Author's Note:
Lines from "Pretty Woman":
"I say when. I say who. I say how much. I say when. I say who. I say how much."
"What do you do?"
"Everything. But I don't kiss on the mouth."
"Neither do I."
Chapter 2
Hermione Granger didn't like mirrors. The aversion had started before Hogwarts, shortly before she had learned about her magic, at one of the rare primary school sleepovers her parents had encouraged her to attend. A girl named Jillian had dared her to play Bloody Mary, and peer pressure had forced her answer. Locked in the water closet, unable to turn on the light for fear of being mocked, Hermione had closed her eyes and chanted the name. She remembered the squealing sound of nails on glass and the screams of the girls on the door's opposite side. But she never saw what she had summoned. Couldn't gather the courage to look.
Since that night, she had feared looking into a mirror and seeing the specter she had conjured. She imagined it waiting, patient and still, invisible until the perfect moment, when it would press its fingers against the glass, catch her hair, and drag her away.
If she'd never been a witch, perhaps this fear would have remained irrational. Perhaps she would've moved past it, relegating it to a mere horror-movie trope used for jump-scares and cheap thrills.
But she was a witch, and though she had not looked into the Mirror of Erised herself, Harry's retelling nevertheless represented a pivotal moment. Not when she had crossed a dark lake toward a magic castle, whose spires scraped the sky like something out of a fantasy novel. Not when she had levitated a feather around a classroom or smuggled a dragon off school grounds or berated herself for cowardice while mounting a shaky broomstick.
It was when she had learned that what had previously seemed impossible could become possible. When the boundary between unreal and real no longer mattered, and fears could be made manifest and hidden in secret chambers and old trunks.
She had gone over two decades without seeing anyone but herself in the reflective surface of a mirror.
Now, she looked into them to intentionally conjure a stranger.
Charming her hair was always the first step and always the most traumatic. So much of her identity was wrapped up in her chocolate-brown curls. Boys had tugged on them in primary school and mocked them at Hogwarts. Late in her seventh year, one had twined his fingers through them and moaned her name in the tenuous privacy of a camp tent. Smoothing them out, lightening their color, and casting blonde highlights that never looked quite natural erased that history.
Once her hair was done, the heavy cosmetics charms hardly seemed to matter. Contouring narrowed her forehead and sharpened her cheekbones. Heavy eye shadow, thick liner, and ample mascara helped disguise the dark amber of her eyes. Cherry red lipstick gave her a pout, and her short black dress and three-inch heels felt more like a uniform than an expression of her sexuality.
She stared at the stranger in the glass and completed the ritual, chanting another set of words that would finalize the transformation.
"I say when. I say who. I say how much. I say when. I say who. I say how much."
With that, Hermione Granger disappeared. In her place, on the real side of the mirror, was Vivian Ward.
She grabbed her cloak and tucked her wand into her clutch. She left her flat unlocked; it contained nothing worth stealing. Everything that mattered was in her purse.
The streets were grim and damp in the way that only Octobers in London could be, when the heady scent of decomposing leaves mixed with the funk of alleyway garbage. The night might not have been pleasant, but the grey market hummed along, indifferent to the weather. Women with less freedom than she loitered on street corners, catcalling to men in cars. A lucky few climbed into them; an unlucky few would never climb back out. Down one alley, two wizards in official Magical Law Enforcement cloaks cornered a man. They demanded to see his identification. When he failed to produce it, they would ask for a few Sickles. If he failed yet again, it would be a beating or an arrest, depending on how much he argued. She heard a grunt and a pained wheeze as she passed and felt a wave of shame: she had done nothing to help him. In fact, she was relieved it hadn't been her.
A few blocks further, she reached a condemned brick building. With its boarded-over door and windows that gaped like broken teeth, it seemed to draw the evening's meager light into it like a black hole. Most pedestrians gave it a wide berth. She continued through the Muggle-repelling charms with a shiver and nodded to the muscular bouncer who guarded the front door, which was now matte black with a silver, twisted handle. Above the door, cursive lettering was backlit by a light the color of an overgrown greenhouse. The Devil's Snare.
