Chapter 1
It’s been going on for weeks.
After work drinks turn into her tipsy walk home, clinging to the arm of a man she’d never have seen coming. At least not until he supported her campaign for werewolf rights and protections.
Draco Malfoy and she had been sleeping together for weeks.
At work -when she only interacted with him on specific cases involving both his department, the DMLE, and her own, the DPMC,- it didn’t feel real.
But then he’d linger at a meeting until they were the only two left. Or he’d write her a memo inviting her out for drinks. Or he’d turn up at her flat with takeout and his killer smirk.
“Stop thinking,” he growls into her ear, pulling her blouse from the waist of her skirt.
She nods, fumbling with the belt around his waist.
They kiss and she sucks at his bottom lip, never getting enough of the spiced taste. He preferred a firewhiskey at the bar.
She went for martinis.
Draco found himself craving the taste of olives.
When their lips part, he lifts her shirt over her head, followed by wrapping his hands around her back and unclipping her bra, baring her chest to him.
“Fuck,” he curses.
She loves it when he does that.
“The bed,” she reminds him.
But he ignores her, unzipping her skirt and pushing down the fabric, pulling her panties down with it.
Draco kneels, pressing a hand against her cool sternum, anchoring her in place.
“Spread your legs, witch,” he says in soft command.
Hermione does as he says, widening her stance, her body on fire.
Slowly, torturously, Draco presses languid kisses to her stomach, her hip, her thigh.
Hermione runs a hand through his hair, tightening when he presses a light kiss to the skin just above her wet pussy.
“Hold still,” is Draco’s last instruction before he presses his face between her legs, using his free hand to tease her skin, tracing patterns into her skin until she is putty in his hands.
She can’t hold in the pleasured moans as he licks her pussy, focusing just enough pressure on her clit while still caressing the rest of her sensitive skin.
His fingers spread on her stomach as she arches her back, feeling an orgasm starting to brew in the base of her stomach.
Draco’s tongue is warm and heady, each ministration helping her climb towards the bliss he so skillfully delivers.
It doesn’t take long before she is coming apart under his fingers, his mouth, his tongue.
“Fuck,” she echoes his earlier sentiment, her grip tightening in his platinum locks.
When he stands, they kiss and she can taste herself on his lips.
It only spurs her on, tearing at the buttons of his clothes.
How is he still fully dressed?
Draco picks her up and carries her to the bed, laying her back gently and climbing on top of her prone form.
“Another one, Granger,” he murmurs, cupping her chin as they kiss.
She lifts her head, not wanting to separate from him.
But when he pulls back and finishes what she had started- removing his shirt- she is fine with the brief space.
He’s gorgeous, with pale skin and taut muscles. A trail of hair leading beneath his waistband.
“Please,” she moves her hand to her breasts, kneading gently, and showing him her stiff nipples.
He sheds his briefs and presses down onto her once more, sucking gently at the spot just beneath her ear. She’s had his love bite there for weeks, always in the same spot. Varying between purple, yellow, and fresh pink. She tilts her head back and gasps. He pays her breasts his attention next, sucking her nipples into his mouth while sliding a finger through her wet folds.
He always makes certain she is ready for him. That she is as desperate for him as he is for her.
When his cock presses into her, she can’t help the keening sound that comes from her mouth and he matches it with his own.
They move in tandem, the rhythm helping them both back up that pleasure peak that she has found goes so much higher when she is with Draco.
It feels incredible, the way their bodies fit together.
They come apart one after the next, Hermione first.
Afterwards, they just lay together for a while. He runs his fingers through her hair, her head resting on his chest. She draws runes into his rib cage, blinking slowly.
Sex with Draco is always amazing, but it was the time after that Hermione enjoyed the most. The quiet. The post-orgasm high. The slight buzz left over from her martini.
Lying there in her bed listening to his breathing slow and even out, nothing is complicated.
Hermione Granger is brilliant. She is intelligent and talented and an astonishing witch by all accounts. She is the head of her department at only 26 years old. President of an organization that has changed hundreds of werewolves' lives, not to mention their families. She has saved lives for Godric’s sake. Hermione Granger is fucking brilliant.
Which is why she should not be in this situation.
He’d cast a contraceptive charm.
She’d been on muggle birth control since school.
So they’d slept together a few times. So it was the best sex of her life. That should not have left her pregnant.
It is like Draco fucking Malfoy has magical fucking sperm.
She should not be in this situation.
The phone is ringing.
It’s been ringing. Ever since she stepped out of the floo and typed in the number, the bloody phone has been ringing.
Except her stupid muggle doctor won’t pick up his stupid muggle phone.
“I sent you an interoffice memo last night.” The voice sends her phone flying and she juggles to slam it shut, hanging up on the doctor and turning to look at the wizard who of course came out of the floo right beside hers.
Of course Malfoy is here right now. Of course!
She’s lost it. Ever since she had peed on that little plastic stick, her logical brain had gone out the window.
