"You have truly incredible tits." Ginny nodded appreciatively at Hermione's breasts. "And the knickers are lovely."

Hermione's tits—by any measure incredible, covered in intricate red lace that obscured nothing and revealed everything—lifted and rotated with her body as she arched her back, raised an arm over her head, then turned her face, eyes half-lidded, towards the camera. There was no sound in the photograph, but it was quite clear that at the end of the loop, she sighed.

Hermione popped an over-crisped chip into her mouth. "Thanks, Gin."

"Are you sure you're going to be able to fit your mouth around all that meat?" Ginny asked.

"I'll manage."

Hermione had picked up a paper-wrapped burger, stacked and draped with cheese, bacon, avocado, and sundry, nominal vegetables. She brought it to her mouth, took a vast, imprudent bite, then tipped back by increments in Draco's desk chair, which gave a sudden, predictable lurch backwards at the quarter mark as you leaned.

"Oh, gods, yes." Hermione covered her mouth with her hand. "Yes. Yes, that's it right there."

Ginny pulled her own, less extravagantly proportioned burger from the greasy paper sack she'd brought into Harry and Draco's shared office in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and watched Hermione with a skeptical eye. "We need to find a nice, friendly penis for you before you develop a burger kink."

Hermione swallowed. "I'd probably need to have a significant sexual experience adjacent to a cheeseburger in order to—"

"Are you sure that you're not having one right now?"

"Possibly. Gods, I miss meat." Hermione tore away another feral bite.

"At least you can sneak around vegetarianism's back without any consequences beyond streaks to your arteries. What I miss are tits."

Hermione bobbed her head in sympathy.

"That's the only thing I dislike about being with Harry." At her place at Harry's desk, pushed flush with Draco's so that on the rare occasions that the two men sat down at the same time they faced one another, Ginny unwrapped her burger, pulled a sliced pickle from under a straggling strand of lettuce and tossed it aside. "If you're a girl who likes girls but you're monogamously attached to a man, people always assume you're straight. But you're not."

Hermine shook her head. "No, you're not, Gin."

"At all. I enjoy the cock, obviously, but the loss of women with beautiful breasts in nice lingerie is something you mourn, you know?"

"I hear and see you. You are a breast woman." Hermione gestured at the half dozen photographs spread out in front of Ginny on Harry's desk. "So you think they're tasteful? Not pornographic?"

Ginny glanced at the photographs, then looked thoughtfully at the rejected pickle sitting flat and lifeless on a serviette. "If it's meant to titillate, then I'd argue they're pornographic. These are some pretty titillating tits you have, Mione. And you didn't have the pictures taken for a bloke?"
"Not at all," said Hermione. "It's part of Tracey's whole philosophy. Her photography sessions are meant first and foremost to help women take ownership of themselves as sexual beings."

"So you went to her place and took off your kit?"

"I went to the lovely professional studio in her home and put on lingerie in a comfortable private changing area, yes."

"Then let her take pictures of you looking like an all you can eat muff buffet. A muffet."

Hermione snorted, and drew back from the bite she was set to take of her burger. "And then I posed in a deeply empowering eroticised fashion, yes."

"Do you think Harry would like it if I had a set taken for him?" Ginny leaned forward in Harry's desk chair. "He could frame it and prop it just here, so everyone in the office thinks his girlfriend is an underwear model."

"Tracey does full nudes as well."

"Even better. Everyone will think I'm a naturist."

Hermione wiped her hands with a serviette and reached across Draco's desk towards Ginny. "Here, let's have those. Gods forbid they come back early and find us looking at my pornographic pictures."

Ginny licked her fingers, then lifted the photographs by their edges and slid them back into a white envelope. She passed the envelope to Hermione, who set it on top of the heavy paperboard media mailer it had been owled in.

"Why'd you have them sent here, anyway?" Ginny asked. "Seems risky."

"It is, but it seemed riskier to have them owled to either the old flat or the new one while I'm still moving, and I was too busy to go pick them up at her studio this week. In any case, they made it to my desk safe and sound."

"Are you still off dating?" Ginny lifted the top half of her burger's bun and pulled away another pickle.

"Unequivocally, yes. After that last experience I'm wondering if breasts are the better option."

"You mean the one that asked—" Ginny raised both eyebrows.

"You don't inquire after that half an hour into the get-to-know-you dinner."

Ginny shook her head solemnly. "You really don't."

"And if that's what's truly critical to you, you put it in your dating profile."

"That's exactly right. You put it right there." Ginny splayed her hands in the air in front of her. "Front and center."

"It would certainly save me a lot of time."

"Are you having any sex, at least? Quick and dirty shag here and there?"

Hermione groaned. "Gods, that's a bust as well. Unfortunately there's no way to sort out the ones who are perfectly content to get off and leave you lying there wondering what just happened."

"Shameful practice."

"Borderline criminal. And some of them are just weird. I met a man in my singles' theatre club who seemed promising, but he actually said the words 'All aboard,' as he headed in."

Ginny guffawed. "No, he did not."

"He truly did. I sent him through the Floo still pulling his pants back on."

Ginny pulled a face. "I can understand your wanting to stay out of it then. Anyone you already know worth your interest, maybe? Someone around the office?"

"You mean besides Percy?"

Ginny's scowl deepened. "We're not talking about your love life anymore if you start seeing Percy."

"He's a lovely man, Ginny. Enormously intelligent. Ambitious. Considerate and courteous. Although to be honest he comes across as being a bit reserved with women."

"'A bit' is underselling the point."

"I'll admit to liking a take-charge attitude from a man in the bedroom, and I worry he'd fall over himself apologizing if a woman asked for a little smack on the bottom now and again."

"I don't consent to this conversation."

"Alright. But in the office, besides your attractive brother—"

"Stop."

"—there's a limited selection."

