Seven Days with Draco Malfoy [PG-13] for ayane_tsurugi
Title: Seven Days With Draco Malfoy
Author/Artist: a_theanalyst
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Unless my alter-ego is J.K. Rowling and I do fan fiction as a ‘bit on the side’, this is sadly not mine. Sadly, no galleons are being made from this (although, if you’re offering, I wouldn’t say no).
Warnings: There is a tendency for Draco to be a pompous Hugh Grant meets Bridget Jones figure (I can’t help myself!); set post-Hogwarts because that’s when all the fun stuff can happen; few necessary clichés; light on serious plot and character development (‘I really am this shallow!’); perhaps too Muggle-ish in places (can we just say they enjoyed their Muggle Studies classes?) and a tendency to over-reference popular culture and lame attempts at humour (apologies).
Summary: What happens when a can strikes a face, which then leads to a scratching of an over-priced car, which then leads to enslavement, and… so much more?
Notes: “Don’t mock the scarf… it’s my signature” (Gossip Girl: season one); “… had lost something nobody had known he’d possessed” (variant of a Gossip Girl quote: season one); “say what you need to say” (Say, John Mayer: features in The Bucket List); ‘as a third party with no absolute no personal interest in the matter’ (butchered quote from She’s The Man). The plot is very loosely based on 100 Days With Mr Arrogant (hence the title!) - just an extremely simplified version.
SEVEN DAYS WITH DRACO MALFOY.
DAY ONE.
She hadn’t meant to do it; it definitely hadn’t been intentional, for she hadn’t known who had owned the Muggle car, had she? No. Therefore, it wasn’t her fault. She couldn’t be blamed. Sure, the action had been there but the intent behind the action? Well, there wasn’t any. There was about as much intent behind the action as there was behind Ginny Weasley giving Harry a love potion -
Well, no, that was a particularly poor example, actually.
But, Hermione tried to justify it to herself, it was a Monday morning. And Monday mornings meant dreary songs whilst she was in the shower, an attempt at a Pepper-Up potion to take away the lingering headache and ill feelings and, well, many other things that seemed satisfactorily depressing. So she didn’t look when she was walking into her office building, and she didn’t look when she kicked that filthy Muggle can on the floor, and she didn’t look when it had hit Draco Malfoy in the face -
Well, no, that wasn’t quite true either. She had definitely been looking when it soared in an arc above the floor; she had seen it almost seek Draco Malfoy’s face out, and she had felt her heart palpitate in acute fear. It would just be her luck, she had thought, if it hit him in the face.
And, oh, but it did. Smack, bang, right in the middle of that very proud, smug and rather sanctimonious face. But it got worse. How could it get worse? It could always get worse . The stupid man that he was (well, perhaps, he might not have been the stupid person in that scenario…) dropped the keys to his car and then there was a horrid, stomach-churning, scratching sound; at which point, she decided to close her eyes, because this Monday was, perhaps, becoming the worst Monday in the history of Mondays.
Obviously the keys scratched his perfection of a car. Of course they had. She couldn’t understand why he used Muggle methods of transportation anyway - all evidence over the course of history pointed to the fact that he hated such things as much as Bellatrix Lestrange had an aversion to Molly Weasley. It was all rather unfortunate, really.
There had been a brief moment - in which his jaw had clenched, then eased again, then the disappearance of a throbbing vein that Vernon Weasley would have been proud of - when she thought he might not threaten her, her blood status, her anything. It was, admittedly, very brief.
Because, at that moment, he walked towards her particularly menacingly (or as menacingly as a Malfoy can anyway: it’s always hard to know whether they’re going to attack you or change their minds, and go for the other side - sadly, there wasn’t another side in this horrid scenario) with the horrid can in hand (didn’t he even think about the cleanliness issues associated?).
‘Granger, look what you’ve done to my car! Is this a case of social envy?’
‘No, Malfoy, this is a case of you getting scared when something hits you in the face - sorry about that, by the way - and then scratching your own Muggle method of transportation.’
‘Actually, Granger, this is a highly expensive car; not, of course, that you would recognise that fact. And, considering you were the one who abused me…’
‘I did not abuse you! Technically, I didn’t even touch you.’
‘… the one who abused me, leading me to drop my keys and scratch my car… Well, I think you might just have to pay for the damage inflicted. Being the nice, rational and charmingly good-looking man that I am, I’ll place the estimate at around four hundred galleons. Of course, I could place interest on it, what do you think?’
‘I think you are the most annoying person that I’ve had the misfortune to meet, and that you’re quite lucky this is an area where I can’t inflict real damage.’
‘Well,’ he said. ‘There is a possibility that you could, ah, give me your services. For a certain period of time. Say, one week or so. I think that would be suitable. And we could forget that you harassed me in the street and defaced my property.’
‘I’m going to deface more than your material property in a second.’
She breathed in deeply, trying to inhale the icy air. She was going to murder him. She was going to have to. It was the only way that the insufferable git would not be able to use this incident to his advantage. But how would she do it? A duel was far too conventional. Maybe she would kill him, in the way that Rasputin was killed, although part of her did recognise that maybe just poisoning was enough; maybe there wasn’t any need to also shoot him and then bundle him in carpet before ditching him in the Neva River. She could, however, appreciate the way a human being could be quite so annoying as to deserve such treatment now in a way that had previously been impossible.
‘I take it you would object to some kind of enslavement agreement then?’
Hermione was actually going to throttle him: forget wands, forget magic, Muggle methods were far more thrilling and ultimately satisfying.
‘Yes, yes I would.’
He surveyed her for a few moments and, she thought, from a purely objective view and if she were a third party outsider with absolutely no personal interest in the matter, then she would consider him quite attractive. The crinkling of his eyes when there was a shocking moment in which a smile almost emerged; the Byronic hero - well, maybe not the Byronic hero. He was no Mr. Darcy. There was, however, something decidedly Mr. Darcy about him.
Or maybe she was just hoping he would turn out to be nice in the end, so she didn’t end up his personal slave.
‘Well, here’s what I propose. You work for me for six days after this one. No enslavement, and you can walk away. But if you walk away, I’m sure I could just increase the price of the damage. Who’s to say that you didn’t leave the building in a rage and then ruin my car further?’
‘Okay.’
Really, what else could she say or do that wouldn’t land herself in Azkaban?
DAY TWO.
She had to drag herself out of bed that morning and into Draco’s office. He dealt with all kinds of hideous legal matters, and she suspected that he often defended those who weren’t worthy of any defence. It was sort of a large, very morally devoid, empire: of newspaper corporations who tried to dictate the perception of news events; of a property market which he completely monopolised; a commercial law firm where arrangements suspiciously went in his interests more often than not.
