Leopards
Pairing: Draco/Hermione
Summary: Hermione and Draco keep coming across each other unexpectedly. When Hermione realises she and Draco both want to investigate the same famous curse, she decides they can help each other by posing as husband and wife.
Rating: NC-17
Length: 6,284
Warnings: None
Written for smutty_claus. Thank you very much to cryptaknight for beta reading.
Christmas was over now, and it was time for the cold clear days of renewed, reinforced activity. Hermione was rarely daunted by the prospect and was even less so this year. Bringing out the idea she had got the inkling of just before Christmas and fed on Quality Street in the days since was like unwrapping a late present.
She had glimpsed the words Cadmus Nightingale, Nightingale Hall on a letter clutched by Draco Malfoy when she ran into him at the post office. Hermione didn’t own her own owl; Crookshanks didn’t get on with them and having one creature chewing on dead mice about the place was quite enough. She imagined Draco did have his own owl but it was more discreet to use hirelings. Hermione had gathered recently that Draco was the kind of person who required discretion - an Unspeakable, she assumed.
Having barely caught sight of him since she left school, in the last few months she had several times run across him unexpectedly. They had both been somewhat discomfited to find one another creeping about the corridors of a brothel. Hermione was investigating veela trafficking and she assumed she knew what Draco was there for. Later she wondered. Hermione broke the scandal, mostly using the name of the Head of Magical Transportation to provoke public interest, and it turned out the brothel was frequented by a lot of high-ups and powerful men whose exact occupation was rarely inquired into. It was an interesting place.
Then they ended up in St Mungo’s together after Hermione was attacked in Flourish and Blotts by an outraged defender of house elf discipline with poor wand aim and Draco, who happened to be there, was more badly injured than anyone in the scuffle. They got talking, inhibitions lowered by the drama and the pain. When asked what he did, Draco claimed, “Oh, something boring.”
Sometime after that, Hermione and Luna found him in a zoo, eyeing up the hippocampi. Luna drew him into a conversation about them; she wanted to ride them but merfolk got possessive of them and it didn’t seem very diplomatic to annoy merfolk now that The Quibbler was allied with the defence of other magical species’ rights. Draco excused himself to look around more but they observed him later sidling up to the hippocampi again. He caught their gaze, smiled, and left the zoo.
“I think he wanted to steal a hippocampus,” said Luna, and Hermione had to admit that it did look like that.
Most unexpected of all was finding him at the wedding of Hermione’s Muggle friends. She found herself sat next to him in the pew, which was lucky because if he’d been sitting on the other side of the church he’d have been even more of a distraction. Draco jumped when he saw Hermione but managed to control his face quite well. He had just been talking and laughing with the man on the other side of him (who was one of Hermione’s friends!) so the plot was already thick. He hadn’t just wandered in here. He was a wedding guest.
“Hi Hermione!” said Draco quickly.
“Oh, you do know each other,” said Andrew. “I was wondering if you did.”
Hermione and Draco, as if in demonstration of their well-established chumminess, drew close together to talk in low voices. Neglected, Andrew struck up a conversation with the groom’s father, who was passing.
“What in the world do you think you are doing here?” asked Hermione once Andrew was no longer listening. She was livid, and afraid. Was Draco carrying out a campaign against Muggles in some bizarre way of his own?
“I have a Muggle identity,” said Draco. “My name is David Maddox. They’re not - they’re my actual friends. They’re not the reason I have a Muggle identity. They’re incidental.”
“So why do you have one?”
“It’s part of my job. I do a lot of things in my job. I can’t say anymore, and I’ll pretend you don’t probably know what I mean.”
He looked thoughtful and Hermione bet he was thinking of Obliviating her. Unspeakables got away with much worse things in the name of discretion. She distracted him by asking whether he was a friend of the bride or the groom.
Later, she wondered whether she was being gullible. It was very easy, after all, to hint you had a job shrouded in secrecy. If you couldn’t prove it, or speak convincingly about it, it was because you just couldn’t speak about it at all. But it did fit. Not only with any oddness in those earlier encounters, but with what Hermione knew about the Department of Mysteries. People who had little to lose, who found it hard to find employment, were often considered to have the right temperament.
The thing about Draco Malfoy and his interest in Cadmus Nightingale was that Hermione knew why Nightingale was interesting - at least, she knew why she was interested in him. The Nightingales had been cursed for centuries, though the curse had been broken in the 1920s. Hereditary curses often caught the imagination, and the Nightingales being a rich, good-looking family, badly behaved even before the curse, helped make theirs more interesting, as did the discovery that the originator of the curse had not been, as always assumed, one of several suspects among the family’s enemies but Eleanor Nightingale, a matriarch, who’d been thought kind if interfering - a Molly Weasley figure, in fact. Speculation as to why she had done it was interesting, yes, but what really caught Hermione’s attention was the arithmancy. The curse was meticulously created using the family’s dates of birth and dates on which disaster occurred. The dates on which all the generations of children as yet unborn when Eleanor created the curse entered the world were dictated by her. She had decided who among her descendants should have children and when and what happened to them. She had been, to an astonishing extent, God, and while it was all repulsive and Hermione was usually unattracted by Dark magic, she did, quite passionately, want to know more about how Eleanor accomplished it. She would like to write an article about it in The Quibbler -- she often did indulge herself with academic articles as well as social polemics, and this would, like the veela trafficking scandal, be unusual in combining her own interests with a wider audience. What was stopping her was what had stopped books and articles from being written before this and rendering her own piece unnecessary - most of the information was held by the present owner of Nightingale Hall who didn’t want to share it. It was the kind of thing the Department of Mysteries would like to know about, though hardly as important as many of the things they preoccupied themselves with. Then again, Hermione thought that if she worked there she would use the opportunity to satisfy her curiosity on all kinds of trivial things as well as solemn ones. If she had thought about it, Hermione would have said that they probably did know all about it, but apparently they did not.
This was not all Hermione knew about the Nightingales and who did and did not know about their curse. The Quibbler grapevine was a funny one and while Hermione smiled politely at most of the things she heard through it, sometimes it did come up with proper things you didn’t hear anywhere else. The Quibbler had had a Christmas party for its staff and contributors. Hermione enjoyed these occasions more than she would have expected, though it probably helped that they happened during the season of goodwill. Someone who was actually a respected magical theoretician and let off steam in The Quibbler under a pseudonym told Hermione enviously that a friendly rival of his, a Professor William Fardo, had gained access to the Nightingale papers - or at least, he had gained permission to access them, and in the New Year would be going to stay at Nightingale Hall for a while.
Thinking about it now, Hermione realised suddenly that The Quibbler had been what could be called a bad influence on her. It had the influence Fred and George had had on Ginny, making her realise that there wasn’t much daring couldn’t accomplish. The freedom of the press, when it was as free as The Quibbler, was intoxicating. She had been free to pursue any interest and find such an audience as there was to be found to share them. She had disturbed the dignity of entrenched social institutions and their upholders. She had got used to going where she liked in search of a story. When Hermione thought about it, it was not as if there was any justice to be fought for here, and hence no justification for doing what she was thinking of doing, but she couldn’t bring herself to care too much. Getting her own way was fun. And even allowing for the bias of the source, William Fardo didn’t sound like he deserved his opportunity. He’d probably been very sycophantic.