"What about whatshisface—the fellow with the dark hair? The owl room witches are all ready to bend over for him? Always smiling? I call him Handsome Ted?"

"That's Jonathan."

"Is that his name?" Ginny asked. "He looks like a Ted."

"Yes, Handsome Ted is called Jonathan. I'm trying to set him up with one of the receptionists in the Office of the Minister for Justice. They're perfect for one another, but he's not seeing past the shapeless cardigans just yet."

"There's always . . ." Ginny glanced pointedly at the desk in front of Hermione.

"What?"

Ginny repeated the look. "You know."

"No, I don't."

Ginny's eyebrows slowly climbed upwards. "His name rhymes with Fake-o Palboy."

"Gods. No."

"Why not? Come on. To our collective horror he's turned out to be a snack. A meal, frankly. One of the really drawn-out ones you get in an expensive restaurant where they don't let you choose your own food."

"A table d'hôte or prix fixe menu."

"Exactly. He's both fit and particular. I'll bet he'd give your prix a proper fixe. I keep telling Harry to grow his hair out like that, but unfortunately he's not wrong that it wouldn't lie quite the same way."

Draco's chair protested as Hermione leaned further back. "I have reconciled myself to the fact, as we all must, that Malfoy is widely considered fit."

"He's fit as hell, Hermione."

"But I will also remind us all that underneath that haircut and the gods-awful smirk he makes with his very terrible mouth, Malfoy is still Malfoy."

"What's wrong with his mouth?"

"You know." Hermione made a puppet-like, mouthy gesture with her fingers. "Sort of angular, but pillowy? Obviously some people like that sort of thing."

Ginny sifted through her chips. "I shouldn't think you would."

"I don't."

Hermione took another bite of her burger, then masticated and pondered.

"All of that's irrelevant anyway," she said at length. "Particular was just the word. Half the weekends he's on the continent gadding with models who also have titles."

"'Gadding'? Crochet me a nose bag for Christmas, will you, Gran?"

"Yes, they gad. I shouldn't think a salaried Ministry prosecutor who works seventy hours a week in a grey pencil skirt and heels with supportive insoles would be anything like his cup of tea."

"A Ministry prosecutor hiding a set of remarkable tits under her frumpy work blouses. This is the exact set-up for a whole subgenre of erotic fantasies."

"That may be so, but—" Hermione brushed a bit of burger bun from the front of her white cotton Oxford shirt and picked a stray crumb from her Gryffindor lanyard. "—I can't think that a set of serviceable breasts and a bottom large enough to make a bit of stretch to fabrics a near necessity makes me an enticing companion for yachting on the Mediterranean."

"I suppose men do turn their nose up at a woman in a bikini if she's got a generous handful of breast and a tiny waist and a great round arse."

"When they like six foot tall women shaped like popsicle sticks with a thigh gap I imagine they do."

Ginny finished off her burger and tossed the greasy wrapper into the paper bag. "I feel like you've given this a bit of thought."
"What?"

"Malfoy. Yachting. Popsicles."

Hermione laughed, short and hard and sharp. "How can I not think about him? His bony backside is parked on the corner of my desk half the day rattling on about Muggle books he's read, and Muggle films he's watched, and whether I've read and seen them as well. He's forever harassing me about what I get up to at the weekend. I haven't a clue when he conducts his law enforcement duties. I've a mind to trigger an inquiry about his job performance."

"Sounds like he needs someone to ride him a bit."

"I get it," Hermione said, throwing up her hands in exasperation. "He's made it clear—repeatedly—that he dates Muggle-born women, but that doesn't mean I ought to be his primary resource for cultural awareness."

"Some people can be quite thick, can't they?"

"So thick."

'Well." Ginny held her hand out for Hermione's burger wrapper and her empty paper chip boat, then tossed both in the bag. "If I were you, I'd seriously consider inviting him over for a ride. You might be surprised by his level of interest in the way your bottom looks in a pencil skirt."

"You're a filthy woman, Ginny."

"I have six older brothers, I don't know how anyone expects otherwise. Oh, balls!"

"Hide the evidence!" Hermione whisper-shouted.

Ginny rapidly Vanished the trash as the door handle to Harry and Draco's office turned.

"Oh! Hello." Harry, hair committed to lying in no particular direction whatsoever, pushed through the doorway with an overstuffed file folder pinched under his arm and a paper hot drinks cup in his hand, milky tea sloshing over the rim and onto the floor. "I wasn't expecting to see the two of you here." He sniffed the air. "Which of you smells like bacon?"

"Do you want me to have dirty pictures taken for you?" Ginny leaned back in Harry's chair and laced her hands over her belly.

Harry set his cup down on his own desk, and paused with the file folder held out over Draco's stack of incoming paperwork.

"Do I—" He narrowed his eyes. "Is this a trick question?"

"Kit off or naughty knickers?" Ginny asked. "Either way I'll be erotically empowered."

When he dropped the folder, the papers inside slid like an avalanche over the top of Draco's desk.

"That's . . ." He trailed off and looked at Hermione. "Is there a wrong answer here?"

"Where's your partner?" Hermione asked Harry, digging under the paper lahar for her envelope. "Off gadding with one of his willowy Swedish marchionesses?"

"No, he's in the closet."

Hermione's hand stilled. "Oh!" She shuffled half the papers back into the folder, only to have them slide out again. "Do you mean . . .? Lord. I hadn't caught on to that at all." She took in a stiff breath through her nostrils as she pushed a pair of the white envelopes that crime scene photographs arrived in from the developer back into the folder. "I suppose people need to remain closeted sometimes, for lots of perfectly valid reasons."

"No." Harry sat on the corner of his desk, and took a sip of his tea. "He's in the supply closet." He tipped his chin towards a narrow, half-open door in the corner of the cramped room. "It's his month to muck out and refresh the field supplies."

