The Politician\'s Wife | By : pir8fancier Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Draco/Hermione Views: 14170 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1 |
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story. |
Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction, written purely for my enjoyment.
The entire month of June was a series of muggy mornings followed by torrential afternoon showers that lasted into the late evening; our umbrellas never quite dried off. At the first sign of really good weather, I couldn't stand wasting a single ray of this precious sunshine. After picking up a picnic lunch from the Chevaliers, a quick walk to a nearby Muggle park saw us eating baguettes lathered with Dijon mustard topped with thick slices of pate, our faces turned toward the sun like desperate flowers.
Like any self-respecting Brit, wizard or no, I'm obsessed with the weather. I was about to grumble about how sick I was of the rain and hopefully this was a sign summer was finally here, when I heard a faint, "Oi!" I knew that voice. Merlin. There was Ron and Harry throwing a footballRon's latest American-inspired passionon the green. Before I could even reach for my wand, Draco had cast a Disillusionment Charm and we and all the picnic accoutrements snapped into near invisibility.
"We should " he began, but I didn't hear the rest.
Because Ron and Harry were laughing and teasing each other. The football went back and forth as they shouted; that insults-masquerading-as-affection thing that men do with each other. As the play progressed, it was obvious that Harry's Seeker skills gave him a most unfair advantage. The ball cut through the air when Harry lobbed it and wobbled sadly when Ron threw it. As is his wont and in keeping with the dynamic that had been the basis of their friendship for thirty years, Ron complained about how it was so unfair, which Harry sloughed off, as is his wont, and then complimented Ron's latest throw or catch. At least Ron could now laugh at himself, making jokes at his own expense; on how the NFLwhatever that waswould leap at the chance to sign him as starting quarterback and how he'd put a good word in for Harry. Despite his being exceptionally good natured as a rule, I realized with horror that I hadn't heard Ron laugh in ages. Immediately, I rationalized this was because of his new position. Another five seconds and I realized that he certainly didn't have a problem with his working horrendous hours and laughing with Harry. In truth, I hadn't heard him laugh in response to me in ages. For one horrible moment, I seriously wondered if Ron had to choose between me or Harry, who would he pick?
A warm hand grabbed my wrist and I was pulled away.
We landed in his flat. Still devoid of furniture, Draco Transfigured one of his ubiquitous handkerchiefs into a sofa. "Sit down," he ordered. "I might not have a real sofa but I have excellent liquor, and the Chevalier's thoughtfully supplied us with a thermos of their superb coffee. Doctored up to the nines, it should suffice."
Not bothering to wait for an answer, Draco went into the kitchen and I heard the comforting sounds of coffee cups rattling as they met their saucers.
I might have joked to myself that Ron and I were nothing more than roommates lately, but that apparently wasn't so much of a joke as a painful reality. A beautiful summer's day and he'd leaped at the chance to spend lunch with his best friend and not his wife. As I had opted to spend it with Draco Malfoy and not my husband.
Thermos, cups, saucers, sugar bowl, creamer, and a bottle of cognac soon came sailing through the air and hovered in front of me in lieu of a coffee table. Draco splashed a generous helping of booze into my cup and then filled it with coffee, one sugar, and the perfect amount of cream. "Drink up," he ordered as he handed me my cup. For himself, he neglected the coffee all together and filled his cup to the brim with cognac. With a grimace, he said, "I have a feeling I'm going to need this." He took a healthy slug. "Now, why the long face? I'm sure they didn't see us. And besides, it was just lunch on a park bench. Nothing to get all"
I flailed both my hands. "He doesn't laugh like that with me," was all I could get out around the sobs that threatened.
He raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Interesting. I was expecting a massive guilt fest. No, I imagine he doesn't. But thenand I don't mean this as an insult; just an observation honed over thirty yearshe's a rather simple fellow."
I exploded. "For fuck sake! Can you please lay off of him for once in your bloody"
"Stop yelling. I can tell this is going to be one of those conversations that whatever I say, I'm going to come out sounding like a complete bastard. Christ, I wish I had a cigarette. Hermione, he's a pint and darts man, with some Quidditch thrown in there for good measure. Deny it. He's certainly not stupid, but he only uses his intelligence when he has to." He paused to give me a chance to challenge him, which I couldn't, because, yes, this was Ron to a tee. "He's basically lazy." Which was also true, but marital solidarity demanded that I stand up for Ron. I opened my mouth to protest and he held up his hand. "Lots of people are. Some days I wish I were; I think I'd be a lot happier. Hermione, he's not very complicated person and you basically invented complicated. Plain and simple. At a certain point " His voice drifted off into a small sigh.