If William Fardo wasn’t going to go to Nightingale Hall, then where was he going to go instead? There was no point making a proposal if she hadn’t thought of these basic details. If a Confundus were combined with a different fabulous research opportunity, Fardo would never turn up at Nightingale Hall, and never explain his absence, either. Could Hermione manufacture such an opportunity? She thought perhaps she could. She had a friend in Germany who was working on a cursed painting by an old wizarding master. His speciality was portrait restoration, and the sophistication of the curse was getting to be too much for him. Fardo should be just as able to write a prestigious article about that curse as the Nightingale one.
She owled Draco and suggested they meet in a coffee shop, without offering an explanation.
Draco was calm and affable, betraying not a trace of curiosity or anxiety, as was only to be expected from any intelligence gatherer worth their salt. Perhaps, it occurred to Hermione, she was also interested in Draco. She was interested generally in the ways people developed, sometimes seeming like quite different people. Sometimes they were the same as ever when you dug, sometimes it turned out you’d never known them at all. There’d been a long gap when Hermione hadn’t been paying attention to a lot of her Muggle connections and had been surprised when she finally had time to spare for her cousins and childhood friends. The most important things about Draco Malfoy when he was younger had been the bad things, and she knew them alright. She hoped he wasn’t the same as ever when she dug.
“Did you have any luck with Cadmus Nightingale?” Hermione asked, finally getting down to business.
Draco sighed. “You know I can’t talk to you about this.”
“I have a reason why you should. I know of someone who did have some luck with him. I would be able to send that person off somewhere else instead of Nightingale Hall, leaving the field open for you to pretend to be that person, and me his wife.” Hermione had thought about making that Fardo’s assistant instead, but she was wary of making the Draco she went to school with her boss. “I’m not sure how well it will go down, me being there, so I’ll hope that in real life he’s more accommodating than he seems or that he likes young women who can smile a lot and ask questions about himself.”
Draco stared into space a moment, considering. “Oh, go on then. It sounds fun. Though when you publish your article won’t he know what’s up and couldn’t he sue you?”
“I did come to that conclusion. But, to be callous, I’m pretty sure he’ll die while I’m still at The Quibbler, so it doesn’t matter much if I keep it under my hat for a while.”
*
The only wizarding stately home Hermione had seen was Malfoy Manor. Despite Malfoy Manor, she was looking forward to seeing another.
“Have you got everything?” Hermione asked. They were in Draco’s flat, preparing to Floo to Nightingale Hall. Draco was wearing robes that made him look older and more sober. Hermione would almost have preferred Draco to want to use Polyjuice Potion, though it made their crime more serious, but he said he hated the taste. She had drawn up pages of notes on what she had been told about Fardo, and, alongside, suggestions for more charitable interpretations. She’d written, too about Fardo’s relationship with his wife Henrietta. The real Fardo was divorced, and his wife hadn’t been called Henrietta, but Hermione thought a name beginning with the same letter and the same number of syllables as her own would make her feel more comfortable.
Draco had shown no interest in these notes. “I like to see what happens,” he said, gesturing at them vaguely.
Hermione put them away crossly, trying not to let herself get nervy and ask lots of questions about what they would do in such and such an eventuality. She didn’t want to let that side of herself show when Draco was being so calm - and was it calm, or just dazed? He didn’t seem to be fully present. Still, she assumed that he would be alright. It was his job, surely he was adequate at it. He had at least looked up some of Fardo’s research, so he could answer polite questions about what else he was interested in.
It was nearly time to go. Hermione drew her case towards her. She had bought too many new things in the cause of making herself feel like a different person. She’d never really acted before and she hoped she wasn’t going to go overboard. Though Henrietta was probably going to be a dreary person, devoted to her marvellous, dull Professor husband.
Luna was the only person she’d told where she was really going to be. She felt someone ought to know, in case of some nameless disaster, and Luna was never surprised, or asked the same kind of awkward questions as other people. Sometimes Hermione thought that one day she would try and bloody well make Luna surprised.
“Well, time to go,” said Draco. She’d never Floo’d at the same time as another person before, but Draco’s fireplace was quite large enough and he was stretching out his hand.
“On the count of three,” Hermione said.
“Nightingale Hall!”
They were in a study, walls lined with generic weighty volumes dingily bound that probably hadn’t been taken down in a century, with large windows looking out onto a long sweeping lawn. A wizard had his feet up on the desk, which was covered with dirty mugs, reading the Prophet.
“Ah, you’re here,” he said, swinging his feet to the floor. “Delighted to meet you.”
Hermione could not help but notice that though elderly, Cadmus was very hale and hearty. She hoped he was nice enough that she would not have to resent it.
“Bissy! Jibbles!” Two house-elves appeared. Oh yes, that was the thing about these rich old pureblood families. House-elves had become somewhat unfashionable among the more aspirational classes since the war, but the established, wealthy pureblood families usually cared little for public opinion where their comfort and convenience was concerned. Oh well, there must be none of her usual gestures, however subtle, of disapproval.
Hermione had not known how many Nightingales there would be in residence, and she wasn’t especially pleased to see that, as well as Cadmus and his wife Katherine, their three sons were there. They were all potential rat-sniffers to Hermione. She was more panicky than she’d thought she’d be. Draco was not Draco, not even the post-Hogwarts one she didn’t know very well. It was like the difference in an actor in and out of character. He seemed older, his voice pattern different. She couldn’t decide whether it was faster or slower, but it was more authoritative. In one way it reassured her that he knew what he was doing, but in another it made her feel more alone.
Cadmus did not seem like a terrible person, but he did seem like one who was nice only so long as people submitted their will to his. There were signs of tension between himself and his sons. One of them was an artist, apparently, a non-realist one.
“What good does it do you to have a red and white blur around the place?” asked Cadmus. “Not as if it’s going to talk because it doesn’t have a mouth. Mind you, I don’t even like still-lifes, so I am biased. I’m all about portraits.”
Hermione suspected Marcus would have liked to continue the conversation about his art and if possible get into a row - she suspected he’d taken up art primarily as a rather painting-by-numbers approach to the role of rebellious son. However, Draco helped draw the conversation onto the subject of portraits, especially ancestral ones. Draco would have grown up surrounded by representations of his ancestors, but he spoke as someone who was interested in and impressed by other people’s ancestors, particularly Cadmus’s, sadly lacking his own.
“You have portraits of Eleanor?” asked Draco tentatively, approaching for the first time the matter they had come to discuss.
“Oh yes, lots. There are some of her alone when she was younger, but it’s mostly family portraits, you know, the kind where they squeeze even the nursery elves in, with the mother in the middle surrounded by her brood. They don’t reveal anything about the curse, though, obviously, or it we wouldn’t have taken so long to realise what was going on.”
“So how did the family realise she was responsible?” Draco asked.
One of the sons, Henry, rolled his eyes. He seemed hostile to their presence.
“My great-aunt found her bible. Sometime before she died she had put it in the library, in the bird-spotting section. No one came across it in centuries. The names of family members and their dates of birth and death were written inside, and on blank leaves, which wasn’t unusual. But of course then you have that moment of ‘Hang on, surely she was dead before these people were born. And how did she know when they died?’ And it just went on and on, well past my great-aunt’s generation. We did wonder if she was just a prophetess, but then we had another look in the library, and her plans were tucked into various bird-spotting books.”
“If only someone had cared about bird-spotting a few centuries earlier,” said Katherine.
“It’s possible she worked even that into her curse,” said Draco.
