![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingSo. Today I submitted three fics/chapters to FA -- Falls the Shadow (a Petuniafic), the epilogue of First You Have to Get There (a light Harry/Ginny romance), and Paint the Town (a kinda-sorta sequel to Restoration). I am also going to serialize "Paint the Town" here on my livejournal, mostly because I can. :-)
Here's what you need to know about "Restoration" in order for "Paint the Town" to make sense.
It's a post-war, post-Hogwarts story. Voldemort killed Dumbledore and then Harry killed him. Ron and Hermione jointly killed Lucius Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange. Draco, after learning up close and personal just what evil and torture and hatred are like, switched sides and sat out the end of the war.
Ron runs a WWW outlet in Hogsmeade. Hermione works at the Ministry. Ginny does experimental potions research. Luna is the chief editor for the Quibbler, and she's hired Draco to write travel guides. Harry, Ron, and Hermione shared a flat for a couple years; Luna and Ginny lived on the floor above them.
And Ginny likes Muggle nightclubs.
(The ff.net version is the most definitive, rather than this LJ version, or the FictionAlley version.)
---------------------------------------------
NOTE: This story is rated R; it contains slash, femslash, het, threesomes, light bondage, and alcohol.
---------------------------------------------
Paint the Town, Part 1
---------------------------------------------
The Friday that Hermione came home through the Floo connection feeling not just tired and put upon, but truly, utterly frazzled, Ginny pounced on her.
"You look like someone transfigured you into piano wire and went twang," she said. "You need to unwind, so we're going clubbing."
Hermione shook her head, trying to clear her muddled thoughts. It had been a terrible week at the office. Her supervisor was on holiday, the house elf representatives were no help creating a code of fair conduct for their own-- no, their employers; correct terminology was the first step to freedom -- Mr. Sinkshaft of the Goblin Council had cancelled their lunch meeting, and she couldn't possibly have heard Ginny correctly. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"
Ginny fixed her hands on her hips -- drawing attention to how tantalizingly low-slung her jeans were and exposing the gold navel ring Hermione still couldn't help staring at -- and favored her flatmate with the Stare of Ultimate Disdain, usually reserved for Harry and Ron's less brilliant moments. "We. Are. Going. Clubbing. Get changed -- I left the clothes on your bed."
"But I don't--"
"No," said Ginny, talking over Hermione's protests and pushing her through the flat. "Not one more word. Now that Ron's moved out, he says it's my job to make sure you unwind. It's Friday, I'm going clubbing, and you're coming with me. Now change!"
One last shove propelled Hermione into her bedroom, and Ginny shut the door behind her. "I'm not letting you out until you agree to come with me. And don't even think about Apparating -- I nicked your wand."
Hermione fumbled for her wand, realized Ginny wasn't lying, and stared at the clothes on the bed. It wasn't quite as bad as she'd expected when Ginny mentioned clubbing -- no miniskirt or spiked heels, thank goodness, and unlike Ginny's shirt, this blouse at least had a back -- but the shocking plunge of that neckline! And the thigh-high slits on the long skirt! There was no way on earth...
"I'm perfectly willing to keep you locked in all night," Ginny said through the door, as if she'd read Hermione's mind. "Without dinner, too. Give already."
With a sigh, Hermione shucked off her office robes and started picking through her drawers for a bra that the blouse might have a prayer of actually covering.
---------------------------------------------
"I'm never going to forgive you for this," hissed Hermione as she trailed Ginny through Muggle London.
Ginny shrugged, unconcerned; Hermione hadn't bolted from the pub during dinner, after all, so she couldn't be too serious about her protests. "That's what I said the first time someone took me out. You'll get over it." She peered at the parchment scrap in her hands. "I've never been to this club before, but I've heard good things about it. Harry says the music's really good for dancing."
"Harry goes clubbing?"
Ginny shot her a confused look. Hermione had been working too much lately, and drifting away from her friends now they weren't all sharing adjoining flats anymore -- but was she really that out of the loop? Obviously Ginny hadn't been paying enough attention to her friend. She resolved to fix that.
"Yes, Harry goes clubbing. What did you think he was doing Friday nights? Twiddling his thumbs on random street corners?"
