Disclaimer: Of course I don't own Harry Potter. If I did, there'd be different romantic pairings ;D.

The Long, Hard, and Stormy Knight (aka I'm insanely curious and you look quite limber)

By Indygodusk

Every muscle in Hermione's body ached. Teaching transfiguration to the first and fifth years back-to-back was going to kill her. It was getting to the point where she'd almost prefer to be knocked down and pummeled with textbooks as soon as she entered the door if it would just get her out of teaching. Headmistress McGonagall owed her a huge favor for this one. Some days, only her love of Hogwarts and her own professionalism kept her from fleeing on a broomstick. And she hated broomsticks.

In contrast, this made her Ministry job seem a lot better than she'd previously viewed it, even if she did have to share an office with Malfoy. Hermione wrinkled her nose at herself. She hadn't seen Malfoy for weeks, and that was a good thing, thank-you-very-much, so why did he have to keep invading her thoughts? Maybe she just worried about the state of their projects without her to keep an eye on things.

Sure, he had matured in some ways. He no longer hurled slurs about her blood, after all. But he still seemed to delight in getting her to lose her temper. Plus, he never just walked into the office, he always had to glide or slink, with a declaration of some sort to make sure she noticed his arrival. And not a day passed without a teasing remark or innuendo. He'd bring her coffee, but say something suggestive (or annoying, don't forget annoying) just as she'd start to swallow to make her choke and spill.

Just the day before she'd left for Hogwarts, he'd "accidentally" pushed an entire stack of papers off of her desk. He didn't even say sorry, probably because he did it on purpose just to rile her. It had taken her almost twenty minutes to order them again.

At least he'd helped to pick them up. To be honest, that part had sort of made it worth the twenty lost minutes, not that she'd tell Malfoy that. Each time he bent over to pick up a paper, he had wiggled. Considering the way his finely tailored slacks molded to his backside, and the way she could actually see individual muscles flexing, it had taken all of her strength just to hold back a lusty sigh of appreciation. Not that she wanted to be appreciating Malfoy's body.

After all, he seemed to have a different girlfriend every few weeks, the rake. Of course, he'd broken up with his last inamorata almost 2 months ago when she threw a salad at his head. Hermione had laughed herself silly when she saw the pictures in the paper. He'd had dressing dripping out of his ears. Priceless!

Since Hermione had broken up with Ron just a few weeks before, she'd felt a little bit vindicated. Now she wasn't the only single person in their department anymore. She'd expected Malfoy to have a new girlfriend by the next week, but strangely enough, he'd stayed single. Of course, it just gave him more time to spend teasing Hermione. No matter where she went, he was always there. Sure, Malfoy could be intelligent and surprisingly hard working, but most of the time he drove her mad!

As Hermione walked to the classroom door, she found two crumpled-up drawings on the floor by the trash bin. On one corner she could make out her name. Curious, she picked them up and smoothed them open. They were doodles. Hermione felt the muscles next to her eye start to tic. One showed a bushy-haired monster labeled "Prof. Granjer" squashing Hogsmeade. The other had the same monster kissing a bear named "Hagrid." The art was surprisingly good, but that didn't excuse the little twerp if Hermione ever caught up with him.

Tossing the drawings back into the bin, and then incinerating them with an evil little smile, Hermione continued into the hall. Thank goodness she was only substituting for another two weeks until their normal teacher came back. A full semester of this and she just might have to change her mind about having children all together.

Of course, she could never tell anyone else that. They'd be horrified. Blinking rapidly, Hermione rewound what she'd just said in her head. You weren't thinking of an amorphous 'they,' she scolded herself. You were thinking of Ron.He would be horrified.

Hermione snorted to herself. They'd been broken up for months, so you'd think she'd be done with censoring herself to avoid arguments. She loved Ron as a friend and always would, but they'd finally realized that both of them were too stubborn to change enough to make a relationship work.

In fact, she missed dating more than she missed dating Ron. The weekends had gotten lonely. Harry and Ginny would always welcome her over, but now that they had a baby of their own, they didn't get out much. Ron himself had embraced singles bars and pub quizzes with enthusiasm, and seemed happier than ever. But she didn't want to hang out at a pub and watch her ex-boyfriend pick up other girls. Hermione hated being the third wheel in a group.

In fact, everyone seemed busy in one-way or another. That often left Hermione with the weekend choices of either going out to a new show by herself, or staying home like a grumpy-pants. When she'd realized that her grumpy-pants voice had been winning for the last month, Hermione had decided that enough was enough.

Last weekend she'd gone out and bought herself an expensive new dress. Afterwards, she'd gone to a play and struck up a conversation with a lovely man in the lobby. He had even agreed that the treatment of magical creatures in England was unfair, and taken down the name of her favorite charity. Smiling even brighter, Hermione had made sure to stand in such a way as to emphasize her figure. That trick had always worked to reel them in for Ginny, as all of the broken male hearts at Hogwarts could attest. Well, that and Ginny's flirtatious personality, but Hermione was working on that.

