"Never," he scoffs, raring to a challenge as ever, but there's a ghost of amusement in his voice, lurking in the corner of his own half-smile. Draco Malfoy is guilty of so very many things, but of all of them, he does have a tendency to dig his own grave and then wind up far too deep, stuck with no way to backpedal or get back out.
A good thing, then, that he's glad to be backed into this particular corner.
Draco fishes in his pocket for his wand, settles it in his right hand (fingers instinctively straight, wrist held at the correct angle, practiced dueling technique, he always was very good at it). And as soon as Hermione comes within reach, he catches her wrist with his off-hand — physical contact anchors the Side-Along — and pulls her the rest of the way closer, and crushes his mouth against hers in another kiss.
And a second later, the world around them slides and blurs. Everything jolts sideways as they're yanked through the neighbourhoods of London, with a dizzying disorientation which has everything and nothing to do with the kiss.
When they eventually re-materialise and catch their footing again, they're stumbling on the uneven cobblestones of Diagon Alley, standing outside Obscurus Books. There's a narrow, unmarked door crammed beside the shop, easy enough to overlook.
It's impossible to Apparate directly inside, since Draco's home is warded to hell and back (one habit he did, in fact, pick up from his paranoid father and uncle), but this is close enough. He breaks away from the kiss just long enough to untangle the wards, tapping the front door with his wand, the click of the lock opening before he leads them up a cramped staircase meandering upward to the apartment proper. It's a prime Diagon Alley location; small but eyewateringly expensive for the convenient location, right in the middle of an urban wizarding neighbourhood rather than having to enchant your building with secrecy charms against living elbow-to-elbow with Muggles.
But apart from that, it's perhaps surprisingly homely: an old-fashioned attic flat, all creaking wooden floorboards and a slanting ceiling under the eaves (there's a lovely skylight, but if he walks too far into the corner he'll knock his head against the ceiling). Sparsely-furnished, since he's evidently still finding furniture for it. A few stacks of books. Quidditch broomstick in pride of place over the unused fireplace mantle, hanging beside a pot of Floo powder. There's enough light from the skylight to see their way as Draco lets them in, and tosses his coat onto the sofa.
One bedroom, one bathroom. Not exactly the sprawling extravagance of Malfoy manor, but— he's trying, mostly, to make it on his own now. Earning his own paycheck.
And just as he's awash with the comfort of being home again, that ease is almost immediately overtaken with a kind of strangled anxiety about what Hermione will think of it. He pivots on his heel, walking backward, waves a lazy hand at the flat, trying to look nonchalant.
She expected a level of awkwardness, now that they are out of the broom cupboard and out of the Ministry. In fact, she wouldn't even have blamed him for wanting to be discreet about this; if she thinks her friends would judge Hermione's choice in bed partners, she can't even begin to understand what his peers would say.
So she expects that answer to be a yes, and just shake on it like civil work partners, promising to not speak of this little outburst again.
What she gets instead is a kiss that steals her breath away, and makes the world go topsy-turvy. It takes a while, between grabbing onto his back with both her hands to lean into it and respond with almost eager desperation, to notice that they've already Apparated. Clever, talented Draco Malfoy.
She takes advantage of the pause in kissing to take in her surroundings (and check for safe exits, a habit picked up during the War - or maybe after the War, as a result of his aunt cornering her in Malfoy Manor) and sees they are in Diagon Alley. She recognises the bookshop, of course. She walks these streets often enough, but never once imagined that he'd be living nearby. She always thought he was somewhere lush in Wiltshire. (The reason she walks these streets often enough is simple: the nearest Apparition point to the Ministry is nearby and it just so happens that Hermione lives in a rented flat around the corner from here.)
If she finds the location interesting, it's nothing in comparison to actually being allowed into his flat. It's so very unlike Malfoy, or what her impression of him is (of course, she will allow now that it's probably mostly prejudice, an impression formed by what the Malfoy family was like when she was still growing up) but she's smiling as she gets introduced.
Home sweet home indeed.
She walks up, as is her habit, to the bookshelf, while she takes her coat off. He needs more books, she decides on the spot. Not the kind of books they have down at the shop, or research, but books to read for pleasure. Regardless of whether or not she gets Malfoy as her Secret Santa in the office draw this year, she's going to get him books.
Her coat joins his on the couch, and she walks up to him again.
"It's a nice home, Draco," she says, mostly to test out using his given name, ahead of...well, whatever it is they do end up doing. "You kiss me again."
It's a nice home, she says, and some unseen vise at the back of his neck and in the set of his shoulders quietly loosens, some tension he hadn't even known he'd been holding.
Draco has always grown up surrounded by history, for better or worse: family heirlooms; matching furniture sets that have been in his blueblood family for generations; portraits and decorative pieces that were selected literal centuries before he was born and which he had zero input into, and never would. The Wiltshire estate would be his someday, but it also would never be his. It was the Malfoys', and when he was there, he could practically feel the whole weight of the family and its expectations waiting behind his left shoulder, their grey eyes (so much like his) watching from the walls.
A separate flat, though. Not just a convenient pied-a-terre for evenings in London, but a place to live in full-time. His father had kicked up a fit about it, but Draco had insisted, and so the man had eventually sighed and loosened the pursestrings to help with the initial rent.
And now Draco realises the benefit: he gets to take a girl home unseen, unnoticed, unjudged. He gets to marvel at the sound of his actual name on Hermione's lips, rather than the usual jabbing and volleying they do with surnames. Have been doing for years. But neither of them are the children they were at Hogwarts, are they?
"Bossy as ever, Hermione," he says — but there's a smirk in it, and he's trying out her name, too — and then he's kissing her again, hands going for the bracket of her cheeks, diving into it as if they're still in that closet.
He has no idea yet just how much - but he will. Maybe later, he'll realise how easily she pulled him into a kiss with a challenge (easy bait), and how she convinced him to take her home with assertive defiance. Maybe later, she'll also realise how eagerly he agreed, and wonder how long he's also been wanting them to end up right here.