Had Ron and I reached our "point," where it was obvious to everyone that duty and obligation were the mainstays of our marriage?
"Why did you marry Pansy?"
That threw him. He put his cup and saucer down on the floor and patted his jacket pocket for a cigarette. "Damn," he muttered. "What does that have to"
"Because it does." He cocked his head in a silent why. "Please."
I needed to know why an art-loving intellectual married a woman who thought painting was something you did to the walls of the lounge every couple of years, because it might give me some insight into why an easy-going man who sees books as a boring but necessary evil chose to marry an uptight bookworm.
"Merlin's dick, I want, no, I need a cigarette. This must be dire. You're not glaring at me as you usually do in response to my pathetic bid for copious amounts of nicotine." When that didn't get any reaction he frowned. "I'd hoped for a little more time because Bollocks the world to hell!" he shouted. His voice reverberated off the empty walls. "Listen," he said in a near shout, and then caught himself and said in his voice normal, "Listen. Your scorn for my wife is legendary so I'm telling you: don't say a single word against her." He held up a warning finger. "Not one or I will lay you low. She has put up with a tremendous amount from me over the years. When I say she's a saint, I'm not joking. That lock on loyalty you Gryffindors think"
This was said with more than just a trace of his former snide.
"We do not"
He patted his pocket again.
"Fuck. I'd give my right eye for a fag right about now. Yes, you do. Shocking as it may seem, it's a trait Slytherins value as well. My mother, Blaise Zabini, and Pansy were the only three people who stood beside me when I changed sides. That counts for a tremendous amount in my book. The rest of you barely tolerated me, sending me out on suicide missions as you waited for me to display my true colors, not even bothering to contain your surprise when I'd come back alive." This was dead on. We never trusted him from the day he arrived at Grimmauld PlacePansy in towto the day Voldemort died. "I couldn't say this at the time, but I'm saying it now. Fuck you, Hermione. Fuck you and Weasley and Potter."
I had the grace to feel properly embarrassed and blushed with shame. We deserved that, as events proved. Harry might have defeated Voldemort on his own, but Draco's efforts weren't marginal. Even post-war, we'd always assumed he had a secret agenda. Of course, his agenda wasn't secret at all. He had every intention of becoming Minister of Magic.
"You should blush. Thank Merlin someone cared if I came back alive and that someone was Pansy. She loved me with a passion I didn't deserve. I loved her in my fashion and Mother approved. I wanted children. She wanted my children. It seemed enough. How was I to know that marrying your fuck buddy is the height of stupidity? We both married our best friends, obviously." He took a swig of cognac directly from the bottle and offered it to me. I glared at him. He gave me a shrewd look, as if he were calculating emotional and mental Knuts, and then said in a quiet voice, "Look how well that turned out."
"I didn't!" I shouted.
He answered that by muttering, "For fuck's sake yourself" under his breath and took another swig.
"I most certainly did not," I reiterated. "Ron and I"
"Right. Then tell me what in the hell you're on about, getting all weepy about the two of them playing a simple game of catch. I doubt you two have shagged in weeks." He gave me the once over. "Months, in fact. So tell me. What do you and your husband talk about? Hmmm? In those few minutes between climbing in between the sheets and sleep. Work, the goings on of the Weasleys ad nauseam, and Potter and his brood? I think that sums it up. I rarely see the two of you together without at least some member of his family or Potter or Potter's wife or Potter's kids alongside. Even then he treats you like you're another sister."
So angry that it took me a couple of seconds before I could form a coherent sentence, I opened my mouth to deny it. That second gave him the opportunity to say something so horrible and so true that later I'd look back on that moment and know that it was the very second my marriage ended.
"Today. The two of them. Tell me honestly if this isn't all about your husband and his continuing platonic love affair with Harry Potter. Hermione, if Potter and your husband weren't so hopelessly middleclass, they'd have fucked each other by the time they were sixteen and then set up house like poufs who mate for life." He took another swallow of cognac. "Fucking hell, not even the cognac is helping. I envision the two of them in some unspeakably grotty flat with dirty underwear piling up in the corners of every room. Come to think of it, no grotty flat; maybe just a few goes in the locker room. Had they fucked at Hogwarts, at the very least they would have gotten it out of their system. Potter seems very attached to his wife. He actually looks at her like he wants to shag her on occasion."
