Chapter Text
Bright scarlet stood out ominously against his pale skin. Draco swore and sucked on his fingertip where the thorn had pierced him. He glared at the massive bouquet he carried. “You’re supposed to be wooing her, not stabbing me. Fucking nature.”
He almost felt bad about swearing at the flowers, which were mostly innocent and only acting in self defence, and recognised his hostile reaction as a symptom of the wild nerves ricocheting around in his stomach. But fuck, that thorn really hurt.
The gate to Granger’s walk was a pretty little arched thing, with green vines and purple flowers creeping up around its white pickets. It squeaked as Draco pushed it open, took a deep breath, and strolled up the walk. Granger’s enormous orange cat stretched out lazily in front of the door, probably imagining himself serving as some sort of guard cat, but really just looking like a a puddle of orange sherbet, melted in the hot June sun and grown fur.
Draco peeked through the ornamental grasses bursting out of the top of the bouquet as he approached her small stoop. He couldn’t see where he was going, and thus there was a geospatial disagreement between his left foot and the top step, and in a show of solidarity, Draco’s body entered into a geospatial disagreement with the rest of the stoop, in this order:
1. His eye smashed into Granger’s doorknob;
2. His head smashed into Granger’s door;
3. His knee nearly smashed Granger’s cat;
4. Granger’s cat’s teeth and claws pierced Draco’s skin;
5. The bouquet, having caused all of this, evaded responsibility by removing itself from the situation entirely, flying out of his arms and landing in some undetermined location.
In the face of this relentless assault, Draco’s body surrendered to the stoop. He came to rest on his back with his head pillowed on the threshold blinking up at Granger, who stood in the crack of the open door.
“Malfoy?” she asked, confusion evident on her face even upside down.
“Oh hello, Granger. How did you know I was here?”
“I have a knocker, you didn’t need to use your head.” She pointed at an attractive brass knocker shaped like a bird.
“Yes, thank you. I’ll remember that next time. Can I come in?”
She stepped back. He groaned, pulling himself to his feet. Her gaze traveled over his injured body with the practiced eye of a Healer. “Who did this to you?”
“Your cat. And also your door.”
She raised an eyebrow. “This all just happened? I assumed you were coming over to ask for some off-duty medical care. If not that, why are you here in the first place?”
Draco found that all his courage had been used up in the battle with the stoop, and there was none left to deliver the short speech he’d practiced with Theo about how she was beautiful and brilliant, softhearted and terrifying, and he was quite smitten with her, actually, and would like very much to take her to dinner.
He didn’t have a backup answer at the ready, but thankfully Granger’s question seemed more rhetorical than anything, as she examined some of his wounds more closely. Cool fingers pressed gently but dispassionately around his eye. “You’re bruising badly. Wait here, I need to grab a few things.”
Draco did not wait there. Hermione found him in the kitchen, holding a tube of ground hamburger over his eye. “What in the world are you doing?”
“Muggle medicine, Granger.”
“It’s supposed to be a raw steak, you idiot.”
“Do you see any raw steak in your fridge?”
“No.”
“Neither did I. I’m improvising. Fuck, this hurts.” He glanced at the tube. “And 70/30? What is this, Granger? You really need to be buying higher quality meats.”
She flushed. “It was a manager’s special!”
“I don’t think this is working. Maybe if I open the tube and just squeeze it onto my face it’ll better approximate the raw steak effect. Maybe the beef has to be in direct contact with the bruise.”
“Maybe you could come here and let me heal you with magic, you complete dumbass.”
“No, Granger. It’s okay. I’m sure the Muggle method is just as effective as magic. Muggles and wizards do things differently but are both equally worthy as human beings.” He looked around for something to cut the tube open with. “Do you have any scissors? Oh, wait. My wand.”
“I want you to know that I see what you’re trying to do here, and I appreciate it, but I promise that in this case, magic is completely superior.” She placed both hands on his chest—he resisted the urge to flex—and pushed him backwards into a chair.
He sat patiently while she patted several different salves and potions into the delicate skin around his eye, and he shivered slightly at the feel of her healing magic diffusing over his skin. Next she shifted her attention to the vicious cat-inflicted trauma on his arms.
“This is going to sting a little bit. I need to use some antiseptic on these; I’m worried about the possibility of Cat Scratch Fever.”
“That sounds made up.”
“It’s very real.”
“Your cat is a menace.”
“He’s quite docile, usually. He must really not like you.”
“Have you been poisoning his thoughts against me? It’s not nice to talk about me behind my back.”
“It’s awfully presumptuous to assume I talk about you to my cat.” She paused in the midst of dressing his wounds, as if something had just occurred to her. “You hit your head, didn’t you?” He nodded. “You’re acting rather strangely. I need to check for a concussion.”
“If I have one, does that mean we need to sleep together?” he asked hopefully.
She squinted at him. “Excuse me?”
“Not sleep together together! That’s not what I meant. I just thought—you’re not supposed to be alone if you have a concussion, right? So I would have to stay in your bed. Right?”
