Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Her vision is merely motion and sunbeams.

Mud cakes on the soles of her shoes, splatters of it mark her jeans. Each time her feet connect with the wet earth, it latches on like it means to keep her in place. If she had a second to breathe, she would feel the way it further stretches each tired joint.

But she doesn’t have a single second, not to breathe, not even to push a sob between her lips—which crack and bleed from exposure, or maybe exhaustion, or maybe it’s all of it. She doesn’t have a second because she must keep going forward.

The dry brush of winter whips past her, branches catching on her skin, thicket bruising as it slices through the air, a punishing switch as she pushes.

She doesn’t know how long she has been running. Each pump of her legs sends pain surging through the overexerted tendons. Weak from lack of use. Surging forward now only on primal instinct. Her brain rationalises mere minutes had passed since he caught her scent, but her muscles ache hours.

But surely, he would tire soon, she thinks, a twinge of hope pricking like a knife in her spleen. He wouldn’t last that long—would lose interest, pick up another scent, an easier kill before that much time had passed.

Too close, she hears his growl.

⨳

It should have been a passing touch.

The halls of Hogwarts are overfull– new students melding with old, children at unease in their too-long robes juxtaposing beanstalk teenagers teetering on adulthood, friends grasping and familiar in embraces heated by the long-stretched summer holiday.

Holiday feels like the wrong word.

Hermione is jostled in the tide of students, pushed to and fro. She’d changed into her outer robes, skin itching, wrists aching as she tried to navigate through the throng of bodies.

Somehow the heat of Scotland felt sweltering this year, hot enough to make the thin cotton of her undershirt stick wet against her skin. Sweat mats her hairline, the curls bunching tight from moisture, frizzy from the long hours twisting and turning in discomfort on the Hogwarts Express.

She thinks of the way her father sat at the kitchen table; glasses hanging precariously on the tip of his nose, brow furrowed in consternation as he flipped through the articles.

‘Global warming,’ he’d said, voice thick and croaked. He wet his lips, which had gone dry from the hour he’d spent in silence, mouthing the words of his newspaper to a silent room.

Then his warm brown eyes had turned to Hermione, shooting her one of those pensive looks.

‘I worry about your future. The world is on fire. I worry about…I worry about what we will have to leave you with when we’re long gone. All the streams and rivers will be bone dry. Your children might never see an elephant. Hell—I don’t even think your mother and I have, outside of a zoo–’

His next words were lost to memory. Her thoughts had been slanted red pupils and Death Eater robes, and she hadn’t focused—hadn’t listened more. She didn’t have time to think of metaphorical children and some future that wasn’t promised.

When she’d obliviated them, sending them straight to Australia, she wondered if she should send them to Botswana or Tanzania first. Let them have their safari. Far away from the war their daughter was a part of.

Now, all she has are the little vignettes of memories—tableaus of her father here, her mother there, Hermione in the centre, Hermione being there, Hermione being here, everybody smile on three, it had been real, happy, Hermione had been there, sad, Hermione had been real, no longer.

Now, she’s the only member of her family who remembers she’d been a part of it. But it was worth it, wasn’t it? It has to mean something, she tells herself when her bones ache deep in the night, when the guilt and grief and all of it weigh on her heavily.

The war was won, and that’s enough. This is evidenced by the gathering of bodies in the courtyard of Hogwarts.

Her wrists itch.

Perhaps it is the return to this place so soon after the events. The blood had been washed from the limestone, but it cloistered. Muddy. It all smells muddy and coagulated and rotted, it’s all death. An overripe Scottish September— global warming, he’d said, lips dry, voice croaked— and she hates it, hates it. The weather heats and the rush of bodies makes it stick. Makes her stick. She is stuck.

Hermione glances around, counting even though she doesn’t want to. There should be more people here. This is all pretend.

The war was won, and that’s enough.

A shoulder bumps into hers. It should mean nothing, not worth a second thought. The touch wouldn’t have even registered to her. It should be nothing.

But it reverberates through her, rippling through her entire body until the aftershock is transferred to the ground beneath. Hermione’s teeth sink into her lower lip, lateral incisors scraping against flesh, molars pinching the sides of her tongue, sharp and pointy—holding back the pained gasp that threatens to loosen from her at the slight contact.

“Fuck,” a voice seethes, and she instantly places him.

Her eyes open and he’s there—tall, blonde, brooding and looming in her space.

Draco Malfoy looks like he’s grown a foot since she last saw him—his shoulders wide, prominent even through the shrouded visual of his robes hanging off him. He looks down at Hermione with a flash of anger, eyes blaming and set to strike, a cunning viper. A second passes, and she watches it all dawn on him, slowly. She knows what’s coming.

Draco Malfoy does not scare her.

Even now, overgrown like a reed, shooting tall, and clearly having had some late bloom of puberty since she’d last seen him, he does not strike fear into her. She knows him. He will hiss, and lash out, because that is what Draco Malfoy does—that’s always been the nature of who he is. That was normal, and she–fuck, she wanted something to be normal. She waits, because what else can she do?

A moment passes, bodies moving around them, gossip and giggles. All the while, Hermione looks up at Malfoy, and he peers down at her.

She tracks the brief flash of recognition, but…his eyes soften. It’s wrong, she knows it’s wrong, but she feels warm, and his grey eyes are like soot—warm and dark, and he’s looking at her—like, like he sees her. And it’s wrong, this is not normal—someone has reached out and slammed a fist directly into her chest, just to squeeze her lungs.

She opens her mouth to speak, but the words are stuck.

Here, finally, now—under the sleepy glow of a late summer’s afternoon, all sound quiets when their eyes connect—she sees him. And it isn’t normal, none of it. There is no more chatter or footsteps on limestone. Hermione only hears and feels her pulse thudding through her ears, drowning out the reunions that chorus on around them.

A muscle flexes in Malfoy’s neck, and his jaw pulls tight.

She waits for him to be cruel—the war couldn’t change some things—but he remains, staring down at her, eyes flashing. She sees soot.

“Granger,” he murmurs her name, slowly like he’s tasting it for the first time.

It sends a jolt through her system, rewiring her brain and sending all nerves on edge. The name sounds so pleasant on his lips, lips she realises are full—cupid’s bow dipping in the middle, bottom lip falling shut on the last syllable.

Has she ever looked at him before? For longer than it took for him to hurl an insult, or to notice his haunted frame the year he’d been recruited to join the Death Eaters.

“Malfoy,” she whispers. It’s a stolen prayer, something secret and gluttonous, begged of the wrong god.

He grins at her. She sees the sharp of his incisors. Feels stuck. Rooted.

Before he can respond, she’s shuffled along. Looped away in hands that are bony and wrong, a fecund scent of vanilla and jasmine swirls around her as Ginny and Luna tug her away.

It feels bad. Makes her bones ache. Grief. Memory.

She chances a glance over her shoulder, looking through her curls.

He watches her exit, eyes lingering and dark. She smells the crackling embers of magic. Her breath catches.

Chapter Text

When she was younger, her father insisted she try athletics.

‘You don’t have to like it,’ he told her, pulling an umbrella from the trunk. ‘You just have to finish the season. Try something new.’

It was a hobby he stuck her in, in a series of extracurriculars, with hopes of finding something that caught. Her father knew there was something different, something special about his daughter, but they had trouble discerning what that talent might be. She tried rounders too, netball, and everything in between.

Hermione wasn’t particularly good at any of it.

But she tried, she always did, and her father was there, every morning for practice, sitting in the stands and watching her—inspecting her for what might come next.

Hermione walked silently to the track, standing at the blocks with other children, feeling her father’s eyes at her back. They didn’t warn her of the sharp crack before they fired the starting pistol. The other kids took off, trainers digging into the gravel track and crunching against pebbles. Hermione’s heart still thumped erratically in her chest long past the seconds it took for the plume of white smoke to disappear into the atmosphere.

⨳

Hermione runs hot, so hot that she passes out in Potions.

At the front of the room, Professor Slughorn animatedly speaks in a self-indulgent droll about the perfect brew of 1982. Hermione stands over her cauldron and sweeps the frizz of curls off of her neck. She’s forgotten an elastic and has instead settled on twisting her curls back from her face, stabbing her wand through in an effort to hold the coils in place. As Hermione listens, her focus blurs—there’s something, something touching her. It feels like a feather being dragged along her neck. Almost comforting, not dissimilar to the touch of a lover; fingertips in dawn, ghosting along sticky, sated skin.

Her eyes shift left, only finding Neville looking ahead with an expression of overt determination, all of his focus on retaining that which Slughorn speaks for his own benefit.

Her attention returns to the man in front of her—steam from the cauldron's steady brewing point lifting in the air. It billows up, circling the ceiling with the other cauldron’s mix of flames and fumes. The resulting smoke creates a dull haze over her vision like she’s looking through her grandfather’s fingerprint-covered glasses.

She remembers being younger, reaching towards his face with small hands. He always bent forward, letting her pull the frames from where they hung behind his ear. The frames were thick—presbyopia, or glaucoma, or all of the things that come from years drawn stretched and basked in sunshine—glass lenses caked with smudges of skin cells and oil. When she put them on, or rather he held them up to her eyes, she squealed in delight—too little to imagine living long enough for her body to wizen and wilt.

And in those brief flashes, her discordant flickered consciousness of youth, she thinks there are worse ways to view the world than through a blur.

She breaks out in a chill, but she’s sweating. She glances to her right, and sees Malfoy—how had she not realised he was in this class too? Now that she notices him, all her thoughts grate to a fine point.

The universe has a centre and it's wherever he is.

He watches her, eyes dark like soot, vision clear. He sees her, and she knows—it all clicks, her body attuned but her mind takes seconds to catch on.

He’s soot, and she knows. She knows what he is.

That heat creeps higher, ticking up, boiling her blood, but it’s more. More than heat, it’s fire and it’s consuming her—swallowing her—vision going black—amorphous particles derived from incomplete combustion of hydrocarbons—but she can’t look away, and he would never look away, he will watch her and take care of her, and he is there for her, only her, always you, perfect perfect perf–

Her thoughts are screaming—no, chanting in repetition as the black vignette gulps her down its throat. All she manages is a little surprised gasp, then she’s falling and Malfoy is up on two feet, but he doesn’t get to the table in time to catch her head before it smacks on the side of the cauldron.

Then, and only then, as she fades into the inky black of unconsciousness, the honeyed seconds before a descent into sleep, in the dark—soot (noun): dusted and flakey powder, consisting largely of amorphous particles produced from the incomplete burning of organic matter—does her mind

go silent.

⨳

“Quite the tumble you took, Ms Granger,” Madam Pomfrey says as Hermione blinks back into this dimension.

The lights in the Hospital Wing are dim, and the matron has long shadows cast along her face as she looks at Hermione. She tilts her head, and Hermione blinks, thoughts slow and viscid.

She manages to croak, “How long?”

Pomfrey’s head cocks back to a neutral position, but her eyes still inspect. Hermione wonders if it's all some test. “We had you under for the rest of the afternoon and well into the evening. It appears you were on the verge of a fever…”

“A fever?”

“You were burning up when Mr Malfoy dropped you off.”

“I don’t remember feeling—Malfoy?”

“Yes, Mr Malfoy carried you here.” Madam Pomfrey sighs a bit, lips puckering sternly.

“Why would… he…carry me?”

“Well, Ms Granger…” she looks uncomfortable, shifting to glance between left and right before her voice drops to a whisper, “—to my knowledge, you were asking for him.”

“What?!” Hermione shouts.

“Yes, when you arrived here, you were still…mumbling Mr Malfoy’s name.”

“I–I wouldn’t–why didn’t Neville bring me?”

Pomfrey speaks as she pours from the vial of Dreamless Sleep, setting the potion next to Hermione’s pillow. “Listen, it isn’t my place to judge anyone for how they cope after the war… after what you kids were forced to fight for. If you and Mr Malfoy found some sort of comfort—”

“I assure you that we most certainly have not found comfort—”

“Ms Granger, it would serve you well to quiet yourself. You are not the only patient in the Wing tonight.”

“I’m sorry, Madam Pomfrey. I just…I cannot believe that I would let Draco Malfoy anywhere near me.”

The matron looks, assessing her, and Hermione wonders what it is that she’s searching for. She subconsciously rubs at her nose, feeling like she’s covered in ash, like she might manage to swipe the dirt off her face and rid herself of this attention from the older witch. But Pomfrey only blinks before her eyebrows draw back together. She doesn’t say anything more as she turns on her heel and heads out of the room.

Hermione shifts, stiff sheets crinkling underneath her as she lays back, the lights now nearly completely out. She stares up at the ceiling, wondering, wondering, wondering why all her thoughts are the colour of half-burnt carbon.

Hermione is kept in a precautionary quarantine for the next two days, hoping that whatever caused her fever and fainting spell is uncovered so Pomfrey can cure it. When it becomes apparent that it was a one-off, she is released back to the boney-fingered grasp of her friends.

She can feel every groove of Ginny’s body when she pulls her into a hug, and the scent of her shampoo—something Hermione knows to be pleasant, knows to be safe—holes up in her nostrils like turned milk. When her hands come up to grasp Ginny, it isn’t to pull her closer but to push her away.

But Ginny is already moving back anyway, running a hand through her hair and looking at Hermione in the same way Pomfrey had.

“Pomfrey said you might have a scar,” she says, tracing a slender finger along Hermione's hairline. It’s almost motherly, this warmth that precludes Ginny. It should feel nice, should remind her of a home she no longer has.

All wrong, her mind shouts. Hermione wants to wrench back, feels her lip curling but remains firmly planted.

“Oh?” she huffs, suddenly feeling like the lights are too bright—like everything is too much, too loud.

“Yeah, something to do with the magical properties of the cauldron you fell against, but it's okay. Scars are hot.” Ginny wiggles her brows.

“I think I need to lay down.”

Ginny’s expression twists, suddenly serious. She hums soothingly, then says, “Right, of course. C’mon, I’ll help you back.”

She’s not sure why she says it, and knows it would be easier if she had someone helping her manage the way back. But instead of following the logical approach, Hermione murmurs, “Actually, I’ve just…got a bit of a headache. I don’t want to be mean but–”

“Ah, I totally understand—you want peace and quiet, not your friend yapping your ear off.” Ginny smiles, always understanding, even when Hermione is undeserving.

Hermione lets herself be squeezed once again, swallowing down the way it hurts like a finger pressed into a plum-coloured bruise.

She waits for Ginny to head off ahead of her, disappearing around the corner before she begins the slow crawl back to Gryffindor Tower. She’s out of sorts, all jellied limbs and bird’s bones, as she meanders with her sore head through the castle.

She knows she’ll find him, and it doesn’t take much effort because when she turns the corner, he’s there, hands in his pockets, waiting for her.

His tongue flicks out, wetting his lips.

“Granger,” he says.

“Malfoy.”

He takes a step forward, and for all his confidence, it’s almost cautious. It’s like—

⨳

Her dad approached the dead thing. Only it wasn’t dead, it was dying.

It’d jumped out. No time for brakes. Only crunching as metal met hide.

He walked slowly and she wondered if it was some trick of the mind; if adrenaline made time run syrupy. Hermione blinked from the passenger seat, watching his careful steps. The heat of the humming engine sent steam up into the cold, and she saw her father through that haze. It was all slow-motion and moonbeams.

On that dark country road, the black of night swallowed them down. As they drove, it was only the two of them—the last people left alive when everyone else had surrendered to slumber. It’d felt like that until the animal—maybe a deer, maybe not—jumped in front of the car. The seatbelt had tightened down across her chest—an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force—but she still felt the impact, still surged forward into it. Her heart thumped, and her teeth had bit her tongue so hard she tasted copper. Then, silence.

Hermione always remembered things in incompletes. Half-churned memories that powdered and flaked even under gentle hands.

But this memory—the first dead or dying thing in a long series of dead or dying things—is technicolour in composition. A core memory, she might have said.

It was the first one, that must explain it; it was normal to remember life in firsts—first word, first step, first snow, first kiss, first time, first, first, first.

Hermione, clad in a dingy flannel of her mother's, remembered this first. It was a precipice. She was on the brink of something and hadn’t even realised it would change everything. It was the sleepy space between knowing a little and knowing it all. It was a grunt and twist, bones fracturing and realigning under the weight of the world—growing pains—and then nothing was how it’d been.

Hermione watched her dad put the dying thing out of its misery.

The headlights of their car illuminated it all, and Hermione heard the snap—like a twig under running feet. One, two and it’s over. Even over the hum of the exhaust, louder than the rumble of their old engine, she heard it—snap!—the sharp crack of a starter pistol in the dead of night. She thought of splintered twigs, branches underneath toes, running running running as she watched him drag and deposit the body along the side of the road.

The blood on his hands was dark when he climbed back into the car—soot, black, a wet thing that smelled of earth and stung the nostrils. She thought…well, she thought it’d be brighter. Red. She thought of scabbed knees and bloody noses. Her blood was brighter.

(They’re the same colour, she later learned. He exited the front seat and walked inside the house, it looked maroon as it circled the drain. But she figured it out. Everything bled the same. Hermione saw enough dead or dying things to know as much was true.)

‘Mercy,’ he told her once she woke in a cold sweat, thinking of branches and running and twigs snapping—one, two. She thinks of his slow steps—the grunt, a twist—it’s over. Soot-wet hands in the dark of the passenger seat. ‘Best to make it quick.’

⨳

—mercy.

His hand is wrapped around her elbow, and he’s walking her—walking with her towards an alcove. She thinks she should put up some resistance but her eyes are locked on where they’re connected—his palm over her bone, and she’s thinking, it doesn’t hurt.

Her spine connects with stone.

“Tell me,” he whispers, bracing his palms on either side of her head. He’s let go of her elbow, but her skin feels warm. “Tell me you’re okay.”

“I–I’m fine, Malfoy,” she says, brain catching up as she looks at his face.

“You’re okay?” he repeats.

“I’m okay,” she says, breath caught in her chest. A fist closing down around her heart. Squeeze.

“Should have caught you,” he mumbles, lowering one hand so it rests against the back of her neck, fingers pulling on the opposite side. He tugs her head so the world is tilted, and she’s looking at the black of his shirt where it covers his shoulder. She sparks at the touch, everything catching fire as his head dips forward. He continues this mindless chatter. “Should have been faster—should have been there—you’re okay, you’re okay.”

His head dips tentatively, settling in the clear notch of her throat he’s exposed with his handling of her body. He presses his face there. She feels the skin of his cheek where it settles over hers, warm, hot, thumping. His lips ghost in the liminal, hanging above but not pressing down. She gulps empty air, and her pulse must quicken, must feel like some confirmation of her still being alive because she feels his whole body react to it.

He draws in a breath, nose pressing down, and he…he savours. Savours the pace of her pulse under his touch, savours the scent of her—salted and slightly medicinal, curls still clinging on to the stickied and antiseptic-laden air of the Hospital Wing, the cool crisp sheets weaved into the stitches of her robes.

“I’m so sorry,” he murmurs, and when he speaks, mouth breaking open to utter this plea, his bottom lip slides against her jugular vein.

Her eyes close, a moaned gasp spilling from her chest, because it’s right—this is right, she belongs here under his mouth, under his tongue. She wants to whine, wants to beg for him to lick her—she’s never wanted anyone to lick her—but him, she…she needs him to lick her.

Bite.

He pulls back and she shudders, eyes breaking open because it hurts, it all hurts when he’s away from her, and he belongs there, with her, with her bloodied heart beating in time with his. She respires raggedly, staring at him and he looks down at her, lips parted and wet—eyes soot, magic cracking—and he knows, and she knows.

He stares at Hermione for a half second longer before his hands fist at his sides.

Malfoy takes another step back, eyes clenching so tight that he works a wrinkle, his whole face twisting in anguish. Then, without opening his eyes, he turns on his heel and stalks from the alcove.

Each limb burns. Every muscle aches rejection.

He’s abandoned you. He doesn’t want you.

She finds her way to Gryffindor Tower. Her heart still hammers in her chest long after she’s curled under her sheets.

Hermione pretends to be asleep when the other girls return.

Chapter Text

There are whispers. Rumours with no known origin catch like dry brush under fevered skies. The speculations quickly have the whole castle descending into flames and disarray.

Someone was bitten before the end of the war.

A punishment, one said.

No, it was a curse, said another.

Yeah, trying to make a weapon.

Well, I heard that it was Dark Magic, even worse than what Vold–

Don’t say that name!

He’s dead, anyhow.

Still—they shudder—gives me the creeps.

I think what’s worse is not knowing who it is–

“Speculation is cruel,” snaps Hermione, loud enough to be heard tables away, and the Great Hall quiets just so. “What if it was someone at this very table?”

Hermione knows it is not. Knows that someone is at the other end of the hall. Knows if she turns her neck, checking her blind spots, she’ll find soot-grey eyes staring back at her, already watching because he’s always watching her. Even if he’s been committed to pretending she doesn’t exist, she can feel it—that weight of his gaze settling along the nape of her neck.

The murmurs dissipate, then grow rancorous, scary stories replaced with happy musings—quidditch, dresses, Hogsmeade—and ignorance is bliss, but was it ignorance or a shared hysteria? Some way to rationalise that the tables are more empty than they should be, that they’ve washed the limestone for the third time this week but the scent of blood has long-set into every crack and rivulet.

After she’s done eating, porridge that clumps in her throat, a handful of cherries that pop putrid under each pass of her jaw, Hermione gathers her things in arms that shake, and leaves the Great Hall. She tries to even her breathing as she walks, but her thoughts scream.

She doesn’t know what’s wrong with her. It’s been weeks since the start of term, weeks since she’d bumped into Malfoy, weeks since his bottom lip grazed her throat, and still—she aches.

He’s abandoned you. He doesn’t want you.

After the alcove, Hermione thought that, well, she thought that what she needed was something…physical. The moments with him had been a cool salve to her bones, making her feel…right. She tried other therapies, but she thought that, maybe, it was something carnal. Something she needed to fuck out of her system.

Hermione thought that the aches, the guilt, and all that pesky grief might melt from her bones with release, with the satisfaction of being wanted. So, she did. She propositioned Dean, because he was kind and she didn’t think he would say anything, and now, they’d been meeting semi-regularly for…trials.

Dean was every bit of what she imagined he might be—generous, sweet, well-endowed—but all that this pursuit of physical connection had managed to wring from Hermione was a sharp understanding of how desperately lonely she felt. She could fill herself, but it never touched that which rotted in her chest. And he was kind, so kind, but each dalliance only made her feel hollow. She rationalised that this was what made her feverish, that there was something wrong with her at the core which manifested as an itch, as a raised body temperature, as a prickle at the back of her neck.

An arm shoots out as she passes a tapestry, locking around her elbow, and she knows she should scream or claw or bite, but she only thinks,

Oh, this feels good,

before she’s standing in a nook of shadows with Malfoy. Her spine hits the wall, and he’s on top of her, pressing his body against hers like he’s dying to step into her skin.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, nose pressed into her throat. “I’m so sorry.”

Hermione is frozen, turned to a sculpture by his lips so close to her pulse. His hand slides up her neck, curling around her throat and he’s so big that she knows he could snap her neck if he wanted to.

But he won’t, because he knows and she knows.

“What’s happened to you?” she whispers, not meaning at all to seem so desperate. At her question, Malfoy’s head tilts, and his mouth touches her skin, not a kiss but a press, and it draws another sound out of her chest—something needy, whimpering, panting, a thing which begs.

His body goes rigid, and she thinks he means to pull back, to twist his face up in pain and anguish, and she doesn't want that, and she knows he doesn’t really want that either. Before he can think, her body reanimates. She wraps her arms around his neck and tugs him down, making his open mouth press against her clavicle. The force, his teeth hitting bone, it’s bliss—she can’t, there’s nothing better. Her eyes shut in indulgence, and it’s orgasmic; the way it flows over her, the sense of right, the way she wants.

She moans in the shadow of the tapestry.

