The Wilful Heart
Summary: Post-Hogwarts AU Time-Travel. Hermione Granger's getting married today – to the man of her dreams. But when she drifts off in her dressing room, only to awaken in Muggle Regency England, it's a different suitor she has to deal with. But who will be there when she wakes up?
This is a majorly AU fic where Draco and Hermione find themselves in another place and time (with all the trappings that are O So much more conducive to romance than Hogwarts and Hogsmeade), and for the purposes of this story the war with Voldemort is over but largely ignored (i.e.; I actually think that most of the major characters in the HP stories will be dead by the end of book 7, but that wouldn't be much fun, so everyone who was alive at the end of Book 5 is still alive).
Pairing: HG-DM
Rating: R for later (if I have the guts!)
Genre: Romance/Supernatural
Disclaimer: The characters are not mine, they belong to J.K. Rowling. The Regency genre belongs to Georgette Heyer, lol.
A/N: This is my first fanfic. I got the idea while reading my fave HG/DM fics, and I just know that I've snaffed plot elements from all of them – hope the result isn't too cobbled-together and/or derivative. Thanks to all the great authors who wrote the fics and came up with the ideas that I hope I'm borrowing and not plagiarising.
---------
CHAPTER 1 – takes place 8 years after graduation.
Hermione Granger almost peed herself laughing. If my friends could see me now, she thought as she pressed her knees together and prayed. Of course, lots of her friends could see her, which was half the reason she was laughing, but not the two who mattered most: Ron Weasley and Harry Potter, who were both absent because this was a girls-only do, an engagement party – or stag-ETTE as her friend Ruby called it – organised by her best girlfriends and taking place at a raucous-but-fashionable wizarding dive in the newly-done-up part of Islington.
Almost losing her land-legs from too much fire whisky and not enough oxygen, she was thankful for the firm grips of Ginny and Ruby, who held Hermione's arms teasingly akimbo for the game they were about to play.
'I'd like to be a fly on that wall,' Harry said with a leer when she'd (reluctantly) told him and Ron about it last week. Hermione'd wrinkled her nose and asked him why, genuinely puzzled, and just shook her head in disgust when he'd choked on his hot chocolate, spilled it all over her couch, and sputtered, 'Are you joking? You have no idea what goes on at those things? Gods, 'Mione, you're in for it…'
Ron had just sat there, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open, and when Harry whispered something to him a minute later, shook his head and said 'Not another word, Harry. Leave me with my illusions. I don't need another reason to be scared of women.'
Thinking of Ron and the terror the feminine sex inspired in him made her laugh even harder, and she truly feared for her dignity – what little was left of it after three hours at the mercy of this band of diabolical, catcalling maniacs she called her friends. Only Hermione's girlfriends had been invited, but f course there were men there – patrons of the bar. The bar was crowded, and most of the males present were milling around in front of the low stage where Hermione was standing, and two of the girls from the party were trying to organise them into a queue. Hermione suppressed a groan and wondered at the fact that she was taking this like such a good sport, then she did groan when she realised why she was taking it so well, and what a hangover she'd have tomorrow to pay for it.
-----
"Lavender," Ginny called out over the din, "You getting this? We want LOADS of pics for the album!!!" Hermione's old schoolmate shouted something unintelligible in reply, but Ginny nodded and smiled, giving a thumbs-up with her free hand. As her guffaws faded to chuckles, then to giggles, Hermione glanced from Ginny at her left to Ruby at her right, both practically jumping up and down in anticipation, and Hermione, through senses oddly heightened and dulled by alcohol, found herself feeling happy for them that the evening was such a smashing success.
The male participants in the game, clean-cut young professionals like most of the bar's patrons, had finally been corralled behind a velvet rope conjured by Andrea (like Ruby, one of Hermione's co-workers) and stickers, sequentially numbered, stuck on their chests (presumably to ensure the prizes went to the correct people, but Hermione blanched at the thought of what those prizes might be…).
Number One, a handsome fellow with dark brown hair and shiny but clear skin, surveyed her with a calculated look, then smiled good-naturedly when he saw her watching him. When he waggled his eyebrows and licked his lips like a cartoon villain, she felt her giggles returning along with a blush, and she looked down at her exceedingly… edible… attire…
-----
-----
It was late Friday night, and Draco Malfoy Apparated to Caledonian Road, preferring the cosy but youthful and energetic little wizarding community to his lonely, cold flat in Kensington. After spending almost two weeks at his offices in Lucerne, he needed people, activity, laughter around him to make him feel alive, to give him… hope.
The streets were wet with recent rain, but the spring air was soft and Draco gratefully inhaled the myriad smells of civilisation in this little London borough. Smiling a little to himself as he walked, he shook his head in wonder that he'd come to find comfort in the overwhelming Muggleness of the big city. So much has changed, old son, he thought as he unconsciously walked in time with the Muggle music drifting through the open window of a passing car, and if you could have it all back, would you even want it?
