Chapter 6: His Name Is Prince
"GINNY!" Hermione screamed, stumbling from the grate of the Potter's fireplace. How was it 8 pm already? She absently wondered as she took another deep breath "GINNY!" she bellowed again. Harry scuttled into the kitchen, glasses askew and feet bare.
"What's happened?" he panted, clutching at a stitch in his chest.
"I need to speak to Ginny!" Hermione snipped.
"I don't understand why I can't be involved in these conversations?" Harry threw up his arms. He still wasn't sure what had happened the night before when Hermione had cried in their kitchen. All he did know was that he'd once again forgotten to flush the toilet, despite being sure he had.
"Because when I talk about sex, you make little gagging noises or giggle behind your hands." Hermione's eyes were narrowed and venomous. She did not need Harry to start complaining that she talked more to Ginny.
"ugh, I didn't know it was about sex." He indicated her general vaginal area with a wave of his hand and gagged.
Ginny entered with a flailing James in her arms. "Go jiggle him about till he falls asleep," she commanded, passing the chunky baby to her husband, her eyes narrowing on Hermione. "YOU STINK OF SEX!" she accused, eyes widening and her finger extending in the direction of the blushing Hermione.
"I haven't been able to smell anything since Voldemort," Harry said in a babyish voice as he rocked his son back and forth.
"We know, Potter, you never stop mentioning it. I love you, but I need you to take the baby and go somewhere else." she shooed her husband from the room and turned to Hermione, casting a silencing charm as she went. "who have you fucked?" the grin that cracked Ginny's face was Cheshire wide and full of conspiracy.
"Malfoy." Hermione squeaked, looking doubtful. As if she wasn't quite sure of herself.
"NO, YOU DID NOT?" Ginny slapped a hand to her mouth.
"He thought I'd deliberately slipped him the story to initiate some sort of office romp," she sputtered, her knuckles pushed against her lower lip as she sank into a chair. The minute he'd left her office, she'd started to panic. It was utter madness.
"hold on." Ginny turned a circle. "Don't you dare speak another word until I get…" she rummaged to the back of a cupboard and retrieved a bottle of tequila. "I'll pump and dump." she declared as though the entire world was about to scold her for drinking while still nursing her son. She poured two measures into mugs and slammed them on the table, grabbing the seat beside Hermione's, folding her legs and taking a deep drink from the mug of liquor she grasped like a cup of tea. "Continue" she finally nodded.
Hermione took a sip of the burning liquid and then a deep breath. "He showed up at my office, dressed like in the story, and he just goes into it…."
"Of course, he thinks this is an invitation, pervy fuck." Ginny laughed and topped up her drink.
"I freak out…." Hermione offered an expression that said obviously, " And I start crying."
"Well, obviously you would." Ginny laughed and drank. "I don't understand how you got from that to fucking!"
"He was ready to leave, and then he said this thing, about how much he enjoyed my story but implying he'd…."
"Cracked one off to it." Ginny finished for her.
Hermione merely nodded "then we did it twice on the desk, and afterwards he called it 'making love. But what does that mean?" Hermione rushed through the story to the part that had her uneasy. She twisted the bud of her lower lip between her thumb and forefinger anxiously.
"hold on. Back up!" Ginny was standing. "You had actual sex with The Draco Malfoy, twice, on your desk at work?" Ginny was scream-whispering, almost bent double and nose to nose with Hermione.
"yes, well, once on the desk, then once kind of leaning over it. From behind," she said sheepishly.
Ginny danced from foot to foot "from behind?" her friend gasped as she repeated the words, "This is so unlike you! You're Missionary Mary!" Ginny stopped, a sudden thought dashing through the giddiness in her brain "hold on, Hermione" she crouched down beside her friend, lowering her voice, "did you cum?" the question was such a sensitive subject for Hermione, something Ginny knew bothered her. They struggled to discuss, given that Hermione's main pool of experience was Ginny's brother, the boy she used to take baths with.
"Yup." Hermione bobbed her head.
"Merlin." Ginny pushed herself back into her seat and shook as though dazed by the information.
"he says Fuckety-fuck when he cums." Hermione offered her best friend a titbit of gossip before taking a large sip of tequila, not sure what else to say.
"Harry shouts Hufflepuff. He started doing it as a joke, and then he just couldn't stop." Ginny grinned, offering her own morsel of juice up in return. It wasn't something they oft got to do, given Hermione's dedication to work and celibacy. "So what did he do? What was the magic sauce lacking in your sexual encounters with Quidditch players of varying success…."
"You say that like there were loads, Ginny, there were three, and they weren't all Quidditch players!" Hermione protested.
"Krum, Wood, and if you count Ron's signing to third division Dundee Squires, then yes they were." Ginny retorted with a cackle, topping up their drinks.
