In her bedroom.

She never took clients here.

He was the first stranger to cross its threshold.

She was nervous, and giddy with need. In his eyes, she saw the same desire, but he was battling a need to hold back. She shook her head, frustrated, freeing herself of her t-shirt before rapidly undoing his belt. She knew every trick there was to make a man speed up.

He stopped her hand, then threaded his fingers through hers. 'I'm not here to fuck you,' he said against her mouth. 'I want to make love to you.'

She stilled, her doe eyes open wide.

'Let me,' he murmured over her lips.

Dazed, all she could do was nod.

He removed her clothing almost perfunctorily and had her climb onto the bed. His eyes blazed as she crawled to the head of the bed; her curved hips, breasts and arse moved sinuously. Once there, she turned and watched him strip his priest's facade away; saw the man emerge.

His body was beautiful. He was long-limbed and toned, taut around his stomach and groin. Dark blonde hair dusted his limbs and traced a path from his navel and headed south. His erection jutted out, glistening at the head. Mesmerised, she moved towards it.

'Hermione.'

She heard the warning in his tone.

Wet lips parted, she raised her face up to his.

His breath left his body in a shuddering exhale.

She tasted him first. She ran her tongue over every inch that jutted out to meet her mouth. When he hissed, her cunt pulsed.

Still kneeling with her hands on the bed, she opened her mouth and sank down on him, drawing back and forth and sucking each and every inch. He felt divine – soft flesh over hard tissue, so warm and clean. Utter luxury. Like fine wine, or decadent dark chocolate.

Without warning, she opened her throat and soared down his length, lips connecting with his body.

His guttural moan speared through her body to her clitoris and she moaned in response, sending shockwaves surging through his shaft, into his balls and throughout his body in turn.

She began the age-old rhythm of sucking back and surging down; over and over, trance-like –

'Hermione. Stop.'

It sounded like his words had fought their way through gravel.

Disoriented, she drew back, saliva glistening on his flesh and her lips.

His jaw was clenched, but his eyes were kind. 'I meant it,' he said, pushing her gently onto her back and spreading her legs. 'Let me lead.'

Bewildered, she nodded, then she jolted as his finger exposed her clitoris. Staring at the ceiling, she felt his warm breath on her body - then she gasped as his tongue curled around her centre and licked it – gently, then with growing passion.

Her thighs trembled; awed, she watched them – she couldn't make them stop. Between them lay the dark golden head of a man, a priest, rubbing her clitoris with his thumb and working his mouth towards the opening between her legs.

He licked and sucked greedily on the lips surrounding her core, and even though it felt so damn good she was embarrassed and tried to close her legs.

He stopped them with his hands and looked into her eyes. His own reflected his obvious arousal. 'Has no-one done this to you?' he asked.

She turned her face away.

He bowed his head, then slowly kissed the inside of each thigh solemnly; like a prayer. Then he looked at her from underneath his mussed-up fringe of hair, and growled 'Tonight, you're mine.'

On that, he pulled her soaking core to his mouth and speared his tongue deep inside her.

He wouldn't let go.

He wouldn't let up.

With his tongue, lips, mouth and fingers, Draco made Hermione come hard, over and over until her body shook and her voice cracked from her cries and her essence, from deep inside of her, filled his mouth and her exotic scent was seared in his mind like a brand.

He released her and pulled back, wiping his face clean with the back of his arm, dragging in restorative breaths; as did she.

If he waited any longer to enter her, he'd explode; he was sure.

He'd never felt harder, more aroused, in his life.

It had been years since he'd had sex. Now he was with a woman who fucked men for money. But going by her reaction to the cunnilingus he'd performed on her, their experiences might be more evenly-matched than he assumed.

He crawled onto the bed, over this beautiful, supine woman. The scent of orchids was stronger here. He dipped his mouth to her breasts, paying homage. Her skin shimmered from perspiration; as his soon would.

He sculpted the base of a full, soft breast with his tongue, flicking the hardened, puckered nipple with his thumb, before repeating the other side. Her back arched and she clutched his hair in silent demand.

Finally, he knelt at the junction of her parted legs, his erection lying heavily on her thigh. Her eyes widened, and she leaned over to her bedside table and scrabbled around in the drawer.

She withdrew her closed hand and unfurled it before him.

On her palm lay a wrapped condom.

His eyes widened at the little sealed square; then they flicked to hers.

She met his stare - a little scared, a little defiant.

He looked at it again. Her body was her livelihood. Pregnancy and infections could have catastrophic outcomes. But as a priest, he could not condone any device that prevented the potential creation of life.

Let alone use one himself...

Still. He let the demons win.

'I'm out of practice,' he murmured.

Wordlessly, she sat up and gently touched his lips with hers. She opened the package and deftly sheathed his erection. He gritted his teeth against the business-like brush of her fingers against his skin.