Hermione was passed his schedule on her way to his office: a map of the building (did she really need it? The lift and the signs were pretty self-explanatory, after all); a milky coffee for Draco with two heaped sugars; his weekly magazines (including the Muggle The Economist) and a muffin. Hermione had claimed that he wanted two that morning and had shovelled the blueberry muffin into her mouth en route to his office.
He immediately called her over when she entered his office. Of course he would. He was revelling in this opportunity of increased power and importance.
‘I thought you could clean and re-organise my office for your first day. With no magic. With hands, no speck of dust left, no book left unturned. Essentially, I want you to be Mary Poppins, preferably with the same happy-go-lucky attitude.’
‘You know Mary Poppins?’
He didn’t actually look up from his work: he continued to talk into the fire, ensuring the wizarding world was going accordingly in his interest, before then returning to the phone that decided to ring constantly. Hermione soon thought that the sound would be implanted into her brain, never to be removed, until she would hear it in her dreams, in the shower, in… well, everywhere.
So she started cleaning the bookshelves with a duster, flicking it over all the surfaces and carefully placing the books on the floor. She was perplexed how to arrange the history books: by theme, by chronological order, or by author? Chronological order within theme seemed to be the best answer; she doubted whether Malfoy would ever make a true effort to read anyway.
She wondered, briefly, if this was meant to be some kind of punishment. Because cleaning was actually rather therapeutic - well, to her mind, anyway - and being asked to organise? Well, that wasn’t punishment at all. The only punishing factor in that was that it couldn’t be repeated throughout every level. Her fingers were itching or, rather, twitching to sort it all out.
‘Granger, I don’t like it.’
Attempting to vanquish him is definitely an Azkaban-worthy offence, she thought.
‘How can you not like it? What isn’t there to like? Your books are organised, the place is absolutely sparkling in a way that even magic couldn’t achieve, even the cleaner would be shocked that it could become anymore pristine. In fact, it’s perfect. Absolutely, completely, even for me who has some rather overzealous cleaning issues, perfect. I have even organised your scarf collection by shade.’
‘It’s rather too clean. I quite like a bit of homely mess. That bookshelf, for example, particularly the top shelf, is rather just too organised. Why don’t you stack a few on top of each other, or… or… something along those lines.’
Of course, belatedly, she hadn’t realised what the true intent of this was. Being a Malfoy, and Malfoys having to be misogynistic pigs (no offence to the poor animals intended), she rather thought that this was actually an attempt for him to ogle her legs from a better view.
Ugh.
‘Well, the view is now absolutely perfect,’ he called from behind her; trying, and rather failing, to keep the smug tone from his voice.
‘My feminist principles have now been completely undermined on every level. Slave status was bad enough, really. This is just beyond the pale.’
‘Well, if you want to undermine them further, there’s another kind of service you could do me, and it would definitely definitely bring the six days down to just the one.’
‘No.’
‘You don’t even know what it is! You are so presumptuous. As if I would even go near you with a broomstick. I was merely referring to a nice little errand which, possibly, involves visiting my father - who, yes, does indeed now live in a rehabilitation centre for those with deep issues towards Muggles and every other variant of blood that isn’t supposedly pure.’
‘You want to send me to my death?’
Draco raised his eyebrow at her and allowed himself a grin; ever so slightly, to break into a full one would be far too charming, of course.
‘Not death, per se, he can barely remember any spells at the moment other than Avada Kedavra in random directions. Of course, that does sound quite threatening…’
‘Just a bit.’
‘… but they took it off him, of course, and now he just brandishes a stick around, thinking he’s cursing everything in sight. Bit sad, really. But he needs company for a few hours a day, and I hate to do it, it’s just a blasted waste of time, so I was thinking…’
‘Fine.’
‘Granger, where is your spine? I would have made me hold out for at least another half an hour, if not more. Clearly I’m going to have to teach you that over the coming five days.’
DAY THREE.
‘I thought we would go out shopping together. Obviously, I know your time here is meant to be completely productive and rather heinous. Trust me, I’ll make it so. But my last assistant, and this one actually, both refuse to attend my shopping outings. Clearly, these are very important occasions and really need the advice of another however, ah, un-style conscious they are.’
Hermione knew the difference between Jimmy Choos and Manolo Blahniks so thought this was a particularly unfair criticism; sure, criticise her hair, perhaps, or her general styling. But her clothing choices? She’d become accustomed to the Muggle way of clothing and hardly thought she was Anne Hathaway in the opening credits of The Devil Wears Prada. Clearly not.
‘Are we going to buy more scarves, then? To add to your already large, over-flowing, and just generally eccentric collection?’
‘Don’t mock the scarf, Granger, it’s my signature.’
Which was how, a few hours later, they were standing in the middle of a very large shopping centre, with Hermione acting as some kind of clothes-hanger. Draco, obviously, could not have anything that would deter from ‘the wonderful experience that happens to be shopping’ and Hermione, with her sort-of enslavement agreement to fulfil, could not be one to argue. She just wished he didn’t enjoy the shopping experience quite so much. The potential for one of the bags to cut off her arms was seemingly rather great.
‘Malfoy, you must have everything you need by now. We have enough scarves to do a particularly nasty form of body-binding, enough suits for you to not need to have one dry-cleaned for at least a year, and I cannot bear to compare another bottle of moisturiser to see which has the more “masculine” smell.’
‘But we’ve only just started! We’ve been here for a total of -’ he checked his watch, ‘- three hours and forty-seven minutes! We have at least another two hours of shopping, maybe including a meal if fatigue, hunger and malnourishment sets in. Which it is quite likely to do considering I normally prefer to just shop in Diagon Alley to avoid the horrible aspect of walking. Gliding is clearly far superior. Oh, and Apparition, I miss that…’
Hermione groaned, shifting from foot to foot, moving the bags from one arm to the other, wondering if she could attempt a feather-light spell while nobody but Draco was looking in her particular direction. Risky, but possibly worth it, if she could spare her arm.
‘Draco, if you don’t want a dead “slave” you are going to have to quit your shopping addiction for at least an hour whilst I consume the left side of the menu and possibly the desert section too. Oh, and maybe a coffee. I really have a coffee craving, you keep drinking mine, even though I only have one sugar.’
‘Well, you do this rather impatient huff-ing type sound…’
She let out an exasperated sigh and rolled her eyes in his general direction.
‘… yes, like that. And it’s rather entertaining. Which, really, is just an incentive to step up the annoying tendencies.’
Somehow, by either magic or plain miracle she wasn’t sure, Hermione and Draco ended up seated in a booth of a restaurant half an hour (and a two new briefcases) later. Clearly the third stomach rumble had convinced Draco that something had to be done before she wilted next to him and caused a scene. Draco, of course, could not handle the possibility of a scene.
He was now staring at her as if he couldn’t quite believe his eyes.
‘You really did consume the entire left side of the menu, I thought you were just joking, that nobody your size could have quite such a ferocious appetite!’
