Allison Illuminated
6/13/22
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THE PEACOCKS WERE UNIMPRESSED
A Dramione Fanfiction
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Draco Malfoy was not a particularly good man, and he was content with that.
He'd known that about himself for a long time – alright, perhaps not quite as long as he might've liked to give himself credit for, but there were only so many times one could come up against Perfect Potter and lose with their ego intact. Perhaps, he realized at some point between getting punched in the face by his future wife and killing for the first time as a Death Eater, it was bad to support the eradication of considerable swaths of the magical population. Murder was occasionally acceptable, but Draco knew he'd taken a wrong turn somewhere when his pomp and arrogance began to win him sneers rather than friends.
As always, he blamed his father.
Nevertheless, Draco was a Malfoy, and therefore even in his aimless existence under house arrest, he fully expected that his life would be exceptional in every way, and he would be rewarded for his grand servitude to Magical Britain – lying around all day was the most odious labor – with all one of his station might come to expect out of life. A wife of good breeding, plentiful assets (in both wife and estate, of course), and happiness, Merlin save him, blah-di-blah, all that proper nonsense that Mother told him he wanted "if only you'd give that darling girl a chance, Draco!"
Draco loved his mother, sometimes to his own misfortune; Narcissa had no qualms at taking advantage of her son's unconditional devotion – so when she wouldn't stop blabbering about Hermione, he looked her in the eye, said "Shut up, woman," and wandered out to the gardens to stand imperiously near the peacocks and brood. A mere three days and six hours of assessment showed him the truth. Hermione Malfoy, for all her insufferable swottishness, was most likely the best thing that had ever happened to Draco, and in the process of ignoring her he had managed to fall deeply and irrevocably in love with her. Which was convenient, because they were already married. Quite convenient indeed.
He gave his peacocks a stern, perhaps paternal nod, then began trying to figure out how one got their wife to fuck them.
His wife was where she always was – in the library, pouring over some obnoxiously dense tome, absently taking notes with one bored hand playing with her bushy hair. Draco slipped into the room, admiring her from afar, his lips quirked in bemused haughtiness. I'll be damned. Where had Hermione found the time to go and get beautiful? Her hair and her dress left something to be desired, but that was a problem he could enlist his mother to fix, and he already knew she cleaned up well. And then there were her absolutely ravishing pair of knockers, so callously buried beneath a robe better fit for a monk, a pair of tits that could have gotten her anywhere in the world. And they had, Draco supposed – into Potter's clique, underneath Viktor Krum, into Malfoy Manor. My wife has fantastic breasts, Draco thought, trying to pretend like he wasn't entranced by the deep concentration in her eyes, the gentle contours of her face, the way he could feel the nova of her magic near him, vibrating under the sheer effort of cognition that had to pass through Hermione's head every day. But her tits. Good Lord.
Maybe once Hermione came around to her status as his woman, she would do her studies naked. He liked the idea of her bare and heaving, surrounded by her precious little books. Purely for academic purposes. Obviously.
Draco attempted to communicate these things to Hermione, but what came out was, "Do you ever stop studying, woman?"
Hermione spared him a cursory amused glance. "Draco."
Tell her she's beautiful. "Honestly, when do you eat? How is your complexion not atrocious?" Draco drifted across the room, cursing himself and his good breeding. Damn it.
"Must be my mudblood genes," Hermione offered.
"Don't call yourself that."
"Can I help you?"
"A man can't enter his own library?"
"Ability and desire are two different things altogether, husband." Hermione gave the most adorable little yawn, sweeping a curl behind her ear, and Draco had to physically restrain himself from snogging her senseless right there. "You might know that, if you'd cracked a book since you graduated Hogwarts. Oh, of course. Pardon me – I misspoke. Left for darker pastures."
I love you. "I got my NEWTS."
"Yes, dear."
A battered scowl winding across his face, Draco found himself wrapping his arms around Hermione's shoulders, and he baffled when she gave a little happy hum and soaked back into his embrace. He blushed. Infuriated, he pressed his nose into her hair and breathed her in. "I hate you."
