A Good Case
Hermione broke the surface of the water with rage coursing through her veins. Before she could spit out the lake’s water and find her soon-to-be-husband to strangle him, the heavy organza of her wedding dress curled around her legs and pulled her back under.
Perhaps that had been his intention then? Escaping a marriage forced upon them by a Ministry desperate to sell their new law as necessary, Malfoy might just have thrown her over the boat’s rim to avoid his destiny. He could easily contort this into a tragic accident.
And so when she fought against her dress, just to find the light of the surface grow dimmer, her anger melted into desperation.
She hadn’t meant to snap at him about how she was not interested in ever touching a man who was more bigoted than your average portrait in the Slytherin common room, but he’d been riling her up with his incessant need to remind her that they would not consummate their wedding night no matter how much she would try to convince him otherwise.
Her arms and lungs burned from the strain, her vision spotting when suddenly something curled around her ribs tight enough to press out the remaining air in her lungs, dragging her to the light.
Back on the shaking boat that was supposed to bring them to the small island where they were going to exchange vows, Hermione heaved and gasped. She lifted her head enough to find Malfoy kneeling in front of her, his wide-eyed gaze revealing delayed shock, water dripping from his matted hair.
“It was supposed to be funny,” he said and she wanted to strangle him again. With a growl, she tackled him backwards onto the boat’s surface until she had him pinned beneath her.
“I thought you would never touch a man like me,” Malfoy said with a startled chuckle and the fact that he was still laughing at her expense made something snap inside of her. On pure instinct, she grasped the lapels of his wet suit, pulled him upwards and crashed her mouth against those thin lips that knew only to mock and sneer.
When he didn’t push her off but froze beneath her, she bit his lower lip hard enough to draw a pained gasp from him. With another strangled growl, she pushed away from him. Or tried to at least because suddenly those two strong arms that had nearly cracked a rib earlier were now curled around her head and kept her locked against him.
She bit him again, hard enough to almost draw blood, and in return, he brushed his tongue against her upper lip. The small touch was electric enough, that her arms buckled and she collapsed against his chest, her fingers clawing at his hair and pulling it back until the back of his head thumped against the wood below.
“Well, so much for ‘they’re probably going to kill each other before they even make it here’,” Ginny called from the distance with a disbelieving laugh. Hermione released Draco and scrambled back onto her knees just to see her friends and the very unamused-looking faces of Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy waiting for them at the shore.
Malfoy had pushed himself up on his elbows, the grey in his eyes pushed to a small ring around his pupils, the red of her lipstick smeared across his stiff lower lip.
“You made a very good case,” he said, his gaze drifting to her lips and then her heaving chest, before settling back on her eyes, “for consummating our marriage tonight after all.”
“You’re bleeding,” Hermione panted with a shake of her head when she realised that the red on his lower lip was pooling.
“As I said,” he returned, “you made a good case.”