Hermione merely shrugged and continued to devour her chocolate cheesecake, only pausing to offer criticisms of Draco’s ‘appalling table manners, honestly’. Dare she say it, it almost felt too comfortable and companionable for a (strictly platonic) slave-master relationship. In fact, this wasn’t turning out to be that much of a punishment at all; a break from academia, at least, not that she usually enjoyed such a break.
‘Are you going to finish that?’ she asked.
‘Clearly not. Do you want to eat my napkin, too? The chair leg, perhaps? Or do you just limit to edible things? It’s hard to tell…’
Draco surveyed her over the rim of his wine glass rather apprehensively: maybe this wasn’t a good idea at all. So she might not have been able to pay the necessary amount to ensure his car was perfection, but money had ceased to be an issue to him a long time ago. Was it really necessary to punish her so?
‘Don’t make me curse you,’ she replied.
Well, actually, maybe the punishment was deserved.
DAY FOUR.
Draco had decided today that he couldn’t actually be bothered to attended to his normal duties, apparently, or so Hermione had deciphered from his apparent lack of concentration. Instead he was asking her a number of impertinent questions over her family, her love life, her studies, and anything else that you would ask an employee but you would, clearly, ask somebody who had wrecked your car.
‘When was your last partner, then? This year, last year, sometime never?’ he questioned. His feet were casually up on his desk; he had a quill rotating in one hand and was sipping a drink all at once. And Hermione had thought that women were the ones who were supposedly able to multi-task.
It was when she was organising one of his filing cabinets that he asked a question which made her drop the files over the floor, with paper spilling out in all directions, as she tried to helplessly stem the flow which threatened to completely engulf her.
‘Are you busy this evening?’
For a minute - one irrational, thoughtless and utterly stupid minute - she had thought he was actually going to ask her on a date. She could not name why: she was supposedly doing his bidding for six days (she wondered why it wasn’t a seventh but then realised he probably believed himself to be God; the seventh was clearly a day of rest for him), he clearly despised her, and she clearly despised him and his pompous attitude… Still, she really did want there to be something Mr. Darcy-ish about him. Why wouldn’t he fulfil the male lead in this story as he was supposed to? It was all rather irritating.
‘Yes.’
And she was, actually; it wasn’t a desperate attempt to show she wasn’t nearing spinsterhood and wouldn’t be eaten by Alsatians as seen in Bridget Jones. Admittedly, it hadn’t been by design. She had, of course, been set up by Ginny (who was rather overly keen on setting up Hermione with anybody since she had read that the Female Friend Is Never Really Just A Friend article in Witch Weekly) on some form of a blind-date. It would be excruciatingly painful and likely to end in an awkward conversation which would be undoubtedly forced in an attempt to make the time pass quickly before they could hurry to their respective sanctuaries of home.
‘You’re actually not spending your time as a recluse?’
She was going to slap the smug smirk off his face one of these days.
‘Yes, yes I am. I’m going to a restaurant with a friend, who hopefully doesn’t think I spend my time as recluse, or that it’s fine to entrap me into being almost a slave for six days.’
‘Feel lucky that there isn’t a seventh. Well, I won’t ask you what I was going to then. Instead, do you want to go and lovingly clean the car that you so happily ruined a few days ago? Obviously avoid scratching off more paint, that would be at least another week.’
He heard her mumbling on the way to the exit.
‘You know, complaints are worth at least another ten hours of hard labour cleaning the Manor!’
*
He hadn’t really meant to run into her. Rather, he hadn’t intended to see Hermione at all. But, somehow, he must have stumbled upon the place she was meeting her ‘friend’. Actually, it didn’t appear to be a friend at all. For when he sat down at the table of his favourite restaurant - pitifully ordering paella for one - he saw Hermione sitting five tables away with somebody who didn’t look like a friend, at all. Not a friend Draco had heard mentioned before, at least, from Potter and co. Did that mean she was on a date? Not, of course, that he cared about what she was doing outside of cleaning his various buildings, apartments, running his errands and generally doing his bidding.
Still, Draco couldn’t help but wonder what the attraction was. She hadn’t laughed in the five minutes he had been staring - well, no, Malfoy’s didn’t do things such as staring; he was merely looking with intent - and she certainly had done little more than give a polite smile. With the rose lying on the corner of the table, it had all the markings of a first date. How delightful. Well, it would be rather delightful to spoil it, at least; look at him, with his perfectly slick hair and his annoying smile with that perfect glint to his teeth, and that annoying sparkle in his eye. Oh, he loathed him, and her for finding that smooth operator attractive.
Of course, Draco was losing something nobody had known he’d possessed: his heart.
DAY FIVE.
Draco didn’t pretend that he had anything particularly useful for her that day: New Year was coming and, in any case, at that time of year business lulled. People ceased to want to buy extra properties and expand their business, legal issues never slept but didn’t appear to be quite so rife, and his opinions were engrained into the newspaper’s print. Which led her to wondering why on Earth he still insisted on keeping her there (well, despite the obvious informal agreement).
Then she found out what her punishment was to be for that day…
‘We’re going babysitting,’ he said, with a fake smile plastered on his face. ‘It possibly involves baking, it might involve screaming, there’s a chance of crying, but it’ll definitely involve a child.’
‘How delightful.’
Actually, for a relative of a Malfoy, the child was quite delightful. She was all wide, Bambi eyes and a voice that apparently led even Draco to melt a little and give her whatever she wished for; in return, he received cupboard love and all was well in the realm of babysitting.
Until little Anna decided that, yes, yes she very much wanted to bake some form of cake with the both of them, and that just Draco’s input wasn’t enough. And there needed to be ‘hot chocolate, and sprinkles, and cream, and everything!’ It was quite impossible to refuse.
Which was possibly how Hermione had ended up with cake mixture on her nose twenty minutes later, cracked eggs on the floor, a very annoyed Draco as some had also landed on his ‘very over-priced jumper, thank you’ and a very overexcited six year old child.
‘Draco, try this, would you?’
Hermione held out the wooden spoon, coated in a thick layer of chocolate icing. He licked it uncertainly and declared his verdict: ‘Definitely needs more sugar.’
She raised her eyebrows in dismay, and grabbed it back again. After tasting it against a few times, she realised the issue.
‘You just have an incredibly sweet tooth. You can’t possibly have any more sugar in this! I know the whole point of cake baking is to encourage some kind of tooth rotting, whether my parents approve or not, but that’s just outlandish.’
‘Not quite as outlandish as the icing on the end of your nose, however.’
He reached over and wiped it off with a distinctly soggy cloth that Anna had been using to clean - well, goodness knows what, actually. There was a brief pause until she loudly demand that the cake be put in the oven ‘now, or I won’t get to eat it before Mummy and Daddy come home’.
