turned up for the first day of her coveted Apprenticeship in Experimental Potions last year, Draco was stood at the next cauldron with a smirk and identical acceptance letter.
But now that Harry and Pansy's insufferable relationship had become an insufferable engagement and Hermione and Draco were both in the wedding party, she was having to spend even more time with him than before. They had spent hours arguing over miniscule details of the bridal shower, the hen night, where to go and who to invite, and worse, Draco's 'Man of Honour' title meant that he always won.
Tosser.
She watched him as he accepted his new drink from the barman and turned to rest his hip against the bar. His eyes found hers immediately.
And her heart skipped.
Oh, yeah.
Of all the things she felt about Draco Malfoy, that was the worst of all.
After
Hermione's heart had never felt any less like skipping as she marched through the streets of Diagon Alley the next morning, Pansy's wedding dress shrunken to the size of a glove in her handbag. It would have looked rather cute, Hermione thought, if it wasn't still so grotesquely, offensively pink.
It was eight-thirty.
She could remember up to about ten o'clock last night.
So that left ten hours unaccounted for; ten hours doing God knows what, during which time she'd somehow managed to take Pansy's dress from magazine envy to charity shop reject.
And now, she had less than two hours to get it back to its snow-white, virgin self, and return it to the bridal suite before Pansy could discover its absence. It was a bloody tall order.
And if she didn't manage it, she was going to be eviscerated.
Thank fuck for magical cleaning solutions.
Flashback Three
"Thank fuck!" cried Pansy. "Hermione, Draco, quit flirting and get over here!"
"We weren't flirting!" protested Hermione, from where she and Draco had been embroiled in an argument over the best way to brew a Memory Suppressant Potion, their faces dangerously close and her heartbeat once more in her throat.
"Obviously not," Draco added, scooting so far away from her down the bench that he knocked Parvati's drink over.
Pansy rolled her eyes vigorously and adjusted the penis-hat, which had begun to droop again. "Yeah, yeah. Come on," she said, beckoning. "We're doing dirty shots."
"Is it the appearance, the cleanliness, or the nomenclature that makes them dirty?" asked Hermione curiously, settling herself atop the indicated barstool, music vibrating through the metal footrest. "Or some combination thereof?"
Pansy squinted at her. "Big words, Granger. I'm six drinks down here. Get on my level."
Hermione took one look at Pansy's expression and decided to do just that, knocking back the dregs of her current glass and eyeing the new ones being lined up along the bar.
On the next few stools along, Luna, Padma, Parvati, Ginny, and Millie reached out to eagerly accept their drinks. Each shot contained a suspiciously dark liquid, topped with an extravagant swirl of whipped cream.
Hermione took hers tentatively. "Am I supposed to drink this without any explanation?"
"You're supposed to drink it without any hands," Millie answered. "It's called a Blow Job Shot."
Draco, who'd had his shot almost to his lips, spluttered and sprayed half of his whipped cream across the bar.
"Come on, ladies," announced Ginny. "Time to show off your technique."
Draco raised a brow at Hermione, who had been gazing dubiously into her glass while the other girls got stuck in. "What?" he smirked. "Scared?"
Determined not to let him find one more thing to tease her about, she primly gathered her hair into one hand, leaned forward, closed her lips around the glass, and knocked it back.
He watched her, speechless.
"I'm confident with my technique," she said innocently, and licked at the corner of her mouth where a spill of cream had appeared. "Your turn."
His hands tightened in his lap and Hermione tried not to think about what those hands might feel like on her body.
After
Slug and Jiggers Apothecary was unusually but blessedly quiet for a Saturday morning. Hermione made a beeline straight for the household products and nearly wept with relief at the sight of a bottle of Mrs Skower's All-Purpose Magical Mess Remover – the last one – on the shelf. Molly Weasley swore by the stuff, claiming its effects to be nothing short of miraculous, and well, if Hermione ever needed a miracle, it was right now.
She raced towards the bottle, hand outstretched, and was just about to close her fingers around its neck when another hand appeared and grabbed it first.
Wide-eyed, Hermione tracked the disturbingly-familiar hand along its attached arm and back to its owner.
Her jaw dropped. "Draco?"
Flashback Four
They were dancing again, and this time Draco had elected to join, swaying in time to the music as the girls giggled and spun one another around in giddy celebration.
The pounding of the music echoed through Hermione's bones and buzzed in her very heart, the lights sweeping with dizzying speed through the bar, flickers of red, purple, blue, pink. Draco's eyes barely left hers as they danced, and it pulled behind her navel like a string of opportunity.
This bar was slightly more expensive than Hermione's usual haunts, so Draco had obviously declared it to be the perfect hen night venue. She had argued against it avidly, of course, but here, now, she unfortunately had to concede that it was rather nice. Not that she would ever admit that to him.
It managed to straddle both worlds of being small enough to be intimate and yet big enough to be atmospheric; the loud music and smoky lighting practically begging its patrons to lose themselves for a few hours. The bar itself ran the entire length of the establishment, a central dancefloor thronged by lights sitting squarely in the centre, and the large booth that they had claimed boasted a perfect view of both.
The alcohol had started to thrum with a pleasant buzz in her veins, each limb weightless and disconnected from her body, as if she were made of little other than vodka and pixie dust. And that was what she decided to blame when she spun out of hold with Parvati only to stumble into Draco's chest, and was for a moment too stunned by the look on his face to move away. His thumb flickered at her waist for the tiniest moment and Hermione's mouth went immediately dry.
They were thankfully interrupted almost immediately with the announcement of a drinking game back at the booth, and Hermione pulled herself away from the warmth of Draco's body with simultaneous relief and reluctance.
"Right!" called Padma. "Since tonight is all about Pansy, we're going to play a game I just made up called 'Get Pansy Drunk'."
Everyone cheered while Pansy tried to hide her blush behind a penis-shaped silly straw.
