Never Again

Title: Never Again
Author: Emily
E-mail: emnorth2002@yahoo.com
Pairings: Draco/Blaise, Draco/Hermione, Draco/Hermione/Blaise
Rating: I don’t know what rating system to use. Adult? Mature? NC-17? *Naughty*
Distribution: QO archive, AFF.net, and RS.org, if I ever get around to sending it to them. Anyone else, if you want it, just ask. I always say yes.
Disclaimer: All characters are owned and operated by JKR. I made no profit off of this other than the sick satisfaction of screwing with Slytherins. [wink]
Spoilers: **Includes Half-Blood Prince spoilers**
Summary: Those Slytherins make Hermione itch, in all sorts of interesting ways.
A/N: Originally begun for the IATQO Monthly Challenge back in May, Theme: New Beginnings, Kink: Sensual Materials (i.e. silk, satin, velvet, leather, etc). I didn’t finish by the end of the month, held off on finishing to read HBP when it came out, and then held off some more to *mourn* for the characters JKR mistreated. I adhere to the plot points in HBP, but I’m proud to say, I took the characters in *quite* a different direction.


Section 1:

It really was the most delicious dream. Four hands, four lips, two tongues, and two *very* hard cocks were rubbing against her, rubbing all over her, driving her crazy with sensation while whispering such deliciously naughty suggestions to her and to each other that she couldn’t stop shivering. A husky chuckle from the body pressed against her back vibrated through her, making her breath catch as his strong arms wrapped around her, steadying her against him and spreading her thighs, positioning her for the man in front of her who was aligning his straining erection between her legs. He smirked at her just before sliding deep inside her, and she could have sworn she felt her heart stop at how *incredible* he felt inside her. Everything was perfect, until . . .

“Oi, Hermione!”

Hermione’s eyes flew open, immediately and instinctively landing on the small fireplace in the corner of her bedroom where, outlined in green flames, she saw the face of her best friend, Harry Potter.

“What in blue blazes are you doing still in bed?” he groused. “You were supposed to meet me here ten minutes ago!”

Hermione’s eyes went comically wide as she scanned the bedroom. Sunlight was pouring in the window; much, *much* too much sunlight, considering she had *planned* to wake up just a bit after dawn. Her eyes jumped over to the clock, and she immediately sprung out of bed, cursing fluently in ancient Greek as she grabbed her dressing gown and a towel and rushed out of the room toward the bathroom.

“Right then,” Harry said a moment later to the empty room. “I’ll just tell everyone you’ll be along directly then, shall I?” The fire went out in a puff of green smoke.

Meanwhile, Hermione was busily taking the fastest shower of her adult life, while continuing to curse herself roundly, in Old High German this time. She couldn’t believe she had forgotten to set her alarm clock. [Scratch that,] she scolded herself as she scrubbed frantically at her hair. [You can *easily* believe that you forgot to set your alarm since you know exactly *why* you got distracted.]

Never again, *never* again would she knock on her flatmate’s door when he was *entertaining* company. He’d answered the door in boxers he’d obviously just thrown on, and the sight of his nearly-nude body had made her mouth go dry. It only got worse when she finally managed to tear her eyes off of his bare chest and looked over his shoulder. His boyfriend was clearly naked in the bed behind him, and while crumpled blankets hid her view of his lap, her over-active mind had little trouble filling in the blanks. It took every ounce of control and self-possession that she possessed to stammer out the question she had come to ask him, and listen to the answer. When their conversation was finished, she’d immediately rushed back to her room where she’d tugged off her clothes, grabbed her vibrator, and brought herself off in less than five minutes with an orgasm so hard, she nearly bit through her lip keeping herself from screaming.

It was little wonder that she had been so distracted that she had forgotten to set her alarm, but the result were still inexcusable. How could she have slept in on *this* day of all days? If she didn’t get there on time, she’d never forgive herself. More than that, *Ron* would never forgive her if she missed so much as a minute of his very first game as Keeper for the Chudley Cannons. And what would she say? What kind of excuse could she give him for running so disastrously late? How could she admit to her friends that she had forgotten to set her alarm because she had been busy fantasizing about amazing sex with Blaise Zabini and Draco Malfoy? They barely accepted that she had, somehow, managed to become somewhat-friends with the pair since moving in with Blaise. Knowing that she felt anything more for them than friendship would probably make Ron and Harry’s brains explode.