After Hermione had sliced the cake into three rather uneven pieces (Draco had guided her hand, and she’d been too distracted to realise that she’d ended up with a slither as the result of his rather larger piece) and made the hot chocolate (with marshmallows, of course, and extra sugar for Draco, as he clearly was not sweet enough himself), they sat around the large, wooden table in the kitchen and slurped happily.
‘So,’ Draco added, ‘what’s for tea, Martha Stewart?’
All in all, Hermione concluded when she got home, it was not a completely disastrous evening, all things considered (considering it was Nigella Lawson meets Sesame Street), at all.
DAY SIX.
It was, she realised, the penultimate day of being with Draco, in all senses. For after this roller coaster of a slave ride was over, she would probably never be acknowledged by him again, rather in the same way he refused to acknowledge the existence of the Weasleys (particularly Ron - the pain of the ‘ferret’ remarks never did quite fade with time).
The penultimate day was really that: things ran smoothly, she did the normal chores, the normal errands, the normal cleaning. She sat on the edge of Draco’s desk and bothered him whilst he pretended to work. She took a few phonecalls and tried to adopt Draco’s smug and, as she liked to tell him, pompous voice. And when that was done she’d bring him refreshments with a glare.
It was almost a routine. And a small part of her considered, albeit very briefly, whether she might actually miss him and all his atrocious ways. Particularly briefly. Probably in the same way she first thought she had enjoyed Trainspotting but, on a second viewing, it actually turned out not to be particularly enjoyable at all. Merlin, was she comparing her non-existent relationship with Malfoy to Trainspotting?
‘Could you stay later, today?’ he asked, at around six o’clock. There was frown line appearing on his head, and she didn’t particularly feel like refusing him in any case. ‘I have to make some arrangements for that New Year’s party which is, um, tomorrow, actually. I have no idea why people feel like celebrating the beginning of a New Yea-’
Hermione placed her hand over his mouth.
‘Are you the New Year’s equivalent of a Scrooge? Because, honestly, if you are then I’ll just have to do the honourable thing and organise it for you. If you’re in charge the setting will probably resemble something from The Addams Family rather than Love Actually. And we can’t have that.’
His shoulders, which had been both raised and tense, relaxed slightly.
‘It’s not part of your normal weekly duties. In fact, if I had a conscience, I think it might feel particularly guilty at the thought of you not spending time with the Smooth Operator.’
‘The who?’
Draco had the courtesy to blush for the first time, since, well, she’d ever known him. It was definitely unprecedented. And then she realised he must have seen her on her so-called date the other evening and jumped to all kinds of (very likely inaccurate) conclusions.
‘Did the Smooth Operator happen to be spotted in a restaurant with me, earlier in the week? Because, not that you would be at all bothered, of course, but it was a blind-date constructed by the oh-so-dear Ginevra Weasley on my behalf as, apparently, I’m to men what Rodenticide is to rats.’
‘Well, not that I like to take happiness in your misfortune, but…’
‘But?’
There was a brief pause where Draco thought to himself: what on Earth have I just said? And the panic began to set in. Which was simply preposterous because he was neither the type to panic, or to feel pressure, or to feel remotely unsettled. His father would not be impressed. Then again, his father really was only impressed with news of Muggle deaths or death, doom and destruction, so perhaps that was a good thing.
‘Draco Malfoy, are you lost for words?’
‘I think I might be.’
DAY SEVEN.
Hermione was unusually nervous: she had spent the main part of her day pretending to do Draco’s general tasks but had really been doing last minute preparations for this utterly ridiculous party which would just see drunken secretaries mistakenly throwing themselves at their bosses, or insulting their poor treatment (she didn’t apply a misogynistic view to this: both genders had done it at hers on numerous, particularly embarrassing, occasions).
It was only when she was finishing clearing up Draco’s desk after he’d left to get ready fort he dreaded event, that she saw a curious piece of screwed up parchment. Bending down, she tentatively unfolded it and saw a small note: ‘Say what you need to say’ and, beneath that, was her name with a question mark beside it. Her heart fluttered for a moment until she realised that she was being utterly ridiculous. Firstly, how could she like somebody who she had been indebted to for a week, really for no particular reason at all? Secondly, well, secondly, the note was so ambiguous that it could mean anything at all. Couldn’t it? Of course it could. She would not be a fool and read far too much into nothing.
Which is why, of course, she spent so long selecting her outfit for that evening. Once she’d settled for her simple black shift dress with Jimmy Choos (he could never again criticise her for her lack of fashion knowledge, general taste and style; although, admittedly, these were, perhaps, actually the only items in her wardrobe that he might even considering approving of, protégé Elie Saab that he thought he was). She pulled her bag over her shoulder and surveyed herself in the mirror before she left: it would do. Yes, Ginny wouldn’t approve of the outfit, but then she never wanted to look like a harlot anyway.
She arrived with the party in full-swing (really, it was the only time to arrive: she had decided Firewhisky was clearly some kind of social lubricant, and that way it would be far less awkward conversing with people she really had not met before, and probably wouldn’t care to meet again) and sought out Draco. He was, of course, standing in the corner talking to a few similar people (in that, their mouths appeared to also look like they were sucking on lemons, too).
And she decided, somewhere along the way, that actually, whether he looked or sounded or was quite frankly as much of an enigma as Mr. Darcy; she really didn’t care. She liked the way his hair seemed to reflect the little light in the room, she liked the way he saved his smiles for very rare occasions and only few people (she thought it made them all the more special) and she liked the way he wasn’t remotely threatened by her brain power (leading her to tell him she did, and could still, go from zero to study in sixty seconds).
But, most of all, she liked the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled. And the way she hadn’t told him she was there, but somehow he had noticed, and his eyes had met hers. It was all rather cliché, but who knew such clichés could be quite so enjoyable?
She watched him excuse himself from his guests (which involved disentangling himself from one rather overenthusiastic female) and made his way over to her. And it was rather predictable, but she didn’t care. How could she care when this utterly pompous, completely arrogant, but somehow entirely loveable man was making his way towards her?
And then he was finally there, lifting her slightly off her feet, into the air; all the while, holding her in his arms (which, she briefly noted, before her brain turned into utter mush, really had evidence of some form of muscle toning). He placed his lips upon hers, and she finally felt all rational thought completely leave. After a few moments, he stood back and simply stared.
‘You, Hermione Granger, are possibly the most insufferable person I’ve spent six days with. But you do make my heart beat faster, and you do make my palms sweat - in an entirely un-Malfoy manner, I might add. And I love you, for all your insufferable know-it-all tendencies, even though you often make me speechless. Because you make me speechless, and my palms sweat, and all those other ridiculous things.’
She merely leant in before she went to kiss him again, and then whispered: ‘pretending it was four hundred galleons to make me spend time with you, Draco Malfoy? All you needed to do was ask.’
The End
ferretbush_post is the account the mods use to post gifts, it has not authored or created any of the gifts.
