All I need to get by
Chapter Six: Love in Vain
The Leaky Cauldron in Diagon Alley was the regular meeting place for the vast majority of Aurors off duty, and several of the younger Healers, coupled with a few Unspeakables. The dark oak bar tops gleamed in the low light, and the stacks of bottles behind the bar joined the reflections. Around the wobbly, scratchy oak tables, on the wobbly benches propped up with shopping lists from long ago customers, sat the aurors, resplendant in their grey uniforms. Healers in red robes sat on the bar stools nursing heavy fire whiskys, and in the corners sat shadey looking people that no-one wanted to go near – Unspeakables. Outside the sun shone, glancing in briefly through stained glass dusty windows, and the sound of rowdy, happy voices drew nearer.
Hermione Granger, off-duty, stumbled into the Leaky Cauldron with her arm draped around Zacharias' shoulders, hiccouping with laughter. Her black gossamor cloak had been banished home, and she was in a black shirt and trousers that, like all Unspeakables, resembled a pair of jodhopers, but flattering and finished off with a pair of black dragon hide boots. Her hair curled riotuously down from her head in springing loops as she threw said head back and laughed uproarously.
'Hermione!' came a shout from a wobbly table, 'Hermione!'
'Ron!' she squeled happily, making all the onlookers in the bar turn suddenly. On a stool a Healer stiffened.
'Hey Hermi!' greeted Harry Potter, elbowing her knee affectionately from underneath his wife, who was sitting on his lap.
'I need a drink!' announced Hermione, sitting down quite firmly on Zach's lap, so he let out a little oomph of mock air.
The old barman Tom, who had a face somewhat like a napkin, complete with warts like crumbs, grinned a toothless, indulgent smile at her and fished under the counter for a bottle of Odgeon's Odd Orange Schnapps, which was Hermione's regular. Her face almost lit up – her Friday night treat was tanatlizingly close.
'Accio! Accio!' she whispered, and the bottle for which she had been aiming came spinning across to her, along with the schnapps glass she regularly employed.
'What about me?' whispered Zach, burying his nose into her throat like a small puppy.
'Fine,' she murmured petulantly, getting up from his legs, 'An orange juice?'
'Only if it's spiked,' was his immediate reply, and she laughed again.
The journey to the bar, however short, took her a while. Friends and acquaintances kept stopping her, volunteering to buy her drinks, discussing their new research with her, or, in the case of Lavender Brown who was sitting with Padma Patil with a stiff G&T, to tell her that Parvati had just had a baby, and still didn't know who the father was.
'Seriously?' was Hermione's slightly scandalized answer, and Lavender nodded over the drink, 'You need more than a G&T then.'
'This is her third,' replied Padma, who was in fact nursing her seventh butterbeer.
'Hermione! Drink!' drifted across to the table where she stood, and she patted Lavender's hand in a comforting way, smiling at Padma.
'Keep your hair on Zach!' she bellowed back, and left the table for the bar.
Tom had to go and fetch a new barrel of butterbeer, so while she waited Hermione slipped her foor onto the low bar that ran along the bottom of the bar, and rested her elbows on the top, and chewed a cashew nut from a bowl.
'Oh come on Nott, cheer up,' said a familiar voice by her side, and she looked along to where two Healers in red robes sat nursing firewhisky.
'Cheer up?' questioned the one furthest away from her, long nose almost touching the rim of the glass as he drooped, 'I lost two patients.'
'One,' corrected the familiar Healer, and pulled his hood away from his face.
Draco Malfoy had not had a good week. His neat blonde hair was loose from the ponytail, and his black shoes were scuffed from running around the hospital. A criticaly unstable auror had come in three days ago, and he had had no sleep. Purple bags rimmed his grey eyes as he watched the whisky swirl around the bottom of his glass. The patient was now stable, demanding and flirtatcious. He had a curiously empty feeling inside of him, which no amount of good wizarding or muggle food could move, and had no desire to find himself a quick shag.
'Hmmm,' murmured Nott, 'But one was obliviated.'
'They have to do that,' snapped Malfoy finally, annoyed with the other Healer. 'It's their job.'
