AUTHOR'S NOTE: Sorry, dear lovely readers, I'm late. I'm down with fluu, dehydrated to the extent that I can't stand straight, on my own, for more than ten minutes. Pray for my soul. *sigh*

So... One place I'm mostly not away from, is tumblr. Catch me there if it's more than a week. i-heart-hogwarts, would be me.

Now, about this, I'm sorry I forgot to clarify the previous time - Draco is being referred to as 'Malfoy Junior', because he's the sole heir to Lucius Malfoy's position at the Head of their family Potions' firm.

Read on... it's gonna get darker, from now on.

3: Now That Storm Has Gone

Draco looks away from the unconscious brunette as tears blur his vision. For some unfathomable reason, it feels as if he's overdone it. It's ridiculous, of course, because he knows how none of this is actually going to affect her, but -

His gaze travels back to Hermione's slackened body and splotchy, red face. Is she faking all of it?

A frown settles on Draco's forehead. Is it even possible to fake unconsciousness?

His brain - which he'd already muddled up quite enough with the three bottles of firewhiskey he'd emptied - gets even foggier with this thought. Why is she behaving like this?

Suddenly, he gets up and grabs his wand from the side-table. Walking up to the love of his life on shaky legs, he points his piece of Hawthorn at her. "Somno Exsuscitem," he murmurs, his voice thick with anticipation.

A second passes. Then two. Then five, ten, thirty - a minute.

"I - is she… actually…?"

Draco starts at the squeak, just remembering the presence of a third person in the room.

He slumps on the floor next to Hermione, legs crossed and elbows rested on his knees, as he drops his face into his palms. "Yes," he grunts into his hands, "she really is."

"You've got to be kidding me!" Draco exclaimed as soon as he crossed the threshold to the exclusive - VIP - section of Blends and Some. "What on earth are you here for?"

Hermione Granger's head whipped around to look at him, eyes wide, before her tensed posture slumped and she let out a suffering groan. "Of course, I'll bump into you, today!" she muttered, bitterly. "The only day of the week when I'm really not pissed at my boss, and the git of the century honours me by his presence to destroy my delicate mood - "

"Is that so?" Draco snapped, scowling. "You'd blame this on me, Granger? Just for your information, it is me who's better fitting to be here, not - "

"What?" Granger practically shrieked. "You're better fitting - for Merlin's sake, Malfoy, stop with this rant of how you deserve better, and I'm snatching away all of it!"

"Not that it it's not true," Draco retorted, acidly, "but I wasn't referring to the job, this once. Not in that sense, at least. What I meant," he sneered, "is that I'm a Potioneer - at a company which is the best in the entire Wizarding Britain, not to forget - "

"And as if," the brunette bitch cut him, again, "I have all day to listen to your damning job, yeah?"

Draco bristled. "This is the bloody place where all my supplies come from!" he yelled, taking complete benefit of the seclusion of this particular wing of the store. "And this" - he gestured about them - "is the VIP section, where all the selective stuff comes from." He looked away from her frowning face, and examined his nails. "And hence, you're out of place."

"Hardly," she scoffed, turning away and bending to scoop up something from the lower shelves, and -

Draco's breath hitched.

The curve of her arse was such a gorgeous, heart-shaped, plump beauty, that he swore he could spend his lazy afternoons - the ones he had become used to spend by lounging about in a delirious state in his office - by enjoying merely the view if he got a picture of this heart-shaped arse, and - and if he got to touch, oh, if he ever got to touch, he would squeeze and squeeze and - and knead and bloody molest the fuck out of -

"Malfoy?" Clicking fingers before his face brought Draco back.

Coughing violently, Draco turned away from a thoroughly confused Granger. "What?" he coughed.

"Uh, I - are you okay?" Granger's voice sounded so lost, that he would have laughed his butt off at its expense, if he weren't trying to adjust his very tented trousers, at the moment.

"I - I'm fine, Granger," he spat back.

"O - kay," she dragged out, not sounding convinced. "I was showing you the canisters of paint that I've come to purchase, so that you - "

"Yes, yes, I get it," he hurriedly interrupted, limping out of the small, confined VIP section.