Mod Note: This gift was originally written for a participant that is no longer participating. In an effort to give thanks to the pinch-hitters that have joined this fest, we will be giving these gifts to them. Enjoy!
Author/Artist: a_theanalyst
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Unless my alter-ego is J.K. Rowling and I do fan fiction as a ‘bit on the side’, this is sadly not mine. Sadly, no galleons are being made from this (although, if you’re offering, I wouldn’t say no).
Warnings: There is a tendency for Draco to be a pompous Hugh Grant meets Bridget Jones figure (I can’t help myself!); set post-Hogwarts because that’s when all the fun stuff can happen; few necessary clichés; light on serious plot and character development (‘I really am this shallow!’); perhaps too Muggle-ish in places (can we just say they enjoyed their Muggle Studies classes?) and a tendency to over-reference popular culture and lame attempts at humour (apologies).
Summary: What happens when a can strikes a face, which then leads to a scratching of an over-priced car, which then leads to enslavement, and… so much more?
Notes: “Don’t mock the scarf… it’s my signature” (Gossip Girl: season one); “… had lost something nobody had known he’d possessed” (variant of a Gossip Girl quote: season one); “say what you need to say” (Say, John Mayer: features in The Bucket List); ‘as a third party with no absolute no personal interest in the matter’ (butchered quote from She’s The Man). The plot is very loosely based on 100 Days With Mr Arrogant (hence the title!) - just an extremely simplified version.
SEVEN DAYS WITH DRACO MALFOY.
DAY ONE.
She hadn’t meant to do it; it definitely hadn’t been intentional, for she hadn’t known who had owned the Muggle car, had she? No. Therefore, it wasn’t her fault. She couldn’t be blamed. Sure, the action had been there but the intent behind the action? Well, there wasn’t any. There was about as much intent behind the action as there was behind Ginny Weasley giving Harry a love potion -
Well, no, that was a particularly poor example, actually.
But, Hermione tried to justify it to herself, it was a Monday morning. And Monday mornings meant dreary songs whilst she was in the shower, an attempt at a Pepper-Up potion to take away the lingering headache and ill feelings and, well, many other things that seemed satisfactorily depressing. So she didn’t look when she was walking into her office building, and she didn’t look when she kicked that filthy Muggle can on the floor, and she didn’t look when it had hit Draco Malfoy in the face -
Well, no, that wasn’t quite true either. She had definitely been looking when it soared in an arc above the floor; she had seen it almost seek Draco Malfoy’s face out, and she had felt her heart palpitate in acute fear. It would just be her luck, she had thought, if it hit him in the face.
And, oh, but it did. Smack, bang, right in the middle of that very proud, smug and rather sanctimonious face. But it got worse. How could it get worse? It could always get worse . The stupid man that he was (well, perhaps, he might not have been the stupid person in that scenario…) dropped the keys to his car and then there was a horrid, stomach-churning, scratching sound; at which point, she decided to close her eyes, because this Monday was, perhaps, becoming the worst Monday in the history of Mondays.
Obviously the keys scratched his perfection of a car. Of course they had. She couldn’t understand why he used Muggle methods of transportation anyway - all evidence over the course of history pointed to the fact that he hated such things as much as Bellatrix Lestrange had an aversion to Molly Weasley. It was all rather unfortunate, really.
There had been a brief moment - in which his jaw had clenched, then eased again, then the disappearance of a throbbing vein that Vernon Weasley would have been proud of - when she thought he might not threaten her, her blood status, her anything. It was, admittedly, very brief.
Because, at that moment, he walked towards her particularly menacingly (or as menacingly as a Malfoy can anyway: it’s always hard to know whether they’re going to attack you or change their minds, and go for the other side - sadly, there wasn’t another side in this horrid scenario) with the horrid can in hand (didn’t he even think about the cleanliness issues associated?).
‘Granger, look what you’ve done to my car! Is this a case of social envy?’
‘No, Malfoy, this is a case of you getting scared when something hits you in the face - sorry about that, by the way - and then scratching your own Muggle method of transportation.’
‘Actually, Granger, this is a highly expensive car; not, of course, that you would recognise that fact. And, considering you were the one who abused me…’
‘I did not abuse you! Technically, I didn’t even touch you.’
‘… the one who abused me, leading me to drop my keys and scratch my car… Well, I think you might just have to pay for the damage inflicted. Being the nice, rational and charmingly good-looking man that I am, I’ll place the estimate at around four hundred galleons. Of course, I could place interest on it, what do you think?’
‘I think you are the most annoying person that I’ve had the misfortune to meet, and that you’re quite lucky this is an area where I can’t inflict real damage.’
‘Well,’ he said. ‘There is a possibility that you could, ah, give me your services. For a certain period of time. Say, one week or so. I think that would be suitable. And we could forget that you harassed me in the street and defaced my property.’
‘I’m going to deface more than your material property in a second.’
She breathed in deeply, trying to inhale the icy air. She was going to murder him. She was going to have to. It was the only way that the insufferable git would not be able to use this incident to his advantage. But how would she do it? A duel was far too conventional. Maybe she would kill him, in the way that Rasputin was killed, although part of her did recognise that maybe just poisoning was enough; maybe there wasn’t any need to also shoot him and then bundle him in carpet before ditching him in the Neva River. She could, however, appreciate the way a human being could be quite so annoying as to deserve such treatment now in a way that had previously been impossible.
‘I take it you would object to some kind of enslavement agreement then?’
Hermione was actually going to throttle him: forget wands, forget magic, Muggle methods were far more thrilling and ultimately satisfying.
‘Yes, yes I would.’
He surveyed her for a few moments and, she thought, from a purely objective view and if she were a third party outsider with absolutely no personal interest in the matter, then she would consider him quite attractive. The crinkling of his eyes when there was a shocking moment in which a smile almost emerged; the Byronic hero - well, maybe not the Byronic hero. He was no Mr. Darcy. There was, however, something decidedly Mr. Darcy about him.
Or maybe she was just hoping he would turn out to be nice in the end, so she didn’t end up his personal slave.
‘Well, here’s what I propose. You work for me for six days after this one. No enslavement, and you can walk away. But if you walk away, I’m sure I could just increase the price of the damage. Who’s to say that you didn’t leave the building in a rage and then ruin my car further?’
‘Okay.’
Really, what else could she say or do that wouldn’t land herself in Azkaban?
DAY TWO.
She had to drag herself out of bed that morning and into Draco’s office. He dealt with all kinds of hideous legal matters, and she suspected that he often defended those who weren’t worthy of any defence. It was sort of a large, very morally devoid, empire: of newspaper corporations who tried to dictate the perception of news events; of a property market which he completely monopolised; a commercial law firm where arrangements suspiciously went in his interests more often than not.
