Chapter Text
After a proportionate amount of sulking, Hermione snatches up her good golden quill from her desk, shoulders her handbag, then leaves the Minister’s office with a note in hand like a delinquent schoolchild. It’s rather brief compared to those that typically leave the Minister’s office:
Official secondment of Ms Hermione Granger to the Auror Offices until the 18th of May.
Signed by Senior Undersecretary, Elizabeth Fitzroy.
Countersigned in satisfaction by _______________
It’s not the worst thing that could have happened, but it’s still a blemish on her otherwise spotless career. She can find a positive out of this. She will. It’s the only way she can cope when silly or bothersome occurrences arise out of her control. The positives… Well, there are none. Harry’s on paternity leave, so she won’t be able to spend time working alongside a friend, and Ron quit the Ministry years ago. A positive, she supposes, is that it could be considered a break. She hasn’t had a vacation in well over two years, so maybe it’s an opportunity to let her brain rest?
That doesn’t sound like a positive.
At Level Four, Hermione pushes through the heavy oak doors of the Auror office. She hasn’t been here since Harry first started, but it’s much the same. Carpeted brown like most of the Ministry, but the white walls are marked up with long faded photographs of criminals and signs that read “Days Since Emmott Was A Wanker.” It's scented with such an overwhelming mix of sharp yet sweet spray deodorant and strong coffee that it’s almost bitter on her tongue.
The open cubicles ahead hold eight men in various states of sitting, leaning and slouching while conversation creeps louder with each new sentence. The missives hovering above their heads are artfully ignored, but so too is the senior Auror, Williams, who slots his head out from his office to the right and shouts, “Will someone get back to bloody Mrs Hill in Magical Transportation? It’s not even nine and she’s onto her third missive.”
Hermione walks a straight line towards Harry’s office, slow and morose, as though she’s part of a funeral procession. How is she supposed to spend four weeks surrounded by nitwits? This isn’t a rest at all. It’s punishment, as very well intended.
Besides the discomfort of her new surroundings, every day she spends away from the Minister’s office is a new opportunity for Percy Weasley to snatch the Senior Policy Officer role right from under her nose. She should be there now, working her way back into Kingsley’s good books.
With nothing short of a foul mood, she knocks on Harry’s office door. Of course she doesn’t expect him to be on the other side, certainly not when the plaque Head Auror Potter has been magicked to add STINKS at the end, but she doesn’t expect Draco Malfoy. She knows he works in this office, but is he capable enough to be considered a senior Auror?
Over the years she’s passed him in the hallways of the Ministry, sometimes at galas (once at a conference), and she’d noticed—definitely not admired—that he’s changed from wearing wizarding robes to fitted muggle trousers and shirts. Occasionally with a smart waistcoat atop. She can only assume this means that he’s not only no longer rejecting everything muggle, but rather, accepting of certain aspects. This doesn’t warm her to him, per se. But maybe she’s more curious about him than she had been.
It also doesn’t hurt that he’s easier to look at these days, all sharp angles rather than pointy. His hair is more carefree than slicked back, and his demeanour she’d describe as dashing. It’s all rather irritating.
Perhaps Malfoy, too, isn’t so perturbed by the sight of her any longer. When the door opens to reveal him, a smirk curls across his lips and it’s nothing like the taunting kind she was subjected to in school.
“Who was idiotic enough to give the Acting Head role to you?” asks Hermione.
“Potter, of course.” He shows a quick pull of a smile. “Aren’t you supposed to be in the dungeons?”
“Don’t play dumb, Malfoy. You know I work in the Minister’s office.”
“Strange.” He draws up his hand, a square of parchment slotted between his fingers. “This missive says you work here for the next several weeks.”
“Well…” She palms down the sides of her pencil skirt. “Yes.”
He appraises her with an unsuccessfully stifled smirk, a curt strike of his eyes up and down her form. “What did you do?”
“Why do you assume I did something?”
“Because we didn’t request the transfer of an annoying swot.”
“Is this how you treat all newcomers?”
“If they’re so lucky.” He slips a hand in his pocket and angles his head to drink in the sight of her more openly, her eye-rolling and all. “What in Salazar’s name am I supposed to do with you?”
“You know you don’t have to do anything with me at all. If you just sign my form to say that you’re satisfied with my work, then I can return to the Minister’s office.” She holds out her slip of parchment and he eyes it as if she’s proffered him a shit-covered sweet.
“Do you mean to say I should lie, Granger?” He tuts. “That wouldn’t be something the Acting Head Auror would do, would it?”
She crosses her arms with a huff and very nearly tells him that Harry would do it, but there’s no need to bring him into this.