She’d have to add ‘Never again interrupt Blaise after he and Draco have shut the door to his room’ to her list of rules of ‘How to Live with Blaise without Causing Problems.’ Rule number four: Never again let Blaise take the first shower of the morning. (She did *not* need a repeat of the week when she was late to work every day because she’d lost track of the time while standing naked in a steam-filled room that smelled of Blaise’s shampoo.) Rule number nine: Never again enter the kitchen when two male voices can be heard inside. (Draco had a fondness for snacking on spreadables licked off of Blaise’s cock. Catching them with chocolate sauce had been bad enough, but the second time she walked in on them, he’d been using peanut butter. Hermione always stuck peanut butter sandwiches in her bag when she thought she wouldn’t have time for an extended lunch. She did *not* need the taste of peanut butter to turn her into a raging nympho.) Rule number fifteen: Never again, under *any* circumstances, look for lost shoes under the living room couch. (The things she had found underneath the sofa on the one memorable occasion that she looked had had her blushing for twenty-four hours straight. After that, if she was missing a shoe, she summoned it. If that didn’t turn it up, she’d wear a different pair of shoes.)

If the list got much longer, she’d have to either find a new flat or go utterly out her mind. There were twenty-eight never-agains on the list so far, and she had only been living with Blaise for six months. Her life was being ruled by never-agains as she fought hard to maintain her peace of mind. It was a losing battle, and she knew it. After all, she could never quite bring herself to add to the list the only never-again that stood any chance of making a real difference: Never again watch Blaise and Draco while they made love.

Her obsession with Blaise and Draco began the summer before she turned eighteen, just after the disastrous events at the end of her sixth year. When Snape and Draco fled from Hogwarts, leaving death, destruction, and the body of Albus Dumbledore behind them, there wasn’t really anywhere for them to go other than to the Dark Lord’s side. If Lucius’s Gringotts account hadn’t kept him out of Azkaban when Fudge the Corruptible was in charge, then the odds of Draco or Snape buying, bribing, or blackmailing their way out of trouble after committing unforgivables were slim to none with Rufus I’ll-arrest-anyone-who-*blinks*-suspiciously Scrimgeour at the helm. Even as Draco dreaded the punishment he’d receive for not fulfilling his mission completely, he was certain that no punishment Voldemort could concoct would be worse than what he’d face if he stayed behind.

As chance would have it, he was wrong.

Oh, he wasn’t wrong about the punishment, itself. He got roundly scolded and derided and generally verbally humiliated in front of the rest of the Death Eaters following which he had to grin and bear it through a few rounds of the standard Crucioed reprimand, but after that, the punishment portion of the evening was done, and the celebrations began. *That* was the part that truly caught Draco off-guard. While Voldemort was annoyed that Draco hadn’t killed Dumbledore as he had been ordered, Voldemort was still quite glad that the old bat was dead, and that the rest of the attack on Hogwarts had taken place as planned. In general, Voldemort was in a festive mood. And after spending fourteen years without a body, when he was in a festive mood, there was only one thing he wanted to do.

It appeared that, along with her ruthless determination, Tom Riddle had also inherited from his mother quite a taste for pretty boys. There was no denying that Draco was a *very* pretty boy, who deserved something of a reward for his excellent work with the vanishing cabinets . . . and since his father no longer there to keep him out of the ‘grown-up’ parts of the festivities, there was nothing to prevent Voldemort from giving Draco the ‘honor’ of an invitation to join him later for a bit of playtime.

Shortly after two in the morning, Voldemort retired to his chambers, accompanied by Snape whose skills apparently earned him the ‘privilege’ of being Voldemort’s first plaything for the evening. Voldemort liked to give his toys his undivided attention, and had his chosen playmates form a queue outside his door so he could call them in one at a time. Draco was fifth in line, right behind his Aunt Bella who was so busy tarting herself up for her lord and master that she didn’t notice when he mumbled something about finding a loo and hurried away, hoping to remain unnoticed. Luck was with him (or rather, lust was with him since the rest of the Death Eaters had followed their lord’s example and were quite busy screwing each other into the floor) and no one paid any attention to Draco as he slipped out the back door and flat-out ran to the apparition boundaries. Serving Voldemort and pledging life, fortune, and honor to him was one thing. Shagging him was quite another.