Here, with Draco's hands on her cheeks, kissing a moan out of her in one go, making her toes curl in her shoes. She forces a breath through her nose and surges up against him, savouring his lips again, and luxuriating in the softness of his hair when she pushes her fingers through it, again. There's no hesitation, and no timer, and no regrets.
He hadn't bothered lighting any of the lights throughout the flat. They wouldn't need it; this evening wasn't for nightcaps and conversation in the living room, after all. This was for that old song-and-dance, the tripping over each others' steps as he catches the edge of her shirt, tugs her backwards down the hall to the one bedroom. They make their way in through in a chaos of hands and mouths, kisses interspersed with Draco nudging the door open with one wingtip shoe.
There's just enough light from the streetlamps out in Diagon Alley, which are perpetually on throughout the night, to see the shape of a dresser; a few discarded clothes already draped over a chair in the corner; a large bed with obscenely high-threadcount sheets in navy and black (apparently he is not cliched enough to still deck everything in Slytherin colours post-Hogwarts).
"Hope this doesn't seem presumptuous, but since we narrowly escaped the closet," he murmurs between breaks for breath, his mouth against Hermione's ear, "I supposed you might like something a bit more comfortable than a sofa."
She's more than ready to be taken to his bed, that's the thing. She follows him with sure steps, her mouth surging up to meet his, kiss for kiss, their breaths meeting in the very small space between their lips. How is she going to survive not igniting from kissing him tonight, she has not idea.
She's already done a fair share of groping by the time they cross the threshold to his bedroom (her hands on his back, her hands on the small of his back, her hands on his hips to pull him close so she can moan into the next kiss, her hands - cheeky and wanton - curved over his ass, fingertips pressing in for a brief second), and it's only because she needs to catch her breath that she takes in the room, quickly, while Draco pants in her ear.
"I think," she murmurs, unwittingly close to his ear, one hand climbing up to curl over the back of his neck, "you'll find I can be flexible." She squeezes his neck a little, and leans back to meet his eyes in the dim light.
She looks wild at this point. Her lips kiss-swollen, her hair slowly being pulled out of an updo that she didn't put much effort into anyway, and the pupils of her eyes dilated from everything they've done in the last few minutes. A little impatient sound escapes from her throat, something like a growl, and she reaches down between them with both hands to start tugging his shirt out of his slacks. "Take your clothes off. No - on second thought, take my clothes off." The flash of a grin.
"Hmm. Gladly," Draco says, mock-thoughtful, as if he's weighed and considered the instruction, as if he has to ponder and contemplate it at all. But he already wanted to shuck both of them of their troublesome clothing, that's the thing.
"Ladies first, then," and his expression breaks into a grin.
Another messy kiss, while his hands reach for the bottom edge of her shirt, eventually dragging it up and around the angles of her elbows, over her head, tugging it over her chin (and now thoroughly destroying the remainder of that updo). And now Draco can finally see the bare expanse of her skin, and the body which he could only feel pressed against him before. Now, instead, he can bend low over her neck and chest, pressing another kiss to the ridges of her collarbone, then the swell of a breast above her bra, then— downwards.
And lower. He drops to a knee, his hands splayed against Hermione's hips. He finds the zipper at the side of her skirt, unzips it agonisingly slowly and bunches the fabric under his hands, before he's peeling the skirt down the lines of her thighs, his mouth against her navel.
"So gallant," she jokes, quick on the uptake, managing to get the words in before that kiss just wrecks her.
The truth is, though you wouldn't say it by the reputation she's built for herself and her impossibly high standards when it comes to social justice and ethics and schoolwork, Hermione fucking loves messy kisses. The ones where there's too much unaddressed desire that you try to kiss and forget to breathe. The ones where hands work furiously at pulling clothes off. All those types of messy kisses are just her jam.
While he pulls her shirt out from where it was neatly and stylishly tucked inside her skit, she unbuttons the top three buttons, so when he takes it off, there's no resistance. She flings it carelessly over back of a chair in the bedroom, and curls her hand over his nape to touch him, ground him, while he kisses her neck, and chest, and lower.
She has to open her eyes to check him out. Draco Malfoy, kneeling at her feet, kissing her stomach, pulling her skirt off. That fucking scar from Dolohov a few inches above where his lips are now, and she prays to any gods that he doesn't pause and notice it, because he's headed in the perfect direction.
Besides. They both hide their fair share of scars beneath the clothes. Doesn't mean she doesn't want to see them. Touch him.
While he pulls her skirt down, she reaches up behind her and unhooks her bra, deciding it can come off without his assistance.
She unhooks her bra and, because at the end of the day they are still Granger and Malfoy, he can't resist getting another quip in: "I do know how to do that, you know." He's bemused, craning his head back to peer up at her, teasing.
But, also, the mental image of him being distracted enough that he fumbles for the clasp in front of her specifically and gets caught on it like some clumsy teenaged boy, well, it would be an actual personal nightmare, and so he's grateful for Hermione expediting.
He tugs the skirt the rest of the way off, hand splayed against the curve of her calf as she steps neatly out of her shoes and the puddle of fabric. You'd think he'd be immediately drawn to tits and ass — predictable — but there's something about the arch of her foot, the turn of an ankle, which Draco suddenly finds both mundane and hypnotising. He's never been close enough to consider Hermione Granger's knees before, and he is now considering them quite a bit. They've never usually been this physically close to each other before, their guards and walls dropped.
And yet the skirt's off and so is her bra and so, keenly aware of priorities, Draco moves back up again — he hesitates over the scar on her abdomen, his thumb tracing it briefly, but he doesn't linger yet. Doesn't ask questions. Instead it's a short distance to her now-bare chest, thumb now brushing against a nipple before his mouth closes over the other one, all wet heat and tongue.
"You can prove it next time," she quips, with a smug little tilt of her chin. Implication being, logically, that there may be a next time. The thing is, though, that through all the kissing and groping each other, she's not felt like bolting once.
(Additionally, and this is from the very petty little voice at the back of her head, no-one has managed to keep her on her toes intellectually quite as Malfoy does, and the result of all their banter and polite competition is that she's soaked.
One more petty observation, which comes timed with his mouth closing over her nipple: Ron wasn't this good.)
