Beta'd by jamethiel
Beta'd by Pidanka
Draco did what all blokes did when they were out of sorts with their wives and sought sanctuary and solace in the pub.
The Kings Neck in Camden Town was something of a dive. The smell assaulted his nose with a combination of yeasty beer and male body odour. The lighting was dim. It gave the pub a dingy and dungeon-like aspect which as a Slytherin alumni made him feel right at home. The decoration was atrocious and had possibly been dredged up from sometime in the previous century. The walls were painted a visually-impairing shade of yellow which was incongruously Warhol when compared with the Victorian-esque fixtures of the wooden bar and the cracked leather clad barstools.
Getting drunk probably wasn't the wisest course of action, but he already had a headache, so, he'd reasoned, why not make it so much worse.
He'd bought the cheapest cider that was on offer, which could explain why he already thought he was going to be sick. It wasn't the foulest cider he'd ever imbibed. No, that honour was held by the barrel of scrumpy he'd consumed the summer after he'd been released from Azkaban. Those scrumpy hangovers had caused him to feel as if his tongue had melted in his mouth and his brains dripped down his nose.
Draco gingerly picked up the slippery pint glass and took another swig. It tasted of bitter-apples; an acerbic tang which suited his current emotional state. Still, he pulled a face like he had picked up a dead vole when it hit the back of his throat.
He lowered the glass and propped his elbow on the bar. Beer spilled by previous customers, and whatever else was on the surface of the bar, stained and soaked his sleeve. He started to leisurely run his finger around the rim of the glass. Above him the bare bulbs glinted off his half-empty glass and reflected the rows of bottles behind the bar, stretching and distorting them like a funhouse mirror.
He dropped his chin onto the heel of his hand.
He seemed to spend most of his life watching Granger walk away. It had its perks. Or should he say perts. Even when she'd turned her back on him this afternoon, he hadn't been able to stop himself admiring her. He didn't need to see her face to appreciate exactly how angry she was. Granger had a great strut, and she walked as if the pavement had insulted her grandmother. She'd swung her hips, thrust her legs forward, and put on a burst of speed as she'd propelled herself away from him.
He'd gone after her. Of course he had. He had an apology ready and waiting to be trotted out the moment he caught up with her. By the time he'd rounded the corner, she'd vanished. She'd either apparated or disappeared into the crowds of tourists and locals in Camden Market.
He'd considered slipping into the market to see if she was there, but had thought better of it. Camden Market was labyrinthine. The stall-lined corridors twisted and turned like twine, and on every corner there seemed to be a shop that sold hookah pipes and shisha tobacco, and these almost identical storefronts mislead and duped the trusting visitor.
Over the decades, the market's passages had grown organically and like the high hedges of a maze; they enclosed, hemming and pinning the wanderer inside fissure-like spaces; encompassed, like the smallest figure in a Matryoshka doll.
He'd avoided the market; he had no desire to be strung along for hours. Instead, he'd cut through Camden High Street. The Kings Neck was the first establishment he saw. The pub's countenance was dire, plastered with terracotta tiles that were chipped and cracked, and therefore it suited his plan of getting utterly sozzled perfectly.
He was drinking to forget, but he couldn't place his finger on exactly what he was trying to forget. Was it their argument, her accusations, their marriage. Or was it simply that he wanted to forget her. Drive her from his brain like a hot poker. Like she was an infection: a hot, dull ache that was festering and seeping further into his soul with every passing hour. He needed to cauterise a wound; cut out the sickness, and sear her from his skin.
Draco leaned back in the barstool and stared at the ceiling. He'd never felt this way about someone before. It was an all-consuming desire not just for her body, but for her. He'd had lovers and plenty of them. He was discerning in his choices, but he catered to a wide-range of tastes. But he hadn't – he hadn't. It had been sex with some light-companionship thrown in; there were emotional and physical attachments, but he wasn't cut-up when an arrangement came to an end, either naturally or abruptly. He would admit that he had a tendency to distance himself if subjects pertaining to commitment and future plans kept cropping up. He was rich and successful, and after a while people became a little fixated with the prospect of what he could do for them.
He'd married Granger, however. He'd made the biggest commitment he could make to another person, and she seemed to have no idea.
Maybe Blaise was spot on. Draco shuddered. Maybe he did want to seduce Granger. It was awful to consider that one's best friend might be right about something.
Granger was certainly appealing on a physical level. He was attracted to many people, but there was an element of boyhood fantasy with her. He'd been brought up to hate her purely due to her antecedents, and then in school he'd grown to develop a form of infatuation with her. It was a competitive obsession; one driven by personal desire to be unsurpassable.
His current fancy must have something to do with this. They were feelings which resonated with his past ambition to beat her academic skill.
He could assure himself that his feelings were not to do with her as an individual.
It was a physical attraction – nothing more.
A physical attraction because he was having sex with her. And only her.
Perhaps he shouldn't have gone celibate once he'd found out that he was going to marry Granger. It had been a logical choice at the time. She seemed the type to like monogamy, faithfulness, and – that dreaded word – fidelity.
She'd been angry enough with the situation without him shagging half of London in the meantime.
