I quit
She burst into their flat, disheveled, panting, and utterly, completely, full of joy. He froze where he sat, one hand hovering over the keyboard of the laptop she had purchased for him earlier that year.
“I did it! I quit!”
At the last word, Hermione’s bag and shoes went flying, and she flung herself into their chaise, limbs splayed in defiance of their previous restraints. Five years she had labored in the Ministry, five years of her nose to the grind, paper pushing, and looming deadlines; five years of denied proposals; five years of absent promotions. Those backwards fools held every department in an ironclad stasis, and she was done letting them string her along as a token of a war won.
Warm hands settled across her shoulders and started kneading away the lingering tension they found there. He did this for her every night without fail and she loved him all the more for it.
“I suppose congratulations are in order?” Draco’s breath fanned across her ear before lips chased down her neck, following a path set by his ever downward moving hands.
“I might…have certain celebrations in mind for tonight,” she admitted, rolling her head back to gaze up at him.
His dark chuckle melted her even further into repose. “Tonight, or right now?”
Those long fingers that had learned to type so quickly in such a short time continued their wicked movements, reaching around to pluck and twist and coax whimpers from her weakened state.
“I…”
“I?”
“I really should…start making plans…”
“Isn’t that what we’re doing right now?”
“Mmmm, yes, but also no…”
In one swift motion, he bent over to tug her into his arms and hauled her straight over the back of the chaise.
“I am going to reward you for a job well done the best way I know how, and you are going to take what you deserve.” He paused a beat to allow for any protest, cool grey eyes locking onto her honeyed brown, and when she gave none, they crinkled at the edges with his satisfied smile. “That’s my girl.”
Hermione decided that these arms were most assuredly the plans she meant to focus on. Any other decisions regarding her future employment, which would undoubtedly remain Ministry-free, could wait until tomorrow. Or, perhaps, until after the weekend.
As her lover—once bully, later rival, a former long-considered enemy, then tentative friend, then something more than a friend—carried her up the stairs and down the hallway, as he tossed her onto their four-poster bed and stripped off his Oxford shirt with the alacrity of a starving man, she decided a long vacation was in order. She deserved it; she deserved him.
And then all scheming vanished in a thrum of well-deserved celebration, Draco Malfoy style and Hermione Granger approved.