Draco waited until the door of their suite had shut behind them with a click and Hermione had cast a muffliato before he opened his mouth to speak. Even then, she interrupted him. "I don't still feel anything –" she began to say.

At the same time, he asked, "Are you okay?"

They both stopped and looked at one another. "I'm fine," Hermione said.

Over her, Draco said, "Of course you don't. Don't be ridiculous."

"I was worried," Hermione began and stopped again. This seemed to be a conversation of half-finished sentences. She hated those. What, exactly, had she been worried about? That he was afraid she was still in love with her ex? That their marriage was a sham? She didn't even know.

"He's such a filthy piece of scum," Draco said, his mouth set in a grim line. "Sneaking around my house, breaking into your room, ransacking your things." He ran a hand through his hair in obvious frustration.

She felt she had to justify why she had saved even a single portion of one of the notes from the Order. It had been a terrible risk. She'd known that at the time, but she'd still done it. "It's not that I am still in love with him," she said. "It's not that." She didn't know how to begin.

"I saved the flowers Pansy gave me for the Yule Ball for years," Draco said before she could talk about how she had needed to remind herself that she had friends, that Ron and Harry hadn't abandoned her here. "I kept it in a little box, but I didn't think to put a stasis charm on it, and the rose slowly turned brown and crumbled, but I didn't care. Sometimes, that horrible year when Voldemort was here, I would shut the door of my room, open the box, and look at this dead flower, and I would remember that there had been a time when all I had cared about was that the most popular girl in my year had agreed to go to an important party as my date." He looked up at Hermione and shrugged but she saw all the pain in that gesture. It wasn't fair that it had stopped being that easy. "The box is probably still in my old room."

Hermione looked down at her feet and Draco wrapped his arms around her. He rested his chin on her shoulder and sighed into her neck. She lifted her own hands to slowly wrap her arms around his back. "Why does everything have to be awful?" she asked.

"Because people like Dolohov make it awful," Draco said.

She couldn't argue with that. Her room felt as though it had been violated. She didn't know how long he'd had that little scrap of paper, but everywhere and she looked inside the room she imagined his hands. She pictured him opening drawers, thumbing through all of her books, lifting out her underpants and brassieres. It all made her skin crawl.

"I don't suppose your mother knows any good cleaning charms?" she asked. She didn't think she'd ever get the room clean. Some stains you couldn't scour away no matter how hard you tried. That didn't mean she didn't plan to make an attempt. She'd scrub this place until her hands were so raw they bled if that's what it took to stop seeing him everywhere.

"I'm sure she does." Draco brushed his lips along her skin and she sighed and leaned into him. "We can move to another suite if you want."

She did, but then she didn't as well. Her head was a mess. She didn't want to let that bastard chase her away. He hadn't chased her away from the Department of Prophecy when she'd been a girl and he hadn't pushed her out of her role with the Order, and she wouldn't let him drive her out of this room. "I think cleaning it will do," she said. She sniffed with all the arrogance she'd learned from Narcissa. "He might have fleas."

Draco swallowed a laugh and she turned to face him. He set his hands on either side of her face and brushed his thumbs against her skin. "I love you, you know," he said seriously. "Terrifying, brilliant woman."

"Even after..." she started to say, disbelieving that even after he'd discovered she'd kept that note, even after she'd put them all at risk he was still so calm. "You aren't?"

"Mad?" he asked, trying to finish her sentence, presumably trying to make sense of her half sentences. He sounded confused, but mad wasn't what she'd meant. Hurt was what she'd meant, although she wasn't bothered he had flowers from Pansy tucked away. She knew where his heart sat now, and she took a deep, shuddering breath as she stared into his grey eyes.

"I wouldn't blame you if you were," she said.

"Well, I'm not."

He leaned forward and pressed his lips to her. He hadn't eaten much at dinner and she could taste the wine on his lips. The wine, his fear, his love. Or maybe she was imagining things, like some sort of deranged sommelier nattering on about notes of blackcurrants or honey in the grapes. She didn't care. She opened her mouth and let herself drown in the feel of his lips and his tongue and the taste of the wine from dinner. She could stand here forever and let herself dream of summer and peace and a time his hands could slide up to lock themselves in her hair, the way they were doing now, and that would be all that mattered. She could lose herself in the fantasy there was nothing but this.

He pulled his mouth away long enough to mutter a hoarse charm at the fireplace, and flames roared up. A log cracked at the sudden influx of heat and settled downward, sending up a rush of sparks. She let him pull her down to the carpet, lush and soft and surely more expensive than anything she'd ever owned, and fumbled with the buttons on his shirt. Her hands had forgotten how to work, and she pushed the tiny bit of glittering, bespoke perfection first left, then up, but no matter what she did it caught against the fabric. Finally, frustrated beyond speech and wanting to get at his skin, she yanked at the two sides of his shirt. She heard a tearing sound, and the button jerked then fell away. She began to fight with the next one, then gave up and, with a sharp pull, yanked the whole thing away. Draco laughed a little, and ran a thumb along the side of her jaw, tracing the shape of her, but she wasn't interested in that so much as his skin. His gleaming, pale skin, so marked with scars. She set her fingers along the ones Harry had given him. Curse scars never healed quite right. She had her own to remind her of that.

