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He stood in the bracken, mud clinging to his calf, mutiny slashed across his pointed features. Draco Malfoy had absolutely had it with so-called ‘field work.’ For one thing, it wasn’t a field. This was a bloody jungle. And the sleeping accommodations? A hammock. Camping. Grotesque. The final straw had come in the form of “food.” Miserable little packages of some Muggle thing, Granger called MREs. Meals Ready-to-Eat…Massively Repellent Edibles, more like.
He’d registered at least a hundred complaints with his colleague (superior? He wasn’t fussed about hierarchy). But no amount of “Good god, Granger”s had moved her.
She was a stubborn ox. He wouldn’t be sorry if she stepped into quicksand and choked to death on damp soil.
“That’s only in stories, Malfoy,” she threw back over her shoulder.
He had, of course, been narrating all of this aloud.
“If—and that’s a big if—we manage to step into quicksand, I’ll just roll on my back and float my way out.”
“Assuming it isn’t completely goopy and bogs you down.” He stomped along in her wake while she slashed at ferns and vines.
A breathy laugh escaped her. “I knew I shouldn’t have shown you cartoons.”
She’d given him a crash course in animated film when they were at a conference once. That was a more agreeable situation. Comfortable beds, lobster bisque, a hotel room where the humidity was normal, unlike this ghastly sauna they were creeping around in.
Granger was slightly ahead of him, leading the charge through the verge. Her leg perched on a fallen log while she worked at a particularly dense bit of foliage. Water boots hugged her feet. “Standard issue,” she’d said. Same with the wetsuits and wand holsters they now wore.
‘Standard issue’ hugged her as she reached up, murmuring spells, filling the air with the tang of magic. Her hand moved gracefully with a rhythm like she was conducting a symphony, not cutting plants and untangling wards.
“There’s a beetle on your leg again,” he murmured, staring unabashedly.
She bent straight over. “Argh! Another?” Her hand swept along that taut muscle. He said nothing. Just watched.
“Bloody useless repelling charms,” she muttered, sweeping her hand across her calf and shifting her hips a bit as she did.
Draco swallowed. The heat must be getting to him. He could feel his cheeks flushing.
“Granger, be reasonable,” he implored. “I’m sweaty. I’m damp everywhere. Even places that shouldn’t be this damp! I am the swamp.”
“Get a grip, Malfoy.” She shoved her sweat-damp hair from her forehead and fixed the full force of her exasperation on him. “You want to let these awful shits have a chimaera? Really?” Her chest rose and fell with hard breaths. Humidity frizzed her curls into a halo. Light caught in them, casting her in gold.
A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead and collected at the top of his lip. He’d never felt more disgusting. And there she was, glowing and righteous, fists planted on those round hips, brow creased just so, and…
“Of course I don’t want that,” he asserted with as much force as he could muster. “I just don’t think I’m equipped for this particular location…genetically.” He let the word settle. Yes, that’s right, Hermione, I do read the reports you set on my desk. I’ve learned a thing or two.
A smirk twitched the corner of her lips. “It’s a miracle you’ve managed this far.”
“I think I’ve lost a stone just sweating.”
“Sounds about right.”
“I always knew being assigned to your offices was an attempt to kill me.”
Her lips twisted in a knowing smile, delight twinkling in her eyes. “Actually, Draco, I requested you.”
She turned away to press ahead before the language centres of his brain had a chance to kick back on.
Granger? Requested him?
Three years ago, the Ministry had dumped him unceremoniously into the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. He knew why they did it: assigned him to his lowest-scoring subject from school so he’d be chained to a miserable desk job and flounder through a mandatory service period. Well, the joke was on them. Turned out he was pretty good at reading magical patterns, noticing anomalies in data, and spotting inconsistencies in creature behaviour. Less than a year in, he’d overheard one of the senior magizoologists explaining to someone in the breakroom, “He doesn’t like them, but he understands the way they warp magic. Like he’s always expecting something to bite him.”
Admittedly, not the most flattering, but effective. He was sought out more and more for his expertise. Sought out at his comfortable, clean desk, that is.
