Alpha'd by jamethiel.
Beta'd by Pidanka and jamethiel.
From Hermione's POV. Set before the events of Chapter 1.
'The problem with courtship is precisely a problem of mutuality [...]'
Feminist Readings: Geoffrey Chaucer, Jill Mann
Yesterday, he'd promised to strip her if she hadn't worn the dress.
"I'll strip you," he'd said. His hand had been white where it gripped the door handle of her office. So white that she'd been able to imagine his bones creaking under the pressure. He'd looked like he was on the point of turning the handle and storming out, and she didn't know which had prevented him more: her refusal, or his desire to win.
"I will do it, Granger." He'd gazed down his nose: a perfect slope from which to glare. "In front of all those Ministry employees and officials. Wear the dress I send, or I'll cut off whatever you have on and burn it."
Her quill had made a splintering sound. "You wouldn't dare."
She'd wanted to stand up and stride towards him as her enemy, but she preferred to keep her desk between them. It seemed like a good idea to have something solid – a tangible barrier – blocking her body from his eyes.
He'd bared his teeth. "Just wear the dress I'll have sent over tomorrow morning, and then you won't have to find out if I'm lying or not."
"You don't get to order what I wear."
"On this occasion, I will." He'd released the handle and stalked towards her.
She hadn't flinched when he'd slapped his hands on her desk, or even when the force of his hand had lifted and scattered the parchment. A letter from the Italian Minister for Magic had tipped onto the floor. His foot had torn it when he'd curved over the desk towards her.
"You have dictated every other aspect of our wedding. You wanted it at the Ministry registry office. Fine. You insisted that we not invite a single guest. Fine. You decreed that –"
"This is not a real wedding, Malfoy." She'd felt the magic crackle on the tips of her fingers: little white hot sparks which would singe his skin if she touched him. She'd stabbed her fingers into the wood to blunt the magic and prayed he didn't realise why. "What we are completing is no more than a transaction for breeding rights."
His brows had been bound like oak, and his eyes flashed like a sudden frost.
Black ice, she'd thought. He's like black ice. She'd fall, if she didn't watch her step.
"You want a child?" His voice had shuddered.
The question had hurt. A small wound, like a paper-cut. A bit sore; a little ache.
She'd wished to drop her eyes, to turn her head away; but she couldn't. Not when he would see and read something into her actions.
It was all about appearances with him. Or perhaps it was performance? He seemed to be playing a role, some fictitious part in a play which only he had the script to. He might think she also had lines; that she was also acting her part.
Was she?
No.
She didn't play games, or act parts, or darkly dart across a space with the purpose to deceive.
"That is the entire point of the law," she'd said, schooling her features.
"I am aware of what the law implies. That is not what I asked."
There was a fear, however. It lingered; pale and loitering. A fear he would use her. Fear she would be defined, remembered, and regarded as nothing more than the carrier of the Malfoy heir. The mother who ruined the bloodline.
She'd licked her lips and then nipped at them, suddenly dry. "I – I –"
He'd lowered himself further, so he'd been almost lying on her desk. She could see the lines around his eyes. Thin lines, like a freshly spun silken web.
"Do you want a child?" He'd spoken slowly, accentuating every word with uncomfortable clarity.
The tendons in his neck had been tense, thickly corded and like branches, and his Adam's apple had bobbed slightly when he'd swallowed.
He'd caught her in his words. No matter her answer, she would be giving too much of herself away. She could speak the truth and have him know, or lie and prove him right.
"One day," she'd said and snapped her mouth shut.
"You are actually willing to carry my child?"
"For the purpose of this law, yes."
She'd noticed him check himself. For a split-second, his mouth had dipped.
"I see." He must have seen something in her own face for he turned that droop into a curve and then a sneer. "Very well," he'd said, and it seemed so insufficient and so unlike him that she'd opened her mouth to reply, before closing it.
"Is that all?" she'd said, instead, and picked up a fresh quill. She'd pointedly ignored where his elbow rested on her stack of correspondences. "Because I'd like you to leave."
"Of course." He'd gracefully pushed himself upright, and she'd been almost jealous by the ease with which he moved his body; such control and certainly that his muscles would bend or tighten to his will.
She'd felt him move away and towards the door.
"I have conceded everything, and I have done it all for you."
She'd not looked up, but let his words spear the bow of her head.