"I don't count anything below premiership." Hermione shot back, making her friend snort.
"so tell me already, Hermione, what was different?"
"I don't know, he spoke to me, he told me his fantasies, he spoke about books" Hermione shrugged "he really tried."
"God, was the bar that low?" Ginny blinked. She'd married a man who bent over backwards, literally sometimes, to make her feel good. The idea that all men weren't Harry made her feel suddenly grateful.
"Maybe, I'm not sure." Hermione took a thoughtful drink. "But more importantly, he said 'making Love' what does that mean?"
"You don't know with Malfoy, he talks like Little Lord ponce pants, so sometimes he'll say something fancy just for the sake. How does he kiss you? You can tell how a man feels by his kiss." She nodded knowledgeably.
Hermione mumbled into her mug in response, her eyes fixed on her knees.
"Excuse me?" Ginny leaned forward, her eyebrow quirked.
"I told him no kissing?" Hermione groaned. The more she thought about the arbitrary rule, the more she worried over it.
"because you're suddenly Julia Roberts?" Ginny chuckled, then stopped at Hermione's disbelief. "You don't think I've seen Pretty Woman? It's my husband's favourite film. He relates to her rag's to riches tale and likes redheads with big boobs."
"I thought it would be weird," Hermione groaned into her cup. "I thought it would make it too intimate..." she let out an awkward wail. "It was supposed to be a one-time thing, you know?"
"And then you came?"
"that, and…" Hermione cringed, "He asked for another story before he left. He said to tide him over till my home visit with him next week." She returned to chewing her lip nervously.
"Well, that's a promise!" Ginny clapped her hands "oh my god, this is huge, Hermione."
"It's not. Please don't tell anyone." Hermione's eyes pleaded.
"Obviously not, but every time my brother starts yammering on about The Harpies promoting a toxic feminist agenda, I will silently scream 'Draco Malfoy made Hermione Cum'." Ginny shrugged and tipped the last few drops of liquid into her mouth.
"that's fair." Hermione conceded.
"So what's in these filthy stories you write, Hermione? You have to write one for Harry and me…."
"Em, no, I'm not writing about my best friend and their wife!" Hermione laughed, her cheeks still ruddy with exertion and existential dread.
"Did you just call Harry your best friend?" Ginny looked genuinely hurt.
"no, I just called him your wife." Hermione joked and watched a grin crack on her best friend's face.
"I wish he was the wife." Ginny took a final swig from the bottle and sighed, "I'm bored shitless. James is a well behaved, even-tempered baby who cries when he's hungry and cries when he needs changing and spends the other 22 hours of the day staring, smiling or sleeping. I'm pretty sure Potter's dropped him on his head and is hiding it from me, and we've got a dim child."
"Don't call James dim, Ginny!" Hermione scolded with a laugh.
"See, I'm so bored I'm making up problems, so thanks for choosing me to tell this monumental sex news to." Ginny patted her friend on the hand. "I'd hug you, but you're probably covered in Malfoy jizz."
"SHUT UP." Hermione's head slumped to the table with a thunk as Ginny roared with laughter.
Any bravado she'd had at her post-coital pow-wow with Ginny had dwindled to nothing over the week. He'd sent her flowers, but rather than making her feel reassured they had an air of guilt, there was no note, and she wasn't sure if that was a projection or if she was reading the situation correctly.
"Do you need me on the Malfoy visit?" Marcus, the beast wrangler, had returned from medical leave and was begrudgingly taking orders from Hermione. He, for some reason, had decided Hermione was to blame for his fiancé sleeping with the file clerk and getting the Dragon Clap.
"I can handle a couple of rowdy elves." she waved him off, trying to force a mask of nonchalance onto her reddening cheeks at the mention of his name.
"I've got a new falcon to train," Marcus grunted, eyes not meeting hers before turning and trundling from her space. Hermione nodded silently at his retreating form. "His name is Prince. Thanks for asking." the brooding man spat before slamming the door.
"I hate this office." Hermione groaned as she flopped to her desk, absently running her finger back and forth over the spot where she and Draco had romped. The realisation of what she was doing hit her like a cast-iron skillet, and she threw herself back in her chair, staring at her offending hand. "Get a grip, pervert," she muttered.
She hadn't opened her drawer since his last visit. She'd found she had very little need for the imaginings when she had the memories. Draco Malfoy had become omnipresent for her. She saw his smirk in coffee foam, smelled him like a phantom in the elevators, felt the ghost of his fingers on her thighs. It was the single most annoying and infuriating thing Draco Malfoy had done to her. She sizzled with indignation, allowing it to propel her to her feet. She grabbed her bag, containing everything she needed for a general inspection cum sexual encounter, should it come to that, which she was sure it would not.