“We have wondered. But none of us have known our Arithmancy enough to follow the fine details of the curse. I don’t think you’re an actual Arithmancy expert, are you, but I presume you know more than us,” said Cadmus.
Honestly, thought Hermione, what was the point of hiring an expert on a whim without hardly bothering to ask what he was an expert in?
“I think I’ll be able to manage, and Henrietta will be able to help me if necessary,” said Draco.
After lunch they were shown about the house. It was very nice, thought Hermione. Lots of pretty antique furniture and some interesting ceiling carvings in the older parts. The portraits were outstandingly depressing and from finding Cadmus’s preference for the companionability of portraits understandable Hermione was wondering what was wrong with the man. They’d all had terrible lives and died horribly. The house itself showed some signs of having sheltered a cursed family for centuries, with an indelible bloodstain here and a crack in the wall there - Cadmus’s great-great grandfather had been struck by lightning.
Then they were shown to their room and Cadmus said, “William, if you come down to the library in a few minutes I’ll fetch out some of the papers.”
Just William, Hermione noticed with a pang. Oh well, she would make an opportunity to look at things herself later. And she did have plenty of Quibbler stuff to be getting on with.
She had kind of hoped that the kind of people who lived in a house called Their Surname Hall were the kind of people who gave couples separate rooms, but apparently not.
*
After dinner Hermione and Draco had been drawn into conversation and not allowed to look at anything curse-related. Hermione was starting to wonder if Fardo had only been invited because the family wanted someone to distract them from one another. She doubted very much they would escape without at least one embarrassing blazing row during their stay. None of the sons had a respectable occupation or were married or had children or liked each other.
When they got upstairs Draco transfigured an armchair into a small bed without being prompted and disappeared into the bathroom with some pyjamas.
As she was undressing, Hermione decided she was being too much her old self, uncomfortable and fretting. They were here, it was going fine and she would get to see those pages of beautiful calculations.
When the lights were out and they were lying in the dark Draco said, “You’ve changed since school.”
Hermione moved her legs, enjoying the feel of the soft warm sheets. “Perhaps you just didn’t know me well enough. Though I suppose I have changed in some ways.”
“You’re even more determined to take control of a situation.”
Hermione wondered how Draco meant that. It couldn’t be that bad if one considered that he could hardly think less of her than he had at school. “You’ve changed too.”
“Yes.” There was a long pause. “I decided I didn’t think anything worthwhile so I might as well not think. It seems to work quite well.”
Hermione wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that, but she supposed it did seem to work quite well. “Do you like your job?”
“Yes, though you know you shouldn’t ask me about that. I like doing so many different things.”
“The problem with the Department of Mysteries for me is that they never tell anyone anything. What’s the point of hoarding knowledge? I want to know things so I can tell people.”
“I remember,” said Draco drily. “I suppose it depends on your temperament. I can see how it would be frustrating but in a way I prefer it. There aren’t a lot of consequences so you can fool yourself into feeling like what you’re doing isn’t very high-pressure.”
“You were trying to steal one of those hippocampi, weren’t you?” asked Hermione.
“Yes. If you must know, I wanted one to help me get into conversation with someone who’s a big hippocampus enthusiast. In the end I had to pinch one from the merfolk.”
“You must have got very wet,” said Hermione. Strictly speaking, Draco shouldn’t have told her even so much. “I take it the Nightingales and the Malfoys didn’t go to the same pureblood parties, then.”
She knew this already as Draco had assured her they wouldn’t recognise him.
“No. The Nightingales were absorbed in their own problems for so many years and dying gorily all over the place didn’t make them very popular, it’d put a dampener on things. And then even when the curse was broken the habit remained on both sides.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?” Hermione asked, wondering if Unspeakables were allowed.
“No. It’s a bit difficult with the job. I’m always off doing something I can’t talk about. Are you still with Weasley?”
“No.” Hermione thought about saying more but didn’t want to get too personal.
“Bad break-up?”
“No.” She thought he might be hoping that it had been and that she was on bad terms with Ron now, so she decided to clarify. “It wasn’t really working and I thought that in the end we might have a bad break-up and it would be better to quit while we could still be friends.”
There was silence from the other bed and Hermione let herself fall asleep.
*
The next day Blaise Zabini turned up in the guise of Henry Nightingale’s boyfriend. That was odd.
Hermione was the only one who froze in her tracks when she saw him already seated at the breakfast table, which irritated her. Blaise looked mildly surprised and Draco sat down apparently unperturbed but making some fussy gestures with his robes that were William Fardo rather than Draco, which may have been intended as a signal.
“This is my boyfriend Blaise,” said Henry. “These are some people my father invited,” he said to Blaise, waving his hand at them dismissively. Really, Henry was far too old to be so childish.
Hermione was just taking a moment to check that Blaise wasn’t wearing sunglasses indoors - he always somehow gave that impression but when you actually looked it turned out you’d misjudged him - when he gave a start as if he’d forgotten something and put some on. Hermione bet she knew what was going on. Henry had got Blaise here - maybe he actually was his boyfriend, but Hermione thought Blaise might have better taste than that - to annoy his father. Firstly by being a boyfriend and secondly by being the disreputable louche layabout son of a notorious woman.
“William and Henrietta Fardo,” said Cadmus reluctantly. “They’ve come to research our family curse.”
“Dad never shuts up about our curse. You’d think we still had it, honestly,” said Henry.
“Even if you did, I’ve broken it for you,” said Blaise, dutifully pulling Henry in for a kiss. Henry’s brother Selwyn made retching noises.
Hermione decided Blaise wasn’t really the tell-tale type and decided not to worry about it. She doubted Henry would be leaving Blaise at large for her or Draco to talk to anytime soon.
As it happened, Blaise did pop along to the library to see them while Henry was having a little talk with his father. Hermione had a couple of sheets of Eleanor’s calculations and was comparing them to a pile of family papers which should document the same period the calculations corresponded to.
“I haven’t seen you in years,” Blaise said. “Are you actually married?”
“Don’t be silly,” said Hermione.
“We wanted to research the curse. We’re here for the reasons we’re supposed to be, it’s just the names that are fake,” said Draco. “I’m assuming you’ll remember to call us the right names while you’re here.”
Blaise shrugged and nodded.
“So what are you, a professional fake boyfriend?” asked Hermione.
“For the moment. It’s a very short-term thing,” said Blaise.
“I can’t imagine Henry can afford you for very long. It’s a shocking waste of money as it is,” said Draco.
“When he suggested it, I thought it would somehow turn out to be the case that there was money in it for him, not make his father even more disinclined to give him any. Still, it was his money,” said Blaise. “So, what are you up to these days?”
“I’m working on The Quibbler with Luna Lovegood. Draco does something boring,” Hermione said. She thought about saying Something Boring coyly with capital letters to make it clear there was a mystery, but decided to be a responsible adult and say it blandly instead.
“Oh. Wouldn’t have thought Lovegood was up your street,” said Blaise.
“Well, you know, a bit of give and take, we do very well,” said Hermione. She was quite proud of the allowances she and Luna had learned to make for each other.
“Do you have any other occupation?” asked Draco.
“Oh, something boring,” said Blaise lightly. Which made Hermione wonder. He was probably only teasing.
*
Later Hermione went to look at the portraits of Eleanor, which, after the discovery of the curse’s origin, had all been put in one room together as if in solitary confinement.
