Chapter Four

Draco's old bedroom

Hermione remembered seeing the Malfoy's that day. They passed them as they sought their seats with Mr. Weasley and, as usual, Draco and his father took the opportunity to taunt them.

Hermione hadn't been able to forget what happened next either, when a dozen Death Eaters showed up at the camp where all the assistants to the World Cup were, attacking several Muggles. She, Harry and Ron met Draco as they tried to escape the chaos, and he warned Hermione in a mocking voice to hide well, because the Death Eaters would come for her.

"Yes, I remember that final," Draco replied grimly.

He didn't like thinking about his past, when he was a complete git full of prejudices.

The final was going to be the day of Voldemort's death, but three years later. The day the prophecy warned that a new evil power would rise... and there would be a stadium with a hundred thousand witches and wizards in it, many of them purebloods.

It all looked very bad, they had to find out what was going on before that day came. As soon as he saw Blaise again at the Department of Mysteries, Draco would talk to him about it.

Hermione sensed the tension that had formed in the room at the mention of that day and decided to talk about something else.

"Maybe Bulgaria will make it to the finals this year as well, so Viktor might come here and I could introduce you all to him."

"Do you know Viktor Krum, Hermione?" Narcissa asked with surprised eyes.

"Yes, we met during the Triwizard Tournament. We're friends and we write letters to each other from time to time," she replied, glancing at Draco out of the corner of her eye.

He had raised an eyebrow and was staring at her.

"That man is one of the best Seekers in the world. I'd love to meet him," Lucius commented quietly.

Draco gave his father a look of hatred and Lucius pursed his lips into a smile.

"If he comes to the country, I'll introduce the three of you," Hermione said, smiling.

"I already know him," Draco spat through his teeth.

"Did you ever talk to him?" she asked.

Hermione knew better than that. She remembered seeing Draco as excited as Ron when the Durmstrang students appeared in the Great Hall. But, as soon as they saw that Viktor was interested in her, the fascination they both felt for him disappeared... though for very different reasons.

Draco shook his head and set his spoon down on his plate.

"Well, I'll introduce you properly to him. I'm sure he wants to meet you," Hermione added, suspecting that Draco was feeling jealous.

"I have no interest in meeting that Bulgarian."

"Don't be silly, Draco. When you were thirteen, you had several posters of him in your room, but a year later you took them down when you came back from Hogwarts. Why did you do that?" Narcissa asked, picking out one of the forks without looking at her son.

"Mother," Draco grunted.

The empty plates disappeared and, in their place, appeared a shallow plate with what seemed to be fish wrapped in a white sauce. Hermione chuckled and mimicked Narcissa, picking up the same fork as her.

"What? Is it something you don't want Hermione to know?" Narcissa said in an innocent voice, but her eyes had a mischievous glint in them.

Draco snorted, digging his fork into the fish a little too violently.

"When I saw Krum in person, I realised he was a cocky idiot, and he ceased to be one of my idols instantly."

"What was it that made you so upset? Because you were a cocky idiot at the time, too, Draco," Hermione commented.

Lucius nearly choked on his wine, coughing several times and setting the glass down on the table. Narcissa put a hand to her lips, trying to hide her smile, but the movement of her shoulders gave her away. She was laughing.

Draco narrowed his eyes and clenched his fists, glaring at Hermione.

"He was one of the most famous purebloods, and he decided to take you to the ball. I didn't like that."

"Why? because I was a Muggle-born?"

"Exactly."

"Are you sure that's all it was? I don't see it as a reason to start hating Viktor, it was just one night."

"It wasn't just that night, he spent his days chasing you. We all saw it," Draco growled in a low voice.

"Don't tell me you were jealous," Hermione said in a mocking voice, raising an eyebrow.

Draco wiped his lips with a napkin without taking his eyes off her. It was like the two of them had forgotten they were not alone.

"Perhaps... though at the time I only knew I hated you, and I hated him being near you even more."

Narcissa and Lucius exchanged a knowing glance.

"I never imagined I'd hear you saying these things, Draco. It's too funny," Narcissa commented, swirling her wine glass.

Lucius nodded silently, but Draco was still looking at Hermione, as if he hadn't heard them.

"Is that why it bothers you so much when he writes to me? Do you think he's still interested in me?" she asked incredulously.

"Obviously. Krum's not going to stop until he gets you, I'm sure."

Lucius cleared his throat and his son glanced at him.

