"Okay, are you ready?" Hermione yelled from the bathroom while she took one last look in the mirror.

Malfoy's voice pushed through the door and sounded off the walls around her. "I'm more than ready. Are you ready?"

"Yes," she squeaked, but realizing her voice likely hadn't carried outside the bathroom at all, she cleared her throat and repeated it, a bit more forcefully this time. For the fourth time since putting on the barely there outfit, she questioned why in the hell she'd thought this was a good idea to begin with. Damn Pansy, she thought, cursing herself for taking the bait.

She tugged at the leather boy shorts, trying to pull the wedgie out before conceding that they were just meant to reside between her cheeks apparently.

"You can do this, you can do this, you can do this," she said like a mantra, reaching inside the metal-studded bra and lifting her breasts. Twirling her wand around her face, she intensified her smoky eyeshadow and pulled her hair into a high and tight ponytail. She had to wipe her hands a few times on the towel hanging beside the door before she successfully managed to slide the fingerless gloves onto her palms.

She took one last glance in the mirror; as uncomfortable as she felt, she had to admit that she looked phenomenal. Summoning all of her Gryffindor courage, she tossed back the shot of whisky on the countertop, wincing at the burn. It's now or never she thought, before walking out the bathroom with as much confidence as she could muster.

Head up, shoulders back, she thought as she stalked toward the center of the room, where Malfoy was waiting, sitting in nothing but his black boxers, his hands cuffed behind his back. For a split second, she couldn't read him; his eyes were wide, roaming from her face down to her thigh-high leather boots, and, though it was likely her own discomfort at being dressed this way, she couldn't tell if it was good gawking or bad gawking.

"Is… is this okay?" she asked. She knew this character she'd created in her mind wouldn't be hesitant at all, but she couldn't help it.

"Fuck, yes," he said without any hesitation, and his enthusiasm definitely gave her the ego boost she needed to crack the whip beside her in the way she'd practiced about four thousand times in the bathroom.

The sound of the whip cracking in their room made him flinch, and that same confidence he's just instilled in her abated slightly. Clearly noticing her face fall, he urged, "No, no, it's fine. I'm excited. Really, Granger."

She lifted one eyebrow at him, falling back into the role she'd developed. "You will refer to me as Queen or Mistress. And" – her voice rose emulating the authoritative tone she'd taken – "you can't look at me like that."

"Like what?" he asked, the blasted smirk never leaving his face.

"Like you're having so much fun."

"Aren't I supposed to be having fun?"

"No, I'm supposed to be having fun. You're supposed to be subservient."

His obvious attempt – and failure – to hide his smirk made her bite back a laugh too. "You promised to try," she said, unable to keep her hand from gravitating toward her hip.

"I'm trying. I swear," he said, covering his mouth with his hand but then realizing he'd just shown her the fact that his hand was no longer in the cuffs. When her mouth dropped open, he added, "They're too easy. Here, I'll just" – putting his hand back behind himself – "pretend."

Just as he finished speaking, she flicked her wand, lifting him from the chair and dropping him onto the bed with an oof. With an extravagant twirl of her wand, elaborate knots formed around his wrists, securing them to each bedpost.

"Get out of those then," she said with a smirk of her own, and he immediately began pulling his wrists, which only succeeded in tightening the rope around them. She took a seat across from him, crossing her legs, and summoned the book from her beaded bag on the desk, "Beginner's Guide to Dom/Sub Relationships" emblazoned across the front.

"Okay" – her eyes skimmed the pages, flipping through them quickly as she mumbled the words under her breath – "safe, sane, consensual… check, check, check… risk awareness…" – eyeing him over the top of the book – "check…" She lifted her voice, speaking to him now, "Okay, safe word?"

"Umm… Slytherin? Wait, no, Pygmy Puff."

She bit back a laugh again, but said nothing as she stood and walked over to drop her bag beside him on the bed. As she began pulling things from it, she lifted them up for him to approve of.

Blindfold – "Of course."

Wax – "Absolutely."

Ticklers – "Sure."

Slowly, the objects became a bit more extreme. As she pulled a Wartenburg pinwheel from the bag, his eyes widened comically, and he blinked a few times. "What's that for?"

"It doesn't hurt… well, much."

"Maybe," he said, eyeing the metal spokes warily.

She stood back up, reaching further into the bag to pull the extendable bar and cuffs from within, having to maneuver it a bit to get them around the confines of the clasp. He attempted to shrug, but the tightness of the ropes only allowed him to move so much.

She pulled a spiked metal cage from inside the bed and held it up for him. "It's for your…" Her eyes shot down toward his boxers.

"Nope. Nope." He said, shaking his head with a frown. "That's a definite no." He strained against the ropes as he sat up a bit straighter. "Love… I mean Queen, you said BDSM, and I thought whips and blindfolds. I did not think my cock would be in a cage," he said, eyeing the contraption that was now sitting at the foot of the bed.

"I may have gone a bit overboard." She dumped the contents of her beaded bag onto the bed and offered him a sheepish grin as she lay down beside him.

"Did you buy the entire store?" His eyes were wide as he took in the vast array of kink toys she'd picked up in Muggle London.

"Well, I wasn't sure what we'd like and what we wouldn't."

"I'm going to go out on a limb and say I do not like that," he said, tapping his foot against one ridiculously large dildo and knocking it off the bed. He craned his neck, reading off the pages of the book she'd left laying open beside him. "And what is elec… electro… electrostimulation?"

She leaned over him, tilting her head to the side to make out the words as well. "Sounds like electric shocks."

"Electric shocks?" his voice rising an octave. "As in electricity?"

"We'll just put that down as a 'no' then. What about these?" she asked, leaning onto her knees to reach a set of heavy rings. As she weighed them in her hand, they came apart, leaving two half circles in her palm. Looking up at his quizzical expression, she said, "They… umm… they hook on your… well, your" – she held her palm up as if she were holding balls in it. His interested appearance immediately shifted into horror.

"Nope. Hard pass." When Hermione had to bite her lip to keep from giggling, he narrowed his eyes at her. "Are… are you fucking with me right now?"

The laugh that had been threatening to burst out of her finally did, and the unimpressed way he kept blinking at her only added fuel to the fire. Every time she thought she had it under control, she'd look at him again, and end up doubled over in a fit of giggles.

Finally, she managed to pull herself together, still breathing heavily as she looked back up at him to find that he'd magically released himself from the binds on either bedpost. He shook his head at her in disbelief, but the slight grin on his face said he was at least partially amused.

"Pansy was sharing her extravagant exploits with me and had the audacity to say I couldn't be a domme," she said with a haughty grin. "And more so, she bet that I'd never convince you to be a sub."

He leaned forward, grey eyes dancing as he reclined her onto the bed. Trailing his fingertips up the length of her thigh, he nuzzled into her neck and brushed his lips across her collarbone. "There are very few things I wouldn't do for you." He sat up, propping himself on one elbow beside her, and added, "However, putting my dick in a cage is one of those things."

"Noted," she said with a grin, feeling her pulse quicken as his eyes roved across her body.

"I do really like this though." He dipped his fingers beneath the hem of her shorts. "And what was the wager of this bet?"

"Well, she will have paid for all of this and then some once I tell her I've won."

"Definitely worth it then," he said. "It'd be incredibly wasteful to not at least try some of it out, right?" he asked, a smug smirk playing across his face as he leaned forward and claimed her lips with his own.