Drabbles

“Hold out your hand,” Draco said, voice low so as not to carry. 

Hermione presented it to him in the space between their torsos, intuiting that he wanted his actions to remain covert. He murmured an incantation and she felt the almost-liquid glide of satin materialize in her palm. She closed her fist around it instantly, dropping her hand to her lap.

“You’ll be able to see through it.” He shifted her fully onto his lap, his left arm curling around her waist, wand tip brushing errantly up the side of her thigh as he aligned it over the black card still held securely under her Auror-issued thigh holster. “It’ll look opaque so here’s hoping theirs is just a standard blindfold and no one will notice the difference.”

“Should I worry about the fact you know how to conjure a satin blindfold?” Hermione teased, to offset the way her nerves had suddenly skyrocketed in anticipation of Disapparation. 

He made a soft sound of dismissal. “Ready?” he asked, ignoring her question. 

She nodded, leaning against his chest and bracing for the twisting sensation of sliding between the fabric of space. His hand curled securely around her hip and then his wand touched the card, tugging them from the club.

They Apparated to a dim room, the lighting lower than the club they’d left, illuminated by candles and sconces rather than electricity. 

The chair was gone from below them, too, but Hermione found herself still curled against Draco’s chest, his wand-hand tucked under her knees. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders to bear some of her weight, but he didn’t seem strained. 

Nor did he put her down, eyes darting around the space in the order of importance drilled into them both: immediate threats first, then exits second (halls, then doors, then windows), and then the finer details. 

Hermione looked around too, though more covertly, and determined that the doorless, windowless room was inhabited by a handful of humans, none of whom appeared to be immediately threatening.

In fact, for a moment, it seemed their sudden appearance hadn’t even been noticed. 

But then a long-legged woman broke away from the small group circling a table and approached, the shape of her body highlighted by a skin-tight dress, her eyes sweeping over Draco in a way that made Hermione’s hackles raise, the predatory glint in her eye triggering the warning of an immediate threat. Though…perhaps not in a life-or-death manner. 

Even so, it took effort for Hermione not to push out of his arms and draw her wand.

“Good evening,” the woman purred as she stopped a few feet from them. “May I see your card?”

Hermione loosened one hand from around Draco’s neck but before she’d gotten it past his collar, Draco was sliding the card deftly from under her dress, as if he’d had it in his palm the whole time. The woman took it, inspecting it for a moment before smiling at them.

“Welcome to the Stag and Vixen,” she said, then waved the card through the air. It melted into a strip of black fabric, not unlike the satin Draco had conjured. She held it out to him.

“This is for your wife to wear. You’ll both have more fun if she can’t see what you’re up to, nor what’s being done to her.” 

Her tone was sultry but the words coiled the muscles of Draco’s shoulders so tight Hermione could feel them bunching under her hand. She pressed her fingertips down into his trapezius in warning. His vigilance for his job was admirable but if he broke their cover by arresting everyone they interacted with, they’d never find the people truly behind the scheme.

His shoulder twitched under her touch but he took the blindfold from the woman with the hand supporting her legs, the material cool against the side of Hermione’s knee when he curled his fingers around it.  

“I don’t intend to let my–” He adjusted her in his arms, a cover for the way she was sure he couldn’t say the word wife in connection with her. “–be touched by anyone else.”

The woman arched a brow but he continued before she could question their presence. “I was given the impression it was acceptable to simply demonstrate my partner’s unique skill sets without inviting active participation.”  

His voice was smooth and authoritative, implying he wasn’t actually asking for her permission to conduct himself how he wished. The implication of Hermione’s uniqueskill set was evidently intriguing enough that the woman simply inclined her head with an excessively demure smile. 

“Of course, sir. And, should the mood strike you, you’d be welcome to demonstrate your skills more broadly.”

Draco grunted noncommittally and the women departed with a lingering look down his form, gaze flicking over his hand still spanning proprietarily across Hermione’s thigh.

The other people in the room seemed engaged in small groups, mostly chatting but some toeing the line toward full-on public sex. 

Draco turned them so his back was to the room and gently set Hermione down. She found her feet and regained her arms, ire rising as he slipped the black-card blindfold into his breast pocket before snagging the conjured one from her fist, like he had everything all sorted out without needing to consult her.

He nudged her shoulder, turning her to face the wall, and her irritation softened at the realization that he had put his back to the room, in order to shelter her while he pretended to rid her of her sight.

 “Last chance,” he said under his breath, arms circling her and holding the conjured blindfold taut between them, inches from her face.

