Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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.

Chapter List
- 4
- 5
- 6
Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction, written purely for my enjoyment.

He followed suit and soaked my face with his champagne. At which point, Mrs. Chevalier walked in bearing a tray of desserts. She took one look at our bedraggled hair and wet faces, and beamed at us. "L'amour," she said with a fond sigh and left the dessert tray on the desk. "I will leave you two love birds alone," she whispered, her French accent extremely pronounced. She exited the room humming La Vie en Rose.

It was too much. Both of us began laughing like mad. I laughed so hard my sides ached for the rest of the afternoon. I couldn't remember the last time I'd laughed with such complete abandonment.

"We… We'll have to wait until… Oh, Merlin, Granger, you do look a sight," he chortled. "Champagne becomes you. Oh, you're soaking."

I couldn't stop giggling. He looked ridiculous. That normally hair-perfect coif of his lay in droopy strands against his forehead and ears, the ends dripping on the shoulders of his Savile Row jacket, his cheeks shiny from champagne and, given how much he was guffawing, tears of laughter. I forgave him for once. If I looked as half as wet… It was so ridiculous. Only the French would interpret champagne glasses at five paces as an act of foreplay.

"Here." He began to daub my face with his napkin. "We shall cast a Drying Charm after we've left. But for now, close your eyes," he ordered.

I might have been a child he was so gentle. Barely touching the linen to my eyes, he mopped my forehead, my cheeks, and, finally, grabbed my chin and gave it a little shake. "Minx," he muttered.

When he'd done a quick, cursory swipe of his own face, he turned toward me. "What? I know I don't have egg on my face."

I shook my head. "Nothing, Malfoy. We should go." I made to stand up.

"Granger," he said and grabbed my wrist. "We're on about Jenkins, aren't we?"

I pulled away and got up from the table. "Yes, you worthless sod, we are. Hide that smirk, or I will change my mind."

The next four weeks were completely punishing. We got the green light from the Minister to conduct our investigation, but we had to sandwich it in between our other duties, which meant that I was working a seventy-five-hour week and Malfoy a thirty-hour week. And the bastard had the nerve to complain about that.

"These hours are getting ridiculous," he pouted.

Once a week, on Friday afternoons at three, we'd rendezvous at his horrible flat for a late two-hour lunch and compare notes. A cursory exploration of his kitchen at our first meeting was a study in debauchery. The kitchen cabinets yielded acres of glassware and booze, but nary a plate or a bowl. He didn't even have a teapot. If I were an alcoholic, I'd be in ecstasy. I could have a martini, scotch, cognac, champagne, or, dear god, absinthe. In the appropriate glass. His refrigerator was completely stocked. With white wine, champagne, vodka, gin, and vermouth. Actual food was limited to five jars of olives. For the martinis. The sum total of his kitchen drawers yielded a pate knife, an oyster shucker, seven corkscrews, and one spoon.

I held up the spoon. "And pray what is this for? Spoon feeding yourself alcohol? I don't even want to know what perverse and disgusting thing you must do with that oyster shucker."

He pasted on that martyred expression I've never seen him use with anyone but me.

"Why do you always think the worst of me? I use the spoon for dolloping caviar on toasts, and the oyster shucker, believe it or not, I use for shucking oysters. I've gotten quite adept at wielding that thing." He picked it up, imitated a vicious twist, and threw it back in the drawer. "Are you partial to oysters, Granger? I'm rather fond of them."

I ignored the question, even though there is really nothing nicer than fresh oysters with a splash of Worcestershire sauce. "Why don't you just use magic?"

"Oh, I entertain the occasional Muggle, so one can't exactly whip out one's wand no matter how inconvenient."

"Into each life, a little rain must fall. Now that you've ploughed your way through the tarts at the Ministry, you're reduced to seducing Muggle shop girls?"

"Something like that. Now what do you fancy?" He leaned into the refrigerator, and when he turned around to face me, he had a bottle of Boodles in one hand and a bottle of Chopin in the other.

"A vodka or gin martini? I'm a gin man myself, but you strike me as the sort of woman who prefers vodka. A small flaw in your otherwise perfect personality. Bugger, we have to add the unfortunate Weasley and Potter effect, so lord knows what in the hell you drink. Those two invented execrable taste. Yesterday's batch of just distilled Firewhiskey is today's chaser."