The bouncer gestured her down the alleyway, where anyone without a pure-blood pedigree was required to enter. She picked a relatively clean path through the detritus and oily, puddled water and shoved a shoulder into the barred rear door. The metal hinges gave way on her second try with their usual scrape and squeal. She shoved the door closed and made her way to the front by memory.
The Snare was doing good business. Ice tinkled against glass, bright notes against the low, steady hum of conversation. Men in fine robes lounged upon overstuffed chairs while women too young and affectionate to be their wives perched on their knees or settled into their laps. A thin haze of cigar smoke hung overhead.
She sat at the main bar. It was a prime location, in the corner and against a wall, affording her a view of almost the entire club. She draped her cloak over the back of her high-top chair and assumed the position: legs crossed so that her dress rode up her thighs; shoulders relaxed and inviting; face impassive, neither eager nor hostile. Bored was ideal, an implicit and oftentimes irresistible challenge.
The first drink, a dirty martini, arrived within minutes.
"From the gentleman across the way." The bartender, a half-blood named Lucas, nodded toward the humidors.
A reedy man with thick glasses and a shock of white hair sipped his own martini. The wingback chair dwarfed his slim frame, and his eyes seem to glow from the darkness. He stared at her unabashed, a predatory smile lingering beneath his thick mustache. She slid her eyes away and down, as if considering.
"Do you know him?"
"By reputation only. You know Jasmina?"
"By reputation only."
"She went with him last week. Came here the morning after to pick up her cloak with a black eye and a limp."
Bile bit the back of Hermione's throat, and she dug her fingernails into her palm. When she could manage a breath, she smiled up at Lucas.
"Thanks."
She locked eyes with the mustached man and pushed the drink away.
Lucas reached for it.
"Do you want me to —"
"Leave it," she said. "I want him to know he failed."
Lucas withdrew his hand without comment, tending to his business and leaving Hermione to hers.
Ten minutes later, she saw him.
Dressed in a slate-grey, immaculately tailored suit, his platinum blond hair was swept back in artful carelessness. His eyes were focused, the anticipatory grey of the sea before a storm. What might have been amusement played over his sharp features, pulling at the corners of his mouth and flashing like lightning in the maelstrom of his eyes. A surge of raw adrenaline bolted through her, lighting up every inch of her body. She uncrossed her legs, bracing one heel on the stretcher of her chair and the other on the floor. But she had missed her chance to run. He stopped before her, blocking not only her escape, but also her view of the room.
Hermione could do no more than watch in expressionless horror as Draco Malfoy laid his cloak over the back of a neighboring chair.
"The martini not to your taste tonight?"
She laid a palm flat against the bar and forced herself to breathe. Her reply came out shaky.
"It's not my favorite. My main objection, however, is to the man who sent it."
Draco followed her gaze across the lounge. The mustached man continued to glare, the open wound of rejection festering like an infected bite. Draco turned back to her with a smirk.
"You're not spoken for tonight, then?"
It was a joke. She knew it was a joke and knew she should reply with something equally light — ideally, a witty comment disparaging the mustached man while stroking Draco's ego as the preferred alternative.
On any other night, if he were any other man and she were any other woman, he would have been. Draco was undeniably attractive. He held himself with confidence, like he had never once questioned his place in the world, and when he looked at her, Hermione felt seen. It wasn't the appraising look she usually got, as if she was an expensive bauble that required thorough inspection prior to purchase. Neither was it the lust-filled, alcohol-fuzzed leer that came at the end of a slow night, when clients were scarce but rent still had to be paid. He looked at her as though she were a human, not an object, and that she, above all others, was worthy of his notice.
On any other night. If he were any other man. If she were any other woman.