"However, you, in turn, are going to turn up in a white dress, holding a damn bouquet. I ask so little." A pause. "Just give me this single concession." The door snapped shut.
She had pressed her palms into the top of her desk and dug her nails in. Hard. Then she'd bend over and picked up the letter from the Italian Minister for Magic – the one which he'd ripped – and began to read the broken English once more.
She'd worn it. The dress had arrived the next day at her home rather than her office. It was beautiful and glamorous, and she felt entirely like she was a child playing dress up. But she'd worn it. On that single issue, he had been correct. She hadn't wanted to find out if he'd been lying.
"The answer is yes, in case you ever wondered." His voice was perfunctory but laced with irritation, like the sting of antiseptic on a skin abrasion.
He'd been like this since before the ceremony. Or, at least, with her he was. There had been an absence of that sardonic tone as he'd spoke to the hotel manager. All charm and smiles; he could turn it on like a switch.
It was a relief to be free of him: those charms and those smiles. His scorn, his sneers, and the sharp lashes of his tongue were easier to cope with. He was tart, and, like a lemon drop, he made her mouth scrunch up.
She stood a little far off but turned her body so she could keep him and the ocean in her sights.
The ocean breeze swept away the burn of the late afternoon Spanish sun, making her skin feel simultaneously balmy and cool. She shivered as a stronger gust blew over them, and her arms broke out in gooseflesh. Freshly plucked, she must look: pale, like a goose ready for the roasting.
From the high altitude of their hotel suite's balcony, she could see the rolling mountains and the valley, almost pressed, between them; all leading to the sea which stretched like the sky, endless and azure.
Almost endless.
Malfoy's profile was as angular and as terrible as those mountains, and it perforated the blue. He was staring straight ahead, but it was a forced stare. It was as if he was lancing the horizon with his eyes.
She could tell from the tight creases of his jacket that there was tension in his shoulders and neck. His muscles would be taut, and his skin stretched like thin, vellum parchment. Bloodless; without colour.
Her nails weren't long, but could she score his skin? Mark him like an illuminated manuscript with red eosin ink?
The thoughts were as trespassers, and she shook her head as if the physical action of refusing would make them depart her brain.
"Yes, to what?" she asked him, more out of habit than design.
She was still holding her bouquet of lily-of-the-valley, and she threaded her thumbs between the stalks to stop her hands from bunching and crushing the posy.
"I did contemplate my wedding once or twice." The blandness in his voice was deceptive; his bowed back revealed the strain underneath.
He looked at her then; dragging his eyes away from the sea and glittering waves. His face was sharp as if the resolution had been turned up: enhancing his features with an unnatural labour. The artfully teased pieces of hair fell and rippled, like kite strings, in the wind, throwing his eyes into shadows. She couldn't see if his pupils dilated for her.
He seemed to take her silence as an invitation to continue. There was a plainess to his tone that she hadn't experienced recently. "It would have been in summer," he said with unvarnished terseness, "at the Manor, and my mother would have been there."
His words were bare and untreated, and, like fresh wood which has had its bark stripped away, they splintered under the pressure.
She felt him slide under her skin.
She would not picture the Manor, but, instead, thought of a county estate in Derbyshire that her parents had taken her to visit one summer holiday. Stately rooms of brocade and gilded gold which edged the centre of the house like a puzzle box so that every room would have a garden view. The gardens, designed by someone like Lancelot Capability Brown, would be beautiful but immaculate. Each leaf would be clipped, each blade of grass arrow-straight, and not a single rose would dare not to bloom in the height of midsummer. It would have been a flawless canvas to have a wedding on.
It must have rankled his florid sensibilities to have his wedding in a registry office and wearing only a tailored suit without even a button-hole.
Earlier this afternoon, he'd plucked the quill from her unresisting hand and dipped it in the magically binding ink. Malfoy's signature had occupied the marriage licence, and, like its owner, it was sprawling and jagged. He'd held no regard for the dotted line or the written request to 'sign here', and the letters of his name had overflown and dwarfed her own meagre mark.
She'd pictured cherry blossom at her wedding. The wafer thin petals would have drifted on the wind and caught in her veil and then in her hair.
She'd wished for blossom and had received dying roses.
As Malfoy ran his palm along the stone parapet, there was a faint scraping sound, and it drew her attention back to him as efficiently as a click of his fingers. She watched, breathless, as he raised his hand and pushed back his hair. A long, clever stroke that caught all the stray strands and exposed his eyes. Like the Rorschach Test, his pupils were blooming under the touch of her gaze: growing and staining the lightness of his irises.