"I assure you, your feelings are unrequited," Hermione said, running her gorgeous delicate fingers over the scruff on his forearm. "I believe I've been quite cordial to you, yes? It must be terribly lonely for you to stew in hating me, Draco; I imagine it must be exhausting."
That's the problem, you bloody witch.
Draco wanted the Hermione Granger who had loathed him with a fearsome passion, not the Hermione Malfoy who patronized him with her biting apathy. He'd known this woman since she was eleven, and he knew his wife, damn it! It made him angry, so he kissed the top of her head (not like she'd think it meant anything), and tried not to pine over a version of Hermione that seemed to have vanished with the ravages of the war. He snatched her hand away from her book.
"Give me that."
"Hey!" Hermione protested. "I happen to likethat hand, thanks."
"I know that, darling," Draco snapped, pulling a ring out of his pocket. The ring had an enormous diamond that glittered in the center, a family heirloom for over seven generations. With a delicacy he rarely used, he slipped the ring onto her finger, feeling a fierce satisfaction when he felt the magic take, sealing the wedding ring in place.
Hermione blinked up at Draco in guileless confusion. She doesn't have a clue, Draco despaired.
"I do hope that's not cursed. I wrote a rather horrid countercurse into the marriage contract, and I would hate to ruin your pretty face so early-"
"Oh, shut up. It's for you."
"Oh." Hermione lifted the ring between her eyes. It sparkled in the beams of light that filtered through the stacks. She gave him a bemused smile, meeting his eyes with her brown irises, and he wanted to drown in her gaze forever. "It's nice, Draco. Thank you."
Nice. Draco wilted. "Yeah," he agreed weakly. "Of course. I'll- I'll go attend to the peacocks now."
She patted his cheek and went right back to her work.
::
Draco considered the possibility that he might never have sex again for the rest of his life.
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Malfoys were not nice. Malfoy heirlooms were not nice. Draco intended to show his infuriating, unrefined wife that basic truth of Wizarding society, even if it took emptying his entire vault to do so.
The sapphire earrings – commissioned for his great grandmother Cordelia Malfoy, of course, who by all of his father's stories had been an awful hag – with gemstones the size of pixies were accepted with a polite 'thank you.' When Draco stood around expectantly, waiting for his wife to shower him, his wealth, and his bloodline with gushing praise, Hermione rolled her eyes and put the earrings on. She shook her head about like a dog, jerking the gems around, and Draco nearly fainted.
"Don't do that!" he cried, offended.
Hermione tilted her head at him. When she was still and inanimate, like any properly bred woman was supposed to be, the sapphires brought out her eyes in the most lovely way; although, Draco tutted to himself, they truly did make her hair look like the bush it was. "What am I supposed to do with them?" Hermione asked. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were hoping to permanently extend my earlobes."
A more alien string of words had never been uttered. "What?" Draco said.
"My earlobes, darling." Hermione tugged on the sapphires, letting them bounce back into place. She had such perky earlobes. Draco rather liked them when she didn't manhandle them like she'd never handled a crown sapphire before – and Draco knew that was a very short list of women, so what was Hermione's excuse? "See? Look at them – they're positively sagging!"
Draco spluttered. "Honestly!"
"Yes?"
"What?"
"What do you mean, what?"
"What do I mean- I asked you a question, you bushy-haired swot!"
"What question?" Hermione asked. "You said 'Honestly.' So I replied, 'Yes?' Yes, 'honestly' what?"
"What?" Draco echoed feebly, hopelessly lost before the machinations of some dire failure of education his poor wife must have been subjected to by the Muggles.
The Malfoy family library stood grand in the morning light. Draco had come straight from his Ministry-escorted trip to Gringotts to deliver his wife, who was, Draco felt the intense need to remind himself, married to him, his very generous and deeply thoughtful gift of rocks which were worth money, money which was in the possession of Draco. In his singular moments of freedom for the month, Draco had decided to bestow his magnificent attentions and fortunes on her. What could Hermione possibly not understand about Draco's very clear signaling of his desire to have sex with her?
