A/N: Hello to anyone reading this! I've written a few HP fics before, but under a different penname. This is me coming back after a long spell of several years to live out some bunnies I've had kicking around in my head. You will not find complicated plotlines here, or much backstory—just pure D/G sexual tension and all the goodness that comes with it. As it stands right now, I imagine this story will be five or six chapters, perhaps longer, depending on if you good folks want me to keep going. Please review and let me know your thoughts! Xo
Disclaimer: Harry Potter, its universe, and all of its various components belong to J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers Inc. No profit is being made from this work of fan fiction, and no copyright infringement is ever intended.
Of Jackets & Gentlemen
Part I
The bone-deep bassline of the music pounding outside the bathroom door thrummed in her head; it vibrated the glass of wine she had set down on the edge of the vanity. She paid it only half a mind as she delicately reapplied her coral-red lipstick. She could hear the tinkling of glasses and cascade of laughter, and a witch squealing "darling, it's been absolute ages!"
Ginny rolled her eyes at herself in the mirror; it's not that she minded these Quidditch premier league after-parties—she almost always managed to make the most of her evening, even if she couldn't always remember the end of it—but on the cusp of 28 years old, the glamour and shininess of these lavish soirees had lessened to a dull lustre.
She smoothed down a wrinkle in her cocktail dress. It was black, satin, and slid against her skin sensually; thin spaghetti straps, with a modest hemline and neckline (not that she was particularly well-endowed in that department) but with a plunging open back that showed off the toned, elegant line of her freckled spine. Her long copper-red hair, usually up in a bun during practices and games, hung in cascading tendrils down her back. She had tied a simple green ribbon at her throat, thrown on strappy black sandals with a chunky tall heel, and a solid gold watch. The beautiful watch had been gifted to her by her now-ex boyfriend when she had first made the Holyhead Harpies reserve team. She looked down at it now—almost midnight. I'm going to get Indian take out on my way home she thought to herself with satisfaction, and watch highlights from the game.
She opened the door to the bathroom and the volume of the pumping music hit her at full blast, reminding her that she was on her third glass of wine. She scanned the room for the witch she had brought as her date. The after-party was taking place at a large club on the side of the River Thames, magically obscured from muggle eyes, who would only see a foreboding-looking warehouse if they were to glance in its direction. She could see over the heads of the revelers, all beautifully dressed in expensive frocks of decadent fabrics, that the floor-to-ceiling windows betrayed a serene, quiet dock on the edge of the river, decorated with gently floating lanterns.
"Ginny!" she heard distantly through the din of the music and the rising and swelling of the excited voices around her. She turned to see Luna waving calmly at her, wearing a long, flowing dress of electric blue patterned with white clouds. She had cut her blonde hair pixie short, and it suited her. Ginny noticed she was standing and talking with Oliver Wood and— Fuck. Draco Malfoy.
There was a figure Ginny hadn't seen in several years; he had been famously abroad in Paris leading the French national Quidditch team to the championships. She spotted him here and there in the pages of the Daily Prophet, or less frequently, in the pages of the various tabloids she would skim through while in the occasional waiting room. Always looking arrogant, meticulously put together, and rarely without a gorgeous French brunette on his arm. But she saw him most often when everyone got together at the Burrow to watch the Pay-Per-Floo stream of last year's Quidditch World Cup.
It had seemed at the time to Ginny that the person documenting France's games was rather enamored of Malfoy, because the footage trailed him all night. Not, Ginny admitted grudgingly to herself as she had watched him play, that she could blame them. To her horror, she found that she too could not look away when Malfoy was on his broom. He cut an impressive figure; quiet, lazy indifference until he virtually exploded into action, seeking the snitch at a break-neck speeds, his profile a line of pure, unadulterated focus and intent. Anytime the French team scored and Malfoy smiled or laughed, Ginny would avoid squirming her seat while the Weasleys around her discussed the game, unaware of her blushing discomfort. She thought, once, she caught Molly and Hermione giving her sly, knowing smiles, but she squashed that idea.
