Gryphon's Wings and Crocodile Tears

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the other original characters and or places in the Potterverse, which was created by the wonderful JK Rowling. I believe that they are owned by Warner Brothers. However, the plot, new characters and or places are mine, mine, and mine! And are subject to copyright by ME!


Chapter 19- …And Your Enemies Closer


Ginny and Hermione were just as close as they’d ever been only a few hours after the end of the catastrophic fight that that had threatened to end their friendship permanently; it was a though the whole mess had never happened, at least on the surface. Ginny did not feel like she should press the matter of Draco, as she rightly suspected that it would only upset Hermione. ‘Well,’ Ginny thought with a sad smirk, ‘You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make her drink.’ Hermione was the smartest witch that Ginny knew, but she was possessed of a stubborn streak that unfortunately could only be broken by learning a lesson the hard way. At least the redhead had done her best to warn her friend of the treachery that lay in Draco Malfoy’s bed.


Harry was a bit slower in warming up to Hermione once more, but not much. His apology came at the end of supper that night as the Great Hall was emptying with the crushing current of a raging river and just as loud. He reached out to her and managed only to secure the tiniest piece of her sleeve in his grasp, but he held onto it for dear life. Eventually they were swept into the Entrance Hall where they were pushed toward the enormous oaken doors that led to the grounds. Hermione eyed him curiously before he spoke. He’d been trying to think of the right words to say to her since lunch and he’d thought that he had them, but as he opened his mouth they would not come. He looked like a fish opening and closing his mouth in rapid succession. Hermione did not laugh at him; she knew how uncomfortable it was on the rare occasions when words failed her. “Hermione, I’m sorry that things worked out the way that they did and I’m also sorry that I hurt your feelings.” Her face split into a wide smile and she squealed happily and pulled him into her embrace. She tried to ignore the small part of her that kept saying that things would never again be right with Harry, though she knew better than to think she’d ever fully trust him, or Ginny ever again.


Draco’s day had not begun well; he missed breakfast and was further aggravated by the fact that his bath was stone cold, the icy water allowed for only a cursory scrubbing of his perfect pale skin. All of these misfortunes stemming from him oversleeping due to a strange dream about the girl with the cocoa colored eyes that had captivated him so and, of all women, Hermione. Not that the dream itself had been at all unpleasant, but it was odd the way that the unknown woman kept shifting with only her eyes in focus into Hermione. She was exquisite, the smell of her and the taste of her lip was so elusive, yet somehow familiar. Draco sighed, no matter how wonderful a dream it was, it was still only a dream and he had a very real “meeting” with one of the occupants of his dream later that evening, it would not do well to allow his slow start to compromise the rest of his day. He had to remain composed, no matter the obstacles in his way. Draco assumed that because he’d missed breakfast that he’d be early to Arithmancy, alas he was wrong again.


He’d gotten all the way to the Arithmancy classroom, which lay in a lonely corner of the castle that was currently in disuse, before he remembered that Professor Ptolemy (the great, great, great, great grandson of the famed wizard, mathematician and astronomer) had scheduled a field trip of sorts into Hogsmeade to “explore the practical applications of divining the future in the life of the modern witch or wizard.” “Damn!” he growled as he set off at full speed for the Entrance Hall. The idea of having a class in Arithmancy do a study in its usage in real life seemed terribly boring to Draco, as did all of his classes. However he’d learned long ago that his boredom was no excuse for getting less than perfect grades.


Draco arrived in the Entrance Hall before Professor Ptolemy led the class into the village for their lesson, but he did not have time to do more with his appearance than flatten his hair. He could feel the sweat crawling down his sides and the dress shirt beneath his robes was soaked under the arms. Draco loathed sweat and the unfortunate smell that accompanied it. This was no way to keep Hermione enamored of him, if she got anywhere near him during this field trip his chances were totally shot. As the rest of the class moved toward the double doors of the castle he hesitated a moment and with a flick of his wand he rectified the situation, “Eluolutum Odorifer.” With those two muttered words he was once again perfectly quaffed and smelling pleasant and extremely masculine. He caught up with the rest of the class easily and managed to get as close as he possibly could to Hermione so that she might take in the intoxicating perfume in which he was bathed.