"Okay, the rules are simple," Padma continued, as all the attendants began to gather round. "We're each going to take it in turns to say something that we think Pansy's done. If she has done it, she has to drink, but if she hasn't, we drink! Okay?"
Thanks to Harry, Hermione was full of enough stories about Pansy's antics to get the bride-to-be completely hammered. She grinned and settled further into the booth, trying to ignore the way Draco kept grinning at her.
"I'll go first," cried Millie. "I think Pansy has… shagged the Chosen One before their wedding night!"
Snorting, Pansy obediently took a drink.
"I think Pansy has… had oral sex on the first date?" suggested Parvati lecherously.
Pansy looked scandalised. "Please! That's second date ground, at least!" Then she thought for a moment. "Hang on, do you mean given or received?"
"I think Pansy has fantasised about someone more than twenty years older than herself," said Luna brightly, interrupting everyone's laughter.
Pansy appeared to count internally for a moment before smirking and taking a drink, and everyone immediately began clamouring for an explanation. "What?" she grinned. "You can't tell me Professor Lupin didn't have something sort of ruggedly handsome about him."
"Ew! He was like… a father figure to Harry!" complained Ginny.
"Hey," added Pansy. "I could have mentioned somebody else's dad that I had a crush on in school, so count yourselves lucky you were spared from that visual."
Draco looked immediately down at his feet and Hermione gaped in disbelief. "You're not serious," she hissed, but the pained expression on his face told her everything she needed to know.
Jesus.
Not willing to consider that disturbing thought for any longer than absolutely necessary, Hermione scrambled for something to contribute to the game. "I think that Pansy has hidden her wedding dress in Draco's room," she offered, and Pansy shook her head vehemently.
"I'm not telling," she grinned, and everyone groaned.
The location of Pansy's dress had been a point of great mystery since the date of its purchase. Hermione had been one of the lucky few to see her try it on in the boutique, but ever since then, it had been sequestered away somewhere safe, away from prying eyes. Hermione considered it an odd sort of personal mission to try and discover its hiding place, but with little more than twelve hours left until the wedding, the chances of doing so were looking slimmer and slimmer. Draco's room had been her final guess, but it seemed Pansy was determined to keep it a secret until the very end.
"I told you I was keeping it to myself," Pansy grinned. "Now drink!"
And amid raucous cheering, Hermione rolled her eyes defeatedly and tipped her glass to her lips.
After
Draco's cheeks were turning pink as he stared at her in the middle of Slug and Jiggers, his eyebrows so high they practically disappeared into his hair. His gaze roamed down her dress, still adorned with pink stains. "What are you doing here?!" he gulped.
"Apparently, the same thing as you," she answered guardedly, eyeing the bottle of Mrs Skower's in his hand. "I haven't got time to explain, but I really need that-"
"Oh," he said quietly.
Pausing for a moment, she eyed him slowly. She didn't know if she'd ever seen him this flushed, this on edge. It didn't sit right with her. "You don't seem yourself," she taunted. "Hangover that bad, huh? So much for a high tolerance."
His fingers twitched reflexively. "I'm fine."
"I didn't ask," she said coldly.
"Obviously," he sneered.
They glared at one another, and Hermione realised she wasn't going to get very far at this rate. "Can I have that?" she tried.
He folded his arms, tucking the bottle away, brow furrowing. "No. I need it. It's important."
Her mouth dropped open. "How important?"
"Life or death," he snapped. "My life. It needs to be sorted before the wedding."
"Mine too," she retorted, thinking of the tiny pocket-sized wedding dress in her bag. "Or preferably, even earlier."
"Tough luck," he sneered. "I got here first. Guess you'll have to take care of your problem some other way."
"Draco-"
"Don't 'Draco' me!" he snarled suddenly.
She blinked. "What's wrong with you today?"
"What's wrong?!" he spluttered. "This is how I always am! This is how we are! Why should today be any different?!"
She had to take a physical step back this time, thoughts scrambling. "I feel like you're angry about something other than the cleaner," she said steadily.
His brows furrowed.
A silence.
Then somebody walked past them in the aisle and Hermione jumped.
"Look," she said desperately. "I will likely get hung, drawn, and quartered, no, quintuplet-ed, if I don't get some of that cleaner in the next half-hour. It cannot wait."
"Why?"
"I can't tell you."
He wiggled the bottle smugly in front of her face. "See this? If you don't make a good case for why you need it, I'm going to assume my need is greater than yours, and it's coming home with me. No Mrs Skower for you."
Ugh, she could throttle him.
"Fine," she hissed. And then, checking there was no one nearby who could spot them, reached delicately into her handbag and pulled out the miniaturised, hot-pink-splattered wedding dress.
"This," she whispered aggressively. "Now, do you see my problem?"
His eyes widened, and his gaze turned to dart between the shelves. "Ah."
"Yeah," she agreed. "Ah. So if you don't mind-" She made a final grab for the bottle, but he yanked it away.
"Wait," he said. "You can have this. But I'm coming too. And then you're going to help me with my mess afterwards."
She considered him for a moment, then sighed.
"Fine." And then, with a pause, "You're paying."
Flashback Five
As the night wore on, Hermione began to grow more and more tipsy. The good news was that everyone was drinking along in time with her, including Draco, who became less and less inhibited on the dancefloor with every progressive sip of Firewhiskey. In fact, she thought, he was veering dangerously close to body-wiggle territory.
It looked distractingly good on him.
She was just considering starting an argument by accusing him of being a hypocrite, when her attention was drawn to Pansy. The bride-to-be was currently in the middle of the dance floor, surrounded by her best friends, covered in glitter with the penis-hat bobbing merrily from atop her messy bun. She was also shrieking with excitement at a man and a woman who had just threaded their way onto the dance floor.
"Hey, do you know those people?" she asked, nudging Draco with her glass, and he snorted.
"Wait."
Confused, she continued to watch, unsure what all the excitement was about, until the newcomers each hooked a leg around a nearby pole and began an intricately choreographed routine.
