5 June, 2010 (Saturday)
"You want me to do what?"
Draco held up the length of wood in his hand and shook it at her.
"You must be joking!" he argued.
Hermione rolled her eyes, casting another Protego, as their enemy closed in, swiping long, skeletal claws at her shields. They sparked as the monster scraped gouges into the magical bubble, but thankfully, the spell held. There had to be a better defence than this! Why hadn't someone invented a protection spell to keep Greek mythological gods at bay by now? Honestly! She was going to take this up with the Unspeakables when she got back to London!
"I told you twice already. Four years to the day we've been partners, and I'm always repeating myself with you, Malfoy! For Merlin's sake!" She pointed to the river directly under their boat. "You put the flat end of the oar into the water and you shove the water backwards, repeatedly."
"If you mean for me to row through the fiery water, Granger, why don't you just say 'row through the fiery water, Draco'?" he asked with exasperation. "Honestly, you are the most maddening, verbose-"
Charon closed in, clawing at her shields until they were wispy threads, his bone jaw clacking with fury and the promise of retribution. Hermione felt the hot slash of panic slide through her spine and recast another Shield Charm, stepping back until she was pressed against her partner.
"Row the bloody boat, Draco!" she yelled, unnerved, putting everything she had into keeping Charon off of them. "Row now!"
Doing as she bade, Malfoy put the oar into the Phlegethon and began paddling their boat away from the shore. Her partner groaned with the effort.
"This would be easier with magic," he pointed out once more.
"It won't work," she sing-songed the reply to him for the third time. "The oar won't react to any magic but its original owner... who is currently attempting to make mince pies of my shields, so hurry the hell up, would you?"
Draco doubled his efforts, and Charon did likewise, nearly tipping the boat over.
Tired of this cat-and-mouse game with their relentless pursuer, Hermione aimed for Charon's bony feet, and as her Protection spell fell, cast a Knock-Back jinx that hurled him over the side of the boat and into the oily, fiery waters. He fought to stay afloat, but his cloak had caught fire and he was so busy putting himself out, that he could not grab hold of the boat as it sculled beyond his reach. He sank beneath the stygian waters of Hades.
"So sorry!" Hermione called back to him, feeling slightly guilty. True, Charon couldn't die by traditional means, but his cloak was surely ruined and it would take him a while to swim back to shore. "I hope you can get that mended!" she called out as they sailed out of sight towards their goal.
X~~~~~X
"We are never, ever doing that again!" Malfoy groused as he began unbuttoning his burnt, torn and bloodied robes and heading for their communal shower in the small hotel room they shared. He was covered, the same as she, in dirt and other unnameable things as their trek through Hades had been arduous and disgusting, not to mention harrowing (especially when Charon had taken offence to them stealing his magical oar to make their passage easier).
"Agreed," Hermione capitulated with a weary sigh. "Hurry up in the shower. I need to get-" She made a disgusted noise as she fingered the slimy-textured substance in her hair. "Just hurry, please."
"You could always join me," he teased, tossing her a smirk over his shoulder as he stripped his shirt off, leaving his strong, lean torso bared. "To save water and time, that is."
Avoiding temptation, Hermione turned her head away and waved him off. "Save your charms, Cassanova, I'm not biting. Just make it fast in there - and don't use up all the shampoo this time! Those complimentary bottles only have a few ounces to spare, and I have a lot of hair to wash."
He stepped into the bathroom, smirking, taking her rejection in stride. "Why don't you cut it then?" he called through the open door. "Maybe if your hair was shorter, you wouldn't shed like an Afghan hound during the mating season."
"I do no such thing," she half-heartedly disputed, a note of censure in her tired tone. "Stop fibbing."
"Do so," her partner contradicted. His trousers and pants flew out the door as he spoke, followed by his socks and boots. They landed in a lumpy heap on the worn, beige carpet. "Every time I get home from an assignment, my bags are filled with little clusters of your loose hairs all tufted together. First time I saw them, I thought they were Pygmy Puff nests, I swear. I've since dubbed them, 'Granger tumbleweeds,' and applied for a copyright on the term."
"You're the world's biggest liar, Draco Malfoy," she flatly accused, much too fatigued to give their verbal sparring the attention it deserved.
"Just for that, I'm using up all the shampoo!"
Hermione slumped, boneless with exhaustion in the only cosy chair in the room. "I'll get a new partner, if you do."
His reply was a snort of disbelief, and then the shower came on and the acoustics changed, making further discussion impossible.
He was right, of course: the threat had been an empty one. Frankly, they were both very aware that there was no way she was swapping Malfoy out. Mostly because her boss would then purposefully assign her a novice partner to train-up - which would mean she'd be tied to a desk for months getting the noob up to snuff, and then many more months taking the easier assignments to gently guide her apprentice into the job. That kind of dull work would be the death of her.