Hermione was passed his schedule on her way to his office: a map of the building (did she really need it? The lift and the signs were pretty self-explanatory, after all); a milky coffee for Draco with two heaped sugars; his weekly magazines (including the Muggle The Economist) and a muffin. Hermione had claimed that he wanted two that morning and had shovelled the blueberry muffin into her mouth en route to his office.
He immediately called her over when she entered his office. Of course he would. He was revelling in this opportunity of increased power and importance.
‘I thought you could clean and re-organise my office for your first day. With no magic. With hands, no speck of dust left, no book left unturned. Essentially, I want you to be Mary Poppins, preferably with the same happy-go-lucky attitude.’
‘You know Mary Poppins?’
He didn’t actually look up from his work: he continued to talk into the fire, ensuring the wizarding world was going accordingly in his interest, before then returning to the phone that decided to ring constantly. Hermione soon thought that the sound would be implanted into her brain, never to be removed, until she would hear it in her dreams, in the shower, in… well, everywhere.
So she started cleaning the bookshelves with a duster, flicking it over all the surfaces and carefully placing the books on the floor. She was perplexed how to arrange the history books: by theme, by chronological order, or by author? Chronological order within theme seemed to be the best answer; she doubted whether Malfoy would ever make a true effort to read anyway.
She wondered, briefly, if this was meant to be some kind of punishment. Because cleaning was actually rather therapeutic - well, to her mind, anyway - and being asked to organise? Well, that wasn’t punishment at all. The only punishing factor in that was that it couldn’t be repeated throughout every level. Her fingers were itching or, rather, twitching to sort it all out.
‘Granger, I don’t like it.’
Attempting to vanquish him is definitely an Azkaban-worthy offence, she thought.
‘How can you not like it? What isn’t there to like? Your books are organised, the place is absolutely sparkling in a way that even magic couldn’t achieve, even the cleaner would be shocked that it could become anymore pristine. In fact, it’s perfect. Absolutely, completely, even for me who has some rather overzealous cleaning issues, perfect. I have even organised your scarf collection by shade.’
‘It’s rather too clean. I quite like a bit of homely mess. That bookshelf, for example, particularly the top shelf, is rather just too organised. Why don’t you stack a few on top of each other, or… or… something along those lines.’
Of course, belatedly, she hadn’t realised what the true intent of this was. Being a Malfoy, and Malfoys having to be misogynistic pigs (no offence to the poor animals intended), she rather thought that this was actually an attempt for him to ogle her legs from a better view.
Ugh.
‘Well, the view is now absolutely perfect,’ he called from behind her; trying, and rather failing, to keep the smug tone from his voice.
‘My feminist principles have now been completely undermined on every level. Slave status was bad enough, really. This is just beyond the pale.’
‘Well, if you want to undermine them further, there’s another kind of service you could do me, and it would definitely definitely bring the six days down to just the one.’
‘No.’
‘You don’t even know what it is! You are so presumptuous. As if I would even go near you with a broomstick. I was merely referring to a nice little errand which, possibly, involves visiting my father - who, yes, does indeed now live in a rehabilitation centre for those with deep issues towards Muggles and every other variant of blood that isn’t supposedly pure.’
‘You want to send me to my death?’
Draco raised his eyebrow at her and allowed himself a grin; ever so slightly, to break into a full one would be far too charming, of course.
‘Not death, per se, he can barely remember any spells at the moment other than Avada Kedavra in random directions. Of course, that does sound quite threatening…’
‘Just a bit.’
‘… but they took it off him, of course, and now he just brandishes a stick around, thinking he’s cursing everything in sight. Bit sad, really. But he needs company for a few hours a day, and I hate to do it, it’s just a blasted waste of time, so I was thinking…’
‘Fine.’
‘Granger, where is your spine? I would have made me hold out for at least another half an hour, if not more. Clearly I’m going to have to teach you that over the coming five days.’
DAY THREE.
‘I thought we would go out shopping together. Obviously, I know your time here is meant to be completely productive and rather heinous. Trust me, I’ll make it so. But my last assistant, and this one actually, both refuse to attend my shopping outings. Clearly, these are very important occasions and really need the advice of another however, ah, un-style conscious they are.’
Hermione knew the difference between Jimmy Choos and Manolo Blahniks so thought this was a particularly unfair criticism; sure, criticise her hair, perhaps, or her general styling. But her clothing choices? She’d become accustomed to the Muggle way of clothing and hardly thought she was Anne Hathaway in the opening credits of The Devil Wears Prada. Clearly not.
‘Are we going to buy more scarves, then? To add to your already large, over-flowing, and just generally eccentric collection?’
‘Don’t mock the scarf, Granger, it’s my signature.’
Which was how, a few hours later, they were standing in the middle of a very large shopping centre, with Hermione acting as some kind of clothes-hanger. Draco, obviously, could not have anything that would deter from ‘the wonderful experience that happens to be shopping’ and Hermione, with her sort-of enslavement agreement to fulfil, could not be one to argue. She just wished he didn’t enjoy the shopping experience quite so much. The potential for one of the bags to cut off her arms was seemingly rather great.
‘Malfoy, you must have everything you need by now. We have enough scarves to do a particularly nasty form of body-binding, enough suits for you to not need to have one dry-cleaned for at least a year, and I cannot bear to compare another bottle of moisturiser to see which has the more “masculine” smell.’
‘But we’ve only just started! We’ve been here for a total of -’ he checked his watch, ‘- three hours and forty-seven minutes! We have at least another two hours of shopping, maybe including a meal if fatigue, hunger and malnourishment sets in. Which it is quite likely to do considering I normally prefer to just shop in Diagon Alley to avoid the horrible aspect of walking. Gliding is clearly far superior. Oh, and Apparition, I miss that…’
Hermione groaned, shifting from foot to foot, moving the bags from one arm to the other, wondering if she could attempt a feather-light spell while nobody but Draco was looking in her particular direction. Risky, but possibly worth it, if she could spare her arm.
‘Draco, if you don’t want a dead “slave” you are going to have to quit your shopping addiction for at least an hour whilst I consume the left side of the menu and possibly the desert section too. Oh, and maybe a coffee. I really have a coffee craving, you keep drinking mine, even though I only have one sugar.’
‘Well, you do this rather impatient huff-ing type sound…’
She let out an exasperated sigh and rolled her eyes in his general direction.
‘… yes, like that. And it’s rather entertaining. Which, really, is just an incentive to step up the annoying tendencies.’
Somehow, by either magic or plain miracle she wasn’t sure, Hermione and Draco ended up seated in a booth of a restaurant half an hour (and a two new briefcases) later. Clearly the third stomach rumble had convinced Draco that something had to be done before she wilted next to him and caused a scene. Draco, of course, could not handle the possibility of a scene.
He was now staring at her as if he couldn’t quite believe his eyes.
‘You really did consume the entire left side of the menu, I thought you were just joking, that nobody your size could have quite such a ferocious appetite!’