Hermione shook her head. "No, I just... Harry? Clubbing? Harry dances?"
"And how," murmured Ginny, remembering her shock when she'd run into Harry on a dance floor several months back. After a disastrous first night out during the period when he'd been flailing around trying to find his way out of his post-war seclusion, he'd sworn that he'd rather suffer Cruciatus than dance in public again. As far as Ginny was concerned, whoever had convinced him to break that promise, and had helped him transfer his natural grace from his broom to his feet, deserved a bloody medal for services to humanity.
Face crinkling with mischief, Ginny bent her head and whispered in Hermione's ear, "You should see his bum when he's really moving -- hot stuff!"
Hermione gave a scandalized gasp. "Ginny!"
"What? I'm just telling the truth. I may not like him that way anymore, but I'm not blind. You have to agree Harry's easy on the eyes."
"I don't think of my friends that way," Hermione said, just a shade too hastily.
Oh, really? Now that was interesting -- was Hermione still hung up on her wartime experiments with the boys? This bore further investigation. But not now. "That must be awfully boring," Ginny said, voice neutral. "Anyhow, here we are -- Crimson."
"Are you sure I can't have my wand back?" asked Hermione, edging closer to Ginny as several men in leather pants leered at them.
"It's helping hold my hair up, so no. Not until we're back at the flat -- unless I get so pissed I can't manage the Underground, in which case I won't care how my hair looks and you can Apparate us home. Come on." Grinning at Hermione's apprehension, Ginny seized her friend's hand and dragged her to the club door.
---------------------------------------------
"Bastard."
"Arsehole."
"Wanker."
"Shirt-lifter."
"Pot, kettle. I'm not dancing with you -- when's Luna getting here again?"
Draco leaned back against the bar, fingers tapping along with the beat that thrummed through the building. "She said eleven. What time that translates to in the real world is anyone's guess."
"True." Harry tilted his glass thoughtfully, watching the beer creep up the sides to maintain a level surface. He still wasn't certain how he'd ended up in a -- well, in some sort of relationship; they were still trying to work out the details -- with two such irritating people. They couldn't even be irritating in the same way, either -- no, Luna was a nut and Draco was a bastard. An interesting and oddly attractive bastard, yes, but still...
"You're sure you don't want to dance?" Draco spread his arms and arched his back suggestively, grey eyes peering slyly through his glitter-dusted hair.
Harry snorted. "Twenty-one years old and you're still a drama queen, Malfoy. Is there anything you won't do for attention?"
Draco raised an eyebrow. "Potter, nobody wearing jeans that tight has any right to accuse me of begging for attention. Besides, I am gainfully employed in a respectable profession, while you do nothing but enhance your celebrity by throwing money at squalling idiots and begging shamelessly for more money so you can do it again."
Harry chucked a handful of peanuts at Draco, who flicked his hand, sending them to swarm around a loudmouth drunk at the other end of the bar.
"Wand up your sleeve?"
"Spring-loaded wrist holster," said Draco, pulling back his cuff to allow Harry a quick glimpse of the mechanism.
"Nice."
They drank in silence for a moment before Draco returned to the original topic. "If you don't dance with me now, I'm going to pick out the first stranger I see and abandon you to Lovegood's six left feet until closing."
"She doesn't have six left feet," said Harry. "Two, maybe, until she unwinds, but not six."
"Still. Do you want to loosen her up all by yourself?"
"Not really." Loath though Harry was to admit it, Draco was far better at talking to people -- at least when he wasn't being an arrogant prick. Draco could smile and nod and spin some bullshit story about nothing in particular until Luna, with the aid of a drink or two, managed to focus completely on the here and now.
Harry was better at keeping Luna from drifting off in the first place, but he always felt awkward trying to bring her back from her mental wandering. Something about his expression usually revealed his disbelief in her cockeyed view of the world, making Luna turn glum or go into her batty seer act -- not that the batty seer persona wasn't interesting in its own right, but it wasn't much use for anything... physically intimate.
"Gryffindors are hopeless at subtlety," Draco told him once when Harry dropped by his office to complain about this tendency to push Luna away.
"You know," said Harry, wishing that they were still enemies so he could sock Draco in the nose, "the Sorting Hat wanted to put me in Slytherin." Chew on that, Malfoy.