He knew he couldn’t go to the Ministry; they were far too deeply in arrest-now-and-avoid-asking-questions-altogether mode; and he was certain that Hogwarts was crawling with Aurors, which left that right out, as well. He only knew about the Order of the Phoenix through reputation, but he knew enough to know that they were his best bet in his brilliant plan to trade Death Eater information to gain some safety from Voldemort’s affections. There was one family that he was absolutely certain belonged to the Order, and two members of that family that he was reasonably certain he knew how to find . . . it was just a matter of working up the resolve to go and face them, something he found easy enough to do when he reminded himself of the alternatives. Apparating to the silent, empty streets of Diagon Alley at three in the morning, he curled up in the doorway of Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes, just below a sign for U-No-Poo, and waited for Fred and George Weasley to arrive.

All things considered, the twins showed remarkable restraint toward Draco when they discovered him on the doorstep of their shop when they arrived to open up the next morning. He was delivered to the rest of the Order (making temporary use of the Burrow until they found new headquarters that Snape wouldn’t know about) without a single bruise on him. (Of course, it’s hard to spot bruises on a large, yellow canary who is suffering from a violent nosebleed and can’t stop vomiting. It would seem that the twins were a bit peeved to discover the use he had made of their Instant Darkness Powder.)

Once they were finally persuaded to give him the antidotes to their skiving snackbox creations, Draco was finally able to offer the assembled Order members blueprints of Malfoy residences, lists of Death Eaters, and every bit of information he had acquired through one means or another as long as they kept Draco bloody well *out* of Voldemort’s bed.

If Draco had come to them claiming a crisis of conscience, saying that he couldn’t stomach the thought of harming innocent children, or attacking muggles unable to defend themselves, or trampling on the weak to gain more power and riches for himself, they would have dismissed him immediately. Draco Malfoy, defender of the oppressed? Not a chance. Draco Malfoy, protector of his own arse? Now *that*, they could believe. Within hours, a whole team of transcribers were positioned around Draco, jotting down every detail he spouted. It took nearly two weeks of practically round-the-clock work to gather all the information Draco could give them, and months afterwards to sort through it all and determine its strategic value.

Draco, in the meanwhile, was busy making himself comfortable in the brand-spanking-new headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix, purchased shortly after he joined them. Unfortunately, Draco’s idea of making himself comfortable seemed to include making everyone else as *un*comfortable as possible. He had no useful function whatsoever. He couldn’t do any field work since the whole purpose of the arrangement was to keep him out of sight, and it was an exercise in futility to try to convince him to help with research. As a result, all he could do was hang around the house and be as much of a bloody *nuisance* to have around as was humanly possible. He criticized everything (and everyone) he came across. He bitched about the food, whined that his room was damp and his bed was hard, and was clearly put out when the other residents refused to wait on him hand and foot. He pouted and sulked and hunted up fragile items with sentimental value belonging to the rest of the people who lived there so he could “accidentally” break them and then smirk at their reactions.

Only Remus lived at the headquarters full time, but the rest of the members of the Order were in and out constantly, especially Hermione, Ron, and Harry who used the place as a combination safe house and research post while they searched for the remaining horcruxes. They, along with the rest of the Order, had various personal items that they kept at the headquarters, in case circumstances forced them to make an unexpected stay. Having Draco Malfoy rooting through their things didn’t make anyone very happy. Ron was in favor of hexing the ferret with a permanent leg-locker curse (and there were a few others who seemed inclined to agree) when Hermione came up with a Brilliant Idea. In one of his endless (heedless) attempts at peacemaking, Remus had asked the blond what he used to do at home or at Hogwarts when he wanted to keep himself occupied *without* going through others’ belongings. Draco’s answer, “Blaise,” had been taken by most of them as another attempt to rile them up. Only Hermione realized that he was serious, and that Blaise Zabini could prove to be the solution to the whole problem.