The closet door swung all the way open, and Draco, wearing his customary waistcoat and tie, his gleaming DMLE badge on a chain around his neck, slid through it in a slat-backed wooden rolling chair.

"Hello."

His plummy lord-of-the-manor voice was at odds with the hard-used patina of his leather wand holster and the careless roll of the cuffs at his elbows. He ran a hand through the long bit in the front of his perfectly imperfect hair.

He was clearly, openly, intensely amused.

If Hermione wasn't restrained by the law she upheld for a living, she'd have erupted out of Draco's desk chair and hexed him right in his smirking, pillowy mouth.

The office was quiet except for the sound of Harry slurping dumbly at his tea and Ginny's ineffectually smothered snorting.

"I realize you two have lunched already—" Draco swiveled his chair from side to side and drummed his short, manicured nails on its arm "—but I could go for a meal right about now."

Hermione grabbed her envelope and shot up from his desk. The skin of her throat and cheeks prickled with heat. "Enjoy yourself. I couldn't possibly eat another bite."

Draco leaned his chin in his hand. "Not even a snack?"

"I think she's had enough meat for the moment, Malfoy." Ginny launched into a fresh round of drawn-out snorts, her eyes gleaming with moisture and her face uniformly pink.

"The two of you are awful, atrocious people," snapped Hermione. She turned on her heel and walked to the door with her chin hoisted.

Harry tossed his empty cup in the shared dustbin next to his and Draco's desks. "I thought you'd gone vegetarian?"

I'd like chicken biryani, please, ordered in at six o'clock.

Hermione sent off the note to her secretary.

Ten minutes before her three o'clock meeting, the airspace over Hermione's desk was crowded with a half dozen paper airplane Ministry memos, a paper parachute with a brown paper package suspended underneath, and a growing flock of tiny paper intraoffice birds, all in a holding pattern and bumping up against one another in their anxiety to land.

"I'll get to you all in a moment." She waved her wand and the crowd moved as a whole to the left side of her office, jostling one another over the head of a drooping ficus. Indirect light, inadequate food for photosynthesis, sifted through the papers from the high, narrow window in the rear wall of her office that she'd enchanted to show the sky over Sydney.

"As I informed the Secretary's office last week—" Hermione tilted her neck, which gave a satisfying series of dull cracks, and swiveled her chair towards the Floo "—there's a limited number of charges the Ministry would be able to bring in this case, and all of them have very clear statutes of limitations. We're keeping a close eye on the proceedings within the French Ministry, of course, and trust that—"

In the waiting cluster of Ministry correspondence, a pink paper jackdaw began to snip at the yellow paper primary feathers of an elf owl. As a tiny triangle was cut and fell from its wingtip to the floor, it ducked below a ficus leaf for cover.

In the confusion, a small, nondescript white paper bird broke from the flock, and with Hermione's attention on the Floo, popped over the surface of her desk and flattened itself into a square note, perfectly aligned with the corners of her desk in the precise center of her work surface. The note was filled in with a distinctive, machine-like hand.

"You've gone astray, you silly thing," Hermione muttered. With half an eye on her conversant in the Floo, she tapped her wand on the paper. "Mr. Drees' desk, across the hall," she whispered. The note refolded itself into the shape of a kestrel, which lifted from Hermione's desk and flew through the open transom window over the door to her office.

The bird had scarcely vanished over the ledge when there was a trio of soft knocks, and the subdued voice of Hermione's secretary. "Your three o'clock is here, Ms. Granger."

"Just a moment, please, Miss Kapoor," Hermione called. She stood from her chair, then moved around her desk to sit at the edge, facing the Floo.

"I completely understand where your concerns lie in this case, Mr. Boucher, and you can rest assured—"

Hermione blinked, but refused to look as the door to her office opened and a narrow figure moved in her peripheral vision.

"—our office has already sent copies of any information publicly available in our jurisdiction—coroner's reports, Auror's reports and so forth—and I believe your lead detectives have been in close communication with ours. In the case of an international—"

The figure moved around her desk and sat in her chair.

"—there are added complexities."

Finally, compelled against her better judgement, she turned to look.

Draco leaned back in her chair, and tossed a file folder down on the desk behind her.

"Do not put your feet on my desk, Malfoy," she whispered.

He jerked his chin towards the Floo and shot her a look that was a clear rebuke, simultaneously stern and mocking.

As she refocused her attention on the Floo, she felt a pair of light thumps on the desk.

"Yes, Mr. Boucher. I'll have my secretary connect with your office to schedule a face-to-face next month with the Belgians."

Hermione ended her call and rotated so that she sat on the edge of her desk facing her chair, glaring at Draco.

"Take your blasted feet off my desk, you philistine."

Draco, arms crossed over his chest and eyes closed, cracked one eyelid open. "You know I love it when you call me Muggle names, Granger. What's a 'philistine'? Do you keep a Muggle dictionary in here?" He sat up by a margin and glanced at her crowded bookshelves.

"Yes, there's a large Oxford dictionary on the bottom left—" She jabbed at his toe with a fingertip. "That's not the point. Take your da—"

Draco pointed, a slack and trifling gesture, at a glass jar sitting on the corner of Hermione's desk. It had a paper placard attached to it which read Obscenities in Miss Kapoor's pretty, orderly hand, and was one third filled with a sea of Sickles, a handful of Knuts, and a few stray Galleons.

"Take your accursed feet off my desk, Malfoy. You're supposed to be a man of fancy manners."

"Fancy manners? That sounds like a cozy tea shop. And an apron with a ruffle."

Hermione leveled a glare at him.

"Kid gloves. Sugar lumps shaped like little hearts." Draco held up his hand, index finger and thumb looped into a circle the size of a heart-shaped sugar lump.

"I'll kid glove you one you won't soon forget if your overpriced Oxfords aren't on the floor in five seconds."