“You’re fucking delicious,” Malfoy growls, spoken with teeth that still graze flesh. His tongue darts out, and he licks up the line of her throat, and her moan grows louder, because she hadn’t been anticipating him to stay, to give her more. Against her pulse, he promises, “Gonna fucking devour you.”

She begs her agreement, punctuating with a mewled little please that has him pushing her harder, sticking her to the wall with his tongue licking up to her ear. At the lobe, he nips, first sucking between teeth and then biting down.

“Please,” she whines again, threading her fingers into his hair. He grunts, and shifts, and she feels him rutting against her stomach.

“Yeah?” he whispers harshly. His teeth nip at her ear once more before he presses his lips to her jaw. “Want me to split you on my cock right here? Fuck into you while your little friends walk on the other side of this fabric?”

He hadn’t even kissed her on the lips, but she was nodding, whimpering please and yes, and pulling him close, letting him slide his free hand under her arse until her legs are wrapped around his waist and the heat of him is running against the fabric covering her tights.

She’s a ragdoll, boneless, and she lets him play with her, put her up how he likes. All the while, his lips suck on any free point—drawing plump red welts, bursting open capillaries. She should care, but she doesn’t, because she would go purple under him—it all clicks into place in an instant.

He sucks on a particularly sensitive patch of flesh just under her ear and she moans, but it’s clipped, falling into a gasp when his teeth nip.

A sound rumbles from his chest. “You’re so sweet, aren’t you? Knew you’d be sweet. Perfect—”

His hand comes out from underneath her arse, and she’s wrapped tight enough around his waist that she doesn’t need the support, but any point on her body that he’s not touching feels cold. Before she can lament the loss too much, his hand is going between their bodies, fiddling with the zipper of her skirt, and her brain does backflips.

She should find this sort of behaviour indecent.

Has she ever managed a half-decent conversation with Malfoy? Never. Not once, and yet…her hips shimmy, and she wants him to rip the fucking wool off of her body so she can get closer to him immediately.

He tugs the zipper low, and she draws in a staggered breath, some small tension relieved from where the pressure of it notched at her stomach. His fingers pull her shirt loose, and then dive under—palm connecting with the skin of her hip to squeeze as he moves lower.

She’s on fire, everything is on fire.

His fingers trail down, drawing a wanton, appreciative path until he’s stopped at the hem of her closest layer. The cotton is damp where it's pressed against her core. She can’t breathe, the air is full of invisible smoke and her lungs feel chalky. His head pulls back, and he looks into her eyes.

She sees soot. She sees want. She sees a plea, his eyes searching hers.

Permission.

She nods, and his fingers work under the fabric of her knickers. He doesn’t pause—doesn’t ask what she likes as Dean did, or Ron had. He knows.

He stares at her, their faces mere centimetres apart. He doesn’t blink as his fingers run a steady line, collecting her arousal where it seeps from her slit. Wetness pools in the curve of her knickers, he must feel it brush against his knuckles as he traces this arduous line. A plea sits on her lips, wobbly and wanton. She might cry out if he takes any longer.

It’s all so messy; the way his fingers find her. She breathes out and his lips part, breathing in. On this exhale, a single finger curls up and in.

They both groan in the heat because it is right—this is how they belong. She knows he feels it too, like every part of him should be inside of her.

Slowly, his finger presses deeper, not hurried—his path of desire is familiar because he knows her body, despite never being here before. She expels a warm pant, and his head dips forward, hanging above her mouth. If she tilts her chin, she’ll find his lips waiting for her. He watches her until his knuckle is flush with her lips, and then his finger slides out.

Malfoy withdraws his hand from her knickers and raises it to his mouth. She feels the heat, his finger now the temperature of her on the inside, and she sees the slick—she’s never been this wet, she doesn’t know what is happening but she knows it is all because of him.

The atmosphere is thick; a settled fervorous humidity that makes her inhales feel slack. His finger smells like her, and he looks like he means to taste, moving imperceptibly slow—an object in motion remains in motion—when he tilts the digit towards his lips, touching flesh to flesh with a readied tongue.

He halts, drawing in a breath, and says, “I can smell him.”

The voice—the thought that has been twisting up inside her for weeks—breaks loose, word vomit—smelling like cherries and the last of summer’s sweat, the barest hint of blood caked on limestone; it’s just some dam come clean. She can’t hide from him—she doesn’t want to hide from him.

She meets his eye when she says, “You abandoned me. You didn’t want me.”

His eyes flash, a maelstrom of emotions flickering in real-time.

“Oh, Granger,” he whispers, finger disappearing from its obstruction of her view of him.

His hand wraps around the side of her neck, palm wide enough to cover the gap from her shoulder to her jaw, and he tilts her head back. She settles against the stone behind her, staring—daring him to deny it. It’s the truth; she knows and he knows. His eyes are still moving about her face—committing every part of her to memory—when he finally speaks again.

“Did you find what you were looking for—” he pauses, tongue coming out to wet his lips as he grits out “—with him?”

Hermione remains silent, her eyes falling to his lips. She draws in a slow breath, oxygen settling like syrup in her lungs. “No,” she murmurs at last.

“Why is that, you imagine?” asks Malfoy, voice low. His lips twitch at the corner, and she knows—he’s playing with her now.

“Please,” is all she says, and it's as much a plea as it is a polite way to chide. A muted shut up. Quieter, though she doesn’t imagine she needs to speak it, she adds, “You know.”

She isn’t seeking answers, at least not completely. She knows something happened to Draco Malfoy since the last time she had a good look at his face. Some thing driving them together. There is only forward progression, mounting upon itself with each passing second, hurried and frantic. They are on a crash course, destined for collision. She’s wrapped up in it—an object in motion—one way or another, and none of it is normal.

His eyes are soot, dark and unyielding, seeing her, all of her, as he looks down. His lips part again, and he breathes into her exhaling mouth,

“I know.”

She isn’t sure how he moves so quickly, but supposes that answer will be saved for later. For now, when his fingers dip back into her skirt, and he strokes two inside of her, she’s only grateful he knows what she needs. Her fingers rest on his shoulder, and she digs in, nails biting against fabric, trying to draw blood because he knew and he left her when he was meant to take care of her.

His thumb swipes over her clit, and her chest arches off the wall, clenching her teeth to hold back a moan as her cheeks go flush. She can hear the steps of those on the other side of the tapestry, can hear the hum and shove of laughter and bodies mere metres away. Under the cover of him and his palm, in the nook where he chases her release, his hand at her throat tightens, and she exhales onto his parted lips. It is the first thread of her unravelling, and she begins to come undone. The flames catch, and it's so much and not enough, but it's him and it's—right.

“Fuck, so pretty,” he groans, curling his finger up to rub against the nerves inside of her. “Pretty pink lips—would you let me if I—I can give you it better—mine—wouldn’t ever leave you, want to protect yo—fuck me, Granger, fuck. You’re so fucking tight.”

Hermione’s mouth opens on a moan because she’s shattering, she’s coming apart, she’s–

“I need to,” he grunts, her eyes open—on the brink.

He stares at her for all of a half of a second before he closes that whispered gap, bringing their lips together.

Everything explodes—technicolour and brilliance. His tongue licks along her lips, savouring and tasting and drinking in the moans he’s wringing from her chest. She becomes wetter—somehow—sticky and soaking his knuckle as he pumps inside of her. These strokes of his finger—the whispered adorations and promises in their pauses for breath—earn a sodden thwack, like patting the surface of a creek, as loud as their swallowed moans. He keeps a steady tempo because she needs it, and he knows, he knows, he knows.

He wrenches his head back with a groan, and when he looks at her—his eyes are black, pupils blown. His brow furrows, the top of his cheeks pink and she sees his teeth—glinting and sharp.

“You are mine—smell like me.”

“Yes,” she promises, voice ragged and whining, and he…purrs some happy hum before kissing her again.

The sound rumbles, shaking her teeth, sliding down her throat, blooming in her chest as her head tilts back against the stone. She vibrates from him. His lips are soft as his fingers continue a pace that works her, making her wobbly, making every nerve in her body glow light. She’s weightless, about to split and shatter, but she is not afraid of him—not afraid of losing herself in him.

“Please, fuck– I can’t– Malfoy—” she murmurs against his lips, words muffled and keened.

“I know,” he says, and he almost sounds apologetic. His finger rubs a tormenting circle over her clit to further weaken her knees. Malfoy pecks the corner of her mouth, and then whispers, “Just a little more.”

He slides out of her completely, and before she can complain, he’s back inside—stretching her, three fingers deep, and scissoring in and out with a speed that makes her eyes close tightly. Her head shakes from side to side, a sharp cry—the endless chirp of a newborn wren, clamouring—proof of life—hungry, hungry, insatiable—on the tip of her tongue. His mouth covers hers, and she does not go easy through what he makes her take—teeth biting, dragging his bottom lip in and sucking, needing, wanting, wet.

He moans, murmuring fucking perfect, and presses down on her clit, nipping her lips as it all grates to a fine point.

The universe has a centre and it's wherever he is.

On his wet, wet fingers, in the shadow of an alcoved nook, Hermione is worked to a precipice. Malfoy continues stroking inside of her, pressing on her centre with a steady thumb, and her orgasm is coming, drawn long and hard. He’s murmuring, talking her through it, in between the kisses he presses so softly against her lips and down her neck: claims of mine, mine, mine, promises to fill her with him, show her that he’ll never leave.

Her vision goes black. Soot.

She screams into a broken sob, centre clenching around his pumping. His mouth is not there to cover hers because he’s grazing his teeth against her neck, and she’s not paying attention as she paws at him like her life depends on it. Then they’re bathed in new light—not just the metaphorical glow of a hard-fought orgasm. Someone pulls back the tapestry, exposing the view of this little death, a tableau which might have many interpretations—at least, this is what Hermione thinks—because a wand is raised, pointed at Malfoy, and he’s hit with a Stupefy while he still has his fingers inside of her.

They go down together.

Chapter Text

Autumn doesn’t happen.

It is peculiar, this way the season never comes to be. Summer dips long—extra days weaving into weeks when everyone anticipates the leaves to wilt and turn red. They hold their breath for crisp air while the world broils, looking like it’s been breathed from the mouth of the dragon. It heats the castle, the already stifling and sweat-laden brows of the prepubescent multiplying as the itch of wool becomes unbearable.

Hermione drums her quill against the weathered top of a library table. She had earlier pried herself from her bed because there was still the matter of N.E.W.Ts. Her eyes follow the notches and knots that curl along the wood—hundreds of years of rich mahogany and Hermione is just one student in a long line of robes who has sat at this very seat. She ices at the thought, a brief reprieve, and her gaze snaps back to a section of wood—just to the left of the textbook that fails to hold her attention—on which she finds herself etching a scrawled

‘d’.

She is not thinking of him. The letter might represent a hundred separate things, such as but not limited to:

              dawdle (verb). To waste time; move slowly.

Hermione is dawdling, slowly running the sharp point of the quill deep into the wood, carving out the point of the ascender.

              debase (verb). To reduce in value; degrade.

This one-track mind has debased her—she can think of nothing save for the heat of his lips.

              debacle (noun). A sudden and ignominious failure; a fiasco.

She finds herself in quite the debacle; this was not a thing that disappeared with a turn of the moon. The whispers persist, but her heart thumps a steady beat, worrying not for the way eyes linger on her in the hall if they are not the colour of steel.

              delicacy (noun). A choice, or expensive food; something hard to come by.

Ruined. That’s the simplest way to put it. She endlessly turns over every moment in her mind, inspecting every second like she might find a stray trace of sugared sweetness in these pockets of memory because he is a delicacy.

              decorticate (verb). Remove the bark, rind, or husk from.

She’s mere marrow—bare husk of a human—decorticated and flayed until she emerged raw, exposed. Every nerve is ablaze, all the time. The lights are too bright, always. She can think of nothing else except finding him again.

              defervescence (noun). The abatement of fever as indicated by a decrease in bodily temperature.

She waits for defervescence—some calm—for this fever to break. Hours crawl, minutes agonising in their stretch. Hermione waits for this ebb and flow to offer some reprieve, to quiet in the storm’s eye, for her weathered bones to find release. But each day, she grows hotter, a fevered passion more intense than she can stomach. Walking takes effort, speaking is near impossible. She finds herself staring up at the canopy of her bed more often than not, sheets bunched like shackles around her ankles. Every part of her itches, but when her fingernails dig into her skin, she finds no satisfaction.

              dégringolade (noun). Downfall; a rapid deterioration.

Hermione succumbs, knocked down a peg when his eyes won’t meet hers across the hall, tumbling loose in dégringolade. There is no tug of her elbow into an alcove; she doesn’t even feel his stare at the nape of her neck. She finds herself chasing shadows, a mad woman looking for signs, but he has made himself scarce.

Ginny brings soup. She does not eat.

⨳

“Enough.”

Hermione opens her eyes. She does not need to turn her head to find Ginny next to her bed, arms crossed, hair polished and sleek where it falls down her back. She tilts her chin expectantly at Hermione—the picture of her mother, a command without vocalisation.

Hermione blinks before rolling onto her side. She props herself up with one arm and shifts, rising in a way that makes her feel as if her entire skeleton creaks. Her legs fall off of the bed, hovering in the centimetres above the floor but not touching.

“Enough,” Ginny repeats. “We need to talk.”

She just nods. There was no use trying to fight with Ginny. The redhead throws a glance over her shoulder, and the other girl, who has been sitting on her bed, ignoring Hermione to the same degree that Hermione ignored her, heaves a great sigh before slinking out of the room.

“What happened with Malfoy?”

“I’m sure you’ve heard.”

The words tumble out of Ginny as her cheeks grow pink. “I heard many things. Some people say that he Imperiused you. Others say you two have been hooking up since Fourth Year. He’s still allowed at Hogwarts so I doubt the former, but you’ve been withdrawn, and, frankly, freaky as fuck, so I just…please. What is the truth?”

“Ginny,” Hermione says. It’s a plea.

But this time, Ginny does not let her collapse further into herself.

“No, I’m–I’m worried about you. I have been since the Battle, but…you’re not healing like everyone else is. And I think coming back to Hogwarts was a mistake. Maybe you should-”

Panic rushes through Hermione—melding with the heat already settled just beneath the surface of her skin. She feels volcanic.

“I’m not leaving,” Hermione snaps.

Ginny’s eyes flash, widening a fraction at her outburst. “Hermione, what happened?”

“Do you have to do this?” Hermione barks a laugh. “I mean—Godric! I don’t want to talk to you.”

Ginny recoils, face twisting up in a way that reminds Hermione of Ron. It feels like a knife spun in her gut. She blows out a breath. “What is–”

Hermione is not sure where it comes from—this blinding anger, a needling urge to enact hurt. It’s a conduit for the heat, flowing with ease—smooth and billowy, a pillow top of lava spewing from the depths.

“No, I mean, really. Do you think we ever wanted you around? We just felt bad for you, Ginny. Ron’s kid sister who couldn’t take a fucking hint–”

“Oh fuck you, Hermione.” Ginny stands, scoffing as she wheels back around and looks down at her. Her cheeks are red, the blush working from her throat in the same way it does when she’s mid-match on the Quidditch pitch. “I’ve–I’ve been trying…ever since we got back. Can you even say the same? And you blatantly refuse help-”

Hermione interrupts. “I never asked for your help-”

“Right, because you’re dealing with this entire circumstance in a rational and logical way. You’re not isolating, or starving yourself, or hiding behind some defence that’s…not you.”

“Well, maybe I changed with the war.”

Ginny is silent for a moment, looking at Hermione, who shifts under her stare. Then, quietly, she says, “We all did. When was the last time you asked anyone else how they were doing?”

Silence settles over the roar of fire spitting hot in Hermione’s chest.

It’d been easier when Ginny hurled a fuck you her way. When she looked at her like this—eyes like Molly’s, brown the same hue as her father’s—it all started to melt away, leaving behind stomach-hot bile, sharp in her throat.

Admitting this would hurl her further into oblivion. It would untether the weak grasp she holds to reality—not that reality has much meaning anymore. She wonders, or has wondered, if she really might be losing her mind. Looking for signs that aren’t there.

Perhaps she’s attached herself to Malfoy as a means to rationalise all the death, loss, and sickly grief that’s cauterised her wounds from the war. Maybe he was just curious to know she was alright—he’d seen her take that nasty spill—and maybe the sounds she made, the way she’d thrown herself at him, were just a way for him to pass the time.

It certainly feels like that now.

Hermione swallows, hoping to ignore her looming thoughts of Malfoy, but it has the opposite effect. Her throat constricts, and she suddenly becomes too aware of the tear ducts in her eyes.

And maybe this rage, this fever inside of her, her ability to hurl it all in the face of Ginny was an emerald jade. Maybe Hermione felt daft, and needed someone to blame.

He’s abandoned you. He doesn’t want you.

Isn’t it obvious? She tucks that voice to the very back of her mind.

She’s sober of her cruelty, everything melting to leave her feeling raw. Hermione’s mouth feels like it’s full of cobwebs, jaws moving automatically. “It’s been hard. I know it’s been difficult for everyone.”

Ginny draws in a breath, looking at Hermione before shifting and settling back in the space next to her on the sheets. “Are…the rumours true?”

“What rumours?”

“You know.”

“Obviously, I don’t-”

“Stop snapping at me! You’re not being fair. I’m not going to sit around here and be your punching bag while you work through whatever it is that’s going on.”

Hermione blinks, opening her mouth as if to say something before her lips clamp shut.

“I don’t know—I don’t know what’s happening to me. I’m sorry.”

Ginny gives her a once-over before sighing, expelling all the air in her lungs. “You’ve never been like this–”

“Can I say something without you thinking I sound mad?” Hermione interrupts.

Ginny’s top lip twitches, fighting back a smile. “Even so, I’d listen.”

“I…can’t stop thinking about him.”

Ginny’s face twists before her mouth falls into a flat line. Slowly, she says, “Did he–”

“No, it wasn’t like that. But we also haven’t been carrying on some sort of years-long dalliance.” Hermione pauses, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth and gnawing at the sensitive muscle she’s been working for hours. There aren't really any words for this, she decides. She’s not even sure what this is. “It is rather…new.”

“Do you imagine he’s done some kind of ritual on you?”

“I don’t think so. This…connection, if you can even call it that, it’s as if…as if he doesn’t want it. I don’t even know if I do but…” Hermione looks off, inspecting the window.

Things outside are dying, the world on the other side of the windowpane has leapt straight from scorch to frost. She blinks, wondering when there will be snow.

“Before—well, twice—it was almost as though he couldn’t help himself. After my fall in Potions—which feels like it may have been related—he was there. And, right, when I told you I could find my way back to Gryffindor Tower?” Hermione says, pulling her attention away to catch Ginny’s nod. “He was waiting for me. He took me into an alcove, and was…apologising. And then his lips grazed my neck, and…”

And I wanted him to bite.

Hermione squeezes her eyes shut, wishing for the umpteenth time that things were normal. She wants Malfoy snapping low-hanging insults and spitting venom, not sitting at the crux of her ever-fixed thoughts.

Ginny considers for a stilted second. “Very intense.”

“Yes.”

“You said it’s happened twice. I’m assuming the second time was when Neville found you–”

“Yes,” she repeats. Hermione tries to dispel the memory, but the mention of Neville—who has not met her eye in the weeks that passed—crashes over her like a wave.

Malfoy’s body falling atop hers, like a marionette with the strings cut loose. The dull crack of her head hitting stone under their combined weight. Neville’s shout, the other prefect—Hannah Abbott—moving back the tapestry with a gasp.

She was grateful for Neville. Though he now dutifully ignored her with a pink flush settled high on his cheeks, he’d told the Headmistress that he wasn’t sure what he saw before immobilising Malfoy.

He levitated Malfoy’s body with them when he ushered her to the Hospital Wing, despite her protests that she was fine. He waited, and waited, and waited until he spoke with McGonagall directly to share his side of things. And he didn’t make a single accusation—very sterile and fair in his retelling.

She imagined what it must have looked like, a hundred times over at least, in the many hours she’d spent tearing at the gnawed skin where it met her fingernails as she stared at her canopy. Still…when Hermione told Neville that nothing happened, he didn’t make an assumption otherwise.

Hannah Abbott, however, did. Which is why Ginny, along with every other person in the castle, knows about it. It’s why everyone is treating her like a victim, and Malfoy even more like a pariah than they had before.

It wasn’t like that.

“So…you wanted that?”

“I mean, not Neville finding us–”

“But being with him, with—Malfoy?”

Hermione nods.

Ginny grimaces. “Well, why are you isolating yourself then?”

“He doesn’t want to be with me.”

“I don’t know that it’s a matter of want. He’s been ostracised by the school, I mean, even his housemates don’t interact with him. Maybe he thinks he’s protecting you from that–”

“He’s ignoring me,” she says. She hates the pitiful register her voice takes up as soon as it escapes her.

Ginny shudders.

“Sorry, it's just—ew. Malfoy.” Hermione’s lips twitch in spite of herself, and Ginny catches it, bumping her shoulder against hers with a grin. She carries on, tutting, “I have not seen you make a single effort to approach him.”

“If I tried, he’d run off. I’m telling you he doesn’t want–”

“Oh, I can sort it for you two!” Ginny says with a decisive nod. Hermione barely manages the first syllable of Ginny’s name before she barrels on, speaking over her. “No, this is perfect. I’ll go find him and say you’d like to meet and–”

“I don’t think–”

“I’ll let you know the details soon.”

Hermione starts to open her mouth in another protest when Ginny hurriedly bounces from the room. She’s still looking at the door long after she hears her bound down the stairs.

Against the thick pane of glass, a cold breeze hums a solemn tune, croaked and moaning as the window shakes. Petrichor fills the room, and she wonders if there is a draft, wonders if that’s what ices her bones. She keeps her eyes on the window as smoke-like clouds fill the sky.

⨳

On the day of her parents’ Obliviation, it rained.

Time moved slowly, a rusted pendulum creaking with every pass. So did her feet.

There wasn’t a choice for her, she already knew that much. In turn, she had to choose for them. She walked down the hallway, eyes catching on picture frames she wouldn’t be able to take with her. Hermione knew from the years she’d grown taller in this house’s skeleton that it took twenty-four steps to emerge in the living room.

On her left was a faded photo, worn edges visible even through the glass encasement of a frame—a sign of something loved, the tapered and frayed evidence of being held over and over again. She’s new, her parents are tired. Dad was crouched over Mum, red-faced and teary-eyed.

‘We were so happy,’ Dad would say each time they passed it, headed to bed. ‘Tired, but…’

‘Happy,’ Mum filled in. ‘As if your dad did any work.’

She’d always had a healthy imagination. She wished as much wasn’t true then. Hermione could hear the photo—hushed voices, bone-tired.

(I love you, they whisper to her toes, counting to verify there are still ten. I love you, promised into skin that smells sweet, fresh-baked bread warm, and wrapped up tight. I love you, murmured against the soft tuft of newborn hair. Let’s count again.)

To her right: Hermione, aged four, flanked by either parent. She sat in front of a cake, purple and sprinkled, a grin splitting her cheeks.

All she’d known from those first gasps of air was love.

As she walked, she choked on smoke. Knew her insides were scorched. All these years, mouldered to the marrow. Thought it was sort of silly—she’d never taken a single drag from a cigarette.

How much hadn’t she done? She always tried to not think about it, but twenty-four steps felt like a marathon when she was surrounded by her wake.

There she is, aged six, missing one front tooth and holding a sparkler. There she is, aged nine, waiting, arms stretched wide in front of her schoolhouse. Small, a baby. Pink lungs. Brand new.

She shook her head—no use looking back, now closer to a pine box than a bassinet. A fresh sting of tears prickled at the corners of her vision, tossing her into the recess of other thoughts she never let herself ponder; Harry on the Hogwarts Express, the way he’d been swimming in clothes, gaunt in his face; Ron clutching Scabbers tight to his chest, dirt on his nose. Now, they were all different. No light in their eyes. Baby-faced and war-torn. All they had was each other. A storm brewed outside.

She continued on, the longest twenty-four paces she’d taken her whole life, reliving every rung of a childhood that she’d be the only one remembering.