Hermione felt him coming before she smelled him, sometimes it seemed to her that his ego preceded him by six or seven feet. She knew that his choice of cologne was designed specifically to render her witless and as a result totally in his power. She smiled before she turned to play the game he’d laid at her feet when he made the offer. She shyly turned to face him out of the corner of her eye, brushing her hair out of her face and smiling coyly just like he expected her to. He smirked by way of response and though it irritated her to no end it also aroused her to see him looking so smug. She fought down the urge to put him in his place then and there and instead took a few quick steps forward in order to put some distance between them, knowing that he’d follow. This was the first step to getting him to fall into the trap she’d laid for him. In just a few short days she’d have the infamous Draco Malfoy eating out of the palm of her hand and possibly even loving her; now if only she could keep from falling for him herself. She knew that she’d have to be subtle in order for her plan to work that was the key to ensnaring that one.


‘God, he smells good,’ Hermione thought as she shook her head in a desperate attempt to keep her mind on her work an hour later. He’d intentionally placed himself just behind her so that his cologne would waft down to her and distract her all through out the lesson. It was difficult enough to concentrate on her work in the hustle and bustle of the Three Broomsticks without the wonderful distraction that she was more than a little irritated to admit was working. She could not stop thinking about him and the small series of strangely passionate kisses that the two of them had shared this year. No, she had to finish her work before she could even begin to address this problem. She wondered what it must have been like to be one of his unsuspecting victims, as most if not all his conquests to this point must have been. She smiled, she wasn’t at all ignorant of his personality or tactics; suddenly she felt the pressure of his presence lift off of her slight shoulders and she finished her work in near record time. This conveniently left her plenty of time to consider her late night rendezvous with Draco.


The rest of Hermione’s day passed in an uneventful haze of daydreams and bizarre revenge fantasies. Draco on the other hand was not so lucky, so intent to distract and enrapture Hermione was he that all else had taken a back seat to his near obsession. The compulsion had led to his receiving a detention from the ever fair and equally strict Transfiguration teacher, Minerva McGonagall. It had been his experience that, barring an emergency, it was unlikely that he’d be out of the detention with enough time to properly prepare for his latest and most impressive conquest. Not trusting that his karma was enough intact to carry his need on its own he had a plan to create a distraction that was sure to free him with time to spare. He was after all a Malfoy and they were renown in the Wizarding world for their skills of manipulation and deception in order to gain what they wanted, in a way it was his legacy.


He arrived at the door to McGonagall’s office at the last possible moment that he could without receiving any further disciplinary action, he did however earn a terse look of annoyance from the Professor as she bid him enter the office. Draco took the same bored and languishing approach to the work he’d been given as he would his schoolwork, so as not to arouse suspicion when his planned escape interrupted the busy work with which he’d been saddled. Like clockwork his diligent studying was interrupted at precisely thirteen minutes past ten by the frantic knocking of Professor Sprout at the door to McGonagall’s office. “Minerva, it’s bedlam in the Library! You must come at once,” she said with more than a hint of distress in her voice. McGonagall merely nodded to her and as the other witch exited the office she turned to Draco, “It would seem Mr. Malfoy that fortune has indeed smiled upon you, you are dismissed. Since more than half of the detention has been served there will be no need to schedule another to make it up at a later date. You may go.”


Draco did his best to look confused and grateful he was sure that the Professor would not notice his insincerity in her rush to get to the disturbance in the Library. “Thank you, Professor,” he said and he exited the room just in front of her. He was astounded that a woman of such age could move so lithely. He was elated that his plan had gone off so well, until a single horrible idea entered his head: ‘What if she’s in the Library? She practically lives there.’ The he smirked, it would be to his advantage if she were late to the Room of Requirement there was no way that he could lose. He preened quickly when he reached his dorm room and he sauntered down toward the Kitchens and the point of rendezvous and he arrived with ten minutes to spare, or so he thought. Just as he rounded the corner that led to the Room of Requirement Harry immerged from the kitchen and threw an invisibility cloak over his head and disappeared. Draco was careful not to let the curse on his tongue reach his lips as he threw himself into a dark recess in which things he’d prefer not to contemplate were now undoubtedly crawling in his hair. He felt his skin crawl at the mere idea and he shivered, but did not move until he was sure that the idiot Potter was well away from the corridor. He spared a moment to clean the unmentionable creepy-crawlies from his hair and robes before entering the Room of Requirement.


He was quite pleased to find that when he entered the room was perfect for his insidious purpose. It would be a spectacular feat to seduce her in such a beautiful environment, as it would lend her the very false impression that he cared for her. He saw no reason that she was likely to be different than other girl he’d “had,” but he did not know Hermione very well at all.