Tutting affectionately, Hermione turned the page of her book with a bored hand and reached up to pat Draco on the cheek. "That's alright, then," she said. "Take your time, love. I know how hard it is for you to understand that women have bodies and ask questions, so I shant be mad at you if you need a few extra moments to wrap your brain around my request for clarification."
Had she insulted him?
…Draco was ninety percent sure that Hermione Malfoy was having him on. She was right, of course – those were some of the peculiarities of women – but still, a little niggling that came after seventeen years of verbally sparring with his wife had him quite certain she had insulted him.
Blasted woman.
"Are you a witch or not?" Draco asked, fed up with the inquiry.
Hermione narrowed her eyes at Draco. Her expression abruptly carried a hidden flicker of malice, something dark, unrepentant, and Draco nearly choked on his own spit at her sudden resemblance to Bellatrix Lestrange, his delightfully deceased aunt. Unbidden, his gaze flickered to her left forearm
"Careful," Hermione said softly, her sapphires sparkling. "Husband."
I didn't mean it like that, he whimpered internally.
Instead, Draco sneered at her. "Use a featherlight charm on the sapphires, Granger," he spat. "What did you think I mean? Do you think any self-respecting woman would walk around with saggy earlobes? Or is your opinion of society so low that you think that anyone in our circles would even con… consider…"
Wood scraped back against wood. Raw ozone crackled through the library musk as Draco was assaulted by the scent of his wife's raw magic. Hermione rose to her feet, fists clenched, jaw tight – magic buzzed through her hair, and the sheer volume of her curly locks was enough to strike the fear of God in him. Dear Merlin, she's terrifying, he thought, trying not to wet himself. He hadn't felt so much concentrated power, so much anger, so much emotion, aimed at him since the last time he had knelt before Voldemort.
"Did you just compare me to Voldemort?" Hermione asked, methodically running her fingers up and down the length of her wand.
"Erm," Draco said. "Did I say that out loud?"
"Yes. You did."
"Oh."
"You're not very intelligent today, Draco, are you?"
I'm rather horny, Draco didn't say. I have Cruciatus damage was also discarded. Draco considered the age-honored technique of groveling, but that seemed like a step too far, especially given that he hadn't done anything wrong. He had given her a gift and Hermione hadn't even had the courtesy to repay him with a knob job. How rude. Mostly, though, somewhere in the emotionally stunted corners of his brain, Draco recognized that this was the most emotion that Hermione had shown him in the entirety of the decade since the end of the war. It reminded him of the Hermione he had know at school – a Hermione Granger who was fierce and utterly fearless, a Hermione who took no shit and dished out her rage as good as she took it. Draco was scared shitless of the sheer magnitude of her anger. Hermione looked ready to flay him and sear his bubbling ashes alive.
He kind of liked it.
"Are you on your period?" Draco blurted.
Drat.
Hermione stared at Draco, holding still and silent for a long moment as Draco cursed himself for the ultimate misstep. Even he knew not to say that to a woman! He knew better, dammit! Pansy had cursed him twice for the same faux pas. The second time she had even frog marched him out to the Black Lake, made him strip of all his clothes, and then tried to feed him to the Great Squid, and if that hadn't taught Draco his lesson, then what could? Just when Draco was about ready to cry, the worst imaginable outcome to his outburst happened: the wild magic faded from around Hermione, the anger vanishing with it, and a simple sadness filled Hermione's eyes. Hermione swallowed thickly, dropping her wand, and shook her head. A few moments later, the sadness was gone too.
"Hermione?" Draco said in a small voice.
Hermione sighed. She tossed her bushy locks back over her shoulder. She cast a quick, wordless charm at her ears, and her earlobes rose back to their proper position. "You're an atrocious husband, Draco Malfoy," she said. "But I hoped I was wrong, I suppose. I still do. Only you would manage to be so utterly incompetent as to keep proving me right."
Draco flinched.
"I don't feel like studying anymore today," Hermione said.