“Hello, dearie,” the Eleanors all called.
Hermione didn’t reply. There was never any point questioning a portrait for information no one had been able to glean from the living person. Death must always mark the end of access to more than one had of a person already, so a portrait could not be more honest than the original. She watched one of the family portraits as Eleanor licked her handkerchief and dived at a child’s face with it. So many things that she would never know.
*
It was a little eerie, over the next few days, how not-hard it was to pretend to be Draco Malfoy -- William Fardo’s wife. They worked rather well together. Draco was good at non-obtrusively including Hermione in opportunities to see things that Cadmus wouldn’t have automatically extended to her. He was interested in what she had to say and wasn’t boastful about what he had to say. He was calm and methodical, for all he claimed not to think, and interesting, too. They talked about the day when they were lying in bed, in the dark. He was like the Draco she went to school with, but not at all the same. It was strange. Actually, she had to admit, she’d started to fancy him. It didn’t seem like the greatest idea, though she supposed it hardly mattered if nothing came of it and she was certainly capable of keeping it to herself. He was an ex-Death Eater Unspeakable and not very forthcoming about personal things.
Hermione would not be sorry to leave Nightingale Hall. The family were tiring. Blaise disappeared after only a day or so. Henry remained a little longer and had a big row with his father, before thankfully leaving also. She preferred the dead Nightingales. No more pleasant, many of them, but somehow more interesting when they were discovered between the lines of letters and diaries and newspaper articles. It had been pleasant to get absorbed in something she didn’t feel angry about like social issues. She assumed it must be an unusual oasis of peace of Draco’s worklife.
In their bedroom on the last night Draco said,” I suppose we won’t see each other again. Barring strange coincidences.”
“That’s the thing with work that involves different projects. You get all bound up in it and then it’s over and you won’t have anything to do with it again. We have added to the store of human knowledge about Arithmancy. Or at least, at some point we will. And it’s given me a lot of ideas for other things you could do with Arithmancy. Though I suppose the Department of Mysteries will get there first.”
“I have been wondering,” said Draco. Hermione thought he might be blushing. “I mean, I don’t suppose we could really see each other, or I don’t suppose you’d want to, but I have enjoyed working with you and it’s made me feel--”
“You’d like to see a little more of me, basically?” said Hermione, brightening up. That would be an interesting way to round things up.
“Yes. Not necessarily now, but when you’re comfortable, if you’re comfortable.”
“It’s nice to know you’re not quite as cool, calm and collected as you appear these days,” Hermione said.
“Oh, no. It has been quite calm, the last couple of weeks, so I’ve probably given a false impression. Usually it’s the calmness of desperate harassment rather than genuine calm.”
If she saw him again, thought Hermione, she would have to play up her own desperate harassment. She could see the more discreet mentions getting more swaggery if encouraged.
“I suppose you must think I’ve changed if you like me now. Even apart from the Mudblood thing.” She would talk herself out of it if she went on like this. But she’d been wondering, and if they were opening themselves up to embarrassment she may as well get it out.
“Hermione, I didn’t like anyone at school. I tolerated people for reasons that were all about me. I think you’ve changed a bit, but I don’t mean to go on about it like I’m obnoxiously surprised or anything. And I know damn well you wouldn’t touch me with a bargepole if you didn’t think I’d changed.”
“True enough. Come over here.” Hermione’s bed was better than the transfigured armchair. She kissed him to see if she liked it. His lips were a little chapped. The kiss was light and tentative and she went back for more. She could tell he was breathing shallowly. She nudged his mouth open and let herself get lost in the kiss for a bit. He was stroking the nape of her neck where the hair was downy. She sensed he was trying to be gentle, on his best behaviour, and kissed him harder.
They were both wearing robes rather too old for them in style - indeed, robes were becoming more and more something that was worn at work - and there seemed to be superfluous folds and billows of fabric between them. Hermione broke off the kiss to impatiently wrestle out of hers, leaving her in the shift she wore underneath. She picked up one of Draco’s hands and tucked it below the neckline. She laid her hand over his through the fabric, encouraging him to knead her breast. He pulled the shift a little down her shoulders so he could actually see her breasts, and kissed her again, squeezing them lightly and circling her nipples with his thumbs. Hermione leaned into his touch. He pinched one of her nipples just as she was wishing he would, and she could feel the warm tingle echoed between her legs. But she wanted to make him come first.
“Come on, off,” Hermione said, plucking at Draco’s robes. “And those,” she said, tapping at his hip when the robes had gone billowing to the floor. She shuffled herself so she was sitting cross-legged on the edge of the bed, facing his cock. She looked at it consideringly, taking her time to tease, though she’d liked it as soon as she saw it. Finally she placed her fingers round the shaft, bringing them to the tip and up again a few times before dipping her head to suck him. She smiled around his cock when she heard his breaths become gasps. She found blowjobs a bit of a bore from her end of things but loved it when men were responsive. Ron had been particularly gratifying, though now wasn’t the right time to think about that. When the gasps had become moans and groans (he was going to be vocal) she pulled off to use her hand again and he came very quickly afterwards.
Hermione looked up at him with a smile. “You look ravished,” she said. His cheeks were flushed, his mouth was red and his hair was ruffled.
“You look only half-ravished,” Draco said. He pulled the shift off over her head and sucked one of her nipples for a moment before sliding to his knees on the floor and tucking his thumbs into Hermione’s knickers. Hermione spread her legs, putting her feet up on his shoulders. She felt his warm breath between her legs and squirmed a little in anticipation. The cotton-screened moistness was just a delay.
“You have to take them off,” she said, and he’d whipped them down in a flash.
“You’re wet,” he said, admiring her for a moment.
“I like your tongue,” Hermione said. “It’s very directed.” He flickered it at her for a moment before turning his attention back to her clit - pointy, she noticed. Unsurprising. She gazed at the ceiling, the blankness enabling her to concentrate better on the sensations between her legs. Draco lifted her buttocks in his hands to raise her pelvis so he could access her even better. She felt very open and exposed but mostly in a good way. Her feet were paddling about the back of his neck now. The stage just before her orgasm was almost too intense, so that she wanted it to be over at the same time as wanting to prolong it. The orgasm itself was a relief.
Her legs felt a little stiff. She unhooked them from Draco’s neck, closed them and sat up. Draco wiped his mouth and got up. They snuggled down in bed.
“I think we should do that again sometime,” said Hermione.
“We should definitely do that again sometime,” said Draco, kissing her.
*
Hermione was not sorry to say goodbye, but the family crowded round the Floo to see them off nicely enough. She suddenly hoped they would learn to get along a little better, or at least prevent themselves reverting to cursed type. She and Draco didn’t Floo together this time. She waved Draco off with a smile, feeling a little pang. The pang was alleviated by Draco noticeably delaying leaving in favour of waving back and smiling. It had all been nice even if it never came to anything.
Hermione occupied herself when she got home by writing an article on the curse. Even if she couldn’t publish it right now, it clarified things in her mind and gave her ideas. She was distracted from those ideas by a werewolf scandal; a child had been bitten and the media was full of calls for werewolf control. Hermione started by writing a passionate article about how all should not be punished for the crimes of a few, and then began gathering together some case studies of werewolves who’d had their attempts to lead a respectable, responsible life thwarted. She was almost too busy to go out with Draco when he turned up, still hopping from foot to foot occasionally with the remains of what he said had been a fearsomely strong Jig Jinx, but she made the time.