There were laughter lines around his mouth; however they were slight, almost delicate, and not as pronounced as the ones between his brows or around his eyes. Those grooves around his eyes deepened, but their severity was sliced by his eyelashes. Such a fine pale line of colour; so blond that the silky length of them almost glowed white in the sun.
"However –" the corner of his mouth twitched upwards, and he touched his bottom lip with a thumb as if holding back a smirk "– if I had to imagine a bride, then they could not have compared to the vision that you are."
She felt the blush: that warmth, which brushed along her cheeks and that couldn't be mistaken for the sun's rays. She swiveled on her heel so she was facing the sea. Like the cover of an old and valuable book which has turned solid with age so that it cracks and groans if opened too far, he could now only study a small area of her face.
"That was my decision," she said in a measured voice. "Thank you for accommodating it."
"You are more than welcome." He laughed, darkly. "I can be very accommodating for people such as yourself."
She snapped her head back to face him. "What's that supposed to mean?"
As he lowered his hand, he waved it languidly in her direction. It was an all-encompassing gesture and travelled the length of her body. She saw his fingers slightly wave as he skimmed her waist and hips.
"Such poise, my dear," he carried on as if she hadn't spoken. "Such refinement." His gaze was one of appreciation, yet the type of appreciation usually reserved for renowned piece of art. Something fixed, something still, something dead. "And all mine."
"I am not yours, or anyone's."
"Not ownership in the mercantile sense, my love. But, forgive me, I get a thrill out of knowing I'll be the only person to know you from here to eternity."
She slapped the bouquet of flowers on the parapet. A few petals broke off and bounced to the floor. "You're alone in this conception." She raised her chin, and bit the inside of her mouth as she sucked her cheeks in.
He sighed, but it was full of amusement. "I am aware of this. Yet –" his smile was as lightning: brief and blinding "– my sense of anticipation does not decrease in the slightest."
Like the roll of clouds which signal an approaching storm, a flutter of the prospective rippled in her lower belly. Alike to those broiling clouds, he approached. He made no sound, but the very air moved around him. It was like a friction: as if the air had become solid, or, rather, he made the air come alive. Breathing life into it; disturbing its composure.
The atmosphere crackled as he approached her, and the hair on the back of her neck stirred in response.
"You are all I could have envisaged in a wife." He was to her side, and she had to strain her neck to keep him in her sights. "Beautiful." He pressed his mouth closer. "Brilliant." The sharp 't' kissed her neck. "Beguiling."
She swallowed a breath, and it felt icy cold on her lips. "What about love?" she said, her voice husky, and weaker than she would have liked.
"Love." He snapped the word, and it was a huff of heat on her skin. "I was not indulged to expect love."
She balled her fists and hid them in the folds of her dress. "I was."
"But not from me?" His lips were at her ear.
So close. So close, he could touch her?
She shut her eyes on that glittering ocean and his piercing smile. "Never," she said, and under the mercurian dress, her thighs trembled.
"We understand each other so perfectly."
She drew in a breath and tasted sea, and salt, and him. Like wood smoke, he lingered on her tongue.
"We don't understand each other, Malfoy." Keeping her eyes closed, she twisted her head to the side: away from him. "I doubt we ever will."
She felt his anger in the sound of his breath. Sharp. Short, bursts.
"Well, thank the gods that we will have the rest of our lives to endeavour," he gritted the word out, "to comprehend the other."
"You can do that, but I won't be wasting my time."
"Merlin," he cursed. "I cannot be having this conversation with you turned away like some martyr waiting for the stake. Look at me, will you."
She curved her body even more, so her back was almost to him."Whether I look at you," she said, addressing the sky, "will not change the bearing of this discussion."
He grasped her elbow, and her eyes shot open. The world spun as he turned her: the blue and gold of the ocean was replaced by the blanched whiteness of his face.
Perhaps it was because of his pallid complexion or the ocean behind her, but his irises seemed to take on the hues of the sea. Their grey had been washed away, and undercurrents of turquoise surged through the cerulean. Lapis lurked around his pupils, flowing into the black.
"If you are going to reject me so out of hand," – he pressed her into the stone – "then you will kindly have the courtesy to pronounce it to my face."