Draco snorted. "I always thought that hat was off its rocker. We would have eaten you alive, Potter -- you wouldn't know subtle if it bit you in the arse. Anytime you had a secret, you practically screamed it with your body language, and you can't tell lies worth two Knuts. You're an unscrupulous bastard, I'll grant you that, but you're far too direct for Slytherin."
"So are you, then," said Harry, leaning across Draco's desk. At Draco's raised eyebrow, he rushed onward. "All those years you tried to get me, you never worked through anybody else. It was always you -- telling the professors about Norbert, calling me the Heir of Slytherin, playing dementor on the Quidditch pitch, writing that song about Ron, sending me that trap Portkey, dropping hints about your Dark secrets, attacking me on the train, swearing you'd kill me... How is that subtle?"
Draco shot him a good imitation of Ginny's Stare of Ultimate Disdain. "Because you weren't really the point of all that -- well, except for when I swore I'd kill you; that was personal. But for everything else... Yes, I hated you -- you were a self-righteous git as much as I was a self-absorbed bastard -- but being your enemy was basically a way to win status in Slytherin and stay in my father's good books. The world didn't revolve around you, Potter, not even with that prophecy, and it certainly doesn't now."
Harry had stalked out of Draco's office feeling oddly disgruntled. It wasn't as though he'd wanted to be in Slytherin, but he hated losing to Draco in anything, and he hated being dismissed from his attention.
It was several hours later before it occurred to Harry that Draco might have been lying.
"Which just proves my point," said Draco, when Harry confronted him about that. "You're no good at subtle and I'm a much better liar. Now go find another one of your sad-sack charity cases -- I'm busy."
Remembering this, Harry shot a sideways glance at Draco as the Slytherin lounged against the bar. So Draco thought he could cajole and order Harry around? He wanted to dance? Fine. Two could play that game.
"On your feet, Malfoy." Harry yanked a startled Draco off his barstool, wrapped an arm indecently tight around his waist, and hauled him off to the dance floor.
---------------------------------------------
Continue to part 2
---------------------------------------------
Part 2 will probably be up tomorrow. Unless, you know, I manage to finish chapter 8 of 'Apartment Manager' instead. :-)
Here's what you need to know about "Restoration" in order for "Paint the Town" to make sense.
It's a post-war, post-Hogwarts story. Voldemort killed Dumbledore and then Harry killed him. Ron and Hermione jointly killed Lucius Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange. Draco, after learning up close and personal just what evil and torture and hatred are like, switched sides and sat out the end of the war.
Ron runs a WWW outlet in Hogsmeade. Hermione works at the Ministry. Ginny does experimental potions research. Luna is the chief editor for the Quibbler, and she's hired Draco to write travel guides. Harry, Ron, and Hermione shared a flat for a couple years; Luna and Ginny lived on the floor above them.
And Ginny likes Muggle nightclubs.
(The ff.net version is the most definitive, rather than this LJ version, or the FictionAlley version.)
---------------------------------------------
NOTE: This story is rated R; it contains slash, femslash, het, threesomes, light bondage, and alcohol.
---------------------------------------------
Paint the Town, Part 1
---------------------------------------------
The Friday that Hermione came home through the Floo connection feeling not just tired and put upon, but truly, utterly frazzled, Ginny pounced on her.
"You look like someone transfigured you into piano wire and went twang," she said. "You need to unwind, so we're going clubbing."
Hermione shook her head, trying to clear her muddled thoughts. It had been a terrible week at the office. Her supervisor was on holiday, the house elf representatives were no help creating a code of fair conduct for their own-- no, their employers; correct terminology was the first step to freedom -- Mr. Sinkshaft of the Goblin Council had cancelled their lunch meeting, and she couldn't possibly have heard Ginny correctly. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"
Ginny fixed her hands on her hips -- drawing attention to how tantalizingly low-slung her jeans were and exposing the gold navel ring Hermione still couldn't help staring at -- and favored her flatmate with the Stare of Ultimate Disdain, usually reserved for Harry and Ron's less brilliant moments. "We. Are. Going. Clubbing. Get changed -- I left the clothes on your bed."