Realizing that she'd phased out for a minute, Hermione had refocused on her lovely new male friend. Leaning forward to simulate interest, step two in Ginny's list of how to get a first date, Hermione ignored the fact that she was already finding his wit a little boring. Nevertheless, she'd been about to bring up SPEW when they'd been joined by his even lovelier, half-Veela girlfriend, hence his interest in activism and charity. Luckily, the bell had rung for the second act, so Hermione had an excuse to retreat from the suddenly awkward situation.

As she took a shortcut across a courtyard, Hermione spotted first year Ally Meadows. The little girl was playing jump-rope with some of her friends. On seeing Hermione, the little girl waved frantically and hopped up and down, inciting her friends to wave and call out enthusiastic greetings to teacher too. They were adorable. Children like Ally kept alive (barely) her wish to have her own children someday. Of course, she hadn't seen Ally as a teenager yet.

Rounding the corner, Hermione saw the door to her room, her sanctuary, shining brightly in a sunbeam from the windows lining the corridor. For the third time since she'd left the classroom, her bag slipped off her drooping shoulders. With the end in sight, she couldn't muster the energy to pull it up again. Collapsing against the wall next to her rooms as professionally as possible under the circumstances, she leaned close to the large portrait of a Scottish warrior riding a stallion and whispered her password. He sent her a saucy wink and drawled, "Have fun wi' tha' one, lassie." Then he turned his horse with a flare of tartan and rode off down the hallway. The portrait door swung open. Confused by his cryptic words, she decided she'd figure it out later.

As soon as she got the door shut behind her, Hermione dropped her bag, kicked off her shoes, and began pulling out her hairpins. Placing the pins into a tidy pile on the table, she then proceeded to scrub her nails against her scalp, releasing her riot of curls. Hermione wanted a hot bath. That or to curl up in bed with a good book. Padding toward her bedroom, she absently noted that she'd left the door wide open. Usually, she closed it tight, in case a colleague or student dropped by unexpectedly.

On entering her bedroom, Hermione received a shock. Lounging on top of her bed, a picture of indolence with his jacket unbuttoned and ankles crossed, was Draco Malfoy. On her bed. Hermione blinked at him a few times, but then continued moving. If he thought anything could faze her after a day spent wrestling with children, he was in for a surprise. She was made of sterner stuff than that. And she was just too tired.

"Make yourself at home, Malfoy," Hermione said dryly, moving into the room a few paces to lean against the wall with arms folded. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing her flustered.

"Thanks, but I already have," he smirked. "I came by to ask you a few questions about work, but you weren't here. I decided to wait."

"I noticed. Don't manners and the law dictate that you wait outside or come back later?" she asked with false sweetness.

"I would have, if your rooms weren't so easy to break into. Don't you remember that you used to fight against Death Eaters? You really need to use some stronger hexes, maybe a curse or two," Malfoy scolded with what almost sounded like worry.

"I don't want to hurt a student!" Hermione replied with exasperation. "Besides Malfoy, I don't think that's any of your business."

"Isn't it?" he looked at her inscrutably for a moment. "I thought I told you to call me Draco, Hermione… especially since we're alone," he drawled.

Hermione straightened up from the wall, "I don't think that would be proper. Besides which, I thought I asked you to continue calling me Granger."

Malfoy laughed, "You can ask, but-" he paused as his eyes zeroed in on her hand surreptitiously rubbing her aching back. Then his gaze scoured across her face. "You look awful. Bad day?"

As insults went, that was pretty mild for Malfoy, so she let it slide. From anyone else, it might have even been interpreted as concern. "You have no idea," she sighed, wishing she didn't have to deal with him on top of everything else. "Kids can be so irritating some times." As can co-workers, she thought mockingly, fiercely suppressing the curl of heat in her belly at how he looked stretched out on top of her bed.

A devious smirk grew on his face. "I know what will cheer you up. You need to do something adult for a while."

"Such as?" she questioned cautiously.

Uncrossing his ankles, Malfoy picked up the book that had, until that moment, been sitting unnoticed on his lap. One of his fingers had been keeping his place, so she must have interrupted his reading when she'd come in. He began flipping pages. "I think something on page 178 is definitely in order." Looking up at her uncomprehending face, his smirk grew wider. "Yes, page 178, to be closely followed by 213, though I must warn you that I'm not quite sure if 213 is physically possible. However, I am insanely curious, and you look quite limber, so I'm willing to give it a shot."

Finally getting a clear look at the cover of the book, Hermione felt her cheeks and even the tips of her ears turn scarlet. Any thought of trying to maintain her composure and some semblance of propriety crumbled into dust. Where had he found her copy of The Long, Hard, and Stormy Knight? She had hidden it in a safe spot weeks ago, to keep it from innocent eyes, and then she'd forgotten where she'd stashed it. To have Malfoy not only find it, but reading it on her bed, it was mortifying. Not to mention the fact that she had read it so many times, evil smuttiness notwithstanding, that she now knew exactly what scenes he was talking about.

Snatching frantically for her book, she tried not to wonder just how he knew that page 213 was physically impossible. She'd never noticed anything odd about it before. Now her enjoyment of the hero Reginald would forever be tainted. Damn Malfoy.