"What's the matter? If a famous Bulgarian was after her, it'd bother you too," Draco growled, pointing at his mother.

Lucius and Narcissa laughed softly.

"That's not true, Draco. And even if it were, do you think Viktor would get anything from me?" Hermione asked with dangerous eyes.

Draco swallowed and looked down at his plate, which was already full again with a steak and grilled vegetables.

"No," he admitted quietly, picking up a knife.

Her face softened and a small smile curved her lips.

"Then there's no problem. I'll introduce the three of you, and you'll be especially nice to him."

Draco wrinkled his nose and continued eating without saying anything.

"Wonderful. I can't wait to go to a Quidditch final again and meet Viktor Krum," Narcissa said, smiling brightly.

"Will you let us know when the tickets are on sale?" asked Lucius, looking at Hermione.

She nodded and Narcissa changed the subject. As soon as they stopped talking about Viktor, Draco's whole body relaxed again and Hermione bit her bottom lip when she noticed, trying not to laugh. She loved his little fits of jealousy, and he hated that she found it so amusing.

Hermione put her napkin down on the table, sighing. After three courses and dessert, she couldn't have felt fuller.

"It was all delicious, Narcissa. As always."

"I'm glad to hear it. Did you like the sea bass today?"

"I loved it. It's my favourite fish since I've tried it here," Hermione admitted, smiling.

"We know, that's why Mipsy always wants to make it when you come over."

Hermione's smile grew and she was surprised to see Draco standing next to her. She hadn't noticed that he had gotten up. He looked sideways at her, both hands on the back of her chair. She stood up slightly and he pushed it away, holding one of her hands and walking with her towards the door.

They'd been dating for almost a year and a half now, but Hermione wasn't used to being with someone who was such a gentleman.

"Wait, Draco."

He paused and looked at his mother quizzically.

"Why don't you stay here tonight? It's late and there are spare rooms, you can use a guest room or your old room."

Draco frowned and turned his head to Hermione, who shrugged.

"I don't know, Mother. We've got all our stuff at Hermione's, and we're getting up early for work tomorrow..."

"That's not a problem. There are some of your clothes in your room, and I'm sure Minsy wouldn't mind going to get something for Hermione in a second."

The elf appeared at the sound of her name.

"What does Miss Granger need?" she asked, looking at Hermione with her big green eyes.

Hermione hesitated, but finally sighed and bent down to talk to Minsy.

"If you could go to my room and get me some clean clothes, I'd really appreciate it. There's a red dress in the wardrobe, and I keep my underwear in the top drawer," she whispered softly.

The elf nodded, disappearing with a pop.

Narcissa approached them. Lucius stood behind, leaning his waist against the giant oak table.

"I don't think we'll be able to have breakfast together tomorrow, so I'll take my leave now. Hermione, dear... would you like to have tea with me this Sunday in Diagon Alley?"

Hermione blinked several times, very surprised. She had never been alone with Narcissa before.

"Us? Alone?" she asked, confused.

"Yes, I want to buy some books and I'd like you to come with me. Since Draco was little, he always told us that you loved to read."

Draco chuckled.

"More like she was a bookworm, and still is."

Hermione nudged him a little in the ribs and he made a face.

"It would be a pleasure to join you, Narcissa," she said with a smile.

Narcissa returned her smile and kissed her again on the cheek.

"See you on Sunday. Have a good rest."

Lucius said nothing and Draco tugged her hand again, leading Hermione out of the dining room. They walked through the Manor in silence, until they were sure his parents could no longer hear them.

"Why did you have to name Krum in front of them? You know I don't like your relationship with him," Draco asked quietly, glaring at her.

"Well, that's the reason," Hermione replied, giggling.

Draco rolled his eyes, letting go of her hand, but he slipped his arm around her neck and pulled her closer, resting his chin on her head.

"I hate it when a dwarf like you teases me."

Hermione laughed again.

"I'm not that short, you're too tall. And you're supposed to trust me."

"I do."

"Then you shouldn't be jealous."

"I trust you, but I don't trust him. I get sick just thinking about him looking at you the way he did that year," Draco grunted.

The two continued down the hallway, passing dark doors that had not been opened for more than two years and that probably no one would ever open again, just like the main dining room of the Manor. They reached the entrance hall and started up the stairs, turning towards the west wing.

Hermione raised a hand and stroked Draco's cheek.

"It's silly for you to feel that way. You're the only one I want."

Draco sighed and placed a kiss on her temple, tangling his index finger in the silver chain she had around her neck.