There was also the problem that other partners had paled in comparison when he'd realised that sleeping with Hermione Granger was a certain – and not to mention imminent – prospect.
As a teenager he'd never imagined her naked...until he was at least sixteen, and then those imaginings have been somewhat abstract and focused on what was under her top. He had formed a juvenile picture of her on her knees sucking him off. He still fantasised about that, but now it wasn't with a desire to dominate her out of hatred. He wanted her submittance to be voluntary. He wanted her to sink to the floor because she desired him.
Images of Granger filtered into his cider-soaked brain, and he was so distracted that when he set the empty pint glass down, he missed the paper coaster by three inches.
Draco raised his hand and signalled for another drink. The barman was efficient, and almost immediately Draco was sipping at the slightly frothy top of a new pint. This stuff really did get better the more he drank.
He'd been here for over two hours, and the only thing that had bothered him was the frankly sickeningly-coloured walls. However, at the start of his fourth or something glass, even the walls were losing their repugnance.
Light bounced through the cider and caught on the bubbles as they made their slow ascent through the liquid. Each little bubble was like pin-prick of light, sparkling like stars in an amber coloured sky.
He slowly blinked and looked beyond the alcohol. The world was soft and unfocused so the colours of the pub's brown and yellow decor flowed together like wet mud.
Hermione's colouring was like mud: her hair, her eyes. Like the rich lush earth of a ploughed field. Brown, and as dark, as when a plough's metal shin broke the earth's dead crust to overturn and expose the fresh soil underneath. Freshly turned earth may be fertile, but it had to be cultivated before anything could be sown, otherwise it was just useless clods of dirt.
He pressed his lips together, and his grip tightened on the glass.
Granger – she was frankly a witch with a capital 'B'.
What did she want him to say? Did she want to hear about Kelpie's illegal activities and then feel honour-bound to arrest him.
All he was trying to do was what Potter and she had asked. She held his arm and smiled up at him. Merlin, she'd practically begged him. And yet, he was constantly being berated and treated like a contemptible bastard. He wasn't a saint – by the gods, he wasn't – but neither was he the root of all evil on earth. He was just a man caught in a situation which, for once, was not of his own creation.
He took another long gulp of life-affirming cider.
She was so frustrating. Her use of – every single phrase against him. It was exhausting – she was exhausting.
His thoughts were sluggish as if they were crawling through tree sap, and by the time they arrived at the front of his brain they were slippery and difficult to keep hold of. A couple of times he and Blaise had tried to play quidditch while drunk. Over the gardens of the Manor, they'd managed to get their brooms up in the air, but no matter what Draco did, he couldn't catch the quaffle. His reflexes were still there, but it was like he was viewing the world a few seconds behind reality. His fingers would only brush the leather as the quaffle sailed past him. His thoughts were like that quaffle: fleeting and out of his reach.
Hermione had to be out of it because of her job, because of her connection to the ministry and law, and everything else that people like Kelpie King disliked. He'd needed King to talk. He'd planned it: soften Kelpie up with Granger, and then he'd take over.
He did consult her – he did – he did consult her – just not then. She had to trust him – he knew best. In this – on being conniving – he knew best.
The world was cut in half as his eyelids drooped. He blindly fumbled for his collar and pulled it open. The air was warm on his exposed neck.
He should give up and resign himself to the rest of his life with a woman who couldn't stand to be in the same room as him. She wouldn't achieve her ridiculous divorce plan. This was a law, and a law for a reason, and if Hermione Granger couldn't get herself out of this law six months ago, then what chance did she have now that they were married.
They were married. It should be different.
Like the shadow of a rising fish, he remembered the day he'd received the letter: the one which informed him that he was required by law to get married and then to whom. It was a clever ploy of the Ministry's to announce the marriage law and the recipient's intended fiance in the same dispatch. It had certainly stopped him from complaining.
Hermione Granger: recognised as the brains to Potter's woefully substandard brawn, brilliant in both her academic and Ministry career, and the poster girl for all Muggle-borns. Her list of accomplishments read like an ideal resume.
How could he not smirk when he read the letter.
She hadn't been so mollified by the knowledge that she was going to be leg-shackled to him for the rest of her life, or 'not a single minute' which is what she announced when she barged into his office that morning.
He remembered there had been fire in her eyes and ice in her words.
"I don't believe you have many options, Granger," he'd said. "It's either Azkaban or me. While I'd like to say that isn't a hard decision, I have a feeling for you it is." He'd stayed seated behind his desk and eyed her with a look of predatory interest. A sharp-eyed gaze that he hadn't allowed himself until then, but now that they were going to be married...
Over the years, he'd become familiar with her face, but only in an objective sense. He'd watched her at Ministry and social functions and studied her expression on the covers of publications. She was one of the few people whose face was on the front cover of The Daily Prophet more than his.
She was less gangly than she had been at school, and her face had lost that gaunt look which it had in the months succeeding the war, but she still held herself in that same haughty manner: her shoulders back and her chin stuck into the air like an ode to defiance.