Draco removed his feet at a leisurely pace from Hermione's desk.

"Happy now?"

"Giddy."

Draco had a white evidence photograph envelope in his hand, and tapped it against his thigh. "Now that we've resolved that bit of tension, what is it you've summoned me here for?"

Hermione pushed at the edge of her chair with the tip of her shoe. "Get out of my chair and get in yours." She pointed a thumb at the pair of visitor's chairs on the other side of her desk.

Draco rose from her seat. As he eased past her, the wool of his trousers brushed against the fabric of the stockings over Hermione's knees with a soft thwip.

He had a smell to him that Hermione liked very much. It wasn't an applied scent, but a mixture of ambient, incidental fragrances, quite clean and somehow steady.

"We need to discuss your and Harry's reports from the ghost killings in Market Hettlesham," she said, lowering herself into her chair. "There are some discrepancies which are minor on the surface, but will cause me enormous headaches at trial if I don't understand how they happened."

"Potter's imprecise." Draco ducked as a paper chickadee zinged past his left ear and came to a light and controlled landing on Hermione's desk before unfolding itself. "It's as simple at that."

Hermione read the note from her secretary confirming a six o'clock curry, then Vanished it.

"You fully recovered, I trust?" Hermione asked, glancing down at Draco's right arm.

"From the Ghost-Touch? I did, thank you for asking. You were spot on about the lavender water recommendation. It sped up the healing process by a full week, and as a bonus I smelled like Provence."

"You did!" Hermione cut off a smile with haste before it became over-broad. "Harry mentioned it."

"Which sections were at odds, if I might ask?"

Hermione waved her wand at the crowd of office correspondence, and the parachute drifted over to her desk, hovered for a moment, then released the paper-wrapped package and disappeared in a puff of scentless white smoke.

Hermione read the shipping label, then used her wand to slice through the twine tied around the box.

"The time the two of you came across the bodies is a bit different—"

"One twenty-seven in the morning."

"And you know this because . . .?"

Draco drew his pocket watch from his waistcoat, opened it, then snapped it shut it again. "I check. Potter estimates."

"He was off by a full hour." She tore the paper from the box.

"Of course he was. In his defense, we did have a fucking poltergeist literally breathing down our necks at the time."

Hermione narrowed her eyes and pointed at the Obscenities jar. Sighing, Draco pulled a Sickle from his trouser pocket and dropped it through the slot at the top of the jar.

"I ought to have Harry up here and not you," said Hermione.

Draco looked affronted. "Why? Because of a little fuck here and there?"

Hermione's eyes opened wide and she tilted her head.

"Shit," Malfoy said, reaching into this pocket again. "Fuck!"

The coins hit the bottom of the jar with a trio of bright clinks.

"No, it's not about that. Your reports aren't the problem, are they?"

Draco smirked, pleased with himself. "I shouldn't think so. I'm frightfully good at my job."

"I admire your ability to ruin truly any compliment with just that little splash of ego."

Draco pinched his fingers together. "A soupçon of self-regard." He tapped the envelope against his thigh absently with his other hand.

Hermione pulled at the end of the box, which had been sealed tight with what looked like excess glue.

"I can certainly do my part to up his accuracy," said Draco, "but it would help to have you mention it to him as being a problem for you, specifically. He'll take it as the worst sort of patronization if it's coming from me."

"And he won't think I'm patronizing him?"

"Of course he will, but he loves being patronized by you. Do you want help with that?"

Hermione sucked in a sharp breath as the edge of the cardboard bit underneath a fingernail, then handed the box his direction.

He lay his envelope on his thigh and took it from her.

"What's in here?" He pulled the side of the box away with one firm, steady movement, then passed the package back to her. "Faux steaks? Is that a thing?"

"No. I've ordered fresh hand towels for my new flat."

Hermione set the box down, then fixed her eye on Draco's left knee as it bounced. He picked the envelope up again and began to tap it against his knee. "Is that for me?" she asked, indicating the envelope. "Halloway mentioned he'd developed the pictures from the Didsbury ordeal and sent them your way."

"These?" Draco looked at the envelope, his eyes unfixed and wary in a way that was unusual for him. "No, in fact—" He paused. "Well, as far as the Didsbury photographs are concerned, I'm loath to have you see them at all. That was a massive fucking shitshow. Fuck!"

He reached into his pocket, and pulled out four Knuts and a Galleon.

He considered the money, then shrugged. "Unfortunately those cunt-fucking, arse-licking piece of shit bastarding sonofabitch pissartists and their bloody vampire genocide agenda deserve the full fucking force of your ability to nail a man's bollocks to the wall." He paused, eyes narrowed and gaze to the ceiling, then said, "Bunch of cockwombled gobshite arsebadgering fuckwazzocks." He dropped the Galleon in the jar.

"There was a lot of blood, then?"

"There's truly no way the pictures can possibly have done it justice." He cleared his throat, and Hermione watched as his knee sped up. "Which is really the relevant issue here."

"How so?"

"I believe you have the pictures, and we'll need them over in the Auror's office first."

Hermione shook her head in the negative. "They haven't come across my desk yet."

There were numerous stacks of papers on Hermione's desk, some incoming, others outgoing, in an arrangement lingering in the dusty borderlands where organization gave way to the tumbleweed-strewn frontier of chaos. There was a small stack of personal papers: catalogs of natural cosmetics, one for fair trade home goods whose purchase benefitted a Muggle children's aid organization, and several with the sorts of clothes she liked to wear on her days off. There was a coupon for a free small iced coffee beverage with the purchase of any scone at Plimshaw's bakery, the For Sale pages of The Daily Prophet, where Hermione hoped to find a bookshelf just right for her new flat, and at the top of the pile, her envelope full of erotic photographs.

Draco reached forward, and put a fingertip on top of the envelope.

Hermione felt as though she'd been struck by a very small, non-lethal jet of lightning.