They will go to Australia, and they will be safe, and the war will be won, and that will be enough, and they would forgive you, if ever they knew, because the war will be won, and that will be enough, and they would never hate you, because they loved all ten of your little toes, and the war will be won, and it will be enough.

(I love her, Mum whispered in the stilled seconds after birth, one adult finger wrapped in five of her baby’s. Here it is only the three of them, sequestered from the tempest on the other side of the glass. Hermione is bundled up, safe, quiet too. She’s perfect, Dad agreed.)

She emerged from the hall, and didn’t want to be there. She wanted to go back and count her steps. She wanted to curl against her mother’s chest, hear her dad whisper into her curls.

Let’s count again. Twenty-four steps. Ten toes. Two lungs.

They did not turn from where they sat on the couch.

The war will be won, and that will be enough.

She raised her wand.

It will be enough.

Outside, thunder cracked. Inside, her ribs splintered too.

⨳

There is a steady rainfall soundtracking Hermione’s descent to the Potions classroom.

Ginny pulled her aside earlier, insisting Hermione arrive promptly. She fussed that even a minute might make all the difference. Malfoy apparently agreed to meet with her—carving out time in what was his overfull schedule to chat during a gleaming free period. As she pauses a few feet from the door, she adjusts her skirt and then smoothes out her sweater.

She’s more nerves than girl, every executive function being performed as an afterthought. Too aware of the blood pumping through her veins, the press of fabric over her limbs. The prospect of seeing him has her wound up. She reminds herself to breathe, and then boldly pushes in the door.

The classroom is dark; only the murky haze of light filtering through the Black Lake offers any clarity. She thinks perhaps she’s late, somehow, and kicks herself for having missed him.

Then the door to the supply closet clicks open, and there he is—carrying a large cauldron and holding his wand between his teeth, the tip emanating a bright glow from Lumos. He has his outer robes removed, and, with the help of his charm, she sees where they’re discarded over a stray chair. His sleeves are rolled to the elbow, and he’s loosened his tie too.

Malfoy manages two steps into the room, attention caught in his thoughts and this motion of carrying the cauldron. On the third step, his spine goes ramrod straight. On the fourth and fifth, which manifest as something of a stumble, he turns—eyes finding where she stands, stuck in the doorframe. Hermione’s heart hammers in her chest, and her thoughts spin, all instinct and primal.

His sixth step is backwards, as the cauldron slips from his hands. It misses his feet, because he’s further back, steps seven, eight and nine putting more distance between them at an inhuman speed. She’s so stuck on this that it takes her a moment to catalogue his features, which have twisted into a pained expression.

When their eyes lock again, he throws a hand over his face, blocking his nose.

Hermione blinks, jaw going slack as he presses against a table, physically recoiling from her.

“What are you doing here?” he seethes.

“I–Ginny said you would meet me–”

“I told that Weasley to piss off.” Malfoy shuts his eyes, brows coming together. He lowers his hand slowly and flinches, like he might toss it right back up. She watches his jaw tick, the way he harshly sets his teeth, chording his neck.

Hermione feels the slow drain of colour from her face. She doesn’t want to ask, doesn’t want to speak, but logic evades her. “But–”

“Can you–” He shakes his head, muttering a short fuck before putting his hand back up over his nose. He opens his eyes and looks down at the cauldron on the floor as he sneers. “Can you fuck off?”

He won’t even look at her. Suddenly that fire, the feeling of rage scalding the tips of her fingers, makes sense. She’s not angry with Ginny, or Hannah Abbott, or even herself. She wants to wring Draco Malfoy’s neck.

“No,” she spits. “No, I will not fuck off.”

Malfoy's eyes snap to her, a look of surprise passing before it’s replaced with irritation.

“I don’t want to speak with you.”

“Well, that’s too bad, because I need to talk to you.”

“Leave well enough alone,” Malfoy responds. His voice is icy, clipped like he’s saving all his breath in his lungs to limit any intake of air that smells like her. This is fine, more oxygen to fan the flames that crackle and spit in her chest.

“I deserve answers,” she says, stepping into the room. She puts her hands on either hip and stands straighter.

“Answers?” he snorts, but there’s no hint of amusement in his tone. “You’ve always been so fucking insistent on sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

“This certainly feels like it involves me–”

“It doesn’t fucking involve–” he barks, voice too loud for where they are. He seems to realise mid-response and cuts himself off with a sharp intake of air that in turn makes him squeeze his eyes shut. Red spots the high points of his cheeks. He pauses for a long while before he finally mutters a response. “I’m handling it.”

“Clearly, you are not if my stepping into the room with you is enough to make you behave like some deranged bea–”

Hermione is mid-blink when it happens, so she can’t accurately recall the order of events despite how many times she’ll turn it over in her mind later.

Here’s what she thinks occurs: a brief gust of air from her chest is the only evidence she’d been standing where she stood. There is a hand on her throat in the same seconds that the door to the classroom slams shut. Her feet go out from under her, and there is a brief feeling of floating as her body moves through space. It starts to get a bit more clear around this point, like her senses catch up a heartbeat too late. Hermione staggers, back pressed against a cabinet of locked potions, the glass shuddering under the impact. She doesn’t fall because he’s got her. Her eyes open and she finds him, right in front of her.

With the way he’s got his palm wrapped around her throat, she might anticipate a look of anger on his face. She’d been about to insult him, reduce him to his strange, jerky mannerisms, to the way his eyes trailed her in the halls weeks prior. She blinks twice as she looks up, finding his features smooth, eyes hooded with his brows pulling together.

“Happy?” he asks, body pressing into hers. He smells different than she remembers, sterile and medicinal. They’re so close now, and she can’t help herself—the way she arches into him, senses on high alert, trying her damnedest to meet his lips.

Hadn’t she meant to ask him something? She was feeling angry and—he blinks at her, and the silver of his gaze is like some balm, soothing parts of herself she hasn’t realised caught fire. Her thoughts dissipate, disappearing in a plume of smoke.

“Are you?” His voice is light, barely a whisper as his head cocks, lips closing in on hers. If he loosened his hold of her neck, she’d be able to come forward and meet him. “Do you like what I’m doing to you?”

She realises a heartbeat later when he hums that he might want her to respond actually—not just think of his words, or the way his lips move when he speaks.

Is she happy? She considers for a moment, the thick of the exhaustion she’s felt in the last weeks seeming to evaporate the second she sees herself reflected in his pupils. She feels pleased now, whole, like a piece has slid into place, like she needs to be with him, like he needs to lean forward and kiss her, devour her–

Something flashes in Malfoy’s eyes, almost as if he can hear her thoughts. He glances away—at his hand wrapped around her throat, at their hips and where he’s pressed against her. Hermione rasps, lips parting as she watches his mind work, and he glances back to meet her eye.

“Please,” she whispers. “Tell me what happened. I can…I can help you.”

His lips move just barely, a brief flick before he swallows his amusement.

“You can help me by staying away, Granger.”

“It–it hurts. It hurts when–” she bites her lip, not knowing where the words are coming from. Hermione knows it is illogical to do this erratic sort of pleading to Draco Malfoy, but she’s not in control of her tongue, hardly in control of her arms as they scramble up, gripping his wrists where they extend from her neck. “When we’re not together, it hurts. And that’s why– that’s why I was with Dean. But I haven’t been with him, not since—you.”

Malfoy looks like he’s been hit with a stinging jinx. His grip loosens, thumb tracing the line of her oesophagus. “I’m handling it,” he says, and starts to pull back.

Hermione panics, palms releasing his wrist and grasping for him, an abject plea, digging her nails into his shoulders. “Please, Draco.”

“Stop,” he seethes, rasping and bitter. “You don’t want this.”

“I do,” she says, and realises a half-second later that she’s on the verge of tears. “You don’t get to decide for me.”

“Let go of me, Granger.”

“No,” she huffs indignantly. She sniffs, trying to steel her voice, but all it does is make a tear break loose from the corner of her eye.

She’s never felt rejection so deeply, and is doubly overcome by the fact that she’s this affected by him. She’d never considered herself a masochist, but who knows? Maybe this was the new normal. Frustrated tears because Malfoy doesn’t like her the way she apparently likes him. Before any more spill, Malfoy's hand is off of her throat, settling on her cheeks, and using his thumb to run under either eye.

“I’ll handle it,” he whispers, cooing like she’s something delicate. “You’re okay.”

She starts to say that she isn’t okay—that rain makes her tongue dry, that the earth is on fire, that she’s incapable of unwinding herself from loss, that it’s interwoven with her at a cellular level and becoming innate. She wants to tell him that the only time her mind has cleared are the seconds she spent in his presence, that nothing makes sense—none of it—but the only thing that feels good is him.

She starts to say all of that, or maybe, none of it. The words dawdle on her tongue. Maybe she would have agreed to leave. Maybe she would have demanded he make the world go silent. But she gets no chance because Malfoy leans forward and presses his lips to hers.

He still holds her head, palms covering her cheeks as his fingertips stretch into her curls. His head tilts one way as hers goes the other, and his mouth opens, capturing her bottom lip in between. The shock of it dizzies her head, though it might be the taste of him after she’d been without for so long. It kicks loose soil, propelling her in dégringolade and dragging her down. Her lips part, tongue sliding out, debased and diving to trace his. Whatever this is—sweet, rare, a delicacy—she wants more. She closes the gap, moves to wrap her arms around his neck.

Malfoy pulls back, blowing out a breath through his nose. His voice is so low, tracing a finger along the length of her spine. “Better?”

Her eyes open and the world has more colour in it, everything just a bit less drab than it’d been moments prior. She feels tired, silken in his touch like she might just slip through his fingers.

“Granger,” he murmurs, eyes opening to meet hers. Flames spark. “Use your words.”

“Marginally,” she breathes. He raises an eyebrow—pale, cocked high, a reminder of their past—and she continues, “It’s duller now, yes. The pain.”

Malfoy hums, bending forward and kissing her. His tongue trails her lower lip, but when her mouth opens, her own tongue venturing out, he pulls back again.

It isn’t a suggestion when he whispers, “Meet me here tomorrow, same time.”

“Can we–”

“No,” he says before she can get the rest out. She knows that he knows where she might’ve been headed—begging for something in the dark of the Potions classroom. Her heart dips at how obvious and desperate she must sound. “Just this.”

He releases her, crossing to the cauldron and his wand, where they’d gone forgotten once she entered. He’s got his back to her when her lips start to work again, mind stirring ashen and hazy.

“Do you feel it too?” she asks quietly. “Does it hurt?”

He doesn’t respond immediately, leaving enough silence that she starts to pluck her answer from the quiet—he doesn’t want you like a chorus in her skull. The quiet means that they’ve returned to how it was; she’ll get her normal she’s so begged for, he’ll ignore her until he calls for her. Relegated to this simple command, brought to heel, reduced, worthless, nothing.

Her legs are thick jellied jam when she takes a step from the cabinet, and she hates that she’ll listen. She’ll come tomorrow like he’s told her, because just this will have to be enough. It is better than nothing at all.

She’s pushing out into the hall, wood croaking as it opens when she hears him speak.

“Yeah,” he says. “I feel it.”

She lets the door click shut behind her.

Chapter Text

Hermione approaches Dean that night with a guilty conscience and a theory to test.

She’s all but ignored him since the situation with Draco, but she knows that he’s aware of what happened. Everyone is. She gives him her best smile and Dean pauses with a stare that screams he can’t quite figure her out. She shuffles on feet that are pinpricked with moral culpability before his attention flickers away and she exhales.

Dean’s always been handsome. It’s his eyes, that’s what everyone says. They’re umber, soil turned at the light of day, and when he looks at you, he sees you.

Hermione knows there was a time before all this, before the war, before their friends were dead. And maybe, in another life, in that idealised before, she might have wanted Dean to look at her and see her. Maybe his familiar grin and the tight-gripped hugs he provided would have made her heartbeat skip, maybe she’d be doing things to test his infatuation instead of propositioning him with someone else tucked in the back of her mind.

When he glances at Hermione his eyes are a little cloudy—like maybe he doesn’t quite like who he sees, and there’s a familiar tinge in her gut, recognising an unfortunate pattern—he doesn’t want you—a series of repetitions that threaten to split the skin which knits her chest. She tells herself that it doesn’t matter because Dean is not—

Stop.

Hermione swallows and tries her best to grin. Dean smiles back, nodding once, and all his features soften imperceptibly as he accepts, following her to the empty classroom after curfew.

She asks for more, asks for him to be rougher than he normally is, and lets her nails scrape down his back. He’s silent above, save for asking if that’s what she means when his thrusts meet her hips at a bruising pace. She moans a confirmation and then drags his face down to her throat and says right there.

He seems to figure out that he likes this, she can tell from the little groan he makes before he speeds up, and needs no further instructions. He hauls her up by her hips and then flips her onto her stomach, bending her over the desk and entering her from behind. His chest falls on top of her back, and she doesn’t need to tell him to bite, he just does.

After, they walk back to Gryffindor Tower side-by-side, discussing Arithmancy. When they reach the portrait of the Fat Lady, he turns and looks down at her.

“Are you alright, Hermione?” he asks.

The question shouldn’t surprise her, but it does. She shuffles under his inspection and mumbles some answer that doesn’t quite satisfy him.

“I don’t want you to feel like…I’m using you. I wouldn’t—I’ve always considered us friends, you know? And I respect you. I hope you don’t think–”

She cuts him off. Tells him that she doesn’t think that. Assures him that she considers him a friend too.

Dean smiles, and Hermione tries to return it, but it must not meet her eyes because he tilts his head at her in a way that makes her chest contract. He bends forward, pressing a kiss right next to where the cauldron left a scar.

“I’m here if you ever need to talk, too. I know it’s hard without Ron or Harry.”

Her chest clenches. Dean asks her if she’s going in, and she says no, not tired yet. He gives her a guarded smile and disappears into the Common Room.

Hermione turns on her heel and starts to walk in the opposite direction. She tugs her robes closer to herself as she journeys—unsure of her destination but one foot continuing in front of the other.

She doesn’t let herself consider her conversation with Dean, as she thinks it’ll hurt too much. Instead, she tries to quiet her mind, but this also just turns into her thinking of Draco.

Whatever he’s handling definitely concerns her. She feels irritated, a bit insane and unsatisfied. She wishes she didn’t care so much, or rather wishes she knew why she cared at all. It has to relate to the gossip in the Great Hall. If only she’d listened more.

Something to do with Voldemort and a bite. She knows that the Dark Lord had no qualms about torturing those within his ranks. Hadn’t Draco’s entire involvement been as some sort of penance for his father’s inability to deliver? If she thought back to his trial, she remembered that being a large source of contention.

Draco had expressed pureblood ideals, but he was just a child regurgitating that which he’d been taught. He wasn’t evil—he was a bully. And he’d looked gaunt in sixth year, when he’d taken the Dark Mark. He didn’t look like he was proud of anything.

She thinks of every time she’s interacted with him since the start of eighth year. His silence, knowing where he was as if there was some string that connected them. What did any of it mean?

Hermione’s steps falter when she hears giggling in the dead of night. She tucks against the wall, wishing she’d gone up to bed, not taken some walk in an attempt to clear a mind that did not want to quiet.

“Awfully handsy tonight, aren’t you?”

Her heart stills in her chest at the lull of the feminine voice, and her body is suddenly washed in cold.

She hears the sounds of bodies shuffling, muffled behind a closed door. Hermione takes a step out from where she’d been pressed against the wall and moves towards a classroom. Her loafer catches on a stone, sending her surging into the wood, where she connects with a dull thud.

“Shut up,” a low voice drawls. That sense of cold turns razor-sharp, spearing through her chest. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

More giggles, and then the telltale signs of a belt bucket clicking. Hermione swallows, feeling a nauseous heat rise in her throat.

“Nothing, I thought—” he pauses. The girl giggles again and his voice turns mean. “Please be louder. I sure would love for Filch to know exactly where we are.”

She knows it’s him.

Hermione squeezes her eyes shut, wishing more than anything she was in her sheets, not frozen here listening to this.

Draco continues, and she can hear the irritation in his rasped whispers. “Of course he might smell us first. What the fuck kind of perfume are you wearing?”

She knows she can walk away; it’s illogical to think she can’t, but her body won’t. She presses a hand over her mouth, feeling ill.

“Gods, it’s French, you uncultured prat. You could try to be decent.”

“Sure,” Draco says, voice clipped. “Bend over.”

“You don’t want me to suck–”

“No.”

“Fine by me,” the girl huffs.

Her blood flows at a snail’s pace through her limbs, freezing over with each stilted second she stands there. Bend over. Bend over. Bend over.

Bile rises, and tears sting. Hermione retreats, not needing to hear anymore. She doesn’t even try to be silent as she heaves in great breaths, ascending to the tower. It’s rather hypocritical of her—she had just been with Dean earlier in the night, and she didn’t have some claim over Draco Malfoy, despite his apparent agreement to kiss her to stave off their joint pain.

And really, she’d made that assumption. Just this. Maybe he meant that he’d let her hang around while he worked on the potion. Maybe the kiss would be the last one.

She approaches the Fat Lady, who looks at her with downturned lips before letting her inside.

⨳

Hermione decides she doesn’t need to meet with Malfoy.

She convinces herself that whatever it is that concerns him definitely does not concern her. She had simply been vulnerable and latched on to the first person to spark some feeling in her that wasn’t dread. Malfoy had gone through some growth spurt and became a bit more manly; thus she was excited at the prospect of something different. That was why her thoughts kept drifting to him. As for everything else that felt as if it was perpetually circling the drain, well, there were ways to explain that too.

She reckons that she has some sort of depression, perhaps even post-traumatic stress disorder. She had been through a lot, but others had also lived through wars too. She wouldn’t give Malfoy the credit for being the one thing to fix her. He hadn’t fixed anything—really, the kiss just quieted her thoughts, but the pain persisted and was back with ferocity the next day. As much as her bones itch to go to him, she doesn’t.

That next evening, Ginny finds her in the Common Room with a book open on her lap. She’d been rereading the same sentence over and over again, unable to retain the words with how hard she was not thinking of him.

Her friend flops onto the seat next to her, cushions dipping as she settles close.

“So…” Ginny starts.

“Yes?”

“How’d it go with Malfuck?”

“It didn’t go,” Hermione says, closing the book. She turns to her right so she can look at Ginny with a stern expression for the next part. “Also, thanks for that. He was elated to find me lurking in the dungeons’ shadows.”

Ginny rolls her eyes at the frenzied rush of Hermione’s voice. “You know, it’s strange.”

“What?” Hermione mutters, turning away and letting herself sink into the seat.

“You two are more similar than I thought.”

Some masochistic beast inside of her preens, teeth flashing in delight. Somewhere closer to the surface, her heart stalls, the unease of surprise plain in the dots of pink that warm her cheeks.

“What are you on about?”

“When I mentioned you, he went all starry-eyed, you’d think I offered him the last cauldron cake.”

“He told me very poetically to ‘fuck off’, so I’d say your findings are skewed.”

Ginny inspects Hermione for a moment longer. Hermione shifts in the silence, feeling her fingers itch to do something. She wrenches open the book to a random page and forces herself to read the words.

Next to her, she hears Ginny tut before murmuring, “Just strange, is all.”

⨳

‘We just need to wipe their memories,’ said Harry, looking at the two Death Eaters where they lay crumbled. ‘It’s better like that, it’ll throw them off the scent. If we killed them, it’d be obvious we were here.’

‘You’re the boss,’ Ron said as he brushed his red hair back from his face. His eyes flashed, suddenly realising, ‘But I’ve never done a Memory Charm.’

‘I can,’ said Hermione resolutely.

Harry and Ron both gave her a strange look, parts pitying and relief. She knew this needed to be done, and knew it would have to stick. If she let herself sink into her grief, then they risked death. Then the war was lost. And everything she’d done would be for nothing.

It has to mean something.

With arms like ten-tonne weights on either side of herself, she sludged one foot forward.

She drew in a deep breath, letting her wand rise; only when she opened she was met with her father’s eyes. Her mouth broke open. Before she knew what was happening, Ron was in her immediate view—blue eyes wide and grasping her shoulders.

‘Hermione,’ he said, voice filtered through a mesh screen. She could see her name, every letter visible and dripping to the floor.

‘Hermione,’ he said again, but it wasn’t Ron—it was Dad. He was standing in the frame of her bedroom door, looking in at her and the book she’d stuffed under the sheets.

‘It’s time for bed,’ he murmured, taking a slow step into the room. His silhouette starts to fray with each drop of his slippered foot into the plush beige carpet. He made it two steps before he was turning to powder, little fatherly flecks spinning in the dark.

She shook, hands turning to blocks of ice at her side. Her grip on her wand tightened as a tear broke loose. She blinked—there’s Ron looking at her, and Harry’s wild eyes, the way he got when he wanted to protect what was his.

She blinked again and it was Dad, he made it to her bed, a hand reached out to her. When he touches her brow, he leaves behind ash.

‘I’ll do it,’ Harry said. ‘There’s tea back there, make her tea. I’ll–I’ve got it.’

‘No,’ Hermione said, squeezing her eyes shut. She sucked in a breath, steel and vitriol and grief and memory clamouring at the base of her brain. She couldn’t let it out, she wouldn’t.

She could visualise herself in her mind, standing still, shelves loaded precariously under the weight of everything she’d experienced, every bit of her life and what she held dear.

She knew what she had to do.

It may have looked to Ron and Harry like she was simply taking a breath, like she needed a second to come back to herself. But the moment in her mind, this act, took more precision. Ron’s hand moved down her shoulders, holding either hand, trying to communicate, trying to make it all okay. She was world’s away.

She swept the shelves of the last seventeen years. She wasn’t trained outright in Occlumency, but she’d been nearly self-taught in every other skill. She knew she could do this, at least enough to keep herself sane through their mission.

She made her choice, and she needed to commit to it. She needed to forget too.

There wasn’t time to be meticulous, this was sloppy work. She told herself that she could go back later, reorganise, but part of her knew that she wouldn’t. Knew that if she were to bring this all forth again, she’d crumble and crack like divots on a road well-travelled.

Every smile, every birthday, every ‘Time for bed’, every quiet moment on the settee, every family dinner, every glance at her father in the stands, every press of her mother’s hand against the side of her head, every second, every hour, every bit of childhood and life and memory that was tinged with their love and pride was forced down. She envisioned herself doing it. She pushed the memories—Dad’s smile, Mum’s laugh, the hum of the hallway light. She pushed until her brain pulsed from the effort, and then swallowed and forced some more. She was protecting them as much as she was protecting herself.

Enough.

Then she swept a hand, and every part of herself that she couldn’t afford to remember was swept to the recess of her mind. Pertinent information piled atop it until she couldn’t see it anymore. Shelves cracked for extra layers, extra protection.

And one day she’ll bring it all back. One day, when the two boys that stared at her for this fleeting heartbeat were safe, when the world she’d come to love wasn’t threatened, when her parents could remember and forgive her, she would unearth it all.

But for now, she was needed here.

Hermione reopened her eyes, and the room was quiet. Ron breathed in through his nose, determined and worried. Harry’s glasses reflected the shaky light of the cafe. Ron squeezed her fingers—time to go—and she had to be ready. She had to make a choice. She nodded.

‘Right,’ said Hermione.

Then she held her wand with a steady hand—tremors buried deep, too—and breathed.

‘Obliviate.’

⨳

She isn’t reading the book that sits in front of her on the desk, but still finds it rude to have it slammed shut by a pale hand.

Her neck aches, and any other year she’d blame it on the way she hunches over texts—contorting her body like she might tumble forward into the words. Now, of course, she knows it is his fault.

She looks up to find Malfoy sneering down at her. She’s sequestered herself to some deep corner of the library, her bluebell flames jarred and set off on the desk, the only real source of light within the stacks.

“Granger,” he starts, and she wonders how he does that with his tone. Makes her name an accusation, vowels dripping dirty.

“What?” she murmurs back. Her voice is tired, has been tired, and even the jolt his nearness stirs in her system isn’t enough to kickstart her back to life.