Summary: Hermione and Draco keep coming across each other unexpectedly. When Hermione realises she and Draco both want to investigate the same famous curse, she decides they can help each other by posing as husband and wife.
Rating: NC-17
Length: 6,284
Warnings: None
Written for smutty_claus. Thank you very much to cryptaknight for beta reading.
Christmas was over now, and it was time for the cold clear days of renewed, reinforced activity. Hermione was rarely daunted by the prospect and was even less so this year. Bringing out the idea she had got the inkling of just before Christmas and fed on Quality Street in the days since was like unwrapping a late present.
She had glimpsed the words Cadmus Nightingale, Nightingale Hall on a letter clutched by Draco Malfoy when she ran into him at the post office. Hermione didn’t own her own owl; Crookshanks didn’t get on with them and having one creature chewing on dead mice about the place was quite enough. She imagined Draco did have his own owl but it was more discreet to use hirelings. Hermione had gathered recently that Draco was the kind of person who required discretion - an Unspeakable, she assumed.
Having barely caught sight of him since she left school, in the last few months she had several times run across him unexpectedly. They had both been somewhat discomfited to find one another creeping about the corridors of a brothel. Hermione was investigating veela trafficking and she assumed she knew what Draco was there for. Later she wondered. Hermione broke the scandal, mostly using the name of the Head of Magical Transportation to provoke public interest, and it turned out the brothel was frequented by a lot of high-ups and powerful men whose exact occupation was rarely inquired into. It was an interesting place.
Then they ended up in St Mungo’s together after Hermione was attacked in Flourish and Blotts by an outraged defender of house elf discipline with poor wand aim and Draco, who happened to be there, was more badly injured than anyone in the scuffle. They got talking, inhibitions lowered by the drama and the pain. When asked what he did, Draco claimed, “Oh, something boring.”
Sometime after that, Hermione and Luna found him in a zoo, eyeing up the hippocampi. Luna drew him into a conversation about them; she wanted to ride them but merfolk got possessive of them and it didn’t seem very diplomatic to annoy merfolk now that The Quibbler was allied with the defence of other magical species’ rights. Draco excused himself to look around more but they observed him later sidling up to the hippocampi again. He caught their gaze, smiled, and left the zoo.
“I think he wanted to steal a hippocampus,” said Luna, and Hermione had to admit that it did look like that.
Most unexpected of all was finding him at the wedding of Hermione’s Muggle friends. She found herself sat next to him in the pew, which was lucky because if he’d been sitting on the other side of the church he’d have been even more of a distraction. Draco jumped when he saw Hermione but managed to control his face quite well. He had just been talking and laughing with the man on the other side of him (who was one of Hermione’s friends!) so the plot was already thick. He hadn’t just wandered in here. He was a wedding guest.
“Hi Hermione!” said Draco quickly.
“Oh, you do know each other,” said Andrew. “I was wondering if you did.”
Hermione and Draco, as if in demonstration of their well-established chumminess, drew close together to talk in low voices. Neglected, Andrew struck up a conversation with the groom’s father, who was passing.
“What in the world do you think you are doing here?” asked Hermione once Andrew was no longer listening. She was livid, and afraid. Was Draco carrying out a campaign against Muggles in some bizarre way of his own?
“I have a Muggle identity,” said Draco. “My name is David Maddox. They’re not - they’re my actual friends. They’re not the reason I have a Muggle identity. They’re incidental.”
“So why do you have one?”
“It’s part of my job. I do a lot of things in my job. I can’t say anymore, and I’ll pretend you don’t probably know what I mean.”
He looked thoughtful and Hermione bet he was thinking of Obliviating her. Unspeakables got away with much worse things in the name of discretion. She distracted him by asking whether he was a friend of the bride or the groom.
Later, she wondered whether she was being gullible. It was very easy, after all, to hint you had a job shrouded in secrecy. If you couldn’t prove it, or speak convincingly about it, it was because you just couldn’t speak about it at all. But it did fit. Not only with any oddness in those earlier encounters, but with what Hermione knew about the Department of Mysteries. People who had little to lose, who found it hard to find employment, were often considered to have the right temperament.
The thing about Draco Malfoy and his interest in Cadmus Nightingale was that Hermione knew why Nightingale was interesting - at least, she knew why she was interested in him. The Nightingales had been cursed for centuries, though the curse had been broken in the 1920s. Hereditary curses often caught the imagination, and the Nightingales being a rich, good-looking family, badly behaved even before the curse, helped make theirs more interesting, as did the discovery that the originator of the curse had not been, as always assumed, one of several suspects among the family’s enemies but Eleanor Nightingale, a matriarch, who’d been thought kind if interfering - a Molly Weasley figure, in fact. Speculation as to why she had done it was interesting, yes, but what really caught Hermione’s attention was the arithmancy. The curse was meticulously created using the family’s dates of birth and dates on which disaster occurred. The dates on which all the generations of children as yet unborn when Eleanor created the curse entered the world were dictated by her. She had decided who among her descendants should have children and when and what happened to them. She had been, to an astonishing extent, God, and while it was all repulsive and Hermione was usually unattracted by Dark magic, she did, quite passionately, want to know more about how Eleanor accomplished it. She would like to write an article about it in The Quibbler -- she often did indulge herself with academic articles as well as social polemics, and this would, like the veela trafficking scandal, be unusual in combining her own interests with a wider audience. What was stopping her was what had stopped books and articles from being written before this and rendering her own piece unnecessary - most of the information was held by the present owner of Nightingale Hall who didn’t want to share it. It was the kind of thing the Department of Mysteries would like to know about, though hardly as important as many of the things they preoccupied themselves with. Then again, Hermione thought that if she worked there she would use the opportunity to satisfy her curiosity on all kinds of trivial things as well as solemn ones. If she had thought about it, Hermione would have said that they probably did know all about it, but apparently they did not.
This was not all Hermione knew about the Nightingales and who did and did not know about their curse. The Quibbler grapevine was a funny one and while Hermione smiled politely at most of the things she heard through it, sometimes it did come up with proper things you didn’t hear anywhere else. The Quibbler had had a Christmas party for its staff and contributors. Hermione enjoyed these occasions more than she would have expected, though it probably helped that they happened during the season of goodwill. Someone who was actually a respected magical theoretician and let off steam in The Quibbler under a pseudonym told Hermione enviously that a friendly rival of his, a Professor William Fardo, had gained access to the Nightingale papers - or at least, he had gained permission to access them, and in the New Year would be going to stay at Nightingale Hall for a while.
Thinking about it now, Hermione realised suddenly that The Quibbler had been what could be called a bad influence on her. It had the influence Fred and George had had on Ginny, making her realise that there wasn’t much daring couldn’t accomplish. The freedom of the press, when it was as free as The Quibbler, was intoxicating. She had been free to pursue any interest and find such an audience as there was to be found to share them. She had disturbed the dignity of entrenched social institutions and their upholders. She had got used to going where she liked in search of a story. When Hermione thought about it, it was not as if there was any justice to be fought for here, and hence no justification for doing what she was thinking of doing, but she couldn’t bring herself to care too much. Getting her own way was fun. And even allowing for the bias of the source, William Fardo didn’t sound like he deserved his opportunity. He’d probably been very sycophantic.