"No! Don't—"

She sat up straight as a rod, mouth falling open, and held her breath as Draco pushed it towards her.

"I believe this is our Didsbury crime scene."

"No," Hermione said. The blood rushed in her ears. "That's . . . something else."

Draco continued to tap the envelope he'd been holding against his knee.

Hermione felt as though she was watching someone else's movements as she reached down and picked up the white envelope from her desk. Taking care to ensure the side of the picture with the image would be facing her, she lifted the envelope flap and drew out the photograph closest to her.

It ought to have been the first of Hermione's images—the one in the red lace bra and knickers, where she sighed at the end.

There was certainly red in the picture she pulled from the envelope. It was lavishly soaked in it, from the sofa in the middle ground to all four walls of the room to the door of the icebox in the kitchen beyond.

"Oh! Gods, that was . . . yes. I see what you mean."

Draco nodded. "Weasley was sick in the dustbin straight away."

"Ron is always sick in the dustbin."

"Yes, but usually not quite that quickly."

Hermione pushed the photograph back into the envelope. Her pulse throbbed, and she felt short of breath.

She couldn't look at his face.

"I'd like my pictures back, please," she said, and impressed herself with the lack of a waver in her voice.

He held the envelope out. "I only saw—" He stopped.

"It's fine." Hermione grabbed the envelope with a numb hand, then passed him the envelope with the photos from the Didsbury case.

"I didn't look at them. I realized the second they came out of the envelope."

"'They'?"

Hermione did look at him, then. He sat leaning forward, and his knee had finally stilled. He'd gone pink across the tops of his cheeks, and his face was twisted in an expression that Hermione hadn't seen on him in many years.

If she wasn't mistaken, he was deeply embarrassed.

"I always tip the photos out all at once," he said, clarifying, "but they went straight back in the moment I saw what they were."

Hermione sat up even taller. Lacking anything better to do with her hands, she picked up the box with her hand towels. "It's not a problem. I trust that this will remain between the two of us, and that we need never mention it again."

Without thinking about it, she slid the contents of the box onto the desk.

"Oh!"

She looked at Draco, who appeared just as surprised as she was.

"They've combined orders, haven't they?" she said, staring at the pile of fabric on her desk.

Draco cleared his throat.

"So you placed the order for the . . ." he trailed off and pointed. "That was separate from the towels."

"Yes. Two months ago. I'd entirely forgotten."

"Sure. Lost in the shuffle."

"Exactly. They were on backorder."

Hermione placed the cardboard box as casually as possible over the mint green silk knickers and matching bralette sitting on top of a stack of organic cotton Turkish hand towels in cream with a stone-colored stripe.

Given that there was very little fabric involved, the box covered the lingerie handily, so that only the narrow band of the crotch of the knickers looped out from underneath.

"I should imagine that it's efficient for them. Saves labor and shipping costs," she said.

Draco dipped his head in agreement. "Certainly." He shifted in his seat. "They sell hand towels and—"

"They do!"

"Ah. So—"

For a moment, Hermione was certain she could hear the tick of his pocket watch.

"Not for a bloke?" he asked.

"No."

"That's nice. Something for yourself. Wear it around the flat."

"Anywhere, really."

"Oh!" Draco's vision shifted back to the green silk and stayed there. "Errands, I suppose. Library visits. Work meetings."

Hermione nodded. "It's very empowering."

"Mm." He tapped the crime scene photographs against his thigh. "The red, of course, was . . . but mint! With the . . ." He made a wave gesture.

"The ruffle, yes. It's quite flattering."

"I should imagine so." His eyes flared wide for a moment. "Not that I am. That I will. That I would. Because I won't."

"Not that you would what?"

"Imagine."

The heat at Hermione's cheeks and the sides of her neck and the tops of her ears had been burning across her skin like a poorly contained forest conflagration for quite some time, but managed to redouble its efforts into something approaching Apocalyptic hellfire.

"No," she said. "Why would you?"

Draco stared at her then, open and plain, without any indication of feeling or thought. "You're asking me why I would?"

"Right?" said Hermione in a rush of heated breath. "Why would you?"

She stood up for no particular reason, and dusted her hands over the sides of her skirt.

Her palms were slicked with a sheen of sweat, which made it all the more surprising to herself when she jutted her right hand straight out towards Draco and said "Malfoy."

He looked at her hand, then down to the mint green silk, then back to her hand, then finally stood and gripped it.

"Granger." He pumped her arm once, and then twice.

Neither of them released their interest in the handshake, and Hermione found herself visually following the line of a dip between the muscles of his forearm.

"Have you been to Thailand?" he asked.

Hermione let go of his hand.

"Thailand? No."

"Yes. They have the loveliest fruit, you know, and some really beautiful vegetarian dishes. I was thinking that you might like to go sometime." He winced like he'd bitten into an especially sour pomelo.

"To Thailand."

Draco nodded, crossed his arms over his chest, tipped back on his heels and looked at Hermione with his eyes narrowed.

"It sounds lovely. Thanks for the tip, Malfoy, I'll put it on my travel list."

"Do you like it?"

"Thailand? I don't know."

"No, travel."

"Yes, I do."

"That's good." He tipped forward onto the balls of his feet.

"I think so."

Draco found the middle balance on his soles once more, and lifted up the packet of photographs.

"I'm going to go and look at these murders now," he said.

"Thank you. I'll have a look at them myself when you're done."

"Lovely towels, by the way. Is that the color scheme for your washroom?"

Hermione looked down at her hand towels, peeking out from beneath the crotch of her knickers. "It is."

He stared at the box on Hermione's desk. "They'll look very nice, I'm sure."

"Thank you."

"Of course."

"Of course," muttered Hermione to the skull in a mocking, nobby impression of a baritone voice.

The skull smiled back at her with half its teeth, jovial and macabre.

