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War Bride Chapter I
When I set out to post this fic, I made the horrifying discovery that all the versions I had were missing the last few paragraphs of the second chapter. ALL my copies and my back up copies. I have no idea how that happened. So, if anyone has a copy of the second chapter of the fic as is was posted to CG, please let me know. I'm going to post the second chapter with a temporary ending, but I'd really like to have the correct one. Any help would be appreciated.

Meanwhile...

War Bride Part I

Disclaimer: Harry Potter (the boy-wizard, as opposed to the Harry Potter, Sr. and Jr. of Troll infamy fame) and the other denizens/artifacts/spells/etc. of the Wizarding and Muggle worlds are the creations of J.K. Rowling. No profit is made from this work, which is intended as a commentary on the original, not as a derivative work. No infringement on the rights of J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Publishing, et al is intended. To the extent permissible by law, I retain the rights to my language/text/story.

Pairing: HG/DM
Rating: NC-17
Genres: Romance, Drama, Humor, Smut
Spoilers: Through HBP

War Bride
Part I - In Which Dumbledore is Guilty of Blatant Mistletoe Abuse
by
Margot Le Faye

More or less HBP compliant. Only, fluffy. Honest.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As Hermione lay gasping in agony, struggling to prepare herself for the next onslaught of excruciating pain that she knew she had no hope of avoiding, she came to the bitter conclusion that no small part of the blame for her circumstances could be laid at the door of one Albus Dumbledore. Well, and perhaps Great Aunt Gertrude. But, no, chiefly it was All Dumbledore’s Fault.

The Hogwarts Headmaster’s stroke of--depending upon one’s view point--sheer genius or barking insanity came just before Christmas of her sixth year. At the time, Ron was dating Lavender Brown, Hermione was hiding her feelings for Ron and was still rumored to be Viktor Krum’s girlfriend when she was, so far as she herself was concerned, merely his pen pal, Harry wasn’t admitting to his crush on Ginny, who was with Dean Thomas at the same time she was fending off (most of) the advances of every male Gryffindor above the fourth year (and a number of non-Gryffindor males, as well) while Pansy Parkinson was floating along in the fond expectation of eventually becoming Madam Draco Malfoy, an expectation shared, somewhat less fondly, by her Intended.

Inconveniently enough for everyone’s love life, the war that was going to tear the Wizarding world apart and which had been slowly gathering steam for nearly sixteen years was now rapidly approaching a crisis, one in which all of these young people would have some part, greater or lesser, to play.

The Sorting Hat had been warning everyone for two years that only house unity could help Hogwarts--and perhaps the entire Wizarding World-- survive the approaching cataclysm. The houses hadn’t really taken that warning to heart, and maintained the same rivalries as ever. Dumbledore decided to try to jump start, as the Muggles would say, their cooperation with a new twist on an old Christmas tradition: he gathered a number of clusters of mistletoe together, and charmed them so that, instead of hanging in one place, they would appear where needed. And, where they were needed--so the headmaster believed--was wherever persons of the opposite sex in rival houses happened to be crossing each other’s paths in sufficiently private circumstances to be conducive to the exchange of a kiss. There was no skiving off: the charm ensured that once the mistletoe appeared above the heads of a particular pair, they couldn’t continue whatever business they had been about without first stopping for a kiss.

The scheme, when announced at dinner a week before the end of term, was greeted with something less than enthusiasm by the student body and, unfortunately for House Unity, was not terribly successful in its execution. Not long after a horrified Millicent Bulstrode and (equally horrified) Seamus Finnegan told their respective houses what they’d had to do when their paths had crossed outside the charms classroom--Seamus was late for one class, Millicent early for another, and all of their classmates either long since gone from the corridor or some moments short of arriving-- the students realized that the only effective way to avoid a similar fate was to travel in packs which, until the charm expired at the end of the holiday, they made sure they did.

Usually.

