DUET 5: nightfalltwen and ningloreth (pinch-hitter)
Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling and Warner Bros. All fics posted at this community were written entirely for fun, not for profit, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Title: The Sketchbook
Author: nightfalltwen
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2962
Summary: Draco and Hermione are paired together to gather evidence for a legal dispute. Hermione discovers that there is more to Draco's being there than probation after the war.
Warnings: None
Author's Note(s): I hope, secret giftee, that you enjoy this story. It's been fun to write. I'm not sure if this exactly qualifies as a body of water, but it seemed to be where the story wanted to go. Special thank you to my beta and cohort L.
*~*~*
Hermione strode through the Ministry, new (yet sensible) heels clicking against the tile floor as she made her way to the lift system. She stood a bit straighter, grabbing onto one of the straps hanging from the roof of the lift and rode it to the Wizengamot. For weeks she'd been working towards this. All the studying and the certifications were complete and now she was ready to change the world.
Or at least she was ready to start helping.
When the lift finally stopped, she had to push her way past the rest of the riders to get off. She hurried through the corridors to the legal offices, waving pleasantly to Gloria. The ancient receptionist barely looked up from her copy of Witch Weekly, but Hermione took the slight nod as a step in the right direction. Most of the time Gloria barely said four words to anyone, let alone greeted them with a nod.
"Ah, Miss Granger," said prosecutor Waddleworth as she entered the office. "You are just in time to hear the good news."
She smiled. "I wanted to get here early just for that," she said, moving to unbutton her jacket. "I was told that there was an opening on the legal team representing falsely imprisoned werewolves..."
The balding prosecutor chuckled and shook his head. It made his long moustache (where she suspected all of his hair had gone) wobble back and forth. "No, I have a more pressing matter I would like you to help with." He gestured to her left and it was only then that Hermione realised she wasn't alone in the office with Waddleworth. Her stomach dropped and she took a step back.
"Mister Malfoy here will be joining you," Waddleworth continued. "I've been struggling with finding the time to obtain some property evidence. I would like you to look into it. Miss Granger, you've been at the top of every certification class since entering the Wizengamot office. The terms of Mister Malfoy's arrangement with the Ministry leaves him in our care. He requested trial and litigation experience. I'm sure you two will do me very proud."
Hermione didn't know what to say. All the words seemed to have left her and she stood there, dumbfounded, as Waddleworth handed her a file and instructions on where they were to go before dismissing them from his office. At some point while they walked back toward the lift system, Draco took the file from her and tucked it into a satchel or a bag or something; she wasn't paying attention. After all this time, after all this work, she'd expected to be placed on an important trial. Changing policies or laws. Something that would make a difference.
"Buck up, Granger. Waddleworth said it's a simple case of ownership rights. You won't be forced to watch over me for too long."
"Why are you in the Wizengamot, Malfoy," Hermione said with a frown, turning to face him. "Of all the places you could do your community service... why the Wizengamot?"
"I happen to like the law when it suits me, Granger." Draco paused and pressed the call button for the lift. "Why are you in the Wizengamot?"
Hermione raised her chin. "I've wanted to be on board with new legislation since fifth year, I'll have you know." She held out her hand for the files that Draco had secreted away. "Well. Where are we going?"
The lift doors opened as Draco fished around in his satchel for a moment until he drew out a piece of parchment. Stepping onto the lift, he surprised her by sticking out his arm and holding the door so it wouldn't close before she'd joined him. Yet it also annoyed her because it was delaying him answering her question. With a slight huff, she stepped in beside him and held out her hand again for the parchment, but he held it out of her reach.
"Patience is a virtue," he said with a slight smirk.
"This has less to do with patience and more to do with the fact that I did ask you a question which you have not answered," Hermione said, reaching up to grab one of the straps hanging above.
Draco shook his head. "We're colleagues now, Granger. We ought to learn to work together."
