He snapped his mouth shut obediently.
The sight of him, shirtless and dark eyed, leaning against a bookshelf as he stared down at her was the sexiest thing Hermione had ever laid eyes on. The image was going to stay with her forever.
The silence lasted for all of thirty seconds.
"Sorry. I can't stop talking yet," he announced straightening and she nearly groaned. "You're still wearing too many clothes. I'll stop talking when you're naked."
He smirked as Hermione fought between the urge to smack him or let him undress her.
"Fine," she grumbled as he pulled her into his arms. "But I get to smack you if you use another five syllable word."
"Fine, you violent muggle-born," he agreed as he slid her robes off her shoulders to pool at her feet and began unbuttoning her blouse. "Just allow me to tell you how lascivious, libidinous, and concupiscent you make me."
Hermione gritted her teeth.
"Four syllables again and I'm smacking you..." she tried to threaten. But her voice faded away into a whimper as his hands slid down her back as he pulled her shirt off and started kissing down her sternum and in between her breasts.
"I have to admit," he muttered as he peeled the cup of her bra off of one breast and started teasing it. "I was slightly chagrined to realize you aren't as pure as I always imagined you."
Hermione stiffened slightly. If Draco Malfoy revealed himself to be a chauvinist pig just then it was going to have a severe dampening affect upon her mood.
"I had all these fantasies about corrupting you that I'm going to have to lay to the wayside," he expounded. "But—the revelation that you were wearing a red lace bra this entire time has me completely over it. Good Merlin, why didn't I seduce you sooner?"
Hermione snorted.
"A witch is entitled to her secrets. Did you expect me to mention it when you were going on and on about how I was the most unattractive woman you had ever laid eyes on and how the sight of me was enough to make people blind themselves?"
"Lies. All lies. I swear," he said penitently. "Although, if you had mentioned it I probably would have started seducing you in the first room we re-warded."
"You didn't seduce me." She scoffed. "If anything I seduced you."
"Maybe I was playing hard to get," he proposed.
Hermione sniggered.
"Is that what that was?" she inquired as he unzipped her skirt and slid it down her hips.
"Matching knickers." He groaned. "Fucking hell. Yes. Let's go with that. This whole month was a long elaborate attempt to seduce you."
"Yes. Virgins do have a weakness for wizards sulking in corners playing maths puzzles with a library's numerical organization system," she quipped and then gasped as he wrapped his mouth around a nipple and started sucking on it so that she collapsed slightly into his arms.
He laid her out on his robes and stared down at her. His eyes were practically black.
"Lets call it a mutual seduction," he finally said after staring at her for a minute.
"If you'll stop talking I'll agree to call it anything you want," she told him.
"You're not naked yet." He growled and leaned over and started kissing her while his hands began roaming over her mostly naked body.
"Fuck. I have spent a considerable amount of time imagining you under those generously sized robes of yours and I must say I failed to do you justice. Your knickers and bra have left me undone."
"Malfoy..." Hermione said between gritted teeth as she fought not to arch against him. This was her one and only chance to shag someone in a library and Malfoy was currently bollocking it entirely up. "I'm going to confess now, I have had a fantasy about having sex in a library for longer than I care to admit. But none of the versions I've ever devised have involved this much talking."
Malfoy stilled and then, to her horror, sat up to stare at her again.
"Good Merlin," he breathed. "You have no idea how many times I have imagined shagging you in the restricted section of Hogwarts."
"Yes, well," Hermione nodded as primly as she could for wearing nothing but bra, knickers, and oxford heels while lying beneath a half naked wizard. "Quietness, as you may recall, is a general aspect of libraries."
"Ohhh..." He chuckled softly. "Now I understand."
Malfoy's smirk became positively sinful as he leaned down and purred in her ear so softly she had to strain to hear him.
"I'm going to make you scream, Granger. Best keep it in."
Hermione bit her lip to keep from whimpering and nodded.
Then he kissed her and it was toe curling as their bodies pressed against each other. Long slow, languorously passionate—but then...
Hermione should never have told Malfoy about her fantasy.
The man was evil incarnate. He became utterly silent and taunting as he slid down her body, kissing and nipping and teasing until she'd gasp or quietly moan and then he'd immediately stop, look up, and shush her before continuing. Unclasping her bra and pulling it off so that he could tease her breasts until her nipples ached from how hard they'd grown.
It wasn't hot, fast, fiery sex but it wasn't slow, sugary sex either. It was torture. He made his way all the way up and down her body several times. Discovering details even she hadn't known about, like the sensitivity of her Achilles' tendons and inner calves.