Her upper lip had warped in a very familiar way as she looked down her nose at him. "I wouldn't count on it," she'd said in frosty accents. "I don't care if I have to lobby the Ministry every single day: I will never marry you."
"Famous last words." He'd got up in one smooth movement and stalked towards her, buttoning his jacket as he walked. "I say we make the best of it." He'd grinned unkindly. "Should we have a practice run of the wedding night?"
She'd stepped smartly back. "Don't touch me."
From this close proximity, her eyes had seemed to burn. Flecked with amber and gold – like sparks that shot from a blacksmith's hammer.
"You cannot honestly tell me that you're happy to have me," she touched a hand to her collarbone, "as your wife? I'm Muggle-born. I fought in a war against you. I was at your father's sentencing."
He didn't even blink at the mention of his father.
"All water under the bridge," he'd said in an airy tone which he didn't feel.
He'd stepped towards her.
"I find that very hard to believe." She'd stepped back.
"Will you believe that I am quite willing to make the best out of an awful predicament?"
"Doubtful, very doubtful." Her eyes had narrowed. "I wouldn't be surprised if you'd arranged this whole situation."
"What? An entire law just so I can get into your knickers?" He'd made a derisive noise as he breathed out. "I want to fuck you, Granger, but not that badly."
He's said it to shock her, and it had the desired effect. His office door had made a little rattling sound as her back hit it.
"Then bribe – or blackmail," she'd said, sputtering like a dying candle flame. "I'm sure someone would've taken an anonymous 'donation' just to swap a couple of names around."
That wasn't an unreasonable conclusion, he'd inwardly conceded. If he had known about the law, then he might have been tempted to rearrange a couple of matches – what was the point of having money if he couldn't swing things his way on occasion – but the news had been as much of a surprise to him as it was to her.
He'd placed the flat of his hand against the door so that his thumb was on the same parallel line as her eyes. Her face was pinched, but her bottom lip was still deliciously plump at the centre.
Her eyes traced the length of his arm, up his shoulder and neck, before settling on his face.
He'd been sure his pupils were dilated; eroding at the grey like acid.
He'd leaned forward until he could smell the delicate jasmine of her perfume.
"You know," his words ghosting her face, "you really are very attractive. I'm rather looking forward to aspects of our marriage."
She'd shoved her head back into the wood, away from him, with a crack.
"I will never accept you as my husband."
She'd opened the door and backed out of his office.
Even now her phrasing still bothered him.
I will never accept you as my husband.
She had been true to her word.
He had her. Their marriage was legal and binding and consummated. He'd fucked her, and some dark part of himself was gleeful that he'd had his lascivious way with Hermione Granger.
He fondled, caressed, and come in her body, but he'd never once touched her mind. It was as if she kept slivers of herself locked away, hidden from him so he could only see a partial view of her. He'd seen glimpses of these fragments in the way she'd spoken to Kelpie King and in her playful interaction with Potter. But he was always the spectator: the intruding interloper. It was like looking at the sky from between bars; the brilliance of the moon and the azure blue of dawn would be latticed and blocked by strikes of iron.
It wasn't enough.
He was coming to realise that just sleeping with Hermione was never going to be enough. He was jealous of the people she gifted with her smiles. They seemed to have no idea of what they were receiving; ignorant of the rarity and the value of her affection.
Perhaps he was incorrect, and she hadn't hidden parts of herself away. Perhaps the picture he was viewing was what she allowed him to see. Perhaps, instead, she'd compartmentalised him in that big brain of hers. Formed a fleshy prison around that part of her head that considered him; where she could organise and neatly file him to be catalogued under a number to be recorded and referenced when required. Like when she needed him to get an erection.
He didn't want to be boxed or compartmentalised. He wanted to own her, and for her to own him. Her smiles, and her soul, and everything else good and worthy about her. It was a base and predatory instinct that disintegrated his reason and good sense like grain ground between millstones.
I hate you. I will never accept you as my husband.
He craved her acceptance, her approval, and even, in a small way, her love. Her rejection of him was a physical pain, like he was swallowing hot coals, or acid that slow-burned and ate at his insides.
She'd slept with him, but she had never once recognised their marriage as anything other than an obstacle to overcome.
I'm Gryffindor enough to set myself on fire to watch you burn.
He was already burning; she was the fuel.
Draco stood up, and the world tilted. He grabbed the bar and anchored himself as his stomach threatened to draw inspiration from the vomit-coloured walls.
The barman gave him a bemused look. "Decided you've had enough?"
Draco kept his eyes fixed on a bottle of Bacardi white rum and waited for his balance to adjust. The bar's surface was concerningly sticky under his fingers, and he tried to suppress his grimace as he spoke to the barman. "I'm going home to make love to my wife."
The pronouncement came out of his mouth a little louder than he'd expected, and there was an encouraging jeer from the back of the pub.
"Then you're not going to need this." The barman picked up Draco's almost full pint glass and poured it down the sink. "Mate, with the amount you've had you're going to embarrass yourself."
Draco nodded in silent agreement and then regretted this as his head span again. He took a few long breaths. "I've already embarrassed myself."