Hermione drew in a deep breath, counted to ten and then exhaled slowly. "I would appreciate knowing where we are going. Please."
"Better." He held the parchment out to her. "The Doxey Marshes outside of Stafford. It's the best place to grow gillyweed in England. The plaintiff claims that the defendant harvested gillyweed from his property and that she sold it for profit. We're to inspect the property lines and where the weed grows and whether or not a trespass was committed."
"That shouldn't be terribly difficult," Hermione replied as the elevator lurched to the left and although she was holding fast to the strap, she stumbled a bit towards Draco. He put his hand to her shoulder to stop her from falling over. Hermione looked at him before returning her attention to the parchment.
"You've never been to the Doxey Marshes have you?" he asked.
"No. Why?"
"You'll see."
*~*~*
What she had expected to take only a few hours had fast turned into five days. Draco, much to her chagrin, had been right. She certainly did see. The arguing wizards both lived on properties that backed onto the Doxey Marshes Nature Reserve. The lines muddied magically when they hit the water. The plaintiff argued that flora in the water butting up against his property was his. The defendant claimed that lines ended at the water. But in the spring, water had risen and the lines came literally and figuratively muddier.
Hermione squelched in the soggy ground, large black wellies on her feet. She cast a few disillusionment charms so they could work alone, replacing the ones that she'd cast the day before. And the day before that. She rubbed the side of her face and returned to making notes on her clipboard, her fingers stiff from cold. The weather had held out, thankfully, but a chilly wind had started blowing down from the North Sea and everything had a clammy feel to it.
Taking a step, she mistakenly managed to put her foot in a larger puddle that was deeper than she was expecting. Cold water poured in over the top of her boot and she yelped, jumping to the side and nearly falling over. She whirled about and glared at Draco.
"Remind me again why I'm down near the water and you're up there?" she called out.
"Because your disillusionment charms are better than mine and I'm making notes. I also don't own a pair of boots." Draco spoke loudly, but didn't look up from his notebook. He scribbled a few more things in the large book before setting it down on the stack of paperwork.
Hermione balanced on one foot as she tugged her foot out of the boot. She turned it upside down and let the water run out before casting a drying charm on her sock. Stuffing her foot back into the boot, she turned on Draco, feeling her skin prickle with irritation at his calm demeanour. When they'd first arrived and she realised just how big this job would be, she'd thought he was being helpful. They seemed to get on a bit better than they had in school and he was appropriately polite. Enough so that she had almost decided that it was because he genuinely felt that way and not because it was expected of him because of his probationary agreements.
"You've had days to get yourself the right equipment, Malfoy," she said. "Wellies are not that difficult to obtain."
She stomped up the bank, unable to smooth down the hackles that were raised. This was how it had been for the last few days, her down by or in the water, him up on the bank with the notebook. She hadn't minded until now. She liked the hands on. She liked the research and the details and she had liked learning that there were seven different varieties of gillyweed grown in these wetlands, two of them endangered, which she hadn't known before.
But she was cold now. And wet despite the drying charms. And angry that she was stuck working on a case that led nowhere or did nothing for her career.
"Perhaps I don't have the disposable income that you do in order to afford new footwear at this point in my life," Draco said, his mouth in a straight line.
"Is that the case?" she snapped.
"Not presently."
"Then you can get down in the water and do the work," she said grumpily.
"You really do happen to be doing a better job of it than I could," he replied gesturing vaguely to the watery mess in front of them.
Hermione let out a frustrated noise and stamped her foot. The wet ground squelched beneath her. She turned and stooped to pick up all the books, parchments and various phials of specimens. She left a quill, a scrap of paper and a few extra phials. Before Draco could say anything, the world folded around her and she was in the sitting room of her flat in Ipswich. Angrily she tossed her armful of things onto the sofa and strode toward the bathroom, stripping off clothes as she walked.
She wasn't going to think about anything until she'd had a hot bath.