Raucous laughter breaks out behind, then a “Thomas, you twat!” and it's beginning to feel like Hermione’s stepped into a Quidditch locker room instead of a law enforcement office.
“I suppose I should introduce you to the juniors, then.” Malfoy moves towards the grid of desks in the main office, where one of the young Auror’s is trying to Scourgify tea out of his button-down. The rest are still talking over each other, hanging past the partitions, still very much ignoring the multiplying floating missives.
At the end of the grid, Malfoy transfigures a new dark oak desk and a padded office chair, putting a pin in the conversation. “Gentleman, this is the Golden Girl. I’m sure you already know of her, seeing as barely a day goes by without mention in the Prophet.”
How many times can she roll her eyes in a day?
“Granger has done something naughty, which she won’t divulge, so she gets to have a little holiday in this office until I say she’s been a good girl.”
She clucks her tongue. “Seriously, Malfoy?”
A young Auror with floppy black hair grins. “The place has really gone downhill since he’s been in charge.”
“Shut up, Davies.”
“I can tell,” she mumbles, already drafting a letter in her mind to Harry about the state of the office he left in not-so-capable hands.
“Welcome aboard, Granger,” Malfoy throws over his shoulder as he goes on his way.
Hermione sinks down into her desk chair with a groan.
All in all, it’s a miserable morning.
Despite the fact she sits staring at the junior Aurors who pop up out of their cubicles more often than not, they all go about their conversation as though she's invisible. Nearly eight years Hermione has worked in the Ministry, probably half a decade longer than any one of them, and they’re treating her like, well, a new junior.
Without a thing to do or chatter to distract her, she spends the majority of her day reading her newest novel (always kept in her extendable bag), sucking on sugar quills, and then plotting the downfall of Percy. Sometimes all three things at once.
It's his fault she’s been relegated to another department. If he hadn’t made such a fuss about what had happened, she might’ve gotten away with it. No use whining about it now, she supposes. She simply needs to set her sights on securing the Senior Policy Officer role, deliver on several more of their team’s evidence-based initiatives, and then when Kingsley retires in another five to seven years, the role of Minister will, of course, be hers.
“See? I wasn't making it up.”
Hermione breaks from her reverie to find Malfoy at her desk, holding a folded Prophet in hand.
“Here you are in the gossip section—wearing a very flattering gown, I might add.”
She snatches the paper from his grasp. There she is, wearing a strapless floor length black silk dress, her hands held loosely at front. It's not necessarily a bad photograph, but it's nearly a year old, taken at the last Ministry gala, and certainly nothing to do with the drivel published about her.
“Absolute rubbish.”
“So there's no truth to you dating Stapleton from the Muggle Liaison Office?”
“I suppose you'll never know.”
He moves to take back the paper, but she pulls it away.
“If you're not going to give me any work, then I suppose I'll just keep this, shall I?”
He glares before he stalks off.
Some hours later, after reading the entire newspaper and taking a long lunch, Hermione startles as a heap of folders drop down onto her desk.
“Found something for you to do.” Malfoy’s fresh cologne cuts through the coffee scent nearby.
He rests his behind on her desk, barely an inch away, and she needs to roll her chair backward to look him in the eye rather than cop an eyeful of his forearms. Much too late, though. She’s already clocked the faint scar of a Dark Mark across the ropey veins. Has he always had such attractive forearms? There’s no one in the Minister’s office getting about with arms like those…
What is she on about? She’s frowning when she peers up at him, but she doesn’t care.
“I need you to review all of these reports to remove the word ‘may’. Phillip in the quality control office has to read them before they’re sent off to the States, and he’s decided we’re not allowed to use the word may any longer due to the way it makes his teeth feel.”
She squints at him. “Is this some sort of hazing ritual?”
“If it were, it’d involve far less clothing and far more whipped cream.”
“Excuse me?”
The end of his mouth tugs up. Ever since she arrived he’s been staring at her as though he can see beneath her clothing, but this is particularly bold.
She doesn’t exactly hate it.
Hermione only just registers his earlier words. “You need to send your files to quality control? Is that the state of the work in this office these days?”
“It’s been a requirement ever since Whitehall sent a case file to Germany’s second highest office with nothing but a facsimile of his cock and balls.”
Whitehall, leant against the side of a nearby cubicle with a styled yet scruffy look about him, raises his coffee mug in a mock toast. “Well, you can't do that with a simple duplication charm, can you?”
“Potter’s idea,” adds Malfoy.
Hermione’s brows sail up. “To photocopy your undercarriage?”
Whitehall laughs gruffly. “That idea was all mine.”