In her embarrassment, Hermione forgot that while she did have the quick reflexes of a schoolteacher, Malfoy had the speed of a Quidditch seeker. Her fingertips had barely closed around the dog-eared cover of the book before he released it. However, she only had a split second to celebrate before his now free hands grabbed her wrists and pulled her down on top of his hard body, rolling over until she found herself trapped on her bed beneath his body.

"What do you think you're doing?" she squawked. Perhaps a breathy whisper would have come out of her mouth instead if this had been Sir Reginald manhandling her body, but it wasn't. It was Malfoy, who was rude and irritating and had the longest blond eyelashes she'd ever seen bracketing dove grey eyes flecked with silver. No, no, no, not thinking that!

At her yelp, he gave an almost imperceptible flinch, but only settled himself more comfortably over her body. "What do I think I'm doing? I think," he answered in a honeyed voice, "that I'm getting ready to kiss you, and I think that you are going to quite enthusiastically kiss me back."

"What?" she protested again, trying to hide how flustered his words were making her. Whether she succeeded or not soon became immaterial. Malfoy took advantage of her open mouth to claim his kiss.

Hermione tried to stay cold and unresponsive, but his tongue and lips, instead of harshly plundering, disarmed her by gently caressing and nibbling at her mouth. Coaxing. She'd never been kissed like this before. The soft seduction, on top of her already weary mind, combined to overcome her intention to stubbornly resist his advances. It was too much effort and too much of a chore to deny the pleasure his lips were begging her to take, no matter how much the front of her brain wanted to throw his arrogant words back in his face by hexing him out of the room. Sighing into his mouth, Hermione relaxed into his body and slowly and hesitantly molded her lips against his.

Despite her surrender, Draco kept his exploration of her mouth slow and thorough, winding her tighter and tighter with arousal until any semblance of language left her brain and all she was left with were colors, shapes, and degrees of intensity. Wantonly arching against him, she felt his hand slip beneath the hem of her shirt into what she'd later identify as the prelude to page 178. Whether she would have actually gone through with it, and tested out page 213 as well, Hermione would never know.

At that moment, a knock sounded at her door. "Professor Granger?" a young voice called through the door. "Are you in there?" Hermione froze, but not before clamping down with an iron grip on the hand moving up her waist beneath her shirt.

"Maybe she's taking a nap or talking to one of the other teachers," another young voice suggested. "Let's just come back later." Over the sound of her pounding heart, Hermione could hear their footsteps moving away down the hall.

Looking up into Draco's dilated eyes and disheveled hair, Hermione whispered, "You should leave." His expression didn't change. Draco just stared down at her hungrily. "Please," she continued, "this shouldn't have-"

Lightly calloused fingers stopped whatever denials she was about to make. "Don't," he growled harshly. Hermione stilled beneath his fingers.

Huffing out a frustrated breath, Draco rolled off the bed. He then leaned over and picked up his shoes where they'd been shoved under the dust ruffle. Without turning around he said, "I'll leave."

Watching him walk away, Hermione felt panic bubble up into her throat. "Wait, Draco-," he paused at her words and half-turned. "Draco," she said again, deliberately using his first name, "I'm back at work again in two weeks, but…."

At her hesitation, he turned to her fully and walked back to the bed. The embers in his eyes were slightly banked, but a smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth. "But, Hermione?"

She took a deep breath and then met his eyes. "But I planned on going to the theater this Saturday."

Draco's arrogant smirk turned into a grin. "I'll pick you up at six for dinner," he told her. "Wear something I'd like." As Hermione started to scowl at his high-handed ways, Draco continued. "Just for you, I'll wear the leather boots from page 278."

Only a squeak escaped Hermione's kiss-swollen lips at the thought of Draco in those leather boots.

Leaning over, Draco kissed Hermione on the nose. For a second he paused, as if fighting the urge to swoop lower, but then he straightened and slinked out of her bedroom. She enjoyed running her eyes over his body as he walked out of view. A few seconds later, she heard a decisive click as the lock engaged on the front door. He was gone.

Turning over, Hermione realized that something else was gone too. He'd taken her book! How dare he steal her only copy of The Long, Hard, and Stormy Knight, unless… a giggle escaped Hermione's mouth, followed by a lusty sigh, unless he needed it to find the correct type of leather boots? To be honest, she wouldn't mind trying out page 278 either.

Smiling, Hermione hugged her pillow to her chest and let herself slip into some very… very nice dreams.

[The End]

AN: Back in 2006, I wrote a draft of this as a future chapter for my Rurouni Kenshin fic, "Liquid Flame." Since that muse has been stalled so long that it's now attending kindergarten, I've decided to convert it to HP. Lately I've enjoyed reading a bunch of Hermione x Draco fics over on 'Hawthorne & Vine,' so I hope I do the pairing justice. Oh, and Vashka, you inspired me a bit to try writing this pairing out too. Hopefully you approve.

Please point out what you liked or any mistakes I made. Also let me know if you have any really good romance novels to recommend. Please! I'm in a dry spell right now with my usual authors. Cheers!