Before she lay back down, he kissed her again; passionately, almost harshly. Following her down to the bed, he leaned over her, lining up his cock against the soaking entrance to her body.

There was no more need for words.

He surged inside her.

God, it had been so long.

As Hermione's body welcomed him, Draco knew that the rapturous, slick, tight heat he found inside her was nothing like what he'd experienced before. He was glad for the desensitisation created by the condom; without it he probably would have orgasmed already.

He tempered his strokes in and out of her core, watching expressions chase over the delicate bones of her lovely face. Wonder. Shock. Need. Raw desire. Smoothly, he rolled onto his back and brought her onto his hips; time to let her play.

She knelt over him, setting most of his cock free except for the head, still snug inside her. She contracted her muscles and he swore, his eyes rolling back with blissful pleasure. Then she slid down his length, engulfing his cock to its base. Closing her eyes, she leaned over his body at a 45-degree angle and undulated her hips – slowly at first, then building in speed. Her breath grew ragged, and she moaned in desire. Unashamedly, she rubbed her clitoris against his body while taking his cock in, over and again.

Draco watched her, entranced by her serpentine moves. As they grew jagged, he clamped his hands to her hips and thrust up repeatedly inside her. Hermione wailed, calling out his name.

'Come for me,' Draco whispered, his eyes glinting silver.

Almost delirious, she shook her head. 'I-I don't – oh God, please!'

Draco kept up the brutal pace, piercing her beautiful body. 'You do.'

Her eyes widened.

Keeping one firm hand on her hip, he cupped one perfect buttock with his other hand – then plunged his finger into her tight, gorgeous arse.

She orgasmed violently on a broken scream, her cunt greedily gripping his cock as if it wanted to drag even more of his beautiful flesh inside her. He gasped in harsh euphoria; the ecstasy she drew out nearly overcame him; but he held on, slowing his thrusts, watching Hermione fling her head back and claw for the air her body denied her when her brain shut down and her body revelled in ecstatic jubilation.

She slowed, then blinked, looking around her.

'Have you lost something?' Draco asked, amused.

She jumped; then smiled shyly. 'I've never come that way' – then she stopped, picking at a pulled threat on the duvet.

He sat up, staying sheathed inside her. To quell his anger about the bitter blow life – no, Snape - had dealt her, he tasted her lips with gentle slowness.

'Did you like it?'

Her lips quirked. 'Yes.'

'Good.'

Draco tried hard not to be harsh. He tried not to be selfish. But Hermione craved the muscular power he put behind each thrust into her cunt, each desperate grip of his fingers on her slick flesh. Sweat gathered at his temples, trickled down his spine and darkened his hair as she gripped his body, begging him to make her feel.

He made love to her throughout the night. Each of her orgasms was poetry in motion, and each ripple of her core around his steel-hard cock sent his body spiralling into raw, base, hard desire.

Eventually, he had to let go. With a gasp of exultation, he slammed his body against hers, coming over and over into the prophylactic sleeve. When his breath left him, he lowered himself shakily onto her body, propping himself on his arms. He rested his head on her breasts, searching, and finding, some serenity.

Hermione gathered his hair into her hands, looking up at the ceiling, seeing nothing. Committing everything to memory.

He had to go; they both knew that. But he couldn't bear to leave her. Not just yet.

They talked in low voices, her head resting next to his heart. About things that happened in the past – before he became a priest; before she became a prostitute.

'If you could do anything,' Draco murmured into her hair, 'what would you do?'

She blinked sleepily. 'I'd go to university,' she whispered. 'Study something. Anything.'

He knew that she felt that Snape had trapped her into staying in this town.

But hopefully not for much longer.

He took up her invitation of a shower but refused to let himself linger in the bathroom, where her scent was so alluring he felt himself harden again.

He watched in the mirror as the priest slowly replaced the body of a lover. Fastening his clerical collar back in place, he realised, sadly, that he was staring at a stranger.

By the front door, Hermione waited in a faded Snoopy sleep shirt. She looked at him warily, but he drew her into his arms and held her tight.

'Will you write the statement?' he whispered.

Her breath left her. 'Yes,' she mumbled.

He hugged her extra tight. 'I'll call you,' he promised. 'All this will end. You have my word.'

She nodded, unable to trust her voice.

Draco's long night came continued into the morning.

He was sitting quietly at the breakfast table when Snape strolled in. He raised an eyebrow at his acolyte, not normally one to rise before him, but said nothing until he put a couple of pieces of bread in the toaster.

'Didn't hear you come in,' he remarked lazily.

'I was up late with a parishioner,' Draco said dully.

'Oh? Who was it that required your doting attendance?'