She lets out a satisfied little sound and sinks her fingers through his hair again, holding him there. Her body, he'll realise quickly, is eagerly responsive. Every flick of thumb or tongue sends a little shiver down her spine, and by the time he properly kisses one nipple, she hisses and tightens her grip, arching slightly to push her tits up towards his face.
"Gods - okay..." she breathes out, in marvelled surprise. That had no right feeling so good, and if that's how it starts, what else is in store? She can't wait - impatiently, she tugs on his hair to pull him up, and plants a quick, hard kiss to his mouth, before hooking two fingers under the knot of his tie and tugging that loose. "Your turn."
And on that note, she's seen where the bed is, so she nudges them towards it as she unbuttons his shirt.
This, honest to Merlin, is his favourite part: that blind eager fumbling, like they've finally kicked open a door and they're both tumbling through it together. Like a rolling boulder, building speed and urgency. Each motion now peeling off more layers and baring more skin as Hermione loosens his tie and drags it off his head, as her quick and clever fingers start working on the buttons of his dress-shirt. Once it's fully unbuttoned, he shrugs obediently out of the sleeves and tosses the shirt crumpled to the floor, to join the growing puddle of clothing.
(Come morning — if she's still around by morning, and that's a dangerous thought — he'll probably be neurotically tidying up after themselves, but for now it's chaos, and he welcomes it.)
Draco follows her nudge, and keeps moving backwards until the back of his legs hits the bed: he wavers there for a second before their momentum carries him further backwards and he falls back onto the bed, winding up seated on the edge, his hands on Hermione's hips. He almost goes for the button of his trousers, before remembering: this is a give-and-take. He's increasingly realising that there's something in this, in tackling each others' clothes, in giving up control even if just for the moment, and giving himself up into Hermione's hands.
"You're too formal," she mutters, as she struggles with the last row of his dress-shirt. Who wears a button-up to a party at the office? It's almost endearing how fixated he is on some of those proper old money ways, even though right now it means more work for her. At least she had the decency of not wearing a shirt that made him want to rip her buttons off - because it does cross her mind, she could just yank it open come what may, or vanish every offensive button.
His skin gets revealed inch by inch, the light in the room not dim enough to hide his scars. Scars from Harry's curse, scars from living. She frees him of his shirt, and only when he's naked from the waist up does she pause for a second.
He's seen hers. The word Bella carved into her arm in front of him. The scar from Dolohov's curse, the one from his aunt's blade close to her throat. They're not the only ones she has, but they are the heaviest she carries - the only ones that magic can't whisk away.
She knows that maybe they should avoid addressing this, and that maybe pausing to take in the jagged lines across his chest is the antithesis of sensual, but it happens. What's more, it leaves her feeling that same level of kinship that drew her to him from the start of their professional partnership.
So, speaking of professional behaviour, she leans in and licks one, no foreplay. Traces the length of it, and finishes with a kiss to his shoulder, then one closer to his neck, and a gentle bite there. Finally, she goes to remove his trousers.
It had been easy enough to just let himself get swept away in it, carried along on this wave of passion, without stopping to pay attention to the details. Safer, maybe. If they just keep running before the floor falls out beneath them, there's no chance of any of this sticking or mattering or lingering.
But then there's Hermione stepping beneath his legs and her tongue tracing a line along one of his scars, up the crook of his shoulder, and the contact makes his skin buzz and prickle and warm beneath her. He hitches a shaky, indrawn breath.
At this angle, she can look down and easily see the Dark Mark on his left forearm. It's faded since the Dark Lord died — it's not the livid red it used to be when he was active, when Draco was being yanked about like a puppet on strings — but it's still visible. No amount of healing magic has been able to make a dent in it, like it's a permanent brand. It practically mirrors the mudblood scar on her own arm.
What words would even be enough?
As she works on the last button, Draco angles his hips, helps her tug off his trousers and wriggle out of it, kicking them loose. He's down to just black briefs now, tented with a noticeable erection. But, mirroring her movements, he shifts closer on the edge of the bed and catches Hermione's arm before she can move on; he draws her closer and presses his mouth against the letters engraved there.
And the next words that trip off his tongue aren't teasing, aren't a needling ploy. They're surprisingly earnest, simple, dangerously simple. "You're beautiful," he says.
She holds her breath, not out of disgust or tension, but because the kiss to the inside of her arm is ticklish - regardless of the ugly word there. And maybe because of that, because it makes her want to laugh, the fact that he kisses that spot, precisely, makes her feel warm and grateful.
So - she's beautiful, he sayd.
"Yes," she agrees, because at this point in time, she has come to that conclusion herself. If men and (dumb) boys like Ron and Harry can take ages to realise she's even a girl, and it takes changing her whole appearance to make a school shut up about her untameable hair, that's on them.
She is beautiful. But also: "So are you," she adds earnestly. He should know that.
"And naked," she murmurs, a little lower, her gaze raking down the length of his considerably gorgeous body, a flutter of pleasure and arousal in her stomach when she reaches his hips, and his briefs. Her reaction is instinctive: she licks her lips, and reaches down with her free hand to hook one fingers into the waistband of his briefs, tugging them down just an inch or so. "Almost, anyway."
"Almost," Draco agrees wryly. "We're about even on that score."
And to think: he almost hadn't gone to this stupid holiday party. He wasn't good at crowds; preferred small gatherings with people he got on with, who he actually liked, who he didn't have to smile thinly and put on a teeth-grittingly polite air with. But if he hadn't swallowed his pride and gone to this Ministry function, he wouldn't have wound up here: him perched on the end of his bed, a near-naked Hermione standing over him. There's always that frisson buzzing along in moments like this, crackling between two people getting each others' clothes off for the first time. Who takes the first step? What does she like? How does she like it? (Another question where he hadn't fully realised how desperate he was to ask it, until now.)
So he just goes ahead and asks it.
Draco leans back on the heels of his hands, looking up to meet her eye, one knee tipped against hers. "How d'you want me," he says — asks — as he feels those opportunities and possibilities unfold. A few years ago, he might've been a little snot about saying it aloud, but it turns out that laying their communication out into the open had gone well enough. Had gotten them out of that closet and away from that party and over to his flat.