Despite the effects that watching him play Quidditch had on her treacherous body, her distaste for him remained. It was not that she hated Malfoy with the same ferocity that she did in school; no one did, not even her family, Harry or Hermione. He had long redeemed himself in the eyes of the wizarding community during his testimony at the Wizengamot a few weeks after the end of the war, opened the doors of Malfoy Manor to the aurors, and offered it as an orphanage for muggle-born children. No, Ginny did not care to hold a grudge against the scared teenager he had been, acting foolishly out of fear. She just knew that generations of being a Malfoy had bred into him a staggering arrogance and hostility that would never mesh with her salt-of-the-earth Weasley nature. And some things just don't change, she thought grimly as she approached.
"Hi Oliver, hi Luna," Ginny said, smiling amicably at her fellow Gryffindor alumni at she entered their circle. She turned to nod coolly at the tall blonde man with them. "Malfoy."
"Weasley." He nodded in return, his face impassive but perhaps a little amused at her lacklustre greeting. "I had wondered if you'd be here," he drawled, raising a glass of amber liquid to his lips.
"Had you? I can't imagine why," she replied, maybe a little coldly.
Oliver cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Ginny, Draco was just telling us about the relentless training the French team went through last season to take the World Cup. Fascinating stuff. Do continue," he said, turning to Malfoy. Ginny laughed inwardly; Wood would make friends with a blast-ended skrewt if it meant they could talk quidditch strategy.
Malfoy smirked at Ginny and continued talking; his low, even voice detailing the various drills that were unique to French quidditch culture. As he talked, smiling slightly, Ginny studied him under the guise of listening to what he was saying. The last time she had seen him in person was at a party much like this one several years ago; they had exchanged a few heated quips while standing at the bar. Draco had carelessly told her that she had really mucked up a pass in a previous game, one that set into motion the turn of events that caused the Holyhead Harpies to lose that particular game. She knew he was right, she felt that way herself, but that didn't stop hot tears from welling up in her eyes as she looked at him with loathing. She had stormed away from him after commenting on his lack of tact, and had felt his eyes burning into her back for the rest of the party.
Still watching him talk to Wood, she wondered if he remembered that night. If he did, his eyes when he had seen her just now didn't betray it. His aristocratic face was masculine, but with a sharpness that could cut glass; his lazy, storm-cloud grey eyes crinkled slightly at the corners when he smiled—if smiling was what you could call it. His almost-platinum hair was impeccably cut and arranged, as were his clothes: a beautifully-tailored pair of grey dress pants, a crisp white button down shirt, and a sharp caramel suede blazer which was pushed off his hip where one of his large hands rested casually in his trouser pocket. She could see the line of a silver watch bracelet glinting at his wrist under his cuff. Looking up at his tall frame—even in her highest heels he was still almost a head taller than her—he oozed wealth, luxury, power. Gross, she thought to herself, unconvincingly.
"Don't you agree Ginny?" Wood cut through her thoughts, turning on her with eager eyes and a Scottish lilt. "Don't you think that England's team could benefit from that sort of discipline?" Ginny was startled and looked quickly at Luna who was looking at her with clever, amused eyes. The red headed girl caught herself quickly and offered a neutral response that she hoped did not betray her reverie.
"I have a hard time believing that the French have any sort of discipline. Have you seen the way they eat bread and cheese? I don't know how those witches stay so skinny." To her relief and surprise, Draco laughed.
"You're not wrong Weasley. But there was a lot riding on the team last year and we all agreed to make sacrifices. We cut out all the fun stuff so that our bodies would remain temples, as they say." He was looking at her with clear amusement in his cold eyes now. His drink was finished.
"What sort of sacrifices?" she asked.
"Oh you know," he said in a mild voice, shaking the ice cubes in his tumbler, "the usual stuff. Wine, cigarettes, drugs, bread," he paused and looked up and directly into her eyes. "Sex."
Ginny almost choked on the sip of wine she had been taking and glared at him as she gingerly wiped the corners of her mouth, careful not to smudge her lipstick. She felt a blush creeping up her neck and into her cheeks.
"Too much information, Malfoy," she snapped. The way his eyes were lazily moving from her collar bone up to her own eyes made it clear to Ginny that her blush did not go unnoticed.
"Actually," said Luna dreamily, and Ginny wondered if she was about to regret inviting her as her date, "plenty of ancient and medieval wizards would make vows of celibacy for months before they went to war; the pent-up sexual tension and lack of sexual release would make them ferocious in battle. I think I read it described somewhere as 'pulled taut like the mighty arrow shot from a quivering bow'—"
"Oh Merlin, Luna," she moaned, horrified, as she buried her face in the hand that was not holding the wine glass. Oliver was full on laughing and Draco looked like he was trying awfully hard not to follow suit.
