“Having that kit in my pocket ruins the lines of the suit.” He laid a hand protectively across the waistband of his trousers. “And I need a well-fitting suit to lure unsuspecting witches to my depraved orgies.”
Hermione snorted. “No witch in the entire Ministry could possibly be unsuspecting at this point.”
Hermione was incensed. Not only was the machine apparently broken, but they’d failed, and failure made her *itch.* When she itched, she needed to work.
“Who ever actually said that I’m putting on sex parties at Malfoy Manor?" There was a laugh threaded through his words, but his voice was sharp with agitation. "Does that even seem plausible to you?”
“Seems plausible enough, yes. With the...” she gestured up and down at him, “...suits.”
“My *suits*, Granger?”
They were *alive*.
They were *together*.
Both of them, under a blue sky, sitting in a field that smelled like horse shit.
Hermione almost howled with relief.
His hair had for several years been trimmed into an undercut, the length at the top forever flopping about over one eyebrow or the other with a maddening look of thoughtless, casual perfection. It was allowed to adopt a tousled nonchalance that made one think "Bed,*"* in a way that caused the loins to wobble a bit, and the void hadn't done it any harm. He was sitting in a field of mud, and yet somehow managed to look shaken and wan in a consumptive, poetical sort of way rather than in a disassembled and muck-smirched way like Hermione was sure she must have done.
Against the black mud, his paleness shone, and his silver-grey eyes reflected the limitless blue of the sky.
For a moment, Hermione almost felt something like positive regard toward him.
Then, like an idiot, he smiled.
That smile.
The audacity of that preposterous, galling, brilliant, *disrespectful* smile.
“You sod,” she said quietly. “You reckless, self-important, pompous *prat.* You blew...up...my...*lab!*” She had started at a *piano*, worked her way through a rapid crescendo and ended in a feral *fortissimo*.
His face dropped.
“*Your* lab? What do you mean *your* lab?” he argued, fatally.
"You must be Granger's thigh maiden,” he said to Margaret. He cleared his throat a second time. “Granger's garter girl. Hermione's, that is. She’s my sister. Hello.”
“You’ve got it down there, haven’t you.”
She glanced straight down into the shadowy depths of her cleavage.
“Even if I did, it wouldn’t be any of your business,” she shot at him.
“Oh, it would be my business,” he said. “You’ve made them entirely my business.”
*“Them?* Don’t you mean *it?”*
“No, I don’t believe that I do.”
He took a single step in her direction.
"I'm keeping an eye on you." He narrowed his eyes at her decolletage.
“Are you speaking to my—”
Before she could finish her thought, the laughter of four women came ringing down the pathway through the trees and entered the cottage at the open front window.
Draco nodded politely, and turned to Hermione. He had that pained, biscuit look again. “You look incredibly beautiful.”
Hermione tilted her head and smiled at him angelically, brushing a curl back from her eye. “Overkill,” she muttered through her teeth, moving her mouth as little as possible.
Draco scowled.
“An affectionate brother,” affirmed Sir Thomas. “I approve of you, Granger! I approve. Now, let’s eat!”
“I’m always safe, I'll have you know," Draco began, turning towards her.
At the same time, Hermione leaned in to place a perfunctory kiss on his cheek.
The corner of his mouth where her partially opened lips met his was soft and warm.
He tasted of mint.
They both pulled back as though they’d been singed.
"I don't know what to do," she said plaintively. "And I always know what to do."
Carefully, she rose, and even more carefully, slid into the narrow strip of space between his body and the edge of the bed.
“You’re a cad,” she whispered. Her tears forged new paths from the corners of her eyes and dripped onto the bed linens. She brought her free hand to his mouth. With the lightest touch, she traced the shape of his upper lip. “And of course you taste of mint.”
She brushed the pads of her fingers over the full curve of his lower lip, then let them trail over his cheek and jaw to the space just behind his ear.
“You're going to wake up tomorrow,” she said. "I'm telling you, and you have to listen to me this time."
Her voice was nearly swallowed up by the soft pop and whine of charred wood in the fireplace. She lifted their entwined fingers to her mouth and rested her lips against the back of his hand.
“You're the worst.” Her breath moved over his skin. “You must know that you are.” She stroked his earlobe, once, with a vanishing touch.
“I don’t care where it is,” she whispered. “It could be England, or France, or Argentina.” Her voice was thick and stilted. “And I don’t care whether you can walk, or talk, or tie your own cravat. But you have to be in the world. I couldn't possibly stand it if you weren't.”
In the ten months Hermione spent at Hogwarts with Draco making up for a ruined seventh year, she had never once seen him smile. And in their three months working together in the Department of Mysteries, he'd smiled once, perhaps twice, and only ever when he thought she wasn’t looking.
If she slept, she was unaware of it, but she felt as though she were returning from someplace far away when her eyes snapped open at the sensation of a balmy hand slipping over the tops of her feet.
Draco’s head lolled to the side.
His eyes were open.
They remained half-lidded, bleary and holding Hermione’s face in unstable focus. A hint of the purple and yellow bruising that had bloomed around his eyelids over the course of the first day remained, and the whites of his eyes were tinted with the fading pink of broken blood vessels, but his irises were clear and grey-blue.
He breathed in, and then out—a contented sigh, like he’d woken early on a drowsy Sunday—then said in an insubstantial, sandpaper voice, “Your feet are freezing.”
“*Oh, God.*” She pulled her feet away from his side. “Draco.”
She tried to gather her thoughts—to determine what to say, what to ask, how to ascertain his state of mind, his degree of awareness, his level of recovery. As her mind cycled through the possibilities, Draco rolled fully onto his side, draped his arm around her waist, and pulled her body flush against his.
Hermione’s mouth fell open in a gasp of surprise, but before she could say anything, he bent his head down and kissed her.
“Orgies?” He drew back yet again, incredulous. “That’s too much work. Too much body. I just want one body.” He looked down at his own hand as it pulled appreciatively at her breast. “I want *this* one.” With that, he dove back into her mouth.
“And my hair. You like my hair. You love it, actually.” He pulled his hand through the disheveled two inches of hair he had sprouted overnight, and frowned again. “Sweet merciful mother of—what’s been done to it?”
"Please want this." He spoke quietly into the fugitive space between their mouths. "Please, Hermione.”
“I miss you when I’m with other women,” he went on. “Every time. Can you imagine? I promise you can’t.”
“You and your brother will be sorely missed, Miss Granger.” The young bride laid her gloved hand over Hermione’s and squeezed it. “You’ll come again soon, won’t you?”
“I—” Without warning, tears pooled in Hermione’s eyes. She looked towards the woods, wicked them away with her glove, and faced Mrs. Longbottom again cheerfully. “I would like that very much.”
He held her close in the late afternoon, and they kissed for two hundred years.
Was this 153,841 words of miscommunication? Yes.
Did I forgive it because it was witty? Yes.
Did I read it in a day? Also yes.