Draco swears under his breath as soon as he reaches the fifth step from the bottom, down the staircase of his wing, and spots his parents in the sitting room. They're waiting for him, he knows, because they never spend time in this main sitting room, this late at night. And he has a hunch that they're here because Caterina hasn't been a good actress.

Draco swears again. If they're here now, it is quite a possibility that at least one of them was here when Hermione came. Shit.

He tries to, subtly, slink back into the shadows that fall over till the fourth step from the bottom, but realises that he hasn't been subtle enough when his pacing mother's sharp gaze snaps up to meet his. She stops in her tracks.

"Draco," she says, icily. "How thoughtful of you to finally show us your face."

Gulping, Draco runs a hand over his face, the other over his hair, and then both of them over his badly crumpled shirt.

Then he flits down the rest of the stairs.

"You know," Narcissa begins in a snappy tone, "when I was five months pregnant with you, Bellatrix - "

"Cissa," Lucius cuts in, giving her a meaningful look from his position on the recliner.

Narcissa resumes her pacing.

"And you," Lucius continues, gazing at Draco with an expressionless face, "a word?"

Draco gives a curt nod before walking over to the sofa his father has pointed at. "Yes, father?"

Lucius sighs, straightening, before he leans a little towards Draco. "What's going on, Draco?"

Tears prickle at the back of his eyes, and Draco looks resolutely away from his father's searching gaze. "I don't understand what you're talking about, father."

"Ha!" Narcissa exclaims, throwing her hands up, incredulously. "Of course, you don't! And you obviously don't know anything about those suddenly cancelled plans of yours, either, that you'd been irritating your father and I, for a week!"

Draco looks at the crackling logs in the fireplace. "Something's gone wrong," he mumbles, quietly.

Narcissa scoffs, ready to speak something, when Lucius raises a calm hand to stop her. "Wrong? What has?" he calmly asks.

Draco sighs and shakes his head. "Something awful, father. But I'm not ready to tell you about it, yet."

"Oh, aren't you?" his mother's sarcastic, hissed retort pushes his held back emotions further, and he finds it impossible to talk past the lump in his throat.

Lucius hums, thoughtfully. "What was Laura here for, Draco?"

Draco stiffens. His father knows him far too well for his liking. He wouldn't be too surprised if Lucius is found to have already figured Draco's situation out.

"Yes, that too," Narcissa adds, now a more concerned frown etched across her face, contrary to the earlier disappointment.

"I - I had something to - to discuss," Draco lies, feeling almost stunned at how difficult it is being, "something ab - about Ricky Rogers."

Narcissa snorts. "Oh? And that explains her smudged mascara," she spits, sarcastically, poisonously, "and - and all the bruises on her neck and - "

"Cissy, please," Lucius cuts in, sounding terribly exasperated. Then he looks at Draco with conflict in his eyes. "And what happened with Miss Granger?"

Draco sucks in a sharp breath. "What - I don't…" He trails off as his father sighs, shaking his head in disappointment. That action hits home for Draco, and he's suddenly tired. "She lied, father."

Narcissa's choked exhale is loud in the silence that follows Draco's words. "What?" she hisses, shocked. "Lied? Whatever does that mean, Draco?"

The lump in his throat grows exponentially, and Draco has to swallow, repeatedly, to clear a wide enough fraction of the passage to speak. "Sh - she just… about ou - ou - our relationship," he manages, ending up with a sob.

"Her feelings, you mean?" Lucius questions, quietly. "Her involvement with you?"

Draco nods, wordlessly, biting hard on his lower lip to hold back the tremors that'd be shaking it if he doesn't.

"How did you figure?" Narcissa asks, her voice really tiny.

"She and Ginny Weasley were talking about it," he snarls, anger coursing through his veins as his mind replays the afternoon.

"Oh, Merlin," Lucius breathes out. "And? Did she say something in her defence?"

Draco blinks, looking at his father strangely. "What she said? I - I didn't confront her, father, what are you talking about?"

Narcissa drops down on the couch, next to Lucius, and clutches desperately on the wizard's hand as she looks at Draco with wide uncertainty in her eyes. "Are you serious, Draco?"

