Chapter 4: Wednesday morning, Granger’s bedroom

Draco hadn’t planned to fall asleep but, nevertheless, he awakes—with a start—thinking, POTTER.

Granger’s sleeping quietly.

He kisses her cheek, reassuring her that he won’t be long, then rushes out of the bedroom, and runs to the nearest fireplace on The Floo Network.

He’s not sure why he’s so hopeful.

Memories are swirling round his head: of Potter, suddenly brewing the perfect Draught of Living Death; of Snape, accusing Potter of using his own magic against him; of Blaise, telling him that Potter had a Potions book with someone else’s notes scribbled in the margins; and, above all, of Weasley, recovering from the poison that he, Draco, had stupidly put in the bottle of mead.

He casts an Incendio charm as he approaches the fireplace, grabs a handful of Floo powder, and throws it into the flames. “Potter!” he bellows, thrusting his head into the green light, “Potter! POTTER!” and he keeps yelling until the man appears, looking tired and dishevelled, and followed by his Weasley wife.

“Have you any idea what time it is?” says Potter, hooking his spectacles over his ears.

“No,” says Draco, honestly, and that seems to strike a chord because the other man crouches down before the fire, and his wife, pulling her dressing gown tightly round her, crouches beside him.

“What’s wrong?” asks Potter

“Hermione’s worse, isn’t she?” says his wife.

“I—I think she may be dying,” says Draco, and his voice cracks. “It’s—the healer says it’s some sort of poison. And I’ve come to you, because—”

“Just shove a bezoar down her throat,” says Potter. “Have you got one?

“A bezoar...?” Draco frowns. His brain’s overloaded, and it takes him a moment to process the idea, and then another to wonder why he hadn’t thought of it himself, and then, “Yes!” he cries. “Yes! Yes!”

He leaps to his feet and he’s about to charge from the room when a thought strikes him.

He bends down, and thrusts his head back into the flames, shouting: “Anything you need Potter—anything, ever—you or your wife—just come to me!”

“Let us know how she is,” he hears Ginny Potter reply. “In the morning.”

...

He has two bezoars in his potion ingredients chest and he grabs both of them, and thunders back upstairs to Granger’s bedroom.

“Please,” he pants, lifting her head from the pillow and pushing one of the stones into her mouth, “swallow, Hermione. Just swallow. For me.”

She coughs.

He clamps his hand over her nose and mouth. “No! Swallow it, Hermione.”

He feels her cheeks move, and sees her throat ripple, and he sighs with relief, wondering how long it’ll be before he knows whether it’s worked.

“Grako,” she says, struggling to break free. “Grako!”

“Oh!” He pulls his hand away.

“What are you doing?” she gasps.

He gathers her up and crushes her to his chest. “You’re back, Granger! You’re back!”

...

She’s groggy and slightly panicked, but all her faculties appear to be functioning normally and, once he’s convinced her that he hadn’t been trying to inherit her recently revealed fortune, nor to suffocate her as part of some perverted sex game, she promptly falls asleep.

Draco sits beside her, turning over the events of the last two days in his mind.

One detail haunts him: Granger was attacked by a man carrying a walking stick.

...

She wakes in the early hours, eager to talk. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

He repeats everything he knows—again.

“It wasn’t your father,” she says, deducing what he hasn’t had the courage to tell her. Then she reaches out and, lifting his chin, she forces him to meet her gaze. “It wasn’t, Malfoy. Think about it: yes, he really doesn’t want you to marry me and, yes, he’ll do anything he can to make you leave me. But he’d never take me away from you, because that would only make you want me more. Killing me would hurt you. And, however wrong-headed his plans might be, everything he does, he does for you.”

Draco lies back on his pillows and considers what she’s said. “Yes… You’re right. As usual.”

“I think it’s time you talked to him,” she adds, “because this is starting to look like vengeance to me. And if there’s anyone who’s likely to have a madman for an enemy, it’s your madman of a father.”

Draco’s suddenly annoyed.

It’s not Granger’s place to say something like that about his father.

Not to him.

Not if she cares for him even half as much as he cares for her.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“Nothing.”

“You’re sulking.”

“Drop it.”

“Wonderful.” She turns her back on him. “I’m the one who found my fiancé with a prostitute. I’m the one who’s learned that he used to visit her all the time. I’m the one who’s been accused of murdering the woman. But, of course, you’re the one with man pain.”

“What?” he yells. “Have you any idea what I went through yesterday, you stupid woman? I thought you were going to die—or that I’d have to spend the rest of my life with a bloody toddler!”

“Well that should have suited you, Draco—a child’s mind in a woman’s body. You could have fucked me whenever and wherever—”

“GRANGER!” That’s so fucking unfair! Child-Granger had come on to him—more than once—and he’d treated her with nothing but respect! “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” he shouts.

Then he turns his back on her, and tries to ignore her sniffles.