She touched the skin, puckered and white, even against his natural paleness, then pressed her lips to the injury. "We'll get them," she whispered. Her breath was hot against his skin, and she could feel tears stinging in the corners of her eyes. It was all so unfair. His scars. Her scars. The war. This horrible, political aftermath. It was unfair and she hated it and she needed to grow up and get the job done. Wallowing never helped anyone.

"Harry did that to me," Draco said a little wryly. "I'm not sure 'getting him' is in the plans."

Hermione gave him a shove but it was what she needed. It took the edge off her melancholy. "Harry gets a pass," she said.

"And I did things as bad to him," Draco said. "And you. And worse to people like Katie Bell."

"And you get a pass as well."

"You're pretty free with the passes," he said.

She tossed her hair. "I," she said, "am Hermione Granger. Malfoy. Granger-Malfoy."

He laughed again and she gave him another shove. He let himself fall back so he was leaning on his elbows, looking up at her. The orange light from the fire danced across his chest and she splayed her hand out so she could watch the patterns of darkness and light rise up and down over her own skin. Her fingers made shadows of their own, and she watched them grow and shrink with the light, stretching across Draco then retreating back to huddle at the base of her palm as the firelight surged and died back again.

She pushed the shirt off his shoulders and he lifted first one hand, then the other, so he could pull his arms through. After he tossed it to the side, he crossed his arms behind his head, lay back, and said, "Your turn."

She blinked at him, not sure she knew what he meant. He elaborated.

"You seemed to be very focused on undressing me," he said. "I'll let you take off your own."

She licked at her lips, suddenly half shy, which was ridiculous because they were married, they'd been on a honeymoon, they slept in the same bed, and neither of them were exactly embracing celibacy. This felt wanton, though, and new. She settled back on her heels and bit at her lower lip, then reached up. Earlier, she'd pulled her hair back into a twist using magic and a single pin. She found the pin with her fingers, whispered the charm to release her curls, and pulled it out. Her hair tumbled down around her shoulders, a mess of twists that wanted to go this way and that and anyway but the one she wanted. She'd spent years thinking of her hair as a disaster, when she'd thought of it at all. It was hard to see herself as the sort of siren who pulled down her bun, tossed her head, and made men suck in their breath. Draco sucked his in, however, and the evidence that he liked the gesture was unmistakable.

This was an old power, older than wands and charms and potions, and available to all women, Muggle and magical alike. She licked her lips, and Draco shuddered. She'd yanked his shirt off, but she undid her own buttons with far more deliberation, and spared a quick moment of thanks for whatever prescience had led her to wear a good bra. It didn't match her pants, of course. She hadn't been that lucky. At least it wasn't one of the ratty ones, though, good for days you didn't want to bother with anything but comfort.

She lowered her shirt over her shoulders even as she kept working on the buttons, and as the cream satin of the not-so-ratty bra appeared, Draco moistened his lips. His eyes flicked from the mounds of her breasts to her eyes and back again. "I shouldn't stare," he said huskily.

"Oh, you should," she said. She undid the last of the buttons and pulled her arms languidly out of the sleeves. She'd never appreciated how slowly a woman could peel herself out of a shirt before. She let her tongue slide over her lips as she tossed her blouse to the side and hooked a thumb under one of her bra straps.

"You're trying to kill me," Draco said. He reached a hand up toward her and she batted it back down.

"You suggested I should take my own clothes off," she said. She wanted to sound prim but she sounded amused and powerful and the feeling of being in total control made her want to move even more slowly. "You'll lie there like a good boy and wait until I've taken care of all these."

She slid forward along his legs until she was not quite brushing against the very clear outline of his enthusiasm. "Good boy, huh?" he asked.

"Can you be good?" she asked. She reached behind her back and unhooked her bra, one hand holding the cups in place even as the back fell open.

"I can be very good," he said.

She slid the first satin strap down, then the other, but didn't release the fabric she had held to her chest. Magic took care of undoing the clasp of her trousers, and magic whisked her stockings away. She had to stand up to let the trousers slide down her legs, and she kicked them across the floor with a grace she'd never have expected to discover. Draco propped himself up as she stood over him and looked up at her with hunger in his eyes.

"You can be very good?" she asked.

He nodded.

She tossed the bra down and watched his pupils dilate. He swallowed and his throat bobbed and he licked at his lips even as his hands reached for the edges of her pants. "Very good, indeed," he said.

"Prove it," she said.

He did.

. . . . . . . . . .

A/N - Thank you to fibrochemist for her very detailed beta read. This was a mess and her help was amazing. Any remaining problems are, of course, my fault.