Lost in his thoughts, Draco's feet took him to the door of his favourite pub, The Cove & Tree, discreetly disguised with a 'CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS' sign for the benefit of passing Muggles. As he opened the door, the bar was unusually loud and boisterous, even for a Friday night – but Draco forged in and as the almost-unbearable noise washed over him, felt himself relax for the first time in a long while. Eight months, in fact – ever since he'd been to see…
-----
Granger.
Hermione Granger.
Or at least she had been the last time he'd seen her. He'd read something in the Daily Prophet recently about…
Gods, what was she wearing?
-----
As he stared from the shadows at the blushing, giggling, drunken Mudblood slut on the little stage at the back of the pub, he didn't have to search for the old fury; it boiled unbidden from the depths of his psyche and from, he didn't doubt, his heart and soul if he had such things.
Tense again, he nevertheless took comfort in the familiarity of his feelings, a kind of captivating agony like biting down hard on a toothache. In a way it was a relief from the hollow uneasiness he'd felt for the last while, although it was an unwelcome surprise to find that his unsettled state might have been the result of that meeting eight months ago, where he'd faced, and been faced down by, one of the ghosts from his past.
Some ghost.
Careful to stay out of the pub's warm, muted pools of light, Draco surmised that this had to be Granger's bachelor party. Must be a stupid Muggle custom, dragging a girl out to slag around and get sickeningly tanked like the blokes do. I thought girls were supposed to be smarter than boys. Well, the threat of marriage must have finally accomplished what years of exposure to brainless Gryffindors had never succeeded in doing: turning Miss perfect, superior, virginal bookworm Hermione Granger into just another stupid twit who swarmed in a pack with other stupid twits, laughing at nothing, drinking too much and measuring the success of an evening by the number of hands up her skirt.
And judging by the crowd of drooling idiots in line to grope her, tonight would be a smashing success.
Stoutly ignoring his irrational desire to beat the drunken leers off each one of those slack-jawed male faces, he forced his attention to remain at the tableau up on the stage. There were three women on the small wooden platform 8 inches or so off the ground; the two outside holding the (half-naked) one in the middle in a spread-eagled, almost sacrificial position. On the right was the youngest Weasley, on the left was a girl he didn't recognise, and in the middle, practically capsizing from mirth or drink (or maybe embarrassment, a tiny voice whispered) was Granger.
Malfoy's vision was exceptionally acute, but he had to squint and creep a few steps closer to begin to estimate what the ex-Gryffindor was wearing… She was barefoot and bare-legged, and what he could see of her legs, which was almost everything, left him feeling a warm ache in his belly (and lower) in spite of his fury, disgust and distain. Don't get sucked in, old son. It's fake, a tease. A cheap Muggle parlour trick. There's nothing real here. There's nothing for you here. Those legs were really something, though. Femininely curved, but with sleek muscles and cute, touchable knees, Draco stared as she shifted from one narrow foot to the other.
Her arms were also bare, and although they weren't the slimmest he'd ever seen, they were smooth and dimpled, and looked soft and warm and strong – arms that could hold onto someone and never let go. Something. Something.
What covered her from the tops of her thighs to her chin made him shake his head bemusedly, for it looked like she was wrapped in long, transparent sheets of Muggle cling wrap. Cling wrap strategically covered in tufts of what looked like cotton batting in different shades of pink. Topped with Hermione's sweet, intelligent face and mounds of fluffy hair, the effect was quite dramatic, and Draco fought back the tendrils of arousal that crept up his legs and down the back of his neck. In another setting, a private setting, such a getup could be unnervingly erotic; possessing, unwrapping and enjoying that confection could be enough to occupy a man for a lifetime; but here in public, as a commodity, it seemed to him tawdry and cheap.
As the first man in line made his way to the stage, Draco moved closer, remaining along the outer edges of the crowd. It was obvious to him that they were playing some kind of ridiculous pseudo-erotic game, but he couldn't figure out what it was. Then he saw the man, a smarmy, greasy little creep, point to a location somewhere on the bride-to-be's midsection and say something to the Weasley slut. When she grinned and nodded like a pigeon that had swallowed a spring, the man leant forward and started to lick and suck Granger's belly. Or rather, he sucked and licked the piece of pink fluff off her belly. When the man turned around in triumph, grinned ridiculously with smears of pink on his face, and promptly passed out on the floor, suddenly Draco knew exactly what the game was.
How twisted could you get? That was the reason for the different shades of pink, which Draco belatedly noticed were darkest in the regions of her breasts and Venus mound. He shook his head in disgust and leaned back against the wood-panelled column behind him, and looked back at Granger to see her reaction.
From appearing somewhat embarrassed and somewhat amused, Hermione Granger's pink face suddenly became a mask of horror, fear and revulsion… and with a cringe Draco realised that he was standing in a pool of light.