"I know," he whispered, pausing.

He opened a large door that had an 'M' carved into the wood and Hermione entered the room. She had been in Draco's bedroom before, the days she had been helping him decide what he was going to take when he moved in with her, but she hadn't been back since, and had never slept there.

Hermione smiled when she saw her red dress on top of the bed, along with a clean set of underwear. Next to the bedside table, Minsy had left some shoes in case she didn't want to wear the same ones in the morning, and she had also brought her favourite cologne.

Draco closed the door and went into his dressing room, making sure he had some decent clothes to wear to the Ministry the next day.

On a piece of furniture was Dark's cage open, like one of the windows. The eagle owl sometimes stayed at Malfoy Manor, but she preferred to be near Draco, so she was almost always in the huge cage they kept for her in their study.

"I enjoyed coming here today, it was fun," Hermione admitted.

She heard a snort from the dressing room.

"Of course, because you had a good laugh at my expense."

Hermione looked around the room. Every piece of furniture there was white wood. She ran a finger along the outline of the books on a shelf at the foot of the bed. Almost all of them were first editions, and some were hundreds of years old.

Hermione remembered the first afternoon she had spent with Draco in the Manor's library. She had spent hours browsing through books while he watched her, sitting on one of the tables. It wasn't until Draco told her that they should stop for dinner that she realised she had been walking around the shelves filled with thousands of books for more than three hours.

She felt arms around her waist and smiled, resting her back against his chest.

"Any books you haven't read?" Draco asked, brushing her ear.

Hermione stopped her hand as she reached for a black book with gold lettering.

"This one. I didn't know there were books about purebloods," she murmured, pulling it off the shelf.

Draco grimaced at the title.

"It's very boring and full of pureblood nonsense, don't waste your time with it."

Hermione ran a finger over the gold lettering on the cover. 'The Sacred Twenty-Eight', by Brutus Malfoy.

"Did someone in your family write it?" she asked in surprise.

"Yes, an ancestor from the seventeenth century. He was not a good person, he had an anti-Muggle newspaper and was always writing articles against people like you," Draco said quietly.

Hermione opened the book and saw that it explained the complete lineage of all the best known pureblood families in England. She gasped at the family tree of the Longbottom family and the Weasley family.

"I never thought about Ron and Neville being purebloods," she commented, flipping through the pages of the book.

It was enchanted to fill in over time, and her two friends' names were at the very end.

Draco took it out of her hands, putting it back on the shelf.

"They are officially no longer part of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. Their families are now blood traitors... and I guess we Malfoy's are too, thanks to me," he whispered, pulling her curls aside to kiss her neck.

Hermione shivered, closing her eyes.

"Do you really not care about all that? I can never tell if you're joking or if you're serious."

Draco's arms tightened around her waist.

"You and I are the same, Hermione. I don't care what my ancestors think. I want to be with you, and that's what I'm going to do."

She turned around, looking into his eyes.

"I want to be with you, too."

"Well, that's what we'll do, and anyone who doesn't like it can go fuck themselves," Draco muttered under his breath, lifting her chin with one hand.

"You love saying that so much," Hermione said, standing on her tiptoes and kissing him.

"Fuck them," Draco repeated between her lips.

They both laughed and he pulled away, pointing to a pair of grey pyjamas he'd left on the bed. Just then, Hermione saw that he was already wearing another pair of dark green ones.

She rolled her eyes and began to undress, leaving her shoes by one of the armchairs near the fireplace. Draco leaned his back against the bookshelf and folded his arms, biting his lower lip as he watched her unbutton her dress. Hermione reddened and threw a cushion at him, which he caught effortlessly with one hand.

"You'll never catch a seeker off guard when you throw things at them," Draco said, lifting his brows.

She snorted and dropped the dress to the floor, bending down to pick it up and placing it on the armchair.

"It's the same with Harry. You two have too many reflexes," she grumbled, holding up his grey pyjama bottoms.

She was about to put them on when his hands stopped her.

"I've changed my mind. You'd better stay like this," he whispered, tossing the pyjamas aside and burying his nose in her hair.

Hermione giggled and Draco shoved her, causing her to fall onto the bed.

"This isn't a good idea, Draco. We could get caught by your parents," she said quietly.

"Their room is on the other side of the Manor. That won't happen," he answered, climbing onto the bed to where Hermione was and forcing her to lie down.