*~*~*
A few hours and a trashy harlequin novel later, Hermione felt more relaxed. Wrapped in a fluffy robe, her hair towelled dry with damp ends tickling against her neck, she returned to the living room. A quick wave of her wand sent clothes to the laundry hamper and her boots to the spot by the door. She dropped onto the sofa and started sorting through all the things she'd brought back to the flat.
The gillyweed samples had been labelled in Draco's blocky printing by phylum and class and a few with subclasses. His attention to specific details was truly commendable and she was impressed to see that there were also drawings of each plant in the large notebook he was always carrying around. At least they wouldn’t be accused of slacking on evidence, she thought as she turned the page, examining each entry.
After a few minutes, she tossed the book down. As it hit the sofa, a number of pages worked their way out of the back of the book, some falling to the floor. Hermione got up and knelt on the floor, gathering up the parchment. At first she didn't really look at what she was picking up, but soon she realised that they weren't drawings of plants. Pushing the towel off her head, she sat on the floor and slowly started to look at each page.
It was her.
It was drawing after drawing of her. Sometimes it was the side of her face, always with her bushy curls sweeping down over her face or curling around her ear. There were too many of these pages for them to have all been done while they were out at the marshes. She drew in a breath at some of them; they were beautiful. Far too beautiful to be her and the only reason she knew that they were was through the detail of the clothing or the tiny pearl pendant of her mother's she was always wearing.
Hermione hurriedly gathered every loose sketch into her arms and shoved her feet back into the damp wellies. She grabbed her wand and Apparated.
When she appeared again at the Doxey Marshes, Hermione paused at the sight of Draco gingerly making his way across one of the more solid sections of land. She dashed (as fast as one could actually dash in almost knee high wellington boots) over to where he stood and held out the sketches. Her hand shook slightly and one of the pages slipped from her fingers, fluttering to the water below. Hermione's own face looked back up at them for a moment before the paper went dark as it got waterlogged.
"What on earth are you wearing?" he said, lips tight and clearly not looking at the papers she was holding out.
Hermione looked down at herself and felt her cheeks flush. She'd remembered boots but she'd left her flat in just her fluffy robe. Reaching up with her free hand, she clutched together the neckline and once again shook the papers at him. It took a beat or two before she heard him audibly sigh, step close, removing the artwork from her grasp.
"I shouldn't have brought those with me," he said, looking down at the pictures, moving them back and forth until he had them in a particular order. "But I don't like leaving them around the manor."
Folding her arms over her chest, Hermione drew in a deep breath. "I don't understand why you have them. Or why there are so many. Or what they are..."
"I should think it was obvious what they are," he said slowly. "I sketch."
"But they're all of me!"
"They are," Draco said.
His evasive tone infuriated her. "Stop leaving out all the details! You barely say anything to me. You were awful to me in school. And now you have all these sketches that look so much like me and I'm so confused by this. I want to understand!"
He took out his wand; Hermione thought he was about to Apparate and she took a step closer, about to latch onto his arm so he couldn't just leave without taking her with him. To her surprise, Draco merely shrunk down the artwork and tucked it into his pocket. Puffing out his cheeks he ran a hand through his hair. The normally tidy hairstyle was instantly out of sorts and she looked up at him, waiting.
"I could have chosen any place in the Ministry to do my probation, Hermione. I chose the Wizengamot because you chose it. I do like the law. The law has been forgiving to me. But I chose where I am because for years I've been trying to suss you out. For years I've been trying to suss out every curl on your head and everything that you think about." He paused and drew in a deep breath before taking another step close to her. "I want to understand too."
Hermione covered her mouth, but spoke behind spread fingers. "There's nothing about me to understand."
He reached up and closed his fingers around her wrists. He tugged her hands away and with him being that close, she felt her infuriation from earlier melt away. She'd never considered this. She'd never thought she could suddenly feel something like this. Confusion and intrigue and curiosity and warmth. It was new and strange she'd never expected anything. She'd never stood in the middle of a marsh wearing nothing but a bathrobe and wellington boots. It was all new. It was all strange. His hand was touching her chin.
