Chapter Text
Hermione watched with held breath how the elegant blonde twirled around the ice rink at a dazzling speed. Her skates twisted and turned and Hermione knew her own legs would have ended up in a knot by now, but not Narcissa’s. They didn’t call her the Ice Queen for nothing. Her skill was legendary combined with an elegance that was almost otherworldly.
The blonde’s dark green top clung to her body, revealing her slight protruding nipples that always came with being this underdressed in temperatures below zero. Her black skirt was short and showed muscular thighs clad in skin-toned leggings so tight Hermione could see Narcissa’s legs twitch underneath it when she jumped. A silver snake was embroidered on the back, clearly showing to which team the blonde belonged.
The figure skating teams existed of the men who wore blue colours and a raven and the women who wore green and a snake. The ice hockey players consisted of two mixed teams, one in yellow with a badger, one in red with a lion. It had been done to enhance group dynamic, but had inadvertedly caused some friendly-feuds between the different groups.
Hermione herself was a proud lion and the star-player of the hockey team together with her friend Ginny. She trained almost every day apart from the weekends when the skating rink was open for the public. A rather recent development the manager of the place, Andromeda, had installed to make some extra cash. Not that Hermione minded too much. She practically lived on the ice and this pushed her to go out a bit more.
“Staring at the princess again, huh?” Ginny said as she crashed down on the bench next to her friend.
“I’m not staring, Gin. I like watching the figure skaters, there’s nothing else to it.”
The redhead who was also part of the lion-team gave Hermione a look. “You like them so much that you went from being late all the time to being dressed fifteen minutes early.”
Hermione rolled her eyes and shuffled closer to the edge of the bench when Narcissa sped up for a particularly difficult jump. On Monday and Wednesday the women trained together with the men, but on Tuesday and Thursday the figure skaters all trained solo, which were Hermione’s favourite trainings. She’d never liked the sight of Lucius, Narcissa’s partner for the duets, gripping the woman like he owned her.
“Just look at her,” Hermione breathed when Narcissa spun through the air and landed without losing balance once.
“When are you going to admit that you like her in particular?” Ginny teased, “and not the figure skating?”
The hockey player didn’t answer. The relationship between the ice skaters and hockey players wasn’t too great. In fact the only thing they seemed to be able to agree on, was that they both needed ice to practise their sports. But anything further than that always ended in an argument that Andromeda had to put an end to. Hermione released her breath when Narcissa started her stretches and rose from the bench to warm up.
Where the figure skaters wore flimsy dresses and glittery outfits, the hockey players were clad from head to toe in protective gear. Hermione wore black pants with a backbone protector sewn in, matching knee protectors, and a red vest with breast and shoulder plates. The lion on her back and her elbow pads were yellow too. The black helmet had a full-face shield, but after a nasty incident with a shattered puck, they all wore an additional mouthpiece as well.
The moment the figure skaters headed to the edge of the rink, Hermione slipped onto the ice and made a few lazy laps to allow her boots to settle before she’d tighten them. She waved when Harry and Ron arrived at the rink too at pointed at the clock. They were always late because they spend too much time chatting in the changing rooms. Ron waved his stick at her in jest and Hermione shook her head.
“Those hockey players are such brutes,” she heard Pansy huff when she passed.
“Hey Gin, I found your stick!” Hermione shouted, “it’s up Parkinson’s arse.”
The lion-team roared as the figure skater with the black bob left the ice with her nose in the air. As usual, the girl was insulted, but she always started the teasing. Ginny shrugged when she saw Hermione looking a bit guiltily at Pansy’s departure. You’d think she’d learned better by now. She noticed Narcissa looking at her with an unreadable expression and felt relieved she was wearing her helmet. That way the blonde couldn’t see just how red her cheeks flushed in embarrassment.
Hermione wondered whether she should apologize, but Narcissa had already skated towards the gate and hopped off the ice. She sat down on the same bench Hermione and Ginny had seated on only moments ago and slipped her protective rubbers on her skates before walking to the changing rooms. After Andromeda’s decision to open the ice rink the public, they’d been forced to share a room seeing as the other one had been filled with lockers and benches for visitors.
That decision had not sat well with any of the teams. The hockey players had complained about having to stuff their large gear into one instead of two lockers while the figure skaters had complained about the changing rooms being messy and smelling of sweat. That of course had been reason enough for Ron to accuse them of merely prancing across the ice while they were practising a real sport. Hermione shuddered when she remembered how that had resorted into a heated argument and Andromeda nearly in tears.
She shook her head and came to a skidding halt to tighten her boots. The members of the other hockey team had arrived as well and Hermione forced herself to nod at Crabbe and Goyle. She wasn’t exactly fond of the brutes that seemed to revel in causing as many injuries as possible. Not that the women of the other team were any better. Bullstrode was a fierce goalkeeper and had smashed many sticks in half when she’d lost control over her temper.