'Pah!' was Nott's reply, and Hermione, lodged against the bar, absolutely hated him at that moment.
'Baby doll, where's my drink?' Zach's voice drowned out Malfoy's reply of 'But at least the girl you love isn't sitting over there with a Ravenclaw idiot.'
'It's coming Zach, it's coming,' sighed Hermione, allowing him to pull her hair affectionately. 'Although it smells like you've had one already.'
'Just some of Harry's firewhisky!' exclaimed the Unspeakable, 'I was dieing of thirst!'
'You were not!'
'How would you know? You were loitering by the bar!'
'I was not loitering!' Hermione sounded vaguely cross.
'You were!' Zach's voice raised itself a fraction, and people began to look around, 'Probably ogling that auror in the corner!'
'Shut up Zach! I was not ogling anyone! Besides it wouldn't make any difference to you!'
'There's your butterbeer and spiked orange juice, Hermione love.'
Tom pushed the full glasses towards Hermione, who glared furiously at Zach, picked up the butterbeer and in one swift motion upended it over his head. He spluttered, eyes full of rage.
'Oh sorry,' he spat angrily, 'Set your sights higher than me haven't you? After a Malfoy aren't you?'
Hermione could have screamed in rage, she could have slapped him, she could have hexed him, she could have kneed him in his unmentionables, but she did none of those things. Her brown eyes filled with sudden tears which burnt the back of her throat, and spilt over her cheeks. She strode furiously from the pub swiping her face with the back of one hand, sniffling.
'You fool!' Malfoy exclaimed, looming off the barstool, 'How dare you say that!?'
'Because I've been chasing her for two years, and you come along and get her in three months! You were a bastard to her in school, and you'll probably be a bastard to her now!' snarled the Unspeakable.
Harry laid an arm on Zach's shoulder, and tightened his fingers around the bone area. The whisky and vodka that Smith had consumed in his time off had made him hard and authorative, and Hermione soft and blurred around the edges. She hadn't had as much to drink as him, but when she jokingly slumped into his arms he took it as too much encouragement. Posessive and angry, the stress from Operation Stonehenge, which was not going well, combined with the guilt Hermione felt over obliterating a fellow Unspeakable, had forced the two into an argument, and Harry was not going to stand by and let him deck Malfoy, or Malfoy deck him.
It seemed Malfoy was in no danger of being thumped; he had slipped underneath Zach's fumbling arms, flashed a grateful sweep of his eyes at Harry, and vanished through the doorway.
'Coward!' bellowed Zach, as Harry apparated him home.
♠
Draco found Hermione leaning into a brick wall in Diagon Alley opposite the Apothocary , her forehead touching the cool stone and her hands bunched at her sides. She was crying silently, liquid spilling down her smooth cheeks and off her chin so that it splattered the black material underneath. Her back spasmed as she drew breath. He approached her almost silently, scrubbing a hand through his hair as he did so.
'Hermione?' he asked softly, 'Granger?'
She turned awkwardly, her her hands reached up once more to swipe at the tears when she saw him standing there. Behind her the brick wall was slightly damp with rising London fog, and a blood pop lay in the gutter close to her foot. He reached forward with one hand as if reaching out to a wild animal with whom one is wary.
'Draco,' she said, fumbling for words, 'What are you doing here?'
She was hiccuping a little now, ragged breaths filling her lungs as she swiped again at her cheeks. Her brown eyes were wide and startled, soft with the drink, and something else that Draco was too far away to see properly.
'I was drinking with Nott,' he explained casually.
'You – You heard all that?!' she exclaimed, hands rising to cover her mouth.
'He was harsh to you. Smith never was one for being a good boyfriend.'
'Oh! He's not my boyfriend,' she assured him a little too quickly, 'We're good friends – or at least we were.'
'He was drunk, Hermione, you can't blame him. And you certainly acted like a couple.'
'I wouldn't want to kiss Zach anyway!' she declared, moving closer to him so that he held her in his arms.
Draco savoured the feel of her warm silken clothes in his arms, and the firm body underneath. Her hair tickled his chin, and the smell was fruity which rose up to his ofaltory senses. The light in Diagon Alley came only from the bright windows above him as a witch tuned in Wizarding Wireless, and the sound of the Weird Sister's new song, a slow, mushy number, drifted out to them.