Her inhibitions are lowered enough that when he asks her how she wants him, she speaks without carefully (and politically) considering her words, and just says: "Often."
Before she can get bashful over that admission, she takes possession of his lap, sitting down with her knees on each side of his hips and pulls him in for a slow, thoroughly deep kiss.
She nips at his lower lip, her hands roaming down his shoulders, his chest, one sneaking between them to cup his tented erection through the fabric of his briefs, just to feel it, just to (hopefully) make him groan.
Often, she says, and she can't miss the way his face breaks into a surprised, delighted smile. It isn't the answer he expected, but it's one he wanted.
Hermione clambers into his lap, her weight settling tantalisingly over him, and Draco kisses her back with a desperate groan in the back of his throat, just as planned. One hand rises to brace against her lower back and clutch her against him, while the other palms a breast again, just eager to be touching her, to have his hands on her skin.
He's already a mess of wanting when she grasps him through the fabric; he'd be bucking up into her hand if he had enough room to move. He kisses her back hungrily, messily — Hermione nips his lip and he bites back, leaning forward into her. Mirroring her, his hand slides down between them, fingers running along the arch of her ribs, lower, and then dips into her underwear, fingers slipping between her legs and starting to circle, already finding her drenched where she straddles him.
"Merlin, you're wet," he says against her mouth, between kisses, his breath hitching.
It was the plan to make him groan, and yet she still draws in a quick breath and holds it when he does, burying the resulting moan against his lips, curling her free hand over the back of his head and holding him close almost tenderly, kissing him nice and deep, until she's breathless.
It comes quickly, with his fingers brushing down her side and slipping into her underwear. She breaks the kiss with a gasp of surprise, not pulling far enough to make it hard for him to chase her for another kiss, and he's right. She's very wet.
She does have the space to roll her hips against his fingers, and bucks a little as he finishes the circle against her clit, the sensation sending a bolt of pleasure up her spine to the crown of her head.
So this is happening. They're having sex, she's going to sleep with Draco Malfoy - and, considering the breathless laugh she lets out at his marvelled discovery of her arousal, she is going to enjoy it. Good - it's been forever since she enjoyed every aspect of sex.
She goes in for one more kiss, teasing her tongue along his bottom lip, before she pushes him to lie back, her hands on his chest. She leans down to press a kiss to the centre of his chest - as she doesn't want to sit up from his lap, it's as far as she reaches - then pulls his underwear down his hips. Not fully off, just enough to free his erection, enough for her to be able to see it, and wraps her hand around it and gives him a slow stroke.
"I want you inside me," she murmurs, gaze focused down on his cock, on the way it looks in her hand as she strokes him a second time. She glances up at him quickly with a little smile. "We can sort out foreplay later."
His breath is catching in his throat, held suspended in his lungs as he sprawls backwards and just drinks in that sight of Hermione sitting over him. And he'd have been surprised as anyone if you'd ever told him that this, apparently, was what he'd wanted all along: him flat on his back, Hermione above him, her hands pressing him into that expensive mattress. But perhaps it wasn't such a surprise after all. Every single time he'd gotten snagged on the fact that she pushed back; hadn't fallen over herself to mindlessly fawn like the Slytherin girls, no matter what a git he was being; hadn't shrunk and wilted at a snide word from him.
He regretted some of those words, now. But there was such a horrifically predictable line drawn from A to B, from tugging her metaphorical pigtails to just wanting Hermione Granger to look at him, to notice him, to be thinking about him.
He'd find better ways, going forward.
Such as.
"No objections," Draco says, and even to his ears that sounds stupid. Her hand around his cock has already seared his mind mostly-blank, leaving nothing behind in its wake except the maddening pressure of her touch and Yes, please. He clears his throat, tries again, some uncustomary profanity slipping into that prim, silver-spoon mouth: "Hermione, if you don't climb on and ride the fuck out of me in the next moment, I'm going to lose my damned mind. Let's."
Well, well - isn't he bossy too? She makes a snap decision about it: tonight she'll reduce Draco Malfoy to begging. Even if it takes all night.
But for now, she leans down and kisses him quickly, while she brings the tip of his cock to her entrance, just to distract him from losing his mind. Her focus is as sharp as always, but in this momentuous occasion, she draws back from the kiss as she takes him in, sinking down until their hips meet in one slow and slick move.
"Oh." That's nice. He has a very lovely - gods, it feels very lovely, so full, so maddeningly nice already. It's unfair and infuriating that Draco should qualify as good at sex just on the basis of being inside her, but there's something about it that makes her heart flutter in her chest, and spurs her on to grind her hips down against him, her fingers splayed against his chest.
"Fuh - damn..." she lets out, catching herself away from the profanity at the very last minute. Her eyebrows draw together in intense concentration, as she lifts her hips and brings them down with a resounding slap of skin against skin. Once, twice, then again and again. "Oh fuck," she gasps, and again and again. "Mmm, Draco. Move."
Draco's head falls back against the pillow, his breath shallow as she sinks down on him, and he bottoms out and she catches her own words, reining them in just in time. It's the little things. It's hearing that ragged Oh fuck, and wanting to hear it from her again and again.
Now that he's sheathed inside her, he's adjusting to the weight and feel of her. His hands slide to the inner curve of Hermione's knee, the arch of her thigh, and his fingers dig into her skin as she shifts her weight. Move, she says, and with a hum of satisfaction, Draco falls obediently into line with a gasped "Yes, shit, yes": bracing himself against the mattress and gaining enough traction to roll his hips up to meet hers, thrusting upwards with a foot against the mattress. There's a moment at first where it's ungainly, out of sync — a stutter in the movement, the timing — but then, as these things always go, they find the rhythm. Her sinking back down onto him each time he pushes back up.
Thank Merlin for stupid Muggle traditions and spinning bottles and that wine and that closet.
The sight of her naked above him is both glorious and irritatingly out of reach. He wants to be able to touch more of her, he realises. So, his own decision made, Draco lurches upward to a seated position so Hermione's sitting in his lap instead, so he can chase her mouth into another kiss, so he can palm another handful of naked breast even as she keeps grinding down on his cock.
