An Honest Face – Chapter Nine
Disclaimer: I only arrange the words in the order you see them, and the only profit I make from this is the warm and fuzzies I get when you review. Read on!
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Hermione hesitated, caught off guard and unsure how to respond.
"I assume you're not going to hex me black and blue again if I sit down?" said Malfoy, moving slowly and cautiously to sit down across from Hermione when she didn't move or say anything. "Good job on that, by the way," he added, the ghost of a laugh in his voice. "I couldn't feel my face for weeks."
Hermione finally found her voice. "Am I missing something? Why...?"
"Why am I here, you mean?" interjected Malfoy, prepared for the question. "Bearing gifts and no malicious intent as I am?"
Hermione's eyes narrowed, and Malfoy went on.
"No, really, I mean it – everyone else is at end-of-term parties and having fun, but if you're not into that I thought we could just... sit and talk," he said. "And I swear I haven't tampered with the Butterbeer either, see—" And he popped the cork of one of the bottles and took a mouthful. Then he popped another and pushed it towards Hermione across the table.
She caught hold of it out of reflex and looked at him suspiciously.
He sighed dramatically. "Listen, Granger, say hypothetically if I said I might have deserved it, will you stop giving me the evil eye and just have a drink with me?"
Hermione remembered watching blue tentacles sprouting out of his ears and couldn't help herself. She smiled. "You absolutely did deserve it, you great bollocking prat."
He grinned back and she was surprised to find that while he undeniably had deserved what he got, she didn't feel as much lingering resentment as she might have expected. She had definitely wreaked her revenge, after all, and she'd had more than two months to let it go.
She raised her bottle of Butterbeer and took a sip.
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Two hours later they were still talking, deep in heated conversation, empty bottles of Butterbeer pushed to one side and forgotten. But the argument they were having was not the kind you might expect.
"Copernicus was definitely a more influential wizard than Merlin," insisted Malfoy. "All Merlin did was make a bunch of potions and get his name attached to the words 'Order of' – Copernicus essentially invented modern magic as we know it. It's thanks to him that we have internationally transferable spells in Latin!"
"Are you seriously saying that the Twenty-Six Solutions of Merlin are nothing more than 'a bunch of potions'?" Hermione shot back incredulously. "They're some of the most fundamental bases for potion-making today! And besides, not all spells are internationally transferable, and plenty of them don't stem from Latin."
"While you make some admirable points, Granger, I simply don't see that you have enough evidence to substantiate your claims," returned Malfoy airily. He gestured to the history book open before him. "I've already pointed out mine."
"That book was written at least a hundred years before Merlin was even born!" scolded Hermione. "It's not an adequate resource. This on the other hand—" and she strode around the side of the table to stretch to the shelf above and behind Malfoy, standing on tiptoes, trying to reach - "is much more suitable, and in any case — argh!" She had gone to stand on the first plank of the bookshelf in her attempt to get a hold of the weighty volume at the very top (she should have known better, but she had been too focussed on the argument at hand) and, inevitably, she had slipped.
Malfoy saw it coming, and leapt forward to stop Hermione from cracking her head open on the table as she fell. She elbowed him in the jaw in the process, and they both ended on the floor in a tangle of bruised limbs and broken pride.
Hermione sat up, rubbing her elbow, and Malfoy sat up, flexing his jaw. Quite suddenly they found that they were very close together. Neither of them spoke for several long moments, both their minds silently abuzz with very similar thoughts.
And suddenly, Hermione thought, why the hell not? She leaned forward infinitesimally, and Malfoy shifted the barest fraction of a millimetre toward her in response. Slowly, achingly slowly, and yet almost before she knew it, Hermione Granger found herself kissing Draco Malfoy.
It was nothing like the last time, nothing like the times before that. Each touch of Malfoy's lips against her own was a question instead of a demand, and his breath tasted of Butterbeer and oranges. Hermione answered each question with another, and so they spoke for a long time without actually exchanging a word.
Before long, Hermione found herself being pressed against the bookcase she had so lately fallen from, and she gasped softly as Malfoy's lips travelled across her jaw and down her neck. Her hands fluttered helplessly over his back when he found a particularly sensitive spot and sucked hard enough to leave a mark. Her heart was beating like a hummingbird's wings and her breath was already coming in excited little bursts - and then she felt his hand on her thigh, and her breath hitched again. Somehow the feeling of his warm palm on her bare skin was enough to give her goosebumps from head to toe. Hermione was no stranger to desire, being a perfectly normal and fully functional seventeen-year-old, yet she was surprised to find herself already practically shaking with it.