But none of those conditions were true, and so her answer came as quick and sharp as a blade.
"I speak for myself."
A blink broke his otherwise steady gaze, and Hermione shifted, readjusting the hem of her dress as a plausible excuse to break eye contact. Draco's skill as a Legilimens was an oft-repeated rumor that she had no intention of confirming.
"It's been a long time since someone has spoken to me like that."
Hermione pressed her lips together, mind tripping over her most likely futures. He might arrest her. Would they hold a sham trial, or move right to the public execution once they discovered her identity? Or he might not bother bringing her in. He had the power and authority to kill her right now, no questions asked. Her charms would break upon her death, and he would probably receive a commendation for his stellar fieldwork.
Or was there a third option?
The atrocities Voldemort and his followers had committed in the name of blood purity were widely known; they had taken no measures to hide them, choosing to rule through terror and violence. Stories specifically about Draco were harder to verify.
In the early years, when the Order still had sources at the Ministry of Magic, there had been reports of inconsistencies in his Muggle-born capture rates. Dozens of Muggle-born witches and wizards allegedly captured, dozens of people documented to have arrived at the camps, yet the camps' resources never reflected the influx. One would expect an increase in food consumption, at least, but the levels never budged.
No one in Voldemort's administration had noticed, but the government operated in such silos that the oversight was not beyond possibility. Anyone who did notice would have had to cross-check ledgers of inventory and people, find the correlation, and prove a pattern. It had taken the Order's specialist, who had been looking for officials to flip, half a year to discover the inconsistency, and he had not been able to confirm it before he was executed for treason. In a nascent government that was less concerned with the means than the ends, Draco could have subverted Voldemort's authority easily.
Could still be doing so, in fact.
There had been disappearances over the years: haphazard, poorly documented reports of single witches and wizards, and sometimes entire families, vanishing overnight. Houses abandoned, personal belongings intact, as if the owners had disintegrated. Some thought it was the Minister of Population Control staging quiet raids on disruptive citizens. Others reported seeing the disappeared leave dead-drop notes on London park benches in the middle of the night, and a slim man in a dark cloak retrieving them. That could have been anybody, but Draco's name had been suggested more than once.
It all worked to create a gaping hole in her mental conception of him. The petty little boy she had known at Hogwarts had been capable of cruelty, but not killing. The man who stood before her, whose eyes bored into her like steel bits through hard packed earth, was surely capable of both.
He offered her his hand.
"Draco Malfoy," he said with a smile.
And that quickly, the riddle of his character no longer mattered. He did not recognize her, which meant that this job could be her last. It was risky, stupid, and could get her imprisoned, killed, or both, but three years of sex work was three years too many. She needed money; he had it. The calculus was clear.
"Vivian Ward."
His skin was warm, his grip firm. Her heart stuttered as he pressed a gentle kiss to the back of her knuckles, then sank as he turned her hand over. The embellished H stood out starkly against her skin of her wrist. She had had the tattoo for seven years and still could not stand the sight of it. Apparently satisfied, he released her hand.
"What would you like to drink, Vivian?"
She cleared her throat.
"Whiskey. Neat," she added, in response to his side-eyed look.
Draco turned to Lucas, who had appeared as if summoned.
"Two Blishen's, neat." Another appraising look. "Make them doubles."
Moments later, Draco handed her a tumbler of amber fire and raised his glass.
"To new acquaintances," he said.
She tapped his glass and, harboring a secret smile, drank. As the alcohol burned down her throat, she felt some of her hard-learned compartmentalization return. If she were going to do this, she had to forget what she knew — or thought she knew — about Draco. He might be a willing participant or a quiet savior, but he was a man first. That was all he could be to her tonight.
Though, admittedly, it might take her longer than normal to see him that way.
"Do you come here often?"
Or maybe not.
"You were doing so well," she said on an exaggerated sigh.