Her eyebrows shot up. "Oh! I guess Pansy must really love a good pole-dance routine."
Draco eyed her, amused.
Oh. They were taking their clothes off now.
"Or… stripper routine," she amended. Turning back to Draco, she wobbled slightly, and tried to ignore the way her heart thumped at the brush of his steadying hand at her waist. "Was that your idea?"
"Obviously," he grinned. "I thought you'd shoot it down if I told you."
"Hey, I like seeing a naked man as much as the next woman," she said, without thinking, and Draco began to laugh. "I didn't mean that," she added, mortified.
"Sure," he agreed, but his eyes met hers with a heat that had electricity jumping in her chest.
After
The heat had well and truly dwindled by the next morning, but Hermione's grip on Draco's wrist didn't let up until they reached the door of the room she was supposed to be sharing with Luna, hoping in vain that it would be vacant.
She knocked timidly. "Luna?"
There was a flurry of muffled activity from the other side of the door.
And then it swung open to reveal Luna's wide eyes, blonde hair sleep-tousled and wild, the duvet clutched in front of her body more than likely the only thing between her and a caution for indecent exposure. "Good morning Hermione," she said warmly. "You can come in if you like, but I've still got Robert and Estelle in here with me. You remember the erotic dancers from last night, don't you?" She opened the door a little wider to reveal far more of Robert and Estelle than they had been displaying on the poles the night before.
"Oh," gulped Hermione, while Draco tried unsuccessfully to disguise his laughter. "No, that's okay-"
"Did you find somewhere else to stay last night, in the end?" Luna asked, unbothered.
"Yes," she said quickly. Although I'll be damned if I know where. "Er, thanks."
"No problem. Do you need anything from this room before I go back to making love?"
Hermione blinked at her. Then, with a defeated sigh, whispered a quick Accio to summon her suitcase into her hand. "Thanks, Luna."
"Any time," she breezed, and the door swung shut again.
Draco was practically bent double in hysterics by this point. Hermione swung her suitcase solidly in his direction and nodded with satisfaction at his disgruntled 'ow'. "I'm glad you find it so funny. Where's your room?"
"My room?"
"Yes," she answered. "I'm not going back into that sex dungeon for love nor money. I hope you booked a twin."
"I hope you can get over that," he said grumpily, rubbing at his shin where her suitcase had made contact. "Because I forgot my room number."
She gaped at him. "Don't you have a key?"
"What use is a key if I don't know which door to stick it in-?"
"Doesn't the key have the room number on it?"
He blinked at her.
Fished in his pocket.
And looked at the key.
"Hey, look, a number," said Hermione dryly.
For a moment she thought Draco was going to implode on the spot. "Brilliant," he snapped. "That wouldn't have been at all useful at one o'clock this morning."
"What are you on about?" she said, then shook her head. "Never mind. We don't have time. Let's go."
Apparently stunned into silence, Draco turned blankly and marched off down the corridor without attempting to have the last word.
He must be really hungover.
Flashback Six
"Luna's turned our room into a den of sin," Hermione groaned to no one in particular, her cheek pressed against the sticky surface of the bar. "I've got nowhere to go..."
"I have no idea what you just said," came a voice from behind her, lilting with tipsy amusement.
Hermione let out a rough sigh before the owner of the voice grasped her shoulders and hoisted her into a more vertical position, giving her the impression that she was nothing but an overgrown ragdoll with a high blood alcohol content. She swayed minutely, gripping onto the bar to retain her balance, and eventually managed to lift her head sufficiently to see her rescuer.
"Oh," she said, face falling into a scowl. "You."
"Yeah, me," Draco said dryly. He leaned over the bar while she attempted to compose herself, and ordered another drink. "I just spotted Luna leaving with the strippers," he said, "so I'm assuming that the incoherent mumbling was about your accommodation situation."
"Well, that's the problem," Hermione muttered, watching the barman turn to get a bottle of Firewhiskey and abruptly deciding that she would also like a drink. "I now don't have an accommodation situation. At all."
He took his Firewhiskey and, with a glance at the way Hermione was gazing longingly at the glass in his hand, slid it gently down the bar before ordering another. She regarded it dubiously for a moment before finally relenting and taking a sip.
Draco still appeared well put together, but Hermione had spent enough time with him over the last year to know all the little tells, the curve of his lip, the lowering of his eyelids, all the subtle relaxations of muscles that meant he was in fact a significant number of drinks down, a far cry from his focused state in the Potions lab.
"Why didn't you ask Luna to go somewhere else?" he asked hesitantly.
Hermione sighed, tilting her head back and watching the light dancing across the ceiling. "I figured one of us might as well get laid tonight," she joked. "And it's not like it's going to be me."
He paused, then sank into the seat next to her. Hermione's skin shivered with sudden adrenaline, her blood pumping through her veins at this newfound proximity.
"Why not?" Draco asked, almost politely. His fingers tapped erratically against the bar top. "We're at the epicentre of British wizarding nightlife. There's plenty of people around."
"I don't want plenty of people," she groused.
He laughed, and it was almost pleasant. "Ah. And here I was, planning to invite you to an orgy."
She narrowed her eyes at him. "What, for moral support?" she scoffed. "Sure, I'd love to cheer you on while you have your wicked way with some tiny, blonde, pure-blood witch-"
"I don't like tiny blonde pure-blood witches," he protested.
"Alright," she continued, taking a sip. "Some buxom, matronly woman then. A Madam Pomfrey type, if you will."
He choked on his Firewhiskey and hid his head in his hands while she cackled. "I did not want that visual," he groaned. "I'm brewing some Memory Suppressant as soon as I get home."
"Just make sure you add the lemongrass after the ox bile," she said cheekily.
"Not this again," he sighed, rolling his eyes. "If you add it after, it dissolves too quickly to exert maximum effect. And then the side effect of fatigue would be tripled!"