Hands shielded inside the faint blue light veil of a gloving charm, she reached for the row of teeth on the table in front of her, and fitted a canine into its socket.

"It's all well and good for you to smile about it," she continued, dropping the tooth and picking up her quill, "but you're not the one who's flashed her naughty knickers at a painfully fit man twice in the same day."

The skull leered.

"Yes, I said that he's fit. There's no denying it. He's a lovely height, and has all the sorts of dips and ridges one finds one has an appetite for. His nose is beautiful. I don't suppose you've seen him since he fetched you out of your wretched mud hole, but you have had a look. Argue the point if you're able, I beg of you."

The skull remained silent.

"Are you laughing again?"

The skull could not deny it.

"You can chuckle all you like about the knickers, it was hilarious. Did wonders for my self-esteem to watch a man become that uncomfortable about the thought of my bottom in a pair of tiny pants. Just don't say 'dead funny' or I'll bin you, trial be damned."

The skull appeared apologetic.

"And no, you're not getting a look at any of the knickers. What I've got on under my blouse today is between me and my gods and the mirror hanging on the back of my bedroom door."

The skull seemed resigned.

"I do wish you'd be more forthcoming about the exact manner of your death," she grumbled, scratching away at a parchment laid out on the table. "We want more than circumstantial evidence here in order to serve you justice, my friend."

She shivered.

"Yes, I'm cold," she said to the skull. "It's fifteen degrees in here. For some reason the gloving spell doesn't work quite right with warming charms."

"Just do your torso, Granger. It keeps you comfortable but doesn't impact the gloves. "

Hermione jerked in her chair.

"Good gods, Malfoy, I've almost dropped my skull."

"Wouldn't want you to treat your friends like that, would we?"

Draco walked past the wide work table in the evidence room holding a cardboard box in both arms. A paper sack hung from his wrist.

A bundle of red fabric was piled on top of the box.

Hermione opened her mouth to say something, but before she did, he'd grabbed the bundle and tossed it into Hermione's lap.

"If you're not going to use a warming spell, at least remember to bring your jumper down here, Granger," he said.

Before she could respond, he disappeared around the corner of one of the long, narrow aisles of shelving.

Hermione set down her skull and spread her cardigan over her lap.

Draco emerged from the shelves without his box, and held out the paper bag.

"Your curry arrived as well."

Hermione took the bag, poked her head in the top and sniffed.

"Mm, yes. I'm starving." She set the bag to the side and began to gather up all of her teeth.

Draco crossed his arms and leaned against the end of a row of shelves.

"Why are you still here, anyway?" she asked, screwing the lid back onto the glass container holding the thirteen teeth that had been knocked by an unknown blunt object from the front of the skull's mouth. "If my curry's arrived, it's at least six o'clock. What time did you come on this morning?"

"Too early. I was meant to be off at four, but Potter didn't make it to bed until nine in the morning on Wednesday, so I offered to finish cataloguing everything we believe is relevant to the Pas-de-Calais situation."

Hermione stood up, lowered the skull into its cardboard nest inside the evidence box, then filed the canister of teeth next to the half dozen phalanges recovered from the skull's shallow grave on a dairy farm in Sussex.

"That was nice of you." Hermione lidded the box, dropped her gloving charm, then went to lift the box.

"Let me get that, you ought to dig in before your curry goes cold."

Before Hermione could protest, Draco had leaned across the table, grabbed her evidence box and, taking a note of the aisle number and the space designation labeled on its side, started off to put it away.

"Oh, blast."

Hermione had every intention of pulling on her cardigan and opening her box of curry, but instead she found herself sweeping an ochre-colored trapezium from the table and dashing after Draco down aisle twelve.

"Here," she called out. "This belongs with our dairyman."

Draco paused with the box halfway into its space.

"Is this how you treat your friends, Granger?" he asked, lifting the box down and opening the lid so that Hermione could tuck the bone back into the glass jar filled with not enough parts of a human hand.

"Only the ones I like," she said.

Draco slid the box into place.

Hermione shivered.

"What was the point of my bringing the jumper all the way down here in the haunted rear lift if you weren't going to wear it?" Draco asked. "Here." He turned a finger in the air, and Hermione obeyed, turning her back towards him.

"You know you don't have to use the haunted lift," she said over her shoulder.

"It gets you closer to Evidence, which is especially relevant if you don't want someone's chicken curry going cold."

He muttered a short spell, and laid his open hand between Hermione's shoulder blades.

Instantly, her chest, belly and back were comfortably warm, as though she'd pulled on a heavy knit Fair Isle sleeveless sweater, or sank only her torso into a lovely hot bath.

She turned around. "Thanks very much, Malfoy."

"Not a problem."

"Didn't the curry place put it under a warming charm?"

He leaned back against the shelving and smirked.

Hermione bristled. "What's that for?"

"What's what for?"

"That." Hermione pointed a finger in his face. "Why are you doing that?"

"You're a hard woman, Granger," he said.

His voice was too quiet.

"I'm not hard, Malfoy." She'd dropped her voice to match his.

His smirk shifted.

"What now?" she asked.

"Nothing."
"No, something. Out with it."

He drew in a deep breath, and looked at the ceiling.

"I'm sorry about the knickers, Granger."

"Are you?"

"I am. And the conversation earlier."

"Which conversation would that be?"

"I wasn't really listening. It's just that one hears one's own name come up between two women, and it's a bit difficult not to."

"You could have rolled out of your closet far earlier than you did." Hermione leaned back against her side of the aisle and crossed her own arms.

"Yes. I am sorry."

"It's alright."

"I'm . . ." He trailed off, and looked down at the dull shine of his costly Oxfords. He looked back at her. "It's hard to hear, really."

"What's hard to hear? That I don't think you're as fit as all that?"