“Unique skill set?” Hermione hissed in response, leaning into the fabric slightly in nonverbal acceptance. 

He snorted softly, pulling it over her eyes and then looping the ends behind her head.

“Your ability to drop a full-grown werewolf with a single jab, of course,” he mumbled back, tightening the knot. “Not sure I’ll ever recover from witnessing that.”

She scoffed, annoyed that he was being genuinely complimentary. 

It had been a fluke, sort of. The werewolf had been looming over her with his throat bared like an overconfident fool so a karate-chop to the side of his neck had been instinctive. It had worked, too, the beast dropping to the side for long enough that she’d scrambled up and stunned and bound him, keeping him down while Malfoy had subdued his own, less-beast-mode assailants. 

He hadn’t praised her for the accomplishment at the time, and she wasn’t sure if knowing he’d found it noteworthy enough to remember it annoyed her more or less than if he’d never mentioned it again. He didn’t owe her in-field kudos but it would have been nice. Validating. 

“I didn’t realize I was cleared for hand-combat on this assignment,” she said dryly. “Nor that it would be the appropriate thing for me to demonstrate in a sex club.”

“Don’t kink shame.” His breath dusted over her neck, the absence of her typical long, voluminous curls suddenly extremely apparent. “And anyway, I didn’t realize you operated under defined regulations.”

“Speaking of which…” She couldn’t help the bolt of nerves that shot through her when her vision was slightly inhibited, like looking through a fog. “What are your defined regulations?”

“What?” 

As soon as the knot was tight, his hands left her. She could still feel him behind her, and the suggestion of proximity was almost worse than actual physical contact. Her skin felt tingly and hyper-aware, trying to figure out exactly where he was.

“We need to defer suspicion,” she said plainly. “So I’m asking what your limits are.”

“I said we’d do it my way,” he reminded her in an undertone. “So you don’t need to worry about my limits.”

She waited but he didn’t take the opening.

“And are you not worried about mine?” 

He made a soft sound in the negative. “No. They won’t be relevant.”

She clucked her tongue imperiously. “I’m not sure how that’s possible. Do you not intend to touch me?” 

“We’ve been partners for almost two years.” He shifted on his feet, and the motion brought his chest into almost-contact with the skin left bare by the scooped back of her dress. “I already know what your limits are with me, and I don’t intend to test them.”

Her brows raised so high, they surpassed the blindfold. She turned, peering up at him through the semi-translucent fabric. 

“Malfoy,” she said, exasperated, but then tried to soften it to keep him off the defense. “Draco. This is hardly a standard operation. We’ll have to make some accommodations to the norm, and that means more physical contact than we’ve previously allowed.”

“I just had you in my arms,” he hissed. “So don’t lecture me about–”

“Sir?” A voice from behind cut him off mid-sentence. His hand found her lower back instantly, pressing her to him as he performed a half-turn. 

“What?” he snapped. Hermione rolled her eyes at his inability to ever stay on script.

The interrupter wore a mockery of a tuxedo, the trousers replaced with tiny shorts and his chest bare under the jacket and bowtie. He held out a tray of glasses filled halfway with a pale yellow, effervescent liquid. 

“Ah.” Draco reached out and plucked up a glass, handing it to her with a warning squeeze of his other hand. She took it, but didn’t drink. He took a second for himself, raising it in subtle thanks to the waiter before turning back to her. 

As the waiter moved on, Draco dropped his other hand from her back and slid it into his trouser pocket, eyes falling to her glass and then his own, before clinking them together and taking a long drink.

“Draco,” she hissed, aghast. “Don’t! You don’t know–”

“Here, love,” he interrupted, withdrawing his hand from his pocket to help align the rim of her glass on her lower lip. “Drink.”

People were watching them in the periphery, finally coming to explore the fresh meat. She hated herself for trusting him, but couldn’t deny that she did. And so she opened her lips and let him tip some of the wine into her mouth.

Although…it wasn’t wine. It was water.

She swallowed, hiding her surprise, but saw the tiniest uptick of his lips. He was smug about something. 

Godric above, had he vanished the wine and then refilled it with water? Wandlessly? She tightened her jaw, annoyed at the very concept that he had, and on the fly, and without her having noticed. 

“Good girl,” he murmured, loud enough to carry. “Drink it all.”

The heat of annoyance shifted instantly into something deeper, something visceral and more substantive, and though she did as she was told, she resented him for it. 

For making her feel anything at all that wasn’t within her control.