“Disastrous,” adds Davies.
She swivels back towards Malfoy, not bothering to hide how unimpressed she is by all this talk. “What, exactly, am I supposed to do with the word ‘may’ in these reports?”
“Amend, redact, reconfigure—truthfully I don’t care.”
“And what about any mention of the month of May?”
He appears to briefly consider. “How about the month between April and June? Fifth month of the year? Use that clever brain of yours, Granger.”
She watches as Malfoy departs for Williams’ office, and she can’t help but think that although he’s an absolute twat, he’s nice to look at. That’s a positive, isn’t it? He leans with a palm on Williams’ doorframe to chat to him and her eyes are immediately drawn to the shift of his shoulders in his white shirt, a wand holster strapped atop. He’s not as scrawny as she remembers. Those would be perfectly good shoulders for grasping on to as he drives into her—
Hermione closes her eyes to rub at the bridge of her nose. Gather your wits.
She glances at him again, noticing how gorgeous his arse looks in grey trousers, generous enough to sink her fingertips into as he delves into her—
She shakes her head. Maybe she’s ovulating?
Malfoy turns around, eyes landing on Hermione and a smirk ready, as if he can hear her thoughts. She sends her gaze away, feeling her cheeks pinken. She’s definitely ovulating.
After he’s returned to his own office, she stares into space, a little dumbstruck but also skeptical about the task she’s been given. Nevertheless, an abundance of coulds and mights later, and she’s nearly done. It's almost six o’clock. The junior Aurors fled barely after four, but Hermione remains sustained by a wild urge to prove to Malfoy that she can complete his menial work well enough that he’ll sign her form and set her free.
After moving the last folder to her completed pile, she nearly internally celebrates.
But there’s a folded slip of parchment beneath.
She unfurls it, ready to see its contents and stuff it back into its original folder, more than ready to be done with the task. But her eyes widen. Then widen again with every new sentence.
Dear Granger,
You’re well aware how these letters go by now. I could preface it all with the many aspects I enjoy about you, beginning with how your hair descends into the small of your back. But truthfully, all I want is to tell you how I’d very much like to scrunch a fist into those curls, how I’d drag your silky lips down onto my cock—
Hermione’s heart feels like it’s in her throat. She swallows roughly, attempting to dislodge it, flipping the parchment over to find clues as to where it came from. And from whom.
A love letter is the only term that comes to mind, but there's no love here, it’s just eroticism all the way down. It’s not signed at the bottom, but it was handed to her with the pile of documents from Malfoy, and she instinctively reads Granger in his drawl. It's his writing isn't it? She convinces herself as much without any knowledge of his longhand. And yet, this doesn’t seem like the sort of thing he would do. Write obscene scenarios about her—Hermione Granger, a mudblood.
Maybe it’s a prank? She glances past her shoulder, then double checks over the cubicle partitions, but there’s not a single soul around. Why would anyone orchestrate a prank without bothering to witness it?
She braves reading on, her heart thudding against her ribcage.
I’ll feed my cock to you, inch by inch, test how much you can take. I'll feel you moan around me as I meet the back of your throat. Over and fucking over again while you rub at your—
Merlin. She’s overheating. She doesn’t want that, she wants answers.
Without any conscious thought as to what comes next, she's rapping her knuckles against Malfoy’s office door and letting herself in. “Have you been writing fiction about me, Malfoy?”
From behind the desk, he startles, looking a little alarmed and very flushed.
“Care to explain this letter you left beneath the pile of ‘may’ reports?”
She moves across the faded Ministry carpet while he stares at her, strangely rigid except for his eyes, tracking her like she’s about to sneakily Avada him. And, as she learns while the silence dawdles on, apparently she’s rendered him speechless. That’s evidence enough that he wrote the letter, but also that he hadn’t intended it to be on her desk. Of course he hadn’t. Something like this is incriminating enough to risk his job.
A risk she’s going to hold over his head.
Hermione raises the letter, sending the door shut behind with her magic and casting a quick privacy charm. “This looks an awful lot like something that might get you put on probation, Malfoy.”
He clears his throat gently. “Is that why you’re here? Probation?”
“Oh no, I’m just here to fulfil your every fantasy—” She drops her eyes to the parchment. “To have a shaking orgasm while you spill into the back of my throat.”
His jaw muscle visibly flexes.
“Sign my form and let me return to the Minister’s office, then I’ll burn this letter."
She approaches the heavy mahogany desk, which she now realises is no longer filled with all manner of mess that Harry used to keep: Fizzing Wizzbee wrappers, coffee mugs, old copies of the Prophet. The closer she tracks, the tenser the set of Malfoy’s shoulders.