…

He lasts about a quarter of an hour. “Granger...”

More sniffles.

“Granger,”—he won’t say he’s sorry, because it wasn’t his fault—“Granger, for Merlin’s sake...” He turns over and pulls her, roughly, into his arms. “We shouldn’t be arguing. We should be—I don’t know—being pleased that you’re okay.”

She says nothing.

“It’s nerves,” he says, desperately. “It’s a reaction to everything that’s happened. I’m all worked up, you’re all worked up...” And, normally, when things were tense like this, they’d have sex, but Granger’s only just recovered—

“I want you to show me what you did with her,” she says.

“With who?”

“Delilah. Whatever you did with her, I want you to do it with me,” she says.

Merlin’s balls, she’s jealous!

And randy?

“You’ve just been poisoned, Granger, you’re not up to that.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. She pulls away from him, and fixes him with the furious glare she used to give him at school. “Anything she could do, I can do, Malfoy,” she says.

“That’s not what I meant—you know it isn’t,” he protests. “I just meant that you need to rest.”

“Do it with me now, or get out of my bed.” She folds her arms across her chest.

She’s terrifying.

A termagant in the making.

And if anyone ever needed a good shagging...

It’s not as though he doesn’t want sex—part of him’s bloody gagging for it—but, when she’d had a mental age of three years, he’d basically—well—tied a knot in it. Because, he thinks, taking her when she was like that would have been abusing her.

And he knows that there’s something very deep and very important behind that thought, but Granger’s looking at him, and the part of him that wants to fuck her brains out is looking back, and he can hardly think straight.

“Oh, fucking hell, Granger,” he growls, “all right! If it’s what you want, I’ll fuck you like a whore.”

He gets up on his knees and, opening his fly, he thinks of all the things he used to do to Delilah—‘chaining’ her to the bed, blindfolded and gagged; ‘forcing’ her to her knees and ‘making’ her fellate him; fucking her in front of his fellow punters whilst they wagered on who would lose it first—and he realises that he doesn’t want any of that crap with Granger.

He doesn’t need any of that crap with Granger.

He’s quite content to make love to Granger.

Make love with Granger.

But Granger needs to know that she’s every bit as good as Delilah, he thinks.

“We’ll play the dice game,” he decides. “First one to come’s the loser.”

…

He transfigures the bed into a sturdy gaming table with a polished mahogany frame and a green baize top, and the pillows into velvet cushions.

“We need an audience,” he says, and casts another spell, filling the room with a crowd of shadowy people—his own memories, given a tenuous substance. “Meet the clientèle of Madam Mafalda’s, as far as I can remember them.”

“That’s impressive magic, Malfoy,” says Granger.

“You’re not the only one with talent, Miss Muggle-born.”

He conjures a pair of ivory dice, and drops them into her hand, and then—with another slash of his wand—he transfigures her modest night robe into an hourglass-shaped corset of pale lilac, studies it for a moment, and adds a few vertical stripes of black, to accentuate her slender waist and her curvy hips.

That certainly gets the juices flowing.

“Are you absolutely sure you want to do this—you really want to be used like a whore?”

“Yes,” she says.

“Well, you’d better choose a safe word,” he says, “just in case you want me to stop.”

“Hippogriff,” she replies.

“Classy.”

He pulls one of the cushions to the edge of the table and, grasping her waist, he bends her over it.

The entire situation—his anxiety, his anger, his suppressed need and, most of all, Granger’s obvious jealousy—has already made him hard, but the sight of her lying on the table, with her gorgeous arse bare, is almost enough to snap the bloody thing off. Without ceremony, he casts a charm to make her ready, and pushes himself inside her.

Granger lets out a thoroughly gratifying gasp, and claws the table, and Draco can’t resist giving her a few rough thrusts, just to show her what she’s let herself in for, but—despite the magical adjustment—her pussy feels fabulously tight, and he quickly realises that he’ll have to be more careful if he’s going to win the game.

He closes his eyes and, keeping perfectly still, he tries to think of potion recipes.

But Granger’s impatient. “Draco...” she whines.

With incredible self control, he leans down and hisses in her ear, “You don’t get to tell me what to do, you whore,” which is a terrible mistake, because Granger squeals with excitement. “Oh fuck,” he pants. “Keep bloody still!”

Fortunately, she obeys.

Once he’s sure the danger’s passed, he takes up his wand, and animates the shadow-people.

Granger looks around. “Oh my,” she says.

Draco follows her gaze.

Most of the people have crowded around the table, and are waiting for the entertainment to start, but some of the shadows have begun having sex—one of the men has bent over backwards and is propping himself on his hands and feet like a human stool, and the woman sitting on his cock is herself being vigorously fucked by a second man, who’s standing between her splayed legs.

“Ignore them,” Draco rasps, looking away. “You’ve got your own job to do.”