It's not that she's a perfectionist when it comes to sex, but the first out of synch movements are frustrating enough to pull a whine out of her. It might have more to do with want, and urgency, because it gets easily placated by the rhythm being found.
It feels so good. He asked her to ride the fuck out of him - and here, she's a guest in his home, how could she refuse him the favour - so she does. Brings her hands to grab onto his hips for balance and meets his hips, thrust for thrust, with enough enthusiasm that skin slaps against skin at a point.
Then he lurges upwards; they kiss, and she loses track of time again, in responding to the kiss. By the end of it, when she's breathless enough to put a few inches of distance and gasp for air, he's got a hand on her breast, she's got hers messing up his hair again, and they've changed the rhythm again. Slow, agonising and teasingly slow rolls of her hips, to feel his cock fully inside her, to let him feel her flutter and clamp around him when she grinds against him just so, just at the right angle to press against her clit too.
Now that they're closer, their hands are everywhere: her winding into his now thoroughly-tousled hair; one of Draco's clutching at the small of her back as if he can't bear to let her go, his grip digging in with each slow roll of her hips; another hand still enjoying soft warm flesh, the pert nipple beneath his thumb.
They've had to break apart for air — when did that happen — and so he finds himself catching his breath against her throat, pressing his mouth to the arch of her neck with something between a kiss and a lick. "You feel so good," he murmurs; everything clever and cool and aloof scoured out of him, everything narrowed down instead to that wet heat clenching around him. "Fuck, Hermione, you're so—"
Another languorous thrust upwards, another hitch in his breath and the words strangled in his throat. When was the last time sex had been this good? He couldn't remember. It had been aimless, before: perfunctory, like scratching an itch, taking society-vetted pureblood girls on dates because that was the sort of thing he was expected to do, inviting them back when they batted doe eyes at him. But it wasn't what he'd wanted. He didn't have to work for it, didn't have to earn it, like he's now determined to do— to prove himself to Hermione Granger, as he's always wanted.
For a few moments - countless, uncountable, she loses track completely - they're just a tangle of limbs and a meeting of mouths and urgent hands. She finds a pace, a little frantic and urgent, rocking against him and grinding down until it feels like he can't get any deeper, and she keeps at it. Over and over, while one hand stays tangled in his hair, and the other roams.
She touches his shoulder, traces his arm all the way up to where his hand cups her breast, scrapes her nails against his wrist in reaction to his thumb teasing against her nipple; in encouragement, because "There, stay close, ah, stay - Draco..."
His name stumbles out of her mouth so easily, it almost feels like this part was meant to be. They were meant to stumble into bed together and learn each other's names through this, exactly. The consummate intellectuals, somehow burning each other up with the physical proof of their lust.
She pulls on his hair lightly, just to bring his head up so she can crush her lips against his again, and again.
"Keep..." between kisses, panted out, "talking..."
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original hook-up
no subject
A good thing, then, that he's glad to be backed into this particular corner.
Draco fishes in his pocket for his wand, settles it in his right hand (fingers instinctively straight, wrist held at the correct angle, practiced dueling technique, he always was very good at it). And as soon as Hermione comes within reach, he catches her wrist with his off-hand — physical contact anchors the Side-Along — and pulls her the rest of the way closer, and crushes his mouth against hers in another kiss.
And a second later, the world around them slides and blurs. Everything jolts sideways as they're yanked through the neighbourhoods of London, with a dizzying disorientation which has everything and nothing to do with the kiss.
When they eventually re-materialise and catch their footing again, they're stumbling on the uneven cobblestones of Diagon Alley, standing outside Obscurus Books. There's a narrow, unmarked door crammed beside the shop, easy enough to overlook.
It's impossible to Apparate directly inside, since Draco's home is warded to hell and back (one habit he did, in fact, pick up from his paranoid father and uncle), but this is close enough. He breaks away from the kiss just long enough to untangle the wards, tapping the front door with his wand, the click of the lock opening before he leads them up a cramped staircase meandering upward to the apartment proper. It's a prime Diagon Alley location; small but eyewateringly expensive for the convenient location, right in the middle of an urban wizarding neighbourhood rather than having to enchant your building with secrecy charms against living elbow-to-elbow with Muggles.
But apart from that, it's perhaps surprisingly homely: an old-fashioned attic flat, all creaking wooden floorboards and a slanting ceiling under the eaves (there's a lovely skylight, but if he walks too far into the corner he'll knock his head against the ceiling). Sparsely-furnished, since he's evidently still finding furniture for it. A few stacks of books. Quidditch broomstick in pride of place over the unused fireplace mantle, hanging beside a pot of Floo powder. There's enough light from the skylight to see their way as Draco lets them in, and tosses his coat onto the sofa.
One bedroom, one bathroom. Not exactly the sprawling extravagance of Malfoy manor, but— he's trying, mostly, to make it on his own now. Earning his own paycheck.
And just as he's awash with the comfort of being home again, that ease is almost immediately overtaken with a kind of strangled anxiety about what Hermione will think of it. He pivots on his heel, walking backward, waves a lazy hand at the flat, trying to look nonchalant.
"Home sweet home," he says.
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So she expects that answer to be a yes, and just shake on it like civil work partners, promising to not speak of this little outburst again.
What she gets instead is a kiss that steals her breath away, and makes the world go topsy-turvy. It takes a while, between grabbing onto his back with both her hands to lean into it and respond with almost eager desperation, to notice that they've already Apparated. Clever, talented Draco Malfoy.
She takes advantage of the pause in kissing to take in her surroundings (and check for safe exits, a habit picked up during the War - or maybe after the War, as a result of his aunt cornering her in Malfoy Manor) and sees they are in Diagon Alley. She recognises the bookshop, of course. She walks these streets often enough, but never once imagined that he'd be living nearby. She always thought he was somewhere lush in Wiltshire. (The reason she walks these streets often enough is simple: the nearest Apparition point to the Ministry is nearby and it just so happens that Hermione lives in a rented flat around the corner from here.)
If she finds the location interesting, it's nothing in comparison to actually being allowed into his flat. It's so very unlike Malfoy, or what her impression of him is (of course, she will allow now that it's probably mostly prejudice, an impression formed by what the Malfoy family was like when she was still growing up) but she's smiling as she gets introduced.