“Alright snowflakes,” their coach called as she slipped onto the ice and immediately skated towards the middle of the rink. “There’s a big game coming up so today I want everybody to play at a different position to determine which combinations work best.”
Hermione nodded at her coach knowing that Bellatrix always did this to keep everybody sharp. Playing the same position could make you overly confident and therefore useless, according to the woman who’d once been a star-skater herself. She was Andromeda’s sister and the spitting image of the manager of the ice rink. Only with a lot less self-restraint and tact. Hermione smirked, it was almost hard to believe that Narcissa, who also coached the younger figure skaters, was the third and youngest sister and looked nothing like the other two.
“Naturally we’re not going to follow that ridiculous tactic,” the coach of the other hockey team drawled as he emerged on the ice as well.
Severus Snape was a tall and gangly man and always looked a bit out of place among the hockey players, but he was freakishly fast on the ice and had a surprising amount of stealth where Bellatrix usually went for brute force. They always pretended to hate each other, but everybody knew they spend hours and hours discussing tactics and possible ways to win the next game. Both teams played for Andromeda after all, a clever idea of the manager to make more profit and have two complete teams that could train against each other instead of splitting up for practise.
Bellatrix rolled her eyes and beckoned for the players in red to gather around her. “Right, I want you all to start on your usual positions for the warm-up. I have a few switches in mind I want to try out, but if you have suggestions yourself. Go for it. We haven’t won a game in a while and I really don’t want Karkaroff to snatch that trophy away from me again, do you hear me?”
“Aye coach!” they all said in unison before quickly doing some last stretches.
The TriSkate Tournament was coming up. A whole day of competition consisting of figure skating, ice racing, and hockey. They didn’t actually have a real racing-team, but for the sake of the competition a few volunteers from both the figure and the hockey skaters had signed up. It was the event of the year and all three sisters took it very seriously.
Snape conversed with Bellatrix for a moment, gesturing at a few sketches in his hands before he blew his whistle and started the first match. Hermione usually was the defence together with Ginny while Fred, George, and Ronald played the forwards and Harry played the goalie. They were a good team, but not as vicious as Snape’s.
Hermione braced when she saw Zabini charge towards her with the puck. Just when she wanted to prevent him from shooting at the goal, she saw the familiar head of platinum hair appear on the edge of the rink again. As Narcissa sat down to watch the game for a bit, one eyebrow slightly arched and seemingly unimpressed, Hermione cursed when Zabini nudged the puck between her skates. The brunette sighed when she heard her coach yell at her. She couldn’t exactly help it that Narcissa always managed to turn her a little bit flustered, could she?
**
“Are you joining us for a beer in the cafeteria, ‘Mione?”
Hermione poked her head around the shower wall and shook it. “I have to work tomorrow. I’m going to bed.”
Ginny sighed. “You’re allowed some fun, you know.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow at training!”
With a sigh Hermione closed the shower tap and relaxed when the door fell close behind her friend. She always lingered in the changing room, wanting some time alone before heading home to her tiny apartment. Where Ginny and Harry both came from a family of skaters and were practically born into the sport, Hermione had had to work for it herself. She’s lost both her parents when she was barely old enough to live alone and had been struggling ever since.
Andromeda paid her teams decent wages, but it wasn’t exactly enough if she was ever going to buy a property of her own. The Potters, and the Weasleys were famous names in the ice skating world, as were the Malfoys, and the Black, but nobody had ever heard of Granger. At least, not yet. And every time Ginny pointed out she already had a career on the ice, Hermione countered her friend by saying she was one accident away of ending up unemployed.
So for eight years now, ever since her eighteenth birthday, Hermione rose at the crack of dawn to deliver the mail in her neighbourhood. If the wind wasn’t too bad, she usually finished her round around twelve, had a quick bite to eat only to then start her second job at local library where she worked until six-thirty. Another quick meal and she was back on her bike to start training at the ice rink around eight. It was an exhausting routine, but she needed the money and while the library didn’t pay too well, she loved spending time around all those books.
Never really having had the chance to study, Hermione used every free moment to read and educate herself. She was clever enough, but life just hadn’t handed her a lot of opportunities. Nevertheless, she tried to stay optimistic and make the best of what she got. Right after her parents had died, Hermione had gone through a really dark time in her life. If it hadn’t been for Ginny who’d convinced her to participate in the try-outs for the hockey team, she probably would have ended up in a ditch somewhere. Thank god her parents had indulged her love for the ice rink when she’d been a child or she would never have made the team that existed almost entirely of players from hockey-families.
She closed her locker with a thud and slumped against it with her head, still hot from the shower, pressed against the cool metal. Hermione hated this part of the day the most. The part where she had to head back to that dreadful apartment with its creepy landlord McLaggen who always seemed to lurk outside her door. Unfortunately it was the only thing she could afford that was within a reasonable distance of all her jobs. It’s not exactly like she had a car and public transport was a bitch. She sighed.