By the time he made his way up to snog her for the third time she was ready to weep with frustration. As he kissed along her jaw she gave a shuddering whimper and he paused slightly and murmured in her ear.
"Hush now. The assistant librarian is nearby and she's got the most terrifying pinched look of disapproval you'll ever see on a woman."
Hermione was going murder him. As soon as he shagged her. She was going to murder him.
"Malfoy, if you don't shag me soon I will just get myself off," she muttered in his ear.
He pulled back to stare at her.
"I would love to see that," he growled.
Oh Merlin, she'd made it worse.
"Please, Malfoy," she gritted out.
"Call me Draco," he ordered huskily.
"Please, Draco."
She was whimpering. She was begging. She was going to kill him later. But right now she needed to have sex with him.
He slid his hand down and ran his fingers lightly over her knickers and she arched up, desperate for more contact. Then he hooked his fingers around her knickers and pulled them off.
He slid his fingers over her folds and sank one into her. An unmuffled moan tore itself from her lips and Draco immediately clamped a hand over her mouth to smother it. Bloody Merlin, this was an exact fantasy of hers.
"Shhhhhh. We're in a library, Hermione Granger," He murmured to her as he added a second finger and pumped into her with agonizing slowness.
She was going to die if he kept teasing her like this.
"I don't know if I'm ever going to forgive myself for not realizing you had a library kink during the last year of Hogwarts. You are so sly. Did you wear lace knickers then too?" he inquired in a low but conversational tone of voice.
She pulled his hand off her mouth.
"You said you were going to shut up when I was naked," she said through gritted teeth.
"Make me," he taunted her softly.
Fuck him.
She wrenched herself away from his hands pounced him. Kissing him with a vengeance.
He gathered her into his arms and fell back against a shelf. She was grinding herself against his lap as she pressed her whole body against his and kissed him punishingly.
He deserved to suffer after teasing her like that.
She pinched his nipples until he hissed and then dragged her nails down his torso. Nipping his lips hard as she slid one hand down into his trousers to grip him and ensure he was as achingly aroused as she was.
"Fuck me, Hermione," he groaned against her lips as she slid her hand up and down his rigid cock. His hands were still sliding over her body and tugging at her hair.
"I won't yet, you git," she muttered vengefully.
"I'm sorry," he gasped. His eyes went wide as she dropped her head down and started licking his nipples the way he had mercilessly teased her own. "You have no fucking idea how long I've wanted to touch you."
"Shhhhh." She purred in his ear before nipping it lightly. "We're in a library, Draco Malfoy. The assistant librarian is a virginal prude with starched knickers. If she finds you she'll make you write lines."
He made a choking sound.
"You must know a different librarian than I do," he said in a strangled voice. "The one I know is secretly a minx and so fucking sexy I think it may kill me."
"Sexy librarian fantasies now, Malfoy?" she inquired as she continued to make him grow harder and harder in her hand.
"It's a new one I'm trying." He whimpered. "Oh, Merlin, Granger, please let me up so I can shag you."
"Make me," she taunted.
That was apparently all the permission he needed. He promptly flipped her onto her back as he quickly relieved himself of his trousers and pants.
She cradled him between her hips as he aligned himself and sank into her.
"Oh fuck, Granger, you are so perfect," He groaned as he began moving in her.
She canted her hips and hooked her heels behind his thighs trying to drive him to move quicker. She wanted it hard and fast, to feel him lose control.
She wanted to watch him lose control.
But he wouldn't waver.
Good Merlin, where did Malfoy get his sexual restraint? No one who talked so much should be capable of possessing such a ridiculous quality of self-control. Was he secretly into tantric sex or something?
The was no interrupting his intentional, controlled, movement.
He slid into her with slow, steady, deep thrusts and smirked like a fiend as he did it.
"I told you I was going to make you scream," he muttered when she began whimpering. "You didn't think I'd forgotten, did you?"
Hermione made an incoherent moan in response.
If she could have formed words she would have snapped that he had a bloody eidetic memory so obviously not, but her word forming abilities were temporarily disabled.
Stupid, stupid prat. This was the worst best thing that had ever happened to her.
How on earth could someone so ridiculously blond and talkative and purebred manage to be so absurdly good at sex? And how had she managed to fall into a dimensional containment ward with him? The sheer absurdity of the situation was still mind-boggling.
His hand slid down between their bodies and he found her center. Slowly, with the most agonizingly light touches, he began to tease her.
So softly...Her nerves felt like they were on fire.
