Chapter 17: Romancier
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She let him refill her glass and he held out his arm for her to grab before leading her down the hall and out onto the back patio. She could see the gardens from the balcony, the rows of flowers were lined with sparkling lights, which were really jars of fairy dust that glowed in the night sky, as Draco would later explain, and there was a gazebo in the middle. In the distance she could see the goal posts of a Quidditch pitch off to the right. To the left of the gardens was a small pond, which shimmered in the moonlight. She put her hands on the railing and gazed out onto the grounds, they were, indeed, magical. Draco walked up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, resting his head on her shoulder. She closed her eyes, embracing the silence and the warmth of his body against hers.
"Ready for a walk in the gardens?" he asked.
She sighed, so content already where she was, but nodded, regretting her answer the second his body moved away from her. They walked down the stairs onto a cobblestone path and he grabbed her hand lightly, letting it swing back and forth with their steps.
"So is this whole evening due to your jealousy over my lunch with Ron?" She asked with a bit of jest.
"Only partially," his eyes met hers with a charm about them, "But I also felt like you deserved a nice night away from your office and your files to be appropriately romanced. And I promised I'd make it up to you for my disruption at the Ministry. A Malfoy always keeps his word."
"Such a gentleman."
They stepped into the first row of yellow roses, "This is my mother's garden," he looked around at the patches of flowers, "She designed it with an herbologist two years ago so that the right plants were next to each other creating a positive energy on the grounds. I still find her out here all the time sitting in the gazebo, surrounded by it all."
"It really does feel calming," Hermione said, entranced by the leaves swaying in the light breeze.
They wandered the gardens, Draco telling her about some of the more interesting plants they had scattered about, before they went back inside the Manor. He lead her through a beautiful room with a grand piano and a small dance floor, through an open courtyard in the middle of the house, down into the sprawling kitchen where they encountered Marty sweeping the floor as a brush in the sink scrubbed the dinner plates on its own accord. Next they stepped into a peculiar room with a broom levitating in the middle.
"It's my Quidditch training room," Draco explained, "I hop on the broom and I've enchanted two mock bludgers and a quaffle to fly around the room for me to practice dodging and catching. All of the balls were stagnantly hovering a few feet in front of the broom. She grabbed a bludger, it wasn't hard like a real bludger, but soft and squishy like a toy. She squeezed it and looked at him with a laugh.
"Well I'm not going to hurt myself practicing," he said incredulously.
"This is quite interesting," she said, "Is it normal for wizards to have things like this? Do other people have these? It's almost like a video game or something."
"A video game?" He said rhetorically, "No idea what that is, Granger, but no I wouldn't say this is normal. I did a lot of research and charms on the room to set this up. Plus, my practice broom is the new Nimbus 2005, certainly not your everyday broom."
She rolled her eyes at him, "Well I think the idea is really impressive."
"I do as well," he looked around proudly.
He ushered her through another door into a gallery of moving paintings and then through to what looked like a small museum exhibit.
"This used to be where we kept the dark artifacts," Draco sighed, "But since we've gotten rid of all of those, my father started collecting rare historical items to display that are not cursed."
They went down a few more hallways and Draco pushed open the next door, turning to her, "And this is my bedroom."
Hermione looked at him with careful intrigue before stepping through the doorway. It was lit by candles along the wall, a deep green paint wrapped around the room with grey borders. The fixtures were ornate and the furniture grand. She felt like she'd just walked into a king's bedroom from an ancient castle in the north.
Draco walked over to his bed and sat down, patting the seat next to him.
Hermione followed him, her heart beating a little too fast, and sat down next to him, unsure what to expect but throwing caution to the wind. The spark between them captivated her, begging her to explore it more.
"Very soft," she commented.
Draco pushed her hair back and turned her chin towards him, "Are you uncomfortable?" He asked her.
"No," she breathed, "Nervous maybe, but not uncomfortable."
He kissed her softly, one hand moving to the back of her neck.
"Nothing to be nervous about, just thought it'd be a nice place to talk," she could tell he was trying to hide his enjoyment of their precarious situation.