“I wasn’t at work last night,” she says, distracted and trying to find an escape route. Unfortunately, none of the elevators seem to be available. So she freezes, her pumps pinching her toes uncomfortably.
“That’s not why I sent you the memo,” he says, leaning oh-so-casually against the marble wall of the ministry foyer.
She gives him a withering look.
“You know, you could give me your muggle telephone number,” he suggests, leaning forwards with his smirk doing all of the work.
Hermione tries to think of a response that isn’t we can never be alone in the same room together again so long as I live.
“Oh, Malfoy. I gotta go,” she shrugs, gesturing to her folder like it holds something more important than a report on a theft from weeks ago.
Luckily, an elevator opens at that moment and she escapes his lopsided smile and mischievous eyes.
Fuckity-fuck.
The elevator goes straight up and Hermione is for once grateful that she isn’t on one of the diagonally located floors.
She doesn’t like heights and the tenth floor of the ministry is just tall enough that she hates walking past the windows. Still, she reaches her department only slightly more nauseous than she had been this morning.
As luck would have it, everyone else in the world has already congregated outside of her office and as she walks past, they start spouting off things they need from her.
As welcome a distraction as there has ever been.
Her luck runs out by lunchtime.
The rumor mill of the ministry finally reaches her closed door when her assistant, Wallace Raucsh, brings her lunch.
Morbus Gallicus. The magical equivalent of syphilis.
“Three witches in the Department of Magical Maintenance have it, plus two wizards from the DMLE and a handful of other employees,” Wallace tells her.
Her appetite had already been gone since receiving her own bad news, but of course things had to be worse.
“Minister Shacklebolt ordered that any employee who is in an intimate relationship with another employee has to get clearance tested. They set up a triage on the fourth floor. Isn’t that awful?”
Wallace doesn’t sound like he thinks it is awful. He sounds like he thinks it is hilarious.
“Shouldn’t you be proofing your report on wolfsbane distribution routes in Wales, Mr. Rausch?”
She never uses his last name, except for when she is irritated beyond belief. He makes quick work of escaping her clutches.
Hermione manages a few bites of her kale salad before laying her head down on her desk and moaning about how unfair her life is.
She manages to get a hold of her doctor after lunch.
It isn’t good news. She is definitely pregnant. Six weeks.
Unfortunately, he can’t confirm or deny the fact that she might have syphilis based on her sample.
Which means that she has to participate in Kingsley’s ludicrously inappropriate testing center.
She sneaks down around three, hoping everyone else is in the midst of their working afternoon.
There are maybe a dozen people in a line on the fourth floor, all looking uncomfortable.
She doesn’t recognize any of them by name but there are certainly a couple that she has interacted with.
While it isn’t something she is particularly proud of, she hides around the bend of the wall, wondering if she should just go find Malfoy and ask him if she needs to get tested.
But then of course she’d have to tell him that she is pregnant. And that it is definitely his because she hasn’t slept with anyone else for months.
She looks around the corner and blushes, thinking of the company she has somehow found herself in. She was going to kill Ginny for pushing her to find a “stress reliever” as she had called it.
Hermione probably wouldn’t kill Draco. They haven't made any agreements regarding the exclusivity of their relationship. Who is she to have a say in who he sleeps with?
The mother of his child.
Sometimes, Hermione hates her own mind.
The door across from her opens and the father of her child steps out of the room, a stack of files in his arms.
She watches in frozen horror as his brows lift and he hands the files to some auror in training.
When he starts towards her, she turns the other way, leaning against the wall and pretending to be fascinated by the floor.
His shoes appear in her line of sight.
“You’re avoiding me, Granger,” he cages her in, leaning a long arm against the wall.
“I’m busy. At work. I’m working.” She won’t look up. Can’t. He’ll see it written on her face.
I’m pregnant with your child.
“Why are you in this line?”
She looks up. He doesn’t look concerned. Or upset. Merely amused.
“This is the Morbus Gallicus line.” Obviously.
“You don’t need to be in this line.” He adjusts the line of his robes, suave.
Hermione nearly does a double take.
“I don’t?” She looks up at him, searching for whatever emotion his words were meant to convey. As usual, his passive features betray nothing.
“There’s no one else. That surprises you?”
It should. Afterall, they’ve only been sleeping together for a couple of months. They certainly aren’t dating. No one else knew they were seeing each other.
This time she doesn’t need to be looking at his face to understand the assurance he is making.
“Nothing surprises me,” she turns towards the wall, grinning like an idiot.
“Do I need to be in this line, Granger?”
“No,” she shakes her head, turning her head and looking up at him shyly.
“Okay then,” he pushes off from the wall.
“Okay.”
Hermione watches him walk away, holding onto the wall for support.
So he’s not sleeping with another witch, so what? That doesn’t mean they are together. He isn’t looking for a relationship with her.
Is she supposed to tell him she’s pregnant now? How can she?
Still, she must admit- if only to herself- that she has feelings for Draco that add up to a whole lot more than casual sex.