The barman's mouth turned up in a half-smile. "Fair enough. Try, 'I'm sorry, and I'll never do it again'."
Draco grabbed his coat and tried to put it on before realising it was inside out. "I called her ornamental," he pulled the sleeve the right way out, "and she called me a bigot."
There was a high-pitched noise as the barman sucked in a breath. "That may take more than an apology."
"I have my methods." Draco was tempted to tap his nose but he was afraid he might miss.
He staggered towards the door and opened it. An icy wind hit his face and filtered past him into the musky warmth of the pub. It was early evening and the temperature had dropped into the minuses, but the cold was refreshing, and the smell of London traffic was preferable to beer and body odour. He peered out into Camden. The street was bustling with evening commuters and people heading out for whatever entertainment they could find on a Thursday evening. The sudden beep of a car horn drew Draco's attention, and he watched as a driver gesticulated at a pedestrian walked in the road. The for-hire black cab behind the car caught Draco's eye and caused him to smile.
"You might want to try that apology first, mate," the barman called in a 'rather you than me' voice, "just in case she doesn't let you in the door."
Draco raised his hand in a salute and walked out into the crowd.
Draco knocked at the Zabini-Lovegood abode, but because he'd known Blaise for most of his life, he was knocking at the back door rather than the front.
Draco kept tapping at the patio door even as Blaise slid it open.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" Blaise stuck his hand out and effectively blocked Draco's entrance into the house.
The house was a terrace and situated in a picturesque white crescent in Notting Hill. The rooms were narrow, but the house made up for the lack of footprint in height. It was an impressive six stories tall, including a basement kitchen which overlooked a Sunken Garden.
Draco looked past Zabini, into the kitchen, and at the gleaming marble countertops and Scandinavian minimalist furniture. The kitchen looked colourless and tasteful, and distinctly lacking any of Luna Lovegood's heinous interior design ideas.
"Let me in," Draco said. The night air, which had seem invigoratingly fresh and bracing, was now causing his extremities to go numb with cold. At least he could feel his extremities now which meant some of the cider was working its way through his system.
"I can't," Blaise said, his teeth gritted in a whisper. He jerked his head to the side. "They're here."
Draco raised an eyebrow at Blaise's dramatic pronouncement. "Who's here?"
"My wife, your wife, and Potter's wife."
Draco blanched. "Fuck," he said, copying Blaise's whispered tone.
"You're being dissected. I haven't heard this much yelling since my mother's fourth divorce." Blaise's mouth tilted up. "Is it true that you once came after thirty seconds?"
"Fuck." It seemed to be the only word he knew how to say. "It was one time. The witch."
Draco bashed his head on the glass door, causing Blaise to wince at the noise.
"Not so loud!"
"I came here to sober up."
"I can smell why." Blaise wrinkled his nose. "Cider? I know you're from the West Country, but do you have fit the stereotype –" Blaise abruptly stopped talking as a loud laugh echoed through the house. "Potter's wife," Blaise said. He looked back at Draco, and his eyes narrowed in determination. "You need to go before they see you."
"For fuck's sake, Blaise. Let me in. I'm cold, and I've drunk too much to walk back to Granger's house."
He obviously looked pathetic enough because Blaise stepped back from the door.
"Fine," Blaise said. "But when Hermione kills you, can you try and not bleed on the carpets. They're from Italy." He softly slid the door closed behind Draco.
"I know where they're from." Draco shook his hands and tried to get some life back into them. "I was the one who imported them."
"Oh yes, I forgot that." Blaise rolled his eyes and held out a hand for Draco's coat, making a 'hurry up' gesture. "So, what's the plan of attack – and please don't say you're going to rely on your natural charm because that never works."
"It has yet to fail." His fingers were stiff, and he struggled to unbutton his coat. It wasn't the elegant entrance he was used to.
"Frankfurt." Blaise's expression was carefully neutral, but Draco could see the smile lurking behind. Fucker.
"Now Blaise," Draco said with purposeful slowness, "we promised not to bring up Frankfurt every time we argued."
"No, you promised," said Blaise, who, seeming to give up on Draco taking his coat off any time this century, folded his arms. "You weren't the one who had to spend the night in a Muggle hospital."
"No, I spent a restful and erotic evening in the Muggle jail." Draco rolled his shoulders and shoved his coat off. "He was going to punch somebody eventually. The man was itching for a fight."
Blaise threw his hands into the air. "Only because you asked his girlfriend and his little sister for a threesome – and they agreed."
Draco gave a slanted smile. "As you said, natural charm." He held out his coat for Blaise to take.
"Seven stitches, Malfoy. On the inside of my mouth." Blaise took Draco's coat and promptly dropped it on the floor. "Done in the Muggle way with a needle."
Draco sighed and picked up his coat. "I defended your honour, did I not? I hit him back for you." He deftly threw it over the back of one of the metal barstools that was tucked under the breakfast bar. "You shouldn't have gotten in the way."
Blaise's brows snapped together. "I was trying to stop you having another Muggle brawl."
"You did a marvelous job. When the polizei arrived, they knew exactly who to arrest."
"If Hermione doesn't kill you tonight then I might."