“I told you to come to Potions, and you blatantly disregarded me–”

Hermione can’t help her laugh, an exasperated snort of air. Malfoy’s eyes widen a bit, and it makes her want to laugh more.

“What’s so funny?” he questions.

“It’s just—you ignored me for weeks. It’s been what–four days and I’m the one getting in trouble?”

His eyes flash. “I expected you.”

“And? You were perfectly fine without me,” she whispers, making her chest seize.

Bend over. Bend over. Bend over.

Malfoy leans forward. Her eyes drop to the long line of his arm, cataloguing how his Oxford collar is pressed neatly, the tie settled perfectly at the notch of his throat before disappearing behind his jumper. She can’t help thinking how she looks comparatively; foregoing a tie in favour of layering a large burgundy jumper of Dean’s. He’d been kind enough to let her borrow the worn long-sleeve on a particularly chilly night just two days prior. It’s oversized, she’s swimming in it, and hadn’t tried to do up her hair or press her skirt.

“Whose is that?” Malfoy says, and her eyes drift to find him looking at her jumper. His pupils are blown wide, ringed by a thin circle of silver.

“What?”

“This,” he hisses, fingers coming off the hardcover of her textbook to grab at the bunched fabric of her wrist. She bites her lip to keep from exhaling at the touch. “Too large for you. Is it Potter’s?”

“Why would I have one of Harry’s jumpers?”

“I don’t know why you do anything that you do, Granger,” he murmurs quietly, like he’s speaking to himself. She opens her mouth, but he continues. “No, it’s not his.”

Malfoy takes a step closer, leaning down as he tugs her wrist up to his nose. She hears his inhale, and then he’s recoiling. He makes a sound of disgust as his lids narrow.

Hermione snatches her wrist back. “You’ve lost your mind.”

“You smell like a fucking…Quidditch pitch and”—he leans toward, audibly sniffing her before growling—“cheap body spray. What the fuck?”

“It’s Dean’s!” she snaps. Hermione suddenly feels the urge to stand, but it does little as he remains towering over her. “Why do you even care?”

“You said you weren’t—”

“Yes, well, that was before you–” Hermione stops herself.

Generally speaking, she’d always considered herself a good liar. Malfoy’s head cocks to the side, and he takes a step forward, neck craning as he peers down at her. She thinks she might not be able to lie convincingly if he continues looking at her like that.

“Before what?”

“Nothing,” she mumbles, cheeks going hot. She reaches forward, collects her bag where it’s been strewn, and moves to stuff her belongings inside.

“What is it?” he asks softly. Hermione shuts her eyes tightly, trying to ignore the way his voice falls featherlight at the base of her skull.

“You don’t—you don’t need to worry about me, alright? I’m fine. I’ll just endure until you’ve solved whatever this”—she motions between them flippantly—“is. Dean is nice enough.”

“No,” he snaps, and she flinches. “Not with fucking Dean Thomas. Are you out of your fucking mind?”

It feels like she’s swallowed a vial of acid. Annoyance flares straight from her gut, and she narrows her eyes at him petulantly.

“Actually, I can do what I bloody well please, just like you.”

Malfoy scoffs, taking a step closer.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Been roaming the castles after hours?” she asks, not meeting his eyes.

“No,” he responds too quickly and the hurt, chalky in her throat, is almost too much to manage a response.

A terribly pathetic laugh tumbles from somewhere deep in Hermione’s chest—this forced gaiety manifesting as a shrill beat.

“You might suggest to whoever you’re bending over that speaking at a decibel below screeching is not an appropriate volume for late-night rendezvouses.”

The air is charged once she spits the last bit out. It’s as if she’s smacked him clean across the cheek, a burning red stark against his pale skin. Hermione feels flames licking up her whole body—embarrassment, or worse; an urge to reach out and feel the heat of him beneath her palm.

“You heard.” And as he says it, her heart clenches.

“She wasn’t exactly silent, was she?” mutters Hermione.

“I thought that I—” Malfoy pauses, and they draw in a breath at precisely the same time. He has the good sense to look ashamed. “That’s not—”

She squeezes her eyes shut. He takes a step towards her, and she backs away.

“I’ll leave you to it,” she says, forcing her last book in at an awkward angle.

She tosses the strap over her shoulder, the leather weighted and folding over her curls in a way that traps her neck, but she needs to get away from him immediately. She moves to go past but his arm comes out, gripping her bicep to halt her immediately. His fingers dig into her skin through the jumper and she loosens a breath, turning to meet his eyes.

“It’s not—that doesn’t mean anything,” he sputters.

“Right, even if it did, who bloody well cares? I’m not—we’re—nothing, this is nothing.”

She wishes he would leave her be.

“Granger.”

“What?” she snaps.

“It’s easier this way.”

This is mortifying. Her skin crawls as his words hit her ears—rejected when they hadn’t been anything at all. And now it feels like pity—the kiss, his hands on her, the rough tug into an alcove.

“I need to have some…restraint,” he continues.

Hermione scoffs. “I really have no need to know why or how you fuck other people.”

“I’m not nice to them.”

Surprise manifests as a rasping stutter, the earnest truth of his voice leaving her head on the fritz. He’s tugging her closer to him, and she goes willingly until her brain catches up.

“Dra—Malfoy. This is a terribly indecent thing to discuss—”

“It isn’t how I’d be with you.”

She flushes, her whole body lighting up like she might cough out fiendfyre. “You can’t say things like that.”

“Why not?” he says, and his voice is different—a man that is starving—a touch desperate and seeking. She meets his eyes, and they’re dark, blown wide; she can’t differentiate where his pupil ends and the iris begins.

The edge of the table presses into her bum, and if he pushes her a little more, he’ll have her seated atop it. Her hand clings to the wood, nails digging in to keep from reaching to pull at his shirt.

“You said—”

“I know what I said, Granger.”

His head tips forward, closing in on her. The air is static energy, prickling softly in the haze of the library and she feels the charge—feels the way the distance between them is electric.

“Stay still,” he whispers, and it’s summer on his tongue, the warm breeze of a balmy afternoon sweeping across her face, a lullaby on the wind hitting her cheeks. She’s fallow soil, earth which is ripe and bleeding promise. What he gives, she will grow. Her heart beats erratically even as she sits frozen, the deep thrum of his voice locking her in place, a snug root finding hold.

“Don’t,” she breathes back, staring him down. His eyes crinkle, like he might be smiling, as he stills above her lips.

“I’m sorry.”

It’s so simple, how she melts. The timbre of his apology folds her up neat, easily moulded and leaving her forgetful, forgiving, fuzzy—this feeble-brained mess of a witch, still arching up into him while her lips fix a whisper of, “Well, alright.”

She wants to make him pay—but no, no she doesn’t. She wants him. She wants air to breathe that doesn’t leave her tongue coated with his taste. She wants the world to quiet, and to have those blissful seconds of peace that come when his mouth covers hers.

He knows, so he obliges.

The gap between them is empty air, and then empty space because it no longer exists. His lips are soft where they press to hers, and it doesn’t hurt, it never hurts, because it’s him him him and his thoughts, she knows, they’re her her her. She should wonder why she’s reduced to the barest senses and flayed alive in those hanging seconds of want, but her thoughts flake to ash, slipping in between her fingers. She’s not easily held together, instead consumed by embers, no longer real, she’s as part of him as he is her.

Malfoy’s tongue is delicate, testing and precise along the seam of her mouth, opening her up to taste. She parts in return, because she’d split in two for him—she’ll make space.

His hands trail down, gripping her hips, and she returns in kind, nails dragging along the surface of the table pressed underneath her until she’s wrapped around his shoulders, locking him to her. She can hear everything—the shift of their clothes, the swallowed moan that spills from her chest, the growl—quiet and possessive—as his hips rock against her.

Her head tilts and this kiss grows deeper, something decidedly more as he pushes her back until she’s lying on the table, bending over her, hungry and taking his fill. Her body—still arching up into him, still wanting for the distance between them to cease—curves against his. His hands slide up her waist, folding the line of her body until he’s supporting her neck, a firm grip to anchor himself.

They separate for breath, lips trembling. Her thoughts are foggy, a fine sort of daze settling along her shivering skin. She can’t name this feeling, the emotion taking root inside of her. All she knows is that she has never wanted anything as much as she currently wants him atop this wooden table in the dark of the library. Perhaps she’s afraid of what it means—

Hermione intimately knows fear, and this does not feel like fear.

His hair is tousled just so, a belated sort of revelation being realised that it is her fault—her hands made a wild path from shoulder to neck to tugging on the champagne strands. He looks so charming with the flush atop his pale skin, pupils still overtaking his eyes, the taste of him so sharp on her tongue. Hermione shoots forward, bringing their lips back together and he groans, deliciously, into her open mouth.

In another life, this would be so bizarre: Malfoy’s body covering hers, their hips seeking friction against one another, their tongues licking, her moans unmitigated and belonging to him. But it’s this life, and nothing has ever felt so good—not of recent memory, and certainly not of a time before.

Her nails scrape down his back, following his waist, until she’s toying with his belt. His chest is vibrating and it doesn’t make sense, but really nothing makes sense and it all threatens to overflow. She’s full to the brim—her cup runneth over. He shudders, mouth pulling back slightly, like he feels it too, but she doesn’t want him to go.

Bite.

Hermione’s mind goes blank because he’s leaving her, he’s going to push her away and head to some empty classroom with some empty girl and say bend over bend over bend over and give them what is hers. And she can’t believe him, can’t believe that he’d do such a thing, hurt her in such a way. She's not thinking of Dean or her ploy to make Draco Malfoy jealous because that meant nothing, and he means everything, but he pushed her aside and said just this and just this wouldn’t ever be enough, but she knows. She knows how to make it enough, she knows how to take, so she will.

A chord snaps into place—terrible and avaricious. Her eyes open and she tilts her head back. Hermione is not there—no, there’s something else in her place, someone else, a thing that is harmonised with the fabric of creation and the vastness of the macrocosm. It’s as if she’s watching a terrible collision, something fated and reeking of decay, an event horizon from which she can’t turn back.

“So sweet,” he whispers.

He leans forward, her mouth opens, and all it takes is that second and a breath—a quiet sigh, a resignation to predestination. He kisses her softly, and Hermione… she bites down.

Serendipity. Scrumptious, sweet. Delicious and filling and everything good—he is everything good, and together, like this, with his broken flesh dripping fresh onto her waiting tongue, she nearly blacks out. It’s one half of a whole settling into position, her teeth sinking into him. He groans and she moans, and then tries to press her sharpest teeth deeper before it occurs to her to bite him elsewhere, then she’s scrambling for a space beneath his collar. The skin beckons to her—right there, she can see it, the pulse notched under his jaw, calling her name.

Malfoy’s hand is on her throat, pushing her down onto the table.

“Stop,” he hisses through clenched teeth.

She blinks. The world comes into focus.

“Don’t do that.”

Her thoughts are sludge. Sifting through them proves impossible, and she doesn’t know what he means. Don’t do what? She’s done nothing wrong. If anything, it’s all right now.

“Granger,” he says softly.

She blinks again, and it all makes a bit more sense. Malfoy is above her, his hand is pressing her down, and his bottom lip bleeds.

“Oh,” she breathes. Her voice comes to her half-croaked, mouth beestung and still pulsing. “Have I–? I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t respond immediately, looking down at her like he means to work something out. His pupils have returned to him, and his eyes look brighter—as though he’s been set at ease.

His hand leaves her throat and he takes two steps away from the table. Hermione sits up, scrambling from her back to her elbows until she’s seated, shifting her skirts and the jumper where they’ve gone askew.

There is a quiet beat.

“I think,” he starts, and she looks up. His eyes are downcast, and his shoulders have risen—all tense. “I think that– fuck, Granger, you’ve got to come when I tell you to. The dungeons, I mean. We can’t keep—the distance is too much.”

Her lips press together tightly, and she scoffs.

“I’m not some hound waiting around for your call.”

Malfoy’s head snaps to her automatically, and she thinks for a fleeting heartbeat that he’ll spit some sharp retort, tell her to fuck off, or sneer. That would be normal.

But here, his eyes flash with a glint of mirth, and his lips pull back in an unanticipated grin. He has a wide smile, and it dimples his cheeks—he’s so amused, finding this humour only he understands. With a sharp exhale, he laughs. It rumbles—low and dark—and a shiver runs down her spine as she watches him. His laugh is feral, trapping her there and, with some twisted fascination, Hermione watches him, shocked by the heat of his stare.

“No, you certainly aren’t.”

She wishes she understood what was so funny, but her mind is still playing catch up. His chuckles trail off into nothing, and she has so much she wants to say, so many things she wants to ask right on the tip of her tongue. Malfoy speaks first.

“Tomorrow. You’ll come?” he asks, still grinning.

She ought to at least feign indifference. The too-quick nod of her head must give her away, but Malfoy’s face betrays no smug self-righteousness. His smile falters some as he gives her a once over, eyes lingering on the jumper covering her chest.

“Don’t wear that,” he says.

“And why not?”

“You know,” he spits.

“The castle is freezing, and I can do what I very well please–”

He reaches over his shoulder with one hand, tugging on the collar of his jumper. In one swift motion, he pulls it over his head, wringing it out with a shake and sending the scent of whatever he wears smack into her face. Hermione watches him step closer, bearing the fabric to her.

“Here.”

“I’m not going to wear your clothing, Malfoy.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

He makes a frustrated sound before shoving it against her chest. Hermione’s hand shoots out automatically, and she clutches the fabric.

“There,” he sighs, and she realises his eyes have softened. The overblown black of his pupils has constricted, and in the dark of the library, the soot is replaced with something akin to silver.

She finds herself leaning forward, inspecting the change. Her curiosity isn’t able to be tapered down, and it must be obvious because Malfoy blinks and takes another step away from her.

“Right,” he murmurs, lingering like he means to say more. His eyes sweep over her once more before he turns and quickly stalks through the stacks, his long strides making him disappear within seconds.

Hermione stares after him and realises that she’s drawn his jumper up to her nose. She sniffs and instantly relaxes, all the tension leaving her in a single blink. She exhales and can’t help herself; all her thoughts draw to a fine point—focused only on him.

“What is happening?” Hermione whispers to the silent air.

She has a keen sense of fear, this absurd sort of knowing—something ties her to Draco Malfoy, binding them together in a way that makes no sense but feels natural, and comes as simple as breathing.

Her heart thumps a slow beat in her chest as she holds tight to the knitted fabric that feels, curiously, like home. With the pain staved off, her mind feels clearer somehow. She runs her tongue along the back of her teeth, tasting him.

And what had he meant?

It’s easier this way.

Was it? It didn’t feel easier. It hurt being away from him. Not that she ever thought she’d say something like that—she thinks of how he used to sneer at her across the Great Hall, how until the war–

A whisper at the back of her skull.

Someone was bitten before the end of the war—a punishment—no, a curse.

She feels tugged in a separate direction, the memory of his face twisting up in irritation, not with her but—I can smell him.

You know, she’d whispered.

I know. He did.

She’d been set to call him a deranged beast just nights prior. Then he’d moved so quickly, held her by her throat. His eyes were black—wild.

Hermione gasps. The pieces suddenly fall into place.

I’m not some hound waiting around for your call.

A grin—teeth glinting, sharp—predatory and primal and natural, a breath in, an exhale onto parted lips, the feel of him on top of her, the overwhelming urge to bite him, to have him bite her—no, you certainly aren’t.

Hermione doesn’t want to be right. She’d never wish that on anyone—not even him, for all his cruelty, no one deserved that.

But a voice is chanting in the back of her mind, it’s a knowing that goes deeper than logic and reason, a thing which pulses and thrums in fate. It is feral, instinctual—canines exposed and dripping—salivating and catching the light of realisation as it saunters forward, circling her, and she knows.

Chapter Text

Inhale.

She draws in a breath before he lowers his face to hers, and then it's him sitting in her lungs. She’s really got a problem—close isn’t ever close enough. Not with him. She could do without everyone else touching her. Ginny likes to be skin-to-skin, sometimes crawling into her sheets when their dreams take an ugly shape, morphing into nightmares before dawn. Hermione swallows the simmering irritation that it dredges up, because she loves Ginny and despite the way it makes her skin prickle, she knows she should be grateful anyone cares enough to check on her. It does hurt though—the touch festering like an overheated sore, sleepy breath hitting her neck like a sickly sweet, rotted wind. Except for when it’s him.

Exhale.

Every nerve is on edge when she lets out the breath, her eyes flickering between his lashes and his lips. He has this thing—she’s not even sure if he’s conscious of it—almost smiling a bit as he’s leaning in. Hermione notices it because she can’t help but notice everything about him, stuck here trying to consume his oxygen as that's the only way she can get him inside of her.

They’ve been doing this for over a week now, Hermione appearing in the doorway at the exact time Malfoy tells her to arrive. Sometimes, when she has her wits about her, she can see him shiver once she enters the room. She’d try to swallow the bit of warmth rising from her gut, spreading through every limb. She shouldn’t care if he notices her, if he shows any reaction to her being near.

He otherwise appears to be unaffected. Once or twice, she felt the featherlight touch of his attention along the back of her neck, but when she turned, he was always looking away. She doesn’t even have the energy to try to make him jealous, because it sours her mouth to imagine him doing this with anyone else. So she comes like he’s told her to, using every ounce of mental fortitude to not think of how right it feels once his potion is brewing, and he finally gives her that look—the sort of come here look.

Her feet connect with the stone as she hops off the desk, and giddy anticipation makes the steps to him feel sugared. When she first came after the library, there hadn’t really been a protocol, and that was how Hermione had him pressed down against a desk, straddling his hips with a rocking motion, her fingers slipping in between the buttons of his shirt to touch his warm chest. She’d bit his lip again, and he’d grabbed her throat, panting heavily as he put distance between them.

Now, they have rules.

For one, Hermione isn’t allowed on top because she somehow lacks restraint. She feigned offence when he first decided this, reminding him that he had been the one to slide his hand into her skirt in the alcove, to which he merely hummed, ignoring her and looking away.

Not that she can focus on any of that in this second. He has her perched on the edge of a desk, standing between her legs and holding her face. It makes her a bit lightheaded, but when his lips touch hers—tugged in a bit of a grin—she doesn’t really mind. It all blanks out and she is reduced to a base desire.

Malfoy draws back, she inclines forward. Malfoy curls his hands under her jaw, moving her head, tilting and fixing her until it’s easiest for him. She thinks she’ll take any form if it's his fingers moulding her. He exhales, she inhales.

Give and take. Push, pull. Breathe in—hold it, hold it—let it out.

I know what you are.

The sentence is dancing on the tip of her tongue. It takes a courage she doesn’t possess to form the syllables, so instead she lets her lips part and slides her tongue out, tracing the seam of his mouth until he acquiesces and lets her in. She blushes, maybe at the sensation, maybe at the memory of his sharp features locked in, tutting as he reminded her,

no teeth.

Still. A small part of her itches for more—some possession, some snap in control. As if he knows—he does, a small voice at the base of her skull argues—his hand drops slowly, tracing her skin until he’s got fingers curled around her hip bone.

He looked at her a few evenings ago, and she furiously warmed under his inspection, then he tilted his head and asked whether or not she was eating. She was, she snapped back. And why was it any of his business? She wanted to add that part—imagined how she would scoff, and then he would be the one blushing, and just this once, she’d have the upper hand. She wanted to demand how he could question anything about her if he’d offer no information on himself—on what ailed them both. She’d almost said it.

I know what you are.

Right there. She could taste the words. Felt the weight and truth of them.

He turned around, putting his back to her thus extinguishing her courage, and she imagined that meant the conversation was over. They didn’t talk a lot, but really, when had they ever talked before? Hermione was used to that, it was normal to be left in silence with him, even now when they were doing…whatever this was that they were doing.

As she was travelling down that train of thought, Malfoy turned back with a box in his hand, holding it out towards her.

“Here,” he said softly, and something pinched in between her ribs and spine.

Her eyes flickered down to the pale green tin, a fine, curling cursive atop the lid. She shook her head, not to decline, she simply didn’t understand why.

“Biscuits?” she whispered.

“Mother sent them,” he said, as if this explained it. He drew it to his chest and opened it before extending the offer again. “They’re my favourite. Or were. I don’t have much of an appetite for them anymore.”

Hermione made a sound in the back of her throat, then reached forward and plucked a biscuit from the tin. The soft, buttery dough melted on her tongue as she slowly chewed under his watchful eye.

He didn’t stop. Each day, there was some sort of offering to her when she arrived. Today, for instance, it’s the same tin, full only of the kind she ate earlier in the week. He took one after her and they bit down at the same time, watching each other. It’s why, now, as he’s kissing her, sugar still clings to her lips.

His chin tilts back and he expels a warm breath, mumbling something about sweet before he closes the gap again. And she knows she should say something—should have more on her mind than his grin in the seconds before he kissed her, or the slope of his shoulders as he leaned over the cauldron, or the way that simple trace of chocolate and butter sits, shared, on his lips. But all she’s thinking is

you’re sweet too.

⨳

Time passes slower, and the nights stretch longest. More often than not, her mind drifts to him.

This is the only time when the thought feels safe—like it’s her own. She can inspect the idea of him under the light of the moon, letting his words echo until they lose their meaning, then reconstructing them in the bleak afterwards’ silence.

Knowing doesn’t make it easier. It doesn’t alleviate the ache in her abdomen, or soothe the squeeze of her heart.

This…whatever this is lives inside her ribs. The sheets are stifling where they cover her, but she can’t bring herself to kick them loose—sure that if she exposes her stickied skin to the cool air of dark, she’ll work herself into a fever.

He’s something else. She wonders how much of him—if any—is human.

Moonlit Maladies: A Healer’s Understanding of Lycanthropic Lore sits at the edge of her bed, dog-eared and pencilled in. Since plucking it from the shelf, she has read it cover to cover thrice—always in the cool dark of night, poring over each page to try and understand. She finds no solace in reading the thick book, only a coiling dread in the pit of her stomach.

One passage in particular stood out, stirring in her mind even now as she tosses and turns.

Lycanthropy erodes both the body and the mind. In observation, the afflicted report an almost violent presence, gnawing at memories and erasing rationale. With time’s passage, the human within may struggle against visions, urges, and half-dreams—churned realities borne of some intrinsic, primal want. Their thread of reality may become warped and distorted, allowing for breaks in sanity. When presented with the object of their desire, they may be observed degrading into an animalistic state.

Heed this warning, Reader: the beast lies not dormant even in the daylight.

Urges underlined so harshly that the ink nearly bleeds through the page. She thinks of his murmured apologies each time he’d tugged her into a hidden corner. Like he couldn’t help himself.

She has very little to go on. There was the rumour of a classmate suffering from a bite. It could well be just that, a rumour. Further, she has no proof that it was him explicitly. Yes, he had moved quickly in the laboratory, and looked like he’d grown a lot in a short period. Unbidden, she thinks of another passage:

The afflicted body is not merely a vessel, but a site of constant transformation. Once bitten, the change is immediate. Bones thicken, muscle grows denser, and the frame itself may expand to house the beast more appropriately.

Observed changes include rapid increases in height and stature. Those who experience bites in their youth can more easily pass these changes off as puberty, but others may struggle to find excuses should they so seek to keep their designation a secret. Over years, such changes become more evident in those who have long borne the curse, as their form grows more capable of containing the dormant power they carry.

Other observations suggest that aside from physicality, facial features of a werewolf may shift; eyes darkening, canines sharpening, and the very shape of the face assuming a predatory cast.

She swallows, willing her mind to quiet. Something else creeps at her, some truth not found in the pages of her book. Hermione isn’t one to lean on intuition, but she’s known since she saw him again that he changed since the war. It feels more innate than logical, which she hates—she has always thrived in proof. She wants to be sure, without a doubt, before she says it aloud.

