Things get more interesting. And the story starts to earn its rating (slowly but surely ;) ). This was planned as PWP, after all.
Thank you all for your kind comments! They truly are a great source for inspiration, and I love reading them 3.
A big thank you to LittleMissEighty-Sixed for her helpful input, and to Riptide and Kyonomiko for their fantastic work as alpha and beta readers. I'm so happy to have your help! 3
This story is cross-posted from AO3 where it's usually updated one or two days earlier than ffn. My username over there is sarena.
Disclaimer: All rights belong to JK Rowling and her publishers. I just borrow the characters and the world for a bit; the plot (as little as there is) is mine, though. This is a non-profit work, and no copyright infringement is intended.
ooOoOoOoo
By ten, they had just finished the second round of 'pull Draco's lengths out of Granger's grabby hands.'
By ten, he was sweating so badly that it ran in streams down his body.
By ten, he was so bloody turned on that he only wanted to bend Granger over and fuck her into the desk for at least three hours.
Sweet, little Granger, who looked at him in concern when he couldn't stifle another moan and never looked between his legs. Thank Merlin for little mercies.
He'd have the wank of his life later.
"You look very exhausted. We should call it a night."
"Yeah, I'm really tired now. And Potter expects your floo call."
"Not until eleven."
"See, I told you you had a curfew." He winked at her.
Bloody hell, his whole life he hadn't winked at Granger, not even thought about it. She blushed a bit, though, and he found that he liked it.
"It'll take me a few days to look some things up, and you could disenchant those documents until then."
"That's not how the magic works. I'll need a bit of your blood."
"What?!"
He shrugged. It wasn't every day that a stranger, and a Muggleborn at that, got access to private Malfoy scrolls. More likely, it was the first time in family history. "It's old magic, Granger. Not evil, per se, just very protective. Look at it like this: You'll get to learn some very secretive pure-blood magic here. You'd normally have to marry into a pure-blood family to even get a glimpse of it. Except maybe for the Weasleys, but I'm not sure about their magic." He barked a laugh at her horrified face, and to his relief, the tightness in his trousers eased with all the talk of spreading blood on paper.
"How much... I mean, how much will you need?"
"How much are you willing to give to satisfy your thirst of knowledge? That's much more interesting, I think." He leaned forward and captured her brown eyes in his. They weren't as dull as he'd have expected during all those years of his distorted childhood, but with lighter, honeyed highlights and a dark rim that imparted depths which he suddenly was very eager to explore.
She narrowed them. "How important is it for you to get rid of your tentacles?"
He scoffed. "They're not tentacles! It's a win-win, for both of us, isn't it? And I don't expect you to give more than I'm willing to give in return." After a few seconds, he broke eye-contact and sighed. "Not much. Just very little, but for each item since we really don't know what exactly we're looking for, and you need to be able to touch them all."
"Why are we concentrating all of our efforts on that, anyway? Not that I don't appreciate working in this wonderful library, but why not look for spells and hexes? Somebody might've hit you without you noticing it."
He winced. He'd expected that question, and he knew that Granger would be nagging until she knew it. "Mother told me about an... ah, incident where she saw a member of my family with those..." He pointed at his appendages.
"Your father?"
"No."
"Then who? Male or female?"
"My grandfather, Abraxas Malfoy. Now let it go."
She hummed and scribbled something into her notebook. "Alright, I'll need a few days to check some books in the Ministry. How about meeting in a week?"
He didn't want to wait for a week. "How about Saturday? You could come over for tea and scones, and we'll compare what we've found."
Tea was good. Tea was non-committal. And above all, tea definitely wasn't a date.
Bugger.
"Yes, that should be okay. We can keep each other updated by owl if necessary."
"Alright. I'll bring you to the floo." He caught a whiff of her shampoo when he opened the door to the hallway for her. The coconut scent made him think of dessert, just that he imagined eating it off her breasts. He wondered if her nipples were as responsive as he hoped they were. Congratulations, you idiot. You just managed to get hard again. He tried to not walk funny, but then again, he'd just blame the things out of his back.
"It's impressive, how long you can keep it up."
She didn't just say that.
At his incredulous look she turned beet-red and stammered. "That's not what I meant. I just wanted to say that—"
He leaned down to her ear, his breath whispering over her curls. "But you're right, anyway. It is impressive." Before she could answer, he grabbed a fistful of floo powder and shouted into the fire-place, "Granger's flat!" He shoved her through and then leaned with stretched arms on the rim of the fireplace mantel. His chin dropped onto his chest.