Home sweet home indeed.
She walks up, as is her habit, to the bookshelf, while she takes her coat off. He needs more books, she decides on the spot. Not the kind of books they have down at the shop, or research, but books to read for pleasure. Regardless of whether or not she gets Malfoy as her Secret Santa in the office draw this year, she's going to get him books.
Her coat joins his on the couch, and she walks up to him again.
"It's a nice home, Draco," she says, mostly to test out using his given name, ahead of...well, whatever it is they do end up doing. "You kiss me again."
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Draco has always grown up surrounded by history, for better or worse: family heirlooms; matching furniture sets that have been in his blueblood family for generations; portraits and decorative pieces that were selected literal centuries before he was born and which he had zero input into, and never would. The Wiltshire estate would be his someday, but it also would never be his. It was the Malfoys', and when he was there, he could practically feel the whole weight of the family and its expectations waiting behind his left shoulder, their grey eyes (so much like his) watching from the walls.
A separate flat, though. Not just a convenient pied-a-terre for evenings in London, but a place to live in full-time. His father had kicked up a fit about it, but Draco had insisted, and so the man had eventually sighed and loosened the pursestrings to help with the initial rent.
And now Draco realises the benefit: he gets to take a girl home unseen, unnoticed, unjudged. He gets to marvel at the sound of his actual name on Hermione's lips, rather than the usual jabbing and volleying they do with surnames. Have been doing for years. But neither of them are the children they were at Hogwarts, are they?
"Bossy as ever, Hermione," he says — but there's a smirk in it, and he's trying out her name, too — and then he's kissing her again, hands going for the bracket of her cheeks, diving into it as if they're still in that closet.
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Here, with Draco's hands on her cheeks, kissing a moan out of her in one go, making her toes curl in her shoes. She forces a breath through her nose and surges up against him, savouring his lips again, and luxuriating in the softness of his hair when she pushes her fingers through it, again. There's no hesitation, and no timer, and no regrets.
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There's just enough light from the streetlamps out in Diagon Alley, which are perpetually on throughout the night, to see the shape of a dresser; a few discarded clothes already draped over a chair in the corner; a large bed with obscenely high-threadcount sheets in navy and black (apparently he is not cliched enough to still deck everything in Slytherin colours post-Hogwarts).
"Hope this doesn't seem presumptuous, but since we narrowly escaped the closet," he murmurs between breaks for breath, his mouth against Hermione's ear, "I supposed you might like something a bit more comfortable than a sofa."
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She's already done a fair share of groping by the time they cross the threshold to his bedroom (her hands on his back, her hands on the small of his back, her hands on his hips to pull him close so she can moan into the next kiss, her hands - cheeky and wanton - curved over his ass, fingertips pressing in for a brief second), and it's only because she needs to catch her breath that she takes in the room, quickly, while Draco pants in her ear.
"I think," she murmurs, unwittingly close to his ear, one hand climbing up to curl over the back of his neck, "you'll find I can be flexible." She squeezes his neck a little, and leans back to meet his eyes in the dim light.
She looks wild at this point. Her lips kiss-swollen, her hair slowly being pulled out of an updo that she didn't put much effort into anyway, and the pupils of her eyes dilated from everything they've done in the last few minutes. A little impatient sound escapes from her throat, something like a growl, and she reaches down between them with both hands to start tugging his shirt out of his slacks. "Take your clothes off. No - on second thought, take my clothes off." The flash of a grin.
"Please."
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"Ladies first, then," and his expression breaks into a grin.
Another messy kiss, while his hands reach for the bottom edge of her shirt, eventually dragging it up and around the angles of her elbows, over her head, tugging it over her chin (and now thoroughly destroying the remainder of that updo). And now Draco can finally see the bare expanse of her skin, and the body which he could only feel pressed against him before. Now, instead, he can bend low over her neck and chest, pressing another kiss to the ridges of her collarbone, then the swell of a breast above her bra, then— downwards.
And lower. He drops to a knee, his hands splayed against Hermione's hips. He finds the zipper at the side of her skirt, unzips it agonisingly slowly and bunches the fabric under his hands, before he's peeling the skirt down the lines of her thighs, his mouth against her navel.
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The truth is, though you wouldn't say it by the reputation she's built for herself and her impossibly high standards when it comes to social justice and ethics and schoolwork, Hermione fucking loves messy kisses. The ones where there's too much unaddressed desire that you try to kiss and forget to breathe. The ones where hands work furiously at pulling clothes off. All those types of messy kisses are just her jam.
While he pulls her shirt out from where it was neatly and stylishly tucked inside her skit, she unbuttons the top three buttons, so when he takes it off, there's no resistance. She flings it carelessly over back of a chair in the bedroom, and curls her hand over his nape to touch him, ground him, while he kisses her neck, and chest, and lower.
She has to open her eyes to check him out. Draco Malfoy, kneeling at her feet, kissing her stomach, pulling her skirt off. That fucking scar from Dolohov a few inches above where his lips are now, and she prays to any gods that he doesn't pause and notice it, because he's headed in the perfect direction.
Besides. They both hide their fair share of scars beneath the clothes. Doesn't mean she doesn't want to see them. Touch him.
While he pulls her skirt down, she reaches up behind her and unhooks her bra, deciding it can come off without his assistance.
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But, also, the mental image of him being distracted enough that he fumbles for the clasp in front of her specifically and gets caught on it like some clumsy teenaged boy, well, it would be an actual personal nightmare, and so he's grateful for Hermione expediting.
He tugs the skirt the rest of the way off, hand splayed against the curve of her calf as she steps neatly out of her shoes and the puddle of fabric. You'd think he'd be immediately drawn to tits and ass — predictable — but there's something about the arch of her foot, the turn of an ankle, which Draco suddenly finds both mundane and hypnotising. He's never been close enough to consider Hermione Granger's knees before, and he is now considering them quite a bit. They've never usually been this physically close to each other before, their guards and walls dropped.