He kept moving steadily even as she writhed and arched under him. Hitting her perfectly as he thrust inside her so that the tightening desire consuming her grew nearly unbearable; her whole body wound itself more and more taut.
It just kept building and building until she was trembling under him.
A loud wailing whimper wrenched itself past her lips as she neared the edge and he immediately clamped his other hand over her mouth.
"Quiet," he purred.
She shuddered as she tried to keep from moaning again.
He stared deep into her eyes with his own unnaturally grey eyes, his narrow, aristocratic face just centimeters from her own.
"Come for me, Hermione," he murmured coaxingly.
His fingers slid and teased against her sensitive nub a few times more and she shattered with a sobbing, keening cry. Muffled against his palm.
When she stopped shaking he pulled his hand away from her mouth and kissed her gasping lips; tangling his fingers in her hair as he increased his speed.
Faster and deeper.
She was practically mindless from the intensity of sensation. Barely even conscious of anything else until she felt him surge inside her as he jerked and slumped down.
Instantly a wave of utter exhaustion struck her and she drifted off, wrapping her arms around his neck and holding him.
He wasn't such a prat...
"Shit! Granger, don't kill me but please wake up."
Hermione found herself abruptly jerked awake by the sensation of Malfoy draping something over her. Cracking open a groggy eye she realized with faint bewilderment the lights were on.
The lights were on—
They were out of the ward.
Her eyes widened as she abruptly sat up looking around wildly and found—
Malfoy sitting beside her, equally naked, staring up at an stunned Ignatius Pigglesworth.
"Now, I know how this may look," Malfoy was saying with astonishing dignity. "But there is actually an extremely compelling explanation for this."
Ignatius' eyebrows looked as though they were about to climb up and take residence within his receding hairline.
"Miss Granger—you've returned," he finally said.
Hermione's face was bright red as she sat on the floor clutching Malfoy's robe in front of herself.
"How long was I gone?" she squeaked.
"Ah. Um. About three weeks now. We thought you had run away. Especially when the news of your marriage emerged following your disappearance."
"News of my marriage?" she yelped.
"Er—Yes. The wedding bond department in Britain brought attention to it after you and Mr Malfoy were both filed as being missing. Turned into rather big news I believe."
"Oh Merlin," Malfoy said in a strangled voice. "I am setting that fucking biography on fire."
"The truth is—," Hermione said in a wobbling voice. "We've actually been in the library this whole time. The Opaleye shook the building when we were recasting the ward on the history room, and I tripped and caused—Mr Malfoy and myself to fall into it. And—it took us a while to figure out how to get out."
Hermione was getting the distinct impression that finding people in a state of postcoital bewilderment was not something that had ever happened in the Library of Alexandria before.
"I see," said Ignatius in a tone of confused skepticism.
"The ghosts in there were rather concerned that Malfoy was the last descendant for so many of them," Hermione added. "So one of them decided that he should be married to me in the hopes he'd beget heirs sooner.
The explanation was really thin sounding when said aloud.
Why on earth was Malfoy suddenly silent? Wasn't he supposed to be the one who didn't stop taking when nervous? She glanced over at him and found him just staring at her pensively.
"Well—," Ignatius said, "Perhaps I should let you dress and then send word to the International Confederation that you have reappeared. This is all quite—irregular. So you'll probably both need to be interviewed and have statements taken. I'll go floo them now."
Ignatius turned on his heel and left at an astonishing speed for a wizard of nearly a hundred and twelve.
Hermione reached over and plucked up her bra of the bookshelf where it had been hanging with unfortunately obvious bright, red laciness. Dropping Malfoy's robes onto her lap she pulled it on and then reached for the crumpled heap that was her shirt.
"So—I think that the reason we both fell asleep so suddenly was probably due to re-experiencing time after such a long period of timeless consciousness," observed Malfoy as he pulled his shirt on. "Three weeks of being awake is a lot of mental and physical energy that we were expending without actually feeling the effects. We're probably going to be really hungry in a little while too."
It was not really what Hermione wanted to talk about.
"I think I'm probably about to be fired," she noted in a small voice.
Malfoy fell silent and didn't say anything else while they dressed.
She cast about with a wandless summoning charm and their wands rolled out from under a bookshelf near the door where they'd apparently fallen.
They both cast pressing charms and freshening charms on their clothes. Just as Hermione was about to open the door Malfoy spoke again,
"Granger—," he said in a rather strained voice.
She pulled her hand away from the door and turned to look at him.
He stood staring at her for several seconds, opening and shutting his mouth several times as though he kept changing his mind about what he wanted to say.