'Mrs Howell,' Draco lied. She was an old woman in the last throes of dementia. No doubt Snape would phone the rest home to check. Draco didn't care.

He waited until Snape chomped through a half a slice of toast before he said 'About Hermione Granger.'

Snape paused, jammy bread halfway to his thin lips. 'What of her?'

'She's a prostitute.'

A raised black eyebrow from across the table.

'She told me, in lurid detail, about the sex acts she performs,' Draco continued. 'In the confessional booth.'

Snape wheezed with laughter. 'She performs sex acts in the confessional booth?'

Draco narrowed his eyes. 'She told me that you required her to be specific during her confessions.'

Snape carefully put the toast down on his plate. 'I should have known,' he intoned. 'She's trying to wrap her talons around your manhood, too.'

Draco put his coffee carefully down. 'Are you saying she's a liar?'

Snape leaned back in his chair. 'She's a whore,' he said dismissively. 'She takes men's hard-earned money, takes them away from their wives and corrupts them, debases them. Even I have been powerless to resist her wiles.' He threw Draco a contemptuous look. 'Small wonder it's taken her this long to infect you.'

'You admit that you've had sex with her?'

Snape laughed humourlessly. 'She had sex with me.'

'Splitting hairs, isn't it?'

'I'm sure God would understand.'

Draco clenched his teeth. 'She told me that you ruined any chance she had of a career and blackmailed her into staying in this town, fucking men for money. Including you.'

Suddenly, Snape had had enough. Jerkily, he stood up, his chair screeching across the floor. 'I have atoned for my sins,' he snarled. 'She is a blight on this parish and a lying, piece-of-shit whore. If you think you can succeed in making her renounce her wicked ways, my boy, then go right ahead and try. But don't you even think about dragging me through her slimy muck.'

'What do you mean?' Draco asked, but the tail of Snape's cassock was already swirling around the kitchen door.

He looked at his empty plate. Then he drew his phone out from under the table, where he had placed it on his lap. He pressed the button to stop the voice recorder.

It was a week or so later. Bishop Shacklebolt looked carefully at the young priest sitting opposite him in his parlour. The optimistic, dynamic man he saw off to St Dumbledore's a few weeks ago was gone. This one was tense, tired and grieving. A hard copy of Hermione Granger's statement, Draco's report and his recording sat on the coffee table between them – a no man's land.

'You knew, didn't you.' Draco spoke into his cold cup of tea.

Shacklebolt sighed sadly. 'I had suspicions. But no proof.'

'What happens now?'

Well, Father Snape has a right to due process.' Shacklebolt finished his tea and put the cup down. 'But it's likely that he will be expelled from the Church. And depending on Ms Granger's wishes, the Police should be notified about the rape allegations.'

Draco rubbed his forehead tiredly.

'Perhaps you could counsel her' –

Draco shook his head. 'I'm in no position to counsel her, your Excellency.' His voice was hollow.

'Oh?' the Bishop asked gently.

Draco sighed, dropped his head in his hands, then sat back up again. 'Your Excellency, I need to confess.'

'Of course.' Shackleton turned to the side, averting his gaze from Draco's wretched face. 'In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.'

'Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,' Draco murmured. 'It has been eight days since my last confession.'

'What are your sins?' Shacklebolt asked, although he had an idea what was coming.

'I have committed the sin of fornication.'

'This is a grave and mortal sin, my son.'

'Yes, Father.'

Did you commit this sin of your own free will?'

'Yes, Father.'

'Do you wholeheartedly repent your sin?'

The loaded silence stretched out. Until eventually, Draco said in a voice so quiet Shacklebolt barely heard him: 'Yes.'

Shacklebolt kept his quiet sigh to himself. A good priest, lost so soon.

For the next few days and weeks, Draco felt like he was underwater, always reaching for the surface, but never managing to break free.

Before Draco left the Bishop's residence, he listened to Shacklebolt talk on the phone to Hermione. Still, when he pulled up at the empty Rectory, he wasn't pleased to find a local newspaper reporter and photographer camping on the front doorstep, demanding a comment from Father Malfoy about Father Snape's recent arrest.

He sent them away, knowing it would only get worse.

When the doorbell rang a little later, he marched down the hallway and yanked the door open – to find Ginny and James Potter standing there, both staring at him with wide brown eyes.

Over tea in the kitchen, rocking James on his knee, he forced the story out over fits and starts, figuring she'd hear about it anyway – preferably from Hermione, but probably from the media. Ginny's eyes brimmed, and she scooted around the table. She didn't pick up a grizzly James, as he expected; she put her arms around him and held him tight.

'Thank you for helping her,' she whispered. 'I'd hoped that you would.'

Draco officiated as parish priest of St Dumbledore's until Bishop Shacklebolt organised a replacement; preferably a mature priest with years under his belt who'd seen it all.