"He did We were In the beginning " I sputtered, the tears now fighting to get out.
What was the point? It wasn't like that when we got married, or maybe it was and we just didn't see it. The double wedding was something of an ominous precursor, now that I thought of it. I tried to raise my cup, but my hand was shaking so badly that I spilled coffee all over my lap.
"Hermione?" With a few quick strokes of his wand, he cleaned me up. "What in Merlin's name "
I turned away from him to cry those hot awful tears that have no sound; tears that signal the very bottom of grief. A handkerchief found its way into my lap. Eventually I turned around. He was sitting at the far end of the sofa.
"I can't comfort you; if I do I'll start mauling you. I have no idea why you still want to be married to a man who doesn't understand you and who seemingly can't be bothered with you most of the time, but apparently you do."
Six months ago I would have been outraged by that statement. I couldn't face him. I closed my eyes and in a dull voice said, "I can't, Draco. You and me. I'm not made like that."
"I know. I cry myself to sleep over this very fact."
I snapped my eyes open, ready to rip into him, because how dare he be flip about this? And then I blushed with shame again, because the mask was now completely gone, his face drawn, bleak, pale, with every hard year etched deep in the brackets around his mouth.
"I have a horrible feeling that's one of the reasons why I'm madly in love with you. Apparently, I have a heretofore latent masochistic streak. And people automatically assume I'm a sadist. They are so wrong. Circe's dick Merlin, I'm babbling again because since when does Circe have a dick? So, tell me. Do we continue this faux fucking we've been doing for months? We might as well be fucking, you know. We're doing everything but."
He tried not to sound bitter, ending his last sentence with a little lilt in his voice, but I couldn't blame him really. If Ron was guilty of neglecting his boring wife, at least he wasn't guilty of having an affair. Because that's what this was. Now that we'd verbalized it, it shocked me just how far we'd come.
"You're right. We are doing everything but. I'm sorry. We need to " At this something inside me died. Right in the center of my soul. "Stop."
He put his head in his hands for a few minutes and then straightened up. "Well, this should make this next bit a little easier. Or not," he added sotto voce. "First of all, I need to say this because I won't get another chance. You think that I want to fuck you so you'll become the ultimate trophy shag of that craven seducer extraordinaire, Draco Malfoy. Oh, I wish I hadn't just seen confirmation in your eyes. Someday I will tell you how much that hurt me. Someday I hope you'll look at me and I won't see that half-second of disgust with which your gaze always greets me. Anyway, it's not true. I want you because I love you."
"Don't" I cried out.
He scooted over next to me and took my chin into his hand, forcing me to look at him. Had he gone absolutely mad? What did this prove? What would we gain by saying any of this out loud? I put my hand on his mouth to silence him, to stop all these dangerous words, because I could not hear this. I should not hear this.
"Draco, stop. We"
He kissed my palm. I dropped my hand with a sharp breath and a cry.
"No, I won't. Rather cruel of me, but I'm feeling rather cruel. I want you to repeat this conversation over and over to yourself in the middle of the night when you can't sleep. I want it to haunt your dreams, you utterly maddening, entrancing woman." With a gentle back and forth, he swiped the gentle dip below my lip and the tip of my chin. "You have the most beautiful mouth. If it were mine And lest you think it's only your physical charms that have enchanted me, think again. You are the only woman besides my mother who not only doesn't let me bully her or manipulate her, but who also can match me wit for wit. Three weeks into my marriage I realized that Pansy might be my best friend and lover, but no amount of rationalizing on my part would make her my equal. I bedded all those women out of boredom and loneliness. Remember that department head meeting last year? The one to discuss our embargo of Americans imports until they revised their immigration policies?"
Yes, that meeting. Carstairs called the American Minister nothing more than a jumped-up Irish tinker and, apparently, half the Executive Council were Irish or had Irish roots. It was amazing he only got one black eye.
"Hard to forget. How does Carstairs keep his job?" I murmured out of the side of my mouth. We were too close.