"There is everything about you to understand," Draco said in such a declarative way that it struck Hermione dumb.
Not that she needed to say much else.
One of his hands slipped to the back of her neck and he lightly tugged her forward, dipping his head down to press his mouth to hers. Hermione sucked in a breath through her nose, freezing briefly at the warm sensation that spread from her mouth down her neck and pooled in her belly. She'd kissed before. She'd been kissed before. But it was not like this. It had never kindled a fire like this.
A gasped escaped her mouth and she flung her arms around his neck, returning the kiss.
It wasn't a simple press of lips against lips. There was nothing tentative about this kiss. As soon as she accepted it the kiss changed. His mouth slanted across hers and she felt her entire body sing at the idea of being kissed like this. Kissed like every heroine in ever novel she had ever read. And yet it was not like every other heroine because this kiss was different. This kiss was the kiss to end all kisses and rewrite how kisses were supposed to be kissed. This was not teeth and tongue and too much of everything. It was both soft and demanding at the same time. It took her breath away.
And when he drew back, the mewling protest that escaped from her throat was a new thing for her.
"What do you understand now?" she asked softly.
"That you are often ridiculous," he said with a chuckle, but pressed his fingertips to her mouth to stop her from responding. "But when pushed in the right way, you do amazing things that I'm only just now starting to understand."
Hermione blushed and looked at a spot on his jacket. "I suppose we ought to finish with the plants."
"If you truly want to," he said. "But I imagine that you might wish to put something other than a bathrobe on." A smirk appeared at the sides of his mouth. "Though I find the look rather endearing. We could always come back to the plants tomorrow."
She had dropped her head against his chest, groaning in embarrassment at the first comment. But everything went still at the second and slowly she looked back up at him, his hair untidy and his lips looking just as plump as hers felt. Reaching a hand up, she ran her thumb along the seam of his mouth. Then smiled and tugged him back towards her. "The plants can wait."
And they did.
THE END
Title: The Sketchbook
Author: nightfalltwen
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2962
Summary: Draco and Hermione are paired together to gather evidence for a legal dispute. Hermione discovers that there is more to Draco's being there than probation after the war.
Warnings: None
Author's Note(s): I hope, secret giftee, that you enjoy this story. It's been fun to write. I'm not sure if this exactly qualifies as a body of water, but it seemed to be where the story wanted to go. Special thank you to my beta and cohort L.
*~*~*
Hermione strode through the Ministry, new (yet sensible) heels clicking against the tile floor as she made her way to the lift system. She stood a bit straighter, grabbing onto one of the straps hanging from the roof of the lift and rode it to the Wizengamot. For weeks she'd been working towards this. All the studying and the certifications were complete and now she was ready to change the world.
Or at least she was ready to start helping.
When the lift finally stopped, she had to push her way past the rest of the riders to get off. She hurried through the corridors to the legal offices, waving pleasantly to Gloria. The ancient receptionist barely looked up from her copy of Witch Weekly, but Hermione took the slight nod as a step in the right direction. Most of the time Gloria barely said four words to anyone, let alone greeted them with a nod.
"Ah, Miss Granger," said prosecutor Waddleworth as she entered the office. "You are just in time to hear the good news."
She smiled. "I wanted to get here early just for that," she said, moving to unbutton her jacket. "I was told that there was an opening on the legal team representing falsely imprisoned werewolves..."
The balding prosecutor chuckled and shook his head. It made his long moustache (where she suspected all of his hair had gone) wobble back and forth. "No, I have a more pressing matter I would like you to help with." He gestured to her left and it was only then that Hermione realised she wasn't alone in the office with Waddleworth. Her stomach dropped and she took a step back.