Malfoy's hand paused just above her knee and he murmured into her neck. "Can I—"
Hermione nodded against his hair and breathed shakily as his hand slid slowly higher over her goosebumped flesh. He lightly ran a finger over the now-damp part of her panties and she shuddered and shifted slightly to give him better access. He returned to kissing her neck and pressed a thumb to caress her clit through her underwear, which was hard and sensitive. Hermione gave another soft little gasp and arched her back as Malfoy began to play with it through her underwear, every touch a delicious tease. And then his deft fingers pushed her panties aside.
He turned his head to kiss her again and her breath was hot in his mouth. Her eyes were closed. Draco closed his own eyes and focussed on exploring Granger's slick wetness with the minutest movements of his fingers.
He was in tune with her every soft breath and every involuntary twitch, and what's more, he was determined not to mess this up. It seemed that Granger had at last given him the perfect opportunity to act on his own hidden desires, and he'd be damned if he was going to just rush in and scare her off again. No, if the last few months had taught him anything, it was that Hermione Granger needed to be approached on her own terms. And he was willing to play by her rules, at least for now.
He slid a finger deeper into her welcoming warmth, then another. Hermione made a soft "mmmh" sound, a little higher pitched than the last one, and Draco smiled against her lips. Villainous and self-serving he may be, but there was no denying the pleasure in being able to coax noises like that from someone else. He curled his fingers in a "come hither" motion and she cried out wordlessly. Her hands clutched at his back and knotted in the fabric of his sweater.
Draco set to work. Gentle at first, then more insistent, he thrust his fingers against her g-spot, sometimes in a staccato rhythm, sometimes with lingering touches, drawing more and more desperate noises from the Gryffindor. With his other hand he gently caressed her breast; even through the layers of clothing, he could feel her nipple pert and stiffened in arousal.
And of course he had a stiffness of his own that was begging to be attended to, but he ignored the pressure in his trousers, by now bordering on uncomfortable, and set all of his focus to doing one of the things he was best at.
When he judged that Hermione had had enough for now (she was remarkably quiet even in the throes of pleasure, he noted - or maybe she kept quiet out of respect for the library? Who knew) he removed his hand from her warmth, and deftly pulled her underwear along with it. She did not object, only looked at him through eyes deep and dark and half-lidded with want. He could only guess what she was thinking, but he was too wise to bring it up.
He kissed a path from her mouth, down her neck, across her collarbone, and down her chest - pausing to bite a nipple through her shirt and savour the sweet gasp he got in return - then down her stomach and past the hemline of her skirt. He kissed his way up her inner thigh and felt her fingers tangle themselves in his hair.
Softly, gently, Draco went about bringing Hermione to the edge. He ran his tongue up and down her slick folds, sucked and paused and kissed. He pushed deeper until his nose was buried in her dark brown curls and his tongue was as far inside her as it could go. Finally, when a whine rose from her throat and he knew she could take no more teasing, he caressed her swollen clit with his tongue, first this way, then that, at last settling on one steady motion and slipping a finger back inside. She trembled and jerked and throbbed beneath him as he worked, and he knew she was close. It took all his concentration to keep her at the edge for so long - but he knew that the longer he made her wait, the better the end result would be, and he intended to make her feel things she would never forget.
Hermione was on fire, but it was nothing like the desperate insanity of the lust spell all those weeks ago. She was awake and alive to every prod and touch and caress and perfectly placed stroke of tongue, and it was better than anything she could imagine. You might suppose that Hermione may have been comparing Malfoy to Ron at that moment, but in fact that was nowhere near her thoughts. Her thoughts just then were nothing much at all, actually, apart from oh my god ah ahhh oh my goooooodddd.
And suddenly it was all too much. Malfoy must have pressed just that little bit deeper or harder or something and she had to grit her teeth to stop from crying out loud. Everything in the world narrowed to one point, her eyes rolled back behind her closed eyelids and she only had time to choke out, "I— I—" before she dissolved into a near-silent, shaking, panting mess, fingers still enmeshed in Malfoy's golden hair. Spasms wracked her body as pleasure in its purest form coursed through every vein, making everything from her nose to her toes tingle and thrum from within. It went on for what seemed like days, and her heart beat fit to burst out of her chest.
She must be used to keeping quiet, noted Malfoy, holding on tightly to her hips and refusing to stop moving his tongue until she was completely spent. She was still twitching and mewling softly when Malfoy finally extricated himself from her skirts and leaned up to kiss her. She could taste herself on him, musky somehow, a mild yet powerfully female scent, and was dimly surprised to find that it didn't bother her at all, really. They lay there against the bookshelf in silence for long moments, until at last Hermione half-opened her eyes to find Malfoy looking cautiously up at her.
"Holy shit," she breathed, and Malfoy grinned.
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A/N: I'm going to leave it there, especially since this chapter is already longer than usual... hope you enjoyed! See you in the new year - and please consider leaving a review in the meantime! :)