And yet the skirt's off and so is her bra and so, keenly aware of priorities, Draco moves back up again — he hesitates over the scar on her abdomen, his thumb tracing it briefly, but he doesn't linger yet. Doesn't ask questions. Instead it's a short distance to her now-bare chest, thumb now brushing against a nipple before his mouth closes over the other one, all wet heat and tongue.
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(Additionally, and this is from the very petty little voice at the back of her head, no-one has managed to keep her on her toes intellectually quite as Malfoy does, and the result of all their banter and polite competition is that she's soaked.
One more petty observation, which comes timed with his mouth closing over her nipple: Ron wasn't this good.)
She lets out a satisfied little sound and sinks her fingers through his hair again, holding him there. Her body, he'll realise quickly, is eagerly responsive. Every flick of thumb or tongue sends a little shiver down her spine, and by the time he properly kisses one nipple, she hisses and tightens her grip, arching slightly to push her tits up towards his face.
"Gods - okay..." she breathes out, in marvelled surprise. That had no right feeling so good, and if that's how it starts, what else is in store? She can't wait - impatiently, she tugs on his hair to pull him up, and plants a quick, hard kiss to his mouth, before hooking two fingers under the knot of his tie and tugging that loose. "Your turn."
And on that note, she's seen where the bed is, so she nudges them towards it as she unbuttons his shirt.
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(Come morning — if she's still around by morning, and that's a dangerous thought — he'll probably be neurotically tidying up after themselves, but for now it's chaos, and he welcomes it.)
Draco follows her nudge, and keeps moving backwards until the back of his legs hits the bed: he wavers there for a second before their momentum carries him further backwards and he falls back onto the bed, winding up seated on the edge, his hands on Hermione's hips. He almost goes for the button of his trousers, before remembering: this is a give-and-take. He's increasingly realising that there's something in this, in tackling each others' clothes, in giving up control even if just for the moment, and giving himself up into Hermione's hands.
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His skin gets revealed inch by inch, the light in the room not dim enough to hide his scars. Scars from Harry's curse, scars from living. She frees him of his shirt, and only when he's naked from the waist up does she pause for a second.
He's seen hers. The word Bella carved into her arm in front of him. The scar from Dolohov's curse, the one from his aunt's blade close to her throat. They're not the only ones she has, but they are the heaviest she carries - the only ones that magic can't whisk away.
She knows that maybe they should avoid addressing this, and that maybe pausing to take in the jagged lines across his chest is the antithesis of sensual, but it happens. What's more, it leaves her feeling that same level of kinship that drew her to him from the start of their professional partnership.
So, speaking of professional behaviour, she leans in and licks one, no foreplay. Traces the length of it, and finishes with a kiss to his shoulder, then one closer to his neck, and a gentle bite there. Finally, she goes to remove his trousers.
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But then there's Hermione stepping beneath his legs and her tongue tracing a line along one of his scars, up the crook of his shoulder, and the contact makes his skin buzz and prickle and warm beneath her. He hitches a shaky, indrawn breath.
At this angle, she can look down and easily see the Dark Mark on his left forearm. It's faded since the Dark Lord died — it's not the livid red it used to be when he was active, when Draco was being yanked about like a puppet on strings — but it's still visible. No amount of healing magic has been able to make a dent in it, like it's a permanent brand. It practically mirrors the mudblood scar on her own arm.
What words would even be enough?
As she works on the last button, Draco angles his hips, helps her tug off his trousers and wriggle out of it, kicking them loose. He's down to just black briefs now, tented with a noticeable erection. But, mirroring her movements, he shifts closer on the edge of the bed and catches Hermione's arm before she can move on; he draws her closer and presses his mouth against the letters engraved there.
And the next words that trip off his tongue aren't teasing, aren't a needling ploy. They're surprisingly earnest, simple, dangerously simple. "You're beautiful," he says.
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So - she's beautiful, he sayd.
"Yes," she agrees, because at this point in time, she has come to that conclusion herself. If men and (dumb) boys like Ron and Harry can take ages to realise she's even a girl, and it takes changing her whole appearance to make a school shut up about her untameable hair, that's on them.
She is beautiful. But also: "So are you," she adds earnestly. He should know that.
"And naked," she murmurs, a little lower, her gaze raking down the length of his considerably gorgeous body, a flutter of pleasure and arousal in her stomach when she reaches his hips, and his briefs. Her reaction is instinctive: she licks her lips, and reaches down with her free hand to hook one fingers into the waistband of his briefs, tugging them down just an inch or so. "Almost, anyway."
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And to think: he almost hadn't gone to this stupid holiday party. He wasn't good at crowds; preferred small gatherings with people he got on with, who he actually liked, who he didn't have to smile thinly and put on a teeth-grittingly polite air with. But if he hadn't swallowed his pride and gone to this Ministry function, he wouldn't have wound up here: him perched on the end of his bed, a near-naked Hermione standing over him. There's always that frisson buzzing along in moments like this, crackling between two people getting each others' clothes off for the first time. Who takes the first step? What does she like? How does she like it? (Another question where he hadn't fully realised how desperate he was to ask it, until now.)
So he just goes ahead and asks it.
Draco leans back on the heels of his hands, looking up to meet her eye, one knee tipped against hers. "How d'you want me," he says — asks — as he feels those opportunities and possibilities unfold. A few years ago, he might've been a little snot about saying it aloud, but it turns out that laying their communication out into the open had gone well enough. Had gotten them out of that closet and away from that party and over to his flat.
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Before she can get bashful over that admission, she takes possession of his lap, sitting down with her knees on each side of his hips and pulls him in for a slow, thoroughly deep kiss.
She nips at his lower lip, her hands roaming down his shoulders, his chest, one sneaking between them to cup his tented erection through the fabric of his briefs, just to feel it, just to (hopefully) make him groan.
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Hermione clambers into his lap, her weight settling tantalisingly over him, and Draco kisses her back with a desperate groan in the back of his throat, just as planned. One hand rises to brace against her lower back and clutch her against him, while the other palms a breast again, just eager to be touching her, to have his hands on her skin.