"But if you add it before, it fixes to the arrowroot and then the ox bile can't permeate as acutely!" she countered. "That's what it says in the textbook-"
"Well then, why did my example work perfectly last week?!"
"It was a fluke!" she cried. "And you sabotaged mine, I saw you do it!"
He scoffed. "I don't need to sabotage your work to do better than you-"
"You take that back!" she snapped. "You've been barely scraping through Alcroft's assignments-"
"At least I can make a simple Memory Suppressant – yours blew up! What are you, a third year?"
That hit a sensitive spot.
"Because you ruined it!"
"For the last time, I didn't touch your bloody Potion! I know how to make a Memory Suppressant, you don't, end of story."
"That's it!" she hissed, kicking her chair away and standing up, eyes blazing. "Take me to your hotel room-"
He choked on his Firewhiskey.
"-And we're going to settle this once and for all."
"You're insane-" he croaked.
"Am not," she growled. "We're going to find two cauldrons, and we are going to have ourselves a brew-off."
"But what about ingredients?!" he protested, and she scowled at him.
"I work with you, you idiot. I know you carry your starter kit everywhere with you-"
"Been watching me, have you?"
"Oh, fuck off."
He smirked at her. "Take you to my hotel room or fuck off? Which is it?"
"Both," she snapped, and pulled him to his feet. "I am going to brew a Memory Suppressant, and it's going to work, and you are going to take back what you said, and then you are going to fuck off and leave me in peace."
He set his jaw. "Fine."
"Fine."
They glared at one another.
Hermione realised her hand was still on his arm, and she yanked it away, blushing.
And then Draco grinned smugly, placed his hand at the small of her back, and her traitorous heart began to thump as he Apparated her back to the hotel.
After
With that helpful new memory in place, Hermione was starting to think she'd solved the mystery of her overnight whereabouts.
However, after leaving Luna to her ménage à trois, Draco opened the door to his hotel room, and Hermione realised with a sinking feeling that he didn't have a balcony either.
So bang went that theory.
The balcony-less room's saving grace was that it was at least clean of pink muck, and it provided the privacy required to enlarge Pansy's wrecked wedding gown once more.
Draco gaped, horror-struck, as the extent of the damage became clear. "You weren't joking when you said it was an emergency, were you?"
"I don't think I've ever felt less like joking," Hermione said shortly. "Right, what's the best way to go about this?"
"Bath?"
"Not right now, thanks," she snapped. "I know I stink to high heaven, but-"
"For the dress."
"Oh." She flushed. "Of course."
Five minutes later, the dress was lying at the bottom of Draco's hotel bathtub, straddled by an irate Hermione, who was lathering thick dollops of Mrs Skower'salleged miracle-worker into the fabric and starting to think that Mrs Skower was nothing more than an old phony with a convenient name.
"It's not working," she hissed.
"Give it time-"
"We live in a magical world, Draco, I shouldn't have to wait twenty minutes for a miracle to happen!"
He wisely remained silent.
The Mess Remover remained ineffective.
And the dress remained pink.
"Ugh," she huffed, throwing the half-empty bottle out of the bath and only feeling slightly guilty when Draco had to duck to avoid it. She shifted awkwardly, prodding at the dress. "Twenty minutes it is."
Smirking, Draco leant back against the sink and regarded her steadily. He was looking remarkably put-together after the night before. Hermione, meanwhile, could still taste the alcohol on her breath.
"Do you have any mouthwash I could use?" she asked hesitantly, and Draco obligingly fetched her a bottle from the shelf, which she took and immediately gulped from as if it were whiskey.
He watched her out of the corner of his eyes as she swirled it around and then jerked a hand at him until he leapt out of the way of the sink so she could spit.
"Er," he said, once her mouth was empty again. "How much do you remember of last night?"
"Next to nothing," she said promptly, running her tongue over her teeth. "Why?"
"Oh," he said, and there was disappointment in his eyes this time.
"Don't tell me we had some weird sort of heart-to-heart," Hermione said distastefully.
"Er, not quite."
"Alright," she said, already impatient with the uncertainty on his face. "That's a relief then. Look, the good news is that I'm remembering bits and pieces as I go. Right now, I can remember up to when we agreed to come back here, and then after that it's all… fuzzy."
"Right," he said stiffly.
"Do you know something I don't?"
His expression heated. "I assure you I know plenty of things you don't," he smirked, and she fixed him with a glare.
"Look," she said. "I'm sure I did something extremely embarrassing, and I'm sure you're having a great time gloating over it. But right now, all I care about is fixing this mess and returning to the wedding party like a good bridesmaid. If you still want me to help you with your problem, can we get it done sooner rather than later?"
He gulped – actually, physically gulped.
"What, is it that bad?" she asked, and he bit his lip.
"Why don't you come and see?"
And with a last, rueful look at the dress in the bathtub, Hermione allowed him to lead her from his hotel room.
Flashback Seven
"Fuck," said Draco, and Hermione hated the way her pelvis tugged at the sound.
"What?" she glowered. They'd been wandering around the hotel's endless corridors in the middle of the night for what felt like hours, Draco assuring her that his room was only around the next corner.
"I don't know my room number," he admitted. "I thought that I'd recognise it when I saw it, but every fucking door looks the same. I have no idea where I'm supposed to be staying."
She gaped at him. "What kind of idiot-?"
"I know," he scowled. "Save it, Granger. Help me find another room." And he stomped down to the next door along and tried the handle.
"What is wrong with you?!" she hissed. "You can't just-"
The door clicked open.
She let out a low breath. "You lucky tosser-"
He smirked.
Once inside, Hermione could barely keep her jaw from dropping.
Plush carpeting, decadent draped curtains, a bed piled high with cushions… A balcony out onto the grounds…
Draco dumped a miniaturised cauldron out of his pocket, enlarged and duplicated it, and settled himself down onto the Persian rug with measured finality, clearly uncaring of their luxurious surroundings. She was so preoccupied for a moment with the fine movements of his hands and the willow of his hair over his forehead that she almost forgot to plaster a scowl back on her face before she stalked over to join him.