If William Fardo wasn’t going to go to Nightingale Hall, then where was he going to go instead? There was no point making a proposal if she hadn’t thought of these basic details. If a Confundus were combined with a different fabulous research opportunity, Fardo would never turn up at Nightingale Hall, and never explain his absence, either. Could Hermione manufacture such an opportunity? She thought perhaps she could. She had a friend in Germany who was working on a cursed painting by an old wizarding master. His speciality was portrait restoration, and the sophistication of the curse was getting to be too much for him. Fardo should be just as able to write a prestigious article about that curse as the Nightingale one.
She owled Draco and suggested they meet in a coffee shop, without offering an explanation.
Draco was calm and affable, betraying not a trace of curiosity or anxiety, as was only to be expected from any intelligence gatherer worth their salt. Perhaps, it occurred to Hermione, she was also interested in Draco. She was interested generally in the ways people developed, sometimes seeming like quite different people. Sometimes they were the same as ever when you dug, sometimes it turned out you’d never known them at all. There’d been a long gap when Hermione hadn’t been paying attention to a lot of her Muggle connections and had been surprised when she finally had time to spare for her cousins and childhood friends. The most important things about Draco Malfoy when he was younger had been the bad things, and she knew them alright. She hoped he wasn’t the same as ever when she dug.
“Did you have any luck with Cadmus Nightingale?” Hermione asked, finally getting down to business.
Draco sighed. “You know I can’t talk to you about this.”
“I have a reason why you should. I know of someone who did have some luck with him. I would be able to send that person off somewhere else instead of Nightingale Hall, leaving the field open for you to pretend to be that person, and me his wife.” Hermione had thought about making that Fardo’s assistant instead, but she was wary of making the Draco she went to school with her boss. “I’m not sure how well it will go down, me being there, so I’ll hope that in real life he’s more accommodating than he seems or that he likes young women who can smile a lot and ask questions about himself.”
Draco stared into space a moment, considering. “Oh, go on then. It sounds fun. Though when you publish your article won’t he know what’s up and couldn’t he sue you?”
“I did come to that conclusion. But, to be callous, I’m pretty sure he’ll die while I’m still at The Quibbler, so it doesn’t matter much if I keep it under my hat for a while.”
*
The only wizarding stately home Hermione had seen was Malfoy Manor. Despite Malfoy Manor, she was looking forward to seeing another.
“Have you got everything?” Hermione asked. They were in Draco’s flat, preparing to Floo to Nightingale Hall. Draco was wearing robes that made him look older and more sober. Hermione would almost have preferred Draco to want to use Polyjuice Potion, though it made their crime more serious, but he said he hated the taste. She had drawn up pages of notes on what she had been told about Fardo, and, alongside, suggestions for more charitable interpretations. She’d written, too about Fardo’s relationship with his wife Henrietta. The real Fardo was divorced, and his wife hadn’t been called Henrietta, but Hermione thought a name beginning with the same letter and the same number of syllables as her own would make her feel more comfortable.
Draco had shown no interest in these notes. “I like to see what happens,” he said, gesturing at them vaguely.
Hermione put them away crossly, trying not to let herself get nervy and ask lots of questions about what they would do in such and such an eventuality. She didn’t want to let that side of herself show when Draco was being so calm - and was it calm, or just dazed? He didn’t seem to be fully present. Still, she assumed that he would be alright. It was his job, surely he was adequate at it. He had at least looked up some of Fardo’s research, so he could answer polite questions about what else he was interested in.
It was nearly time to go. Hermione drew her case towards her. She had bought too many new things in the cause of making herself feel like a different person. She’d never really acted before and she hoped she wasn’t going to go overboard. Though Henrietta was probably going to be a dreary person, devoted to her marvellous, dull Professor husband.
Luna was the only person she’d told where she was really going to be. She felt someone ought to know, in case of some nameless disaster, and Luna was never surprised, or asked the same kind of awkward questions as other people. Sometimes Hermione thought that one day she would try and bloody well make Luna surprised.
“Well, time to go,” said Draco. She’d never Floo’d at the same time as another person before, but Draco’s fireplace was quite large enough and he was stretching out his hand.
“On the count of three,” Hermione said.
“Nightingale Hall!”
They were in a study, walls lined with generic weighty volumes dingily bound that probably hadn’t been taken down in a century, with large windows looking out onto a long sweeping lawn. A wizard had his feet up on the desk, which was covered with dirty mugs, reading the Prophet.
“Ah, you’re here,” he said, swinging his feet to the floor. “Delighted to meet you.”
Hermione could not help but notice that though elderly, Cadmus was very hale and hearty. She hoped he was nice enough that she would not have to resent it.
“Bissy! Jibbles!” Two house-elves appeared. Oh yes, that was the thing about these rich old pureblood families. House-elves had become somewhat unfashionable among the more aspirational classes since the war, but the established, wealthy pureblood families usually cared little for public opinion where their comfort and convenience was concerned. Oh well, there must be none of her usual gestures, however subtle, of disapproval.
Hermione had not known how many Nightingales there would be in residence, and she wasn’t especially pleased to see that, as well as Cadmus and his wife Katherine, their three sons were there. They were all potential rat-sniffers to Hermione. She was more panicky than she’d thought she’d be. Draco was not Draco, not even the post-Hogwarts one she didn’t know very well. It was like the difference in an actor in and out of character. He seemed older, his voice pattern different. She couldn’t decide whether it was faster or slower, but it was more authoritative. In one way it reassured her that he knew what he was doing, but in another it made her feel more alone.
Cadmus did not seem like a terrible person, but he did seem like one who was nice only so long as people submitted their will to his. There were signs of tension between himself and his sons. One of them was an artist, apparently, a non-realist one.
“What good does it do you to have a red and white blur around the place?” asked Cadmus. “Not as if it’s going to talk because it doesn’t have a mouth. Mind you, I don’t even like still-lifes, so I am biased. I’m all about portraits.”
Hermione suspected Marcus would have liked to continue the conversation about his art and if possible get into a row - she suspected he’d taken up art primarily as a rather painting-by-numbers approach to the role of rebellious son. However, Draco helped draw the conversation onto the subject of portraits, especially ancestral ones. Draco would have grown up surrounded by representations of his ancestors, but he spoke as someone who was interested in and impressed by other people’s ancestors, particularly Cadmus’s, sadly lacking his own.
“You have portraits of Eleanor?” asked Draco tentatively, approaching for the first time the matter they had come to discuss.
“Oh yes, lots. There are some of her alone when she was younger, but it’s mostly family portraits, you know, the kind where they squeeze even the nursery elves in, with the mother in the middle surrounded by her brood. They don’t reveal anything about the curse, though, obviously, or it we wouldn’t have taken so long to realise what was going on.”
“So how did the family realise she was responsible?” Draco asked.
One of the sons, Henry, rolled his eyes. He seemed hostile to their presence.
“My great-aunt found her bible. Sometime before she died she had put it in the library, in the bird-spotting section. No one came across it in centuries. The names of family members and their dates of birth and death were written inside, and on blank leaves, which wasn’t unusual. But of course then you have that moment of ‘Hang on, surely she was dead before these people were born. And how did she know when they died?’ And it just went on and on, well past my great-aunt’s generation. We did wonder if she was just a prophetess, but then we had another look in the library, and her plans were tucked into various bird-spotting books.”
“If only someone had cared about bird-spotting a few centuries earlier,” said Katherine.
“It’s possible she worked even that into her curse,” said Draco.