"That," he said with a laugh, "goes without saying. But the idea that a fellow wouldn't hold up his end of things. I'm not surprised you've decided not to pursue a relationship if that's been your experience."

Hermione pushed her shoulder blades into the vertical shelf support behind her. "It hasn't all been like that."

"Good."

"I didn't say it's been good."

She snorted, and then Draco snorted.

"That's offensive, frankly. I'm offended for women, and by men, when it's not at all difficult to take at least a few moments to—"

"It can be difficult, I suppose." Hermione pushed her hands into the pockets at the sides of her skirt. "There's a bit more mystery."

"Ignorance is not the same thing as mystery."

"Touche."

"Honestly, I can think of five ways to get you off right now without removing a single article of your clothes."

As soon as the words fell out of his mouth, his eyes widened and his mouth hung open.

Then he closed it, and looked away.

Hermione had felt it the moment he walked into Evidence.

It was a kinetic excitation at the level of her navel. At her stomach. At her cunt.

At the vital center of her, whenever he entered a room.

"Five?" she asked.

As she said it, quiet enough to think that perhaps she hadn't meant to, she became aware of the droning buzz of the magic in the overhead lights in the room at the end of the aisle, and the smell of his clothes and his body, his soap and whatever he put on his skin when he shaved.

Even at the end of the day, his skin was smooth.

He looked back at her instantly.

"You won't tell anyone?" she asked.

Despite the steady march of progress, it was mostly men in the Auror's office, and Hermione found herself often wary of them and their tendency to speak without thinking, especially when they were out in the field, despite the total clarity of Shacklebolt's expectations for safety and respect.

"I already said I wouldn't, Granger. Your erotic photography session is a secret I'll take to my grave. If anyone finds out about it, you'll need to speak to Lady Weasley."

"No," she said.

His brow furrowed.

She twisted her fingers into the arm of her shirt. "If you get me off."

His throat bob with a hard swallow, then he shook his head.

"No."

She closed her eyes, then opened them again.

He shifted away from the shelves and leaned towards her.
"Do you want me to?" he asked.

She nodded.

"What's this?" He smiled, something like his usual smirk only softer, wider and less playful, and mimicked her nod. "I don't know what that means."

"Yes," she whispered. "I want you do."

He leaned in further, bending his face towards hers.

She thought about his proclivities for taller, wealthier women who didn't need to wear stiff cotton shirts to emphasize that they ought to be taken seriously in the courtroom, and about how if Malfoy came close enough, she was going to care that she wasn't tall and wealthy and as beautiful as a magazine cover, too.

Her hand splayed out against his chest.

"No kissing," she said.

He pulled back. "What?"

"Don't you think?" She pressed her fingertips into the wool of his waistcoat, and felt the unyielding muscle of his chest underneath. "We don't need things to be awkward, since it's just this once."

"Just this once?" he said, and his eyebrows climbed.

"Obviously. It's not like we're going to walk out of here and head straight over to your mother's for tea."

He pulled away from her hand. "If you don't want to, Granger, I'm not—"

On an impulse, she reached for his left hand. "I want to."

When he didn't pull his hand away, she drew it with hesitant determination down, and guided it under the hem of her skirt.

Draco's eyes widened again, and then fell, half-closed and calculating.

She took her hand away from his, and not knowing what to do with herself, rested both on the shelves behind her.

She closed her eyes, and imagined his face as his hand traveled with care and patient curiosity up the inside of her thigh, and discovered what was there.

The silk surface of her stockings, over the bit of give that there was to the flesh of her thighs, gave way suddenly to bare skin where the stockings were held up by a set of attractive but functional suspenders.

He leaned forward again, closer, but not close enough to kiss her, propped his free hand against the shelves behind her, and smoothed his entire palm up the soft inner curve of her bare thigh.

She expected him to slow, to shift into a tentative, maybe even apologetic, touch to the front of her knickers, but his hand moved between her legs with calm confidence and an even, unhurried pressure.

She moaned out loud, and his hand rose higher, then ducked below the waistband of her knickers, and slid without hesitation across the bare skin of her cunt.

He tilted forward until his mouth was beside his ear.

He stroked her, with a touch that felt like affection, slowly, from deep between her legs and upwards.

"You're so soft, Hermione." He continued to stroke with gentle deliberation at the outside of her body. "Is this alright?"

"Yes."

He pet her like that for ages, and she moaned for him, to let him know how good his patience felt.

His touch did become hesitant, or rather it lightened and became something cautious and experimental, when he finally slid his index finger over her clit and through the moisture below.

"And this?" He pushed his middle finger along the same pathway, and both moved easily, comfortably, fluidly over her. "Do you want this?"

She was soaked. She wanted it. He could already feel how much.

"Yes."

He read her skin with his fingertips, and her pulse with his eyes, and he listened to her breathing, so that he learned that she liked a soft touch in one place, and a firm one in another.

Her clitoris was too much, just yet, but everything around it was not.

"You're very wet," he whispered. She tilted her neck, and recalled with wonder that she'd told him not to kiss her.

Why?
"Do you like being penetrated, Hermione?" He pushed the pad of his index finger over the opening of her vagina, but not inside.

"Yes."

She reached for the top button of her shirt, and opened it.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

She pulled at the next three buttons, and then pulled her shirt open.

"Touch me, please," she said, opening her eyes to see him watching her left hand as it reached for his right, holding himself up against the shelves.

He laughed next to her ear. "You said no kissing."

"This isn't kissing."

"Yes, but if I'm not allowed to kiss you, I'm certainly not touching your breasts."

"What?" She tugged at his right wrist, and when he refused to move it, she arched her back petulantly, straining her breasts against the sheer green lace of her bra. "Your hand is in my knickers. Touch my breasts, Malfoy."

He brought his lips so close to her ear she could feel the movement of his mouth when he said, "No."

Then he pushed his index finger inside her, and she gasped.