'Why wouldn't you want to kiss Smith?' asked Draco at last.
Hermione backed straight out of his arms, her eyes gleaming and wide in anger. Her mouth was compressed into a tiny bud of pink in her face, and her eyebrows knitted over her brow.
'How could you?' she forced out, 'You took care of me, you saved my life and I fell in love with you. I don't even know why. Tell me!'
'You fell in love with me?' Draco murmured weakly, his insides preparing for lift off instantaneously.
'Of course I fell in love with you!' she bellowed rather quietly, 'You're sweet, and kind, and intelligent, and respectful! You may have been a bastard, hell, sometimes you're still a jackass, but that doesn't stop me loving you!'
There was a laboured silence for a moment, and the lights overhead waned as the witch above the apothecary went to bed.
'And NOW you tell me you're GAY?'
Draco could have laughed, or cried, or something. His heart was catching in his ribs like studs on a muddy football ground, and he was sliding towards her, and suddenly he had her in his arms, and she was fighting to get away, and he was holding her so tightly she would have bruises the next day.
'I'll show you how gay I am!' he whispered fiercly.
And then his lips were on hers, crashing down on her lips, and his tongue was tracing his name on her bottom lip, and her tongue was meeting his, and they were dancing together, and there was no regular rythym because this was passion. Pure unadultered passion.
When they finally stopped for air and stepped back a little, although Draco didn't release his hold on her, the light was fading. The Leaky Cauldron doors were spilling light onto the pavement was the archway opened magically and drunk wizards tottered towards the road where they could get the knight bus, or where they had parked their car. Rowdy laughter and crude comments mingled with a upbeat jazz now churning from the Wireless. Above them the moon was hidden beneath a bank of cloud, and they were suddenly standing in shadow.
And Draco felt his breath catch again because the girl in his arms was crying again, and wiping the tears on the edge of his shoulder. And she was soft in his arms, relaxed and delicated, and when she looked up her eyes were full of tears and love. And looking down on her were the most beautiful, passionate, lustful, loving pair of grey eyes she had ever seen.
'Gay am I?' he smirked suddenly, 'I think I've fallen for you.'
Hermione didn't answer, just pressed her hot, swollen lips to his and kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed. And it wasn't until the frost crept up Draco's show that he apparated them to his flat, with her lips still glued to his.
Blabber Area:-MadAboutHarry:- [whispers] Between you and me, I'm not entirely sure where it's going either. No, only kidding. Why would you put them in the fridge? Check the freezer.
Chamorro:- Yes oh demanding one – one new chapter. Thanks!
Miss3y:- I have to agree with you about MASH – just as a promotional bit of advertising in this space – go watch it if you haven't. Can I get kicked off for that? Woops. Thanks for your review!
Sweet jane:- I like Zach as well – even totally drunk! Bless him and his little posessive streak. And he got them together – his use holds no bounds. Well, what did you think of the ::drumroll:: kiss? Ta.
NitenGale:- No, your review wasn't out of order. It was just the sigh - it makes me giggle. But thanks for the apologies anyway – and you came back! Yeah, I seem to go for the forgotten characters. Even Zabini wriggled his way in. And I simply had to get someone grumpy, pessimistic and antagonistic in there – Nott seemed to fit the bill!
Coooeee! This chapter wasn't meant to offend gay people, I should probably say, I just got half way through and thought, gadzooks, Draco's like, totally gay. I think I'm being irrational though! They're slightly drunk alright, that was the only way to get them together…Hermione's clearly gone mad, thinking he's gay. I think it's the 'smith never was one for being a good boyfriend' line. It screams 'I've been out with Smith!' perhaps it's my delusional mind.
And thanks for the really prompt reviews – it's great! Chapter six already – sob, only six more chapters to go! And then we neatly wrap up. And look, I wrote dodgy poetry for you! Yeah, down there. Good, eh?
You sit and watch,
And all the mistakes flash through your brain,
Every chapter I make a botch,
I know,
But sometimes the enthusiasm wanes,
So off you go and review.