"Carry your cauldron about with you too, do you?"
"I was half expecting to have to make a Sobering Potion before the night was through, so, yes," he smirked.
"Mm," she grunted, and tucked herself into a cross-legged position opposite him, staring over the lip of the cauldron.
"One hour," he announced, fixing her with the look that never failed to freeze her to the spot. "One hour to brew a flawless Memory Suppressant."
"Not. A. Problem," she said heavily. "Bring it on."
They glared at one another. Or rather, Hermione glared at him, and he looked back with obvious amusement.
And then Hermione grabbed at his re-enlarged Potion kit, selected a vial of mandrake infusion, and set to work, trying not to look at the grin on his face.
After
The next morning, after spending what felt like hours navigating labyrinthian acres of magnolia walls and identical gold-inlaid doors, Draco eventually turned onto a somewhat quieter, more secluded corridor with a grand door at the end. A twisting feeling settled in Hermione's gut as they got closer and closer until she was just about able to read the plaque above it.
"Oh, Draco," she sighed. "You didn't-"
And Draco had the decency to look abashed as he turned the handle, and they crossed the threshold into the room labelled 'Honeymoon Suite'.
"We are absolutely not supposed to be in here," she whispered.
"It's a little too late for that," he grumbled. "Look."
And Hermione's mouth fell open.
The room was disturbingly familiar.
The bedsheets lay in tangled, discarded heaps across the floor.
Paintings hung off-kilter on the walls.
Two cauldrons lay on their sides in the centre of the room, their liquid contents steadily dripping onto the expensive carpet. The same liquid that appeared to have been splattered around every possibly square inch of the room.
And the worst thing? Was that the liquid was grossly, offensively, luridly pink.
Flashback Eight
"Keeping up alright, Granger?" said Draco.
She ignored him, stirring frantically at her cauldron, where the liquid was bubbling upwards in domes of dusky blue. Opposite, Draco's cauldron was already showing that his potion had reached the next stage, a deep pink that would eventually lighten, and directly above it, his smirk was threatening to make her heart leap right out of her chest.
It was an incredibly inconvenient time to be realising exactly how attractive he was. She swiped at a bead of sweat at her temple.
They'd been at it for half an hour already, and Hermione was still refusing to admit that his addition of lemongrass before the ox bile had gained him precious time. She was hoping that the poor end result of his potion would prove her right in the end, but it was hard to focus on that right now when she was painfully aware that she was lagging behind, his grin was the suddenly the sexiest thing she'd ever seen, and he was watching her brew with evident enjoyment.
"You don't seem to be having a lot of fun," he drawled, and leaned back against the side of the bed. His hands flitted to his collar and undid a button with a movement so subtle Hermione couldn't help but stare.
"Wh-what are you doing-?"
"I think you should be focusing on your potion, not on me," Draco taunted, and she almost threw her wand across the room at him.
"Fuck off," she hissed. "I can multitask."
"Really?" he asked, but his hands were back at his shirt, another button undone. "Then by all means, keep watching."
She narrowed her eyes at the floor, neither wanting to look at him nor the potion. "I do not give consent for you to start stripping in this room."
"Relax," he snorted. "It's too warm to sit here in a collared shirt. You could do with loosening up a few buttons, yourself."
"What's that supposed to mean?" she demanded. Her cheeks felt absurdly hot, and her forehead was sweaty, and her hair was most likely frizzing out to superhuman proportions, and as much as she knew she shouldn't care, it still made embarrassment swell in her chest.
No one, not a single person, got to her like Draco did. He barely needed to say a word in order to rile her up, and so on a night like this, making comments like that… Hermione was certain that the only thing she would like better than to curse him would be to kiss him.
"I just mean that you could stand to relax," he answered, the look in his eyes so penetrating it was as if he could see right through her. "Live a little," he whispered, and Hermione knew there was no way he could have intended that to be even half as salacious as it sounded to her.
She stared openly at him for a moment, too stunned to do anything.
His smile only grew. And so, she set her jaw.
Maybe she was drunk. Maybe she was short on sleep. Either way, she had to wipe the smirk off his face.
She put her wand down, shook her hair back, grasped at the hem of her dress, and lifted it up and over her head with a flourish that lifted a breeze into the stiflingly hot room.
"There," she said delicately, before throwing the balled-up fabric at his astonished face and beginning to stir her potion again.
She counted thirteen stirs of the now hot-pink potion before he managed to ground himself enough to lay the dress back down on the floor, resolutely avoiding looking her way. "Oh," he said quietly.
"Oh," she repeated, secretly revelling in the way he looked as if the earth had been knocked out from underneath him. "Does that count as living a little? Loosening a few buttons?"
He swallowed thickly and finally returned to his potion.
"You know," she said, turning her burner down and folding her arms over her lacy bra, "you really oughtn't antagonise me when I'm drunk."
"Granger," he muttered stiffly into his cauldron.
"What?" she scoffed. "You brought this on yourself. You got what you asked for."
He let out an odd, strangled sort of noise.
"In fact," she continued, courage firing in her veins. "I'm quite pleased with the results. If getting my kit off is the only way to shut you up, I'll gladly spend the entire rest of the Apprenticeship in my knickers-"
"-Hermione, please-"
"What, Draco?! Can't take someone winning an argument-?"
"-I can see your nipples-"
"Well, I" – she looked down and adjusted herself – "then you can count yourself bloody lucky," she blustered. "They're a very nice pair of nipples, if I do say so myself, and no one has had a good look at them in almost two years-"
His eyebrows shot up. "Two years? No wonder you're uptight-"
Her wand was outstretched in an instant, scowling viciously. "Could you stop riling me up for five minutes?!"
"I'm riling you up?!"
"Yes!" she cried. And then, "What do you mean-?!"