“What’s that?”

He seizes her by the waist. “Roll the dice.”

Granger picks them up, shakes them in her hand and drops them onto the table. “Two,” she says.

He withdraws almost fully, then makes two long, slow thrusts, counting each time he buries himself up to his balls, “One—two.”

“Oh,” says Granger, obviously inferring the rules of the game.

Draco takes a deep breath. “Roll again.”

She does. “Double six.”

“Bollocks,” he murmurs. The shadow people are applauding. One of the men sets a pile of galleons on the green baize. “He’s backing you, Granger. He thinks you’re going to win.”

And he bites the bullet, and thrusts twelve times.

...

They’ve been at it for what feels like hours.

And, just as the punters used to at the real Madam Mafalda’s, the shadow people have come out from their private rooms, from the Members’ Bar, and from the Grand Salon, and have gathered to watch them—some are standing on the furniture to get a better look—and, within the hum of sound, Draco can recognise snippets of conversation: men are envying his staying power, women are admiring his arse, and everyone’s counting his strokes.

The money’s on Granger, but Draco knows she’s holding on by a thread—the slightest movement of his hips has her gasping, and her pussy clamping down on him—and another throw of the dice will surely push her over the edge.

If he can just hold on...

Granger rolls the dice. There’s a thunderous round of applause. “Double-six,” she groans. “Again.”

Fuck, thinks Draco. I’m done for. But he’s determined to go down with flying colours.

He hauls himself up into a standing position and, grasping her hips and gazing down at her absolutely-fucking-gorgeous arse, he grinds into her, because he’s no longer capable of proper thrusts. “One,” he moans, “two—ah—three—ah...” Someone in the shadow crowd is urging him to go faster because, if he takes too long between strokes, he’ll forfeit the game. “Four,”—his voice rises to an embarrassing falsetto—“fi—aaah—five—oh Merlin!—”

Granger comes.

Her body’s arching and twisting, her pussy’s devouring him—

And something bursts in his balls.

“GRANGER,” he screams, “GRANGER,” and comes too, in a series of great, spine-wrenching convulsions.

...

The shadow people are congratulating him—patting his back with their wispy hands—and settling their bets. One shadow man reaches over and tries to stroke Granger’s sweat-damp hair, and Draco’s memory supplies his words: “How about having a real man fuck you now, girlie? Take a look at what I’ve got...”

Draco grabs his wand and banishes the bastard just in time, though the effort almost kills him. “Satisfied now?” he gasps.

“You really did this,” she says, “in public?”

“Yes.”

“With her...”

“Fucking hell, Granger,” he groans. “Yes, but you were better, all right?”

“It was incredible,” she says, turning her head, and seeking his mouth, and—somehow—they manage to share a clumsy kiss. “You’re incredible, Malfoy. Always.”

“Mmm.” He’s too tired to argue.

“And you’re all mine.”

“Mmmmm.”

He barely has the strength to mumble, “Finite Incantatem,” and turn the table back into a bed, before exhaustion claims him, and he’s fast asleep and snoring—loudly, Granger tells him later.

...

He’s awoken by someone hammering at the door. “Where am I?”

“Our bedroom,” says Granger.

“Oh...” He stretches, and sighs.

“Hadn’t you better go and see who it is?”

“It’ll be Mother,” he says, wearily, “come to ask how you are. JUST A MOMENT!”

He manages to climb out of bed, and cast a couple of cleaning charms over himself, fastening his trousers and raking his hand through his hair. “Presentable?”

Granger studies him critically. “Yes,” she decides. “But,”—she lifts the bedclothes to reveal the love bites on her neck and shoulders, and her corset, stained and torn—“I’m not.”

“I won’t let her in.”

He goes to the door, and opens it, but it’s not Narcissa waiting outside.

“Father?”

“How is she?” asks Lucius.

“Much better,” says Draco, “thank you for asking, but she’s sleeping.”

Lucius nods. “It’s you I want to speak to, Draco. In my study.”

Draco’s torn. He wants, of course, to question his father, and this will give him the perfect opportunity, but he’d rather have Granger with him, two brains being so much better than one...

He needs to talk to her.

“Fifteen minutes?” he suggests. “I should like to change out of yesterday’s clothes.”

“Very well,” says Lucius. “Fifteen minutes.”

...

“Good,” says Granger.

Draco threads the end of his tie through the loop. “You’re sure you’re ready to be on your own? If you need—”

“I’m fine, Malfoy. I’ll have a nice long soak in the bath.”

“If I stayed,” he says, “I could soak with you.” He adjusts the knot.

Granger laughs. “And then we’d both come out dirtier than when we went in.”

Draco smirks at her reflection in the mirror. “I just wish I could have you in there with me,” he says, more seriously. “My father... He can be quite hard work.” He selects a tie pin.

“I know,” says Granger. “But I have an idea—though you may not like it.”