She’d done research on lycanthropy long ago, following the seed planted by Snape. She recalls Malfoy’s sneer back then—that sense of pompous indifference and disgust he’d imbibed into each syllable when he spoke of werewolves. If he was suffering from a bite, Hermione knows he would keep it a secret, perhaps even in denial. It would be impossible for him to rationalise that he of all people carries a curse he once cruelly derided so openly, as though the ailment belonged only to those deemed lesser.

Even that wouldn’t make him deserving of all that she’d seen Professor Lupin suffer through. And that was examining the memory of Malfoy then. If she thinks of him now…

Her memories of him now don’t align—jumbled and twisted, overarching in her thoughts. There is a softness—an edge to the mean—a pretty dip in his Cupid’s bow. He had kissed her, and—

She draws her head back, letting the jumper slip up and over her nose, then she takes in a breath and it’s him.

He wrenched this sweater off of his back and forced it into her arms. He laughed, almost amenable. Insisted she eat, watched her as she took slow bites. Her heart aches, something like fondness twisting when the simple upturn of his lips comes to mind.

Hermione shifts, feet bunching in the fabric at the foot of the bed. She knows she can break out of her self-imposed cover of fabric, crawl to the edge of her quilt, and bring the book snug to her chest. She can slowly cross back to her sheets, pull them high over her head, and crack open the text to read once again.

Though she knows she needs to rest, so she squeezes her eyes shut and wills her mind to be silent. This can’t be how she operates. She can’t—can’t waste away ruminating. Her thoughts spin, and all she can see are his eyes—staring at her, dark, full of something he won’t speak aloud.

She’s too aware of the blood moving through her veins, the heat of it—the heat of him, the sound of his voice, and he’s whispering, telling her to come to him.

Come, Hermione. Come to me. Come come come.

She hears it, feels him, all she needs to do is just—

⨳

She blinks, resurfacing. The air feels hot in her lungs as she looks around, a daze settled on the perimeter of her mind.

She’s no longer in bed, not snug and stifled in scratchy sheets. Her clothes have changed, curls pulled back from her neck. Her eyes catch outside, and it’s sunset, she can see the light settling across the Forbidden Forest. Time passed and Hermione wasn’t present for any of it.

“Hermione?” someone asks, and she turns from the window to find Neville pale-faced next to her. His jaw is loose, and he seems scared.

And despite the absurdity of her own situation, of the confusion knitting her brows, she wonders what's wrong with him.

“Neville?” she asks. The words come croaked, like she hasn’t spoken in days.

What day is it?

“I was…I was saying your name. And you just…sat there.”

Her ears are ringing and she feels unsteady, but she can’t stand when people look at her like that. Like she’s something broken, like she needs saving. She doesn’t need anything from anyone except—

Except that’s not really true anymore, is it? And with the thought comes the tug of the chord and her thoughts fall to him yet again.

“Excuse me,” Hermione says, and makes a polite hum, tilting her head at him as a smile pulls on her lips. “I ought to be off.”

Neville blinks, mouth opening and closing as he starts to say more, but Hermione is quick—at least she is now that she’s come back to herself. She stands before he can voice any lingering curiosity, and this is fine because she wouldn’t have an answer for him.

Her knees feel weak as she meanders through the portrait and into the chilled air of the castle. She rubs her arms, trying to warm her blood.

Really, she’s fine. This is…fine.

Sometimes people forget things, and maybe it was just a few hours. She has been stressed, not only with classes but also everything else that seems to be happening. A few hours not being memorable wouldn’t change anything. She touches her hip and finds her wand in her pocket, and when she casts the Tempus, she finds that it is Friday.

Hermione has lost two days.

She blinks at the tendrils of the spell casting a faint glow as the date and time sit in front of her. Forty-eight hours. Class, meals, study time. Gone in a blink. Had Ginny spoken to her? Did she sit in the Great Hall, listening to those speak all around her? And had she—had she gone to Malfoy? She suddenly feels mortified because it takes all her self control to not give into the subconscious voice in the back of her mind, and if she wasn’t present then—

She wants to laugh, feels almost manic with the sort of silly joy that twirls her gut. She probably made a fool of herself, probably begged for more, probably used teeth.

She watches a minute tick by, and then a second. Shaking her wrist, she dispels the charm and pockets her wand, feeling the spindly wood along the length of her hip.

He probably won’t even be there, but he might—there is that little thread, invisible to her eye but tugging her body forward—so she goes anyway. She doesn’t think she can really talk with anyone else about this, save for Malfoy.

He felt the pain of it too. And she saw it in his eyes, that hint of himself that he couldn’t deny, and the way that extended to her even now.

Hermione is in front of the dungeon in record time. Time has a funny way of passing when she lets herself be guided by instinct. She’s never been inside the Slytherin common room, but Harry and Ron have—gods, years ago now. The memory is hazy, like peering through a thick fog, but she remembers the general location of it and there’s that feeling, so sharp it feels like it’s stabbing from her navel straight through to the base of her spine. Knocking feels absurd, but she doesn’t have much of a choice.

Only as she’s going to rap her fist against the wood, it’s opening. The figures aren’t paying attention, heads twisted as low laughter is passed between them, so one broad chest runs smack into her.

She’s knocked back, whoever this is is quite large—a man in boy’s clothing—and as she falls, a hand grips her wrist and tugs her so she’s standing straight yet again.

“Granger?”

Hermione’s head tilts to find Gregory Goyle with a twisted-up expression. She knows she should speak, make some acknowledgement, perhaps wrench her hand out of his, but she remains still—holding her breath as he holds her.

Goyle looks a bit more gaunt in the face, still larger than their peers, but notably less put together. Even now, as his face softens from the laughter he’d been engaged in, she can see the way that the war carved at him. The use of dark magic in such a short span has aged him, and he looks older—more haggard than years prior.

Hermione thinks of the Room of Requirement, his wand trained at Ron, that sneered sort of petulance he carried on his face. Unbidden, the memory shifts, and it is grey eyes—they’d been trained on her, hadn’t they? She exhales sharply, the revelation chilling her to the bone.

“Are you looking for Draco?”

Hermione’s brow furrows. But it sounds so earnest, and she realises she’s never really spoken to him.

The two others flanking either shoulder don’t say a word—Hermione’s eyes flicker, finding Blaise Zabini looking over his right and a curly-headed boy that she doesn’t quite recognise on his left. Goyle releases her hand and she draws it close to her chest, rubbing at her wrist that just feels off now. He hasn’t squeezed hard but her skin prickles.

“I—am. Yes. We are working on a potion. Extra credit.”

“You need extra credit?” Zabini drawls, blinking slowly. 

Goyle makes a tight face, lips pursing as he looks over his shoulder. Zabini sighs, apparently put-off, before he turns, motioning with his head to the curly-headed one. He shrugs, smiling and his name comes to mind—Theodore Nott—before he moves to his side. The two disappear down the corridor without another word. Hermione’s eyes follow them before she coughs, shaking her head.

“Nearly curfew, I imagine they’ll want to get back soon," she says dully. 

Goyle grunts, something between a snort and breath. “Well, it’s Friday night. They’ll probably stay in Hogsmeade for the weekend.”

“Is that—do you all do that?”

“Not all. You said you had to ask Draco about a potion?”

“Yes,” she breathes, turning back to meet his eye. “I—err…we have a small window.”

“Sure,” Goyle responds, turning around and whispering something that makes the door come unslotted, the stone dragging along the floor as it pushes open. The interior of the common room looks brooding—foreboding—but Goyle wastes no time as he takes a step inside.

Hermione suddenly realises the absurdity of where she finds herself. Chatting with Goyle about Malfoy as he opens the dungeons for her. She's stuck to the floor, and he turns around, surprise evident that she hadn’t hopped merrily along after him.

“This way, c’mon.”

“Oh, uh–right.” Hermione doesn’t recognise the sound of her own voice. Goyle nods once, brown hair falling into his vision before he pushes it back, sweeping a hand in front of himself for her to go first.

She draws in a breath, and steps inside. Her pulse thrums at the base of her throat, one beat after another, and she fights to keep herself steady.

He’s probably not even here, she tells herself. But it’s reflex now, this draw toward him. She pushes forward. It’s emptier than she expected, only a few students scattered here and there, most too absorbed in their books or drowsing by the fire to notice her.

It’s about as one would expect. Grand and cold, the greenish hue from the Great Lake sweeping in from the wide windows. The hazy setting sun filters through the water, casting shimmering patterns of liquid lace across the walls and dark furniture. Ornate leather wingback chairs flank a fireplace, housing a cool blue flame that does little to warm the space. Hermione shuffles on the plush, black floor, feeling like she’s entered a den and is woefully unprepared.

She’s surprised it’s so quiet tonight, imagining that the whole lot of Slytherins might be congregated in the common room much like the Gryffindors had been about to do upstairs. Though, when she did think of this house’s common room, she imagined there might be an exchange of fine crystal decanters, containing rich and bubbly liquids that were far too expensive for her tongue. She could see the group, a blond head at the centre—smiling in a way that tugged his lips, indenting his cheeks as laughter spun about the room like the caustics of the Great Lake. Would he have his arm slung over the back of the settee, perhaps tucking a witch close to his chest?

Hermione bites her tongue, a bright flash of pain suddenly evident in her mouth.

She instead looks out at the lake, watching what aquatic creatures swim past and lose their shape with the setting sun. Long seconds must pass this way, Hermione trying her hardest not to dissociate over an imaginary brush of his lips against someone else’s forehead.

Then, movement. She spots him, leaning over a small table near the window, fingers drumming idly on the wood as he scans the page of a book. The sight of him has her feeling exposed. She approaches him quietly, her steps softened by the thick carpet. He doesn’t notice her at first, and there’s something achingly vulnerable in the way his forehead is resting on his hand, brows knitted, focused and oblivious. The look on his face feels private, a sliver of something she’s not sure he ever lets himself show.

When she’s only a step away, his hand halts its rhythm, and without looking up, he speaks.

“Always sneaking up on me, Granger.” His voice is soft, lacking its usual sharp edge.

Her lips press together—somewhere along the line forgetting that he is still Malfoy. “I wasn’t sneaking.”

“Mm. Whatever helps you sleep at night.” His eyes finally lift, piercing her with a flicker of something unreadable before he leans back in his chair, arms crossing lazily over his chest.

She holds his gaze, resisting the urge to shrink back. “I was…in the area. Had a question. Thought I’d see if you were around.”

He raises an eyebrow, his mouth curving into the barest hint of a smirk. “Here I am.”

His words twist something in her chest, tightening her throat. She doesn’t let him see her flinch, only gives him a sidelong glance as she slips into the chair across from him.

“Here you are.” The reply is automatic, almost more for Goyle’s ears than his. But the slight smile on his face doesn’t waver, and she wonders if he’s reading her just as well as she’s trying to read him.

She can’t help the way her eyes run along his body, inspecting and cataloguing him like she might commit it to memory. Malfoy wears a simple black crew neck and dark trousers, hair tousled in a way he’d taken to wearing it this year—soft blond strands curling around his ears. He’s put together, done up like he’s about to head out.

He probably was. Probably was merely a few moments behind his friends, told them to go ahead, maybe they were meant to save a table at The Three Broomsticks. And then, as Goyle mentioned, they could stay there after.

Hermione suddenly feels very incredibly daft for having come here at all. This year, she hadn’t seen him hanging around his usual friends like years prior, and she’d stupidly assumed that maybe he was always alone. But even Ginny said that he was all too aware of his reputation. Perhaps in public, he did make an effort to not include anyone else in his negative press.

Malfoy’s head tilts, his eyes narrowing.

“Hi,” she blurts, suddenly lost for words.

His brow furrows slightly, lips twitching into a faint grin. “Hi.”

“I–” Hermione clears her throat, attention flickering between him and Goyle, “I was coming to ask about our—project. The potion we are brewing in—” her volume drops to a whisper as she pinches her eyes shut. “Potions.”

Silence settles, the only sound a soft crackle of flames from the fireplace, even the hushed whispers of the sleepy students that do occupy the common room quiet to their ears. It stretches for a beat until Goyle coughs, looking at the ceiling. “Right. I’ll be off then.”

“Came for a visit?” Malfoy asks when Goyle slips back down the hall.

“Yes,” she says before she shakes her head, huffing. “Well, no, actually. Did I see you today?”

Malfoy frowns, raising a brow. “Yes? In Potions.”

“How did I…look?”

“What?” he asks with a pinched expression.

“I mean…did we talk? Did I—did we—you know?”

He shakes his head, eyes narrowing like she’s messing with him. With a snort, he says, “What? You don’t remember?”

“I don’t.”

Malfoy doesn’t respond right away, but she watches his face fall, grey eyes sweeping her expression. “How?”

“My last memory is Wednesday evening. I don’t remember yesterday or most of today. I ‘woke up’ on the couch earlier and Neville had been speaking to me. I came to see you because I thought maybe it had to do with—”

“Keep your voice down,” he snaps, reaching across the small table as he stands.

Before she can process his words, Malfoy grabs her arm and wrenches her to her feet. She exhales as he wraps an arm around her shoulder, his towering frame folding her in neatly at his side. Then she’s struggling to keep up with his long strides as he practically hoists her towards a secluded hallway, pressing her into a corner to conceal them from view.

“Wh–” she starts to ask before his finger brushes her lower lip, pulling it down as he looks at her teeth.

She draws her head back but he catches her with his other hand, keeping her in place as his hand at her lips comes to press against her head.

“What’re you doing?” she hisses when he finally releases her.

“Do you feel hot?”

“I mean…most of the time, sure.”

“But is it worse now? How did you know I was here?”

“Well, contrary to your belief, I’m not an idiot–”

“Granger.”

Her heart thumps a slow, steady beat. “Simple process of elimination.”

“But you didn’t…feel some sort of draw, right? You only assumed I’d be here?”

She’s too aware of his breath spanning her cheeks, of the feel of his hand at the back of her head. Her thoughts jumble—whirling mindlessly as she attempts to maintain her focus. “I don’t–I don’t know.”

“Well, think,” he seethes and her waning self-control feels like a red-hot coil in her abdomen.

“The problem is that I cannot think, Malfoy. I’m constantly in some sort of pain. I’m now losing time and–”

“And what?”

A flush settles on her throat and she chokes on her words. “Nothing, it’s—nothing.”

“Please.”

Then the words come clean out.

“I do feel like I…can find you. If I want. I just…my thoughts constantly go to you, and it’s like I—”

He is silent, staring at her with his hand still placed on the back of her neck, which gives her the disastrous freedom to continue spewing her thoughts, disjointed and bleeding a fragile truth.

“I’m not sure if I have some sort of…passing infatuation. Maybe it is the kissing, I’ve never been particularly hormonal, but I suspect that I am having a reaction to the contact, and in turn, you, and I think it has to do with whatever you won’t tell me is happening.”

“Are you–”

“Really, it’s very stupid.” She tries to shake her head, but he’s steadying her, making her look up at him. “I shouldn’t have come here, I’m not sure why I did. I guess my concern was just the loss of time because—” she draws in a deep breath, “I have very important…classes, and I think if this continues—” The same breath catches in her throat and she suddenly feels unsure.

If this continues, then what?

“I'm going to–” he starts.

Hermione bites her lip to stop herself, but she really doesn’t imagine she can handle whatever he is about to say in response to her speculation of a possible infatuation with him, so she starts right back up—consonants pushing up out of her throat as she pivots.

“I have theories. About, well, everything. But nothing aligns with my symptoms, so I’m running into a bit of a wall.”

His hand tightens in her hair, as if anchoring not only her but himself, fingers lightly tugging on the curls of her ponytail just enough to rein in her focus. “Theories?”

“People talk,” she whispers.

His voice softens, fingers loosening as he gently asks, “What do they say?”

He must have heard, it would be impossible not to. His gaze shifts—dark, steady, and amused—as though watching a child spin fearful tales.

She’s faltering, swept up in how he holds her, but she forces herself to spit it out. “They say that someone was…bitten during the war.”

“Hm,” Malfoy hums noncommittally.

“You’re brewing something. You won’t divulge–”

“What do you reckon?” he cuts in, the question honeyed.

“I…I don’t know,” she breathes. And she should know—should pay attention when he pores over his work in the laboratory—but she hasn't been, she's only been watching him. 

"Won’t you tell me?" His words are a low murmur, and she feels it more than hears it—a rough, shadowed vibration thrumming in her bones. “You think something bit me?”

Her lips part, oxygen thick and charged between them, crackling with more than the blue embers flickering in the fireplace—something dangerous and electric. The air sits dense, suffocating, wrapping around their seclusion in the dim, laced light filtering through the window.

"Yes." The word is no more than a whisper, but it lingers, stretching in the silence, too loud and too quiet all at once. “Yes, you’re…different.”

“What am I?”

His question slips from the lips of a man, but just beneath, she hears it; not him, something older, inhuman. It isn’t Draco Malfoy asking her, but something else, something that knows—tugging her along towards the truth. Begging to be discovered.

Hermione licks her lips, pulse drumming hard under her breastbone. She isn’t afraid, but she wonders if she ought to be. The words come easily, because she knows—she’s known.

"Werewolf."

The quiet is deafening, heavy with a truth that sinks between them, rooting itself in her chest as it tightens the muscle of her heart—a loom of understanding sharp and sudden, knotted with a bow. Outside, the lake shifts, deep and dark, casting ripples of distorted moonlight and dying sun across the floor, the faintest echoes of movement just out of sight.

Her pulse hammers, a lump forming in her throat, each beat a drum against her ribs that ache for breath.

“I thought…” She chokes on her words, but they tumble forth, fragile porcelain syllables. “I feel…I feel like it’s not just you. Like I’m different, too.”

Malfoy’s hand loosens, his fingertips brushing her cheek, and his voice is a rasp, rough with restraint. "And if that’s true?" he whispers. "If everything you’ve felt is real?"

Her breath catches, something breaking open inside her chest. “I’m not afraid of it. I’m not afraid of…this.”

I’m not afraid of you.

For a moment, his expression is achingly human—bared and raw as his eyes drop. When he looks at her again, its weight borders on reverence. No one has ever looked at her like this.

“Oh, Granger,” he murmurs. “We’re long past where you should be afraid.”

The wind stirs on the surface of the lake, a faint, distant howl threading into the silence. In the wavering bands of moon beaming through the murky depths, she sees his pupils contract, narrowing to slits, a dark glint catching in his gaze that sends a shiver up her spine.

She knows—she’s standing on the edge of something vast, something that stretches out past fear, past choice, into the unknown. And she has nowhere to go but forward.

Chapter Text

Ginny gawks at her. Hermione arches a brow. One of them snorts.

The common room hums with quiet, the weight of night settling over the building. Everyone is hidden under blankets, safe in their own corners, except for the two friends perched on the couch, their faces warmed by the hearth's flickering flames.

“So what is it?” Ginny asks, leaning in.

Hermione shifts, pulling the end of Malfoy’s sweater over her knuckles and tucking them beneath her chin. “I already told you.”

“You said you don’t remember–” Ginny demands.

She exhales, a soft interruption, but Ginny’s mouth gapes in affront. Hermione tilts her head, ignoring the dramatics and staring at the embers pulsing in the hearth. “I don’t remember.”

“But why? You hit your head weeks ago. It doesn’t make sense to have such a delayed reaction, and you won’t go to Pomfrey–”

“That’s because I don’t need her keeping me in quarantine for another week. I’ll never be ready for my exams if I spend all my time in the infirmary.”

“You really ought to take better care of yourself.”

Hermione freezes, thinking of the turn of Malfoy's head.

The lake’s surface was smooth again by the time Hermione stepped away, but the storm had only shifted inward. Her inhales came shallow, hands trembling as she pressed them to her sides, willing herself to steady. The weight of his words—we’re long past where you should be afraid—coiled tight in her chest, an echo that shook her teeth.

And in the dark of the Slytherin dormitory, he watched her, eyes unnatural in the half-light, something unspoken lingering between them. He was amused. She wasn’t sure if it was the moonlight or her mind playing tricks, but for a brief moment, it had looked like his shadow stretched farther than it should—like it was alive.

‘Are you going to run?’ His voice broke through the silence, a breach in the early night, calm but with an edge which pricked her skin.

Hermione swallowed, heart rattling against her ribs. ‘No,’ she said quietly, enough steel hanging in the simple word that she surprised herself. He clicks his tongue. She was disjointed—weak rasps and flexing fingers—as she met his gaze, unwavering despite the questions threatening to spill from her lips. ‘Should I?’

His lips curved—a winsome grin, the memory of it melting something in her even now. The words that followed the flash of his teeth did not drip with any fondness: ‘You wouldn’t get far.’

Hermione’s breath hitched before she saw it—a flicker ghosting across his face. He stayed silent, tilting his head, waiting. Her jaw tightened, the tension settling in a familiar weight of her strength.

She’d always burdened her worries there, tucked in her mandibles, clenched between teeth, grinding them to dust in her sleep. Her parents had done their best to save her from herself—custom mouthguards moulded in silence, herbal sprays that left her with a bittered tongue, whispered assurances that never soothed the gnawing in her bones. Anxiety tasted like salt and copper, metal left to corrode in rain, a mouth raw with sleepy breath. But the quiet scrape of enamel against enamel had always betrayed her, a sound her parents listened for at twilight.

In recent years, it had grown worse—a clench stored in the muscles of her neck, an unseen burden chewing through her as she dreamed. Only now, no one listens.

She worked her nerves, her irritation there, staring at Draco Malfoy and feeling a dismal spout of irritation at his tactic.

‘It won’t work—you can’t scare me off.’

A smile still played on his lips as he whispered, ‘You’re no good at it.’

She swallowed her anxiety, the violent want that left claw marks in her sternum. ‘What–’

‘Taking care of yourself,’ he murmured. The scrape of her molars reverberated in the back of her skull, a grind of tension notched and familiar to her bones. ‘You ought to go to sleep, Granger.’

Questions spun, but his voice poured like honey—slow gold, sweeter and more convincing than any attempt to frighten her.

‘Can’t we just—’ Talk. Something. If her assumption had been correct, it may be Wolfsbane he brewed on the evenings he permitted her to watch. But still—that didn’t explain her loss of time, nor the pang of his absence, the soothing of him when he was breathing against her lips. She just needed answers.

His hand reached forward, brushing her cheek. It was soft, so soft and sweet, lulling and steady. Her body goes without thought, leaning forward onto the balls of her feet as she’s pulled into him, the pad of his thumb passing down the curve of her jaw.

‘Aren’t you tired?’ he whispered.

And she realised that she was. She was so tired, he’s right, and she was surprised she could even hold herself up.

‘Y-yeah. I am,’ she agreed.

Malfoy’s lips stayed in that grin—and she smiled back, nodding, because he must be pleased with her, listening to him finally. But as her lips tugged up, that same sort of glint shone in his eyes and all at once, he stepped back, dropping his hand to a fist at his side.

‘Go on then.’

So she did, because she listens. Only as she was several paces away from the Slytherin dorms, breathing in air that was not laced with him, she suddenly didn’t feel all that tired anymore.

Now she’s here, nerves buzzing as she endures Ginny’s inquisition.

“I’m just worried about you,” Ginny says, and Hermione is pulled from those thoughts—forced back up to the surface from where she’s been considering the upturn of Malfoy's lips as moonlight elongated the shadows on his face.

“Don’t worry,” she responds, clearing her throat.

Ginny’s brow still sits raised. “What did Malfoy have to say?”

“How–” Hermione turns, eyes widening as she gawks at Ginny. She stares back with tight lips.

“Well, it was a guess as to where you ran off after Neville said you’d been acting silly. Though, I’ll take this look—” she motions to Hermione’s gaping mouth and furtive blush with a wave of her hand “—to be confirmation.”

Hermione scoffs, looking away as heat settles, heavy on her cheeks. Ginny is a rotten girl.

“We can talk about him, you know? Been dying for some good goss. You’ve truly neglected me. Not that I ever wanted to hear about your trysts with my brother—” A small, freckled shudder, “but now we have a rather interesting and very blonde talking point.”

“I went to discuss our Potions project.”

“Right,” Ginny says.

“I did–” Hermione starts, but Ginny’s face is one of clear disbelief.

“I see the way he looks at you, you know?”