"Mister Malfoy here will be joining you," Waddleworth continued. "I've been struggling with finding the time to obtain some property evidence. I would like you to look into it. Miss Granger, you've been at the top of every certification class since entering the Wizengamot office. The terms of Mister Malfoy's arrangement with the Ministry leaves him in our care. He requested trial and litigation experience. I'm sure you two will do me very proud."
Hermione didn't know what to say. All the words seemed to have left her and she stood there, dumbfounded, as Waddleworth handed her a file and instructions on where they were to go before dismissing them from his office. At some point while they walked back toward the lift system, Draco took the file from her and tucked it into a satchel or a bag or something; she wasn't paying attention. After all this time, after all this work, she'd expected to be placed on an important trial. Changing policies or laws. Something that would make a difference.
"Buck up, Granger. Waddleworth said it's a simple case of ownership rights. You won't be forced to watch over me for too long."
"Why are you in the Wizengamot, Malfoy," Hermione said with a frown, turning to face him. "Of all the places you could do your community service... why the Wizengamot?"
"I happen to like the law when it suits me, Granger." Draco paused and pressed the call button for the lift. "Why are you in the Wizengamot?"
Hermione raised her chin. "I've wanted to be on board with new legislation since fifth year, I'll have you know." She held out her hand for the files that Draco had secreted away. "Well. Where are we going?"
The lift doors opened as Draco fished around in his satchel for a moment until he drew out a piece of parchment. Stepping onto the lift, he surprised her by sticking out his arm and holding the door so it wouldn't close before she'd joined him. Yet it also annoyed her because it was delaying him answering her question. With a slight huff, she stepped in beside him and held out her hand again for the parchment, but he held it out of her reach.
"Patience is a virtue," he said with a slight smirk.
"This has less to do with patience and more to do with the fact that I did ask you a question which you have not answered," Hermione said, reaching up to grab one of the straps hanging above.
Draco shook his head. "We're colleagues now, Granger. We ought to learn to work together."
Hermione drew in a deep breath, counted to ten and then exhaled slowly. "I would appreciate knowing where we are going. Please."
"Better." He held the parchment out to her. "The Doxey Marshes outside of Stafford. It's the best place to grow gillyweed in England. The plaintiff claims that the defendant harvested gillyweed from his property and that she sold it for profit. We're to inspect the property lines and where the weed grows and whether or not a trespass was committed."
"That shouldn't be terribly difficult," Hermione replied as the elevator lurched to the left and although she was holding fast to the strap, she stumbled a bit towards Draco. He put his hand to her shoulder to stop her from falling over. Hermione looked at him before returning her attention to the parchment.
"You've never been to the Doxey Marshes have you?" he asked.
"No. Why?"
"You'll see."
*~*~*
What she had expected to take only a few hours had fast turned into five days. Draco, much to her chagrin, had been right. She certainly did see. The arguing wizards both lived on properties that backed onto the Doxey Marshes Nature Reserve. The lines muddied magically when they hit the water. The plaintiff argued that flora in the water butting up against his property was his. The defendant claimed that lines ended at the water. But in the spring, water had risen and the lines came literally and figuratively muddier.
Hermione squelched in the soggy ground, large black wellies on her feet. She cast a few disillusionment charms so they could work alone, replacing the ones that she'd cast the day before. And the day before that. She rubbed the side of her face and returned to making notes on her clipboard, her fingers stiff from cold. The weather had held out, thankfully, but a chilly wind had started blowing down from the North Sea and everything had a clammy feel to it.
Taking a step, she mistakenly managed to put her foot in a larger puddle that was deeper than she was expecting. Cold water poured in over the top of her boot and she yelped, jumping to the side and nearly falling over. She whirled about and glared at Draco.
"Remind me again why I'm down near the water and you're up there?" she called out.
"Because your disillusionment charms are better than mine and I'm making notes. I also don't own a pair of boots." Draco spoke loudly, but didn't look up from his notebook. He scribbled a few more things in the large book before setting it down on the stack of paperwork.