“I’m just going to ignore that entire thing. And also, you don’t have a concussion.” She waved away the diagnostic spell.
“Oh. Well that’s a relief,” he said. He didn’t mean it.
He sat quietly until she finished working on the feline-inflicted injuries. “Thank you for your expert care, Granger. Wouldn’t have trusted anyone but you.”
“These are really very minor injuries, Malfoy, you could trust almost any Healer and a fair few mothers with them.”
“But I didn’t. Only you.” He looked at her meaningfully, but she only nodded slowly, concern still evident on her face.
“Take it easy for the rest of the day, Malfoy.”
“Yes, Healer Granger.”
On his way back down her path, he cast an Incendio at the bouquet where it lay defenceless, but not blameless, on the ground.
The next morning, Draco was forty-five minutes into a large pile of overdue incident reports (Aurors had to submit a report for every instance of offensive magic used in the line of duty; it was exactly as tedious and dull as it sounded) when Granger appeared at his desk.
“Granger.” He felt inexplicably nervous under her assessing gaze.
“I thought I would stop by to check on how you’re healing. Make sure you didn’t die of undiagnosed head trauma overnight.”
“Wish I had died so I didn’t have to do these reports. Why couldn’t you have been a little less good at your job yesterday?”
“My deepest apologies.” She came around to his side of the desk and reached her hand towards his face, before pausing. “May I?”
“Of course.” He tilted his head to give her access. She lightly pressed two cool fingers around his eye. He winced slightly as she pushed on a tender spot.
“Sorry. Put some more salve on it today and the tenderness should go away by tomorrow. No discolouration, at least.” She pulled her hand away from his face, and he wondered if he could make up a complaint so she would touch him again. “How are the Crookshanks-inflicted injuries?”
Draco unbuttoned his right cuff and rolled up the sleeve to his elbow so she could see that his forearm was unblemished by cat scratches. “They were nearly fine by the time I got home last night. Your Kitty Cat Fever didn’t come for me after all.
She snorted. “Cat Scratch Fever.” She ran her hand lightly over his skin, then looked up at him inquisitively. “So you never did mention the real reason you were at my house yesterday.”
He cursed his pale skin as he felt a flush spread across his face. “Oh. Ah. I was just—in the neighbourhood. Walking by. Thought I would stop and say hello.”
One lovely eyebrow raised slightly. Was she amused, or skeptical? Both? He couldn’t tell. “Hmm. I noticed a few flowers scattered on the walk after you left. Do you know anything about that?”
Shit. His Incendio must have missed some stray stems. He shrugged casually. “No idea. I didn’t notice anything. Though to be fair, I was quite dazed from the pain and trauma.”
“Hmm.”
“Maybe your cat knows something. Has he been off wooing a lady cat with flowers?”
She seemed to be holding back a smile. “Maybe I’ll ask him. Anyway, I’m off to work. Glad you’re okay, Malfoy.”
“Right. Bye, Granger.”
He was such a coward.
She passed Harry in the doorway and paused to talk to him for a moment. When Harry looked over at Draco with shades of sixth year in his eyes, Draco jerked his gaze away from Granger’s bum and back to his endless pile of paperwork.
How lovely and considerate of Granger to come check on him. He should get hurt more often.
It was Monday morning. Draco stood at his kitchen sink staring at his right hand, holding a large knife in his left. This would be so much easier with a slicing hex, but he needed the cut to look believably knife-y. Thus, an actual knife.
He took a deep breath and counted himself off. “One, two, three!”
Nothing happened.
He stood motionless for another 30 seconds, during which he vowed that future iterations of this plan wouldn’t require quite so much personal resolve on his part. But for now, there was nothing for it. With a sharp inhale, he scrunched up his eyes and dragged the knife across his palm with a loud, wordless yell.
When he landed in St. Mungo’s A&E, blood dripping to the floor through a soaked cloth wrapped around his hand, a small commotion erupted around him. A nurse cast some sort of charm, and his blood diverted from the floor to small bucket hovering below his hand. Someone else shoved a chair into the back of his knees and wheeled him into an exam room.
“Malfoy?” Draco turned towards the door and saw—oh thank God—Granger coming through.
“Fancy meeting you here, Granger.” He smiled weakly.
“What did you do?”
“Kitchen knife accident,” he said, light-headed. This plan felt stupider by the minute.
She peeled the blood-drenched cloth from his hand. “Please tell me you didn’t try to heal this one with raw meat.”
“I decided I trusted you more than a dodgy Muggle cure.”
“Good. This resembles raw meat already.” She held his hand in hers, examining the gaping wound he’d inflicted on his palm. It hurt less just from the feel of her hand around his. “I’ve done a numbing charm to ease the pain, does it feel better?”
Oh.
“Yes. Thank you.” He stared at the ceiling. If he kept looking at his mangled hand he might pass out.
“This is a deep cut, but the edges are clean and smooth. It’s a pretty simple fix.” With an incantation and a wave of her wand, a strange tugging sensation began deep inside his palm as his hand knit itself back together. After several minutes, the tugging stopped, and the familiar prickle of a Scourgify passed over his skin. He finally dared to look at his hand.
