Chapter 70: Middle-Aged Relations

Hermione returned to Malfoy Manor very tired. The sun on this low June evening was sinking towards the horizon, making its final descent.

The mansion was altogether much better a sight when in the light. Hermione never liked to be anywhere on the grounds after dark, if she could avoid it – some horrid memories never faded, not even with time.

She recalled, with an almost rueful chuckle, how it had taken most of her courage just to set foot here when Rose had brought them along for dinner, to properly re-introduce Scorpius as her boyfriend.

The former Minister for Magic spotted her daughter now, a gaggle of kids playing at her feet. Glancing up, the striking redhead broke into a beaming smile.

"Hey! How was the wedding?"

"GRAN!" came the chorus from the grandchildren before Hermione could answer, and then she was being pelted by little bodies slamming into her midsection. She picked up Jean, the eldest and her namesake, and cuddled her, even as she grunted a little at the girl's weight.

Rose just trilled out a laugh and sauntered over. "All right, you lot! Quit pestering Gran. Anyone for a pony race?"

The children shrieked assent and stampeded away. Hermione chuckled.

"Where's Scorpius?" She realized too late how her asking about his absence could be construed, but her daughter just shrugged it off.

"He's almost done; he'll be down in a minute. Come on!" And grinning, Rose dragged her mother by the hand over to a small table and umbrella, from under which mother and daughter watched the Malfoy-Weasley generation attempt that pony race.

Really, it was Jean and Draco II, the oldest of the bunch, playing the part of the horses and galloping their way across the green.

"It was a lovely ceremony," Hermione reported to her daughter. "Luna looked absolutely resplendent!"

"Really?" Rose's blue eyes expanded in pleasant surprise. "That certainly isn't a word I thought I'd hear about the bride. Not that Auntie Luna is in any way ugly, mind, but…."

"…. That dress from her wedding to Uncle Rolf?..." Hermione finished, lips quirking.

"Yes, from when I was little! Oh my goodness, but it was horrid!... I couldn't have been much older than Jean…." The two women chuckled. When Rose glanced down, she noticed the clump of flowers still clutched in her mother's fist. "Hey, you caught the bridal bouquet?" A twinkling smile was playing on her lips.

Hermione snorted, deciding it was too late to throw the thing away. "Don't. Your uncle was teasing me about it all evening!"

Rose shrugged. "I was just asking." Bollocks she was! Staring off into the distance, her gaze turned wistful. "I just get worried about you, and Uncle Harry, that's all…. I'm sure he felt a little bittersweet today. Aunt Ginny would have been absolutely thrilled to see Neville and Luna get married."

Hermione pursed her lips and nodded. The blood curse had taken so many good people. Rolf Scamander. Her sister-in-law. Her husband. "It was a long time coming, that's for certain."

"Are Lorcan and Lysander taking it well? I can't imagine anyone better for a stepfather than Neville!"

"Blokes were up to their old tricks again, but I think they're thrilled."

A sudden clatter made both women snap their heads up. Something noisy was emanating from the small cottage on the edge of the property, from which little Fred (Hermione was fairly certain her late brother-in-law would have had a conniption knowing that a Malfoy was named for him) fleeing from the scene. The little boy dashed right into his mother's arms, Rose murmuring to him quietly. "I startled Pop," the boy warbled sweetly, feeling bad. Rose hugged him and nudged him back towards playing with his siblings.

Eyes still on the cottage, Hermione bit her lip. "How is he?"

"We've been getting him outside and back to the main house for tea. And the kids have been doing their part in trying to get him to play with them. Though when he does come out, he mostly just watches." Rose smiled wanly. "Lately, I've been taking that as a win."

Hermione spotted Draco now, in the middle distance and emerging from the small cottage that had become a sort of workshop of late. It reminded her of Arthur's tool shed, to be perfectly honest. In the years since his wife Astoria's passing, she (and Ronald, when he was still alive) had often wondered what he got up to in there.

She tried not to stop and gawk as the Malfoy patriarch came edging out onto the green, observing his grandchildren play. More than once, Jean or one of the others would approach him with an enticement to join in, but he begged off. His blonde hair had receded even further than Hermione remembered it when Rose and Scorpius had been starting at Hogwarts. The strands had become lighter, until some were almost white, catching the dying rays of the sun.

"Would you terribly mind watching them? I think I'll go check on Scorp," Rose hummed into her mother's ear, rising and bustling towards the mansion without waiting for an answer.

Across the green, Draco and Hermione locked eyes. He nodded once to her, and she nodded back. Seeming satisfied in this acknowledgement, he began to turn to retreat back towards his workshop-cottage.

Holding up her skirts from the wedding, Hermione darted after him. "Draco, please don't go." He turned and she attempted a friendly smile. "We've…. never really spoken much, have we? We have so much in common now."

Draco glanced past her, looking pensive, even sorrowful. "We don't have that much in common…. except for shared grandchildren, perhaps." He paused, searching for the right words. He was finding it hard to look her in the eye. "It doesn't have anything to do with you, or who your parents are, please don't misunderstand me. All that is over and done with. I realized some time ago that I was wrong. So, so wrong." He cracked an almost rueful smile. "You remind me of the thing I could have had, if only it had been different."

"What thing, Draco?" Hermione peered at him.

He turned away, as if afraid he had said too much. "I…. I have to go. Goodbye…. Hermione."

He shuffled back into the small little cottage workshop, leaving her standing and staring into space. ….Surely not? Hermione walked back towards her frolicking grandchildren, lost in thought.

She was still lost in thought when she returned to the empty cottage in Ottery St. Catchpole, the place where she and Ron had first been a married couple and where they had parented their children. Crookshanks the Third purring at her feet, Hermione nursed a goblet of wine as her mind wheeled back decades earlier, replaying memories (some of which she would still sooner forget) only to now re-examine them in a new light.