"Lovegood, congratulations, you've officially scandalized Weasley," he drawled with a trace of laughter in his voice, turning his fey eyes on Ginny. "I didn't realize you were so delicate on the topic of sex. I'm sorry."
"I am not—delicate—on the topic," she managed through gritted teeth. "I would just rather imagine McGonagall and Snape shagging on his desk in the potions dungeon than think about you as a sexual being, Malfoy." Well that was a blatant lie, Ginny, she thought to herself.
"Ginny, that's not nice," Luna said without conviction. Oliver was still laughing. Draco's eyebrows raised a little bit at this jab, and Ginny wondered if maybe that had been a little bit too aggressive of a statement for the situation. Her and her big mouth.
"No, that's ok," he said slowly, addressing Luna but looking with laughing, sharp eyes at Ginny only. "I'm not sure that I believe you, Weasley, but far be it from me to deny you the opportunity of imagining Snape's white, thrusting arse." He put his drink down flawlessly on the tray of an unsuspecting waiter who was walking by. She saw the vintage muggle Rolex at his wrist properly. "Now if you'll excuse me, I see someone I must say hello to. Hopefully they find me more appealing than the idea of geriatric sex." He nodded in their direction and disappeared between the moving bodies, into the crowd and out of sight.
"Oh dear," Ginny said, frowning and feeling something odd in the pit of her stomach. "Do you think I hurt his feelings? I didn't need to say that."
Beside her, Oliver barked one sharp laugh. "I wouldn't worry about it Gin; last I heard he was casually dating Mathilde Theriault, that young French supermodel. And she won't be the last one. I'm sure he's not worried about what you think of him."
Ginny knew Oliver was saying that to make her feel better; so why did it only make her feel worse?
Forty minutes and another full glass of sauvignon blanc later, after a pleasant but distracted conversation with Angelina Johnson, Ginny was looking for Luna to tell her she was leaving. In the midst of her search, however, she spotted a gleam of silvery hair on the dock outside, unmistakable despite the fairy lights dancing in the windows. Almost unconsciously, she moved through the crowd and stepped into the night.
As the doors closed behind her, the sound of the music and rowdy laughter became virtually imperceptible; it was at that point in the evening where people were getting sloppy, their words slurring loudly around her—she was immediately relieved to step into the still peace of the darkness. In the early wee hours of the morning, only the sound was of the lapping waves of the vast river against the dock, stretching out like a wide, eerie road of black velvet in the moonlight.
She saw Malfoy standing at the very edge of the shore in the distance, as close as he could be without falling in. She did not know how she knew, as his body did not move, but she could tell that he immediately felt her presence. She walked towards him, the early October breeze uncomfortably chilling her skin as it grazed her. Her wide heels made a satisfying, rhythmic tattoo on the wooden boards beneath her feet, and he casually, without surprise, turned to look at her.
She stopped a little distance away when he did, suddenly taken aback by his reflective eyes in the moonlight. He looked tired, his shirt a little disheveled and his face flushed. A cigarette burned away between his fingers. She wondered if some witch had been out here snogging him only moments before.
"If you've come to tell me again how repulsive you find me, Weasley, let me spare you the trouble by throwing myself into the river." His voice was cold, but not completely uninviting.
She laughed, to her own surprise, and wrapped her arms around herself. "Oh, shut up. Don't pretend I hurt your feelings. I know you don't have feelings," she said, making sure her voice was light-hearted. She walked slowly closer until she was an arms-length away and turned to look out at the dark river. The moon moved through it like ink into water. "You're smoking. I thought your body was a temple."
She could hear his smirk when he replied, though she wasn't looking at him. "Only during quidditch season. Off season it's pretty much an ashtray." There were a few beats of silence and she turned to face him again. He brought the hand-rolled cigarette to his lips for a drag, exhaling through his nose, eyes still on her face. "It's a habit I picked up in France."
Ginny held out her slim hand; she saw the freckles on her bare arm stand out starkly against her pale skin in the light of the overhead streetlamp. "May I?" she asked. His eyebrows shot up on his forehead, which was the most reaction Ginny had seen out of him all night.