There was a shiny pink line down the middle of his palm. Granger ran a finger over the new skin. His fingers twitched.
“You’ll want to do some dexterity exercises to make sure the scar tissue doesn’t tighten up.” She manipulated his hand and fingers to demonstrate. It was difficult to focus on her instructions while she held his wrist and hand. Her hands were soft and looked surprisingly small around his, but she worked with surety and crisp efficiency.
Without thinking, he closed his hand and stroked his fingers around hers in a decidedly affectionate gesture that could not be fully explained away under the guise of the exercises. Granger raised an eyebrow and waited for him to say something.
“Sorry. Just, ah, checking my grip strength.” He released her hand. She rolled her lips between her teeth and looked—again—like she was biting back a smile.
“It feels good to me, but let me know if you encounter any issues with your grip over the next few days. I can help you come up with some more stimulating exercises to do.”
“Uh—right. Okay.” It almost sounded like Granger was flirting with him. But he felt decidedly unsteady after all that blood and didn’t trust that it wasn’t all a post-traumatic delusion invented by his mind.
“You’re all done here.” She handed him a potion vial. “I want you to take this blood replenishing potion as a precaution. Someone will be in to handle your discharge paperwork soon, and then you can go.”
“Thanks, Granger.”
“My pleasure. See you around, Malfoy.”
She had no idea.
A week later, Draco invited Potter to join him for combat practice. At close range, sometimes magic wasn’t the most effective option, so Aurors were required to stay up to date on hand-to-hand fighting skills. It was one of Draco’s strengths, but today, he had decided to let Harry get in a few punches.
Potter was a decent fighter—quick on his feet and good reflexes—but he and Draco were regular sparring partners so Draco wasn’t usually caught off guard by any of his attacks. After several bouts of swings and dodges and kicks and blocks, Draco saw a right hook coming a mile away and fought against his every instinct to duck. Harry pulled the punch at the last minute and it landed with only a glancing blow on his cheekbone. Shit.
“What the fuck, Malfoy? Are you trying to get yourself hurt? You’re lucky I reacted so quickly; I could have broken something!”
“I might as well just stand here, it’s not like you can do real damage with those weak little fists.”
Potter scowled and resumed the scrimmage. He was angrier this time. Good. Draco landed a couple hits that were harder than strictly necessary—this was fun, why didn’t he do combat practice like this always?—to be sure Potter would put the right amount of force behind the finishing blow.
When he saw another wide-open punch coming, he feinted a block and leaned into Potter’s fist. He fell to his knees. Stars erupted in his field of vision. He was almost sure his nose was broken. Excellent.
“Shit, Malfoy, I’m sorry. Are you okay, mate? Well, your nose is clearly broken. But are you okay otherwise? You weren’t acting like yourself, even before that.”
Draco only grunted. Fuck, this hurt.
“You want me to fix it? It’ll just take a second.” Potter began to walk towards their wands resting by the door.
“What are you going to do, conjure a Patronus at it? We’re talking about my face here, and I can’t leave that to just anyone.”
Potter rolled his eyes. “Fine. Well, I saw Walker in the bullpen earlier, let me go grab him for you.” Walker was one of the department medics, on call to handle many of the various ailments and injuries Aurors tended to receive in the line of duty.
“No, it’s okay, I don’t want to bother him. I’ll just bop over to St. Mungo’s and be back in a flash.” He hustled to his wand and Disapparated before Potter could argue.
Draco Apparated into chaos. There were crying children everywhere, a woman screaming without ceasing (though she seemed uninjured as far as Draco could see), two men with a matched set of elephant ears on their heads, and a broad assortment of injuries at various levels of severity.
A broken nose was not high on anybody’s list of priorities, except Draco’s. He sat and sat and sat, waiting for his name to be called.
He really wished he’d had the foresight to grab a pain relief potion before he spun out of the Ministry.
He’d vowed not to do anything quite so gory as last week’s self-stabbing again, but he had to admit he’d have been seen much quicker if he’d taken a knife to the other palm this morning.
Every now and then, a familiar flash of brown curly hair appeared through a doorway, but Draco started to worry he wouldn’t get to see her today, much less get his nose fixed.
He began to imagine his new life as a crooked-nosed commoner. Somewhere around the time he pictured himself as an Alistair Moody doppelgänger, frightening small children as he stalked down the street in a broody cloak with a cane for effect, he heard his name called from the reception desk.
He leapt to his feet and followed the nurse to his examination room. Granger was in the hallway. He smiled brightly at her and immediately winced as the movement jostled his craniofacial trauma.
She cringed sympathetically. “Ouch. So sorry I can’t see you, but we’re completely buried today.” She glanced down at the folder in her arm which had begun to flash blue, rather alarmingly. “I’ve got to dash, hope you feel better soon!” She hurried down the hall, leaving Draco to sit on an exam table and confront the fact that he’d broken his nose on purpose, possibly ruined his profile for life, and would not even get the consolation prize of Granger’s skilled hands holding his jaw steady, the sharp clean scent of her as she leaned in close, and her hair tickling his arm as she efficiently set him back to rights.