"You don't think brewing a potion in your lacy bloody knickers is riling me up in the slightest?"
"Well, of course not!" she protested. "Why would it?!"
"Would you not be riled up if I was sat here in my underwear?"
"Of course not!"
"Fine!" he snapped, and then he was tugging at his shirt until it fell to the floor and Hermione was eye to eye, or should she say eye to chest, with miles and miles of gorgeous, addictive, magnetising skin-
"Oh-" she choked, unable to tear her eyes away.
"Oh," he repeated triumphantly. "Ha!"
"What do you mean 'ha'?!"
"I mean, it's not so easy is it? Pretending not to be distracted-"
"I'm not distracted!" she almost screeched.
"Well, I am!"
"Good!" she yelled. "Because so am I!"
And then Draco launched himself at her and she met him halfway in a tangle of want and need and pent-up desire that had been brewing longer than any potion.
The cauldrons lay forgotten as Hermione grasped at him, pulling him closer, and he kissed her with a desperation that stole the breath from her lungs. His body was taut with tension, hands circling, searching, exploring, and one strong thigh plunged forwards between hers as if he was helpless to resist, an inexorable kind of magnetism.
Hermione was lost to the feeling that this was what she had been waiting for, and it had her skin roaring as if aflame with every single caress, every swipe of his tongue across her lower lip, every soft, low noise that spilled from his throat. She was burning up, melting into him, and she couldn't imagine possibly cooling down long enough to disentangle herself now.
He bent to her neck, kissing and sucking with an ardency that only fuelled this bonfire, and she couldn't help the way she bucked into him, hands fisting in his hair and hips canting to slant against his.
"Wanted-" he gasped at her skin in liquid kisses – "so long-"
"Fuck-" she breathed. "Draco, bed-"
And he leaned back enough to grip her thighs and yank her up, her already drenched knickers slick against his fingertips. Groaning, he slammed her down against the bed and crawled over her to return to his ministrations, the hardness in his underwear spiralling Hermione's heartbeat into a frenzy.
This was real.
Fuck, she was a goner.
She yanked his hips towards her own by his belt loops and renewed her attentions to his lips, nipping and sucking urgently, small noises tearing free of her vocal cords with every shattered exhale. He palmed at her skin through her bra and she broke free of his mouth long enough to gasp, "Take it off, take it off-"
And he sought her lips insatiably again as she arched her back to help him tear the clasps free.
The top sheet rucking up underneath her pelvis, Hermione yanked it out from underneath them and shoved it off the side of the bed, uncaring about the mess they were making, especially when his lips slid around one tightened nipple and she cried out once more. The weight of his body pressed her into the mattress, centred at the strong hands that gripped her hips like a prize he wouldn't – couldn't – let go of.
She was desperate to feel him against her, and she bade only the tiniest of farewells to her favourite pair of knickers before she pinched at them and murmured an Evanesco that had Draco letting out an incoherent moan and diving down to kiss at the juncture of her thighs.
She gasped and arched into him, waves of accidental magic rolling over her skin like static shocks, and when one particularly violent one sent tingles racing down her entire body and gusted two luxurious pillows onto the floor, he stared up at her in disbelief.
She bit her lip. "I'm sorry, I can't help it-"
"That's the hottest thing I've ever seen," he whispered, and this time the feeling of his tongue against her very centre had her keening out so loudly she felt she must have woken up half the hotel. "Fuck, Hermione-"
"Get naked," she said hoarsely, scrabbling at his shoulders and not embarrassed about it in the slightest. "Please, please, I want-"
She didn't even need to finish her sentence; he kicked his briefs off and shoved her once more into the sheets with salacious kisses at her jaw and two fingers at her clit, rubbing into her with a relentless hunger that she had no choice but to satisfy. She cried out and yanked at his hair as she spasmed weightlessly into his touch, and he sucked a bruise into her collarbone that Hermione was definitely going to have to Glamour.
When the blaze of pleasure faded to a glowing ember, she gasped in a breath and forced a hand between their bodies, wrapping keen fingers around his cock and relishing the look on his face as his neck dipped and a guttural noise forced its way from his throat. He was thick and anticipatory in her hand, and Hermione worked her thumb at the delicate slip beneath the head until he pulled her away, chest heaving with need.
"Do it," she whispered, trying to angle herself towards him. "Please."
He moaned softly against her lips. "Are you sure you want-"
"Yes," she gasped, and she whispered a Contraceptive Charm as she laced her fingers over his spine. "I've been wanting this, I want you, please-"
And he thrust into her so hard and so fast that they both let out a shout.
"Fuck," she rasped, and then the overwhelming fullness of him gave way to the heady drag of skin against skin and she threw back her head and moaned.
"You're so good," he breathed, "so fucking perfect, so tight, Merlin, fuck-"
Hermione could barely think with the relentless force of pleasure raging through her nerves, every synapse its own little firework of rapture. Draco was all she could see, all she could feel, and it was so clearly what they had been leading up to all along, what every little fight and argument and jab had been building to for the last two years, as she clutched him tighter and shuddered with every movement.
"Have you," she rasped, "been thinking about this as long as I have?"
"Longer," he groaned, and dipped to suck at her breast as she quivered beneath him. Her palms squeezed and grasped at the ridges of his back, the curves of muscle at his sides, the sturdy ladders of his ribs, and he groaned with every dig of her fingers into his skin. "You have no idea-"
"I have some," she breathed, tugging fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck and shoving herself up to meet his thrusts as his pace increased, steadily winding into arrhythmia.
It was fast, frantic, almost violent, and when Draco pressed a thumb to her clit once more, slamming into her with erratic thrusts, she yelped and bucked up as pleasure split her apart atom by atom. The shockwave of magic blew out from her body, knocking the wall paintings askew and throwing the door of the wardrobe clean open, but Hermione had no time to think about it when Draco gripped her tight and shattered into her, hips jerking and spine arching and moans spilling from his lips like a secret.