What the bloody hell had he been thrown into?
"How did it go?"
His mother's voice made him sigh. There went his plan to take care of his raging hard-on. "We didn't get that far, actually." Unfortunately, he replaced in his mind. "Just some exercises to strengthen my control over those— She'll be back for tea on Saturday."
"I'll have the elves take care of that. What are you going to do until then?"
"Start reading anything by and about grandfather Abraxas, I guess. By the way, do you know of a spell to unlock all the documents for her at once? I really don't want to repeat the same words a couple of hundred times over and over again."
"Besides marrying her, which is completely out of the question? I think there is, but I have to read on it. I seem to remember that the incantation was close to the one cursing the blood of a foe."
He bristled a bit at her words, and his retracting appendages halted when his anger started to bubble up again, even if he couldn't quite categorise that curious pursing of her lips. "Nobody said anything about getting married! Besides, her blood status doesn't mean anything to me. I grew up, you know?"
"It's just hard for me, Draco." She pleaded. "It's different when I associate with Mu—ggleborns on neutral ground. But in our home? Having her going through our legacy, pulling everything apart and asunder? Maybe I should pay a visit to our estate in Provence for a few weeks."
He pulled her in for a hug. "Maybe you should if that makes it easier for you. I'll owl you."
She squeezed him. "I'll leave tomorrow, then, after I've retrieved that spell."
ooOoOoOoo
It'd been a while since Hermione had been excited about a challenge. Working at Gringotts had its advantages with all the cursed objects wizarding folk had in their vaults—or tried to bring in—and the research that went with them, but it wasn't often that the curses were presumably that old and complex. Usually, it was a bit of blood magic and a lot of stupidity instead of skill and ingenuity. Most of the hexes didn't even have more than one layer. Her day-to-day job was a bit of a bore, to be honest.
Come in Draco Malfoy. She'd seen him a few times at Gringotts, even had to check him for Dark Artifacts every now and then, but that day had been the first where they'd actually interacted beyond a functional "Granger" and "Malfoy."
And the turn of events was very intriguing. The years after the war had mellowed her hatred for everything Malfoy down until it was only a simmering dislike. And even that was simmering on very low heat after this evening, after she'd seen the pain that his curse brought. In all honesty, she suspected that it wasn't real dislike anymore. Sometimes she didn't like her own compassion for the misfortunate.
She switched on the additional light over the bathroom mirror and examined the palms of her hands again. They were still warm-ish. Considering that she'd scourgified her hands at the manor and washed them twice since she got home, it had to be either a long-lasting substance on his appendages or her very vivid imagination. She was tempted to blame the latter. In fact, seeing Malfoy sweating and moaning in his shredded shirt had caused her to start to perspire, too, not to mention how smooth and hot his tentacles had felt in her hands. Just like a certain part of the male anatomy that she hadn't felt in quite a while.
She pulled the nightshirt over her head and inspected her upper body. The scar from Dolohov's curse was a considerable white line leading from the top of left her breast across the arch of the supple flesh to the lowest rib on the other side of her torso. On some days, she wished her and her friends' healing abilities would've been better, back then. She wondered if it would've made any difference, at all, or if the Death Eater's magic would've prevented traceless healing anyway. She wondered if Snape had been able to fully heal Harry's Sectumsempra on Malfoy, or if he carried the same live-long markings as she.
Her nipples puckered in the draft from the open bathroom door and she cupped her breasts with her hands. She bit her lower lip the same time she pinched and pulled her nipples, and moaned when the warmth of her palms lingered on the trail where she moved them over her chest. Her skin prickled, and the sensation shot between her legs. Making up her mind, she picked up her nightshirt, and took her knickers off on the way to her bed. She threw both on her mattress and grabbed her magic-attuned vibrator from the drawer of the nightstand.
Getting comfortable on her queen size bed, her head fell back on the pillow and her legs opened. At that point, she was already so wet that the softly vibrating silicone slid into her without much effort.
"That's not how the magic works." is a reference to The Force Awakens of the Star Wars franchise. I couldn't resist.
The next chapter is edited heavily at the moment, and I hope I'll be able to put it out there a bit sooner than this one :). Thank you all for reading and commenting 3!
Please let me know what you think! Praise and constructive criticism is very welcome :). If you find a mistake, please don't hesitate to contact me on tumblr: o0sarena0o and I'll try to fix it as soon as I can.