Many minutes later, when the Healer knocked briskly on the doorframe before stepping into the room, Draco was upset to discover his nose would be fixed up today by Ernie MacMillan. He barely remembered Ernie from school but he could tell by the faint look of distaste that Ernie certainly remembered him.
“Hello, Malfoy.”
Draco nodded. “MacMillan.”
“You’ve broken your nose.”
“Observant as ever, I see.” Truthfully, Draco had no idea where MacMillan sat on the spectrum of observational skills, but it felt like the right amount of derision to expend on someone who clearly didn’t like him but also would be responsible for the dignity of Draco’s visage for the rest of his life.
“The good news for both of us is that this will take no time at all to fix.” MacMillan waved his wand, and with a horrific crunch and a shooting pain that seemed to reach to the very centre of his brain, Draco’s nose snapped back into place. “Right. Well. That’s done. Wait here for your discharge forms. Have a lovely day.” And he swept back out of the room.
Draco returned to work extremely put out.
It was Monday once again. The whole Auror department couldn’t stop talking about the illegal creature smuggling ring that an undercover team brought down over the weekend. Lots of unusual beasts were held down in Magical Creatures, which sounded like a fairly promising way to get lightly maimed for his weekly visit to the Mungo’s A&E.
With his Auror badge and a vague cover story, he entered the holding area where creatures waited to be sent to the correct magical wildlife sanctuaries. He wandered around looking for something that could do the job properly—a demented sort of Goldilocks game.
A cage of juvenile Acromantulas, no thanks. A Chimaera egg, rather harmless in its current state. A niffler would just steal his cufflinks. A firedrake—that might do it. He walked up to its cage and watched it soar around inside. It was rather elegant, and Draco felt an affinity for it; they were both in the dragon family, after all. He felt guilty raising his wand on the creature, but it couldn’t be helped: Draco needed an injury.
He shot some sparks at the firedrake, but when they bounced off his hide unnoticed, Draco resorted to something a little more aggressive. He threw a Knockback Jinx. The firedrake whirled towards him and hissed as sparks shot out of its tail.
Draco watched in dismay as his very fine shirt—a favourite!—lit up in flames. He counted to five, which was as long as he could stand, before extinguishing the flames with a jet of water. He patted down the smouldering edges and Disapparated once again to St. Mungo’s.
He was pleased to see that the waiting room was mostly quiet this time. As his injury was more emergent than last time, he was taken back to be seen quite quickly. When the knock came on his exam room door, he held his breath until Granger walked through. He let out a sigh of relief.
“Malfoy, you’re back.” She sounded rather unsurprised. “What happened this time?”
“Got on the wrong side of a firedrake from a smuggling raid we did this weekend.”
“Harry told me about that. I didn’t realise you were involved in that investigation.”
“I wasn’t. Just helping them tie up some loose ends. This is what I get for offering to help, I suppose.” He gestured down at his torso, where shiny red skin peeked through the tattered remains of his shirt.
“Well, as they say, no good deed goes unpunished,” she said dryly. “Lie back and let’s remove what’s left of that shirt.”
Draco spent a very pleasant half hour having lots of salves and potions rubbed carefully onto his chest. It hurt, but the sting was eased by the fact of Granger’s hands all over his body. As well as the topical pain potion she massaged into his skin.
A few inches above his navel, Granger prodded at something. “What are these?”
Draco lifted his head to see what she was talking about.
“Little punctures, just here. They look partially healed; they can’t be from the Firedrake.”
“Oh. Theo has a Kneazle.”
“And he attacked you? That’s a bad track record for you, Malfoy.”
“No! He was making biscuits on my tummy. To be honest, we have a very special relationship, he and I.”
“Oh.” She looked at him curiously, as if she was sizing him up, then lifted his hand and traced her finger along the scar. Draco shivered. “This looks well healed. Any problems with your grip?”
He smirked. “None at all.”
“You came in last week, too.”
“Yes. Potter broke my nose. MacMillan saw me. I can’t say I cared for him. You’re a far superior healer, Granger.”
She leaned in close and placed her hands on his cheeks. She turned his head side to side to inspect MacMillan’s work. “He may well be inferior but it looks like he did a fine enough job.” She released his face and studied him. “You’ve gotten quite a lot of injuries lately, Malfoy.”
“I’m trying to accumulate points for the customer loyalty program.”
“The customer loyalty program.”
“Do you not have one of those?”
“We do not.”
“Damn. That’s why I’ve not got a punch card, then.”
“What did you think the reward was going to be?”
He shrugged. “I was hoping you’d have something for me.”
For Draco, Mondays now came with an extra flavour of terrible, beyond the usual Monday woes. A sort of preemptive pain filled his bones when he woke to the start of a new week.
If he were less of an idiot, he would put a stop to this by simply telling Granger how he felt and asking her out properly.