He shrugged like her disdain did not matter, even as the color in his cheeks darkened half a shade.
"I've never seen you here before."
"Do you come here often?"
"No," he admitted. "Just when I want to make a bad decision."
"Don't make enough of those at work?"
Tension sprung up like a wall between them. Draco cut his eyes to hers fast enough to catch her wince.
"Mistakes aren't tolerated well where I work," he said delicately. "You know who I am? How I make my living?"
There was no sense in lying.
"Yes."
He laid his hand on her arm and left it there through her flinch.
"You're not in any danger," he whispered, "but let's not talk further about my work."
She nodded and took another drink. Their knees brushed as Draco pulled himself close.
"Tell me about yourself, Vivian. Did you go to Hogwarts?"
Hermione brushed her hair over her shoulder.
"I was homeschooled. Did you?"
He arched a brow.
"You said you know who I am."
"Just because I know your name doesn't mean I know your history," she said, a slow flush of color crawling up her neck.
He leaned in again, his lips quirked in a grin.
"Do you want to guess?"
"Must we?"
"Humor me."
"Fine. Draco Malfoy's tale of woe…" She narrowed her eyes as if to study him, buying time to calculate how much truth to weave into the lie. Too much would be suspicious; too little, insulting. "You did go to Hogwarts. Slytherin house, obviously. You played Quidditch. Chaser, I think, though you weren't very good. You studied hard and were the best in your year. You always knew you were destined for greatness, but never knew how you'd get there. Then the Dark Lord rose, and the Boy Who Lived died, and you found your path." She looked down at her drink, tracing a finger around the rim of the glass. "How did I do?"
"I was an excellent Seeker. And I wasn't the best in my year. I was consistently bested by a very clever witch."
"I'm surprised you can admit that."
"I've learned to admit some failings. But only some." He checked his watch. "Vivian, I would very much appreciate if you accompanied me to my flat tonight."
Her heart raced as he smiled at her, an expression so effortless, so easy, that she could almost mistake it for genuine.
"Are you sure you can afford me?"
"I can't afford not to."
She furrowed her brow. It was a strange reply, but she had taken stranger clients.
"500 Galleons." It was an exaggerated price, far above market value and more than she needed, but the negotiation had to start somewhere.
"Done."
She dropped her glass. The tumbler landed with a heavy clank, and her remaining whiskey spilled across the bar. All of her clients, without exception, had negotiated the price. Draco accepting her first, patently ludicrous offer triggered every instinct she had. The urge to run flared, stronger and more insistent than when he had prowled toward her from across the lounge.
Though fleeing guaranteed her survival, it would ruin her life. She had tucked her clutch into her cloak's inside pocket, and her cloak was now folded over Draco's right arm. If she left him, she also left her books, her savings, her wand. Everything.
She had to go with him. She had to walk through the lounge with his hand on her lower back and step into his arms after he'd activated the Floo. She had to endure the seconds-long journey pressed against his chest and hide her shiver when he trailed his fingers along the top line of her hips after they'd landed. He gestured to his flat with one hand.
"Ladies first."
Her heels clicked against polished wood floors, and candles lit automatically, illuminating neutral grey walls, vaulted ceilings, and simple furniture in dark colors — burgundy, navy, emerald. There were no photos or unnecessary décor. His space was impersonal, and the reminder steadied her. Draco was a client, no different from any other man on any other night. She could do this, just like she had hundreds of times before.
"Nice place."
"Witch Weekly described it as elegant, modern, minimalist, and cold."
She glanced back, made a show of looking him up and down.
"A reflection of its owner, perhaps?"
He set their cloaks on a side chair and removed his suit jacket and tie.
"I'm not paying you for psychoanalysis."
"You haven't paid me at all."
"Perhaps we should change that."
His approach was slow and measured. Goose flesh rose on her skin as he skimmed his fingers up her arms.
"What do you do?"