That horrid night, at the Manor, Draco could have revealed their identities and sold them all out. He hadn't. Then later, during the Battle, he and his goons had had her dead to rights; he could have killed her with Avada Kedavra easily. He didn't. Harry had always told her that, based on the little that he had observed, how Draco might not have been fully committed to the Dark Lord's cause, particularly towards the end when things had started to get really bad. It had been the rationale for Harry to support their old schoolyard enemy's defense, when Draco had gone to trial so long ago. Undue influence, especially as it pertained to a legal, wizarding adult had been an unorthodox counter to the prosecution, but thanks to some significant evidence, if not exactly an overabundance of it, the young heir had been acquitted, avoiding his parents' fate.

Looking back on it now, Hermione had to wonder if she had partially been the catalyst, or at least one of many, that contributed to a change of thinking in Draco. You remind me of the thing I could have had, if only it had been different.

The mockery she had endured at his hands as a little girl still lingered, though she startled herself in realizing that even in this too, she had forgiven him some time ago. Her heart started to pound as she rose, knocking back the last of her wine, as if it might fuel her courage.

She must be mad. Out of her head. But that didn't stop her from stepping out into the night and Disapparating.

It was stormy and pouring rain when she reappeared on the slick grass of the Manor. There was a light still on at the small cottage workshop on the edge of the property and Hermione made her way towards it. Before she could change her mind, she knocked deliberately.

Draco seemed surprised to see her when he answered. Hermione stared at him, soaking wet, her chestnut curls plastered to her head, but she didn't care. She was feeling brave, thanks in no small part to the drink.

"I need to know….. What did you mean, when you said I reminded you of the thing you…. could have had?"

Draco studied her, then stepped deliberately into her. To her credit, Hermione didn't shy away, though she did shiver when she felt his arms steal about her waist. Her brown eyes growing lidded, her own hands gliding up his forearms on their way to looping about his neck, Hermione leaned in with Draco and the pair kissed tentatively.

It astonished her how quickly the kiss deepened, as the former Minister for Magic and reformed Death Eater embraced. Turning her, Draco backed them both into the little cottage.

Someone kicked the door closed with his or her foot. Hermione didn't know whom, and didn't care.

The thunderstorm continued to rage outside. Drenched though she was (and now not just due to the rain), Hermione was finding she couldn't feel the cold.

As she and Draco embraced and snogged again, Hermione tugged his mouth down to hers hungrily. She had previously only ever kissed two other men in her entire life, and one of them had been her only lover for decades of marriage, but she was finding that she rather enjoyed making out with Draco.

He was certainly a passionate lover, and she shuddered and squirmed with pleasure as he helped her shrug her party dress off her lithe frame, letting it pool with a rustle at their feet. Draco dared to cup the swell of Hermione's breast, tweaking the nipple so that she arched her neck, sagging back into his firm chest. Her hip burned where his other palm touched her.

As Draco maneuvered Hermione over to a small cot in the one corner, Hermione had to conclude that the art of intimate relations, particularly at middle age, had a heavier, more conscientious weight to it then when she and Ron had made lover after they were newly married. In the immediate years after childbirth, she had been conscious about her body, despite her husband's assurances that she still looked breathtaking. As a young grandmother, Hermione wondered if she looked worse now. If she did, though, Draco wouldn't be taking her to bed, most likely.

He steered her down onto all fours on the mattress. Hermione was quivering in anticipation. She hadn't had sex in so bloody long, and never with anyone besides Ron. And she had for Merlin damn sure not been taken in this position in ages. Still, she temptingly lifted her bum skyward.

Seizing her hips, Draco thrust himself in between the globed cheeks of Hermione's buttocks. He mounted her…. and mated with her.

"Huhhhh….. Uhhhhh….. Errrm…. Hmmmmm… Mmmmmm….." Hermione could hear between her plaintive, pleasured moans how her breathing had become more ragged, heavy, staccato, labored. The bedsprings on the cot creaked loudly below her undulating body as she and Draco had sex. Observing through hooded lids how their joining shadows danced against the wall, Hermione had to inwardly chuckle. No wonder people referred to sexual intercourse as Playing the Beast with Two Backs.

Draco grunted and picked up his pace, humping Hermione's bum frenetically. Her cries grew louder and higher in pitch; perhaps fearing that someone at the Manor might hear, Draco now reached around and clapped a palm over his lover's mouth to muffle her shouts.

"The…. the children…." Hermione rasped, gasping, through Draco's splayed fingers. "Oh, Merlin, our children! Our children will never forgive us if they learn that we've….. Ohhhhhhhhh…" She damn near melted into the bed, canting her arse into Draco's pelvis so she could draw his cock even deeper into her anus. "Yesssss… Yes, Draco, YES!"

Draco growled and now fisted his free palm into her drying chestnut hair, his fingers twisting into the curls and he yanked Hermione's head up with a cry as he bore down. He was close, as close as she was, she could feel it.

"I….. I don't care. I….. I love you…."

"MMMMMM-HMMMMMMM!" With an astonished muffled shout, Hermione felt her limbs lock up. She came. Lashes fluttering, her brown eyes rolled up dazedly into the back of her head. She felt the muscles in her glutes seize, trapping his cock and milking it as Draco let out a whimper. The man sagged against her, riding through his own orgasm.

At last, he pulled out like a gentleman. When Hermione's eyes fluttered open and they met his, she was tickled by how adorably self-conscious he looked. Inverting herself deftly, Hermione grinned and pulled him down on top of her. Quietly, she spread her legs for him.

Draco face-planted into her bare breasts, kissing her erect nipples. His member slid into her warmth.

Rutting together in heat, Draco and Hermione had sex again.