He bore the irate and sometimes hysterical questions from worried parents of past and present students at St Hufflepuff's; the monotonous, repetitive questions from the Department of Education, and more of the same from the Police and the Diocese calmly enough. He did his best to minister to the members of the parish who actually needed his spiritual guidance, even though he felt like a fraud.

He'd lost his faith.

No; that wasn't it.

He lost his heart.

To a woman who wanted nothing to do with him.

After Ginny and James left the Rectory, he climbed into his Jeep and headed to Hermione's house. Not caring how it looked.

When she finally opened the door to his insistent knocking, he was appalled. Before this, she was slim, big-eyed and carried a trapped energy around in her. Now she was pallid and visibly shook as she let him and closed the door. And stayed there.

He stepped forward, wanting to hold her, but she held up a trembling arm. 'Don't,' she croaked.

'Hermione' –

'I can't deal with you right now.'

Draco paled.

'I- I knew there would be fallout, of course. But I didn't expect it to happen so fast. I've had to unplug the phone. The reporters will probably be around any minute. And it's going to get very, very ugly. You must know that.'

'I want to help you,' Draco insisted. 'I – that night wasn't a casual fuck to me. I care about you. More than that.'

She closed her eyes against his heartfelt words. 'I can't be with you. I'll drag you down with me, and you're still too good to be treated that way.'

'I don't care!' he said fiercely.

She opened her eyes, now filled with tears. 'But I do,' she whispered. Her eyes skittered to a dark corner, where Draco made out a suitcase.

A hand clenched around his heart. 'Where are you going?'

'Bishop Shacklebolt's arranged somewhere for me to stay while all this goes on.' She indicated the door with her head.

Draco nodded, and exhaled. 'How do you feel about me?' he asked, silver eyes steady when everything else wasn't.

She looked down at the floor, at her suitcase, at a nondescript picture on the wall, then finally, at him. She swallowed. 'You're too good for me,' she whispered.

Draco shook his head, stepped forward and gently brushed a tear from her cheekbone.

'When all this is over,' he said quietly, 'we'll talk.'

She nodded.

He let his lips rest on that same cheekbone, then opened the door.

Four years later

Outside the university's auditorium, two figures clothed in black robes and mortarboards embraced happily. Classics Professor Malfoy acknowledged some of the graduates who greeted him as they whizzed past with a smile before murmuring 'I am so proud of you' to his wife.

Mrs Hermione Malfoy held her Bachelor's degree - in which she majored in Public Policy – in one hand and clutched her mortarboard when an errant gust of wind threatened to make off with it. 'Goodness!' she laughed breathlessly. 'I can't believe it's finally over!'

'And not a moment before time,' Draco gently admonished, running a protective hand over Hermione's considerable baby bump.

'Pft.' His wife waved an airy hand. 'She was as good as gold during the ceremony. Barely kicked at all.'

Draco smirked. 'Good boy,' he whispered to her tummy.

'Stop confusing her!'

He straightened up and looked into Hermione's laughing eyes. She was almost unrecognisable from four years ago.

The publicity was brutal – nobody loved a good sex scandal better than the media, fuelled by a public with a rabid thirst for lurid details. Their night together stayed a secret, but when they had to appear in Court as witnesses for Snape's rape trial, the baying public wouldn't leave them alone.

Draco had left the priesthood by then and returned to university to work on his Classics doctoral thesis. The brutal work schedule he adhered to kept his mind focused during the day.

Not so during the night.

Hermione knew how he felt about her. As much as he wanted to hunt her down, throw her over his shoulder and carry her off to his bed, he knew he had to wait for her to decide what she wanted to do.

It was a winter's day, and he'd just submitted his thesis to the University's examination board. He slouched on a park bench alongside a river that wended its way through the university's picturesque grounds, beanie clamped on his head, hands shoved into his coat pockets.

A shadow fell over the bench, but that wasn't what made him slowly sit up.

It was the faint smell of orchids.

'One of your students said I'd probably find you here.'

He swallowed; stood up and turned around.

She was wrapped up against the cold, with a scarf and matching beanie. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes were warm; maybe a little nervous. Despite the bundles of clothing, he could tell that she'd gained the weight that the toll of the scandal had stolen from her. He, in turn, looked like a typical student – scruffy clothes, overgrown hair, stubble, a pallor to his skin that only months in a library can create.

Her lips parted. 'You said you wanted to talk.'

He cleared his throat, wondering if this was a dream. 'Uh... of course. Yes.'

She walked around the bench and stood in front of him. She raised herself up on her tip-toes, linked her arms around his neck and drew him close. 'Is it okay if we don't talk?' she murmured before sealing his lips with her own.

Draco wrapped his arms around her until there was no air between them.

Of course it was okay.

The End