Following the example of his incomparable mother, Blaise was unaffiliated with either side, but Hermione knew enough about him to know that he would probably be willing to align himself with the Order members, as long as they made the offer attractive enough. Hermione also knew that Blaise’s father’s estate had been tied up in litigation for years due to a tiny dispute over the illustrious Mr. Zabini’s cause of death. Since Blaise was the inheritor instead of her, his mother hadn’t bothered to step in and “get any stickiness with the Aurors smoothed away” as she usually did following her husbands’ deaths and Blaise, despite his efforts, hadn’t been able to make any headway on his own. Hermione took Kingsley with her when she went to speak with Blaise. Two days later, an owl arrived informing Blaise that since the investigation into his father’s death had been closed, all the liquid assets of his newly-inherited estate had been transferred to his personal vault at Gringotts. The owl found him at Order headquarters, where Blaise was in the process of moving into Draco’s room, as per agreement.

The results of Draco’s new roommate were immediately appreciable. Oh, Draco continued to whine and complain and was still rude and obnoxious to all the Order members he encountered, but he had a lot less time to make trouble considering how many of his waking hours were booked solid with shagging Blaise every way known to wizard, and a few that he seemed to have made up all on his own. They were young, healthy, and living with people who actively *encouraged* them to do nothing with their days but mate like crazed weasels. Is it any wonder that they complied?

Blaise had been there for less than a week when Hermione’s obsession began. To her credit, it wasn’t as though she set *out* to be a voyeur. Blaise and Draco simply had no sense of modesty. They’d shag anywhere, on any moderately flat surface, with little to no warning, and absolutely no concern for who might be watching. (Draco, attention-seeking git that he was, actually seemed to enjoy having an audience.) She hadn’t been looking for them when she stepped into the parlor to try and find where she’d left her favorite quill, but there they were, all the same, stark naked and glistening with sweat. Draco had Blaise bent over a massive wooden desk, and was pounding into him hard enough to make the desk; an ancient, claw-footed piece that weighed a ton; rattle with the force of his thrusts. Draco was silent as he happily devoured the side of Blaise’s neck, but Blaise was cursing up a blue streak, calling Draco names Hermione had never even *heard* of before while he begged for more.

The sight of them; ivory on top of ebony; the sounds they made, the smell of sex so thick in the air that she could almost taste it on her tongue had Hermione so instantly and overwhelmingly aroused that she forgot to breathe until spots glowed in her vision and she nearly passed out. On shaking legs, she stumbled back to the room she and Ginny used whenever they were there and collapsed on the bed. She whimpered in frustration as she struggled out of her clothes, her trembling hands unable to move as quickly as she wanted, until she was naked with her legs spread wide and as many fingers as she could fit shoved inside her cunt *hard*, over and over again, making her pant and growl and grunt in a way that she *never* had before until she reached down with the other hand to pinch her clit and *came* so hard that it made her burst into tears, sobbing and gasping for air as she shook from head to toe, downright terrified of the intense pleasure still washing over her. That night, on her way back to her flat, she bought her first vibrator.

It wasn’t as if she’d never felt arousal before. She’d felt those bewilderingly pleasant tingles from time to time when her eye caught on a particular smile, or a graceful pair of hands, or a lean pair of thighs straddling a broomstick. And she was no stranger to fantasies. Her detail-oriented mind had no trouble building up elaborate scenarios involving deep kisses and skilled caresses that made her feel warm all over while she stroked herself shyly in the safety of her bed.

But sweet *Merlin*, it had *never* been like *that*. She’d never been turned on that fast, never been that wanton in her desires, *never* been that rough in their execution, and hadn’t even known it was *possible* to come that hard. It was like she’d spent her life in a kiddie-pool and had been suddenly thrust into the ocean. It was overwhelming and terrifying and so incredibly *amazing* that she started finding lots of excuses to stop by headquarters whenever she had a chance. She hadn’t been a deliberate voyeur the first time she watched Blaise and Draco, but she certainly was after that.