"But I don't--"
"No," said Ginny, talking over Hermione's protests and pushing her through the flat. "Not one more word. Now that Ron's moved out, he says it's my job to make sure you unwind. It's Friday, I'm going clubbing, and you're coming with me. Now change!"
One last shove propelled Hermione into her bedroom, and Ginny shut the door behind her. "I'm not letting you out until you agree to come with me. And don't even think about Apparating -- I nicked your wand."
Hermione fumbled for her wand, realized Ginny wasn't lying, and stared at the clothes on the bed. It wasn't quite as bad as she'd expected when Ginny mentioned clubbing -- no miniskirt or spiked heels, thank goodness, and unlike Ginny's shirt, this blouse at least had a back -- but the shocking plunge of that neckline! And the thigh-high slits on the long skirt! There was no way on earth...
"I'm perfectly willing to keep you locked in all night," Ginny said through the door, as if she'd read Hermione's mind. "Without dinner, too. Give already."
With a sigh, Hermione shucked off her office robes and started picking through her drawers for a bra that the blouse might have a prayer of actually covering.
---------------------------------------------
"I'm never going to forgive you for this," hissed Hermione as she trailed Ginny through Muggle London.
Ginny shrugged, unconcerned; Hermione hadn't bolted from the pub during dinner, after all, so she couldn't be too serious about her protests. "That's what I said the first time someone took me out. You'll get over it." She peered at the parchment scrap in her hands. "I've never been to this club before, but I've heard good things about it. Harry says the music's really good for dancing."
"Harry goes clubbing?"
Ginny shot her a confused look. Hermione had been working too much lately, and drifting away from her friends now they weren't all sharing adjoining flats anymore -- but was she really that out of the loop? Obviously Ginny hadn't been paying enough attention to her friend. She resolved to fix that.
"Yes, Harry goes clubbing. What did you think he was doing Friday nights? Twiddling his thumbs on random street corners?"
Hermione shook her head. "No, I just... Harry? Clubbing? Harry dances?"
"And how," murmured Ginny, remembering her shock when she'd run into Harry on a dance floor several months back. After a disastrous first night out during the period when he'd been flailing around trying to find his way out of his post-war seclusion, he'd sworn that he'd rather suffer Cruciatus than dance in public again. As far as Ginny was concerned, whoever had convinced him to break that promise, and had helped him transfer his natural grace from his broom to his feet, deserved a bloody medal for services to humanity.
Face crinkling with mischief, Ginny bent her head and whispered in Hermione's ear, "You should see his bum when he's really moving -- hot stuff!"
Hermione gave a scandalized gasp. "Ginny!"
"What? I'm just telling the truth. I may not like him that way anymore, but I'm not blind. You have to agree Harry's easy on the eyes."
"I don't think of my friends that way," Hermione said, just a shade too hastily.
Oh, really? Now that was interesting -- was Hermione still hung up on her wartime experiments with the boys? This bore further investigation. But not now. "That must be awfully boring," Ginny said, voice neutral. "Anyhow, here we are -- Crimson."
"Are you sure I can't have my wand back?" asked Hermione, edging closer to Ginny as several men in leather pants leered at them.
"It's helping hold my hair up, so no. Not until we're back at the flat -- unless I get so pissed I can't manage the Underground, in which case I won't care how my hair looks and you can Apparate us home. Come on." Grinning at Hermione's apprehension, Ginny seized her friend's hand and dragged her to the club door.
---------------------------------------------
"Bastard."
"Arsehole."
"Wanker."
"Shirt-lifter."
"Pot, kettle. I'm not dancing with you -- when's Luna getting here again?"
Draco leaned back against the bar, fingers tapping along with the beat that thrummed through the building. "She said eleven. What time that translates to in the real world is anyone's guess."
"True." Harry tilted his glass thoughtfully, watching the beer creep up the sides to maintain a level surface. He still wasn't certain how he'd ended up in a -- well, in some sort of relationship; they were still trying to work out the details -- with two such irritating people. They couldn't even be irritating in the same way, either -- no, Luna was a nut and Draco was a bastard. An interesting and oddly attractive bastard, yes, but still...
"You're sure you don't want to dance?" Draco spread his arms and arched his back suggestively, grey eyes peering slyly through his glitter-dusted hair.