All at the same time, he turned his wrist, pressed his finger against the forward wall of her cunt, and swiped the broad pad of his thumb over her clitoris.

Hermione's knees trembled.

"Do you want another one?" he asked.

"Please."

He pushed a second finger inside her, and her moans became a relentless series of pleas and affirmations.

She tilted her hips, rode his hand, and then he was pushing inside her in a fast, stable pattern and running his thumb against the side of her clit, so that their dark corner of the evidence room was filled with the sound of him fucking her wet cunt hard with his fingers.

"Touch me." She ran a hand over her left breast, stroking at the peak of her nipple. "Please."

She opened her eyes halfway. He was staring down at her breasts, watching them move with each incursion of his hand.

He reached down and pulled her skirt up over her hips until he could see her knickers.

"You wore green knickers, Granger." His voice was strained.

"I like green. Please." She pushed her breasts towards him again.

He laughed, breathless, and shook his head.

His hand fell into a rhythm with the roll of her hips.

"I want you," she whispered.

She dropped her hands to his belt, tugged at the leather and the frame of the buckle all at once, until he drew back from her ear, grabbed her wrist and pushed it against the shelves over her head.

He threaded his fingers through hers, and held her hand.
"If I can't kiss you, I'm not fucking you," he said.

She groaned.

"Hello." He looked down between them. "What was that for?" He changed nothing about his rhythm, but his brow tilted heavily in thought.

"Do you like . . . ?" He considered for a while longer, then finally laughed, leaned forward until his lips were against her ear again, and whispered, "Fuck."

She couldn't stop the way her body tightened around his fingers, or the positively wanton moan that tumbled out of her mouth.

"Merlin, Granger. How many Galleons have I put in that damned jar of yours?" He laughed again, then right at her ear, unleashed a string of words, each worth a Sickle.

"Do you know how good it feels to know how much you like it when I fuck this wet cunt with my fingers, Hermione? To feel how soaked it's making you?"

She was crying out, being truly, unbelievably loud, but she couldn't stop herself.

"Do you know how fucking hard I am right now? How hard my cock is for you? How fucking bad I want to tear these knickers down your legs and fuck this cunt, fuck it hard, stroke your clit with my fingers and feel you hold on tight when you—"

"I'm going to come," she said, her voice small and panting and shallow.

He changed nothing at all, and she came.

Her legs trembled as she gripped his left wrist, felt the tension in his arm as he kept his motions just as they were, and cried out into the half dark of the unlit aisle.

Everything felt distant and unimportant as she rode his hand. Even his muttering, which had somewhere in the midst of her collapse shifted from obscene to sincere praise, had ceased to matter. She was a good girl, of course she was; she was so beautiful, yes; she ought to come for him just like that, and she would.

Yes. Yes.

"Yes," she said, little and quiet, just before her knees gave way.

"Don't fall over," he said, laughing, and looped his arm around her back, under her arms, and held her up while she quivered all over—her thighs, her belly, her cunt, pulsing around his fingers.

She gripped the front of his waistcoat, dropped forward and mouthed at it stupidly, pressed her cheek into the hard plane of his chest.

As she slowed, he did, too, until totally supported in his right arm, she arched lazily against his left hand, now smoothing over the obscenely wet skin of her cunt in long strokes with the very lightest contact.

If she didn't know any better, she thought he might have kissed the top of her hair.

"Thank you," she whispered to his waistcoat.

If Draco's hand entered her knickers with confidence, it left with reluctance and regret, his touch slow and lingering.

"Can you stand up?"

Hermione tested the strength of her knees, and found them sound again.

"Yes."

He kept his arm around her shoulders as she regained the support of her legs, and leaned back against the shelves.

He muttered a series of the sort of post-coital tidying up spells everyone had learned rather quickly as they entered young adulthood, then pulled her skirt back down over her hips, and straightened it for her.

He tugged her shirt closed over her breasts.

Hermione tilted her head back as he fastened her buttons one by one.

She reached forward and hooked a fingertip into the frame of his belt buckle.

"Let me return the favor."

He shook his head, buttoning her top button.

"That's not what this is, Granger."

"I want to get you off," she said. She felt drunk.

He laughed once more, and patted the front of her shirt, satisfied with his work. "All finished."

She brought her hand to his left arm, and turned it over until she could see the series of tattoos there.

The Dark Mark had turned out to be unremovable, but he could have had it covered with another tattoo. Instead, he'd added a series of flowers around it, following its shape.

"What are they?" she asked. "You've never said."

She brushed her fingertips over a spray of gladiolus.

"They're flowers, Granger." He pulled back, and leaned against the opposite side of the aisle. "Everyone likes flowers."

Hermione watched him in a way she'd never have allowed herself to do before.

"Did you like the red or the green better?" she asked, and gave him a smirk of her own.

She expected the same back, but instead his cheeks flushed in the dark.

"The green."

"Predictable. Gryffindor in Slytherin lingerie."

Draco shook his head. "I can't deny the appeal, but no."

He moved towards her again, and leaned in close.

She wanted nothing more than to turn her face to his, to taste of that blasted pillowy mouth.

"I liked the green, because it's the set you wanted me to see," he said.

He stood back from her, and straightened his belt buckle.

"I know what you're going to do is stay here and eat your dinner out of a box and most likely talk to your skull some more, but you should probably go home, Granger." His smile was small, but not a smirk. "Allow yourself a quiet night. Relax. Just this once."

Hermione nodded. "I'll consider it."

He looked away, then back again, and held up his index finger.

"Just this once," he mouthed.

Hermione rolled her eyes.

He turned, and as he moved around the corner to leave, gave the end of the shelf a pair of manly, conclusive pats.

"Your dinner's under a warming spell."

"Thank you."

"Don't lose any more carpal bones."

Hermione snorted.

He held up his left hand and waved the back of it at her as he walked away.