He stopped talking and gave a noticeable shudder. "I just had a horrible thought. You're not one of those misguided wretches who prefer their booze doctored to the nines? Please tell me you're not of the Long Island Iced Tea persuasion? That I couldn't possibly endure. It would, I'm afraid, completely put the kibosh on this overriding passion I'm developing for you. Stop it in its tracks."

Despite the bottle he was holding, he fluttered his eyelids closed, manufactured an exaggerated pout, and brought his hand up to his head as if to ward off the vapours. Would that he had broken his nose with that bottle of gin indulging in these immature theatrics. When I didn't say anything he opened one eye.

I looked at him.

He dropped the act and grimaced. "How am I going to convince you of my love for you if you refuse to take me seriously? You have that Malfoy-is-a-ridiculous-twit-and-if-I-could-get-away-without-twenty-years-in-Azbakan-I'd-kill-him-this-instant look. The one that says you are not amused at all."

I knew him well enough to know that he was about to go on some verbal tear. The man was a motor mouth. How in the hell did Pansy put up with this night and day?

"Do please shut up," I demanded, the "please" only a matter of habit.

"Can't." His mouth twitched up in an insincere smile. "You make me ridiculously nervous, especially when you're shooting these pointed, disapproving visual daggers my way. Anyway, now that I have your attention, I've catalogued them, you know. There are no less than ten. The worst being the deep disgust on your face when you are two seconds away from vilifying me as Death Eater scum; the more benign one being when you think I'm being annoying and childish, but you still are amused. This is somewhere in the middle. You are not amused, but you are not mortally offended. All in all, not bad as far as your looks go, but still rather ego deflating." He returned the bottles to the refrigerator and slammed the door shut with a dramatic flourish and a sigh, and leaned back. "What does amuse you, Granger? Inquiring minds want to know."

He brushed back an errant hair from my forehead, and then stood there, lolling against the refrigerator in his impeccable suit with nothing out of place; ridiculing me with these unbearably offensive references to this alleged passion for me, when in reality, we both knew he scorned my every molecule. I wanted to smack him. No one on the face of this planet had the ability to enrage me as much as this man. And it was with no great pride that my forty-one-year-old self was itching to regress to my thirteen-year-old self and haul off and belt him.

I took a deep breath.

"I would find lunch quite amusing right about now, since I missed elevenses interviewing that pervert Carstairs, who apparently has nothing intelligent thing to say on the subject of Jenkins, but still managed to take forty minutes of my precious time while indulging his kink for dowdy brunettes. I wish I had a Galleon for every time he pawed my knee. My bank account would rival yours. Ergo, I have had nothing to eat since six this morning, and I come here to find that the only edible items in your refrigerator are martini olives. Therefore—"

The doorbell rang.

"Ah," was all he said, and with a frown, he whipped around me to the intercom near the front door. In rapid French he bade whoever had rung the doorbell to come up. Five minutes later, the dining room table was set for two, with a complete hot meal courtesy of the Chevaliers, right down to the pats of butter for the sliced baguette and oversized spoons for the French onion soup. The slip of a fiver into a palm, an enthusiastic "Merci, Monsieur," to Malfoy, and the waiter was gone. Lunch was served.

Malfoy held out my chair and I sat down. We ate in silence.

It wasn't until he poured me a cup of coffee from a thermos that he said, in a quiet voice, "Surely, I'm not that much of a troll that you'd think I'd serve you gin for lunch? It was a joke. Why are you so angry at me?"

"I know it was a joke, and I don't know," I snapped, stirring sugar into my coffee with such force that if my cup had shattered. I wouldn't have been surprised.
He filled his own cup, took it black, I noticed, and sat back in his chair, apparently waiting for some explanation.

"I was working until midnight last night trying to finish up the material for our meeting today. By the time I got home, I missed my window and tossed and turned all night. I've had about three seconds of sleep total. My secretary called in sick, and I had to finish off the meeting notes for that department head meeting we had last week. Billingsly sent me six owls in the space of thirty minutes, asking me where they were—"

"You should have told him to fuck off. They aren't due for review to the other department heads until Monday. He only did that because he was the secretary for the last meeting and his were three days late."