Her scowl slashed her brows, and she jerked at where he held her. "Don't you dare –"
"Dare what?" He stepped forward and sunk his body into hers. "To touch you?"
The parapet dug into the base of her spine, and his hip bones drove into her soft underbelly.
She lowered her eyes: tracing down his neck to the cut of his throat. Blue veins, which throbbed like the heart of a rabbit under his semi-translucent skin.
"Yes," she whispered, and his pulse visibly jumped.
As he slid his hand down her arm and enclosed her wrist, the material of the dress tugged slightly. "By tonight, I will have done much more than merely touch you."
She shivered against him. She was so aware of every slice and ridge of him. From the pressure of his hand on her arm, to the rise and fall of his chest which brought his body into further contact with hers.
"You will not know where I begin, and you end." Like the touch of fine china, he stroked the bones of her wrists. Such a tender touch for someone who held her in his grasp.
He nimbly caught her other hand as she raised it. He plucked her sleeves between his fingers and caught her wrists. He pushed their conjoined hands down, down between their bodies; forming a knot which separated them.
"Let go." She jerked her eyes up and glared at him.
His eyes flickered across her face; such eyes. The black had spilled into the blue. It was as if the sea was banished from them, and they were now cavernous in their depths.
She could slip into those eyes and forget all. She could crawl into him, and along that hollow tunnel of his pupils. Seat herself in the centre of him and bury herself within his reach. She could steep herself in him. Saturate, and drown on him.
She blinked; a smile flicked across his face. He was expecting her to.
"I can never lose sight of who I am." She clenched her fingers, and her wedding band delved into her skin and burrowed into her pelvis.
"You will." He moved deeper, closer; so those black pupils stretched her eyes. "Even if it is only temporarily, my dear."
He shifted his hips, bracing himself between her legs.
He was an intrusion, and the warmth of him trickled down her body, like honey, and pooled in her belly. It slipped down the contours of her stomach, easing its way to the juncture of her thighs.
To her horror, she felt herself slicken.
"I will make you forget," he promised. He declined his head. The movement shielded her from his eyes, but brought his mouth to her skin. His words sucked at her neck.
"Forget who kisses you."
He untangled one of his hands from hers, but still kept her wrists pinned with a single pinch of his fingers, and brought it up and behind her back. His fingers dragged across her back, sliding into every dip of the lace.
"Who touches you."
He stopped at the central line of the dress: where the seam divided into buttons. Three buttons, to be precise. More like clasps, or hooks. Easy to flick open.
"Who will whisper to you in the night."
Her blood hummed in her body, singing a rapid tempo in her ears, as she stared blindly at the sandy brick of the hotel.
"Who will strip you."
His thumb skimmed her vertebrae as he slid the first button from its clothed prison. The loosening of the ties that bind.
"Who you will come for."
Her body lightly trembled as he dipped a finger between the open fold of the dress: a single finger.
She was aware of the emptiness behind her. How the balcony dropped and tumbled downwards, and that the only thing holding her up was Malfoy's finger, which hotly stroked: back and forth; tracing the split of her bones. The wind could ripple through her, shattering her, and the last thing she would have felt was his touch. The dryness of her eyes was almost painful, as if her unconcentrated stare was being abraded by the brick. As if the stone was eroding her eyes; yet, if she looked away, then her pupils would fall on him. Fall on those flashes of gold in his hair which leached the sun of its light.
He added another finger as he undid the second clasp.
"And then," the curl of his lip connected with her jugular, "you will open your eyes and remember exactly who made you scream."
For all its sharpness of shape and sound, his mouth was pillow soft.
She brought her foot up, and in a sharp relief, slammed it on his toes.
"Fuck."
His hand was clear of her.
"Fuck."
He stepped back.
"Fuck."
She stumbled past, and her ring caught on the dress; the lace ripped open, and her skin seeped out.
She'd called them the screaming necklaces.
His gifts, that is.
The first one had arrived six months ago, the day after the Marriage Law was announced.
Having somehow bypassed the Ministry's security checks, the jewellery case had been on her desk when she arrived. Almost as if it had been waiting for her, the embossed silver 'M' carved into the leather seemed to come alive: gleaming keenly as the scutes of some tropical, deadly snake.
She'd blinked at the case and mentally run through all the spells and rules Malfoy must have used and broken to get it into her office. She'd calculated at least twenty-six spells. However, she'd have to do some research into how many rules.