"Everything," she answered, her stomach in her throat. She looked up at him through her lashes, noticing flecks of blue near his irises. "But I don't kiss on the mouth."
He chuckled low in his chest and pressed his lips to her cheek, then skimmed them over her ear.
"Neither do I."
Hermione tilted her head back as Draco kissed her throat. His hands ghosted along the contours of her body, close enough to brush the fabric of her dress, for her to feel the faint static between them. But he didn't touch her. He seemed to wait for permission, as if he drew some backwards distinction between his lips and her neck and his hands and her hips.
She had no such scruples. He had hired her for pleasure, and she would give it to him.
She reached for his waistband and untucked his shirt. Her fingers made quick work of the buttons, and she smoothed it over his shoulders and onto the floor. He watched as she ran her hands over his pectorals and down his obliques to settle on his hips. She looked up at him with a coy smile and stepped forward. He stepped back, and she stepped forward again, angling him toward the sofa. When the back of his knees hit the cushion, he sat.
She stood over him for a moment and felt a heady, traitorous rush in her belly as Draco looked up at her from beneath soft, hooded eyes. He wanted her. And for just a second, she let herself want him, too. She slid into the heat of mutual desire as though it were a warm bath, the idea of control a distant, frigid afterthought. But her heat had an edge, because she knew something he didn't. He might have hired her, but she had control. His power and status meant nothing against a pretty face and a forged tattoo.
She knelt between his knees and ran her hands up his thighs, pressing against the muscle, feeling the strength he held in check. Her fingers reached for his fly.
"No," he said with a gasp, placing his hands atop hers. "Not that."
Their eyes met, an instantaneous question-and-answer that Hermione lost. It didn't matter. She might have been a commodity, but she was still in control. She was taking something from him tonight.
She straddled him, watching his eyes go wide as her dress rode up her thighs. She reached her arms behind her, breasts pushing forward until she found the zipper at her back. She lifted herself up onto her knees and pulled it over her head. Draco tracked the reveal of her body inch by inch — black lace panties, flat stomach, a matching lace brassiere.
"You're beautiful," he murmured.
She flushed and settled onto his lap, trying to ignore the erection pressed against her thigh. She knew where the night ended. Knew it was unavoidable and knew better than to be nervous. Sex was biological, as natural as breathing, and she had learned to disconnect it from feeling. But she had not disconnected. That slip in control mere minutes ago had never fully righted, and the fact that Draco Malfoy sat beneath her, aroused and vulnerable, gave her a kind of high she hadn't felt in years.
He dipped his fingers beneath her waistband, gripping the flesh of her hips, and she rocked forward. He felt good beneath her, and his hands held her firmly, so that when he sat forward, leaning her back, she had no fear of falling. He dipped his head to her chest and kissed the side of her breast through the lace.
"Do you consent?"
Another strange comment. She steadied her breathing and tried to ignore it.
"I'm here, aren't I?"
He kissed her breast again and inhaled, tightening his grip on her hips. One hand twined its way into her hair.
"Do you consent, Granger?"
She launched herself away from him, shoving hard with her arms and legs, but his hand had fisted in her hair and the hand on her hip was now an arm wrapped around her waist. His fingers dug into the flesh of her abdomen, holding her tight, pinning her to him.
"Finite," he growled, dismantling the charms on her hair and face.
She shoved again, drew a hand back to strike him. He yanked down hard, and a cry tore from her throat as her head wrenched back.
"Stay still," he ordered.
"Let me go."
"What was your plan here? Shag me rotten and rob me blind?" He tugged on her hair again. "Answer."
"Something like that," she said between clenched teeth. "You're hurting me."
He let go of her hair and clamped both hands on her hips, pressing her down onto his thighs. She winced as she straightened her neck. His eyes were hard and uncompromising, dangerously aloof. How had she ever thought she could fool him?
"How did you know?"
"I asked if you went to Hogwarts, and you touched your hair. You were nervous. Hiding something. It wasn't difficult to figure out what."