"I highly doubt you thought this would be a nice place to talk," she said with a half smile. She felt very warm and tried hard to concentrate on the words as she said them. Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was his presence, but it felt difficult to focus on anything but her heartbeat and his hands on her skin.
"Would you rather go back to the den?" He asked, his voice a bit cocky, like he already knew the answer.
"Not at all," she replied in a whisper as he captured her lips.
Draco moved back on the bed, pulling her with him until they were pressed against each other. She draped a leg over his, noticing already that her mind was overly cognizant of where each part of her was and what it was doing. One leg draped, the other caught under his, one hand around the back of his neck, the other wrapped around his waist. She felt his tongue massage hers and moaned softly into the kiss, wanting to somehow be closer. She was hyper aware of his hand slipping past the fabric of her shirt and her stomach tensed as his cold hands moved slowly up her side and around her back.
His fingers outlined her bra, sending chills up her spine and she leaned her head back, allowing him access to the bare skin on her neck. He kissed her softly a few times before dragging his teeth lightly across her skin. She breathed in deeply, trying to control all of the thoughts and feelings fighting for her attention.
She felt both of his hands move back to the bottom of her shirt and start to lift it up. Their eyes met and she nodded ever so slightly. He grinned down at her, pulling it over her head and lifting his own off. He took a moment to look down at her, vulnerable, innocent, opening herself up to him. It was everything he shouldn't have.
He leaned back in, hands on either side of her body, and kissed her with more intensity this time, feeling himself give into his instincts, biting her bottom lip gently. He felt her hands reach up and tentatively grasp his back. He knew he needed to be slow with her, but she drove him crazy and she probably didn't even fucking realize it.
He lowered his body onto hers, propped up on his elbows, her bra brushing up against his chest. He wrapped his arm tightly around her, pulling her into him. His other hand entangled itself in her hair, pulling her head back so he could kiss down her neck, past her collar bone and towards her chest.
Hermione lay back, taking in every feeling and sensation in her body. The way her skin lit up when his lips touched it, the way his breathing sped up in time with hers, the way his eyes burned into her every time they met. She let her nails drag down his back as he kissed her, loving the feeling of passion he filled her with and hoping he was feeling even half of what she was.
She felt his lips move up from her chest and reconnect with hers. She felt his fingers slip her straps off her shoulder before sliding around back and unhooking her bra with a little more expertise than she'd like to acknowledge. Before she knew it, it was on the floor and she felt too warm again as she lay there entangled with Draco, exposed, free and blissfully lost in the moment. His hands roamed her body as she pressed herself against him tighter. She could feel his hand run over her chest and down her stomach, coming to rest on her inner thigh. She thought her heart might pound out of her chest. Surely he heard it.
He moved over to her ear, "Tell me what you want," he said, voice low.
She could barely think straight, much less eloquently tell him which of the hundred things her brain was screaming at her that she wanted in that moment. She felt him press into her and her eyes drifted open as she pulled his face back to hers, kissing him hard. She felt him smile into the kiss and she didn't even care if he felt he was winning something. She wanted to be touching every part of him. He pulled himself back to look at her again and her eyes glanced down to take him in, pausing briefly on his left arm that was holding him up. She subconsciously did a double take, trying not to let it affect her, but it was too late. He'd seen her glance and his entire demeanor changed.
His look of confidence melted away into resentment quicker than she could protest and he pushed himself to one side of her, grabbing his shirt.
"Malfoy, wait," she grabbed his arm but he wouldn't meet her gaze, "I'm sorry I stared, it just caught me off guard."
"Sometimes I try to forget it's there," he said quietly, still breathing heavily.
"We all have our scars from the war," she reminded him, wishing she could take back the last 10 seconds and hit redo.
"Mine are self-inflicted," he closed his eyes, trying to calm himself down again.
Hermione sat up, grabbing the shirt from his hands and setting it aside. She turned his forearm towards her and looked at it with determination. She felt him tense as she ran her thumb down the Dark Mark imprinted here.