"I know that, Malfoy, but you know how I am. And I had to prepare the agenda for the Magical Quality Assurance Training Retreat next month, and it's not like I could put that off, considering the Minister personally requested that I organize it. And then to cap an utterly shit morning, that total waste of space Carstairs slobbered all over me, trying to sneak peeks at my breasts, and Ron is leaving for two weeks tomorrow for some international Auror boondoggle in New York that he and Harry are attending, and I promised him we'd have dinner with his parents tonight, and I don't know how I'm going to get out of the office by six what with…"

I stopped talking—just stopped—because, for one thing, even I knew I was sounding not a little manic, and for another, Malfoy was stroking my head in the most unbelievably gentle fashion. I found myself leaning into it and trying desperately not to cry.

What I couldn't, and wouldn't, tell Malfoy was that when I got in last night, Ron was already asleep. Naturally, why would he be awake—it was nearly 12:30. Like the proper wife I was, I had Firecalled him earlier and told him I'd be late. He wasn't at home, but at Harry's house, their youngest on his knee. Ginny's "We'll feed him, Hermione," and his, "Thanks, Gin. All set, yeah? Don't be real late," settled the matter.

Nevertheless, he would be none too pleased to see how late I actually was. Over the years, I'd perfected the art of slipping into bed without making a single sound. Unfortunately, despite being so tired even my fingernails were yawning, I lay there with my fists clenched. The adrenaline was now pumping through me, my internal clock thinking that since I'd so cavalierly ignored its overt hints an hour ago, I must not want to sleep. I tossed and turned in frustration as my mind went spinning in six different directions, so much so that I woke Ron up.

"Bloody hell, Hermione, would you take some Dreamless Sleep? You've turned over sixteen times in the past five minutes. I counted."

"Sorry, sorry," I apologised. "Just this Jenkins business has me all wound up. You all set to head off on Saturday?" I asked in an attempt to deflect the inevitable confrontation over the hours I was working.

"Yeah, can't wait." He added, as if I didn't know this, "I love the States."

Even though half asleep, he couldn't contain his excitement. If Fred hadn't died in the war, Ron would have been after me to emigrate, assuming he could get Harry and Ginny to join us there. Many wizards did emigrate after the war. In the months following the final battle, it was impossible to go anywhere and not confront the spectre of those who had died. Plus, the informal tenor of the United States suited Ron: the emphasis on sports, the more casual approach to dress, the easy come and go of American culture. I would have hated it, of course; I don't have any time for the American wizarding community. Their complete lack of help during the last war with Voldemort left me with an admittedly unreasonable scorn of all things American. But I didn't have to worry about it. It took Molly a good ten years to come to terms with Fred's death, and not even Ron, who can be as obtuse as they come, would have threatened her hard fought mental equilibrium by moving four thousand miles away, Portkey or Floo network notwithstanding.

I lay there wondering if half a dose of Dreamless Sleep would put me out but not make me groggy in the morning when Ron said in a quiet voice, "Hermione, why haven't you asked me about Jenkins?"

Although this was top secret, I had to justify why I was working such hellish hours, and told Ron the bare minimum, about how the Minister had asked Malfoy and me to conduct an investigation of Jenkins. That rumours had been floating around regarding him being a racist clod—completely inappropriate for any head of department and doubly so for a department that was international in nature—and our task was to suss out whether these were just rumours or actual facts. I had not mentioned lunch at Chevaliers, because I honestly didn't think I could explain why we were eating in a Muggle restaurant without going into the whole wearing French couture/marriage farce, nor the baptism by champagne.

"You?"

The word was out of my mouth before I could stop myself. Because of course I should have talked to Ron. Ron, who'd run the Ministry's Quidditch league for the last fifteen years. Who met regularly with Jenkins to chat about horribly boring sports miscellany that I could care less about, but seemed to be Ron's real love. He'd only become an Auror because he truly couldn't envision not being by Harry's side. Ever. He was a competent enough Auror, not first-rate by long shot, and he'd be the first to admit it. But running the Ministry Quidditch league? That tendency to dig his heels in, to get bent out of shape, didn't exist when he put on his league captain's hat. I asked him once if he'd ever considered leaving the Ministry, try for some low-level job in management for the Cannons, and work his way up. His response was a curt, "No, as long as Harry needs me, I'll stay where I am, thank you."

Twenty-two years later, he was still by Harry's side, but I wondered how happy he was.

"I see that git all the time, you know," he ground out, clearly furious at me, and I didn't blame him. When had I stopped taking him seriously, ignoring him, not even considering him? He made to turn over.