“Rough training?”
Hermione spun around and clutched her towel against her chest. “Shit, sorry, I thought I was the last one left.”
“Just forgot my phone,” Narcissa sounded apologetic. “You okay?”
“Yes! I am. Okay, that is,” the brunette winced at her own lack of eloquence. “You did great today with that last jump.”
“Well, according to your friend, we’re rather good at prancing around.”
Narcissa’s voice had lacked bite, but Hermione could tell the blonde was still bitter about Ron’s remark. She lifted a wet towel off the bench with barely hidden disgust and quickly yanked her phone from underneath it before dropping the offending cloth on the floor.
“Honestly, this place looks like a pigsty.”
“I always clean it up before I leave,” Hermione muttered weakly but Narcissa had already left the changing room without looking at her twice, leaving the hockey player to dry her wet curls that were dripping onto the tile floor.
**
The next training had been delayed with thirty minutes. The maintenance guy, Filch or something, Hermione always forgot, had been too late to smooth the ice and the figure skaters had blatantly refused to continue training. Andromeda had tried to reason with her sister, but had eventually given up and left for her office with a loud huff. Both hockey teams had arrived and gotten dressed while the figure skaters were still halfway their practise.
“Just sit your asses down on the bench,” Bellatrix growled when she heard a few complaints. “Perhaps my sister can learn you snowflakes a thing or two,” Hermione laughed as her coach sounded like she barely convinced herself of that statement.
The rowdy hockey players all scooted together on the front row bench and started chatting loudly, causing Narcissa to throw a few glares in their direction as she instructed her pupils. On Friday she always coached the younger generations herself, but Hermione had never actually seen much of the training seeing as Ginny insisted she had dinner at her place once a week. It was the only day she was barely on time for training.
But watching the blonde in black skin-tight yoga pants and a black hoody did things to her insides Hermione was not willing to acknowledge. She smiled when she saw how gentle Narcissa was with the smallest students and how demanding she was towards the eldest. Out of all coaches, she definitely had the most tact, Hermione thought when she heard Snape call Crabbe a buffoon.
Narcissa was instructing Fleur Delacour now, one of her most promising pupils, and Ron immediately hooted. He had a thing for the girl who’d come all the way from France simply to be tutored by the Blacks, but he seemed oblivious to the fact that he didn’t stand a chance with the blonde. When Fleur missed a step because Ron distracted her, she cursed him in French and chaos erupted.
The hockey players all banged their skates and sticks against the tribune causing a loud rumble to fill the arena and drown out Fleur’s insults. That in turn made Pansy snap and she flipped off Fred and George who always managed to get on her nerves. Hermione could have sworn she saw Narcissa roll her eyes at the black-haired girl’s lack of restraint before the twins made their way onto the ice to challenge Pansy to do that again.
Narcissa seemed to look to her sister for help, but Bellatrix was having a heated argument with Severus who seemed to agree that the figure skaters should cut their training short while Bellatrix reasoned that everybody was entitled to their time on the ice. Hermione quickly glanced up at Andy’s office, but there was no light shining through the blinds so the manager clearly wasn’t in the house. She sighed and placed her fingers in her mouth.
The ear-piercing whistle made everybody wince. “Oi, stop behaving like a bunch of toddlers and get back on the bench,” she glared at Fred and George before turning to their younger brother. “Ron, don’t whistle at women. It’s rude and very inappropriate,” she then looked at Narcissa with an apologetic smile. “Please, continue with your training. But perhaps your pupils can try not to look down on us too much? It’s getting a bit old. We’re all here for the ice, are we not?”
The silence that followed made Hermione shuffle on the bench as her cheeks flushed in embarrassment, but Bellatrix quickly backed her up. “Right you are, kitten. We shouldn’t delay our training further by distracting the figure skaters. The ice is yours, Cissy.”
It was clear that Hermione’s male team-members were a tad bitter about her defending the ice princesses, as they liked to call the figure skaters, but Hermione couldn’t care less. She often felt relieved she was clad in protective gear that shrouded her in mystery. The audience could only tell she was a girl because she didn’t have a groin guard. But those girls in their thin and revealing dresses? They got catcalled all the time and Hermione knew it made them uncomfortable. She simply shot the Weasley brothers one of her looks before turning to Ginny to discuss the upcoming game with her.
If Hermione had chosen to look to the ice rink instead of her friend, she’d have seen Narcissa Black staring at her with that omnipresent unreadable expression on her face. The blonde woman knew the hockey skater often looked at her during training, but she had never paid it much attention until now. She saw the way her cheeks had flushed when everybody had looked at her. The girl had balls, but seemed to underestimate her own abilities unlike all the other athletes who often behaved like they’d invented warm water themselves. Narcissa blinked from her reverie when Fleur called her name, but couldn’t stop her gaze from wandering towards the curly-haired brunette throughout the remainder of their training.