One one notable occasion, Hermione Granger, absorbed in her research at the library, didn’t realize how late the hour had grown, or that she was the only remaining student, until Madam Pince shooed her out of the Restricted Section with the warning that it was nearly curfew. Hermione hastily gathered up her notes, shoved them into her book bag, and hurried off to the Gryffindor tower. The inconvenient mistletoe charms were the farthest thing from her mind, and she didn’t really pay much attention when, approaching the intersection of two corridors, she heard footsteps approaching the same intersection from around the bend. Not, that is, until she actually arrived at said intersection only to find Draco Malfoy, similarly arrived, in her path. She glared. He sneered. This being par for the course, they were about to move as far to opposite walls as possible in order to pass each other and continue on their respective paths when, to their overwhelming horror, one of the infernal balls of charmed mistletoe announced its arrival with a loud popping sound and a shower of green and red confetti as an invisible bell choir tolled out We Wish you a Merry Christmas.

“Oh, good lord!” Hermione said crossly at the same time as Draco said rather a lot more, rather a lot less politely.

“If that ruddy old fool thinks I’m going to kiss a damned Mudblood,” he snarled belligerently when he was through swearing, “he’s barmy!”

Hermione didn’t turn a hair at the M word, having had nearly six years to get used to Malfoy’s rudeness. And, as she was every bit as put out over the situation as he was, she didn’t hold his show of temper against him.

Much.

“As if I’d let you anywhere near me,” she returned acidly, while the mistletoe charm hovering above them threw out another shower of confetti, and launched into the second verse of the carol it was merrily ringing out. “But, I haven’t figured out a countercharm, so unless you lot in Slytherin have managed to come up with one, we’re going to be stuck here until Filch does his rounds.”

“Filch? Bloody hell!” Draco growled, then remembered a number of expletives he’d forgotten to use on the first go-round and proceeded to work his way through all of them. As his language turned the air around them blue--a charm that normally allowed professors to determine which students in a crowded area were using inappropriate language-- Hermione sighed, made an attempt to step around him to confirm that the charm wouldn’t let her take a step around him, then settled herself on the floor beside her bookbag, opened it up and began to extract the notes and texts she had only just dumped into it.

“Oi, Granger, what the hell are you doing?” Draco left off blistering the air to ask her.

“I take it we’re agreed that the detentions and loss of house points we’re in for when we’re caught here after curfew, and refusing to cooperate with the headmaster’s mistletoe plan, are worth it to avoid having to kiss?” she said absently, brushing yet another dusting of confetti off her notes. The mistletoe charm moved on to Here We Come A Wassailing

“Too right!” Draco snarled.

“Then, I suggest you make yourself comfortable until Filch comes along. Which ought to be in about another three hours.”

“Three? Hours?” Draco said tightly.

“Probably,” Hermione said, still looking at her notes rather than at the outraged Slytherin wizard currently towering above her. “He starts his rounds at the other end of the castle, and several floors above where we are now. So, three hours at least for him to get around to us.”

“Three hours at least?” Draco fairly roared, his horror evident.

“Yes, well, he likes to be thorough, does our Mr. Filch,” Hermione said unsympathetically as she extracted a self-inking quill from her bag. “No simple, quick stroll down the corridor for him. He’ll try every door and check every room, just to make sure that no student is getting away with anything.” She laughed ruefully. “He’ll probably think that finding two sixth year prefects out of bed past curfew is the best Christmas present he’s ever had.”

“Granger,” Draco said tightly. “Stand up.”

Hermione frowned up at him as the mistletoe charm launched into a rousing version of Angels We Have Heard On High

“What are you on about?” she asked.

“I said, stand up,” Draco repeated angrily.

“Why on earth...?” Her eyes widened as she caught on. Draco smiled malevolently.

“Yes. Brightest witch in your year, but it takes you forever to suss out the simple things. Stand up. I don’t much fancy cooling my heels in this godforsaken corridor for the next three hours when I’ve got better things to do. So, stand up, kiss me and let’s get the hell out of here.”

She blinked at him for a moment, then turned back to her notes.

“No,” she said simply, effectively leaving him gobsmacked.

“No?” he stuttered. “No? What the ruddy hell do you mean, no?”