“He…he doesn’t look at me any sort of way,” she stammers.

“He does,” says Ginny, matching Hermione’s petulance. “And you…well, even in the state you say you were in, you definitely look at him too.”

“I might die of embarrassment.”

“‘Intense’ hardly covers it–” Ginny continues.

“I’ll ensure the papers know it’s all your fault.”

“And Neville said he looked wild the day when…” Ginny trails off with a giggle as Hermione throws her face into her hands.

“Please stop,” is muffled by the press of her palms over her lips and eyes.

Ginny, undeterred, prattles on. “I’m not sure they’ve developed a word that so adequately summarises it, aside from perhaps eye-fuc—”

“Goodnight, Ginevra.” Hermione pops up from her seat, the pins-and-needles sensation pricking through her legs. It’s a slow waking, blood sluggish where it's pooled, a static fizzing beneath her skin, matching the restlessness humming beneath her breast.

⨳

She sleeps until she can’t.

Some fear churns beneath her skin—if she lets herself rest too long, she’ll have another period of not remembering. Restless, she wakes before dawn, watching the velvety black of night bleed into navy until the sun begins a slow crawl—the sleepy limbs of light stirring up the atmosphere into indigo and violet. She’s turned onto her side, propping an arm beneath her head as she watches and steadies her breath when a shadow swoops down against the blushed sky.

Two precise raps against the windowpane.

Hermione sits up, staring back at the large owl as it inspects her with ambivalence. She slides from under her duvet, creeping toward the glass, careful to shuffle lightly across the ground with hope of not waking her dorm mates.

The bird does not hoot or peck in greeting, smart enough to recognise the early hour. It merely presents the unmarked letter.

Granger,

I find myself indisposed. No potion-making this week.

Don’t seek me out.

Malfoy

She is only aware she’s nicked her tongue when she tastes copper. She blinks at the parchment, at the dull and cold ache of her palm losing sensation, at the feeling rumbling in her rib cage. A breeze blows then, ruffling the feathers of the owl, and Hermione glances up. The bird stares at her, head tilted, two glowing eyes flickering in judgement as she sniffs, trying to swallow the silly, stinging urge behind her lids.

The note is curt. Less than curt. Don’t seek me out.

The handwriting, neat and swirling, seems deliberately devoid of emotion. She crushes the paper in her hand, irritation flaring hotter with each passing second. He didn’t even bother to explain why.

The bird blinks at her in wait. She stares back, frustrated, before stalking to her desk, settling with parchment and scribbling.

Malfoy,

‘Don’t seek you out’? How presumptuous. We had an arrangement—one I’ve upheld without complaint despite the inconvenience of sitting in a stuffy Potions lab waiting for you to notice I exist. And yet, when it becomes too much for you, I’m expected to sit idly and stomach your absence?

What am I to do when the pain becomes unbearable? Kneel quietly and wait for your convenience? How utterly typical. I assure you, I am perfectly capable of managing without you, though your sudden unreliability is both disappointing and, frankly, predictable.

Do let me know when you’ve decided to resume your obligations—or don’t. I’ll endure, as always. With any luck, I’ll lose track of time and walk myself over a cliff. Then you’ll never have to worry about my ‘seeking you out’ again.

Hermione

She huffs.

That’ll show him.

Folding the parchment sharply, she ties it to the owl’s leg with quick, decisive movements. The bird hoots softly in protest, but she glares at it, her voice clipped. “Go on. Take it to your insufferable master.”

The owl gives her one last unblinking stare to ask: Are you sure?

She grumbles unhappily, of course she’s sure, she’s never been so sure of anything in her life. She shoos with a palm that still radiates her heartbeat. The bird blinks some sort of acceptance, before launching into the hazy sky, its wings slicing through the quiet morning. Hermione watches it disappear into the distance, her hands trembling slightly.

As the anger begins to ebb, a twinge of doubt creeps into her chest. She quiets it by stalking back to her bed, stuffing herself under sheets that only exacerbate the itch on her skin, and squeezing her eyes shut so tight that an array of beaming technicolour dances behind her lids.

⨳

She’s aware that her arm is moving, that her lips are parting and the fork carries food into her waiting mouth. Her jaw closes, teeth scraping against the metal. The bite is ash on her tongue.

She chews, swallows, and repeats. The thick syrup does not register, a dull, cloying weight against the edge of her thoughts.

On Mondays and Tuesdays, the Great Hall fills with sweeter offerings—as if in apology for the start of another week. The chatter is bright and loud, like the sugar coursing through everyone’s veins, words and laughter bouncing off stone walls. Quidditch, Arithmancy, the faint scrape of plates and clink of goblets.

This Tuesday bears teetering stacks of pancakes and more syrup than any one person should stomach. Her plate is piled high with food, she’s insatiable, but not for this. Her attention is—has been—elsewhere.

He doesn’t look at her. Not once.

Hermione’s gaze passes over the rest of the hall first. She lets herself linger on the Ravenclaws for eleven seconds. Simple curiosity, one might chalk it up to. Dean bumps her shoulder, and she turns her head, giving him a mollifying grin. He beams back before looking away, and her face falls. When laughter grows louder among her friends, she thinks it’s a safe bet. She glances to where she knows he is.

Malfoy sits with the Slytherins, his head tilted toward Zabini, one long finger tracing the edge of his cup. It’s deliberate—pointed, even—and that awareness scrapes at her nerves like nails against slate. She watches him grimace slightly as he shakes his head at something Zabini whispers.

Hermione’s foot is restless beneath the table, though every part of her is buzzing. It’s maddening that he doesn’t feel it too—this pull. It takes more effort to glance away from him than it does to just give in. It’s ridiculous, actually, that he won’t just look at her. Immature, even. Just plainly inconsiderate of not only her time but her personhood—

A witch leans toward him. Malfoy shifts, turning to hear her better, probably; it’s so bloody loud in here. She watches the corner of his mouth tilt up before he pulls back, staring down at the girl.

Ginny knocks her knee against Hermione’s. She drops her chin and stares at the pile of sugar in front of her, watching it stick and clump around her fork that she’s stabbed down so hard it scrapes against the plate.

It has been days since the letter arrived. She’d slept fitfully—broken fragments of rest, only being able to remain asleep when she’d peeled back the sheets and gathered the crumbled note off the floor. She’d smoothed the parchment until it was soft as butter, clutched tight in her palm. Lying there, her mind spun with imagined replies, weaving different words in his handwriting. At some point, exhaustion overtook her, and she’d dozed off with the letter pressed over her heart.

The weekend had passed in a fog, Ginny holding back her usual teasing when she spotted the dark circles under Hermione’s eyes. Hermione spent most of it pacing her bedroom, glancing out the window with an ache of expectation she refused to name, half-hoping to see the same owl swoop toward her with more correspondence. The sky remained empty.

No such luck.

The days dragged, slow and itchy, each one thick with silence that seeped into her chest. She rewrote her Transfiguration essay three times, as though perfect penmanship might distract her thoughts. She buried herself in Arithmancy until the formulas blurred, her brain feeling ready to liquefy gooey and drip out of her ears. To prove—to the furrowed concern that shone on her roommate’s face, to herself—that she was perfectly fine, she’d even let Ginny pull out a bottle of Sleekeasy and drag it through her curls, smoothing them into two tight plaits. They hung down her back like ropes, pulling her scalp taut until her skull throbbed. The ache was an easy scapegoat for the weight she carried, something she could blame instead of acknowledging the real cause of her discomfort.

She’d kept the braids in until Monday evening, but as the hours crept by, the tightness became unbearable. Alone in her four post, she unwound them strand by strand, her fingers trembling slightly as if the undoing was symbolic of what spun at a molecular level. By the time she was finished, her curls framed her face in perfect, glossy spirals, soft and sweet-smelling, the hint of petroleum and jasmine settling at the nape of her neck. Yet as she stared at herself in the mirror, all she could think about was how much easier it was to pull everything rigid and hide it away.

She tells herself it’s her fault. She crossed a line. She shouldn’t have followed Goyle. Shouldn’t have slipped into the shadows of the Slytherin common room and accused Malfoy of that.

But he hadn’t denied it.

And a voice in the back of her mind—the one that preens with the prospect of being right—screams that she’d been exactly that.

Hermione swallows another treacled clump, her throat tight. Ginny leans into her side, elbow nudging, words tumbling out. Hermione nods, but her attention is elsewhere. Malfoy stands abruptly, his movement so smooth it’s jarring.

He doesn’t glance her way. Her heart seizes.

Hermione is up before she realises it, shoving her belongings into her bag with trembling hands.

“Oi, Hermione, you okay?” Dean’s voice rises above the chatter, but Ginny’s hand cuts in, steering the conversation away with practised ease.

By the time Hermione reaches the corridor, Malfoy’s already halfway down it. He moves with his infuriating precision, like every step is calculated.

She quickens her pace. Walking. But with each step, the distance between them grows. His footsteps echo, steady and sure, while hers falter in an uneven daze. The stone beneath her feet seems to mock her as she pushes harder, her steps faster now, the click of her Mary Janes sharper and more frantic.

He rounds a corner up ahead.

No hesitation. She doesn’t think, she just moves—her breath coming faster, her legs pushing harder. She runs, heart thumping, the fear flooding her as she loses sight of him.

Others fly past, barely formed as she keeps an eye ahead of her. No matter how fast she moves, how many shoulders she bumps into as she trails him, she can’t seem to close any gap. The cold air claws at her lungs, and her heart slams against her ribs.

The halls begin to dwindle as they descend further into the bowels of the castle. He must hear her shoes clicking against the stone, but he doesn’t turn, and she doesn’t speak up—voice pinned like the delicate wings of a moth beneath glass. For each stride he takes, her legs push four times to close the gap. He turns another corner and she does the same just two heartbeats later, only to find the corridor completely empty.

She halts immediately, propping a hand against the wall as she breathes in the chill.

Hermione already feels like a fool for ending up on the complete opposite side of the castle from where she was meant to be. So she presses a hand over her heart to soothe the ache in her palms, the dull pulse through her whole body. Even her brain hurts, so she shuts her eyes and tries to focus on her breathing.

“Ms Granger! Are you quite alright?”

Her teeth grind where her jaw is tight as she opens her eyes, finding Professor Slughorn peering at her inquisitively.

“Hi, Professor.”

“I imagine you’re a ways away from where you should be at this hour of the day.”

“I just needed a bit of a walk after breakfast. I’ll find my way back.”

“Very well.”

“Actually, Professor. I–” Hermione bites her lip, unsure of herself. “Do you mind if I pick your brain a bit? I was wondering about Potions Theory.”

Slughorn smiles, properly besotted at the consideration of his opinion. “Why, of course. How can I be of service?”

Slughorn walks slow enough that Hermione has a chance to catch her breath and work up the nerve to ask.

“I was wondering about Wolfsbane.”

Slughorn raises one furry brow. “Wolfsbane? Why on Earth are you thinking about that?”

There is a Werewolf at Hogwarts, and I think we’re bound together for some inexplicable reason feels like the incorrect answer.

“Well, I was…I was thinking of drafting a correspondence to the Ministry. I heard they were considering a measure which would require all those infected to register in their system.”

“I haven’t heard of this legislation.”

“It was a passing comment from…Mr Weasley. It may just be talk.”

He doesn’t look entirely convinced. “And this made you think of Wolfsbane?”

“Yes, I–” she pauses, gnawing on her cheek as she tries to spin a believable innocence. “I guess I don’t quite know if it has been used to any measure of success.”

“It is a fickle potion,” Slughorn nods.

“It affects the transformation, right? Harry mentioned–”

“How is Mr Potter?”

“He’s quite well, Professor, but the Wolfsbane–”

“Oh, yes. The Wolfsbane does not halt a transformation entirely but rather allows the wolf to maintain their mind. Quite innovative. You’ll remember the young Mr Belby’s uncle was the Potioneer behind such a stroke of genius. I’m told Remus Lupin was a staunch advocate of its success.”

Hermione pales at the mention of Remus, but she forces her expression to remain neutral. “Yes,” she says carefully. “Professor Lupin managed, though he rarely spoke about the effects.”

Slughorn hums in agreement, stroking his moustache. “A remarkable man. And fortunate, in some ways. I seem to recall Severus Snape dabbling with a more…refined variation of the Wolfsbane potion during his time here. Quite brilliant, really, though his methods were—shall we say—less than conventional.”

Hermione’s brows furrow. “A refined variation?”

Slughorn chuckles, though the sound is nervous. “Oh, nothing officially recorded, mind you. But there were rumours—always rumours, with Severus. Some whispered how he found a way to ease the transformation further, to dull the pain—even dull the Wolf itself. Of course, he never shared much with the likes of me. Kept his secrets close, that one.”

She can’t help herself. “Do you know what happened to his notes?”

Slughorn hesitates, his gaze flickering to the side. “Ah, well, I can’t say I’ve gone rummaging through his old things. But you know, Hogwarts has a way of holding onto its ghosts.” He taps a finger to his temple. “Why, just the other day, I came across one of his journals while clearing space in my office cabinets. Made for a nostalgic read, but utterly incomprehensible to someone like me. His shorthand was perfectly illegible.”

Hermione’s pulse quickens, though she fights to keep her voice steady. “You didn’t…dispose of it?”

“Dispose of it? Oh, heavens no! I could never bring myself to toss the work of such a mind. It’s still gathering dust in the far cabinet. Probably sharing space with a few other remnants of his tenure here.”

“Right,” she says, her voice tight with forced nonchalance. “That’s…good to know.”

Slughorn stops and peers at her with a curious tilt of his head. “You’re not planning to start tinkering with Wolfsbane yourself, are you, Ms Granger? A potion like that requires precision and a steady hand, even for someone of your talents. Not to mention the sheer cost of those ingredients.”

“Of course not, Professor,” she replies smoothly, schooling her features into something guileless. “I was just curious. Thank you for indulging me.”

Slughorn smiles, though his eyes remain shrewd. “Always happy to nurture a curious mind. Now, off with you! Can’t have you lingering too long in these dreary corridors.”

Hermione nods, murmuring a quick farewell before heading in the opposite direction, her mind already working on the imagined scenario of Malfoy's budding smile as he leans in towards her.

⨳

Hermione stands in front of the portrait hole, her heart pounding in her chest. She glances over her shoulder, making sure the common room is still quiet. After a long moment, she murmurs a soft, “Oh, piss it,” and lets the door swing open with a damning creak.

She freezes, one foot halfway through the opening, when the Fat Lady’s voice rings out.

“Ah, Miss Granger,” the portrait tuts, her frame shuffling slightly as if she’s been expecting Hermione. “Mr Thomas is not with you this time, then?”

Hermione hesitates, glancing back with a forced smile. “No, he’s not with me tonight. I’m just going for a walk. To clear my head.”

“Hm,” the Fat Lady says, still eyeing her with a knowing gleam. “Never just a walk this late, is it? Other portraits whisper, you know? I heard that you’ve been spending some time in the dungeons.”

Hermione’s breath hitches, and she quickly turns, forcing a casual tone. “Really, I—”

“Not that I’m one to judge, of course,” she continues, the pitched lilt of her soprano dripping with sarcasm. “But I must say, if I were you, I’d seek a bit of solace somewhere else in this castle. There are other places to find comfort than running after that Malfoy boy.”

“I’m not–” Hermione scoffs, mouth twisting down to a frown.

“All I ask is that you consider the ramifications of tying yourself up with the likes of him. I’m trying to be helpful, dear,” the Fat Lady says, and she tilts her over-blushed cheeks, eyes glinting a false maternal edge. “But if you’re set on this...don’t let me catch you again. The last thing this house needs is a scandal. The castle has enough of them as it is.”

Hermione’s tongue traces the wound she bites inside of her mouth for as long as it takes her to turn and walk away. That taste of metal lingers at the back of her throat.

It’s remarkably easier than she thought, moving about the castle undetected these days. Where Hermione’s anxieties have multiplied since the conclusion of the war, the rest of the world seems to have exhaled, grown lax in vigilance. Hogwarts feels quieter now—is quieter now—though it carries its own brand of unease. A lulled sort of dread seeps into every empty corner, unacknowledged but ever-fixed.

Hermione tucks herself into the shadows, letting the chilled stone walls guide her, muffled footfall one after the other. The sconces on the walls burn low, their flickering light painting faint gold patterns across her path. Every so often, the flames leap, crackling, and she freezes, breath trapped in her throat. The noise goes unnoticed. The corridors remain empty, their echoes swallowed whole by the ancient limestone.

Her heart pounds a relentless rhythm as she descends deeper into the castle. Every staircase she takes seems to groan in betrayal, though she swears she steps lightly. She doesn’t run into a single soul, yet she feels watched, the portraits lining the halls whisper soft accusations behind her back, their judgment suspended between curiosity and disdain.

She quickly finds herself standing before the door to Slughorn’s office, the warm glow spilling out beneath the crack feeling almost mocking in its welcome. For a moment, she pauses, her hand hovering over her wand as she presses her ear to the door. She doesn’t hear anything but still whispers, “Homenum Revelio.”

No one save for her. The air here feels heavier, charged with the scent of aged parchment, spiced wine, and something faintly chemical—the lingering essence of countless potion experiments.

Hermione swallows hard, gathering herself. This isn’t just another intellectual pursuit or the carefully constructed bravery she’s known before. This is messy, desperate, wrong. It reminds her of Harry and Ron, and her chest contracts, that thrum of pain at their absence rearing to the surface. She pushes it down, because she misses a lot of people and she thinks it’s best they didn’t come back for Eighth Year. If anyone deserves rest, it’s them.

She tells herself she’ll see them soon—maybe she’ll accept Ron’s invitation to the Burrow for the holidays. She can picture it: sitting between them on the worn settee, their warmth and presence pressing in on either side. The weight of her closest friends—their steadfastness, that surety—might just be enough to piece her back together. But for now, she turns her attention to what brought her here in the first place.

Her fingers tighten around her wand. With a whispered charm, she prods the lock, watching as the door creaks open just wide enough for her to slip inside. The office is quiet, save for the faint hum of enchantments woven into its walls.

It’s only as she closes the door behind her, sealing herself inside, that she allows a single shaky breath to escape. The journals must be here. She thinks if she can find them, can prove to Malfoy that she is on his side, he might be more forthcoming with information.

She knows that she needs to move quickly, so she holds that breath in her chest and heads for the cabinets. There’s no lock on it, so tugging it open leaves her staring at the books, an assortment of paper and files stacked haphazardly. She squints, trying to see the spines, suspecting she might find one that calls to her.

Seconds tick, each sending her peaked pulse more quickly through her veins. Had Slughorn had a change of heart? Chosen to remove Snape's belongings to some more secure place after their conversation? Perhaps her interest had reminded him of their value—maybe he’d gathered them all to keep in his personal chest at the foot of his bed.

Her pulse lags. Why is she even doing this?

The letter scribbled in his handwriting, devoid of all responsibility, lacking every plump promise he’d whispered against her lips.

Don’t seek me out.

It hits her with renewed ache, a sore left to fester in frost.

He doesn’t want you. Abandoned you.

She sees Malfoy's eyes, feels the heat of his touch pressing into her hips, knows the space of his fingers inside of her, on her, covering her. The truth she knows sits immovable in her rib cage—I know, you know. He’d asked her, and she’d answered.

You’re on fire. Everything is on fire.

Her palm presses against her temple, the voices growing louder. It hurts. Everything hurts, and she has to deal with it alone, but still, she is here, trying to find something to help him. She’s always given, always made room, always cleaving bits of herself off in sacrificial offerings to make another whole. There’s so little of her left, but those scraps, just the burnt ends, leftovers of a girl, that final spoonful of self; she’s giving to him.

That question echoes again, louder, more insistent because he’s gone, he doesn’t want her, he’s made her stomach this alone. Why is she doing this?

Her head lulls to the side, resting on her shoulder and she realises she isn’t even standing anymore. Lost her footing when she’s lost in her thoughts. Another thing to add to the list of burdens she is meant to shoulder. Crumpled to the ground, back pressed against the cabinet, the world hazy on the edges, Hermione tires, can barely manage a breath.

But that thought quickly slips away as her gaze catches on a shape tucked behind a stack of faded texts. The wooden box is small, unassuming, but something about it calls to her. She leans forward, brushing aside the large tomes with a quick, practised motion. Her fingers strain to grasp the box, pulling it free with a gentle tug. The letters "S.S." are etched into the top, and her heart gives an involuntary jolt.

Her hands tremble, fingertips shaking like extensions of her psyche; she pries the lid open.

Inside, there’s nothing out of place. A jarred lily, charmed to remain in stasis, its petals frozen in a perpetual bloom. A tarnished silver locket. And then, a stack of old, brittle parchment—Snape's journals, she realises. Not just potions notes, but something far more personal.

Her fingers hover over the pages. This could be it. This could be the key to finding a better solution for Malfoy's condition, the one thing he doesn’t have to suffer through alone, the one thing she can give him that he might accept.

Her pulse hammers, and for a moment, the room seems to tilt on its axis. She presses her palm to her forehead, trying to breathe through the sting in her eyes.

She shudders a breath and pulls each journal from the box, settling the stack on her lap. There are four in total, in thick leather-bound notebooks wrapped with twine. Hermione pulls her wand from where it’s been digging into her hip.

“Duplicus,” she whispers, drawing a half circle with the tip of the wood.

The journals duplicate without ceremony until she’s left with near-carbon copies. Tucking them carefully back in the box, her heart continues knocking steadily against her tired bones, so hard she can feel it in her throat. She glances down at the original journals in her lap, feeling the cool, worn leather under her fingertips. A part of her wants to hurry, to rush through the pages and find what she came for. But another part—the one that knows the danger of tampering with things she doesn't fully understand—urges caution. She should head back to the tower, back to the safety her sheets promise.

Still, now that she has them, she can’t resist. With trembling hands, she picks up the first journal, the leather crackling softly as she opens the cover. The musty scent of old parchment fills the air, and she scans the first page, her eyes darting across Snape’s winding handwriting. She’s so absorbed in the text—mind racing with potential solutions for Malfoy's condition—that she doesn’t hear the faintest shift in the room until it's too late.

A strange calm overcomes her.

The office door slams shut with a resounding thud, reverberating through her chest. She gasps, her weak heart stuttering as her gaze snaps up. He lets out a harsh breath through his nose, features twisted like he hates the taste on his tongue. The leering figure in the doorway is unmistakable.

Draco.

Chapter Text

The gull peered at her, settled at the border of her blanket—twitchy tilts of a little feathered head, gawking at her to gauge her resolve. It didn’t come closer, and Hermione didn’t beckon it. They both felt comfortable with the scratchy linen barrier separating them, the sand and earth belonging to the creature, Hermione’s only solace being the blanket she could gather in her arms.

What can I do for you? she asked with a slight nod of her head. What can I give?

The bird did not blink before it took off, deciding there were greater promises elsewhere.

‘What is it?’ Ron’s voice came from behind. She can hear the way he tilted his head at her, and she glanced back, seeing the scruff on his chin and the fringe in front of his eyes, indicating how she ought to cut his hair.

A shift—rustling clothes against folded blankets, sand trapping dried blood beneath her nail bed—to see him better. She’d been drawing fistfuls of the grains up, then letting them slip between her fingers. She wiped her palm against her jeans—starched and too fresh, the wash having erased the months they’d spent on the run with sickening ease. Now the evidence was carved into her, even when her skin was scrubbed raw around her bandages.

She turned to Ron, now settled next to her, to quiet her mind and admired how his hair fell, the red waves soft as sunset, long and loose in front of his eyes. A brilliant blue peeked through the fringe, retaining some of that brightness, the sort that made her heart twist and riot against her sternum. Honest, imperfect, and fiercely loyal—all him.

Bile kissed the juncture of her stomach and oesophagus. It shouldn’t hurt to look at him, but Ron was blinding, beaming brilliant and golden, always had been but now, it was worse.

Hermione hummed, sating the urge to turn toward the night sky so she might be able to breathe again. He touched the small of her back and she shook her head, swallowing down the little flinch, the way every touch felt like a slice to her forearm.