Finally he said, "Your hair is—"
He pointed awkwardly at it.
"You—should probably do something about it."
"Oh." She reached up and tried to smooth it. It felt like an utter mess. She blushed faintly.
While she was still combing through it with her fingers Malfoy opened the door and walked out.
When she stepped out herself he was nowhere in sight. She went down the hallway toward the foyer and found Ignatius and several other witches and wizards waiting there when she arrived.
"Miss Granger. There you are. Mr. Malfoy is already giving his statement. You can step into this room over here to give yours."
Hermione followed a stiff, reedy looking witch and wizard into one of the reading rooms and sat down to give a sanitized version of events. It took much longer than she expected, the International Confederation was apparently aghast that such a thing could have happened.
When she re-emerged the foyer had emptied. There was no Malfoy in sight.
"Mr Malfoy had to leave," Ignatius informed her when he noticed her glancing around. "You know the regulations about three week visiting limitations. Apparently it still counts even in dimensional containment wards."
"Oh," Hermione said in a small voice. There was a slightly painful, sinking sensation in her stomach at the news.
She had thought—
Well—she'd thought he would say goodbye.
"Are you still wanting to complete your contract?" Ignatius inquired. "Of course, I understand after what happened that you might not want to, but the Library would sorely miss your talents."
"Oh... of course I'd like to stay," Hermione said, overcome with relief that she wouldn't be fired.
Things settled back into place after a few days. She was desperate to read again, but—
She found herself missing Malfoy. His conversation. His interest and ability to contribute his own information on almost any topic.
She had gotten used to his talking.
The library was so quiet.
Days passed...
She never heard from Malfoy. Not a word.
After a week she sent an owl. But nothing came back in reply.
She wrote a second note and then tossed it into the fireplace.
It didn't matter.
It had been nothing.
It was just—a random accident that happened to befall them. Nothing more.
He probably had enough memories of her now to last him a lifetime or propel him entirely free of his crush.
She—wasn't that awful, was she?
Maybe she had been rather angry and aggressive when they'd had sex. And—she'd never actually taken back all the mean things she'd said to him.
He had been pretty horrified when he found out the whole world knew they'd gotten married. Having a little secret crush on her was hardly the same as actually being publicly married to the most virginal and prudish individual he'd ever been acquainted with.
It was all—nothing.
Just an unfortunate workplace incident. Best forgotten.
Over now.
She was lucky to still have her job. She should focus on that.
But—Hermione found herself floating through her duties for a while. Her motivation suddenly seemed to have drained away from her. She still performed her job quite ably, after all she was a responsible witch of twenty-six, but her passion for it felt somewhat faded.
In her spare time, when she would read, she would often find her mind wandering and realize that she couldn't remember a single line—being that, unlike some irritating people, she didn't have a memory that recalled everything just by glancing at it once.
Life at the library suddenly seemed to pass much more slowly.
A few months later Ignatius came in excitedly to inform her that the International Confederation had finally approved a short-term librarian to add to their staff. Ignatius wanted to know if it was alright to put the new member in Hermione's room, given that Mordred had a tendency toward trying to eat her roommates and Ignatius was a wizard now nearing his hundred and twelfth birthday.
Hermione sighed and agreed, hoping that, whomever she was, the new librarian was less of a gossip than Parvati and Lavender had been back in school. Hermione had not shared a room with anyone since leaving school because she found incessant chattering truly grating when she was trying to sleep.
Presumably—hopefully, it would be a severe, taciturn woman considerably older than Hermione. Given how rare it was for anyone to get cleared to come to the library she was probably already a librarian elsewhere, or possibly recently retired from a desk job.
According to Ignatius the new librarian was even a descendant. He was quite hopeful that the library would be able to develop some new wards with the added help. Hermione brightened at the thought, it was getting rather irritating to have to chase down and subdue a Opaleye every few days.
So Hermione went to her little room and shoved all her possessions over into one corner and transfigured another bed against the far wall. Hermione wasn't sure if the newcomer would want a desk—well, she could conjured one herself if she did.
Then Hermione set out to dust the library. It required a trickier spell than an all purpose cleaning charm, and she lost track of time. When she finished dusting her hair was a frazzled mess from the wind charm and the clock in the hall was indicating that the new staff member had probably arrived by portkey several minutes before.
She sighed. She had meant to freshen up a bit—But no matter, appearances weren't everything. Hermione doubted anyone who came to work in the library would care about what her hair looked like. So she patted it down half-heartedly, straightened her skirt and headed toward the foyer.