"What?" Draco barked, alarmed. That wasn't how the script went! They had rappour! Banter! She had her library! He waved his hands at the library around them, effusively attempting to communicate that they were surrounded by books. Lots of them, too! And the windows were bright and sunny, and the now-freed house elves had been through that morning to dust off the royal blue carpets, and her horrid kneazle was sleeping in the corner! "But- but- Your library! You can't not study! Where else would you go in the house?"
"My five-chamber suite? The parlor? Narcissa's rooms? Out?" Hermione gave an apathetic shug that somehow managed to be nastier than any of Pansy's barbed insults. "You know, because I can do that. Perks of being a war hero, I suppose."
"But… I- I could- I could leave-"
"I'm tired," Hermione whispered.
Sunlight fell across the blue carpet between them. Her hand strayed to her scars. Draco couldn't hold her gaze, so he looked away, contrite.
"Oh."
Hermione sighed. She stepped away from her table and turned back to look at Draco, flicked her wand at him almost as an afterthought. His feet left the solid ground. Like a mote of light, Draco rose into the library's air, floating into the direct heat of the sun, blinded by its brilliance at his back. Hermione looked so small below him. Held high, confident, but small. Her grip on her wand was too loose.
Weightless, Draco forgot how to breathe. She was radiant.
"I didn't tell you to use the charm on me," Draco called softly, swimming through the air toward her, reaching down for one of her hands. His outstretched fingers came into her reach. She stepped away. "You knowhow much magic it wastes to keep a whole human afloat like this."
"Did you know that for Muggles," Hermione said, her gaze trained on her wand, "magic is a synonym for wonder?"
Draco didn't know that. "Why?" he asked. "Magic is magic."
She lowered him back to earth, and for some reason, Draco felt as though he had lost something in the descent.
"I know." As though a switch had been flipped, Hermione slipped into a businesslike demeanor, the same haughty air she had assumed when she had informed him they were married. She shoved her wand into its holster and turned away. "I'll study tomorrow," she announced, as certain as ever. "I'm done for the day. The earrings were very nice, Draco. Gaudy and ridiculously exorbitant, but I've come to expect that from our family – I'll wear them to your mother's next soiree. Don't come and bother me for the rest of the day; I'm going to draw myself a bath."
"Hermione," Draco managed.
The look his wife gave him was worse than agony – worse than when she'd been writhing and screaming under Bellatrix's knife on his drawing room floor, worse than anything he could have ever said to her. It was simply empty.
Hermione swept out of the library and disappeared into the bowels of Malfoy Mannor.
::
When Draco knocked on the thick oakwood door to Hermione's master bathroom, steam had already begun to seep under the threshold, pooling at his feet. Their custom-made jets had exquisite eighteenth-century bathing effects, the sort long out of fashion, and he was pleased to find that Hermione appreciated the nozzles as much as him. A strained "Cissa?" came from within.
"Hermione?" Draco called out, pressing his forehead to the door. It was hard against his forehead. He laid his palm against the grain. "I'm sorry."
The light splashing from within ceased, followed by a long moment of silence. He could hear the gentle echoes of water resonating off of the stone walls within.
"Go away, Draco," came her eventual, muffled reply.
"But-"
"Later." Hermione left no room for argument. "Say it later. Say it to my face. Tell me you're sorry when I'm not bloody naked, and if you can explain to me why you have to be sorry in the first place, maybe I'll even find it in me to forgive you. But right now you're going to leave me to my wonderful bubble bath in peace, and you're going to ask our elves, politely, if they can make me up a slice of chocolate cake, and bring me a bottle of champagne."
"I'll have them bring you whatever you want," Draco said. "Anything."
More echoing splashes.
"Maybe you should try to figure out the answer to that question before you do," Hermione murmured, almost too faintly to be heard.
The door was hard. Draco closed his eyes and wondered how exquisite she must have been in that moment, naked in her grand bathtub, running her hands over her bare body as she responded to the sound of his voice. "The answer to what question?" he pleaded.
"What did your father do to you?"
"To what?
"…Go away, Draco," Hermione said. "I don't want to talk to you right now."