Hermione balanced on one foot as she tugged her foot out of the boot. She turned it upside down and let the water run out before casting a drying charm on her sock. Stuffing her foot back into the boot, she turned on Draco, feeling her skin prickle with irritation at his calm demeanour. When they'd first arrived and she realised just how big this job would be, she'd thought he was being helpful. They seemed to get on a bit better than they had in school and he was appropriately polite. Enough so that she had almost decided that it was because he genuinely felt that way and not because it was expected of him because of his probationary agreements.
"You've had days to get yourself the right equipment, Malfoy," she said. "Wellies are not that difficult to obtain."
She stomped up the bank, unable to smooth down the hackles that were raised. This was how it had been for the last few days, her down by or in the water, him up on the bank with the notebook. She hadn't minded until now. She liked the hands on. She liked the research and the details and she had liked learning that there were seven different varieties of gillyweed grown in these wetlands, two of them endangered, which she hadn't known before.
But she was cold now. And wet despite the drying charms. And angry that she was stuck working on a case that led nowhere or did nothing for her career.
"Perhaps I don't have the disposable income that you do in order to afford new footwear at this point in my life," Draco said, his mouth in a straight line.
"Is that the case?" she snapped.
"Not presently."
"Then you can get down in the water and do the work," she said grumpily.
"You really do happen to be doing a better job of it than I could," he replied gesturing vaguely to the watery mess in front of them.
Hermione let out a frustrated noise and stamped her foot. The wet ground squelched beneath her. She turned and stooped to pick up all the books, parchments and various phials of specimens. She left a quill, a scrap of paper and a few extra phials. Before Draco could say anything, the world folded around her and she was in the sitting room of her flat in Ipswich. Angrily she tossed her armful of things onto the sofa and strode toward the bathroom, stripping off clothes as she walked.
She wasn't going to think about anything until she'd had a hot bath.
*~*~*
A few hours and a trashy harlequin novel later, Hermione felt more relaxed. Wrapped in a fluffy robe, her hair towelled dry with damp ends tickling against her neck, she returned to the living room. A quick wave of her wand sent clothes to the laundry hamper and her boots to the spot by the door. She dropped onto the sofa and started sorting through all the things she'd brought back to the flat.
The gillyweed samples had been labelled in Draco's blocky printing by phylum and class and a few with subclasses. His attention to specific details was truly commendable and she was impressed to see that there were also drawings of each plant in the large notebook he was always carrying around. At least they wouldn’t be accused of slacking on evidence, she thought as she turned the page, examining each entry.
After a few minutes, she tossed the book down. As it hit the sofa, a number of pages worked their way out of the back of the book, some falling to the floor. Hermione got up and knelt on the floor, gathering up the parchment. At first she didn't really look at what she was picking up, but soon she realised that they weren't drawings of plants. Pushing the towel off her head, she sat on the floor and slowly started to look at each page.
It was her.
It was drawing after drawing of her. Sometimes it was the side of her face, always with her bushy curls sweeping down over her face or curling around her ear. There were too many of these pages for them to have all been done while they were out at the marshes. She drew in a breath at some of them; they were beautiful. Far too beautiful to be her and the only reason she knew that they were was through the detail of the clothing or the tiny pearl pendant of her mother's she was always wearing.
Hermione hurriedly gathered every loose sketch into her arms and shoved her feet back into the damp wellies. She grabbed her wand and Apparated.
When she appeared again at the Doxey Marshes, Hermione paused at the sight of Draco gingerly making his way across one of the more solid sections of land. She dashed (as fast as one could actually dash in almost knee high wellington boots) over to where he stood and held out the sketches. Her hand shook slightly and one of the pages slipped from her fingers, fluttering to the water below. Hermione's own face looked back up at them for a moment before the paper went dark as it got waterlogged.
"What on earth are you wearing?" he said, lips tight and clearly not looking at the papers she was holding out.