When she arrived and looked around she was surprised to see that the librarian had not arrived yet. There were no matronly, severe looking witches in sight.
Rather, standing there bag in hand, was a pointy featured, practically albino man who was too tall and had unnatural looking eyes that stared intently at her the moment she walked into the foyer.
She blinked in confusion.
"Are you here for re-warding again, Malfoy?" she inquired, feeling slightly betrayed and baffled by running unexpectedly into him.
"No. I'm not due back for that for two years," he replied smirking.
She straightened somewhat and tried to make herself maintain a businesslike distance between them.
"Oh, right— to access some of your family's books then. Have you been assigned a reading room yet?" She went over to the desk to look over the logbook.
"No," he replied blandly. "They're putting me into a room elsewhere."
Well—that was rather non-regulation. Strange no one had mentioned it to her.
"Where are they putting you?"
"In your room, I believe." He smirked.
"What—?" she choked.
"Didn't Pigglesworth mention it? I'm the new librarian," he informed her smugly.
She stared at him.
"You became a librarian? Why would you become a librarian?" she asked in a bewildered voice.
"Why do you think?" he asked mockingly.
She stared at him for several seconds.
"I don't know," she said in a flat tone.
"Come now, Granger. Surely you must have some idea." His voice was rather needling.
"I don't," she said in a bitter tone, "Everything about you tends to surprise, disappoint, or confuse me."
"God, Granger," he snorted. "You. You are the only reason I would get a job as a librarian anywhere. Much less in a library that I'd be required to live in. This is probably going to bring permanent ruin to my reputation," he whined, slumping dramatically against the wall.
"Now everyone is going think I'm an insufferable know-it-all too," he complained.
"Why are you here?" she demanded. She did not feel like making any assumptions at the moment. She didn't think she could handle trying to rationalize more things that ended up meaning—nothing.
He rolled his eyes.
"I couldn't very well leave my wife to live in a dangerous library all by herself," he said matter of factly. "Malfoys are not traditionally very honorable, but there are a few lines we don't cross. We even have a code of conduct that says something about not blithely allowing ones spouse to live alone among soul-siphoning magical treatises. At least it should— if it doesn't we can have it amended. I believe the code of conduct is actually kept somewhere in this library, maybe in the general section—" He abruptly interrupted his own rambling.
"Anyway," he waved his hand dismissively. "Given how clumsy you are, the next time that Opaleye transfigures itself you're liable to go falling into a dimensional containment ward with some other, less attractive descendant, and make me wait thirty years just to see you."
Well—," he hedged, "I think I would have to wait that long—I like to imagine that you aren't the type who consents to have library sex with just any descendant you happened to do re-warding with—"
He was rambling again and stopped abruptly once more before resuming.
"Anyway—if you did go off and fall into another ward I would most definitely get grey hair and sneer wrinkles waiting thirty years to see you and your dreadful hair again. And that would really throw quite a wrench into the elaborate scheme I devised for convincing you to stay married to me."
"So—I was going to tell you all about these plans before I left, but they dragged me out of here as soon as I finished giving my statement and the only loophole I could find to come back was applying to become a librarian. And apparently you're not allowed to send any mail to the Library when you're undergoing the background checks and interview processes. And I'll have you know, that those processes take bloody ages when you happen to be an ex-death eater. I sat through so many probing interviews I even got tired of talking, if you can believe it. "
He paused to study her.
Hermione was not crying.
There was simply—a great overabundance of dust in the library. The tears currently streaming down her face were most assuredly due to tiny particles that had adhered themselves to her corneas. And the shuddering of her chest was caused by—the asthma that she had abruptly developed. And the way her jaw was trembling was certainly just due to—how cold the Library was.
She was not weeping in the middle of the library foyer in front of Draco Malfoy.
"So," he said, "I have very little experience as a librarian. I'm not entirely clear what all it involves aside from reshelving books and looking prudish and severe. I wasn't even sure what I was supposed to pack. The only librarian I have ever spent any time thinking about happens to be female, and I don't think oxford heels and wool pencil skirts suit my frame, and red lace is not particularly flattering on me, even in small quantities. But I have brought a wide selection of cardigans, and bow ties, and tweed jackets, and even some spectacles—in case I am required to glare disapprovingly over them any anyone. Although, I'm happy to lend the spectacles to you, provided you promise to only use them for glaring at me. And—"
"For Merlin's sake, Malfoy," Hermione sobbed, "shut up!"
"Make me," he taunted.
So—seeing as there was no other option, and his endless prattling was liable to upset the books, she strode over, grabbed him by his robes, and kissed him.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
The End