“We have wondered. But none of us have known our Arithmancy enough to follow the fine details of the curse. I don’t think you’re an actual Arithmancy expert, are you, but I presume you know more than us,” said Cadmus.
Honestly, thought Hermione, what was the point of hiring an expert on a whim without hardly bothering to ask what he was an expert in?
“I think I’ll be able to manage, and Henrietta will be able to help me if necessary,” said Draco.
After lunch they were shown about the house. It was very nice, thought Hermione. Lots of pretty antique furniture and some interesting ceiling carvings in the older parts. The portraits were outstandingly depressing and from finding Cadmus’s preference for the companionability of portraits understandable Hermione was wondering what was wrong with the man. They’d all had terrible lives and died horribly. The house itself showed some signs of having sheltered a cursed family for centuries, with an indelible bloodstain here and a crack in the wall there - Cadmus’s great-great grandfather had been struck by lightning.
Then they were shown to their room and Cadmus said, “William, if you come down to the library in a few minutes I’ll fetch out some of the papers.”
Just William, Hermione noticed with a pang. Oh well, she would make an opportunity to look at things herself later. And she did have plenty of Quibbler stuff to be getting on with.
She had kind of hoped that the kind of people who lived in a house called Their Surname Hall were the kind of people who gave couples separate rooms, but apparently not.
*
After dinner Hermione and Draco had been drawn into conversation and not allowed to look at anything curse-related. Hermione was starting to wonder if Fardo had only been invited because the family wanted someone to distract them from one another. She doubted very much they would escape without at least one embarrassing blazing row during their stay. None of the sons had a respectable occupation or were married or had children or liked each other.
When they got upstairs Draco transfigured an armchair into a small bed without being prompted and disappeared into the bathroom with some pyjamas.
As she was undressing, Hermione decided she was being too much her old self, uncomfortable and fretting. They were here, it was going fine and she would get to see those pages of beautiful calculations.
When the lights were out and they were lying in the dark Draco said, “You’ve changed since school.”
Hermione moved her legs, enjoying the feel of the soft warm sheets. “Perhaps you just didn’t know me well enough. Though I suppose I have changed in some ways.”
“You’re even more determined to take control of a situation.”
Hermione wondered how Draco meant that. It couldn’t be that bad if one considered that he could hardly think less of her than he had at school. “You’ve changed too.”
“Yes.” There was a long pause. “I decided I didn’t think anything worthwhile so I might as well not think. It seems to work quite well.”
Hermione wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that, but she supposed it did seem to work quite well. “Do you like your job?”
“Yes, though you know you shouldn’t ask me about that. I like doing so many different things.”
“The problem with the Department of Mysteries for me is that they never tell anyone anything. What’s the point of hoarding knowledge? I want to know things so I can tell people.”
“I remember,” said Draco drily. “I suppose it depends on your temperament. I can see how it would be frustrating but in a way I prefer it. There aren’t a lot of consequences so you can fool yourself into feeling like what you’re doing isn’t very high-pressure.”
“You were trying to steal one of those hippocampi, weren’t you?” asked Hermione.
“Yes. If you must know, I wanted one to help me get into conversation with someone who’s a big hippocampus enthusiast. In the end I had to pinch one from the merfolk.”
“You must have got very wet,” said Hermione. Strictly speaking, Draco shouldn’t have told her even so much. “I take it the Nightingales and the Malfoys didn’t go to the same pureblood parties, then.”
She knew this already as Draco had assured her they wouldn’t recognise him.
“No. The Nightingales were absorbed in their own problems for so many years and dying gorily all over the place didn’t make them very popular, it’d put a dampener on things. And then even when the curse was broken the habit remained on both sides.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?” Hermione asked, wondering if Unspeakables were allowed.
“No. It’s a bit difficult with the job. I’m always off doing something I can’t talk about. Are you still with Weasley?”
“No.” Hermione thought about saying more but didn’t want to get too personal.
“Bad break-up?”
“No.” She thought he might be hoping that it had been and that she was on bad terms with Ron now, so she decided to clarify. “It wasn’t really working and I thought that in the end we might have a bad break-up and it would be better to quit while we could still be friends.”
There was silence from the other bed and Hermione let herself fall asleep.
*
The next day Blaise Zabini turned up in the guise of Henry Nightingale’s boyfriend. That was odd.
Hermione was the only one who froze in her tracks when she saw him already seated at the breakfast table, which irritated her. Blaise looked mildly surprised and Draco sat down apparently unperturbed but making some fussy gestures with his robes that were William Fardo rather than Draco, which may have been intended as a signal.
“This is my boyfriend Blaise,” said Henry. “These are some people my father invited,” he said to Blaise, waving his hand at them dismissively. Really, Henry was far too old to be so childish.
Hermione was just taking a moment to check that Blaise wasn’t wearing sunglasses indoors - he always somehow gave that impression but when you actually looked it turned out you’d misjudged him - when he gave a start as if he’d forgotten something and put some on. Hermione bet she knew what was going on. Henry had got Blaise here - maybe he actually was his boyfriend, but Hermione thought Blaise might have better taste than that - to annoy his father. Firstly by being a boyfriend and secondly by being the disreputable louche layabout son of a notorious woman.
“William and Henrietta Fardo,” said Cadmus reluctantly. “They’ve come to research our family curse.”
“Dad never shuts up about our curse. You’d think we still had it, honestly,” said Henry.
“Even if you did, I’ve broken it for you,” said Blaise, dutifully pulling Henry in for a kiss. Henry’s brother Selwyn made retching noises.
Hermione decided Blaise wasn’t really the tell-tale type and decided not to worry about it. She doubted Henry would be leaving Blaise at large for her or Draco to talk to anytime soon.
As it happened, Blaise did pop along to the library to see them while Henry was having a little talk with his father. Hermione had a couple of sheets of Eleanor’s calculations and was comparing them to a pile of family papers which should document the same period the calculations corresponded to.
“I haven’t seen you in years,” Blaise said. “Are you actually married?”
“Don’t be silly,” said Hermione.
“We wanted to research the curse. We’re here for the reasons we’re supposed to be, it’s just the names that are fake,” said Draco. “I’m assuming you’ll remember to call us the right names while you’re here.”
Blaise shrugged and nodded.
“So what are you, a professional fake boyfriend?” asked Hermione.
“For the moment. It’s a very short-term thing,” said Blaise.
“I can’t imagine Henry can afford you for very long. It’s a shocking waste of money as it is,” said Draco.
“When he suggested it, I thought it would somehow turn out to be the case that there was money in it for him, not make his father even more disinclined to give him any. Still, it was his money,” said Blaise. “So, what are you up to these days?”
“I’m working on The Quibbler with Luna Lovegood. Draco does something boring,” Hermione said. She thought about saying Something Boring coyly with capital letters to make it clear there was a mystery, but decided to be a responsible adult and say it blandly instead.
“Oh. Wouldn’t have thought Lovegood was up your street,” said Blaise.
“Well, you know, a bit of give and take, we do very well,” said Hermione. She was quite proud of the allowances she and Luna had learned to make for each other.
“Do you have any other occupation?” asked Draco.
“Oh, something boring,” said Blaise lightly. Which made Hermione wonder. He was probably only teasing.
*
Later Hermione went to look at the portraits of Eleanor, which, after the discovery of the curse’s origin, had all been put in one room together as if in solitary confinement.
“Hello, dearie,” the Eleanors all called.