Besides, in many aspects, Malfoy was perfectly suited to be her right-hand man, for he was erudite, razor-sharp, and crafty. Where she excelled at logical deduction (she fit square pegs into square holes with perfect precision), Draco's strength was in considering unconventional angles to problems (he fit square pegs into round holes with surprising accuracy). Bill had been right four years earlier to assign them to each other based upon those attributes, for there was no denying that they were a formidable partnership. Their success record had no equal in the history of Gringotts' Curse-Breaking office.
Of course, there was another reason that parting from him seemed completely impossible to imagine...
She was much too tired to chase that thought.
Closing her eyes, she leaned her head back against the worn cushion of the chair. The sound of the shower turning on and the pitter-patter of droplets hitting the tub lulled her to sleep.
Malfoy shook her awake at some indeterminate amount of time later. Blinking back the sand from her eyes, Hermione stared up at her half-naked partner. Only a towel around his hips kept his modesty intact. "You were snoring," he commented with a shark's grin, and stepped to his overnight bag on the bed to pull out his pyjamas.
"Was I?" she asked, still too tired to register much beyond the need to lay her head back down and return to her previous activity.
She must have dozed off again, for the next thing she knew, she was being lifted and carried. "Guess I'm going in for round two," Malfoy commented with a sigh. "Hope you don't mind my undressing you, Granger? I promise not to look… much."
"Hmmm," was all Hermione could reply, his words not really sinking in as his warmth dragged her deeper into sleep.
She was brought to full wakefulness the instant she was doused under the cold spray of the shower. Her scream was loud enough to wake the residents of Hades that they'd left behind.
Malfoy's laughter was filled with delight as he began helping her strip off her clothing. "Quit being such a baby. It's only a little water."
She continued swearing at him until she finally threw him a dry towel to cover up and kicked him out of the bathroom – just before her lingerie was removed. He left her with a final look of regret over his bared shoulder, his heated, teasing gaze travelling her from head to toe.
Hermione tried to ignore the pixies that erupted in her belly as she watched his towel-wrapped arse walk out and the door shut behind him. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, reminding herself once more than this was not the first time that she'd felt the pull of sexual attraction between them, and surely it would not be the last. They were both unattached, relatively good-looking adults who worked in very close quarters together on a regular basis. That didn't mean anything was going to happen. After all, everyone knew that rule numero uno was never to get involved with a co-worker. The scandal and potential for career damage from the fallout of an office affair were too high a price to pay, especially for a woman, as they were always judged harsher than their male counterparts, regardless of the idea of full equality under the law.
Besides, Malfoy had made it quite clear over the last four years that he had no intention of becoming involved in another monogamous relationship after 'Hurricane' Astoria had swept through and cleaned him out. Remarriage was, as far as he was concerned, entirely off the table.
"One time at the altar was enough for me, Granger."
Sure, that had been said somewhere around the end of the first year of their re-acquaintance, but it was something Hermione had kept at the forefront of her mind when dealing with the man ever since.
Of course, she didn't have to work too hard to remind herself of that fact as it was reinforced every time they went on mission to some place foreign and were given separate rooms. Honestly, the sheer number of women Malfoy brought back to his hotel bed over the years... Well, they took several pairs of hands to count! He had her tally beaten by a factor of nearly four in that regard. Simply unacceptable.
Which brought her face-to-face once more with rule numero dos: never get involved with a man who prefers a la carte to the main entree, as it cheapens the whole point of the meal. At least Hermione was looking for a second chance at love, even if it was all in the wrong places. Malfoy, however, was quickly becoming known as the devoted bachelor by all the rags.
So, although she was tempted by the man's continual offers for hot, hard sex in any position she wanted, Hermione felt it safer to turn him down.
And she took a lot of cold showers... just like now.
TO BE CONTINUES...
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
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Preview of Chapter 3:
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"So, where do you plan to head for your break?" Draco asked her as they left Bill's office and headed down the hallway together towards the exit.
Hermione shrugged. "Back to Greece, I suppose. My cousin has been writing lately, asking me to come so she and the rest of the clan can show me around my mother's ancestral country."
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Truthfully, she needed to get away from Draco. Their four-month-long assignment this time had brought them dangerously close to crossing lines that would have jeopardized their working relationship, and she was feeling a little too sex-starved to trust herself around him at the moment.
She needed a shag, badly. No deeper, conflicting emotions, no past history to muck things up. Just fun, no strings... and just until she could get the vision of Malfoy, half-naked with a towel around his hips, out of her head.