Her chin quivered. She had gambled and lost, and the consequences of what that meant began to settle over her. She tried to keep her voice steady.
"What now?"
He tilted his head slightly to one side, as if considering that himself.
"You have two options. Option one: I incapacitate you and bring you to the Ministry. I file a report, and custody is transferred to Bellatrix Lestrange, the Minister of Security. You'll be put on trial, found guilty of treason, and sentenced to death, but not before my aunt tortures you for every scrap of information you might possess about the resistance."
"There is no resistance."
"I know that. So does she. But do you think she'll care, especially when the lie serves the Dark Lord's narrative?"
"And my second option?"
"That depends on what you want and how far you're willing to go to get it. And since I've already seen how far you'll go…"
Humiliation melted the steel inside of her. Draco was right: her desperation was obvious, and it gave him all the leverage he needed.
"Papers. I need identification and travel papers so I can leave Great Britain. There's a man in Brixton who could have —" She looked away from him, staring out of the floor-to-ceiling window and into the cloudy London night. "It hardly matters now."
"I can get them for you."
She tensed. The rumors she had heard about him suddenly felt less like fiction.
"What?"
"Entirely legal, not forgeries. The Dark Lord himself could inspect them and not find a mark out of place."
"What do you need from me?"
"You have your wand?"
"No. I lost it."
He squeezed her hips again.
"Don't break eye contact when you lie."
"Yes," she said with an annoyed hiss. "It's in my bag."
"Which is where?"
"Inner cloak pocket."
"Good. Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to let you go, you're going to put on your dress, and I'm going to confiscate your wand. Then we're going to discuss your future. If you attack me, I will turn you in without a second's hesitation. You're more than welcome to Disapparate or take the Floo, but you'll be doing so without your handbag, which I imagine you would miss quite dearly. Are we understood?"
She waited a moment, weighing her options, though they both knew she had none.
"Yes."
Draco released his hold, and Hermione rolled off him. Cheeks burning, she pulled her dress over her head. She heard him chuckle softly.
"Undetectable Extension Charm. Old habits, Granger?"
She crossed her arms and kept her back to him, trying to find composure, but he was beside her before her most recent bout of embarrassment could fade.
"I hardly notice the view anymore," he said, almost to himself. His flat must have been near the top of a skyscraper, because the city looked like a drawing below them, a child's atlas in black, grey, and navy. She felt the warmth of his hand between her shoulders, hovering just above her skin. "Come on."
She followed him into the kitchen. He slid a glass of water across to her across the marble island and leaned his elbows on the countertop.
"Your papers will take a week to be processed. During that time, I would like you to accompany me to Italy. Your employment would begin —" he checked his watch "— today, October 13, and end on October 20. You will travel with me, stay with me, attend all required engagements, and behave in a way consistent with your assumed role as my companion."
"You want me to act like a pure-blood."
"Like a half-blood." He gestured to her wrist, the one with the tattooed H. "Risky, that. Plenty of double agents posing as tattoo artists."
"I did my research."
"I'd expect nothing less." Their eyes met as he let the compliment hang. "I don't know how well versed you are on our foreign affairs, but Italy supports our cause."
"Your cause."
"Our cause," he corrected. "If you let slip that you're anything less than a half-blood, or if you show sympathy for the so-called resistance, you'll put us both in danger."
"Then why risk it? If I'm a liability, why not just give me the papers and send me on my way?"
"Because that still leaves me in Italy for a week without a companion."
"Aren't you dating a Greengrass?"
"I was until about three hours ago."
Hermione bit back a snide comment and sat back in her chair.
"And if I refuse?"
"Then you leave without your handbag," he repeated, "and I find another escort."
It was not much of a choice.
"Fine." She extended her hand. "One week, then you give me my papers and we never see each other again."
Draco took her hand.
"One week," he agreed. "You get your papers, and then we part forever."