Next morning
Draco hustled for the shower, hoping Hermione and her enormous stash of hair products weren't already occupying the room. His morning wood was in serious danger of disgracing itself on the floor. Gods, this was worse than normal.
Turning on the water, he examined his face in the bathroom mirror while he waited for the water to heat. He looked like absolute hell. If he headed outside like this, he'd frighten off the First Years.
At last, he dropped his robe and leapt into the shower, skidding on the wet tiles and giving him scary thoughts about Hermione finding him dead in the shower from a broken neck with his red-angry todger standing to attention. How humiliating.
Soaping up his hand, he gripped his cock and stroked it vigorously. He almost gasped out loud - his flesh was over-sensitive - but he remembered he didn't silence the bathroom, damn it. So he'd have to be quiet.
In his mind he recalled the brief, forbidden glance he once had of Hermione, changing clothes in her bedroom with the door partially open. Her bra and panties were white with a lace hem. Simple. Sublime. Her golden skin shone against the material in contrast, and he wondered what it would taste like if he ran his lips and tongue over the contours of her waist, making his way to her breasts.
Honey. He bet her skin would taste honey-like. Nectar from the gods.
Then he backed silently away, knowing she'd hex him until the cows came home if she knew he was perving at her.
Anyway, that image always served to make him spill over his hand in less than a minute.
And he wasn't disappointed today.
Freshly uniformed, he headed downstairs to the kitchen. Hermione was sitting at the kitchen table, foot tapping, poring over a Transfiguration tome. Each page was turned with more and more agitation.
"Do we have a Transfiguration test this morning?" Draco asked, confused. He couldn't recall any mention of one. He poured himself a large coffee from the carafe, warming it up a touch with his wand when his first sip revealed it was a little cool.
Hermione held her cup out, shaking it like a busker's tin mug. "Can I have one?" she asked.
Draco filled Hermione's cup, then wondered why she still held it in the air.
"Could you warm it too, please?" she asked nicely, proffering a smile he'd never seen before. Seventy-five percent scary; twenty-five percent terrifying. "Left my wand in my room like the lazy arse I am."
"Sure," Draco muttered and zapped her coffee while he got out some bread for toast.
"Thanks. And no."
"No?" Draco was confused again.
"There's no Transfiguration test. I'm just looking something up."
Draco nodded. She looked things up a lot.
Later that day
It was in Potions class that Draco started wondering if something was wrong with Hermione.
Paired with Longbottom, Hermione was normally the picture of a whirling dervish, always on the move: rushing to the potions store for extra ingredients when Longbottom burned or exploded their original materials; rescuing their cauldron from apocalyptic disaster when Longbottom added the ingredients in the wrong order or didn't stir enough times in the correct direction. That sort of thing.
Essentially, Hermione was responsible for the safety and sanity of every occupant of Hogwarts each time Longbottom entered the Potions classroom. Which was why Draco's silver eyes widened in alarm when he overheard Hermione say in a strange, high voice: "How about you try the incantation today, Neville? I think you're ready."
"Did you hear that?" Draco mumbled to Blaise, his potions partner.
"What?" Blaise mumbled back, concentrating on stirring the cauldron exactly sixty-seven times clockwise. "Quit staring at Granger and help me count, for Merlin's sake."
Neville was a very nervous young man. "A-are you sure, Hermione?" he whispered. His wand hand was already shaking.
Out of the corner of her eye, Hermione saw the cloaked and beaked features of Professor Snape approach their table. He had a sixth sense for sniffing out trouble, and he sensed it would be percolating at Granger and Longbottom's table today.
Desperately, Hermione placed her hand on Neville's wand hand and whispered "Now, follow my hand and say the incantation clearly. I believe in you."
Emboldened (but only a little) by Hermione's generous help with the wandwork and only mildly hampered by Neville's stuttered incantation, the end resulted in a completed potion that only burped once instead of going stellar and painting the entire classroom and its occupants purple. Elated, Neville carried a flask of the completed potion to a disappointed Snape's desk while Hermione sank onto her stool and buried her head in her hands.