She'd calmly rolled up her copy of the Prophet and, so she wouldn't have to touch the case, used it as a baton to push the case off her desk and into the bin. She'd then picked up the bin, opened her office door, and unceremoniously dumped it outside. The metallic clang of the bin hitting the floor had still been reverberating in her ears when she'd gone back into her office and, firmly, shut the door behind her.
At first, she'd felt the sound more than heard it. Like the buzzing of a mosquito at night, it had started as a whistle: a thin, reedy sound and just on the point of hearing. She'd ignored it, presuming that it was just some nonsense going on in the main office.
An hour later, however, the screaming had began.
Her secretary had staggered into her office, his face screwed-up, and his hand flapping like an agitated moth around a lightbulb in the direction of where she'd left the bin.
The necklace – as she discovered when she summoned the bin back into her office and opened the case – was charmed. Imbued with a charm to 'make a loud and annoying noise' until the intended recipient wore it. Malfoy's note, informing her of this fact, had been bluntly put. Excessively blunt. It was almost as if he didn't want to waste words on the subject, or perhaps he felt less was more. The less he put, the less she could argue with. Not that she couldn't have written an entire three roles of parchment to him on the wrongness in the entire principle of a booby-trapped necklace.
Perhaps she shouldn't have been surprised. He did, after all, have a history with cursed necklaces.
There had been a slight tremble in her fingers as she'd pulled out the glittering mass of diamonds and wrapped it around her neck. The gold had been clammy and cold, and she'd briefly wondered if the owner's hands would be equally so. Unfastened, it had lain around her neck, and yet it had still screamed.
Wear it, he'd written.
Her fingers, stiff and unyielding, had fumbled with the delicate clasp as she fastened it. As soon as her finger left cold metal, the wailing had ceased.
Like a collar, it encircled her bare neck.
The silence had felt almost deafening, so loud, so awful had been that scream. It wasn't a human or an animal cry, but a constant pitched shriek which didn't waver or take breath. The sheer inhumanness of the sound almost made it worse, because she was hearing an manufactured sound. An artificial scream of pain.
It had perhaps been naive to hope that Malfoy would only present her with the one gift: a single token of his esteem. However, that hope had been crushed when a week later another case was ready and waiting when she arrived at the office at eight o'clock.
She'd pondered on how long she could leave the necklace before the screaming became unbearable. It turned out she'd only been able to stomach thirty minutes.
Afterwards she'd been grateful that no one else had been in the office that early. No one had witnessed the crime of her taking a pair of magicked pliers to the emerald and diamond necklace which probably cost more than anyone in her department made in a year.
The next week, it had been a sapphire creation which she'd pulled apart. She'd lined the stones up, like toy soldiers, on her desk: the smallest a speck of glitter, and the biggest the size of a Galleon. Out of their settings, they'd not shone so brilliantly and had almost seemed dull when paired with the dark brown wood underneath.
The week after, a platinum collar embedded with chips of opal had been at the mercy of her hands.
She'd hesitated over a garnet pendant the size of her thumb nail and cursed herself for the millisecond of enjoyment she felt when she slid the fine chain around her neck. It had nestled between her breasts; a plump tear-drop made even redder against the whiteness of her skin. She'd sighed as she sliced the chain into four even parts and again when she placed the components into an envelope, wrote Malfoy's business address on the front, and sent it to the Ministry's owlery to be delivered.
One time the necklace hadn't stopped screaming.
He must have changed the charm, she'd thought as she fastened it for the sixth time. Altered it, perhaps? Or developed the spell just so she would have to contact him?
She'd sworn when the clasp had snagged on her poloneck and the fine wool had pulled, ruching like a ladder along the weave.
There had been no notes, letters, or correspondence since that first gift; no acknowledgment of the numerous bits of necklace she'd sent him over the weeks. She'd felt this silence of Malfoy's was noxious; like resentment, it grew with each passing week, with each gift, with each rejection. Without a sound, the air between them had become thick with poison.
She'd relented and gone to Malfoy, but it had taken another hour and many desperate pleas from her staff.
He'd had the audacity to look surprised when she charged into his office and flung the necklace down in front of him. She'd flooed to his building, and the whole time the necklace had been wailing like a constant and high-pitched foghorn. She'd not been able to explain the situation to Baddon, the Head of Magical Transport, and the older woman had waved her through the department and cleared her access to use the floo in record time.