But an idiot he was, and an idiot he would apparently remain, at least for one more week.
Draco was a confident man. He wasn’t used to women turning him down. But he also wasn’t used to truly caring about a woman. And he had discovered that when he truly cared about the outcome, he was overcome by a crippling fear of rejection.
Today, he’d scheduled a one-on-one Quidditch match with Theo during their lunch hour. They met in their kits on the lawn at Nott Manor and thoroughly enjoyed themselves for a quarter hour before Draco reinforced the protective charm on his helmet, squeezed his eyes shut, and tipped sideways off his broom.
He landed hard. His legs split awkwardly and he felt a distinct pop in his thigh.
Theo bolted to the ground and landed beside him. “Bloody hell, Draco, are you okay?”
Draco shot Theo a scathing look meant to communicate how very un-okay he was and additionally how deeply stupid of a question that was because look at him here splayed across the ground gasping in agony, how could one possibly think being “okay” was even an option?
“Can you walk?”
Draco shook his head.
“Do you want me to take you to St. Mungo’s?”
Draco nodded his head.
“Do you want me to ask why it looked like you just purposely threw yourself off a broom from ten feet in the air?”
Draco shook his head.
“Right. Well. Let’s go then.” Theo adeptly conjured a stretcher and levitated Draco onto it, then Apparated them to the A&E. In a stroke of luck, he was processed and delivered to an exam room almost immediately.
Draco was immensely grateful for the magic that allowed him to undress and put on a hospital gown without actually moving his legs.
“Right on schedule. What have you done now?” Granger entered the room with a grin on her face that, in a tragic irony, Draco was in too much pain to properly bask in.
“Ah,” said Theo, in dawning understanding.
Granger’s grin faded as she got close enough to see how bollocksed Draco truly was. She quickly cast some diagnostic spells and examined the colourful graphs that hovered around his head.
“You’ve got a torn hamstring, a pulled groin, and a rib contusion. I’m assuming this was a flying accident, based on your outfit, but your head seems to—yet again—be injury-free. You’re a lucky man, Malfoy.”
Draco’s groin offered a strong case to the contrary.
“And a bloody moron,” chimed in Theo helpfully.
“I’m going to repair the hamstring tear now. It will take several minutes, and you’ll feel some unpleasant pulling and tugging inside your leg. The pain potion should dull the worst of it.”
Draco laid back and gritted his teeth as Granger put his muscle back together. At first he tried to be stoic, but then it occurred to him that if he’d had any pride when it came to Granger, it had surely been cast far aside at some point in the last four or five weeks. He let himself wince and whimper freely as she muttered spells and worked around his leg with her wand.
“I’m done,” she announced, with what was, unless he was totally delirious with pain, an affectionate stroke of her hand over his bare thigh. “You’ll want to be gentle on it for the next week or so, as it will be sore and prone to re-injury.” She cast another diagnostic. “I’ll move on to your groin now. This will be much quicker and less painful.”
Theo snorted. “I’m suddenly in desperate need of some terrible cafeteria food.” He closed the door behind him as he left.
Draco lifted his head to watch Granger precisely drape the hospital gown to expose his left groin and carefully keep his more delicate bits under the gown. He was grateful he’d worn a good pair of pants—black, well-fitting, and not faded—today, but he wished he were showing them off to Granger in very different circumstances.
Her hand hovered over the juncture of his hip and thigh briefly before she began to palpate the area. Draco took in a deep breath and laid back down. He concentrated very hard on the pattern of cracks in the ceiling and not the feeling of her hands on him.
“This type of injury can be very painful, but it often only needs a gentle helping hand to get it all fixed up. We want to keep you from getting too stiff,” she said.
He felt her wand tip rest on the injury and a warming sensation spread through the area, and she ran her hands over the spot again, and goddammit, his cock twitched once, and then once more.
She tugged his gown back into place and announced once again that she was done. “This will heal more quickly than the hamstring, but please be gentle with it as well. No vigorous activities”—her lips twitched upwards—“or strain in the area until you have full range of motion with no pain. You’ll know if you’ve overdone it if you experience any swelling or stiffness.”
“I shall do my very best,” he vowed solemnly. It was a pity that everything hurt too much for him to take advantage of the countless innuendo options available to him at the moment.
“There are less painful ways to see me, you know.” She smirked at him, and wasn’t that just bloody unprofessional of her.
“Are you implying that I’m doing this on purpose? That would be unhinged, Granger.”
She nodded in agreement. “It would.”
Next Monday, the fifth Monday, Draco strolled into the A&E and told the receptionist he would wait as long as he had to, but he would only be seen by Healer Granger.
He waited patiently, reading back issues of Quidditch Weekly until his name was called. He stood up and followed the nurse into his room. Hardly a full minute went by before Granger once again came through the door. She looked at him expectantly but didn’t speak.
Draco grinned brightly and thrust his hand in her direction. “I have a paper cut.”
Her eyebrows lifted nearly to her hairline. “A paper cut.”