"Hopefully she will spare you the trouble." He ran a hand through his hair, endeavouring to straighten out the damage that Kelpie King's punch, hours spent in a pub, and then a brisk walk around London had done. "How do I look?" He turned towards Blaise.
Blaise's mouth was poker-straight. "Like a smug git."
"How I usually do, then." He stopped combing his hair with his hand and pointed to the kitchen door. "Is she upstairs?"
"I'd been doing such a good job of staying out of the way and avoiding pissing off anyone's wife, including my own, and then you show up and that plan turns to shit." Blaise's tone was resentful, and similar to that of a teenager who had just been told to clean their bedroom. "Follow me."
Blaise led the way out of the kitchen and up a short flight of stairs to the ground floor of the house. If Draco remembered correctly, there was a lounge and a dining room on this floor, and then on the second floor was a sitting room and Blaise's study – although Draco had no idea why the man needed a study as he never seemed to work.
The sound of feminine chatter was getting louder as they approached the lounge.
Draco moved towards the door but was stopped as Blaise's hand shot-out to grabbed his arm.
"That floorboard creaks," Blaise whispered and pointed the board Draco was just about to stand on.
Draco gave Blaise a withering look. "Are we really going to creep up to the door and eavesdrop?"
"Yes. You don't want to interrupt them at a crucial point in their conversation, also," Blaise smiled nastily, "you might get to hear some of what they're saying about you."
He hoped Hermione wasn't regaling her friends with a narrative of him being knocked out by a single punch this afternoon. Knowing his luck, that story was how she'd started the conversation.
Draco deliberated whether he wanted to be the type of man that listened in on his wife's private conversations.
He leaned closer to the door.
"– that slimy git." She-Potter had a distinctly husky voice, and Draco briefly wondered if she used that tone on He-Potter in the bedroom. "The only thing he had going for him was his reputation and even that's a load of bollocks."
"Hermione didn't say that Draco was an inexperienced lover." Luna's lilt-accented voice broke She-Potter's rant, and Draco could have kissed her for it. "She just said he could be bit quick."
There was a snorting noise from behind him.
Without looking, Draco reached back and grabbed Blaise by the collar of his shirt. The message was clear: shut up or die.
Quick. She was the one who wanted it quick, he thought. He'd wanted to spend hours working out how to produce a purring noise from her. How could she –
"How big would you say, Hermione?" Ginny said.
Draco stopped breathing.
There was a pause before Hermione replied, "Oh, smaller than that."
Draco's grip tightened on Blaise's shirt, but it was no use. The man was silently shaking with laughter.
"Smaller," Hermione said. "Even less." Another pause. "Goodness Ginny, I can't eat all of that."
"Luna, I hope you don't intend to stint on cake too?"
There was the clatter of crockery.
"The bigger the better," Luna said. "When it comes to cake."
Draco exhaled and relaxed his hold on Zabini's shirt. If they hadn't been spying on their wives, Draco was sure that Zabini would have started moaning at how Draco had creased the silk. Instead, both men leaned closer to the door until their noses were pressed into grain of the wood.
With all the subtlety of a Slytherin, Draco turned the doorknob and opened the door a fraction. A slither of light spilled into the dark hallway, and, for an instant, the sudden brightness blinded Draco. He rapidly blinked to adjust his vision.
The three women sat in arm chairs which were clustered in a semi-circle around a low coffee table. From the angle that she sat at, Draco could see Hermione's face. Her mouth was smiling, but her eyes looked tired, and there was a faint line between her brows. Ginny passed her what was possibly the smallest slice of cake in the world.
Ginny leaned back in her chair and stuck a fork into her own cake. "You will learn that one of only joys of being pregnant is the guilt-free eating. That is when you're not throwing it back up."
The last time Draco had seen Ginny was at Blaise's and Luna's wedding and, apart from refusing the champagne, she hadn't looked pregnant. This had changed over the past few weeks, and now she was sporting a bump under a t-shirt which had printed on it 'Boy, Girl, or Burrito?'.
Gods, that was what the world needed: a Weasley-Potter hybrid.
Draco suddenly had the image of his own beautiful blond-haired, brown-eyed child laughing and running about in some imaginary garden, but then the imaginary sun was covered by a cloud, and in this now shadowed and murky garden, Potter's scruffy urchin-like offspring appeared.
Oh my Merlin.
His child and Potter's child were going to grow up together, play together, and most likely become friends.
Compared to the cold and the walk, nothing was as sobering as the thought of play-dates between his perfect child and Potter's menace.
"I'm not pregnant yet," Hermione said and placed her untouched cake onto the coffee table. Draco wasn't surprised. Hermione always lost her appetite when she was upset about something.
Last week he'd discovered a Raymond Blanc book in her collection and had spent two hours following the recipe for beetroot risotto. He'd peeled what felt like a hoard of beetroots, and chopped the ingredients with a precision he hadn't used since his potions exam. All for nothing as Granger pushed the risotto around her plate like a pile of newt spleens. He'd discovered later that she'd turned down his magnificent feast just because she'd found out that a Muggle friend of hers had missed out on some professorship in Oxford. No wonder she couldn't stomach cake when she was being questioned by her friends on their sex life.