Numbly, Draco nods. What is the big deal if he didn't? He didn't want to hear the obvious lies she'd have spouted - the blatant excuses she'd have made. He didn't want to end up being an absolute fool, at the end of this all, by getting lured by her innocence and believing her lies.

"Oh, son, what were you thinking?" Lucius snaps, groaning mildly as Narcissa clicks her tongue.

"I was… father, I didn't want to make a fool of myself!" Draco defends himself, jumping to his feet. "Because, obviously - "

"What was Caterina doing here, again, Draco?" his mother cuts in, eyes narrowed.

Draco sighs. He'd have to tell them, sooner or later. "I'm courting her, from this day on."

Narcissa raises from her seat with a gasp. "You what?"

"Narcissa - "

"No, Lucius, enough of this calming down!" she snaps. "This boy has lost his mind, and that is that!" Then she takes a breath and turns on her heels. Halfway to the staircase leading up to hers and his father's wing in the manor, she looks at Draco, over her shoulder. "I'm leaving off for Andromeda's. Contact me when you've cleared this mess," she sneers before walking off.

Draco's desperate gaze finds his father's crestfallen face.

"You better make a quick job of clearing it," Lucius grumbles.

Draco rolled back his shoulders. Fucking advertisement was going to end his life!

Then he let his imagination swim.

What would it have been like if he would've been made Senior Analyst of the Advertisement Department at the Ministry? This nuisance wouldn't have been taking place, for one.

Then he recalled his conversation with Granger about the Head of Department being a squib, and took comfort from the fact that he wasn't working under him - the least he could do in the name of restoring the Malfoy integrity, post war, was maintaining their prime pride - the refined magic that flowed in their blood - by refraining from working under a magic-less squib.

But, then, he started recalling other, really uncalled for things associated with one Hermione Granger, and - the heart-shaped curve that was her ass, and the pink, deep pink points that were her nipples, atop those perfect, honey-gold mounds, and -

And Draco cleared his throat, and stepped into his father's study, where the older wizard was engaged in a ferocious discussions with a certain brunette witch that Draco didn't actually lust after. Just slightly. Very slightly.

"...and the glory - ah, Draco, you're here!" his father exclaimed, cutting himself off, as their eyes met.

"Good evening, father," Draco intoned, tilting his head towards him before giving an almost subtle glare to Hermione Granger. "Granger," he deadpanned when she met his gaze head on.

"Draco." Granger nodded before quickly focussing back on the myriad of papers spread on the table between her and Lucius.

Draco sauntered in and dropped in the chair next to hers. "Yes, father," he breathed out, absentmindedly adjusting his sapphire cufflinks. "What did you want to discuss?"

Lucius, meanwhile, shuffled through the stack of, actually, ancient looking parchments placed before him to pull one out and forward it to Draco.

Draco's brows shot up in alarm as he mechanically extracted the sheet from his father's hand. Then he glanced at the text, and his mouth fell open, as well. Lucius had handed over to him the records of the market and public value that Felicis Potions held, in the year 1972.

"We were at the top, Draco,"Lucius drawled, bitterness evident in his tone. "The Ministry couldn't afford things that we had involved in our campaigns. Miss Granger?"

Granger nodded, mouth twisted in evident reluctance at having to agree to the prowess of the business that the Malfoy family had once held. "That is true, Draco," she said, then, flipping through a tattered looking journal. "Even the Ministry of Magic didn't take the measures that were taken by your father's company, and this is despite the obvious benefit that the Ministry had, just because."

"So," Draco mumbled, cocking an eyebrow at his father, "Granger, here, is going to play espionage and bring out the Ministry's secrets of advertisement for us?"

Granger chokes on a cough, reaching forward to grab the goblet of water placed on Lucius' study, while Lucius himself merely chuckles.

"Stop being cute, Draco, it doesn't suit you." Lucius cleared his throat, giving a tiny smile to a really flustered Hermione. "Miss Granger is merely going to supervise our advertising strategies. Effectively, for a year, right now."

Somno Exsuscitem means, simply, 'awaken' in Latin. (At least that's what Google Translate says.) I've used it merely to signify that Draco's suspecting Hermione and so he tries a spell that she wont know to repel.

So... Review, please! xo!

Aishwarya.