‘Knut for your thoughts?’ Ron said, leaning close.

He’d always been good at that, getting Hermione out of her head. Her face still ached from the contortion that twisted; the back of her throat was still raw from screams, and she despised the feeling of skin swollen and aching beneath bandages. She smelt like rot, it bled from her insides.

Fleur had told Hermione that she shouldn’t feel any pain—the potions and butters she’d rubbed into her wound were strong, effective. Her two friends buzzed around her, fussing and questioning, demanding results that only strained the thin peace they were afforded once Dobby’s quick exit left them sputtering in salt-laden sea air.

Not wanting to draw attention to herself, as people had died and bodies in this house were dying even now, Hermione just swallowed the way her flesh was pulsating and hot and excused herself outside.

And there, Ron found her; slightly unkempt, gritting her teeth, and trying to focus on anything other than the pain.

‘Do you think it’ll be like this forever?’ Hermione asked.

He sat next to her on the blanket, and where sparks once popped up and grew warm, she only found a shivering chill.

‘No,’ he responded after a quiet moment. She admired Ron for this—the way things moved through his head with steady focus, each decision extracted and borne of strategy.

She had heard his voice, a distant warble beneath her as she blinked through tears and the spit of Bellatrix Lestrange, bent over and carving the tip of a blade into her skin.

Hermione closed her eyes, breathing in the salt and earth, but the air felt thin—never quite enough. Dobby was dead, and though he saved them, the sacrifice loosened a drain that she couldn’t plug again. Everything seeped away. She didn’t cry anymore, not for lack of grief, but because even tears had abandoned her. All she had now was a searing heat stinging in her forearm, a cruel echo of Bellatrix’s laughter, the memory of her blood seeping down onto the parquet floor of Malfoy Manor.

Her fingers curled into the blanket beneath her, desperate to grasp something solid, something real. ‘Sometimes,’ she whispered, trembling like frost clinging to brittle leaves, ‘I think the pain is all we have left. It’s…it’s all I can feel.’

Ron didn’t answer right away. He placed his hand on hers, and for a moment, it wasn’t heat or chill she noticed, but pressure—steady, grounding, present. The universe compacted down on her, compressing every drop of blood in her veins until she shifted, transformed into something new entirely, but Ron was here and he was real. She couldn’t bear to meet his gaze, afraid of what she’d see there: pity, sorrow, or worse—understanding.

She was tired of pain. Tired of death. Tired of the hollow, carved-out expression she knew would find her as soon as she reminded Ron of what stood before them, and all that had been lost as they pushed on.

‘He died so we could keep living,’ Ron said. ‘It has to mean something.’

They mirrored each other—her, Harry and Ron were the same. A long time ago, that was enough too, but now, his words settle like ash.

Hermione shuddered, gripping his hand tightly. She knew that he meant to inspire action, to stir up the fight within her. But all she could think about was how Dobby’s grave lay beyond the dunes, marked by nothing more than a simple stone, and to her, it might as well have been a mountain. She didn’t know if what lay on the other side was even a future worth finding.

She couldn’t voice this here—not after all that had been lost. Hermione’s cynicism would need to be chewed up and sucked down until it landed somewhere deep.

And so she stayed, letting the night seep into her, letting Ron’s quiet comfort soften the edges of her grief—dull the pain that throbbed, steady and real. Somewhere beyond the stars, she hoped Dobby knew that his sacrifice wasn’t in vain—that they carried him now, not just in memory, but in every breath they fought to take.

She would murmur into the night’s velvet hush, hoping the darkness would carry her words to someone who could hear. She would wonder later, not for the first time, how long it’d been since anyone had truly listened. Not the stars, nor the vast, indifferent sky. Not the earth beneath her feet, heavy with the weight of unmarked graves. Their hopes, their sacrifices—they scattered like ash on the wind, unnoticed and unremembered. Hermione tightened her grip on the blanket, her other hand growing cold against Ron’s palm, the ache in her chest sharper than the throb of her wounds. In the end, it seemed, nothing they gave had ever mattered. Not to the world, and certainly not to the darkness that swallowed her whispered pleas whole.

That night she would wake up screaming, the curve of her fingernails clawing at the flesh of her wound, trying to release what was burning, bubbling and popping under her skin.

Harry, with fingers slippery red, would press into her jaw to open her mouth. Fleur would press a vial past her biting teeth. Hermione would swallow. Ron wouldn’t meet her eyes the next morning. And her blood—bright crimson, an endless rivulet, sticky hot—would seep into the sheets, staining proof against the mattress beneath.

⨳

The first breath is relief. Her stuttering heart expands, her lungs have opened up. Then a blink, and she remembers.

He stands there, the doorframe calling attention to his rigid posture, his eyes gleaming with a coldness that cuts through the warmth of the dying embers in the fireplace. His jaw is clenched tight, and for a moment.

He’s glaring, displeased and Hermione just feels so tired. It aches both familiar and wrong. He pins her with this stare—the dark overtaking his eyes, heated coals burning black. Soot, soot, soot.

“Malfoy,” she says but falters—his name dying in a breath before it can fully escape her lips. His attention flickers to the journals in her lap, then back to her face.

Hermione stands up, instinctively tucking the journals under her arm as if that could somehow shield her from the storm she knows is coming. Her pulse quickens, the rush of blood in her ears deafening, and for a split second, she wonders if she’s caught in some kind of nightmare.

“How did you–” she starts, but he cuts her off.

“Where is he?”

Hermione hears him, it just doesn’t make sense. She murmurs something close to “What?”

Malfoy stalks into the office, his head darting to either side, searching for someone. Hermione blinks, his sudden proximity like a head rush, the mere presence might make her collapse all over again. “Where is he?” he repeats.

“If you’re referring to Slughorn, obviously he isn’t–”

Malfoy is in front of her before she can even get the sentence out. “I’m not talking about Slughorn.”

She is only fluttering blinks and misshapen vowels, her focus slippery. This riles him. He huffs once, scorned by her silence, and continues.

“Thomas. Where is your little pet?”

“Dean?” Hermione shakes her head as Malfoy's sneer curls to malice. “Why would I be in here with him?”

“Why do you do anything that you do? All I asked of you was one week.”

“I’m not even–” Hermione shakes her head again—feeling like her entire body might burst into flames. “Why are we doing this? You send me a cryptic letter and then pretend I don't even exist, only to show up now with raised hackles like…” She pauses, eyes snapping at him. His nostrils flare, and it clicks. No. She can’t believe it. But her lips move still, spurned forth by the simmering irritation that only he creates, and she knows she’s right. “Christ, Malfoy, are you…jealous?”

His eyes flash as he recoils back. “Jealous?”

“Yeah.”

They stare at each other, a fuse sparking in the silence of her words, charged by the moonlight that pours in from the windows. His mouth opens once before he closes on another agitated huff. She feels the effort it takes on his part.

He bends forward like he’s speaking only for her, like he’ll spin a story, tell her everything she wants to know, and she can’t help it—fuck, she leans into him.

“I would sooner collect Potter’s owl shit-covered post with my bare teeth than be jealous of Dean fucking Thomas.”

She blinks—again—because no matter how many times she forces herself to focus, she can’t, but even in that hazy gap between confusion and realisation, she knows in her bones that he is standing in front of her, lying.

“You were following me,” she whispers.

He rolls his eyes, and her fingers dig into the cover of the journal. When he speaks, it is as if it pains him to hiss the word. “Hardly.”

“You were!” she snaps, and he glares at her outburst. “What is your problem?”

“My problem? What is your problem?” He drags a hand through his hair, pushing back the fringe over his eyes and providing her a more distinct view of his blown pupils. “I can’t fucking sleep because I feel you outside, roaming the halls—your pulse going a mile a fucking minute like one of those bloody pixies in Cornwall, you know the ones—darting around like a snitch, impossible to pin down—incessant. My problem is you echoing in my skull. I can smell–”

“Well,” Hermione huffs like he does, laughing with no humour. “If you hadn’t been ignoring me for the last few days, maybe you’d know that I wasn’t—” She scoffs, looking off. “I wasn’t with Dean.”

The name hangs between them, vibrating like a snapped wire. His chest rises and falls, lungs accepting broken inhales, as they stare each other down.

“I thought—” she falters, swallowing hard. She can’t even hide beneath anger; she feels bruised at the reminder of his letter. “I thought it hurt you too. When we don’t…”

“I knew you’d be okay.”

“No,” she snaps. “You didn’t know that. I deserve more than—” She can’t get it out, so she starts again. “You just—” Impossible. Saying it aloud, him staring at her like this—she can’t do it. “You just ignore me.”

He exhales slowly, a minty breath curling into the silence between them. His gaze sweeps over her, unhurried—she’s reminded of how wide his pupils are like this, overtaking his eyes, tracing a path from the crown of her head to the tips of her shoes. She shudders slightly, and his attention is pulled back, the whole of him settling on her flushing face. Soft and gentle, like he’s taken care with these words—chosen them just for her, he says, “You told me you’d be fine in your response. Unlike you, I listen."

“Well, I only did because you—” Her cheeks flame. Her response was a seething untruth, but he started it. She was only giving back what he said first. “I don’t remember two days,” she says, loathing how it sounds like a plea, a child scorned. “You wouldn’t even expand on my behaviour. You all but sent me away.”

He leans back, sliding his hands into his pockets. His lips part and for one single heartbeat, he looks agonised. He grimaces suddenly, seething like it should be so obvious. “I am trying to...help you.”

Her mind is an echo chamber—the heavy parchment of his letter slicing clean, leaving papercuts on every soft piece of her memory.

Don’t seek me out.

“Right,” she spits.

“You don’t get it.” He stares still. “It’s better like this.”

“Define: better.”

“Granger,” he seethes.

“Why would you exasperate the suffering?” Her jaw pulls taut, and she can’t stop that which continues barreling clean from her rambling lips. “I mean…have I—did I upset you?”

She’d imagined sounding firmer, more sure of herself but her nerves are bared in every syllable. Malfoy clears his throat, lips parting as if to respond, but he stops short. His gaze flickers away from her then—a strange twist of his mouth, a quick furrow of his brow—a look of distaste passing over his expression, but it is gone in an instant. He just shakes his head, like he’s fighting with himself.

His eyes narrow, still looking off, away—a stubborn refusal to acknowledge her. “Are you even aware of what week this is?”

Her mind scrambles; she knows the date—December 1st—but it means nothing to her.

Once, the beginning of December had carried a glimmer of magic—a quiet hope wrapped in soft lights and the promise of warmth. But once isn’t now, when grief and memory knit firmly in the very centre of her chest. She can’t even reflect with any whisper of fondness without being reminded that no one else remembers it as she does.

And there had been a silly hope—that the war ending might see her running into their arms, waving a hand to reverse what she’d broken. She had imagined curling up in a house that felt like home, wrapped in arms that whispered I love you and I could never hate you and I forgive you, I forgive you, we forgive you as many times as it took to fix it—fix her.

Too many days passed, and memory charms were fickle things. The healers had stressed as much.

So yes, she thinks, she knows the date. The first of December. Two hundred and thirteen days since the war was won. Five hundred and eighteen days since her mum or dad remembered her first name. December 1st was a day no different than any other—a marker in a vast, featureless expanse of weeks that stretched endlessly, void of joy.

She stammers, the relevance lost on her as she swallows the ache, the memories that leave claw marks inside of her throat. She resents him for her decaying thoughts. She spits, “I know what day it is,” and knows her malice is ill-pointed.

He doesn’t comment on her flat affect, just says, “The full moon is in two nights.”

The realisation hits like ice water, and the short sound tumbles from her lips before she can stop it. “Oh.”

His head tilts, studying her. “Yes. Oh.”

“Then you’re…” He nods. She swallows. “And—the letter was…?” He stands straight like he waits for her to say it.

“Go on, Granger.” Malfoy's eyes fall to her in challenge.

“Have you–” She doesn’t think she can put it into words. He’s transformed, obviously, but this is the first real confirmation that isn’t swollen from scare tactics. “Before…you’ve–?”

“Yes.”

He would transform on the full moon. She knows from her research that it would still be painful and would still register as torture, but with the Wolfsbane he would at least keep his mind.

But why send her away? Why ignore her so blatantly? It’s one thing to read about it in books, but seeing him—hearing it confirmed—makes it far more real, far more frightening. Still, fear isn’t what she wants to feel. Not for him. And certainly not now.

“I wasn’t—I didn’t just run to Dean. I don’t appreciate you assuming that.” His gaze narrows, but he stands staunch in his silence, and a resplendent pain bursts open. Even now, he ignores her—won’t dignify her with a simple nod of his head. “I am not helpless,” she continues. “I don’t know where you’ve gotten this notion, but I could help you. If you let me.”

He huffs a humourless laugh. “And what, exactly, are you going to do for me?”

“I know potions, and—”

“No.”

“What do you mean no?”

“No, Granger.” His tone sharpens, and he thinks he means to make her flinch—to back her into the corner he’s tried so hard to tuck her into. “You are not going to brew Wolfsbane for me.”

Her breath catches, and for a moment, the room feels suspended, oxygen too thin. He glowers at her and she meets him in this animosity, tugged so thoroughly through his emotional stonewall that her temple throbs with promised pain. “Why not?”

“Because you’re not involved.”

“Yes, I am. I want to help you.”

“Do you think that this—” Malfoy motions to the shadowed room, toward the box she hasn’t yet stuffed back in the cabinet, “—helps me? I never asked you to go sneaking around on my behalf. Why you would do something so objectively stupid as breaking into a professor’s office is beyond me. I thought you’d shed that idiotic lack of forethought when you returned here without Potter and Weasley at your side.”

Her anger flares, scorching away any hesitation. “I’m doing it for you, arsehole!”

His eyes burn. “When did I ask?”

“You didn’t have to!” Her voice cracks, but she doesn’t stop. “I can feel it too!”

His expression shifts, momentarily unguarded, and in that fleeting second, an unreadable pause flickers in his eyes. But it’s gone before she can name it, replaced by the same cold detachment.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he mutters, final, as if the argument has ended.

“No. You! You don’t know what you’re saying,” she hisses, slapping the journal against his chest. “I know what you are. And I was trying to find a way to make this easier for you.”

“What is–” Malfoy starts, only to abruptly stop speaking as his head snaps to the door.

“Do not ignore me, you tw–”

Before she can finish, his hand clamps over her mouth, silencing her mid-sentence. The suddenness of the gesture startles her, and she struggles instinctively against him.

“Shut up,” he hisses.

His other arm wraps around her, pulling her flush against his chest as he moves them backwards. Her feet barely register the movement before his back presses against the wall near the door. His grip tightens, keeping her still.

Her heart pounds against her ribs, the sound deafening in her ears, but it’s nothing compared to the rapid drum of his heartbeat against her cheek where it’s pressed to his chest. Her elevated pulse has her moving, and itching, and she writhes against him. His head drops onto her shoulder, tilting in until she feels his breath at her throat, lips hovering over her prickling flesh, where he murmurs, “Stop moving.”

She does, and then she hears it.

Faint voices. Footsteps. Prefects.

They’re just outside the door, their muffled conversation growing clearer with each passing second.

Malfoy pulls back, knocking his head against the wall with a silent thud. His eyes pinch shut as if a knife is lodged in his gut. When the voices grow louder, his eyes open and she sees it—his jaw clenched, gaze focused, every line of him almost glowing in the dim light, tense and ticking like a predator in wait.

He cocks his head, ear attuned to the hallway. Listening and focused, he’s preternaturally still. Mismatched where she feels every part of her moving, buzzing, humming. With a sudden jolt, it occurs to Hermione that he must have heard them long before she did.

Hermione heaves. His heightened senses, his raw awareness—so inhuman. It sends a chill down her spine.

Does he hear the steady and quick thump of her heart in her ribcage? Does he feel the thrum of her pulse, her bated breaths trapped beneath his palm?

The prefects linger, their conversation drifting in and out, one word catching before the rest is lost again. For a moment, time stretches impossibly thin, the air flickering and popping as her pulse thump, thump, thumps.

Finally, the footsteps fade, taking the muffled voices, too.

Malfoy's grip loosens, though he doesn’t let her go completely. He regards her with a silver gaze, unreadable in the hard line of his jaw, his inhales still heavy. Slowly, he removes his hand from her mouth, leaving her face scorching where his fingertips touched. She licks her lips.

“Don’t tell me to shut up,” she snaps, moving the journals to cover her chest, a weak attempt to soundproof her heartbeat.

He steps off the wall, but moves away from her, eyes flickering to the open cabinet and wooden box lying on the floor. He mutters, “Don’t break into offices.”

“I did it–”

“Stop.” Her response dies on her tongue when he speaks, not even looking at her. “Enough, Granger. Go to bed.”

She knows he’s not asking. His stance screams command, an unspoken warning echoing in the hard set of his jaw and the gleam in his eyes. She doesn’t move. She should. She knows she should. Yet, the way he stands there, coiled and rigid, the muscles in his shoulders taut as if even speaking cost him, makes her hesitate. She glances at the wall, stands straight, and says it.

“No.”

The air in the room shifts. He turns, and a rumble hums. “What?”

“I said no.” Just like you, she would like to add. She turns to face him fully, tilting her chin upward.

He closes the distance between them in two quick strides, his towering frame looming over hers. His body radiates heat, and the tension rolling off him is palpable, animalistic.

“You accuse me of being a Werewolf, find yourself cornered in a dark room, and choose to bare your throat like that?” His head tilts. “What a brave, little fool.”

“And why shouldn’t I?” she challenges, steady despite the storm raging in her chest. “I’ve already told you that you don’t scare me, Malfoy.”

“Of course, I don’t scare you.” His lip curls into a sneer, but it’s not anger—it’s restraint, resentment pulled taut and fraying at the edges. “I could tell you every little thing I want to do to you right now and you would beg me for it. I bet you’d even say please.”

The room shrinks, and suddenly, it’s as if she’s seeing him for the first time—not just the anger, the flare of irritation beneath his words, nor the constant, simmering tension, but the desire beneath it, all his own.

She steps closer, defiant, testing the waters as her heart thunders. He mirrors her with a step back. “Why shouldn’t you?” she asks softly.

“At least pretend like you have some sense of self-preserving caution.”

She doesn’t back down. She lifts her chin, meeting his gaze, daring him to say it, to admit what’s burning between them. His nostrils flare again, and his breathing grows uneven. For a second, she thinks he might deny it—deny her. But instead, his eyes shadow further, his expression twisting into the same sort of agony that twirls in her chest.

The silence between them is deafening. Her mind races, piecing together every glance, every clipped word, every moment he’s stepped too close and lingered too long. Every second of his absence and how it burned her insides.

“You won’t hurt me,” she says. “You can’t break me. I’m rather…resilient.”

His hand twitches at his side, and he steps closer, giving in, and she feels his breath ghost over. His pupils darken, swallowing the light, and there's a threat—insatiable and crude, jaw snapping and hungry—that chills the air suspended between them.

His movement is jerky—pure instinct, it just is; innate for him to touch her, for her to touch him, pull her closer, for her to go. Always forward, leaning in, answering a silent call. His eyes flash and he catches himself at the last second, his fingers curling into a fist inches from her face.

“You need to leave.” The command is hoarse and strained. “Now.”

“No.”

His eyes pinch shut as he groans. “For fuck’s sake, Granger. Go.”

Her heart is pounding, knocking against the fragile cradle of her ribcage, but she refuses even as it sets her aflame.

It isn’t easy to deny him. It goes against something inside of her, like a sparrow rebuking the wind when it calls to soar, or a murky creek bed holding still against the flirtation of gravity. It is the wolf swallowing its growl, the moth retreating from the flame that aches for touch. A silent rebellion against the very pulse of the blood that drives her forward, but she has to say no because he is wrong. He’s been wrong.

She takes a step forward, shoes clicking against the floor. 

His jaw clenches when his eyes snap open. “Stop.”

But she’s already tempted him, and the knowledge that he wants her—that he’s fighting this hard to resist her—surges through her like a spark igniting dry kindling.

“I’m just standing here,” she whispers.

“Don’t-” He laughs once, bitter. “Don’t play stupid, Granger.”

“You don’t need to be mean to me.”

“Will it make you leave if I am? Is that what you need? Do us both a favour and fuck off to your tower.”

His words barely hold an edge, and she thinks some small part of her must be used to the way he resorts to hollow jabs when cornered. She tells herself she should let it go, but the question nags at her, a flesh wound of curiosity, welling and insistent. She asks because she has to know—even if it hurts. “What is it about me that makes you so desperate to get away? I know that some part of you must…want me. Does it disgust you?”

“Is that what you think?” His jaw goes slack. “You think I’m disgusted by you?”

Hermione flushes, staring off. “It pains you so severely. You clearly can’t stand me being around. You hardly even look at me.”

Malfoy exhales, and he sounds so angry as he snaps, “You don’t know anything.”

“Then tell me—”

“I can’t look at you,” he sneers, “because I wouldn’t ever get off of you. If I permitted myself to watch you, I’d take you so far from here that no one would ever find you again. Do you understand?” His glare pins her to the floor. He rakes a trembling hand through his hair, a sharp laugh spilling from his lips. “This is me sparing you. I stay away, especially now, because it’s the only mercy I can give.”

Hermione stands motionless, watching as he drags his palm down his face, doing nothing to wipe the pain that pinches his features.

“Malfoy, I–”

“No. You want to stand here tempting fate. Fine. Do you know what it does to me? The knowledge that you make those sounds you make for Thomas? Knowing he doesn’t deserve them—doesn’t deserve you? Shouldn’t have his hands anywhere near you. It makes me fucking crazed imagining you sneaking around and letting him put some part of him inside of you.”

Malfoy's eyes open, the dark of his pupils wide as his face goes blank. Hermione can’t breathe, and only barely shakes her head in response.

“I want to kill him. And then, I’d suck every last bit of you off of his fingers. Because I have no fucking sense anymore, and you insist on doing everything in your power to push me. I mean, following me down an empty corridor? I told you. Do you even know what I—of course, you fucking don’t. All but herding you toward some dark, little corner where I could—a fat lot of fucking luck that Slughorn was nearby. And then you think I don’t even fucking—want you—with that look on your face like, like—bloody idiotic—Salazar. Fuck this.”

He slaps a hand over his mouth like he’s fighting to keep more from tumbling out. Hermione blinks a few times, watching muscles work in his neck as he swallows down whatever else he is compelled to say.

Her mouth opens and closes twice before she finally manages a response. “I—I’m sorry.” He peels his hand away, lips pursed, but Hermione continues. “I didn’t think…I mean, you don’t act like it makes any difference to you. And what was I meant to think—your note was…I thought I did something wrong mentioning you being a…Werewolf.”

“That is a simple torture. A scar from the war,” he says. “This—you are something far worse.”

“I just want to help you.”

I want to be near you. My heart beats in time with yours. I feel it—I feel it—I know what you know.

“I know,” he murmurs. Eyes dark, moonlight reflected back in his wide pupils.

A snap in her chest, and then: “Why are you acting like I can’t decide for myself?”

“Can you?” he snaps, the question spat out with enough force to rattle her. “Can you even say no?”

“I just…I did say ‘no’. You told me to leave and I—”

“Have you ever stopped to think about why you want to be near me? Why our separation hurts?”

“I just—it must be something to do with your transformation. The books indicated it is a painful transition–”

“Did you want to be near Remus? Did it hurt when you were apart?”

“No. That isn’t the same though.”

His eyes narrow like she’s still missing the point, and he frowns as he challenges her further. “And why is that?”

“I–I don’t know! You give me nothing. You don’t consider me at all.”

“Because you can’t think for yourself.”

“Yes, I do!” she fires back, her heart pounding in her chest, her hands shaking in her grip of Snape’s journals.

“Granger, come here.”

The words strike like a whip and for a moment, she’s paralyzed. Her body wants to obey, wants to please, something deep inside her thrumming with the desire to close the space between them. The words are an invitation, they’re what she’s wanted since the last time she had him, and it very nearly pulls.