"How is that possible?" Ginny said, frowning. "Malfoy seems to have been shagging you like a ferret in heat."
"Ferrets rut," Luna said, halting the conversation as effectively as a Muggle lollipop lady stopped traffic. She flourished the word 'rut' like a big yellow sign.
Both Hermione and Ginny turned and stared at Luna.
"A male ferret is called a hob and the a female a jill," Luna said, her tone rising and falling like ocean waves. "You're right in a way, Ginny. Male ferrets do go into heat like females, but it's called a rut instead. Ferrets have a fairly violent mating process, and the hob often bites the jill on the neck to trigger ovulation." She looked at Hermione and blinked. "Maybe his sperm have low motility?"
"I hope you're talking about Malfoy now and not ferret," Hermione said, and her eyes brightened with amusement.
"Or perhaps you're having too much sex?"
Ginny's nose wrinkled as if she had smelt a Weasley's Wizard Wheezes dung bomb. "Yeah, maybe things are getting 'diluted'."
Draco turned and glared at Blaise. Blaise was doubled over, clutching his side, and making little breathy noises like he was about to die. Which he might well do, Draco thought. He shot Blaise a venomous look before raising a single finger to his lips. When this didn't have the desired effect, Draco jerked his head towards the door in a 'they'll hear us' motion. The electric light seeping through the open door highlighted Blaise's face and shimmered off the unshed tears in his eyes. Blaise managed to nod and clapped his hands over his mouth to smother the sound of his sniggers.
"It's a possibility." Hermione's voice sounded distant, as if she was thinking through a complicated arithmancy equation, and when Draco turned back to look at her, she did seem to be staring in space. "If I'm not pregnant soon, I'll visit a fertility specialist."
A fertility specialist? They'd barely been trying for two months – was seeking medical help really necessary at this point? He'd briefly skimmed the sections in Hermione's baby books pertaining to fertility issues and alternative methods of conception, but he'd read with a pinch of salt as these were Muggle books. They were young and reasonably healthy, something was bound to happen soon enough.
Even so, he should perhaps speak to his mother. She would be certain to know more about magical conception than he was. After all, for generations of Malfoy women the main prerogative had been to produce an heir, whereas for Malfoy men it was to ensure the fortune for the next seven or so generations. Hermione was, rather ironically, falling in with his family's traditional values. Wouldn't his father be proud. That thought crept up on him, and he felt an ominous prickle on the back of his neck.
A witch-like cackle emitted from Ginny. "Merlin, can you imagine Malfoy's face when they present him with one of those little plastic cups."
Draco lifted an eyebrow and wondered what exactly he would be expected to do with a plastic cup. Judging by She-Potter's mirth it was undoubtedly something humiliating if not potentially painful.
"I think I've been on the receiving end of that particular expression." Hermione's voice quivered on the edge of laughter.
"Are you enjoying sex with Draco?"
Luna's question seemed to affect Hermione as much as it did him.
Hermione let out a high-pitched cough. "What – uh?"
"I read a theory once that when women are trying for a baby, they should ideally be climaxing during sex."
"I heard that too," Ginny chipped in. "Something about the cervix contracting and holding the sperm in –"
"Not while I'm eating, please." Hermione scrambled for her plate and poised her fork above the cake as if to imitate the act.
"Well, are you?" Ginny's commanding tone was only matched by the way her eyes narrowed.
There was a frigid pause. Draco's ear burned as he waited for Hermione's answer.
He could see her expression change, but he couldn't read these changes in their entirety. She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth as if she was chewing her answer. Her pink cheeks were a sign of embarrassment, but embarrassment at what? Was her discomfort due to this conversation, or at what her answer might be? Was she ashamed of him, or herself, or simply self-conscious?
She wasn't a shy creature. Yet, when he considered how reluctant she had been for him to see her nude, perhaps she was more insecure than he'd initial suspected. He'd presumed that their clothed sex had been her forming an obstacle: a physical barrier between her body and his. A fairly useless barrier given that they were having sex, but what did he know about the psyche of Hermione Granger.
He didn't think Hermione had a kink for clothed sex. He couldn't imagine her being the type of person to tear at her lover's clothes with an attitude of 'I must have you now', before giving up halfway through undressing because she simply couldn't wait. That was far more his cup of tea. He may have, on occasion, used that very same line. He recalled employing it on during a drunken dalliance with a cabaret performer in Amsterdam. She'd known just enough English to get the gist of what he was saying and apparently found it romantic enough that they'd ended up doing a number of glorious and possibly illegal activities in the shadow of one of the city's more modern bridges. He only remembered this detail because in the middle of February, painted steel on bare skin felt as cold as one would imagine. He'd had ice burns in places he would rather not disclose, and these had detracted from the post-coital bliss of sleeping with a woman who could bend over one-hundred-and-eighty degrees both ways. It had been an eye opening experience, and he'd vowed to never have open-air sex again unless he was in a hot country.