“It’s very painful. Right between my fingers.” He pointed to the thin line of blood between his index and middle fingers. “I’m very worried about infection.”
“Well. We certainly don’t want an infection. I’ll have to take a careful look.”
She took his hand in both of hers and looked it over very thoroughly. “Yes, this is a paper cut. Excellent self-diagnosis, Malfoy.”
“Thank you,” he beamed.
“I can put a topical antiseptic on it. I have to warn you, it will sting.”
“I’ll do my best to withstand the pain.”
She dabbed a tiny amount of antiseptic in the V between his fingers, and fuck, it did sting quite a bit. A hiss of pain gave him away, and Granger glanced at him.
“Sorry. Let me help.” And without breaking eye contact, she blew a stream of cool air onto the cut. Draco’s breath snagged; he cleared his throat.
“Is that better?” Her professional Healer voice was gone, replaced by something much softer and throatier.
“Uh—loads. Thanks.”
“Lovely.” The professional voice was back. He wondered if he’d imagined its absence. “Then I think you’re all set. You should be fully healed by tomorrow.” She ran her finger with a whisper-soft touch over the V of his fingers: down the side of his middle finger, over the cut, and up the side of his index finger. She might have been running her finger up and down the sides of his cock for all he could tell the difference.
“Granger.” His voice was rough and a little breathy.
“Hm?”
“Would you—can I take you out to dinner tonight?”
Her lips curved slightly into a smile. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Draco met Granger for dinner with a horrific combination of nerves and delight. He had horrible flashbacks to sitting at Madam Puddifoot’s with Pansy in fifth year. Thankfully there were fewer doilies at this restaurant. Granger seemed to be having a nice enough time, and wasn’t particularly bothered by the way he vacillated wildly between flirtatious and horrendously awkward. The small smile on her face indicated that she possibly found it…endearing?
Draco wanted to ask but was afraid that if she examined her thoughts too closely she’d realise what an idiot he was and that she could do so much better.
Outside the restaurant after dinner, Granger grinned up at him. “I’ve had a really nice time.”
“Really? I mean. Me too. I have as well.” Draco blushed, and then blushed harder from the embarrassment of blushing in the first place. “You know, it’s been a week since my groin injury. I forgot to ask you about it at Mungo’s earlier today. Do you want to come to mine and check how the healing process is going?”
“I suppose that would be the responsible Healer thing to do.”
“Fantastic. Shall we?” He held an arm out for her, and to his surprise she tucked herself under it, into his side. Warmth spread through his body from every point of contact between Granger and him.
He whirled into an Apparition, but when they landed, her weight set him off balance. They tumbled to the ground and Draco’s head hit the floor with a thud.
Granger quickly disentangled herself and stood up, leaving Draco to marinate in a puddle of humiliation on the tile. She crouched next to him and quickly checked him over. “You’re fine,” she said, and held out her hand to help him up. Draco merely looked at her from the floor.
“But what if I have a concussion?”
“You don’t.”
“But what if I do? Should we—shouldn’t we sleep together, just in case?” he added hopefully.
Her eyes traveled the length of his body. “Perhaps that would be for the best. I would hate to leave myself open to accusations of medical negligence.”
“Absolutely. You must do your due diligence. And of course you need to check on my groin as well.”
“Of course. Can’t forget that.”
He finally accepted her hand, and though she was actually not all that helpful in pulling someone his size up from the floor, he relished the sight of her hand enveloped in his, the inverse of what he’d seen several times in the hospital over the last few weeks.
He ultimately wasn’t sure who pulled who, but once he was standing, their bodies were pressed together and their lips were on each other’s. Their noses bumped and their teeth clacked. They pulled back and laughed at each other, and Granger bit her lip. Draco leaned in more slowly to try again, with greater success. With their lips barely touching, they paused for what felt like ages until Granger flicked her tongue across his lip and everything shifted into high speed. His hands slid up her arms to her jaw as he angled her face to fit his, while hers scrabbled at his waist and then slid up his chest and into his hair. Her breath was hot and intoxicating. He pushed closer, not wanting a molecule of air to fit between them.
He walked her backwards through the hallway, into his bedroom. “My exam table is in here.”
Off balance from the sudden movement, she grabbed at his sides to stay upright. His shirt came untucked where she pulled, and streaks of hot anticipation radiated through him where each of her fingertips greedily scratched at his skin. The feeling was so surreal that he thought he must be dreaming or—
With effort, he pulled back, laughing in disbelief when she chased his lips with her own. He touched his fingers to his lips; they were hot and slightly swollen. He brushed his fingers to her cheek; it was smooth and soft. It felt real, but, “Are you sure I’m not concussed?”
“Yes.”
“Because this feels like a hallucination.”
“It’s very real, I assure you.” Her fingers dipped under the waistband of his trousers, and she tugged him back to her before she undid his belt buckle and slid his trousers and pants down his legs. As he stepped out of the pants puddle on the floor, he made a “voilà” gesture towards his pelvis.
“Now this is a manager’s special, Granger.”