He's already a mess of wanting when she grasps him through the fabric; he'd be bucking up into her hand if he had enough room to move. He kisses her back hungrily, messily — Hermione nips his lip and he bites back, leaning forward into her. Mirroring her, his hand slides down between them, fingers running along the arch of her ribs, lower, and then dips into her underwear, fingers slipping between her legs and starting to circle, already finding her drenched where she straddles him.
"Merlin, you're wet," he says against her mouth, between kisses, his breath hitching.
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It comes quickly, with his fingers brushing down her side and slipping into her underwear. She breaks the kiss with a gasp of surprise, not pulling far enough to make it hard for him to chase her for another kiss, and he's right. She's very wet.
She does have the space to roll her hips against his fingers, and bucks a little as he finishes the circle against her clit, the sensation sending a bolt of pleasure up her spine to the crown of her head.
So this is happening. They're having sex, she's going to sleep with Draco Malfoy - and, considering the breathless laugh she lets out at his marvelled discovery of her arousal, she is going to enjoy it. Good - it's been forever since she enjoyed every aspect of sex.
She goes in for one more kiss, teasing her tongue along his bottom lip, before she pushes him to lie back, her hands on his chest. She leans down to press a kiss to the centre of his chest - as she doesn't want to sit up from his lap, it's as far as she reaches - then pulls his underwear down his hips. Not fully off, just enough to free his erection, enough for her to be able to see it, and wraps her hand around it and gives him a slow stroke.
"I want you inside me," she murmurs, gaze focused down on his cock, on the way it looks in her hand as she strokes him a second time. She glances up at him quickly with a little smile. "We can sort out foreplay later."
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He regretted some of those words, now. But there was such a horrifically predictable line drawn from A to B, from tugging her metaphorical pigtails to just wanting Hermione Granger to look at him, to notice him, to be thinking about him.
He'd find better ways, going forward.
Such as.
"No objections," Draco says, and even to his ears that sounds stupid. Her hand around his cock has already seared his mind mostly-blank, leaving nothing behind in its wake except the maddening pressure of her touch and Yes, please. He clears his throat, tries again, some uncustomary profanity slipping into that prim, silver-spoon mouth: "Hermione, if you don't climb on and ride the fuck out of me in the next moment, I'm going to lose my damned mind. Let's."
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But for now, she leans down and kisses him quickly, while she brings the tip of his cock to her entrance, just to distract him from losing his mind. Her focus is as sharp as always, but in this momentuous occasion, she draws back from the kiss as she takes him in, sinking down until their hips meet in one slow and slick move.
"Oh." That's nice. He has a very lovely - gods, it feels very lovely, so full, so maddeningly nice already. It's unfair and infuriating that Draco should qualify as good at sex just on the basis of being inside her, but there's something about it that makes her heart flutter in her chest, and spurs her on to grind her hips down against him, her fingers splayed against his chest.
"Fuh - damn..." she lets out, catching herself away from the profanity at the very last minute. Her eyebrows draw together in intense concentration, as she lifts her hips and brings them down with a resounding slap of skin against skin. Once, twice, then again and again. "Oh fuck," she gasps, and again and again. "Mmm, Draco. Move."
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Now that he's sheathed inside her, he's adjusting to the weight and feel of her. His hands slide to the inner curve of Hermione's knee, the arch of her thigh, and his fingers dig into her skin as she shifts her weight. Move, she says, and with a hum of satisfaction, Draco falls obediently into line with a gasped "Yes, shit, yes": bracing himself against the mattress and gaining enough traction to roll his hips up to meet hers, thrusting upwards with a foot against the mattress. There's a moment at first where it's ungainly, out of sync — a stutter in the movement, the timing — but then, as these things always go, they find the rhythm. Her sinking back down onto him each time he pushes back up.
Thank Merlin for stupid Muggle traditions and spinning bottles and that wine and that closet.
The sight of her naked above him is both glorious and irritatingly out of reach. He wants to be able to touch more of her, he realises. So, his own decision made, Draco lurches upward to a seated position so Hermione's sitting in his lap instead, so he can chase her mouth into another kiss, so he can palm another handful of naked breast even as she keeps grinding down on his cock.
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It feels so good. He asked her to ride the fuck out of him - and here, she's a guest in his home, how could she refuse him the favour - so she does. Brings her hands to grab onto his hips for balance and meets his hips, thrust for thrust, with enough enthusiasm that skin slaps against skin at a point.
Then he lurges upwards; they kiss, and she loses track of time again, in responding to the kiss. By the end of it, when she's breathless enough to put a few inches of distance and gasp for air, he's got a hand on her breast, she's got hers messing up his hair again, and they've changed the rhythm again. Slow, agonising and teasingly slow rolls of her hips, to feel his cock fully inside her, to let him feel her flutter and clamp around him when she grinds against him just so, just at the right angle to press against her clit too.
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They've had to break apart for air — when did that happen — and so he finds himself catching his breath against her throat, pressing his mouth to the arch of her neck with something between a kiss and a lick. "You feel so good," he murmurs; everything clever and cool and aloof scoured out of him, everything narrowed down instead to that wet heat clenching around him. "Fuck, Hermione, you're so—"
Another languorous thrust upwards, another hitch in his breath and the words strangled in his throat. When was the last time sex had been this good? He couldn't remember. It had been aimless, before: perfunctory, like scratching an itch, taking society-vetted pureblood girls on dates because that was the sort of thing he was expected to do, inviting them back when they batted doe eyes at him. But it wasn't what he'd wanted. He didn't have to work for it, didn't have to earn it, like he's now determined to do— to prove himself to Hermione Granger, as he's always wanted.
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She touches his shoulder, traces his arm all the way up to where his hand cups her breast, scrapes her nails against his wrist in reaction to his thumb teasing against her nipple; in encouragement, because "There, stay close, ah, stay - Draco..."
His name stumbles out of her mouth so easily, it almost feels like this part was meant to be. They were meant to stumble into bed together and learn each other's names through this, exactly. The consummate intellectuals, somehow burning each other up with the physical proof of their lust.
She pulls on his hair lightly, just to bring his head up so she can crush her lips against his again, and again.
"Keep..." between kisses, panted out, "talking..."
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I forgot where I made her live but I'm 99% I'm right with this guess
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