He narrowed his eyes at me in a brief rebuke and then his mouth softened from its grim line into a small smile.
"Because woefully misguided softies like you keep writing his White Papers. Do not for one moment think you didn't rewrite his latest. Your name was spelled right. For once. Anyway, that day you were your usual unkempt natty self. You'd spent most of the meeting chewing on the cuticles of your left hand and writing notes with your right, your wand holding up that unruly knot of hair. I said something you took exception to, not exactly a game changer. Par for the course. You opened your mouth to challenge me, and I have to admit I expected the usual Gryffindor claptrap. Instead, sense, wisdom, and brilliance came out." His gave my chin a slight squeeze. "Then I looked twice, and I noticed that in addition to having the most phenomenal brain, your eyes are the color of fine cognac. Then I looked a third time, and Christ, if you don't have the most beautiful mouth. Then I looked a fourth time and realized that you have a rack that would give a eunuch a hard on. And then I found I couldn't look away."
"Please don't" I begged. His grip on my chin tightened.
"Hermione, listen to me. For years, I despaired finding my equal. I'd resigned myself to enduring boring lunch after boring lunch with women who have I.Q's of a teabag so that I'd at least have the novelty of fucking someone I hadn't fucked before. And then even that became unspeakably dull. Do you know what it's like to be in a room and know that you're the smartest person there? Of course, you do. It's very lonely, isn't it?"
"Yes," I whispered.
He kissed me on the forehead and then despite his previous admission, he wrapped me in an embrace, his breath hot against my ear. "I love you. I know you don't believe me, but I do. And aside from the fact you are beautiful and smart and articulate and sexy, most importantly, you're the only person I know who has the guts and determination to stop me from becoming my father."
After uttering that bombshell, he pulled away to stand up. His face tightened into a grimace. "Here's where I ruin any chances I might have ever had of earning your love. Again, I know you won't believe me, but this is going to be like shoving a hot poker into my ear. The Assistant Minister has resigned and I'm replacing him. I wanted to tell you myself. I can't imagine a worse time, but I don't think I'll get a second chance. And, as I said, I wanted to tell you myself."
My cheeks tingled, as if someone had slapped them.
"Downs resigned?"
"Yes, he's lost the confidence of the Minister. I think the official story will be that he's ill, but really he's just terminally sick with incompetence."
"And you're replacing him?"
"Until the next election. Then we will run together. Assuming the Minister's wife doesn't have a relapse. If she does, he'll resign and I'll run on my own."
"I was never even under consideration, was I?"
He leaned over to touch my cheek and I flinched.
"Fuck," he muttered and straightened up to his full height. "Never let it be said that Malfoys don't have brass balls. No, you were not. You are brilliant and brilliant and did I say brilliant, but you are refreshingly incorruptible. You do not play the game, Hermione. You might be the moral compass for the Ministry, but I'm sad to say, moral compasses do not make good Ministers of Magic. They make excellent moral compasses."
I stood up, marched over to the fireplace, scooped up a large handful of powder, and Flooed home. Being the middle of the day, no one was home. Lonely didn't even come close to how I felt.
"Ron, once and for all, I'm not going to Greece with you all. Not this year. That's the end of it. I'm off to have my bath and go to bed." I hung up my coat and made to go up the stairs. We'd just finished having dinner over at Harry and Ginny's. He followed me up the stairs and into our bedroom.
"You're not still narked about not getting that job are you?"
I whirled around. "No, I'm not narked. I'm violently disappointed, depressed, and thoroughly disheartened. And, in addition to that, I'm woefully overworked, as I've had to assume many of Malfoy's responsibilities because we haven't found a suitable replacement for him. If you'd been listening to even half of what I've said over the last three weeks, you'd have gleaned as much. Which is why I'm not going to fucking Greece with you. Read my lips. Enjoy yourself, Ronald."
I stalked out of the bedroom and slammed the door to the bathroom on the tail end of his "Hermi"
And while I was ridiculously overworked, the truth was that I had no desire to endure two weeks of everyone tip-toeing around me, whispering behind my back, "Is she okay yet?" as if this were just a bad cold, insinuating that all I needed a cup of strong tea and a good night's sleep, and I'd be fine in the morning. No one, not even Harry, seemed to understand what this meant to me. Yes, there had been more than enough signs that Malfoy was going to be the inevitable choice. I knew that. Yes, it hurt. But what hurt even more was that, with the exception of Draco Malfoy (Merlin, the irony), no one seemed to understand that this was a nearly fatal blow. Everyone was most solicitous for a week, and after that it was more like, what is her problem? I had an excellent position within the Ministry. I was very well regarded and respected. Why couldn't I just buck up? I imagine most of Ron's responses to people's concerned inquiries were along the lines of: "Yeah, her knickers are still in a twist. That's Hermione. Remember SPEW?"