There was something to be said for running through the Ministry, clutching a diamond necklace to her chest, and wearing an expression on her face which spoke of limited patience. It had certainly upped everyone's ability to get out of her way.
When she'd arrived at Malfoy's offices, her presence had incurred a similar effect: that of a cat amongst the pigeons.
She'd not seen him for weeks, yet it hadn't been enough.
The last time she'd been here, he'd caged her in. His arms had been like brackets around her body, his hands affixed to the door, as he'd whispered to her how he was looking forward to 'aspects' of their marriage. Like the heat of his body, it was burned into her memory.
She'd pointed at the necklace that lay curled and motionless on his desk. "Make it stop."
His eyebrows had quivered, but she'd been unsure if this was with amusement or confusion. He'd stood and walked towards her. Apart from that small movement of his eyebrow, his face was blank; unreadable, like an unblotted piece of parchment.
As he'd moved towards her, he'd swiped the necklace; he'd held it out in front of him like a bejewelled garotte.
The step back she'd taken had been involuntary, but his pupils had narrowed as he took in her movement. It had been a sharp stare, and, as if her feet had been skewered to the floor, she'd stopped retreating immediately.
"I can't," he'd said. He'd shouted, but she'd still had to watch his lips to understand the complete sentence. "Only you can."
As she'd shaken her head, more of her hair had broken free of the low ponytail it had been secured in. The curls had spun in front of her eyes and cut her view of him into uneven pieces.
"It won't stop," she'd tried to say, but her voice had been drowned under his accursed necklace.
His eyes had started to dance then; roaming down her body with an easy which made her spine stiffen and her knees quiver. They'd alighted on her neck and widened with glee.
He'd started to laugh. She'd not heard his laugh, but, by the unbending of his mouth, she'd been able to imagine the deep huskiness of it.
He'd reached a hand towards his own neck, tugged at his collar, and exposed a slit of pale skin which was white and, like the surface of fresh milk, looked beautifully smooth.
"Bare skin, my dear." He'd tilted his chin up, so she could count the thin bones which jutted from his neck like Adam's ribs. "The charm will only break if it touches your bare skin."
All she'd been able to do was glare, and even that had been cut off when she'd pulled her sweater over her head. She'd kept her head high as she'd stood before him in a thin camisole top. He'd been able to see every dip and rise of her chest. She'd gripped her jumper between her knees and held a hand out for the necklace.
He'd ignored her hand and had stalked around behind her.
His breath had tickled the dip between her shoulder blades, and she had shivered when he'd placed the cold metal of the necklace on her collar bones.
"There" – the screaming stopped as he fastened the chain – "peace is once more restored. But," he'd said as he'd walked back to face her, "I fear, not for long."
"You –"
"I thought you appreciate all the elements of how the charm worked."
"– bastard."
The smile he had laid on her had been styled with the sole intention to deceive: awashed with admiration and affection.
"Can you not chop this one up into little pieces?" He skipped away from her and settled back behind his desk. "I don't especially mind, but my jeweler is beginning to take it personally."
She ripped the arms of her jumper the right way around. "Stop sending them."
His laugh had been low, and his eyes had, once again, danced as they deliberately alighted on her. "They are tokens of my high regard for you." He'd raised a brow in a gesture she couldn't have mistaken the meaning for. "A regard which is only increasing by the minute."
She'd hurried and pulled her jumper back over her head. Glaring, she'd raised her chin. "I don't want your tokens or gifts, Malfoy." She'd swept her hair back from her eyes. "You're wasting your money and my time."
"My money is of little importance. But what an offending crime to have taken up your precious time." He'd raised a hand and splayed it on his chest in mock contrition. "Accept my most humble apologies."
She'd looked from his ridiculous pose to his ridiculously large smile and turned on her heel.
"How is storming the Ministry and demanding that they release you from this oppressive Marriage Law progressing?"
Her hand had paused on the door handle. "I'm not working on behalf of myself," she'd said, crisply and cooly as she tightly gripped the handle.
"Of course not," he'd said, the amusement catching in his throat. "However, forgive me if I am wrong, but a sizeable part of your motivation is your impending marriage to yours truly?"
She'd jerked the handle down and stormed from the room, and, knowing what she would see, she'd not bothering to answer or look back.
His laugh had only been muffled by the door and not silenced.
"Granger, I understand that women have a secret and often mystical relationship with the bathroom, but may I request that you not make this a permanent one."