She giggled from her concealed second room, which served to give him the impression that he was the first to arrive, though he was not. In order for her plan to be executed letter perfectly she had to make him think that he was a step ahead of her when in reality she was three in front of him, not an easy task. With one last giggle of amusement she closed her silk robe, put her school robe over it and pushed open the door to enter the room.


Draco chuckled under his breath as Hermione entered the room still in her school robes, he was glad that he’d beaten her to the room so the he would be completely prepared for her arrival, or so he thought. Though she still wore her robes he took note of a strangely confident swagger that was not usually present in her stride, but he did not have the time necessary to analyze this peculiarity before she was standing in front of him with a look of lust mingled with a hint of disgust in her eyes. ‘She has brown eyes? Never would have thought,’ Draco said to himself before he’d looked properly into them. His attention was turned to the soft smelling and flawless porcelain that was revealed as she slipped her school robes from off of her head and threw them in a heap in the middle of the floor. In later weeks he would marvel that someone so short could have legs that looked so very long, for the moment he was content to let the siren enrapture and distract him.

Hermione was pleased, but not at all shocked that her plan was going so swimmingly up until this point, Draco was a man after all, and men in her experience were very easy led by their genitals. Especially when one had had so easily and correctly predicted his actions (and without the use of Arithmancy), she knew that there was no chance that he’d ever consider her to be any kind of threat to him intellectually so the likelihood of him catching on to her plan was slim at best. ‘Now the game can begin in earnest,’ she thought with a coy smile that did not fit her body language at all.


Draco was shocked and aroused by the decisive and downright aggressive creature that bore an astonishing resemblance to the wallflower that was Hermione Granger as she backed him against the nearest wall and clawed open the silk nightshirt that draped his puissant frame. Before he had realized what had happened she had taken control of the entire night’s events and made them her own, or perhaps his shock had given way to a side of him that no longer cared for conquest, that cared only for the pleasure of the moment.


It was a pleasure like none that he’d ever experienced, her kisses tingled his bare skin and set his heart beating so rapid that he feared it might break a rib, or worse explode. It was an unfamiliar, slightly unpleasant, and yet not entirely unwelcome sensation to the generally cold young wizard. There was no term that came to mind that he could put with this feeling and at that moment he would not have cared if there had been one.


She raked her nails up his back and he groaned with pleasure as she directed him to the bed by means of a few careful gestures to his nether regions. “Take off your pants,” she ordered and he complied with lightning speed. She slid the satin nightgown off of her shoulders with her thumbs and let it linger a moment on her breasts before it fell to the ground she kicked it aside and he reached up to touch her newly exposed body. No sooner had his hand grazed her ample bosom then he was slapped with enough force to knock him back onto the bed, “I never said that you could touch, worm.” Draco could scarcely believe that someone had the nerve to speak to him like that, but far from being offended by her tone and attack he was further aroused by it; though he could not say why.


She climbed onto the bed and straddled him and after less than two minutes she pulled herself off of him in disgust, he’d already finished! This was the best that the famed Draco Malfoy could do in bed; it was nothing short of sad! After all the fights she’d witnessed over the past six or so months over him he would have been bested by an egg timer. She wondered if this was typical of his late night liaisons if the others just thought him so good that it did not matter that he didn’t have any…staying power. That just didn’t seem right.


Draco could not imagine what had made him climax so quickly it had never happened to him before, it was embarrassing, still it wasn’t like Hermione had a ton of experience with other men, maybe she didn’t notice. “So?” he asked smugly as he turned to her.


Hermione, who usually thought honesty to be the best policy, chose to stick to that conviction at this moment, “What? You can’t be serious, that was the best that the famed Draco Malfoy can do? You do know that two-minute eggs get longer than I did?” Draco gaped at her in the silence, and for the first time he looked her properly in the eyes and saw that it was her; she was the girl whose eyes he’d been dreaming of for the better part of a year.


“What are you staring at?” she demanded, though she did not wait for an answer before continuing, “Get out.” She kicked him just hard enough that he lost his balance and fell on the cold stone floor; for once he was the one who was kicked out of bed and made to feel useless.


He dressed quickly and as he left the room he muttered the strangest thing under his breath, “I think I love you,” just loud enough that it might be possible for her to hear him.