“I mean, no I will not stand up and kiss you. No I do not regard kissing you as the lesser of two evils when faced with three hours of sitting in a deserted corridor, and two months of detention. Also, no I would rather face a horde of stampeding blast-end skrewts without my wand than let your lips anywhere near mine, not to mention no this is--”

It was at that point that Draco lost all patience and resorted to the simple expedient of setting his hands on Granger, dragging her to her feet. She yelped in shock as her notes, quill and parchment went flying, and she tried to push him away. For one moment, as she braced her hands hard against his shoulders to keep him at arm’s length, the two of them simply glared at each other--silver eyes flashing, golden brown sparking--with five and half-year’s worth of loathing, anger and animosity. The next, Draco took brutal advantage of his greater strength and hauled Hermione forcefully into a close embrace, his mouth descending upon hers.

To do him justice, Draco intended the kiss to be the merest peck, the briefest brush of his pure lips against her muddy mouth. In other words, the bare minimum of contact needed to satisfy the charm.

Then he tasted her.

And as the charm merrily pealed out Joy to the World amidst yet another shower of confetti, five and a half year’s worth of loathing, anger and animosity went right out the window. Or, more accurately, burned to ashes in a fire brighter than that fed by any yule log ever burned in a Hogwarts’ hearth.

She didn’t taste remotely of mud or dirt or anything inferior, at all. Quite the opposite. She tasted like honeyed mead, Madam Rosemerta’s best, sweet and intoxicating. As Hermione, with a whimper, suddenly began to return the kiss, a lot of impressions hit Draco at once. First, that her lips were impossibly soft, her body impossibly pliant in his arms. He also came to the shocking, if delightful, realization that said pliant body was not done justice by the school robes she was wearing. The school robes gave no hint of the glorious curves of her figure, but, Merlin, close as he was holding her, he could certainly feel them--could feel every delectable, well-rounded, firm inch.

Hermione’s arms slid from his shoulders around his neck, and he was bending her over his arm as the mistletoe charm, having completed its mission, gave a final burst of confetti then popped out of existence, once more. Neither of them particularly noticed.

For her part, Hermione was well past the point of coherent thought, and had been since the moment Draco’s mouth had claimed hers in a kiss totally unlike any she had received before. Not as reverent as Viktor’s. Not as enthusiastic and sloppy as Ron’s. Draco’s kiss was a very deliberate, skilled, masterful affair executed with but one aim: to reduce the lucky witch receiving it to a pliable puddle of hormonal goo. An aim in which he was clearly succeeding. There was nothing for her but the incredible, spicy taste of him, his tongue quickly demanding, and gaining, entrance to the tender cavern of her mouth. The body pressed against hers was firm and muscled from years of Quidditch, and the way he was bending her over his arm...she didn’t think that people kissed like that unless they were posing for the cover of a Muggle romance novel. A really bad Muggle romance novel. The pages of which, she belatedly realized--when the sheer need for oxygen finally forced Draco to break their kiss long enough to gasp in a much needed breath--she was in danger of getting stuck in. Oxygenation attended to, Draco appeared ready to pick up where they’d left off, and Hermione had half a mind to let him, when she remembered exactly who it was she was about to snog senseless without the excuse of being forced to it by the blasted charm.

“Dr...Draco?” she stuttered. Malfoy blinked, shook his head as if to clear it. He stared down at her, and the same realization seemed to hit him: he’d been about to fraternize, quite heavily, with the enemy. His expression closed in on itself. He didn’t sneer at her or say any of the low, disgusting things she might have expected. He merely stepped away from her, gave her one final, unreadable glance, and headed off to the Slytherin dungeon. Hermione watched him leave, then shook her own head, muttered a spell to set her scattered belongings back into her bag, and hurried off to her own house.

Hermione told herself the incident was nothing but a wild aberration, brought on by the charm. Perhaps Dumbledore had designed it so that the more one resisted the charm’s impetus to kiss, the more heated that kiss, when finally exchanged, would prove to be. Yes, that was a nice, tidy explanation that would let her put the whole thing out of her mind.