Even through an inch of wood, the caustic tone in Malfoy's voice bled through the door like acid.
The hotel room's bathroom was approximately the size of a large double bedroom. The space was more than sufficient to fit the few fixtures in the room, and she appreciated the spatial interior decisions as she was seriously considering never leaving and – as Malfoy feared– taking up permanent residence here.
"As your devoted and entirely unreluctant husband" – there was a couple of impatient raps from the other side of the door – "I would like to have my first dinner as a married man actually with my wife."
As she rested her head against the door, the wood felt cool against the side of her face. Her fingers traced down: her index finger followed the score of a single grain and pursued the dimples and wavers in the line.
Not wearing a watch, she could only estimate how long she'd been in here; but, by now, the tips of her fingers knew each shift in the wood's grain.
She touched metal, and, instead of ignoring it, she stopped and laid her hand over the handle.
"Can we continue as we mean to go on – with a fight," he said, and she could easily imagine the half-smile in his words being replicated on his face. "A verbal one, to clarify. I don't fancy being on the receiving end of one of your right hooks for a second time."
She flicked her eyes up to the mirrored wall in front of her. She looked a mess, yet her face was concerningly hard. The lines between her brows were becoming as tattoos, she saw them so regularly.
Ever since the Ministry's Marriage Law, her face had been getting harder. Sometime she caught flashes of herself as she passed mirrors and darked windows, and she barely recognised the scowl that stamped her features.
The inevitable has happened this afternoon, and at least that was one battle over; if lost. Perhaps her position, her appearance of agreeing with the marriage law, could work to her advantage? It would be easier, at least, only fighting on two sides rather than three. Just Malfoy and the Ministry; she'd lost to marriage.
This evening, her hair was a lost cause. Curls, like a thicket, surrounded her face and their darkness highlighted the ghastly paleness of her cheeks. Between the ceremony at the Ministry, the Portkey to Spain, the muggy heat of the Spanish sun, and finally, Malfoy's interference, the twisted arrangement hadn't survived the day's events.
The day had been a struggle – and he was right in his assessment – a fight.
Like her hair, she wasn't sure how many more of these days she could survive. How long she could survive him.
He might want a verbal fight, but she … she didn't think she could cope with many more sparring matches with him. Not for the moment. Not while the wounds were fresh and the memories sharp.
Could she persuade him? Turn him so they didn't fight, so they worked together?
An impossible thought. He was too suspicious; too unhampered by the events to want to work.
Using him might be the only option. Then again, wasn't he using her – wasn't the Ministry using her like a mule, like an animal? Limited to her reproductive functions on one side, and her physical attraction on the another. They were all going to use her; she had no agency in the matter. Her reaction to this use, however, was her choice, and, like Jason and the Symplegades, she had no option but to proceed.
The dress Malfoy had ordered for her was maintaining some semblance of sophistication. Nevertheless, she thought that was more because of the fine style of the dress, rather than the woman inside it. Until this dress, she hadn't understood the principle that clothes could wear the owner and not the other way around. The embroidered silk looked wrong on her, and she felt oddly small, diminutive in the tight cut and wrapped sleeves. He'd used those sleeves like a straight-jacket, pinning her wrists by pinched the material with his thumb and forefinger.
Had he chosen this dress for that reason, she wondered. Dressed her up like a doll, so he could undress her like one.
When she'd been a girl, she'd owned a paper peg doll. The type of ancient toy where she'd spent ages with her child-safe scissors cutting out the doll, the clothes, and the accessories, which had turned out to be the most interesting part of the toy. She'd folded down the flaps and placed the clothes on the doll and stared at it. The clothes had slightly swung as they'd hung off the paper frame of the doll, but at the faintest movement and the dresses would drop and leave her bare. In her mind that doll had been useless: both as a toy, and as a girl. How could the doll hope to function in a world where she wasn't able to walk, move, talk without her clothes falling off?
The white and silver dress she wore now was simple to undo. It would only take a flick and twist of his wrist and the silk would flutter down her body and pool at their feet.
He'd only had the third clasp left when she'd shut herself in the bathroom. The first two were still open, gaping to reveal the rivets of her spine. Her fingers could only aimlessly brush the hooks, such was the angle of the fastenings.
It hurt her palm where she gripped the door handle, a hot dull ache, and she wished the metal would give in under her hand. To break, and become redundant, unusable, and then she wouldn't have to go out.