Draco and Blaise's potion was a dismal failure, having produced a sticky, black tar-like substance. Most probably tar. Blaise blamed Draco for getting distracted by Granger. And not for the first time.
Dinner
"Jesus fucking Christ!" came a most Muggle shriek from the Gryffindor table. Everybody, naturally, stopped eating and craned their necks to see what the excitement was.
It came, most inappropriately, from an irate Head Girl, who had been splattered by a smorgasbord of food particles. Draco's stomach turned when he realised that the food particles had originated from the Weasel's mouth. The interior of Weasel's mouth. He pushed his plate away and wished desperately for a Firewhisky.
"Are you incapable of covering your mouth with your hand or serviette if you must sneeze in the middle of dinner?" Hermione hollered, trying to scrub the worst of the gunk off her body with said serviettes.
"I didn't know I was going to sneeze, was I?" the hapless twit blundered, not looking that worried at the extent of Hermione's rage.
"You pig!" she hollered back, then turned on her heel and stormed out of the Great Hall before McGonnagall could do some damage to Gryffindor's house points. Draco could see tears forming in Hermione's eyes. He stood up, but Blaise stopped him.
"Go now and you'll end up being screamed at," he said, with all the superior knowledge of having dated Pansy Parkinson for a year. "Give her a little time if you fancy your bollocks remaining where they are."
Draco reluctantly sat down.
"Why didn't she use a shield charm around me like normal?" Ron muttered into his mashed potato.
Draco wondered that, too.
"Perhaps she thinks you're old enough to eat a simple meal without spreading it over a massive distance!" Ginny snapped, scourgifying the remainder of the mess away.
Draco wondered that, too.
The Library, late evening
Draco was sweating through his Ancient Runes homework when he became aware of a sniffling sound coming from the Restricted Section. Draco slowly stood up and drew out his wand. Prefects had access to this mysterious part of the library as it was a favourite place for shenanigans to occur, and since he couldn't see hide nor hair of Madame Pince, he supposed it was his duty to be the hero and submit whatever book was acting up into reluctant obedience.
Lighting a dull Lumos on his wand, he carefully stepped over the rope at the entrance to the section and silently traversed past tall and menacing bookcases. Rounding the corner of the second row, he made out a shape halfway down – a witch shape, not a book shape. It was holding a candle, trying to replace a book on a shelf that was miles to high for it - and quietly sobbing.
Draco cleared his throat, and the shape shrieked, leapt into the air, then whirled around to face him.
"Malfoy!" Hermione whispered, making an attempt to surreptitiously wipe her tears with the sleeve of her shirt. "You scared the ever-loving crap out of me!"
"What's the matter, Granger?" Draco asked, taking a step into the aisle. "And don't say 'nothing,''' as she opened her mouth, "because it's pretty obvious something is."
When Draco reached Hermione, she sniffled and whispered "I -I transfigured my wand and I can't transfigure it back without another wand. I've been looking for other ways to fix it but I can't find anything! I've even tried wandless magic! Not even anything in the bloody Restricted Section is useful!"
Things fell into place for Draco. The coffee, entrusting Longbottom of all people to complete a potion safely, and not shielding herself from Weasley's revolting mastications. But –
"Why can't you ask one of your friends to transfigure it back with their wand?"
Hermione looked away, pale under the flickering candle. "It's rather embarrassing," she mumbled.
"Well, there's 'embarrassing' and there's not having a wand to use," Draco pointed out.
A tear rolled down Hermione's cheek. Draco's chest hurt.
"How about I help?" he asked.
Her face was a perfect mask of horror.
He sighed. "I swear on my wand I won't tell anyone about what transpires."
She nibbled her lower lip doubtfully.
"And... I promise I won't tease you or speak of it to you in any way again."
Some hope glimmered in her eyes. Or maybe it was the flickering candle.
"I'll hex your balls to the Afterlife if you do," she warned.
"I'm well aware."