It wasn’t until being assigned to Granger’s offices that he’d found himself in these ghastly situations in the mud. Well, not assigned: requested. Something mortifying and squiggly was going on in his chest.
He waved his wand again, trying to focus on the work he had been requested to do. There was a weft and weave to magic in a place like this. It was stitched into the living fabric of the surroundings. For a chimaera, trafficked here from its native Greek wilds, the magic didn’t match. If one looked closely enough, there was a subtle ripple in it. A slight trace was left as the creature moved through the place. There! Right there, a subtle flexion. If he could just…
“Shitting fuck!”
The ground had given way. He was knee deep in it.
“Granger, you—” Bollocks, where was she? “Ascendio,” he tried. He rose a little, but the mud pulled him back down. He cast again—still not enough.
He was going to die like a bloody cartoon.
“Help! Where the hell are you, you shiting little pixie!” He sank further in. “Oh fuck, oh sweet Merlin, this can’t be how I go.” He scrabbled for a root, a branch, anything! Damp, slippy moss was all he kept finding. She must have cut away all the vines. His wand thrashed uselessly. Hip deep—waist deep—perilously deep.
“HER-MI-O-NE!”
“If you stop flailing like a sweaty octopus, you might be able to catch hold of something, you know?” Granger leaned against a tree to his side, wand in hand and a wide grin across her face.
A feverish flush crept up his cheeks. “I’m not flailing. I was testing my options.” She frowned a little as her eyes flitted over the mud-patch he was in. “Don’t just stand there,” he gritted, slipping further down. “This is the gloppy stuff!”
“Yes, I can see that.” She pushed herself off the tree. “Let me just…”
He froze, eyes fixed on her. Hair clung to her neck and cheeks. She lifted her wand and held her other hand aloft as well. For a moment, her body tensed in concentration, then her wand wrist spun in a tight spiral, and he felt the mud simultaneously liquifying more as his body rose. Magic seemed to sing around her, bending the warp of the jungle to her whim. She was bloody magnificent.
He rose with a squelching, sucking sound.
“Bugger, there went the boots,” he said.
She dropped him on a root near the lagoon behind him—likely the reason for all that muck. Utterly humiliating. He’d schedule his own funeral when they got back to London.
Granger stepped in, scanning him—checking for injuries, probably. A sly grin adorned her.
“Think this is all funny, do you?” He sniffed.
She shrugged. “You don’t look half bad painted in mud like this.” Her eyes rose to meet his, colour blooming on her cheeks
She stepped closer. Her wand slipped into its holster. Her pupils were blown wide.
Wait, what was happening?
“I like that you need saving sometimes,” she purred.
“I’m not some pathetic—” Her chest brushed his, cutting him off from words and thoughts.
“Never said you were.” She scanned his face. “And anyway, I’m capable enough for both of us.”
She was so close. He holstered his wand. His fingers flexed over her hip. Maybe if he just…
“Draco,” she whispered, “I know there haven’t been any beetles.”
Ah. Well, in for a knut, in for a galleon.
“Hermione, I—”
A great roar ripped through the green. Hermione’s head whipped back toward the sound. At the same moment, Draco, thoroughly done with fieldwork, pulled her in as he stepped backwards—straight into nothing.
They crashed into the water with all the grace of a floundering fish and surfaced, spluttering—his hands, somehow, still fixed to her hips.
“Sorry! I just—you heard it—” But Hermione didn’t look angry. Not at all.
Another roar, this time closer.
“Under,” she commanded. He filled his lungs and obeyed.
The water was so clear, shimmering turquoise and green like emeralds littered the edges. He felt her body slip against his, her hand sweeping up to his face and resting against his cheek. The stubble on his jaw grazed her palm. His grip loosened, gliding up to nestle in her silky strands.
Beneath the surface, she was a beautiful blur. She drew him in to her like a siren, and he met her call. Lips pressed softly at first, then insistent. Her hair wrapped about his fingers. His tongue brushed against her lips, a request, and she let him in. He consumed her.
On the embankment where a pair of small water boots lay abandoned by a muddy hole, a chimaera sniffed at the air, scenting magic. Bubbles drifted up to the lagoon’s surface. Below, two bodies suspended in magic and water, boundaryless, breathless, and new.