"Please." I placed an arm on his shoulder to stop him from turning over. "Ron, have you heard him make comments about…" I paused,"… Mudbloods?"

He resisted for a minute but gave in. I could tell he was still angry. His shoulder muscles remained taut under my hand, but his voice sounded normal enough.

"Yeah, but not when he thought I was around. Be bloody stupid, wouldn't he, with my wife and best friend being born to Muggles. He's got a thing about it, no mistake, but he's real smart. He only shoots his mouth off in front of those who he thinks agree with him. Like Malfoy. Who does agree with him, but knows that's not the way the wind blows these days, what with Harry the head of the Auror Division and you so high up in the Ministry. So he keeps his aristocratic trap shut. You know, the only reason that devious bastard Malfoy is angling to boot Jenkins out is because he's so popular. Jenkins is always ready to buy a few rounds. Really generous with the Galleons, he is. That goes a long way with lots of the lads, so they ignore the odd comment. And he watches himself around Harry. Never slips up. But around the others and in the locker room?"

I could feel Ron shrug.

"Should be a piece of cake," Ron continued. "He hates the French and the Japanese, too, but I doubt that's going to get him sacked. Plus, I might think he's some sort of pillock on a personal level, but he's real good at what he does. The Ministry will need to replace him with someone who knows the sport and the teams, or you're going to have a right cock-up on your hands when you give him the boot."

I was wondering how I could take this further when he brought a hand up to my cheek.

"Hermione, Malfoy sees himself as Minister one day. He's only doing this to get rid of the competition. You'll probably be next."

Oh dear, sweet Ron. Watching out for me. I gave his hand a kiss, which was entirely too chaste, but I was so exhausted I didn't want him to get other ideas.

"Yes, I know," I admitted. "But he's got me between a rock and a hard spot. Jenkins needs to be booted out, and I can't do it without him."

"Fucking Malfoy," he muttered. "Anyway, you should interview Blandings and Mason over in Magical Games and Sports. They've worked with him for years and those two had Muggle grandmothers. Not that that bastard Jenkins knows that."

I wasn't sure whether I was insulted or relieved when he didn't follow up that kiss with anything else but a yawn.

"Thanks, Ron. I will. Now tell me again about your itinerary. New York first, then on to Chicago, then California?"

I let him talk non-stop for the next twenty minutes about his trip, and by the end he wasn't angry anymore, just sleepy. He'd scooted into the curve of my arm, snuggling up next to me, and rattled off all the cities they were to visit, which I already knew verbatim. He dropped off in mid-sentence about the beaches in California and what was that marvellous sunscreen charm?

When I could hear his gentle snores and made my usual apology, I snuggled up against his back to hold him and tried not to cry, because I was so tired and I was so ashamed at myself for treating him like some house-elf.

None of which was Malfoy's business, so all I said was, "I'm exhausted. Sorry," and pulled my head away from his hand. He immediately dropped it to pick up his coffee cup. "This was a lovely lunch, thank you. And not that it's germane, but I absolutely loathe this flat."

For some odd reason that got a hearty laugh.

"I'll change it. I love being rich. Something resolutely English with a hint of French, I'd wager. Hmmm?" he asked and then didn't bother to wait for my reply. "As wonderful as the lunch has been, having you glare at me over your soup for the last thirty minutes, we now must move on to the more mundane, and, alas, more pertinent part of the afternoon. We need to finish by five so let's get a move on. I have tickets to the opera this evening, and you have to go home and take a nap before your dinner at the Weasley compound. Now, here's what I've discovered in the past week." He unfurled a four-foot length of parchment.

I blinked and then blinked again.

"Not bothering to hide your shock, I see. Do you think I do nothing all day? Don't bother to answer that because we both know you think that is exactly what I do all day. Nothing. I'm sure your notes will be twice as long as mine, though not as succinct, because knowing you, you're doing your level best to be fair about all this. And it would be pointless to point out that it is not about fairness; it is about nailing that bastard's hide to the wall. But I wouldn't expect anything less from you. One thing before I forget. You must interview Blandings and Mason. They both have Muggle grandmothers. They won't give me the time of day; Blandings lost a brother in the war and Mason despises me on principle, but they will talk to you, no doubt. More coffee?"

To Be Continued
- 4
- 5
- 6
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

The Politician\'s Wife