Puzzle Pieces

Section 5:

It took me the rest of the week to get Draco to forgive me for meeting with Granger behind his back. I knew he wouldn’t take it well that I had lied to him, but I certainly hadn’t expected him to react so violently. I had expected a bit of shouting, probably a bit of pouting, and a few days of me spoiling him rotten and walking on eggshells until he fully forgave me. Instead, I got three and a half days of him ignoring my existence, and smashing the living hell out of the billiards balls every night to vent his anger, when he wasn’t out on the Quidditch pitch, flying like a maniac with a death wish. Three and a half days of hell, worrying myself sick about him and what he might do without me there with him, to keep him reigned in. I wouldn’t have put it past him to challenge Granger outright, even though she hadn’t done a single thing to hurt me, just because she *might* have hurt me without him there to protect me, and the idea scared him enough to have him mightily pissed off.

I think his anger might have lasted longer, if Slytherin hadn’t lost the Quidditch game to Gryffindor that weekend. The game was devastating for Slytherin fans. Miles Bletchly who had been keeper for the Slytherin team ever since I was a first year, finally managed to pass his N.E.W.T.s the second time around the previous summer, leaving Draco with the task of training and breaking in a new keeper for our final season. Edgar Hunter, a third year, had taken over the position. He wasn’t bad; he was fast and strong and had performed well at the tryouts and the practice sessions; but no one had anticipated his fit of nerves before the game. After throwing up, seemingly, everything he had eaten for the past week or so, he was barely steady enough to mount his broom, and only got worse as the game progressed. The Gryffindor chasers, led by other-Weasley, ate him for breakfast. The more shots they scored past him, the more flustered he got, and the worse he played. Our chasers and beaters put up a hell of a fight, but despite their efforts, Slytherin got ground into the mud.

Worst of all, once Potter caught on to what was happening, he called a brief time out to huddle with his team. After that, their tactics changed. They were no longer out to win the game; they were out to disgrace Slytherin. While the Gryffindor stands chorused out “Hunter Is Our King,” the chasers, beaters, and most especially the seeker concentrated on blocking the snitch. Any time that tell-tale flash of gold caught Potter’s eye, he’d lead the rest of his team in circling around Draco to keep him from going after it. Until the snitch was caught, the game couldn’t end, and Slytherin’s humiliation would continue, and Potter made sure that Draco didn’t even have the chance to go after the snitch until Gryffindor was already up by 160 points, meaning that we wouldn’t have won the game even if Draco *had* managed to catch the snitch. He didn’t, of course. The final score, when Potter finally deigned to put us out of our misery, was 330 to 10. If it weren’t for the brilliant goal by Warrington, at the beginning of the game before the team became so dispirited, it would have been a shut-out. As it stood, it was the most crushing Quidditch loss the Slytherin house team had suffered in fifty years.

Draco took it very hard. Bad enough that he should lose to his detested rival in the first game of his season as captain. Worse still that he should lose his last chance at ever defeating Potter on the Quidditch pitch. But that the first game with himself at the helm should be a loss that would go down in history books was more than Draco could take. He positively *reamed* the team for a solid hour after the game before kicking them out of the changing rooms and telling them to get out of his sight and *stay* out of it, if they knew what was good for them.

Apparently they did, because they scattered quite quickly. By the time I was able to sneak in to the changing rooms, no one was there but Draco, still in his sweaty uniform, seated on a bench with his head in his hands. He wasn’t crying; Draco never cried; but he looked more defeated than I had ever seen him. He didn’t even look up when I seated myself next to him.

“I failed,” he whispered, so softly that I barely heard him.

If Lucius Malfoy had shown up at that moment, I’d have strangled him with my bare hands. I knew it was his fault that Draco saw himself as a failure whenever he couldn’t fly faster than the speed of light, or score five hundred percent on his year end exams, or pull golden eggs out of his arse. There were times when I almost wished that Lucius really *was* a little free with his wand and his fists, the way many people claimed. If he ever actually had raised a hand against Draco or Narcissa, then Draco would have been able to hate him with a clear conscience. But instead, Lucius contented himself with cutting them down in little ways by belittling all their accomplishments, and magnifying their failures. He was a sick fuck who always felt like he had to be better than everyone else, and got his kicks from bullying his wife and child. Unfortunately, instead of seeing these actions as proof of *Lucius’* weakness, Draco saw the treatment he received as evidence of his own inferiority. I knew from vast, painful experience that nothing I said would change his mind.

“I love you,” I whispered instead. At those words, he looked up at last, his face drawn tight with pain and frustration, and spoke to me while looking me in the eye for the first time in days.