"I won't touch you," he said. There was a pause, a halting pause like the stutter of a record player. "Again."
Her fingers didn't move.
He sighed, and it must have been a deep sigh for her to hear it through the door. That or a dramatic one. "Come out, Granger."
She didn't believe him, and he seemed to read her mind because he added, "I know my word on the subject does not count for much –"
That was a rich statement; as rich and as outrageous as she was certain he was.
"– and I admit I was a tad hasty with my attentions –"
She wanted to shout and then, perhaps, throw something at him.
"– and I won't insult your intelligence by pretending I don't have anything but carnal intentions towards you –"
There was grit in his words; ground out through a clenched smile.
"– however, we can put everything else on hold for the moment."
Another sigh seeped through the wood, and this one lacked the melodrama of the first.
She smoothed her thumb over the handle, and it rattled in its cradle, slightly. He would have seen the movement, and she silently cursed herself.
"Just dinner, Granger," he said, and his voice was eager as if almost leaping on the subtle shift of the door handle as a sign of her leniency. "That is all. I swear that on your perception of my bastardly traits."
Nerves and nausea had gotten the better of her for the past two days, and her stomach felt empty, and, apart from water, there really wasn't anything to eat in a bathroom. Next to the sink there was a phone which she could call the hotel's concierge, but that would still require her leaving the bathroom to recieve room service.
There was just silence from beyond the door, now. No more knocks and sighs.
Had he gone?
Was it better to know where he was – have him in her sights – than have his whereabouts unknown?
If she could see him, then she would know what he was up to. She could track his movements, analyse his gestures, and follow the lines of his eyes as they softened and hardened.
She looked up at herself and saw the pallid colour of her face. The colour drained, and her lips a chapped paleness. There were smudges around her eyes as if shadow had been painted underneath them.
How had she got here – hiding in a bathroom from Malfoy?
The Ministry, the marriage, and him; these problems swirled around her brain, mingling with the anxiety and humiliation of this entire day.
No one at the Ministry had been able to look her in the eyes for days. They knew. They knew exactly what they'd done. To her. To all the people who fell in the age catchment of this law.
Malfoy seemed to be one of the few people untouched by recent events. So wrapped up was he in his bower of mercantile bliss, that he couldn't see the wood from the trees. By the time the effects of the law were felt by him – the years of loneliness, lovelessness – it would be too late from him to do anything about it.
But she, she could see clearly.
She rubbed the fragile, bruised-like skin under her eyes with the heel of her hand.
Her voice might have been drowned, but that wasn't the only weapon she had at her disposal.
If men like Malfoy, if institutions like the Ministry, operate under appearance and performance, then so would she.
Reap the harvest of her thoughts, and hope the autumn bore fruit.
First, food, she decided. She needed food. If not the company, she could sit in silence and enjoy the food and the weather. Simple pleasures to distract herself. Distract herself. To direct her mind away. Far away. Away.
She opened the door in a rush, and he blinked down at her.
"Hello," he said, and his voice sounded like the plucking of a string: melodic and fixed.
As quickly as she'd come, she turned her back to him. "The dress. Do it up."
There was a pause, a small one, and she felt the tickle of his breath on the back of her neck.
She closed her eyes and waited for his comment, or remark, which would be designed to make her feel uncomfortable.
"Certainly."
His fingers were efficient, more efficient than when he'd undone the clasps, and soon she felt the dress enclose her once more.
"Wife, dearest," he said as she pivoted around to face him, "shall we go?" He waved to the door, and, as he raised his hand, the light of the setting sun glinted off his wedding band.
'The problem of courtship is precisely a problem of mutuality: if the impetus towards the avowal and consummation of love is not exactly equal on both sides, one of other of the lovers must assume the initiative and thus run the risk of coercion, of imposing desire on the other, instead of meeting it in the other. Modern eroticism submerges this problem in the myth of the Simultaneous Kiss (bowdlerised correlative of the Simultaneous Orgasm), a familiar cliche of the movies. '
Jill Mann, Feminist Readings: Geoffrey Chaucer
Thank you for everyone who nominated and voted for this story in the Granger Enchanted Awards. I am genuinely touched that you liked it so much.
Title quoted from Angela Carter's 'The Erl-King'.
Next chapter will be from Hermione's POV.
Tumblr is the best place to reach me under the name stargazing121.