“I’ll forget that I ever saw this, that it was carelessly left around, that a pureblood wizard who once made me feel inferior wants nothing more than to—” She glances down at the neat scrawl. “To feel the glide of his cock into my hot, wet cunt.”
A shadow of a groan escapes his mouth. It’s a shadow, but it’s there.
With that, Hermione notices that he’s sitting even stranger than she originally presumed. Not only is he tense, but his hands are below the desk. Everything about this is peculiar. He’s not threatening, nor quipping. She’s just walked in, demanding his cooperation with implications that will risk his job and he hasn’t even reached for his wand beside his eagle feather quill.
She knows what it looks like… but it can’t be, can it?
“Are you…” She steps closer, eyes pricking wider, “enjoying yourself?”
His chest rises and falls sharply. His mouth is tight, not even bothering to open with denial.
With the realisation that he’s truly gripping his cock beneath the desk, Hermione’s stomach swoops. What the hell is wrong with him? Writing filth at work and then pleasuring himself? Filth about her? She bites at her lip.
Actually, she’s not sure she wants an answer. Not when she’s suddenly scorching all over. The wayward flutter of her cunt is an annoying reminder of the fact that she hasn’t been in a remotely sexual situation for over a year. And then before that was Cormac, who somehow couldn’t make her orgasm despite the fact she’s as easy as a wind-up toy.
“The letter was…” he begins through an iron jaw.
“So you admit that it’s yours?” She moves closer again, stopping at the corner of the desk. “Well in that case, you know what I find very interesting? There are a few splotches at the bottom here, and I have a great suspicion that—given the state I’m finding you in—it’s cum.” She extends the letter towards him in her most naive show yet, enjoying how she’s making him visibly squirm.
“For fuck’s sake, Granger, do not take another step.”
A smirk graces her lips at experiencing how the dynamics in the room—and surely out of it—have well and truly changed. He’s the most vulnerable she’s ever seen. He’s not sneering up or threatening to curse her. He’s stuck in his grand office chair with his cock out.
Her gaze sinks down to where his shirt is sandwiched against the desk and she lets her stare linger to torture him a little. “Is this some sort of wank material, then? Are you sitting here each day writing fantasies and then pleasuring yourself?”
“Need I remind you that for the next four weeks I’m your superior?”
“Yes, my superior in the midst of wanking.”
She rounds the desk and leans her behind against it, crossing her ankles. She’s barely an inch from him. Even if he wasn’t seemingly stuck with his hands beneath the desk, she can smell the musk of pre-cum. “I'm right, aren't I?”
Malfoy can’t hold her gaze for all too long. When he does, she witnesses the whir of his thoughts as he attempts to puzzle his way out of this.
“You’re going to sign my form, and in exchange I'll destroy this letter and—as much as I want to tell Harry about what you’ve been doing in his office after hours—I won’t reveal a word to anyone.”
With that, the letter pinched in her fingers bursts into flames.
Hermione gasps as ash floats about in the air. “You bastard.”
“You have too much on me, Granger.”
With her own wandless magic and a jot of anger, she sends his chair back a foot, enough to reveal his straining cock poking out from his trousers and cradled by his curved palm. Her breath hitches. He’s thick and long, his large hand only covering the base of his shaft, and she knows she shouldn’t stare, but what else is she supposed to do when Draco Malfoy’s cock is rigid, tip glistening right before her?
“It's not what it looks like,” he says hurriedly, face crimson.
Hermione can’t pull her eyes away. It’s certainly what it looks like. He’s mid-wank after writing fantasies all about her, apparently. She’s more turned on than she cares to admit—at least not to Malfoy. But then again, he’s the reason her nipples have peaked under her bra and she’s clenching her thighs just to satisfy a rampant ache. He’s the reason she has clear imaginings of sinking her mouth down on him.
Her next breath stutters in. She questions where her mind is going, but in truth, it’s been there all day long. Hermione brushes her tongue along the back of her teeth, teasing the thought of running it along the smooth tip of his cock, striking a path through the beads of pre-cum.
Except… Well, she can’t do that, can she? She’s not here for any form of sexual relationship with Malfoy. She’s simply here until she can escape to the Minister’s office. Without the letter (why didn’t she think to duplicate it?), she no longer has anything tangible to hold over his head, and he should be punished for that fact. But faced with a situation like this, punishment suddenly looks awfully different. Not simply because it’s Malfoy and it’s achingly attractive to see him stroking himself, but rather how vulnerable he is.
She likes when they’re like that.
“You’re right,” she begins, finally lifting her eyes to his and finding his pupils blown wide. “This isn't what you were doing before I entered, is it?” The tone of her voice has changed to something quiet. Sultry.