"It's nothing but a tattoo," she said, shaking her head, "It doesn't define you."
"It will be there until the day I die as a constant reminder of what I was," he said, trying to pull his arm back, but she didn't let him.
"We're not going through this every time you take off your shirt, so let's get it over with," she said with her head high.
He finally looked over at her, eyes narrow, "Granger one look at this and you should run for the forest. What the fuck is wrong with you that you're still sitting here."
She narrowed her eyes right back at him, "This is not who you are and I'm not going to sit here and listen to you pretend it is. Move forward with me, Malfoy."
"How?" He asked scathingly, "Should we have dinner with your friends that saved my life from the fire we started to kill them, and act like that's normal? Shall we go on vacation to the tropics and lounge on the beach in our swimsuits, Dark Mark on my arm and Mudblood inscripted on yours? Or better yet shall we just galavant off to Australia and pretend life is wonderful? Lie to your parents and tell them what a nice boy I am? That's what it looks like for you and I to move forward." She could tell he was mad at himself and not at her, but it didn't make his words any easier to hear.
She looked at him, hurt, "You could have just told me if you thought it was too forward of me to ask you to come to Australia."
Her grip on his arm had loosened and Draco finally pulled it back to reach his hands up and rub his face, realizing he'd gone too far, trying to reel himself back in, "It really wasn't," he said in a softer tone, "I'm sorry, I am just not as decisive on all this and you know that."
Hermione grabbed the throw blanket resting at the end of the bed and pulled it up over her chest, feeling more self-conscious now that they were just sitting there, "I know it's only been a few months and it's been a bit up and down," she said, putting it lightly, "It's okay if you still don't know how you feel about me or something, I would always appreciate your honesty even if it's not what I want to hear. I just thought it would be nice for you, and for us, to get away from all this for a couple of days," she felt like she'd crossed an unspoken line somewhere insinuating that they were on the same page.
Draco looked at her with a dark, but almost amused look in his eyes and he sighed heavily, "It's certainly not a question of how I feel about you, Granger. You're one of the most stubborn, challenging and frustrating witches I've ever met," his lip curled up as she shifted awkwardly next to him, "I've never been more invigorated by another person in my life. I know exactly how I feel about you, I just wish for your sake that you didn't feel the same way back," he reached his hand over to cup her face, wanting to remember the feel of her skin on his, "You have big things ahead of you and I'll only bring you into my darkness if you stay with me."
"Well I'm not going anywhere right now, Malfoy. Maybe I'll bring a little light to your darkness," she covered his hand with hers and he looked at her warily.
"There's that stubbornness," he said.
She closed the gap between them and kissed him softly, pulling him back down to lay with her, the blanket between them.
"Sorry I ruined the mood," he said, quite honestly, "This is an uphill battle for me. Probably a constant one and it's hard to control. I already have so much resentment about my past and you walk in here with a heart of fucking Gryffindor gold and it just highlights it all. If I see the Dark Mark on my arm, I feel bitter. If you see it on my arm, I feel disgusted."
"I wish you could see you how I do," she looked back down at the Dark Mark glistening back at her in the candlelight. It was repulsive, but it was a sign of how far he'd come since the war. She looked back up at him, "I've seen it, we've acknowledged it, and now it's in the past. There may be hurdles, but we'll jump them as they come."
Their eyes were locked on one another and Draco couldn't ignore the adoration she looked at him with, "How in the world did we end up here," he said with a grin.
"I couldn't even begin to explain," Hermione grinned back at him, happy to see him relaxing again.
He leaned back down and kissed her, "Will you stay the night?" He asked, "We can grab a few books and relax in bed, get straight to work tomorrow morning on that file review I promised."
Hermione looked at him skeptically, "Tempting me with books and work, this feels like a trap."
He laughed, "Not a trap, just trying to redeem myself a little so I can earn some points to rip that shirt off of you another time."
"Ah, there's the truth," she let the blanket fall and grabbed her shirt, pulling it back over her head, "Let's go find a good book for the evening."
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