Harry snorted. "Twenty-one years old and you're still a drama queen, Malfoy. Is there anything you won't do for attention?"
Draco raised an eyebrow. "Potter, nobody wearing jeans that tight has any right to accuse me of begging for attention. Besides, I am gainfully employed in a respectable profession, while you do nothing but enhance your celebrity by throwing money at squalling idiots and begging shamelessly for more money so you can do it again."
Harry chucked a handful of peanuts at Draco, who flicked his hand, sending them to swarm around a loudmouth drunk at the other end of the bar.
"Wand up your sleeve?"
"Spring-loaded wrist holster," said Draco, pulling back his cuff to allow Harry a quick glimpse of the mechanism.
"Nice."
They drank in silence for a moment before Draco returned to the original topic. "If you don't dance with me now, I'm going to pick out the first stranger I see and abandon you to Lovegood's six left feet until closing."
"She doesn't have six left feet," said Harry. "Two, maybe, until she unwinds, but not six."
"Still. Do you want to loosen her up all by yourself?"
"Not really." Loath though Harry was to admit it, Draco was far better at talking to people -- at least when he wasn't being an arrogant prick. Draco could smile and nod and spin some bullshit story about nothing in particular until Luna, with the aid of a drink or two, managed to focus completely on the here and now.
Harry was better at keeping Luna from drifting off in the first place, but he always felt awkward trying to bring her back from her mental wandering. Something about his expression usually revealed his disbelief in her cockeyed view of the world, making Luna turn glum or go into her batty seer act -- not that the batty seer persona wasn't interesting in its own right, but it wasn't much use for anything... physically intimate.
"Gryffindors are hopeless at subtlety," Draco told him once when Harry dropped by his office to complain about this tendency to push Luna away.
"You know," said Harry, wishing that they were still enemies so he could sock Draco in the nose, "the Sorting Hat wanted to put me in Slytherin." Chew on that, Malfoy.
Draco snorted. "I always thought that hat was off its rocker. We would have eaten you alive, Potter -- you wouldn't know subtle if it bit you in the arse. Anytime you had a secret, you practically screamed it with your body language, and you can't tell lies worth two Knuts. You're an unscrupulous bastard, I'll grant you that, but you're far too direct for Slytherin."
"So are you, then," said Harry, leaning across Draco's desk. At Draco's raised eyebrow, he rushed onward. "All those years you tried to get me, you never worked through anybody else. It was always you -- telling the professors about Norbert, calling me the Heir of Slytherin, playing dementor on the Quidditch pitch, writing that song about Ron, sending me that trap Portkey, dropping hints about your Dark secrets, attacking me on the train, swearing you'd kill me... How is that subtle?"
Draco shot him a good imitation of Ginny's Stare of Ultimate Disdain. "Because you weren't really the point of all that -- well, except for when I swore I'd kill you; that was personal. But for everything else... Yes, I hated you -- you were a self-righteous git as much as I was a self-absorbed bastard -- but being your enemy was basically a way to win status in Slytherin and stay in my father's good books. The world didn't revolve around you, Potter, not even with that prophecy, and it certainly doesn't now."
Harry had stalked out of Draco's office feeling oddly disgruntled. It wasn't as though he'd wanted to be in Slytherin, but he hated losing to Draco in anything, and he hated being dismissed from his attention.
It was several hours later before it occurred to Harry that Draco might have been lying.
"Which just proves my point," said Draco, when Harry confronted him about that. "You're no good at subtle and I'm a much better liar. Now go find another one of your sad-sack charity cases -- I'm busy."
Remembering this, Harry shot a sideways glance at Draco as the Slytherin lounged against the bar. So Draco thought he could cajole and order Harry around? He wanted to dance? Fine. Two could play that game.
"On your feet, Malfoy." Harry yanked a startled Draco off his barstool, wrapped an arm indecently tight around his waist, and hauled him off to the dance floor.
---------------------------------------------
Continue to part 2
---------------------------------------------
Part 2 will probably be up tomorrow. Unless, you know, I manage to finish chapter 8 of 'Apartment Manager' instead. :-)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-13 11:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-14 01:16 am (UTC)