She looked down at her shoes, then up at him, uncertainly. "Okay," she said unhappily. "It's in my room."
Heading back to the Heads' Chamber
It was a long climb up the multitude of stairs to the Heads' Chamber. However, Hermione seemed particularly fascinated by every single painting and tapestry that lined the castle's walls along the way, stopping to converse with many.
After taking twenty minutes to dawdle to the third floor, Draco sighed and gritted "Granger, if you don't hurry up, I will put you over my shoulder and carry you the rest of the way."
Hermione glared – but it died when she looked at him. Like properly. Gone was the pointy, weedy wanker from earlier school days. In its place was a tall, Quidditch-toned body with lightly-tanned skin and blonde hair that looked like it had been recently ruffled by a frustrated set of hands. His threat to carry her over his shoulder suddenly didn't seem like an empty one.
She didn't know what to do with this new insight.
But she dawdled slightly less, anyway.
Heads' Chamber
Draco got tired of waiting for Hermione to drag herself up the stairs, so he headed to their Chamber at his own speed and sloshed a few drams of Firewhisky into a tumbler. He was holding it when Granger reluctantly appeared through the portrait hole.
He held the glass out to her. "For you."
"Oh!" Hermione had to admit she was surprised at his thoughtfulness. And boy, did she need it. "Thank you." She tipped the glass to her lips and took a good swallow – before bending over double and making a good effort to cough up a lung.
Draco rescued the tumbler before it drenched the common room rug and took a small sip. "No time like the present," he said, when a streaming-eyed Hermione could stand upright again. "The sooner you produce whatever you transfigured your wand into, the sooner we can fix it."
Shoulders slumping, Hermione slowly climbed the stairs to her bedroom.
Draco sat on the settee. Surely Granger was overreacting. What could she have possibly done that's so embarrassing?
Finally, Granger appeared before him with her hands behind her back. Her face was flushed and she looked absolutely miserable.
Draco waited.
She didn't move.
He waited some more.
Eventually she sighed and brought her arms around from behind her back. Clutched in her hand was... an ivory penis.
Draco had to admit he wasn't expecting... that. His eyebrows shot to the ceiling. "What is that?" he asked, mystified.
"What's it look like?" she mumbled, staring at the rug.
Draco, having had the advantage of seeing something like it before, remarked "Looks like a penis to me."
"It's a vibrator," she whispered.
Draco frowned. "A thing that... vibrates?" he asked. He was pretty sure vibrating things that looked like penises weren't covered in Muggle Studies.
She sighed. "Yes, Malfoy, it's a fake phallus that is designed to vibrate when you turn it on and use it on, or in, one's body."
Draco took another sip of Firewhisky and pondered. "So... you put the penis inside your pussy and it vibrates until you orgasm?"
Hermione's head jerked when he said 'pussy.' "Yeah. Basically."
Draco crossed his legs. Fascinating. "Does it work?" he asked.
There was a very long silence. Then: "Yes."
Draco offered the last of the Firewhisky to Hermione. Then he sat back on the settee and stared at her, contemplating.
Hermione's chest heaved. "Are you going to help me or not?" she snapped.
Draco smiled. "Of course."
"Well, then" –
"After you show me how you use it."
Hermione's mouth fell open. 'That was not the deal!' she hissed angrily.
Draco smirked. "I'm still going to help, Granger, don't fly off the broom. You've shown me a piece of Muggle technology and I'm interested in how it works. It's not like I'm going to come across one of those again in my life."
Hermione's hair began to crackle. "You utter bast" –
But Draco interrupted. "You must look absolutely stunning when you come."
His low voice and intense gaze halted Hermione's tantrum mid-stream. That was the sexiest thing anyone had said to her, hands down. And the way his eyes glittered...
She bit her lip, then murmured "Have you wondered about that often?"
Draco slowly stood up from the settee. "Nearly every day since the start of the school year."
She closed her eyes. Her panties felt sticky. Desire pooled deep in her stomach. And she was holding a vibrator.
At last, she said "Then you'd better come up to my room."