Hermione looked down at herself and felt her cheeks flush. She'd remembered boots but she'd left her flat in just her fluffy robe. Reaching up with her free hand, she clutched together the neckline and once again shook the papers at him. It took a beat or two before she heard him audibly sigh, step close, removing the artwork from her grasp.
"I shouldn't have brought those with me," he said, looking down at the pictures, moving them back and forth until he had them in a particular order. "But I don't like leaving them around the manor."
Folding her arms over her chest, Hermione drew in a deep breath. "I don't understand why you have them. Or why there are so many. Or what they are..."
"I should think it was obvious what they are," he said slowly. "I sketch."
"But they're all of me!"
"They are," Draco said.
His evasive tone infuriated her. "Stop leaving out all the details! You barely say anything to me. You were awful to me in school. And now you have all these sketches that look so much like me and I'm so confused by this. I want to understand!"
He took out his wand; Hermione thought he was about to Apparate and she took a step closer, about to latch onto his arm so he couldn't just leave without taking her with him. To her surprise, Draco merely shrunk down the artwork and tucked it into his pocket. Puffing out his cheeks he ran a hand through his hair. The normally tidy hairstyle was instantly out of sorts and she looked up at him, waiting.
"I could have chosen any place in the Ministry to do my probation, Hermione. I chose the Wizengamot because you chose it. I do like the law. The law has been forgiving to me. But I chose where I am because for years I've been trying to suss you out. For years I've been trying to suss out every curl on your head and everything that you think about." He paused and drew in a deep breath before taking another step close to her. "I want to understand too."
Hermione covered her mouth, but spoke behind spread fingers. "There's nothing about me to understand."
He reached up and closed his fingers around her wrists. He tugged her hands away and with him being that close, she felt her infuriation from earlier melt away. She'd never considered this. She'd never thought she could suddenly feel something like this. Confusion and intrigue and curiosity and warmth. It was new and strange she'd never expected anything. She'd never stood in the middle of a marsh wearing nothing but a bathrobe and wellington boots. It was all new. It was all strange. His hand was touching her chin.
"There is everything about you to understand," Draco said in such a declarative way that it struck Hermione dumb.
Not that she needed to say much else.
One of his hands slipped to the back of her neck and he lightly tugged her forward, dipping his head down to press his mouth to hers. Hermione sucked in a breath through her nose, freezing briefly at the warm sensation that spread from her mouth down her neck and pooled in her belly. She'd kissed before. She'd been kissed before. But it was not like this. It had never kindled a fire like this.
A gasped escaped her mouth and she flung her arms around his neck, returning the kiss.
It wasn't a simple press of lips against lips. There was nothing tentative about this kiss. As soon as she accepted it the kiss changed. His mouth slanted across hers and she felt her entire body sing at the idea of being kissed like this. Kissed like every heroine in ever novel she had ever read. And yet it was not like every other heroine because this kiss was different. This kiss was the kiss to end all kisses and rewrite how kisses were supposed to be kissed. This was not teeth and tongue and too much of everything. It was both soft and demanding at the same time. It took her breath away.
And when he drew back, the mewling protest that escaped from her throat was a new thing for her.
"What do you understand now?" she asked softly.
"That you are often ridiculous," he said with a chuckle, but pressed his fingertips to her mouth to stop her from responding. "But when pushed in the right way, you do amazing things that I'm only just now starting to understand."
Hermione blushed and looked at a spot on his jacket. "I suppose we ought to finish with the plants."
"If you truly want to," he said. "But I imagine that you might wish to put something other than a bathrobe on." A smirk appeared at the sides of his mouth. "Though I find the look rather endearing. We could always come back to the plants tomorrow."
She had dropped her head against his chest, groaning in embarrassment at the first comment. But everything went still at the second and slowly she looked back up at him, his hair untidy and his lips looking just as plump as hers felt. Reaching a hand up, she ran her thumb along the seam of his mouth. Then smiled and tugged him back towards her. "The plants can wait."
And they did.
THE END