“Why?” he asked, his voice breaking slightly on the word. “Why would you love me?”

“Because you let me,” I answered reaching up to brush a lock of silky soft hair out of his eyes. Loving Draco was easy; he had no idea how easy. For all his superficial arrogance, he never realized just how charming and appealing he could be, when he wasn’t trying so hard. Thanks to bloody Lucius, Draco’s self-esteem was so low that he automatically suspected the motives of anyone showing admiration for him. I still don’t know why he let me in, but I knew that this was one of the times to make him glad that he had. I needed to show him just how good it felt to be loved.

I gently tucked the soft strand behind his ear, trailing my fingers back softly over his cheek, keeping the touch light in case he decided to pull away. He didn’t. He shuddered as my fingers touched his skin, eyes closing for a brief moment, before lunging at me, digging his fingers into the back of my neck and bruising my mouth with his. Moments later, when my lips were still tingling from the sudden impact with his, he pulled away just enough to speak, breathing the words against my lips.

“Show me how much you love me.”

Leaning forward to brush my lips against his, softly this time, not letting him take control of the kiss, I pulled out my wand and closed my eyes. Taking a deep breath, I pictured the bench we were seated on behind my closed eyelids until I could picture it perfectly in every detail. Slowly, gradually, I made changes to the image till I could picture the bench softening, spreading, and thickening into a bed with a plush mattress.

“Mutare lectus,” I stated firmly with my eyes still closed. I heard Draco gasp in surprise, and summoned the courage to open my eyes, praying I hadn’t just turned my best friend and lover into a squid.

Instead, I found him still irresistibly human, though looking rather silly at that moment with his eyes wide open and his jaw hanging somewhere around his knees, sprawled on the thick, soft mattress of the bed that had appeared *perfectly*, just as I had pictured it.

“How…” he gasped. “What… How…?”

I silenced him with my lips on his as I climbed onto the bed with him, kicking off my shoes and unfastening my robes in my haste to be naked with him as quickly as possible. He stopped trying to ask questions as soon as my tongue entered his mouth, and was soon working as busily to get out of his clothes as I was to get out of mine. The sweat made the clothes stick to his skin, and I couldn’t help but chuckle at his growl of annoyance when the tight material positively refused to peel away from his body. He threw me a beautiful glare to which I responded by kissing and licking every inch of flesh he had managed to bare, finally reaching the groin of his pants. Peeling off the tight trousers was difficult in any circumstances, so I didn’t bother trying. I simply unfastened them, working them down a bit at a time until I had freed the achingly hard object of my search into my hand.

I had mastered deep-throating the summer before, and put those skills to work on my lover right away, swallowing him down to the root while he gasped and howled and thrashed so hard, I had to pin down his legs under my body to keep him from bucking me off his body altogether. His hands flew out frantically, trying to touch me in return, but I batted them away. This was for him; for me to take care of him. Even when he was begging and cursing me with every breath that he took, I didn’t stop until I felt him climax, absorbing the myriad sensations of his hands fisting in my hair while his taste exploded on my tongue and the sound of his screams echoed in my ear. Then and only then did I give into his hands urging me up on the bed to lie beside him.

From the way he had screamed, I rather expected him to be a bit comatose for the next hour or so. My ego was a bit bruised to feel him stirring beside me only a few minutes later, but it was pacified by his request.

“Need you inside me,” he whispered, twisting his way out of his clothes and unfastening my trousers as well.

“No, love,” I tried to protest. “I shouldn’t. You’re tired, you’re sore, you’ve been on a broomstick for hours… I don’t want to hurt you.”

“*Need* you,” he repeated, pulling out my stiff cock and stroking it firmly. I immediately stopped arguing and concentrated on shedding the last of our clothing. Retrieving my wand from where it had fallen, I cast the lubrication charm before sliding my body on top of Draco’s. His legs wrapped themselves around me and he moaned in pleasure as I slid, as carefully as possible, inside him. I wanted him too badly to stay gentle for long, and soon I was thrusting hard and deep all the way inside him. His whisper in my ear that he loved me was enough to send me over the edge and I came so hard, I saw black spots in front of my eyes before I collapsed on top of him.

Heaven only knows how long it was before we mustered the energy to drag ourselves into the shower. Of course, what we *did* in the shower once we got there wasn’t exactly what the healer ordered to replenish our energy but after several thorough explorations with mouths and hands in addition to soap, we got ourselves reasonably clean, in body if not in mind. Draco had a wicked smirk on his face as we got dressed, and I knew that he was alright again, especially when he started whining about having to clean up the mess in the locker room.