She snorted and rolled her eyes as she took him in hand and slowly stroked up and down. The practiced clinical efficiency from St. Mungo’s was nowhere to be found, only slow, sensual twists with a warm hand. “What are you the manager of?”
“Fucking you into the mattress,” he said, and pushed her back on the bed.
Her laugh turned into a breathy sigh as he kissed across her jaw line and slid his hand high on her thigh, slipping under her skirt. “Do you want me…” She interrupted herself with a moan as he licked just below her ear, and he made a mental note of the sensitive spot.
“Yes,” he mumbled against her skin.
“…to hurt you?”
Draco pushed himself up. “What? No.”
“Oh. I just assumed you had some sort of pain kink since you keep injuring yourself to see me.”
“No. I hate pain in all forms. It was truly just an excuse to see you.”
“So you’re just extra stupid then.”
“Isn’t it charming, though?”
“I really wish it wasn’t.”
“But it is, isn’t it.”
“Just kiss me, you idiot.” She pulled him down.
Draco was happy to oblige. For many minutes, there was nothing except warm lips and wet tongues and the soft skin at the top of her thighs, and her hands running through his hair, over his shoulders, and down his arms.
When she reached between them to fumble with his shirt buttons, he sat back to quickly finish the task. After tossing his shirt away, he observed her appreciatively. At the beginning of the night she had looked extremely polished and pulled together, and echoes of that were still there, but now she was wild-eyed and flushed. Her dress was wrinkled and her careful hairstyle was a bit disheveled. Draco felt a boyish pride rise up at the picture in front of him and he mentally high-fived himself.
He traced his finger over her dress strap. “You’ve seen me undressed so many times now, I’d like to even the score a little bit.”
She sat up and unzipped her dress, letting it pool around her waist. She wasn’t wearing a bra. “I could put on a hospital gown, if you wanted. To really balance it out.”
“Gods, no,” he said with a shudder. “You’re so beautiful. I want to see you.” Almost tentatively, he placed his hand on the side of her breast. When he brushed his thumb over her nipple, she whimpered slightly. The sound went straight to his cock. He was already achingly hard, maybe harder than he’d ever been.
“I’ve been keeping up with my finger dexterity exercises, do you want me to show you?”
“Please.” Her eyelids were heavy as she shifted her gaze from his hand cupping her breast to his face.
Her legs spread wider as he trailed his other hand up her thigh. He looked down at her legs, spread around him, and couldn’t shake the sense of awe that she was here, for him, and she wanted him, was baring herself to him.
He traced his fingers over her knickers. Lace.
He was dying to see, so he gently pushed her back down and tugged the dress down the rest of the way. Navy with a pretty little bow in the centre. While he teased his finger along the elastic between her legs, he leaned over and placed a careful open mouth kiss right above the bow, letting his tongue dip just under the lace. Her skin was soft and tasted like his new favourite dessert, though usually dessert didn’t moan and push up at him eagerly. He laughed softly into her belly, half at how impatient she was, half at how bloody unbelievable it was that he was even in this situation, that Hermione Granger was whining for him to do more.
But far be it from him to refuse her.
“These are lovely, but they have to go,” he said to her, but really to the knickers, then pulled them off.
He traced his devotion between her legs with fingers and tongue, until she was panting with her hands twisted in his hair. He thought he didn’t like pain, but the way she pulled on his hair had him reconsidering. She tugged on his precious hair and attempted to suffocate him between her thighs until she broke, shuddering around him.
After, he crawled back up her body. “How did I do on my anatomy exam?”
“Full marks. But that reminds me, I never checked on the status of your groin injury.” She shoved him onto his back, then nestled herself between his legs. As she dragged her tongue over the tendon at his inner thigh crease, Draco’s eyes rolled back in his head. With both hands, she worked her way around his inner thighs and across his pelvis, squeezing, kneading, and licking. Finally, as her fingers drifted tantalisingly, frustratingly close to where he wanted her, she looked up at him. “Everything seems to be healing nicely, though there seems to be a lot of stiffness in the area. I have just one more test to run.” She continued to look him in the eye as she took him in her mouth. “Fuuuuuck,” he groaned.
Her hair was braided down her back, but he desperately wished it hung loose so he could be given the privilege of holding it out of the way while she completed her examination. His elbows collapsed beneath him and he lay on his back, breathing heavily and doing his best not to explode in her mouth. He was risking a premature ending to the evening if he didn’t stop her. It pained him deeply, but he pulled her off of him.
“Am I healed?”
“All indications point toward complete recovery.”
“My Healer told me to take it easy for a while, but it sounds like it’s your professional opinion that I can give it to you hard.”
Granger stared at him as if she was questioning every decision that had brought her here.
“Don’t look at me like that; I’m only trying to follow my Healer’s orders. I’m a model patient.”
“If by that you mean you could serve as a model for every type of injury in the book, then yes.”
“You think I could be a model? Granger, I’m flattered.” He raised and lowered his eyebrows and grinned rakishly. “What would you say are my most attractive attributes?”