As the weeks passed, her obsession deepened, made worse by the realization that she and Blaise were actually starting to become something that vaguely resembled friends. That was unexpected. Blaise, to put it mildly, was not the friendly type. He was prouder than a hippogriff, more enigmatic than a sphinx, and more dangerous to provoke than a blast-ended skrewt, so people tended to keep themselves at a rather considerable distance from him whenever possible. In all the years she had known him, Hermione had always been vaguely intimidated by him. She had never seen him anything other than perfectly composed, without a single thread of his clothes out of place, generally silent, never distracted, and constantly alert with his large, almost golden eyes always watching, always judging and, from the expression on his face, always finding the rest of the world somewhat lacking. To someone as openly passionate as Hermione, such cold calculation seemed almost inhuman.

The first time Hermione saw him behave like a human being was when she watched his naked body writhe under Draco Malfoy’s touch. Even more than the sensuality of the act they performed, the way that sex had the ever-so-contained Blaise Zabini utterly unbound and unrestrained was enough to make her shiver. It had been difficult to see him as a man back when she thought he had ice water in his veins instead of blood. Once she knew just how hot that blood could pump under the right circumstances, she found she couldn’t *stop* thinking of him as a man. And that was just the first step.

The next step, if possible, came as even more of a surprise. She knew, of course, that Blaise was intelligent. His hand didn’t shoot up to answer every teacher’s question the way that hers did, but there was no way to really hide magical talent in a school of witchcraft and wizardry. There were simply too many sink-or-swim practical demonstrations. But lots of wizards were intelligent. Harry was occasionally intelligent. Ron had some random sparks of intellect at odd moments (usually involving a chess board). Hell, Draco was surprisingly intelligent, for all the good it did him. Blaise’s intelligence was different from theirs not because he was inherently ultra-brilliant, but because he had such an appetite for knowledge that he couldn’t bear *not* using his mind. Typical modes of relaxation bored him. Vacations made him antsy. Inactivity preyed on his mind. The Order had assumed that he would be content with having no task other than to fuck the living daylights out of Draco. They were wrong. When they gave him nothing to occupy his mind, he quickly found an occupation all on his own.

Hermione discovered his new hobby when she walked in to the library at five in the morning, ready to begin work again on her researching, just to find a scroll of parchment next to the notes she had left out saying that she must not be as smart as he had thought if she wasn’t consulting the Cheyvez Compendium. Hermione tracked down the book . . . and discovered that her anonymous advisor was right; it *did* have some of the information she needed. Breakthroughs in research always distracted her from everything else, and she didn’t give a second thought to the parchment until she arrived the *next* morning and found yet another piece of parchment, commenting on the progress she had made the previous day, with added suggestions for where she might go next. And so it began.

Hermione liked to work in the morning. Those few hours before the sun rose had been her haven of quiet and solitude in Gryffindor Tower, and the habit carried over when she was in the Order headquarters as she used the precious bits of silence to accomplish the bulk of her work. Blaise, on the other hand, was a night owl, prowling around the house, bored out of his skull, after everyone else had gone to sleep, and becoming increasingly involved in Hermione’s research. They never discussed it; in fact, they rarely spoke to each other during the day; but they built a mutual respect and appreciation through the bits of parchment left for each other along with the research that had become *theirs* instead of hers.

She should have felt guilty, developing a friendship with someone and then spying on his sexual habits at every opportunity. She *did* feel guilty, actually . . . but she didn’t stop. The better she knew Blaise, the more arousing she found him, in a slow-burn-fever kind of way that got under her skin without her even realizing it and got stronger every day; classic Blaise. And in spite of her best intentions, she had to admit to herself that she had always found Draco attractive, in a much more immediate, in-the-moment, heart-racing, temperature-climbing, kiss-or-kill sort of way that was *absolutely* classic Draco. He was rude and arrogant and obnoxious and condescending and snide and brilliant and cutting and devious and delicious and exciting and seductive and had been the face in her fantasies since she was *fifteen years old* and finally gave up on the idea that Ron would ever have any *idea* of how to handle her in a relationship, much less give her anything resembling pleasure in bed, and . . . and that was that. Blaise was attractive and desirable and Draco was attractive and desirable and when the two of them were together . . .

Hermione started buying the batteries for her vibrator in the large, economy packs; she was tired of it running out of buzz just when she needed it the most.


*****