He knew that in a physical sense, Hermione must enjoy sex with him. This wasn't just his arrogance talking – this week she'd asked him to sleep with her. She'd done it in a roundabout way, with her seduction being preoccupied with ovulation and menstruation, but she had still asked him. And, while this was an obvious sign of pleasure, she also climaxed. On occasion it took some persuasion, however he was confident that they were sexually compatible. It was their emotional compatibility that he couldn't be sure of.
There was an emotional standoffishness between them, but not the anonymous distance of a one-night stand. With Hermione, it was a self-imposed distance. A lack of emotional connection wasn't necessarily a draw-back in sex. He'd often found that his relations with more...unknown people had been frenzied: with the other so preoccupied in their own pleasure that he could detach from sentiment and just fuck. For him, however, here was a huge difference between having sex with an almost stranger and sleeping with Hermione, his wife, and the future mother of his child.
Hermione released her lip, and Draco registered how pink and plump it had become in her mouth.
"Yes," Hermione said and then frowned as if admitting she enjoyed sex with him was something she begrudged and disliked. "The sex is –"
Enjoyable, mind-blowing, the best I've ever had. Draco could think of a number of ways for her to end that sentence.
"– good," she finished.
Blaise let out a stifled, but derisive, snort.
"And are you," Luna made a complicated hand gesture that Draco couldn't decipher, but he concluded that he needed to have a word with Blaise about the man's technique, "every time?"
This time, there was less of a pause before she answered, "Almost."
"He might be speedy, but he's obviously doing something right," Ginny said and smiled in a way which if she'd been a man Draco would have described as a leer. "Multiple?"
Hermione couldn't seem to get the words beyond her mouth, but she made a little noncommittal noise.
"Maybe all that talk about him wasn't just talk?"
"There have been lots of photographs and interviews in the papers," Luna said. "I even ran articles on him in the Quibbler. Sex sells, and Malfoy's sex life has been pretty sensational." She looked up at the ceiling as if searching for clues. "I've always wondered how he ended up having an orgy with Lorcan d'Earth?"
"What!" If she'd been eating, Draco was certain that Hermione would have choked on her cake.
Draco wanted to hit his head against another door.
His sex life was the stuff of gossip and, in the case of those seventeen hours in Dublin, legend. He'd found the entire interest around these episodes of apparent sexual deviance to be quite useful. For one thing, it stopped the world from focusing on his less than perfect past. He would much rather be known as the man who potentially shagged a half-vampire singer during an interspecies orgy than the boy who tried to murder Dumbledore.
Judging by the way Hermione's frown was maturing into an all-out scowl, he presumed she had been ignorant of the the Lorcan d'Earth incident.
Like Hermione, Lorcan d'Earth had been another remnant of Draco's teenage fascination. His deep infatuation with Lorcan was the only time he'd ever wished he could trade in his Malfoy blond locks for gothic black, and he'd even copied Lorcan's slicked-back-almost-widows-peak hairstyle for a few years.
"Oh yes," Luna said. "I got a tip off from someone staying at the hotel, and I took the quickest Portkey I could to Dublin, but by the time I arrived, Draco had checked-out. All I could find out was that Draco, Lorcan, all of Lorcan's entourage, and a few other witches and wizards had stayed in Draco's suite that night."
Hermione sat up straight. "Then how do you know there was any type of carousing?"
Luna smiled indulgently at her. "I visited the hotel, and I got a clue from the room full of sleeping people and the surfeit of used condoms."
He wanted it on record that he hadn't actually had sex with Lorcan d'Earth. Had he seen the half-vampire naked – yes. Had he and Lorcan been in the same room whilst engaging in sexual activities – yes. Had he potentially shared some bodily fluids with Lorcan – maybe.
He'd been young and decidedly more foolish when he'd met Lorcan and his posse in Temple Bar, Dublin. He'd been on a high. He'd travelled to the capital of Ireland for a single night to broker an import deal with a shipping yard; his first successful deal since taking over his family's company. He'd walked up the River Liffey and stumbled into Temple Bar before navigating his way to the more magically inclined bars. It was in the apply named Obliviate that he'd met Lorcan d'Earth.
Draco hadn't often experienced the sensation of being star-struck, but he'd been almost struck drunk just by the sight of the supernatural rockstar. He'd felt giddy and had babbled his way into Lorcan's good books with a series of, for once, heartfelt compliments. Through the imbuing a plethora of very fine Irish whiskey, and in taking a shine to two or three of the witches which followed Lorcan, Draco had suggested they reconvene to somewhere a lot more private.
The orgy was an accident. To call it an orgy would be a gross exaggeration. It was more a party that got a little wild and had a few too many naked individuals. To be honest, he missed most of the debauchery because in classic celebrity fashion, there was the main org–party in the suite's living room and the private, more exclusive party in the master bedroom.
Merlin knows what happened in the rest of the suite, but he'd spent a long night with a few close and personal friends...getting frankly close and personal.
He'd possibly slept for half an hour before he'd had to leave to catch his Portkey from the Dublin Transport Office at six o'clock in the morning. He'd been a bit drunk still and hadn't been paying a massive amount of attention to how the living room, three bathrooms, other bedroom, and balcony had looked. However, if the dry cleaning bill he received from the hotel was anything to go by, then things had got extremely untidy.