She rolled her eyes but bit back a smile. “Fine,” she said, with an exaggerated sigh. She lifted her chin and skimmed her eyes over his body appraisingly. “Well, the prominence of your zygomatic bones is aesthetically satisfactory.” She stroked her thumb over his cheek.
“Satisfactory?” he repeated.
“All right, they’re aesthetically perfect.”
Draco preened as her hand trailed down his neck, over his shoulder, past his elbow, to his forearm. She traced over the flowers tattooed over the ever-present reminder of his past mistakes. “Your forearms have excellent vascular structure, and your metacarpals are—well-formed.” She paused to caress his palm. “Which highlights your elegant phalanges.” She encircled his middle finger with her own fingers and slid over its length slowly.
Draco considered that he might now be able to use an anatomy textbook as wank material.
Her hands drifted to his thighs, which she squeezed greedily. “I’m quite taken with the firmness of your rectus femoris, and your gluteus maximus is rather—biteable.”
With both hands, she dragged a finger down the V lines at his hips. “The definition of your inguinal ligaments is especially tantalising.” She leaned down, apparently intending to investigate further with her mouth.
Draco was not normally one to turn down an opportunity to revel in compliments, but a man’s patience had limits, and he had reached his. With a growl he abruptly shifted them so that he was poised over her body, hesitating ever so slightly after lining himself up against her. “They’re called cum gutters, Granger.” He entered her and smothered her shocked laugh with a kiss.
She felt impossibly good. His only thoughts before his mind turned to static were vague sensations of “warm” and “wet”; his entire body was buzzing. He wanted to wildly rut into her but had an idea, somewhere back in the tiny part of his brain that remained clear-headed, that it would be ungentlemanly to do so. The thought that this might all be a brain-injury-induced hallucination crossed his mind again, so he squeezed one hand tight at her hip and inhaled deeply in the crook of her neck. He’d read that hallucinations didn’t have smells, and Granger’s skin smelled like perfume and sweat and that always-present base note of Granger.
With every thrust of his hips, her tits bounced enticingly. The visual was not helping his rapidly failing effort to not finish first. He squeezed his eyes shut, which only left him more vulnerable to the fucking sounds she was making.
Fuck. He sat back on his heels and squeezed the base of his dick, breathing hard.
“Is everything okay?” Granger asked.
Draco huffed out a short laugh. “More than okay. A little too okay.” She laughed. “Actually, yes. Keep laughing at me. That helps.” He grabbed her (luscious, entirely too squeezable) thigh and folded it back against her chest. “Hold this, please.”
She obliged, and he restarted his efforts, but now he slid his hand between their bodies, wrenching her tighter and tighter with each messy, wet circle he drew. It was the kind of thing a generous lover would do, but if he were truly honest, it was entirely selfish, because the sooner she came, the sooner he could.
Judging by the pitch of her whines and the flush blooming beautifully across her perfect tits, she was almost there. Her free hand pinched her nipple and Draco groaned. “Fuck, Granger. You’re too hot, I can’t—“
He bent down and sucked her nipple into his mouth. When he flicked it with his tongue, she clenched around his cock and arched into him, shuddering and gasping. In an act of superhuman restraint, he paused to let the intense first wave roll through her before he let go all of pretences. Still trembling slightly, she hooked her legs behind him and dug her heels into his arse. He fell forward and rested his forehead on hers for a beat before he gave into the urge to thrust with abandon.
It didn’t take long. Everything in him was coiled tight and ready to release. One—two—three—he was done. He collapsed, panting into her neck. Her hands ran up and down his back, and the goosebumps made him shiver.
“Fuck, Hermione.”
“I think you just did.”
After a few minutes, he pulled out of her with a groan and rolled over. When she turned to face him, he stroked along her hairline, pushing the curls that he’d fucked out of her polished braid off her face.
“I was bringing you flowers, that first time,” he confessed.
“Yes, I figured that one out when I saw the flowers on the sidewalk. Why didn’t you stay?”
“I chickened out. Also your bloody cat tried to kill me with Cat Arse Fever and I didn’t want to push my luck.”
“You should have stayed. Would have saved you a lot of pain.”
“But now I have so many more scars, and I hear women love those. I’ve just made myself so much more marketable.”
“If you use these scars to go out and pick up other women, I will give you some new ones for your collection and make you see someone else to have them treated.”
“No, thank you.” He grimaced. “These scars are only for you, Granger.”
She nuzzled her face into his side. “You know I can’t sleep with patients.”
“Our current situation indicates otherwise.”
“It’s true, though. So you’re going to have to stop injuring yourself.”
“Fine, you’re officially fired as my Healer.” He dropped a lazy trail of kisses up her arm.
“I don’t work for you. But you’re officially fired as my patient. Next time you come to the A&E you’ll have to see somebody else.”
“I think I’ll just stop injuring myself. The last time I went to see a Healer about an injury, she ended up falling for me. At this rate, I’ll have a trail of Healers following me all around town.”
“You’re such a bloody idiot. And who says—mmph—” He cut off her objections with a kiss. There were more important things to do with their mouths.