"Excuse-moi? The littlest Weasley, sharing a cigarette with big bad Malfoy?" He smiled, showing his white, straight teeth, as he held out the smoke for her to take. "If we were still in Hogwarts I would have taken great joy lording this over your brother."
"Don't be a git," she replied smoothly, moving just close enough to poke him in the chest with the fingers that held the offending object. "I didn't smoke at Hogwarts." She took a long drag, feeling the heady effect that she actually only enjoyed after several glasses of wine, and held it back out for him to take. She tried not to think about the little jolt she felt when his long, calloused fingers brushed her own.
There was another silence before she said, "Congratulations on your World Cup win. I watched the game. You played—" she swallowed, remembering how he played; magnificently, like an arrow pulled taut shot from a quivering bow, she thought, and immediately balked. She had had way too much wine. Uncontrollably, she began to giggle.
Draco's face betrayed his amused confusion. "Are you laughing at me?" he asked, clearly bewildered. He had turned to face her with his arms crossed.
Ginny composed herself. "Well," she said quickly, possibly even swaying on the spot. "You played very well. France earned that win."
He looked incredulous for a moment, then smiled an almost-smirk. "Weasley. You're drunk."
"I'm not," she retorted stiffly, wrapping her arms more tightly around herself, unconsciously. But Draco wasn't paying attention; his eyes were trained on two men who had suddenly walked past Ginny from behind. She noticed, vaguely, that they kept turning their heads to look back at her, murmuring to one another.
Draco was watching them go with an odd sneer on his face. His eyes were liquid silver with thinly veiled contempt. "How are you getting home?" he snapped, not looking at her. In her tipsy haze, she began to understand that he was perturbed by those men who were looking at her. I must seem like I'm really drunk if he's concerned with how I'm getting home. Great. Almost thirty years old and feeling like a teenager again.
"I live very close by. I'll walk. I want the fresh air," she snapped back, with as much dignity as she could. "I appreciate this charade of concern but I'm not so drunk that I can't protect myself." Her voice dripped sarcasm on the word 'charade'.
He looked at her, finally, unmoved. He did not try to correct her accusation. He only slid off his jacket in one fluid movement and came to stand directly in front of her. At this proximity, she was eye level with his neck, and could see the pulse moving quickly at the hollow of this throat, the clean edges of his crisp white shirt collar. His cologne, subtle but spicy, suddenly trailed under her nose and she felt an immediate, alarming jumble of butterflies in her stomach, and an ache of something else, slowly moving lower through her body. He draped his blazer around her shoulders, the weight of it dwarfing her and betraying the exceptional quality of its craftsmanship; she could smell the intoxicating cologne even more potently.
Get a grip Ginny, you've been in a long dry spell, you are not actually horny for Malfoy.
"Fine, whatever," he retorted quietly, pulling the jacket closed around her, nestling her in its warmth. She could feel the heat radiating from his hands, close to her face. "But Lovegood was looking for you earlier, she didn't want to leave without you. So at least promise me you'll walk home with her and not by yourself." He was looking down at her with the same impassive face from earlier, but there was a subtle possessiveness in his voice that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She shivered, not from the cold, and nodded.
"I promise," she said. And then, turning her face up to his, "why do you care?"
She saw herself reflected in his startled eyes—her small pale face, her own dark eyes, her wild crimson hair tousled by the breeze. She saw his lips part and eyes darken, and she felt her heart sail to her stomach, then lower— for a brief, terrifying moment she almost, almost thought he might kiss her.
"Ginny! There you are," Luna's musical voice called out from the door, as sudden as glass shattering. "I was looking—oh—you're not alone." There was an awkward silence.
Malfoy stepped back several steps, breaking the heat of the spell from moments earlier, and put his hands in his trouser pockets. "I was just leaving, Lovegood; she's all yours." He looked at Ginny, face completely unreadable save for a wild electricity in his eyes, and apparated with a pop. The rushing of blood in her ears stopped. Ginny stared at the space where he stood only seconds ago, seeing only the flickering lights of London around her. After a few moments, she turned to her friend.
"Oh! Draco gave you his jacket. What a gentleman," Luna said happily.
Ginny looked down at the heavy, warm coat around her, surprised.
"I suppose he did," she murmured.
When Ginny got home later that night, she got into bed, completely dressed, and fell asleep with the weight and scent of Draco's jacket around her.
A/N: Please review! Reviews are like cookies to me. 😊