The uniforms were always left in the messy pile on the floor after a game; that’s what house elves are for; but the team was usually responsible for making sure that the brooms and other pieces of equipment were properly cleaned and stored before leaving. Of course, the team wasn’t usually berated for an hour or so after the game. When Draco finally finished ranting and raving, they were so pleased to be getting out of there alive that they didn’t bother seeing to their equipment. As team captain, it was, technically, Draco’s responsibility to make sure that it was taken care of, but he had no problem resorting to whining to try to convince me otherwise.

“I’m the captain,” he complained. “This is work for the *players* to do.” He said the word ‘players’ as if they were some type of useful but foul smelling mold.

“The players aren’t here,” I reminded him.

“I could fetch them,” he suggested hopefully.

“They wouldn’t let you get within five broomstick lengths of them before *running* with all their might to the hills.”

He pouted a bit more. “But I’m the *captain*!” he reiterated. Showing superhuman restraint, I managed to keep from rolling my eyes.

“Why don’t you go ahead back to the castle, love?” I suggested in as neutral a tone as I could manage. “I’ll finish up here.”

Draco brightened immediately. “Are you sure?” he asked, not really waiting for an answer before gathering his stuff to depart.

“Sure and certain,” I replied, deciding that it was well worth it to handle all the rest of the cleaning myself if it meant being spared his grumblings. He rewarded me with a lingering kiss before he left that was enough to make my eyes glaze over, remembering the delicious things he had done to other parts of me with his tongue, only an hour or so before. Even when I came out of the daze to discover him long gone, I stayed in a good enough mood to clean the rest of the locker room quickly and thoroughly. With the work finally done, I headed back to the castle, mentally running through what I needed to do for the rest of the day. The last thing I expected was to run into Hermione Granger in the entrance hall, giving every appearance of having waited for my arrival.

“It was a horrible game,” she announced bluntly, without preface, once she was in speaking range. “I’m ashamed of what the Gryffindor team did, Harry and Ron in particular. I read them the riot act for it, if that’s any comfort.”

In spite of myself, I chuckled a bit at the thought of it. Weasley was one of the tallest boys in seventh year, and Potter was no shrimp, himself, anymore, while Granger hadn’t gotten any taller since fourth year. Both of ‘her boys’ stood head and shoulders above her in addition to being much bulkier in build and should, in theory, have been about as intimidated by Granger as I would be by a puffskein. And yet it wasn’t a difficult image to imagine: Granger raking the two of them over the coals while they hung their heads and waited for her to finish. Merlin knew she led those two around by the nose whenever she put her foot down.

The thought of how much Draco would enjoy the sight she had described drove away the last of my laughter. There was no doubt that Draco would’ve dearly loved to see Potter and Weasley humiliated in return for the crushing humiliation they had subjected him to, just that afternoon.

“There’s really nothing to apologize for,” I insisted. “You certainly didn’t do anything wrong, and as far as your friends… well… if we had been able to pull it off back in fifth year, when Weasley played his first game as keeper, we’d have done the same thing,” I admitted ruefully.

“Ah, but we’re prunes and prisms, holier than thou Gryffindors,” she responded. I bit back the urge to laugh. Since when did Granger have a sense of humor? She smiled back at me, in response to the grin on my face that I couldn’t hide. She had a… surprisingly nice smile. It faded a moment later, and I was sorry to see it go. “We’re supposed to be better than that,” she concluded.

“You aren’t.”

She smiled sadly. “I know. I wish we were. I’m sorry that we’re not. I’d tell you to apologize to Malfoy for me, but he’d probably think I was just making fun of him, wouldn’t he?” I nodded, knowing that that was *exactly* what Draco would think. “At any rate, I’m glad I got to tell *you* how sorry I am that it happened. And I will say that Harry and Ron are sorry as well.”

“They are?” I asked incredulously.

Her smile was a touch wicked this time. I liked it even better that way. “Oh yes,” she replied mysteriously. “They’re *very* sorry. Trust me.” I raised a single eyebrow, waiting for her to elaborate. “Oh, I may have cast a *tiny* little hex that I know they won’t want to be showing to Madam Pomfrey that won’t wear off for another few hours.”

This time, I didn’t bother trying to hold back the laugh. She threw me a wink before disappearing down the hall. I watched her go, still chuckling a bit to myself, and coming to the slow realization that Gryffindor or not, she really was a rather remarkable girl. It was almost a pity, I thought to myself, that I’d probably never have reason to talk to her again. But although my imagination had developed a bit lately, I couldn’t imagine any circumstances that would lead me to speak with her anymore.

I was, in fact, incorrect, though it would be a few weeks before I realized that for myself. As it turned out, we reached December before I had any reason to speak to Hermione Granger again.


End Section 5