"God," she rasped.
And he broke into a grin, a deep, wondering, sated grin that had her beaming back, yanking at him until he bent to kiss her once more. With a sigh, he shifted off of her and gathered her into his arms.
"I've never seen that before," he whispered. "Is your magic… always like that?"
She bit her lip. "Only when I… lose control."
He squeezed her even tighter, and she laughed. "I much prefer this to arguing," he muttered in her ear, and Hermione was tempted to agree.
But at that moment, she became aware of a terrible smell from the room.
"Oh fuck," she hissed, "the cauldrons-"
And clambering off the bed, she was only able to stare helplessly, stomach sinking, as the bright pink potion in her cauldron bubbled furiously.
She gasped.
Draco ducked.
And with one final gurgle, the potion exploded.
The room was showered in the stuff: the walls, the bed, the paintings, inside the open wardrobe, and all the way up Hermione's body, as hot and cloying as candle wax. She gasped aloud, frantically waving her wand to cool it down, and then again to turn off the burners.
It was quiet.
From his den of safety behind the duvet, Draco scrambled upright, a look of dawning horror on his face. "Oh Merlin, look what we did to the room-"
She wasn't really listening. Her knees buckled, and she knew immediately that the potion had already made its way into her body, pushing at her eyelids like gravity.
"Draco," she said tightly. "Draco, what happens if you come into contact with an over-brewed Memory Suppressant?"
He got unsteadily to his feet, panic in his eyes as he took in the pink splatters over her body. "Oh, no, no, no-"
"Didn't you say something about ox bile… side effect… fatigue…?" she whispered. Her eyes widened. "I'm not going to remember this when I wake up, am I?" she breathed.
"Don't say that," he said sharply. "Don't you dare forget, I'll never forgive you-"
"I'm going to get dressed," she said stiffly, reaching for her bra. "If I – if I wake up naked, I'm going to panic, I-"
"Wait, we can solve this, we can fix this-" he said, reaching for her, but she pulled away, heart thudding.
"We had sex," she whispered, yanking her dress down over her head. "I've been wanting to forever, and now I'm not going to remember it – I think I, I need – you need to forget too-"
"No!"
A shudder of fatigue shot through her and she stumbled away from him.
"Hermione," he said desperately, "please. I couldn't stand it if we just… forgot, like this never happened, I… I can't go back to how we were, please-"
"I couldn't stand it if you remembered something I didn't!" she choked. "This wasn't how I – I didn't want our first time to be-"
The colour drained from his face.
"You're drunk," he whispered. "Fuck, I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have-"
She stared at him, willing herself to say something, to console him, but it was like the potion had sapped the energy from her body, the air from her lungs.
"I should go," he said, and didn't even wait for her to respond before he grabbed his clothes and threw open the door.
Hermione could do nothing but stare at the carnage around her, wondering how the hell she was going to clean this up with the equivalent of a tranquiliser dart in her veins, when she noticed something inside the open wardrobe.
Oh, God. Oh no.
White lace. Gleaming crystals.
Smeared with pink.
Fear strangled at her heart and she stumbled forward again, pulling Pansy's ruined wedding dress from its hanger. And then, as if the tiredness had finally draped itself over her like a blanket, she found herself wobbling out and onto the balcony, legs crumpling.
She collapsed in a heap.
And the last thing she thought of before sleep consumed her was the guilt on his face.
After
"Oh my God," said Hermione.
Draco stared at the floor.
"We had sex."
"Er. Yeah."
"In Harry and Pansy's wedding bed."
"Mm."
"And then my cauldron exploded."
He bit the inside of his cheek. "Hermione-"
"You know when you're having one of those stress dreams where there's something you have to do, or somewhere you have to be," Hermione said, "except every time you try and get there, other things keep happening and delaying you more and more until you just know you're going to be hours late, and you're going to fail, and everyone's going to be furious? This is just like that, except it's real life, and if I don't get this sorted, I'm not ever going to wake up, because Pansy is going to mutilate me-"
"Granger," he croaked, and she looked at him, quieting immediately. "We've got a room to tidy," he said flatly.
Her heart thudded dully in her chest. "Oh. Of course."
The atmosphere was stretched so thin it was practically fraying at the edges, and Hermione resolutely avoided his eyes as they made their way into the room and began cleaning.
She didn't think she'd ever cast so many Scourgify spells in her life, remaking the bed and removing any evidence of them ever having been there. Mrs Skower's Magical Mess Remover proved invaluable, as Draco spread it liberally on every conceivable surface, rubbing it into walls and carpets and curtains as Hermione turned her attention to the ruined cauldrons.
They must have spent at least an hour scrubbing and rearranging, tidying and cleaning, and Hermione thanked every possibly deity she could think of when they scraped away the Mess Remover residue to reveal a carpet that looked as if it had never been so much as trod on.
Hermione was soon racing down the corridor to Draco's room, and practically wept with relief at the sight of Pansy's wedding dress as white as the day it was bought. A quick drying spell and it was as good as new.
With barely minutes to go, she legged it back down the corridor and pushed open the door to the honeymoon suite, where Draco was placing the last cushion back on the bed. He turned a panicked expression her way, and even as her stomach roiled with the need to say something, she could only watch him nod stiffly at the wedding dress in her arms and gesture towards the wardrobe.
The clink of the hanger against the rail was the loudest thing Hermione had ever heard, but afterwards, she and Draco surveyed their work in deathly silence. The carpets were stain-free, the bed was remade and possibly even sterile, judging by the number of cleaning charms Hermione had placed on it, the paintings were hung with perfect symmetry on the walls, and the smell of over-brewed Memory Suppressant had well and truly faded.
"We did it," she said softly, and not a moment too soon, because the main door suddenly swung open to reveal Pansy Parkinson in a silk dressing gown, her hair pinned up in extravagant curls atop her head.
"Granger? Draco?" she asked. "What are you- oh, don't tell me – this is where you disappeared off to last night?" she groaned, placing an austere hand on her hip.