Hermione merely shrugged and continued to devour her chocolate cheesecake, only pausing to offer criticisms of Draco’s ‘appalling table manners, honestly’. Dare she say it, it almost felt too comfortable and companionable for a (strictly platonic) slave-master relationship. In fact, this wasn’t turning out to be that much of a punishment at all; a break from academia, at least, not that she usually enjoyed such a break.
‘Are you going to finish that?’ she asked.
‘Clearly not. Do you want to eat my napkin, too? The chair leg, perhaps? Or do you just limit to edible things? It’s hard to tell…’
Draco surveyed her over the rim of his wine glass rather apprehensively: maybe this wasn’t a good idea at all. So she might not have been able to pay the necessary amount to ensure his car was perfection, but money had ceased to be an issue to him a long time ago. Was it really necessary to punish her so?
‘Don’t make me curse you,’ she replied.
Well, actually, maybe the punishment was deserved.
DAY FOUR.
Draco had decided today that he couldn’t actually be bothered to attended to his normal duties, apparently, or so Hermione had deciphered from his apparent lack of concentration. Instead he was asking her a number of impertinent questions over her family, her love life, her studies, and anything else that you would ask an employee but you would, clearly, ask somebody who had wrecked your car.
‘When was your last partner, then? This year, last year, sometime never?’ he questioned. His feet were casually up on his desk; he had a quill rotating in one hand and was sipping a drink all at once. And Hermione had thought that women were the ones who were supposedly able to multi-task.
It was when she was organising one of his filing cabinets that he asked a question which made her drop the files over the floor, with paper spilling out in all directions, as she tried to helplessly stem the flow which threatened to completely engulf her.
‘Are you busy this evening?’
For a minute - one irrational, thoughtless and utterly stupid minute - she had thought he was actually going to ask her on a date. She could not name why: she was supposedly doing his bidding for six days (she wondered why it wasn’t a seventh but then realised he probably believed himself to be God; the seventh was clearly a day of rest for him), he clearly despised her, and she clearly despised him and his pompous attitude… Still, she really did want there to be something Mr. Darcy-ish about him. Why wouldn’t he fulfil the male lead in this story as he was supposed to? It was all rather irritating.
‘Yes.’
And she was, actually; it wasn’t a desperate attempt to show she wasn’t nearing spinsterhood and wouldn’t be eaten by Alsatians as seen in Bridget Jones. Admittedly, it hadn’t been by design. She had, of course, been set up by Ginny (who was rather overly keen on setting up Hermione with anybody since she had read that the Female Friend Is Never Really Just A Friend article in Witch Weekly) on some form of a blind-date. It would be excruciatingly painful and likely to end in an awkward conversation which would be undoubtedly forced in an attempt to make the time pass quickly before they could hurry to their respective sanctuaries of home.
‘You’re actually not spending your time as a recluse?’
She was going to slap the smug smirk off his face one of these days.
‘Yes, yes I am. I’m going to a restaurant with a friend, who hopefully doesn’t think I spend my time as recluse, or that it’s fine to entrap me into being almost a slave for six days.’
‘Feel lucky that there isn’t a seventh. Well, I won’t ask you what I was going to then. Instead, do you want to go and lovingly clean the car that you so happily ruined a few days ago? Obviously avoid scratching off more paint, that would be at least another week.’
He heard her mumbling on the way to the exit.
‘You know, complaints are worth at least another ten hours of hard labour cleaning the Manor!’
*
He hadn’t really meant to run into her. Rather, he hadn’t intended to see Hermione at all. But, somehow, he must have stumbled upon the place she was meeting her ‘friend’. Actually, it didn’t appear to be a friend at all. For when he sat down at the table of his favourite restaurant - pitifully ordering paella for one - he saw Hermione sitting five tables away with somebody who didn’t look like a friend, at all. Not a friend Draco had heard mentioned before, at least, from Potter and co. Did that mean she was on a date? Not, of course, that he cared about what she was doing outside of cleaning his various buildings, apartments, running his errands and generally doing his bidding.
Still, Draco couldn’t help but wonder what the attraction was. She hadn’t laughed in the five minutes he had been staring - well, no, Malfoy’s didn’t do things such as staring; he was merely looking with intent - and she certainly had done little more than give a polite smile. With the rose lying on the corner of the table, it had all the markings of a first date. How delightful. Well, it would be rather delightful to spoil it, at least; look at him, with his perfectly slick hair and his annoying smile with that perfect glint to his teeth, and that annoying sparkle in his eye. Oh, he loathed him, and her for finding that smooth operator attractive.
Of course, Draco was losing something nobody had known he’d possessed: his heart.
DAY FIVE.
Draco didn’t pretend that he had anything particularly useful for her that day: New Year was coming and, in any case, at that time of year business lulled. People ceased to want to buy extra properties and expand their business, legal issues never slept but didn’t appear to be quite so rife, and his opinions were engrained into the newspaper’s print. Which led her to wondering why on Earth he still insisted on keeping her there (well, despite the obvious informal agreement).
Then she found out what her punishment was to be for that day…
‘We’re going babysitting,’ he said, with a fake smile plastered on his face. ‘It possibly involves baking, it might involve screaming, there’s a chance of crying, but it’ll definitely involve a child.’
‘How delightful.’
Actually, for a relative of a Malfoy, the child was quite delightful. She was all wide, Bambi eyes and a voice that apparently led even Draco to melt a little and give her whatever she wished for; in return, he received cupboard love and all was well in the realm of babysitting.
Until little Anna decided that, yes, yes she very much wanted to bake some form of cake with the both of them, and that just Draco’s input wasn’t enough. And there needed to be ‘hot chocolate, and sprinkles, and cream, and everything!’ It was quite impossible to refuse.
Which was possibly how Hermione had ended up with cake mixture on her nose twenty minutes later, cracked eggs on the floor, a very annoyed Draco as some had also landed on his ‘very over-priced jumper, thank you’ and a very overexcited six year old child.
‘Draco, try this, would you?’
Hermione held out the wooden spoon, coated in a thick layer of chocolate icing. He licked it uncertainly and declared his verdict: ‘Definitely needs more sugar.’
She raised her eyebrows in dismay, and grabbed it back again. After tasting it against a few times, she realised the issue.
‘You just have an incredibly sweet tooth. You can’t possibly have any more sugar in this! I know the whole point of cake baking is to encourage some kind of tooth rotting, whether my parents approve or not, but that’s just outlandish.’
‘Not quite as outlandish as the icing on the end of your nose, however.’
He reached over and wiped it off with a distinctly soggy cloth that Anna had been using to clean - well, goodness knows what, actually. There was a brief pause until she loudly demand that the cake be put in the oven ‘now, or I won’t get to eat it before Mummy and Daddy come home’.