In the dark of the night, almost welcoming my now habitual insomnia, I lay there going over and over the political dynamics within the office, the cliques, the divisions between the factions, which were cleaved along the old house lines and wasn't that a depressing thought: the power structure of the Ministry was nothing more than Hogwarts thirty years later. True, we didn't have to turn in six feet of parchment on the Goblin wars of the fourteenth century every Friday and there was the added bonus of paycheques, but it was not that much different.
Even worse, I couldn't say that Draco wouldn't do a good job. It wouldn't be the job I would have done, but he had a rapport with the Minister that I could only envy. Related by marriage to Harry Potter was a terrific bonus, plus he had the respect of a few key players. Everyone else was intimidated by him. Playing the game? Over the years he'd manipulated the situation to where he not only played the game, he was Seeker, Beater, Chaser, and Keeper, all in one.
Ron came home early that day. As always, he had forgotten to cast a Sunblock Charm and even though he couldn't have been playing football for more than thirty minutes, his face was the color of a strawberry. His first words to me were, "Bloody hell, Hermione. I'm so sorry."
He tried to comfort me, but I was inconsolable, and Ron is all about cause and effect. When a glass of my favorite wine, a foot rub, and a funny story about the Italian Quidditch team wearing ballet tutus failed to elicit even the tiniest of smiles, he immediately called over Harry and Ginny. They spent several hours insulting Draco, talking around me as if I weren't there. I sat there mute, sipping on my wine. I suppose they thought this would make me feel better, but a laundry list of his faults and Death Eater past made me feel much worse. Because it said to me that a former Death Eater who knew how to play the game could become Minister, and someone like me, who really only had competence and loyalty to recommend her, might as well whistle in the dark.
I brooded all weekend, and when I returned to work on Monday, no one would look me in the eye. The Monet was gone, which saved me the humiliation of demanding that he remove it. My life returned to working lunches and lots of overtime. The invitations to clubby insider get-togethers stopped, and my status returned to that of Ministry swot, the go-to person for all the work no one else wanted to do but must get done.
After a week, Ron stopped pussy footing around me. He did buy me boxes of caramels and more flowers than I had vases for, but the truth was that he didn't know what to say to me. Leaving me surrounded by candy and dozens of roses, he spent what little free time he had with Harry and Ginny, and taking his nieces and nephews along with Romilda's children to summer league Quidditch matches. I'd taken to Apparating to Tunbridge Wells after dinner and exacting out my fury and disappointment in nightly tennis games with my father. By this point he was no match for me. Nearly seventy, he was perfectly happy with lobbing the ball and back forth in a lackluster way for an hour. What I wanted was a nasty, violent game of tennis where I could smack that ball over the net with the hopes of not only gaining points but exacting some sort of retribution. What type of retribution I didn't know, but I often came away from those games more frustrated than when I started.
After Ron's request fell on deaf ears, he enlisted Harry, Ginny, Molly, and Arthur to petition me to come. Harry and Ginny knew better. They asked once and then dropped the subject. But Molly and Arthur kept urging me: "It won't be the same without you." "You're so overworked and tired. Just for a week then?" "The children will be so disappointed." "We're so worried about you." Until the last possible moment, they kept on bombarding me with a barrage of wheedling and guilt-laden requests that I join them. Finally, the Saturday morning everyone was due to leave arrived. It couldn't come fast enough. Standing in the garden of the Burrow to see them off, I avoided meeting any of their eyes. I hugged Harry and Ginny, heard Ron yell, "Oi, we need to get a move on!" and watched them Portkey away, vanishing into a whirl. At which point I screamed at the top of my lungs, "Thank, God!"
As I lay in bed that night, exhausted from six hours in the garden, casting spell after spell trying to bring it to some sort of order after six months of total neglect, I realized that Ron hadn't even said good-bye.
Sod him.
To Be Continued
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