Hermione froze. She must have left a pink splodge somewhere, she must have done. There must be clothes on the floor somewhere, lipstick on Draco's collar, a love bite on her neck, something, because Pansy knew, oh, God, she knew-
"I can't believe you went searching for my dress! Merlin, you two, I should have known you wouldn't leave it alone!" Pansy laughed, and Hermione could have collapsed with relief.
Thank fuck. Crisis averted.
Hermione bit her lip. "I'm sorry."
Pansy huffed good-naturedly. "Ah well, no harm done. Come on Granger, it's your turn to get your hair done, Salazar knows you'll need as much time as possible."
And Pansy tugged her away before Hermione could even look at Draco, let alone say something to remove this awful barrier that had fallen between them.
She had thought that their argument-driven relationship had been bad enough.
But this was much, much worse.
Ever After
The wedding was, as Hermione had predicted, perfect.
Harry practically glowed with joy as Pansy walked down the aisle in her entirely white dress. Ron fulfilled his Best Man duties admirably by handing over two perfect rings that made even Pansy's lip tremble a little. Molly Weasley wept with pride the entire way through the ceremony.
Hermione spent the whole time sat beside Draco in the bridesmaids' aisle trying not to look at him, her heart banging in her chest. His jaw remained tight, his lips pursed, his eyes caged, and yet he looked so handsome in his suit that Hermione would have given anything for him to look at her, just once.
At the reception, Harry and Pansy's first dance left very few dry eyes in the room, and Hermione was just contemplating nursing her misfortune in a corner with a large glass of rosé when she realised that Ron had amplified his voice and was talking from the front of the reception room.
"So, I know," he said, "you may be expecting a dance from the Best Man and the Maid of Honour, but since our Maid is actually Draco Malfoy, that idea is frankly… well, you know what I mean."
There was a chorus of laughter and a 'boo' from Ginny, and Ron grinned out at the crowd.
"Nothing personal, you understand, Malfoy," he continued. "Anyway, since I'm engaged" - Lavender Brown beamed up at him from the crowd - "I thought I'd let someone else take my place. Hermione, where are you?"
Dread infused her bloodstream.
Bloody typical.
She patted down her sage green bridesmaid dress and wandered reluctantly towards the dance floor, where Draco was staring at her with a stricken expression. Pansy cackled at them from Harry's side, and Hermione rolled her eyes, trying desperately to smile at the crowd.
"Hey," she said, and Draco swallowed obviously.
"Hello."
The music started again and Draco gathered her stiffly into his arms, where Hermione tried not to notice how much she enjoyed the feeling of his chest against hers. They rocked together, gently, formally, and all Hermione could think about was how he had looked last night, the way he had kissed her as if he was starved for air.
He watched her expressionlessly, hands tentative at her waist. Gradually, more and more people began to join them on the dance floor, surrounding them in colour, in noise. And yet, Draco remained guarded, careful, locked away behind some protective screen that had Hermione feeling like she was a million miles away.
And she could take it no longer. "Why did you leave?" she asked softly.
His eyebrows flitted upwards, but his mouth pressed into a line. "I took advantage of you," he answered eventually, and the guilt seeped from his voice like wine. "We were drunk. And I knew if you remembered what had happened, when you were sober, you'd hate me."
"I don't hate you," she said, and she felt him exhale heavily. "And I wasn't that drunk. I think we both knew what we were doing, didn't we?"
The fine muscles in his throat fluttered, and his fingers tightened at her waist. "I turned around almost as soon as I left," he admitted quietly, coaxing her into a soft spin. "I knew I shouldn't have stormed out when I did. But then when I came back, you were already asleep, and I didn't want to disturb you, so I- I stayed in the room. I didn't see the dress, so when I saw that you'd left in the morning without saying anything, I assumed that you… that you remembered. And you didn't want to see me."
She gently laid her head against his shoulder as they danced, and she felt his heart accelerate through his skin.
"When I saw you in the Apothecary," he breathed, "I was so relieved that you didn't remember, and yet when you spoke to me the way you always did before, it just made me… I'm sorry."
She swallowed. "It's okay."
"Do you regret what we did?" he said desperately, and it was suddenly clear that he'd been waiting all day to ask. The breath fled from her lungs.
"Of course not," she whispered, staring up at him. "I regret being stupid about the potions, and wrecking the room, and I'm still terrified that Pansy might find out, but I – I don't regret… us."
His eyes widened. "Even though we'd been drinking?"
"Yes," Hermione breathed. "It wasn't ideal, obviously, but I… I'd been wanting to for…" She took a breath. "It might have taken more provocation, but I would have done it - all of it - even if I was stone cold sober."
"Oh," he breathed, and all pretense of dancing was abandoned as he grasped her hands in his. "Fuck, Hermione, if you had any idea how long I've wanted to… I've been wanting this more than anything, I - Merlin, I know I'm doing this all in the wrong order, but do you think I can take you out for dinner sometime-?"
And she laughed joyously, relief and excitement thundering through her chest. "Of course," she grinned. "But first, er… Please stop talking?"
And he blinked delightedly as she leant forward, grabbed his collar, and pulled his face down to kiss him.
"I knew it!" shrieked Pansy from nearby, and Hermione's heart slipped and plummeted three feet into her knees as they broke apart. "I know resolved sexual tension when I see it," Pansy continued, grinning at Harry. "Didn't I tell you?"
Harry snorted. "You did. In great detail."
"I was just saying!" Pansy cried. "Can you imagine the state of Draco's hotel room?"
Her husband began to look vaguely ill. "I'm not sure I want to," he answered.
And Hermione bit her lip, thinking of a key with an unread number on it, a bed that hadn't been slept in, and a bathtub still covered in pink residue. "No," she grinned, squeezing Draco's hand. "No, you definitely don't."
Thank you for reading! If you have time, I'd love to hear what you think!