He began to slowly work his way up her legs, leaving a trail of wet kisses on her skin. Hermione gasped and looked up. Draco's bed was a lot like the one she had seen in his Slytherin dormitory. It even had the same green and silver colours on the canopy... but it was much bigger.

"What if Minsy comes here looking for us?"

"She's smart, and she knows not to go into the dormitories unannounced," Draco replied, already kissing her navel area, while one of his hands slipped inside her blue knickers.

Hermione closed her eyes and sighed. She was afraid that Draco's parents might hear something, but... she was starting to forget why she was worried about that.

He kept moving up, stopping above her bra and biting through the lace. Hermione dug her hands into his hair and tugged at it, until she could see his face. She attacked his lips with intensity, intertwining their tongues and enjoying the minty taste of Draco's mouth. A few months earlier, he had invented a spell that, in addition to cleaning teeth, left minty breath.

Draco pulled back a few inches, looking into her eyes.

"I've never had sex in this bed."

"Really?" Hermione asked in surprise.

"Not in this bed, and not in this house."

"And you want to try it out with me?"

Draco gave her a mischievous grin.

"I like to try everything out with you," he reminded her, thinking about how they'd been going through her parents' house and 'trying out' every piece of furniture they came across... except for the Granger's old bedroom, where neither of them wanted to do anything.

Hermione let out a giggle, undoing the buttons of his pyjama. Draco lowered his head and kissed her neck, just between her shoulder and the area where her pulse was. He knew she felt shivers every time he kissed her there.

Immediately, Draco felt Hermione shuddering and he smiled against her skin, using his teeth in the same area. He heard a gasp and noticed how she tugged at his pajama sleeves in desperation.

Draco sat up in bed and pulled off his green shirt, letting it fall to the floor. He also got rid of his trousers and lay back down on top of Hermione, sighing as he felt her body heat. Hermione's whole body shivered at the contact.

"Oh, God."

"You mention that 'God' of yours a lot when we're like this... Should I be jealous?" Draco asked, arching an eyebrow as a grin curved his lips.

Hermione chuckled, shaking her head.

"Shut up. It's just an expression."

Draco leaned closer to her, until their noses were rubbing together.

"I know, it's in a lot of those Muggle books you've been making me read lately."

"Don't complain, you love most of them," Hermione replied, glaring at him.

He reached for her mouth and kissed her again, trapping her bottom lip between his. Hermione arched her back and they heard a metallic noise, she had just unclasped her bra. Draco took the opportunity to remove it and toss it to the foot of the bed, still devouring her lips.

A small moan escaped his throat as he felt his girlfriend's fingers inside his boxers. He lowered one of his hands to the only piece of clothing she still had on, but he remembered something.

Breaking the kiss, he looked around for his wand, which was on the bedside table. Draco reached out and grabbed it, pointing it at Hermione's belly. Her skin glowed a faint bluish glow for half a second and he put the wand back in its place.

"I almost forgot," he whispered, claiming her lips again.

Hermione giggled in the middle of the kiss and helped Draco get rid of his underwear, until they were both completely naked. She entwined her legs around his waist and he pulled away, smirking.

"Are you in a hurry?" he asked teasingly.

"It's too late and I want to feel you now," she protested, cupping his face with both hands and pressing their lips together again.

Draco growled and spread her legs wider, placing himself right between them. He slowly sank into her and she moaned. Draco deepened the kiss, swallowing all the sounds coming from her throat. He reached for her most sensitive spot with his fingers, just above where their bodies joined, and began to stroke her as he moved.

Hermione dug her nails into his back, sitting up a little so that the angle was different. Draco gasped and began to move faster, grabbing her curly hair with his free hand. He sensed that she was almost there and opened his eyes.

"Look at me."

Hermione blinked a couple of times and locked her brown gaze into his grey irises. Their lips brushed without kissing and their breaths mingled. Her legs began to shake and she stifled a moan, not looking away. Draco groaned and let the pleasure run through his body, losing himself in the caramel coloured eyes that were staring back at him.

He kissed her again as their bodies stilled and their breaths returned to normal, then pulled away so as not to crush her and lay down at her side. Hermione snuggled up next to him and Draco pulled the sheet back until they were both covered.

"Goodnight," he whispered, kissing her forehead.

She rested her head on his chest, sighing.

"I love you."

"Love you too."

Hermione smiled and closed her eyes, drifting off into dreamland. Draco took longer to fall asleep, thinking about the bloody prophecy and the day of the Quidditch World Cup final.