Hermione didn’t reply. There was never any point questioning a portrait for information no one had been able to glean from the living person. Death must always mark the end of access to more than one had of a person already, so a portrait could not be more honest than the original. She watched one of the family portraits as Eleanor licked her handkerchief and dived at a child’s face with it. So many things that she would never know.
*
It was a little eerie, over the next few days, how not-hard it was to pretend to be Draco Malfoy -- William Fardo’s wife. They worked rather well together. Draco was good at non-obtrusively including Hermione in opportunities to see things that Cadmus wouldn’t have automatically extended to her. He was interested in what she had to say and wasn’t boastful about what he had to say. He was calm and methodical, for all he claimed not to think, and interesting, too. They talked about the day when they were lying in bed, in the dark. He was like the Draco she went to school with, but not at all the same. It was strange. Actually, she had to admit, she’d started to fancy him. It didn’t seem like the greatest idea, though she supposed it hardly mattered if nothing came of it and she was certainly capable of keeping it to herself. He was an ex-Death Eater Unspeakable and not very forthcoming about personal things.
Hermione would not be sorry to leave Nightingale Hall. The family were tiring. Blaise disappeared after only a day or so. Henry remained a little longer and had a big row with his father, before thankfully leaving also. She preferred the dead Nightingales. No more pleasant, many of them, but somehow more interesting when they were discovered between the lines of letters and diaries and newspaper articles. It had been pleasant to get absorbed in something she didn’t feel angry about like social issues. She assumed it must be an unusual oasis of peace of Draco’s worklife.
In their bedroom on the last night Draco said,” I suppose we won’t see each other again. Barring strange coincidences.”
“That’s the thing with work that involves different projects. You get all bound up in it and then it’s over and you won’t have anything to do with it again. We have added to the store of human knowledge about Arithmancy. Or at least, at some point we will. And it’s given me a lot of ideas for other things you could do with Arithmancy. Though I suppose the Department of Mysteries will get there first.”
“I have been wondering,” said Draco. Hermione thought he might be blushing. “I mean, I don’t suppose we could really see each other, or I don’t suppose you’d want to, but I have enjoyed working with you and it’s made me feel--”
“You’d like to see a little more of me, basically?” said Hermione, brightening up. That would be an interesting way to round things up.
“Yes. Not necessarily now, but when you’re comfortable, if you’re comfortable.”
“It’s nice to know you’re not quite as cool, calm and collected as you appear these days,” Hermione said.
“Oh, no. It has been quite calm, the last couple of weeks, so I’ve probably given a false impression. Usually it’s the calmness of desperate harassment rather than genuine calm.”
If she saw him again, thought Hermione, she would have to play up her own desperate harassment. She could see the more discreet mentions getting more swaggery if encouraged.
“I suppose you must think I’ve changed if you like me now. Even apart from the Mudblood thing.” She would talk herself out of it if she went on like this. But she’d been wondering, and if they were opening themselves up to embarrassment she may as well get it out.
“Hermione, I didn’t like anyone at school. I tolerated people for reasons that were all about me. I think you’ve changed a bit, but I don’t mean to go on about it like I’m obnoxiously surprised or anything. And I know damn well you wouldn’t touch me with a bargepole if you didn’t think I’d changed.”
“True enough. Come over here.” Hermione’s bed was better than the transfigured armchair. She kissed him to see if she liked it. His lips were a little chapped. The kiss was light and tentative and she went back for more. She could tell he was breathing shallowly. She nudged his mouth open and let herself get lost in the kiss for a bit. He was stroking the nape of her neck where the hair was downy. She sensed he was trying to be gentle, on his best behaviour, and kissed him harder.
They were both wearing robes rather too old for them in style - indeed, robes were becoming more and more something that was worn at work - and there seemed to be superfluous folds and billows of fabric between them. Hermione broke off the kiss to impatiently wrestle out of hers, leaving her in the shift she wore underneath. She picked up one of Draco’s hands and tucked it below the neckline. She laid her hand over his through the fabric, encouraging him to knead her breast. He pulled the shift a little down her shoulders so he could actually see her breasts, and kissed her again, squeezing them lightly and circling her nipples with his thumbs. Hermione leaned into his touch. He pinched one of her nipples just as she was wishing he would, and she could feel the warm tingle echoed between her legs. But she wanted to make him come first.
“Come on, off,” Hermione said, plucking at Draco’s robes. “And those,” she said, tapping at his hip when the robes had gone billowing to the floor. She shuffled herself so she was sitting cross-legged on the edge of the bed, facing his cock. She looked at it consideringly, taking her time to tease, though she’d liked it as soon as she saw it. Finally she placed her fingers round the shaft, bringing them to the tip and up again a few times before dipping her head to suck him. She smiled around his cock when she heard his breaths become gasps. She found blowjobs a bit of a bore from her end of things but loved it when men were responsive. Ron had been particularly gratifying, though now wasn’t the right time to think about that. When the gasps had become moans and groans (he was going to be vocal) she pulled off to use her hand again and he came very quickly afterwards.
Hermione looked up at him with a smile. “You look ravished,” she said. His cheeks were flushed, his mouth was red and his hair was ruffled.
“You look only half-ravished,” Draco said. He pulled the shift off over her head and sucked one of her nipples for a moment before sliding to his knees on the floor and tucking his thumbs into Hermione’s knickers. Hermione spread her legs, putting her feet up on his shoulders. She felt his warm breath between her legs and squirmed a little in anticipation. The cotton-screened moistness was just a delay.
“You have to take them off,” she said, and he’d whipped them down in a flash.
“You’re wet,” he said, admiring her for a moment.
“I like your tongue,” Hermione said. “It’s very directed.” He flickered it at her for a moment before turning his attention back to her clit - pointy, she noticed. Unsurprising. She gazed at the ceiling, the blankness enabling her to concentrate better on the sensations between her legs. Draco lifted her buttocks in his hands to raise her pelvis so he could access her even better. She felt very open and exposed but mostly in a good way. Her feet were paddling about the back of his neck now. The stage just before her orgasm was almost too intense, so that she wanted it to be over at the same time as wanting to prolong it. The orgasm itself was a relief.
Her legs felt a little stiff. She unhooked them from Draco’s neck, closed them and sat up. Draco wiped his mouth and got up. They snuggled down in bed.
“I think we should do that again sometime,” said Hermione.
“We should definitely do that again sometime,” said Draco, kissing her.
*
Hermione was not sorry to say goodbye, but the family crowded round the Floo to see them off nicely enough. She suddenly hoped they would learn to get along a little better, or at least prevent themselves reverting to cursed type. She and Draco didn’t Floo together this time. She waved Draco off with a smile, feeling a little pang. The pang was alleviated by Draco noticeably delaying leaving in favour of waving back and smiling. It had all been nice even if it never came to anything.
Hermione occupied herself when she got home by writing an article on the curse. Even if she couldn’t publish it right now, it clarified things in her mind and gave her ideas. She was distracted from those ideas by a werewolf scandal; a child had been bitten and the media was full of calls for werewolf control. Hermione started by writing a passionate article about how all should not be punished for the crimes of a few, and then began gathering together some case studies of werewolves who’d had their attempts to lead a respectable, responsible life thwarted. She was almost too busy to go out with Draco when he turned up, still hopping from foot to foot occasionally with the remains of what he said had been a fearsomely strong Jig Jinx, but she made the time.