Sinking down onto his haunches, Draco wrapped his arms around his knees and banged his head against the door. There was a soft clonk. She doesn't want to talk to me, he despaired, wondering what Lucius would say to him if his father were still alive, if his soul wasn't currently rotting in the gallbladder of a Dementor. Not that it mattered, truly. Any time Draco wanted to know what his father would have thought, would have done, he didn't have to look a stone further than his own actions.
"Okay," Draco whispered, turning away. "I'll go."
::
It was only two and a half days later and what could have constituted a full African safari of albino peacock watching later that it finally dawned on Draco what Hermione had been attempting to tell him.
"She wanted me to ask what shewants, you absolute blithering idiot! You dunce! FUCK!"
The albino peacocks blinked at their master, then strutted away.
::
Draco considered the possibility that his father may have been responsible for some of the current problems in his life. Like the house arrest. Like his war criminal status.
But mostly the fact that his wife hated him.
Draco hadn't meant to fall in love with Hermione. But Draco hadn't meant to fall in love with Hermione in the third year, either. There was just something so romantic about getting punched in the face by a tiny, angry banshee of a disheveled brunette; truly, Draco didn't know how anyone could resist the charm.
Probably by calling the only woman they'd ever truly loved a bunch of derogatory slurs, then playing witness to her brutal torture from the losing side of a war. Especially considering how that losing side had been advocating for, delightfully, her murder and the genocide of all her kin and kind. Lucius Malfoy had always come up with the best solutions to Draco's problems, the problems that weren't actually problems most of all. Problems that didn't need to be fixed. Problems like a muggleborn, who had curls that were gorgeous when cared for and a wit that was razor-sharp when unleashed, which weren't really problems at all. Hermione had always been Draco's solution. His problemsjust happened to be a violent, vicious bigotry imposed upon him by his father, bigotry to which Draco had little choice but acquiesce.
Yeah.
That would do it.
::
It was truly, utterly beyond Draco Malfoy how he had somehow managed to wind up married to Hermione anyway.
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[A/N] After an OVERWHELMINGLY positive response to My Hand For a Library (and a lil inspiration), I decided to treat y'all to a second chapter!
This one's a little bit less fluffy and little more angsty, but I want to do this story justice, and cynicism and apathy always is a little less funny from an outside perspective. Poor Draco's got some growing to do. Might not be everyone's cup of tea who loved the original chapter, but I want to do the characters justice, and there were loads of darker undertones in the first piece too lol. :) Trust me, fluff always tastes sweeter when it's got a little bite to it.
That, plus you guys are all Dramione trash anyway, so I know you love this sort of stuff lmao.
Thanks on Fanfiction to SweetSwizzle614, Amsantiago315, Lena2244, gmhribrahimsoleh89, herxy, Courtneyrozy101, previouslyjade, AlesiaWillows, riptiderobin21, Jaxjax, MioneRanger, Lisa Clark1, Anna Doherty, Vixie, Qween87, krang1458 (me too, dude. me too), Shaina Cobra, Lady-Draco79, OnceUponABlueMoonDream, 5th Dimension, RillaBlytheWrites, fanmule, three guests, AAAAAAND over on Archives we've got The_Archiver, ShadyLaine, afrancum1, Copitix, CarrieMaxwell, thronconnelly, Sri1997, MissPugLover24, Eclectician, Ria_Fr, UnbowedUnbentUnbrokenDreamer, SarahJaneNeed, turainempress, crazyreader00, ishouldberesearching, trouvera, whenallelsefail, Smays1091, BarbarafromGR, dramione5eva, nightsspentreading, Ultimatetornshipper, Julie5, Lita_Snow, Mapaulas, solaine, FlowerChild26, Julesthegoblin, Doctor_Susan_Holmes, Lorlorgrace, and Alwayswanderlusting! Wow! Thank you all so much, this is easily the best response I've gotten on a first chapter.
I absolutely adore you all. Keep feeding me like this, and maybe I'll be back with a third chapter before 2023 haha
Love, Allie