Her success in keeping the whole thing out of her mind the next day was underwhelming. At breakfast, she found her gaze drawn to the Slytherin table. She was disconcerted when Draco turned from a conversation he was having with Zabini to lock eyes with her. It was even more disconcerting when he didn’t smirk, snarl, snort or do any of the other obnoxious things he might normally have done, simply held her gaze for one very long moment, then turned away. Something similar happened in Potions. And, again in Arithmancy. And even when she was in classes they did not share, she found memories of what had happened beneath that blasted mistletoe charm sneaking their way back into her mind, no matter how hard she tried to keep her thoughts on her lessons. She was plagued with inconvenient memories the entire day. Then that evening, when Hermione was on her way back to Gryffindor tower from a prefect’s meeting, a hand clapped over her mouth, another around her waist, and she was dragged into an empty classroom.

“Malfoy!” she screeched when she realized the identity of her assailant. “What do you thi--” The sentence was doomed to remain unfinished, as Draco chose that moment to kiss her, and she responded by wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him back. As before, neither one of them was at all inclined to break the kiss until forced to do so by lack of oxygen. Unlike the preceding evening, they carried on with snogging as soon as the needed breaths had been taken. Said snogging proceeded with a rapidity neither party would have credited, and after about fifteen minutes, Hermione found herself stretched out on the floor, Draco Malfoy stretched over her, his robes askew, hers rucked up about her waist, his hands coming perilously close to the edge of her knickers. With Herculean effort, Hermione pulled herself out of the kiss, Draco responding by availing himself of the nearest target of opportunity and enthusiastically kissing, nibbling and sucking on her neck.

“Malfoy!” she breathed, rather than screeched, this time. “St-stop!”

It took him a moment or two to realize she wasn’t responding with quite the enthusiasm she had before (not to say she wasn’t responding at all, for she couldn’t quite resist running her hands over those quidditch-broadened shoulders, or sliding the sole of her foot down his toned leg, or wriggling her hips, just a bit, in an entirely unconscious manner). Eventually, Draco raised up, and peered down at her intently.

“Hermione?” he questioned. Her stomach did something peculiar when she heard the way he said her name, so softly, tentatively, the name he’d never used before. Hermione almost pulled his head back down to snog him senseless, again, when she remembered why she had stopped snogging him in the first place. She took a deep breath and said what had to be said.

“I really don’t fancy losing my virginity on the floor of a classroom with a boy who’s never said two polite words to me in five and a half years,” she said with as much dignity as their current, rather intimate, position afforded. Draco stared down at her owlishly, then gave a bark of laughter and rolled away.

“Bloody hell!” he groaned. “We really were going to...to...well. We really were going to, weren’t we?”

Hermione sat up, shakily, and began to smooth down her robes. “It’s got to be something to do with that blasted mistletoe charm,” she said.

“Do you really think so?” he surprised her by saying.

“What else could it be?” she said, turning to look down at him, her gaze quizzical. “You don’t like me, remember? Muggle-born? Inferior blood? Beneath you?”

Draco sat up, smiling wickedly. “Oh, definitely, beneath me, love. As often as possible.”

“Git,” she said succinctly, trying to get to her feet. Draco stopped her by the simple expedient of snagging her wrist and dragging her down, into his lap.

“I don’t think it’s the charm,” he told her, holding her still despite her struggles. “Well, other than the fact that without it, I’d never have kissed you in the first place. I think it’s the simple fact that you taste divine, that I can tell the body under those robes is utterly delectable, and that, frankly, while I don’t fancy taking your virginity in something other than a proper bed, I very much fancy you, and the idea of taking you is damned appealing.”

“Oh!” Hermione flushed, and renewed her struggles. “Of all the arrogant, beastly--” at this point, Draco decided to shut her up by kissing her again. This time, though, she was determined to resist him, and successfully fought him off. For all of one point five seconds. After which she was enthusiastically wrapping her arms around his neck and shifting in his lap until she could get comfortable. Straddling him so that a certain soft, vulnerable portion of her anatomy was rubbing up against a certain hard, demanding portion of his, even with several layers of robes and undergarments between them, proved to be a very comfortable position indeed.

Hermione managed to retain her virginity, but she did have the first orgasm of her life on the floor of a classroom with a boy who’d never said two polite words to her in five and a half years. Since he had one a few seconds later, that was all right. They were even.