At least Draco now knew which reporter he had to thank for starting that particular rumour mill.
Lorcan had gone on to write a chart-topping song called 'My Deathly Lover', and had sent Draco backstage passes to his next sold-out tour. Draco hadn't attended, however he had disposed of them for a hefty profit. Obviously, the gossip that Lorcan had shagged an ex-Death Eater had done wonders for his undead reputation, and the star wanted to recoup on this new-found level of hedonism.
Hermione was molesting her lip with her front teeth. Draco's jaw tightened as he watched her cheeks lose their rosy blush and turn pale.
"I had no idea," Hermione said faintly.
Ginny raised her fork in the air as if she was suggesting a toast. "To Malfoy, the amazing shagging ferret."
"Rutting," Luna corrected.
"The amazing rutting ferret."
"Can we not talk about Malfoy's past sexual relationships – it makes me feel like a name on a list."
Hermione's voice had the same effect of a sudden April shower on a picnic, and Ginny and Luna's laugher abruptly ceased.
"My marriage is a fiction, and I feel like I'm play-acting."
Hermione lightly brushed her fingertips along the rim of the plate, and he was sure she must be tracing the floral pattern around the rim. It's what she did at home during breakfast when she thought he wasn't looking. She'd assume he was preoccupied with the paper, and she'd start to touch the painted bluebells on the cups and saucers his mother had given them.
"Don't you find it just a little bit arbitrary that in this marriage law the consummation was only valid if the man orgasmed."
She glanced up, seemingly to gauge Luna and Ginny's reactions. Her eyes were dark, and her lashes vibrated as she blinked.
"I studied that law," she said. Her voice was low and calm, and, like the sea, deceptive. It hid what lay beneath the surface. "I read through every section and every clause, and not once does it discuss the female orgasms. The woman's pleasure during consummation – on a night that is supposed to be a shared between two people who have promised an emotional and social commitment to one another – is entirely omitted. As if it didn't matter, or occur, or even exists."
She gripped the plate, and the skin around her knuckles looked thin and bleached.
"On my wedding night, I told him to get on with it. It was awful." She was fitting the phrases together like building blocks. "I told him to get on with it. I didn't want anything from him – I didn't want to feel. I couldn't bear pleasure from him."
"This law is wrong. It is wrong on so many levels that I cannot even begin to articulate them. When it came to it – the consummation – I found I couldn't do it. When we were in that hotel room and I"– like a flame that had been hit with a surprise gust of wind, her eyes glittered and wavered to the corners of the room –"if I could have chosen to go to Azkaban then, I would've."
Her nostrils flared, and he watched her catch her breath. She looked brittle, like burnt wood or bone, and like she would splinter at any moment.
"He pointed out that if I didn't cooperate, then he would also go to prison, and while I can make that choice for myself, I will not take that choice away from him. I will not be the one responsible for putting him back into Azkaban."
She then frowned, and as she lifted her chin. "Even if he is a complete bastard."
Draco's mouth curled. She did have a very unique way of uttering the word 'bastard'. It was like getting slapped in the face, and she spoke it as if she was imagining hitting him in the mouth.
Ginny's reaction was quintessentially British. "Tea," she said as if it was the balm to all hurts. "I need tea. Decaffeinated tea. Herbal, if you have it?"
"Yes," Luna said, with alarming brightness. "Tea."
Draco didn't look at Ginny and Luna. His entire attention was preoccupied with Hermione.
It was as if someone had cast Lumos and the dark edges of a room had been illuminated.
Luna stood up and hurried to the door. "It's been over a quarter of an hour. I don't know where Blaise has got to."
Looking like a couple of naughty schoolboys who were about to get caught peeping into the girl's changing room, Draco and Blaise scrambled away from the door.
Luna pulled the door open. "He only went to boil the kettle. Oh –" Her mouth popped into a silent 'o'. "I've found him. He and Draco are standing outside the door."
There was a smashing noise.
Draco wasn't a betting man, but if he were he'd bet then that was the sound of Hermione's plate shattering on the floor.
Hermione came into view. There was a vein pulsing on her forehead, and her eyes burned like piping hot caramel.
She turned on Draco. "This had better be not what it looks like."
Author's Note:
There has been some consternation on elements of the story, and something of a team Draco or team Hermione situation has developed.
Addressing some of these questions/ issues, I have not written this as a non-consensual sex narrative. The marriage, the co-habitation, and law are non-consensual; however, the actual sexual acts depicted were not written to be taken as sexual assault.
The dubious consent aspect is much more in reference to the marriage and forced relationship between Draco and Hermione.
I consider both characters as victims in this marriage law, although their individual responses to this law are different.
The next chapter (Chapter 7: His Irrevocable Hand) will be from Hermione's POV and will be set before the events of Chapter 1: Deciduous. Hopefully, this chapter will answer, and, or, be illuminating on some of the complexities of their relationship.
If you do wish to contact me for clarity on sensitive issues, I have a Tumblr account under the name Stargazing121.
Ultimately, this is a love story; just not a conventional one.