In turn, his gentle expression of fear softens.
“Show me what it’s supposed to look like,” she whispers.
“Granger, this is inappropriate.” There’s no conviction behind his words.
“I know it's inappropriate and you seem to know, and yet here we are, your weeping cock out and a wish list of the very many ways you want to…” She recollects a line from his letter. “Drown in my sweet cunt.”
His chest lifts with a desperate inhale.
“How else are we supposed to get to all of this cunt drowning if you’re too timid to even show me a stroke?”
Malfoy’s throat bobs with a swallow.
“Are you shy all of a sudden? The same wizard who wrote that he wanted to fuck me all night long, until he needed to Episkey my cunt?”
His brows curve in.
Hermione preens a little, noticing how his cock jumps in his hand. “I have a photographic memory and there’s no chance of you burning that from my mind unless you Obliviate me. But you’re not going to do that, are you? You’re going to come for me now like a good boy—”
Malfoy openly groans. His posture loosens and the hand around his cock flinches up his shaft.
“And then tomorrow you’re going to sign my form and let me free.”
He drinks in a loud breath, lifting his chin to show the strain of tendons in his throat. He doesn’t look all too far off from his release. She can’t tell if he’s already been tending to himself for some time, or whether he’s just all too easy, but either way she doesn’t care. Hermione knows what she wants to see.
“Go on, I know you want to.” She readjusts to lean back onto her palms.
His gaze flies down, to where her skirt now rides an extra inch up her thighs. He smooths his hand up over the crown of his cock and muffles the next desperate noise in his throat.
“No need to hold back,” she tells him. “Show me what you can do.”
With one more clench of his jaw, Malfoy drops his head back against the chair. If she were a little more reckless, she’d climb onto his lap and bite at his throat. Then sit straight down onto his straining erection. But she’s not one for recklessness, she’s simply a little curious. Simply feeling a little punitive.
At first he moves his fist up incrementally, a small, testing stroke. His eyes stay latched to Hermione. His breaths quicken.
“Is this also in one of your letters?” She drops the volume and pitch of her voice and she’ll pretend that it’s for Malfoy’s benefit, not her own arousal constricting her breath. “Pleasuring yourself while I watch?”
He nods stiffly. Just once.
That wasn’t in his letter at all, and something about the idea that there may be another letter detailing more of his salacious fantasies ignites Hermione’s arousal. There’s a growing wetness in her knickers and her body is flaming in the same manner as when her own orgasm builds. A prickle of sweat threatening the back of her neck.
Who would have thought watching Draco Malfoy fist his swollen cock would be so attractive? Though, she doesn’t care to think about that now. She doesn’t care to think at all.
She only wants to talk.
“What else is in your letters? Perhaps pleasuring yourself while I tell you how I’d like to get on my knees and wrap my mouth around—”
He moans as he draws his fist down his shaft in a leisurely glide, then up, twisting over his cockhead.
“Or perhaps pleasuring yourself while I sit on your face, ride your tongue, come in your mouth.”
Malfoy hisses in a breath through clenched teeth as he pulls his fist up again. Pre-cum weeps from the head, dripping off the edge and down his shaft, and she’s certain she’s never seen anyone so turned on in her life.
And she hasn’t even touched him.
“And then,” she continues, “perhaps you'll finish in my mouth, come hot on my tongue—”
With one final stroke, a long groan breaks free from his mouth. He bucks up into his fist, thrusting his head back and making the chair tilt as he comes in wild spurts. He marks lines along his shirt and the sliver of his abdomen and Hermione hums. It’s a sound simultaneously full of intrigue, satisfaction and disbelief.
He’s still panting when she stands from her lean, her underwear noticeably wet from arousal. “Well.” She smooths the wrinkles out of her skirt. “I’ll let you get cleaned up, shall I?”
She walks towards the door, legs a little shaky—almost as if she’s had her own release—then adds over her shoulder in a sterner tone, “I look forward to receiving your signature tomorrow morning.”
She’s in a strange state as she departs, needing to double back to snatch up her handbag from her desk. Hermione can’t quite believe she started the day cursing her punishment and ended it watching Malfoy come all over himself.
But at least now she’s in possession of bribe-worthy information. Come morning, she’ll have his signature and she’ll return to the Minister’s office.
As she emerges from her Floo and traipses through her flat, she bites her lip harshly. A steadying gesture. She could bask in the glory of her little win, but instead, she makes a bee-line for the vibrator in her bedside drawer.
Artwork by Jittery Wisp! You can find more of their fab artwork on bluesky and tumblr.