After Hermione had sliced the cake into three rather uneven pieces (Draco had guided her hand, and she’d been too distracted to realise that she’d ended up with a slither as the result of his rather larger piece) and made the hot chocolate (with marshmallows, of course, and extra sugar for Draco, as he clearly was not sweet enough himself), they sat around the large, wooden table in the kitchen and slurped happily.
‘So,’ Draco added, ‘what’s for tea, Martha Stewart?’
All in all, Hermione concluded when she got home, it was not a completely disastrous evening, all things considered (considering it was Nigella Lawson meets Sesame Street), at all.
DAY SIX.
It was, she realised, the penultimate day of being with Draco, in all senses. For after this roller coaster of a slave ride was over, she would probably never be acknowledged by him again, rather in the same way he refused to acknowledge the existence of the Weasleys (particularly Ron - the pain of the ‘ferret’ remarks never did quite fade with time).
The penultimate day was really that: things ran smoothly, she did the normal chores, the normal errands, the normal cleaning. She sat on the edge of Draco’s desk and bothered him whilst he pretended to work. She took a few phonecalls and tried to adopt Draco’s smug and, as she liked to tell him, pompous voice. And when that was done she’d bring him refreshments with a glare.
It was almost a routine. And a small part of her considered, albeit very briefly, whether she might actually miss him and all his atrocious ways. Particularly briefly. Probably in the same way she first thought she had enjoyed Trainspotting but, on a second viewing, it actually turned out not to be particularly enjoyable at all. Merlin, was she comparing her non-existent relationship with Malfoy to Trainspotting?
‘Could you stay later, today?’ he asked, at around six o’clock. There was frown line appearing on his head, and she didn’t particularly feel like refusing him in any case. ‘I have to make some arrangements for that New Year’s party which is, um, tomorrow, actually. I have no idea why people feel like celebrating the beginning of a New Yea-’
Hermione placed her hand over his mouth.
‘Are you the New Year’s equivalent of a Scrooge? Because, honestly, if you are then I’ll just have to do the honourable thing and organise it for you. If you’re in charge the setting will probably resemble something from The Addams Family rather than Love Actually. And we can’t have that.’
His shoulders, which had been both raised and tense, relaxed slightly.
‘It’s not part of your normal weekly duties. In fact, if I had a conscience, I think it might feel particularly guilty at the thought of you not spending time with the Smooth Operator.’
‘The who?’
Draco had the courtesy to blush for the first time, since, well, she’d ever known him. It was definitely unprecedented. And then she realised he must have seen her on her so-called date the other evening and jumped to all kinds of (very likely inaccurate) conclusions.
‘Did the Smooth Operator happen to be spotted in a restaurant with me, earlier in the week? Because, not that you would be at all bothered, of course, but it was a blind-date constructed by the oh-so-dear Ginevra Weasley on my behalf as, apparently, I’m to men what Rodenticide is to rats.’
‘Well, not that I like to take happiness in your misfortune, but…’
‘But?’
There was a brief pause where Draco thought to himself: what on Earth have I just said? And the panic began to set in. Which was simply preposterous because he was neither the type to panic, or to feel pressure, or to feel remotely unsettled. His father would not be impressed. Then again, his father really was only impressed with news of Muggle deaths or death, doom and destruction, so perhaps that was a good thing.
‘Draco Malfoy, are you lost for words?’
‘I think I might be.’
DAY SEVEN.
Hermione was unusually nervous: she had spent the main part of her day pretending to do Draco’s general tasks but had really been doing last minute preparations for this utterly ridiculous party which would just see drunken secretaries mistakenly throwing themselves at their bosses, or insulting their poor treatment (she didn’t apply a misogynistic view to this: both genders had done it at hers on numerous, particularly embarrassing, occasions).
It was only when she was finishing clearing up Draco’s desk after he’d left to get ready fort he dreaded event, that she saw a curious piece of screwed up parchment. Bending down, she tentatively unfolded it and saw a small note: ‘Say what you need to say’ and, beneath that, was her name with a question mark beside it. Her heart fluttered for a moment until she realised that she was being utterly ridiculous. Firstly, how could she like somebody who she had been indebted to for a week, really for no particular reason at all? Secondly, well, secondly, the note was so ambiguous that it could mean anything at all. Couldn’t it? Of course it could. She would not be a fool and read far too much into nothing.
Which is why, of course, she spent so long selecting her outfit for that evening. Once she’d settled for her simple black shift dress with Jimmy Choos (he could never again criticise her for her lack of fashion knowledge, general taste and style; although, admittedly, these were, perhaps, actually the only items in her wardrobe that he might even considering approving of, protégé Elie Saab that he thought he was). She pulled her bag over her shoulder and surveyed herself in the mirror before she left: it would do. Yes, Ginny wouldn’t approve of the outfit, but then she never wanted to look like a harlot anyway.
She arrived with the party in full-swing (really, it was the only time to arrive: she had decided Firewhisky was clearly some kind of social lubricant, and that way it would be far less awkward conversing with people she really had not met before, and probably wouldn’t care to meet again) and sought out Draco. He was, of course, standing in the corner talking to a few similar people (in that, their mouths appeared to also look like they were sucking on lemons, too).
And she decided, somewhere along the way, that actually, whether he looked or sounded or was quite frankly as much of an enigma as Mr. Darcy; she really didn’t care. She liked the way his hair seemed to reflect the little light in the room, she liked the way he saved his smiles for very rare occasions and only few people (she thought it made them all the more special) and she liked the way he wasn’t remotely threatened by her brain power (leading her to tell him she did, and could still, go from zero to study in sixty seconds).
But, most of all, she liked the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled. And the way she hadn’t told him she was there, but somehow he had noticed, and his eyes had met hers. It was all rather cliché, but who knew such clichés could be quite so enjoyable?
She watched him excuse himself from his guests (which involved disentangling himself from one rather overenthusiastic female) and made his way over to her. And it was rather predictable, but she didn’t care. How could she care when this utterly pompous, completely arrogant, but somehow entirely loveable man was making his way towards her?
And then he was finally there, lifting her slightly off her feet, into the air; all the while, holding her in his arms (which, she briefly noted, before her brain turned into utter mush, really had evidence of some form of muscle toning). He placed his lips upon hers, and she finally felt all rational thought completely leave. After a few moments, he stood back and simply stared.
‘You, Hermione Granger, are possibly the most insufferable person I’ve spent six days with. But you do make my heart beat faster, and you do make my palms sweat - in an entirely un-Malfoy manner, I might add. And I love you, for all your insufferable know-it-all tendencies, even though you often make me speechless. Because you make me speechless, and my palms sweat, and all those other ridiculous things.’
She merely leant in before she went to kiss him again, and then whispered: ‘pretending it was four hundred galleons to make me spend time with you, Draco Malfoy? All you needed to do was ask.’
The End
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