But somewhere beneath that compulsion, another voice whispers—faint, fragile, but hers. Her feet remain rooted to the floor. She doesn’t move. She can’t.

“No.”

His eyes flash, triumphant and bitter all at once, like this is exactly what he expected. He steps forward slowly, the heat of him palpable as he draws closer.

“Please.” He murmurs this dark caress, dangerously soft. This whisper is his teeth as they graze her throat. “Please come to me.”

Her heart pounds furiously, but she stands her ground, barely. She’s trembling now—she’s weak, so weak and bitter, frustrated and wanting, she is a wanting thing—but he told her she couldn’t think for herself, and she has to. “I said no. That was me. I—I chose that.”

“Did you?” His hand moves, lifting to hover near her face, stopping just shy of touching her. His pupils darken, swallowing the light, and his breath is warm against her cheek.

She nods her head, backing away a step, though her body protests the distance. “I’m thinking for myself.”

“Prove it.”

Her hands clench tighter, nails digging into the leather of the journals. She doesn’t want to go. Every part of her screams to stay, to argue, to push until this unbearable tension breaks—but if she stays, she’ll lose. He’ll never get over whatever it is that makes him doubt her will. She doesn’t understand why, but she knows it with the same certainty as her own heartbeat.

Hermione steps back, and Malfoy's eyes soften before he looks down. His throat bobs once, and then twice before he closes his eyes and turns away from her. She palms her wand and shoots it towards the box, righting its positon behind the books Slughorn set it behind, and flicking the door shut to the cabinet to erase evidence she’d ever been here. She takes a shaky breath, forcing herself to move, to turn toward the door. Her steps feel slow.

At the door, she pauses, one hand resting on the frame. “I chose to leave,” she says quietly, as much resolution as she can muster. Can you see what I can do for you? What I can give?

He doesn’t respond, doesn’t even look at her, but she catches the way his jaw tightens, the flicker in his eyes as he leans back against the corner of the desk, gaze locked on the floor. It should feel like a triumph, but it doesn’t. She thinks about mumbling a goodbye, but would he mistake it for weakness? She waits there, stuck between stay and go, staring at him when his chin tilts, meeting her gaze.

Stay or go. A test.

She resents him for this, but she hates being wrong most of all. Before she can do something stupid, she slips out, closing the door softly and leaving him to stare at where her shape had been tucked, hovering in her indecision.

Chapter Text

Her thumb presses against her lips, teeth tugging at the stubborn edge of a hangnail. Ginny’s voice hums ever on behind her, sentences blending together and drowned out by the thought of lips near her neck, a confession muffled by a hand, Hermione only half-listening to her—until she says it.

“I’ve got our dresses for—”

The words land like a snap of cold water, and Hermione bites down too hard, copper mined and blooming bitter on her tongue.

“Absolutely not,” she seethes through the sting. Hermione tucks the journal beneath her pillow—eyes bleary from pouring over Snape’s winding script—and glances at her thumb, red beading at her cuticle.

Ginny’s brows furrow. “You have to!” She stares at Hermione’s stone face and goes on. “I already told Mum and if I try to back out now, she’ll just have a million questions–”

“It’s not too late to ask Harry,” Hermione interrupts.

“Harry is coming. Ron, too,” Ginny murmurs. “But they’ll be up with the big-wigs at the Ministry’s table since they’re no longer students. You agreed at breakfast the other day and–”

Hermione resists the urge to bite her cheek. If she had agreed, well, that doesn’t count because she wasn’t listening. But to admit this, she’d have to divulge that she hadn’t been paying attention because she was too busy watching Malfoy lean his face toward another witch over lumpy pumpkin porridge.

Her stomach heaves.

Easier to ignore this illogical jealousy over nothing, she sniffs and says, “I really feel this is a spectacle meant to—”

Ginny cuts her off with a groan, flopping back onto the bedspread. “Merlin’s beard, Hermione, it’s not an execution. It’s a dance. Sort of.” She throws an arm over her eyes. “You’re not being sent to the gallows.”

Hermione swallows thickly, staring at the ceiling as her lips thin.

It rather feels like it.

“Please,” Ginny continues, sitting up quickly. Her hair is hardly affected by her constant state of motion, still falling smooth as silk down her back. She drags the plea out, pinning her with the sort of glance that makes Harry’s cheeks flush. Hermione chews on her lip as she glares at her injury. “It’s your very last ball—mine, too—you have to go.”

The last time had meant something, and there was still meaning; a reason to unify, a reason to dance, the tingling anticipation of the answer to some great big ‘what if’. There’s nothing to celebrate now. Does no one else remember the blood on the floor, on their hands?

Trying to slot those memories into her mind makes no sense. The Great Hall, decked in glittering lights and flowing robes, laughter spilling from the corners—it clashes violently with the echoed screams in every corner of her dreams. Lavender’s glassy stare, Remus and Tonks’ still hands, Fred’s laughter, cut off too soon. A ball feels like an insult to the dead, like salt tipped over a wound.

“I’ve been to the Yule Ball,” she responds, ignoring the syrupy sweet intonation Ginny uses—Hermione knows every trick she’s pulling. She presses her index finger against the broken skin of her nail bed until it's that sting which blurs her vision, not the red-tinged memories she swallows down. She doesn’t look up when she says, “My experience thus far has been perfectly well, thank you. I don’t want to go.”

“It’s not the Yule Ball though.” Ginny’s voice is small, really playing the part. She sighs. “I hate to say it but I don’t think you’ll manage to get out of the Remembrance Gala. It’s meant to signify the start of a ‘new era’ and all that rubbish.”

Hermione frowns. She can’t do it—can’t stab the pin of a corsage into the grief, can’t sit in a room with the officials who did nothing, can’t idly watch Harry sit through yet another ceremony where they thank him for saving everyone, and pat themselves on the back for leaving the war to children. She thinks she’ll explode—thinks she’ll scream. She doesn’t think she can manage it. Not when her entire body is sore with the effort of just getting through the days. Not when she still smells like rot.

“McGonagall’s pulling strings with the Ministry, making it a whole thing. The Prophet is going to cover it. Half the school’s convinced it’s really a ‘Look, world, Hogwarts isn’t cursed anymore’ PR stunt.” Ginny catches herself rambling and buttons her lips, looking down for a moment. “You can’t skip it—we’re basically part of the exhibit. And I don’t think I can—well, I want to be there with you. Maybe it will...help.”

She knows what Ginny’s doing—what she’s really asking. It’s not about a dance. It’s about pulling Hermione back into the world of the living, dragging her forward even when she wants to stay rooted in the past, where the people she loves still exist.

She can’t deny Ginny—not when she has done so much for her, not with every secret she’s kept, not with everything Ginny lost.

“I’ll consider it…” she starts, but the words barely leave her mouth before Ginny's arms wrap around her, all red hair and breathless laughter. Hermione falls with an oof, landing on her friend when she tugs her onto the mattress.

“This is perfect! We can match–” Hermione starts to protest; their colouring is completely opposite. She doesn’t get a chance as Ginny continues. “Actually, hate to be a bit of a sneaker, but Mum’s already finished the dresses. I think she sort of assumed you’d go, as if you’d ever really skip out on it. Anyway, they’re pretty. You’ll see day after tomorrow—we’ll have a fitting with Mum and then probably–”

“What’s...what?”

“Hogsmeade day!” Ginny exclaims like she’s stating the obvious.

“But it is…” Hermione’s mind spins, trying to conjure a calendar to ponder why they’d be going mid-week, but all that comes to mind is grey eyes slanted and seething at her to think of the moon phases. She shakes her head, feeling all too aware of the little hill where the journal rests beneath her pillow. “What about classes?”

“What about classes? Who are we to question the benevolence of Minerva McGonagall?”

Hermione doesn’t answer. She doesn’t have to—the silence is filled with Ginny’s happiness, spilling out in little stories, excited plans, a squeeze of her hand, a lilting laugh. Hermione’s teeth find her same thumb.

The touch itches, a burning sort of wrong, but she doesn’t push Ginny off, just settles under her weight as the happy murmuring becomes contented, easy breath. She blinks at the canopy, brain going soft, slipping easily and far away, thoughts creeping on trepid tip-toes toward the memory of his teeth at her throat, the rushed breath hot against her skin. She squeezes her hands into a tight fist, letting her brittle nails make half moons against her palms, forcing herself to focus on Ginny’s breathing and the little bump of the journals under her neck.

Her thoughts bend and sway, thinking that it might not be so bad if she does go to the ball. Maybe it would be a nice distraction, maybe it would be like before. Maybe she could be like before.

It’s a nice thought for the fleeting second it first materialises. Then she is reminded of everything else and it hurts again. She can’t swallow her disbelieving snort—she wouldn’t fit in that skin anymore, can hardly hold the searing pain in these limbs she’s got now.

“Want me to heal it?” Ginny asks.

Hermione glances over, and she must have a look on her face like she doesn’t understand because Ginny taps the back of her hand.

“No, thanks.” Hermione drops her wrist so it lies flat against the bed, and her friend curls up closer, chatting about this, that and the other.

She never really had a choice, Hermione decides, as Ginny’s plans unfold like a ribbon, unwinding endlessly before her, as mocking and inevitable as the cladded threads of fate.

Her breathing becomes even, slipping into an almost comfort with Ginny’s warmth pressed close at her side; her last conscious thoughts linger, misty on the precipice of awake. The picture isn't quite clear but the familiarity of shape forces recognition. To rid herself of the thought would only jolt her body back to reality, and it’s sort of nice here, isn’t it? This little place in between. Not quite real, not quite not. She doesn’t want to think critically about where her thoughts go, doesn’t want that—not yet. Not when the edges of her mind are soft and blurred, and the ache in her chest feels distant, muffled beneath the weight of sleep.

Ginny twists, soft with slumber and curls closer with her warmth. Hermione flinches and her thoughts seem to retreat, tossing her blindly into the black behind her lids. Too hot—too touchy—too wrong.

Her mind hums a taunting tune, a little reminder that she doesn’t hate the warmth, not always. Not when it’s him, and they’re close, and she’s asking for things he won’t give. But even when she thinks of him outwardly—gives power to his apparition in her subconscious—her qualifier does not fit. He wasn’t warmth, not really. He was fire—searing, the kind that flattens landscapes, wrath of the gods.

Her cheeks flush. She’s senseless, all teenaged dramatics, but—not baseless. Not completely, really, because he’d admitted it, said he wanted her in the same way. That’s what he’d suggested, those were the words he had to cut himself off from finishing. She doesn’t know why he won’t give in, why he keeps her at a distance, what his obsession was with her volition or supposed lack thereof.

Maybe he finds her strange. Now she’s gone and hurt her own feelings. She closes her eyes tighter, hoping to strike the thought from her mind. It doesn’t matter what he thinks of her.

And yet, even as sleep pulls her under, her heart aches like it’s reaching for the flame. She hums just as she teeters off the edge, wondering if she’s ever felt so tragic—like the heroine of a story that doesn’t end well, the kind people whisper about in hushed voices after the curtains close.

Poor, ridiculous girl.

It is ridiculous, she’s ridiculous. Overwrought. Still, the thought settles in her chest like splintered glass, extending from punctured lungs and impossible to ignore.

⨳

Snape clearly never anticipated the eyes of others. His shorthand is illegible; notations often break off in the middle of a thought. She feels as though her eyes are permanently crossing trying to decipher what he meant.

The smudged ink trails off more than once, leaving only an impressionist’s interpretation of language.

Base unstable for black-label ingredients. Rapid degradation observed—synthesis compromised? Introduced monkshood at third simmer to bind volatile compounds. Result: transformation stabilised, confirmed by periwinkle hue. Secondary effect: improved analgesic properties noted. Remains semi-conscious, lucidity fleeting. Potion remains ineffective.

Others are scathing, even personal—she wonders about their relevance.

Lupin tolerates weakness like it’s a virtue. Refuses to put his supposed mate at risk for potential cure.

One notation makes her pause.

Belladonna infusion (trace addition, chopped most effec.)—counters muscular degradation, but increases volatility. Unclear whether mind follows body’s lead. Further testing…

His handwriting gets worse the deeper she reads. Lines slant wildly, abbreviations spiral into nothing. He seems to quote from other sources, one standing out more than the rest.

Bound ‘i blood, reforged by steel. Alpha to Omega as strength unto submission. A surrender of soul, to unite Man with Beast through Tether wrought of this earthly soil. Through bloodshed, fate bequeathed, stronger than th’ flesh of mortal coil, no longer thrall to dominion of thine moon. Thy Beast reclaimed upon beshrew be sated. By fang alone shall union be sealed, an’ ‘i that sealing, Power shall be thine Master’s name.

It hardly makes any sense. "Alpha," the first letter of the Greek alphabet and "Omega," the last, seem symbolic. A beginning and an end. But why would that matter here? She can see the correlation to Werewolves in the latter half—no longer thrall to dominion of thine moon. It suggests a cure.

Hermione gasps. It is entirely possible this section alludes to the “Great End” of Lycanthropy. She grins dumbly before biting her lip. Strength born from submission—an odd thought—but perhaps that’s the point. Her mind races, bubbling with theories as she reads on, forcing herself not to cling to hope until she finds something concrete.

Granted, breakfast in the Great Hall is an awful place for research. Seamus flings a bit of porridge across the table and it lands on the edge of her journal. Dean leans forward and smacks the back of his head, which makes the table erupt into lighthearted giggles. She sighs but reads on anyway, if only to avoid spending the hour sneaking glances in his direction.

Her flicker of hope is smothered by what follows: more notes on Lupin’s condition, each observation more painful than the last. A final, nearly illegible scrawl lingers on the edge of the page, but the words stick the most in Hermione’s mind.

Consciousness preserved. Mercy or cruelty?

Hermione stares at the line until the words blur. For a brief, unwelcome moment, she imagines what it might mean to stay awake through a transformation. To feel her mind caged inside a body that isn’t hers anymore, instincts rewriting the very marrow of her bones as they crack and snarl.

She closes the journal with a snap.

The question curls in her mind and twists sour in her gut. She knew that the transformation could not be stopped, knew that it only preserved the mind. But hope flickered inside of her when Slughorn mentioned Snape’s attempts to further dull the wolf. Snape appeared to have gotten far enough to test his theory but had not perfected anything, at least nothing she could use to her immediate benefit. If she were to attempt to brew for Malfoy, she’d be putting him at risk—unable to test the efficacy until his transformation began. Who is to say she’d have any success?

She chews on her lip as she considers her plan. Was it kinder to take the potion as it was, or risk testing theories that had already failed, knowing the outcome? Even mercy came with a price.

Her fingers flick along the fore-edge of the journal, letting the rough fibres bite into her skin, grounding her against the rising hum of the Great Hall. The room is too loud in every way, a blinding bright that makes her teeth ache. Ginny’s voice lilts on her right, light and careless, plans about Zonko’s and an enchantment for her scarf when they venture to Hogsmeade and will you be coming posed at Luna, who ignores the question to grace them with her latest theory on wrackspurts in butterbeer. To her left, Dean laughs, an easy warmth, his shoulder bumping into hers. She doesn’t lean back.

It’s all noise. Friendly, familiar noise—and it scrapes against her like sandpaper.

She wonders, distantly, when it started feeling this way. When the comfort of being surrounded by friends became a weight on her chest. It’s not their fault. It’s her, she knows it’s her. She lets them prop her up between them, keeps pretending that her heart beats a normal thump.

Her eyes drift upward, chasing relief in the vastness of the ceiling. The enchanted sky stretches endlessly above, clouds swirling slow and lazy over the high arches. It should feel open, freeing, like lips parting on a gasp to welcome in the sweet gulps of freezing air, but it doesn’t. The weight doesn’t lift, her throat still wound tight, her Mary-Janes glued to the stone beneath her feet and time isn’t kind to her—no, each second drags her down.

“Gin said you’ll be going to the Remembrance Gala then?”

Hermione blinks at the ceiling, swallowing before tilting her head and meeting Dean’s eye.

“I’ve got no choice, I suppose.”

“Well, if you have to go, at least you’ll be the prettiest one there. Might make the rest of us look decent by association.”

Her lips twitch. “I thought we agreed to not get sentimental.”

Dean tilts his head at her in a way that makes other girls softly sigh. He tries to look a bit solemn, but she can tell he’s only barely containing his amusement at the back of his throat. It manifests in a little concaved dimple on his cheek, dipping deeper as he leans closer to her.

“Forgive me for liking it when a beautiful girl finally smiles. Feels like I earned something.”

“Dean.”

Her harsh whisper is almost instantly negated by the rising blush creeping up her throat. She lifts a hand and pushes at his shoulder, or at least she tries to, forgetting that Dean had started playing Quidditch this year—bloody fuck all else to do, no?—and his lessons must have paid off, because he captures her hand right before her palm presses over his fluttering heart.

“It’s all platonic, Hermione,” he murmurs, though the warmth in his voice betrays the teasing glint in his eyes. He still doesn’t let go, tugging her a bit closer, his thumb brushing over her wrist. Her lips part. “Doesn’t mean I don’t like seeing you blush.”

He’s playful today, clearly, or maybe he just recognises when she’s at her worst. The distraction is mostly welcome, the warmth of the blush he invites mixing with the sensation of the growing smile on her dimpling cheeks. It is a quick thrill—harmless—to chase the impending doom that sits in the centre of her chest. Dean is too kind, even with how she’s…used him, and she thinks she ought to say thanks. For being there for her in a way she doesn’t think she could ask of anyone else. For making her feel wanted, for trying to paint her blush with his silly little remarks, for looking almost genuine as he says it.

His lips brush her temple—light, familiar, but still enough to make her chest seize, lungs bouncing up with a stuttered breath. She’s whispering his name when the hair on the nape of her neck rises, ozone tinging the air like a storm about to break. Then it does.

The enchanted ceiling churns with a clap of exploding thunder.

A rip through the air as the picture twists into something mud-dark and wrong. The lazy, drifting clouds split apart like a blade’s been driven through the sky itself, the now soot-black swirl cracking open, lightning cutting sideways through the illusion. The Great Hall gasps as the heavens snarl. A low, vibrating sound hums in the air, a disjointed growl trapped behind the walls. Plates rattle. Mugs and goblets shake, tea spilling over until no cup is left unturned. A pitcher of pumpkin juice bursts, shards of glass skittering over the table.

Hermione’s hand rips from Dean’s as she jolts straight, eyes flying to the sky, but her stomach drops, because she already knows.

Someone screams when light sparks hot, streaking across the sky and leaving the scent of burnt ozone in its wake. Seconds stretch like they’ve been transported to a typhoon, the earth flinching with each crack of the sky. It enraptures everyone, pulling irises up until their necks crane too.

But even now, even as heaven split open above her—a god beckoning them home—Hermione’s chin tucks towards her chest, gaze falling from where everyone stares. No one else is paying attention, no one deigning to look his way, but she does. Her skin burns under the weight of his gaze, already locked on her. Her throat is tight, heart hammering against her ribs. It’s him.

Malfoy, eyes locked on her, seated with a lethal stillness amongst the chaos.

Dean mutters softly—a confused, nervous laugh—and leans in again, still eyes up, probably to ask if she’s alright. His voice doesn’t quite reach her ears. Her pulse, over the top, skittering within her ribs, wins out. She can feel Malfoy's magic, thrumming, caged fury barely contained. It’s exacting as a finger dragging over her spine, pushing between two vertebrae, deep down, under her skin now, sinking into her veins like it belongs there.

The ceiling hasn’t stopped twisting. He won’t let it. The clouds churn unnaturally, dark, circling a hollow, gaping centre where the sky should be. His lips don’t part, his stare does not waver. It is a violent silence painted emerald jade.

Hermione swallows hard, sulfur on her tongue. Her hand, the one Dean held, feels wrong. Like it doesn’t belong to her anymore. Like she’d been doing wrong—like she’d been found out.

Utterly ridiculous—causing this scene all over some jealousy? As if she were to blame. A tantrum because…what? Dean had smiled at her?

Her irritation bubbles, red-hot, in her carotid. Adrenaline quickens her pulse, making her itch to stand up, march over to his stupid, sneering face, and confront him.

She’s prepared to do it. Prepared to weather the storm to demand to know what the hell his problem is. She sits rooted in place, staring back at him, as if offering a warning he’d never have the decency to give her. Her gaze drops to his tense shoulders, and then, following the line down, lands on his table.

In complete disarray, his section seems to have endured the worst of his magic. A thin vial lies broken among the shards.

The liquid inside it is thick and a mesmerizing blue, slow as mercury as it seeps into the tablecloth. Her stomach twists as she observes the slow drip.

Periwinkle spills out.

It all clicks.

His hand hovers over the wreckage for a second longer, fingers twitching like he’s debating scooping the remains into his palm, but then they curl into a fist instead. His jaw clenches tight enough to crack his teeth, throat bobbing like he’s swallowing the shattered glass.

The last of the potion leaks out, damning as spilt ink. Even with the chaos, she thinks she can hear it—that drip drip drip.

He doesn’t look at it. He only looks at her. His eyes burn hotter than the crackling sky above them.

It’s not just jealousy—maybe it was only that at first, but this look is layered. His brow is furrowed, his lips are twisted down, and his eyes—they’re so dark, black swallowing the whole of his irises. The way his jaw clenches, the flare of his nostrils, the tension in his broad shoulders—all of it draws her in, makes her realise.

It’s rage. The kind that burns everything in its path.

He ruined his dose of Wolfsbane watching them, and in his mind, she must be the reason.

She can’t help it—the sudden guilt that fills her gut.

Malfoy stands. The bench scrapes harshly against the floor, loud enough to make a few heads turn. His robes whip after him like smoke as he storms from the hall.

Hermione doesn’t move. She barely feels Dean’s hand brushing against her wrist as the sky returns to a serene blue. He turns from her when she remains silent, musing with everyone else about what might have caused such a thing. Her heart is in her throat, hammering, fast and painful.

Her fingers curl in, nails biting into the leather cover. The words from Snape’s journal throb behind her eyes. Consciousness preserved. But is that mercy or cruelty?

And she wonders, as she stares after him, if this is what it feels like to be a caged beast. If someone forced her to stay here, to sit with the people she loves, pretending to belong, pretending to fit in—when everything inside her aches to be somewhere else, somewhere she can’t even define—would they call it mercy?

Would they think they were saving her?

Maybe she has been telling herself that she wants to save him when all she has really done is push and pull, dragging him down to her. Made this all about her suffering.

Was this mercy—or selfishness?

She swallows hard. The parchment crinkles in her fist, edges cutting into her palm. And yet, she doesn’t let go.

⨳

The milk spread slowly, bleeding pale across the dark wood.

Hermione stared at it, feeling the way her throat pulled tight. It was not the mess that unsettled her—it was the sound. The quiet drip drip drip where it slipped over the edge of the table, splattering onto the floor.

Dad rose from his chair with a sigh, but it was not an angry sound. It was familiar, worn at the edges like the old jumpers he pulled on when winter crept in.

‘It’s alright, poppet,’ he murmured. ‘It’s only milk.’

Hermione nodded, fingers still buzzing and trembling. There was something wrong with her hands. She knew this. It was a fleeting thought that she had—but she remembered all of her thoughts, at least she thought so. Mum didn’t agree, saying a thing like hyperthymesia was rare, and more than likely, she was young with enough space for the memories to rattle around. But she knew this—knew it was wrong with her bones, maybe one of the twenty-seven in her hand. They’re too light, too distant from her, like they belong to someone else. She watched her fingers curl in on themselves, small half-moons pressed into her palms.

Squeezing her eyes shut, a wish to disappear from the moment unspoken on her lips, the memory only amplified behind her lids. It felt like sinking, quicksand-stuck watching the glass slip from her fingers. Over and over and over and over—

Her mother’s voice cut through, gentle but sure enough to pull her back.

‘Hey,’ Mum said, tilting her head. The light from the kitchen window caught on her hair, turning it to copper and fire. She stepped around the table and knelt, her hands warm and steady as they framed Hermione’s face. ‘It’s okay, darling.’

Hermione blinked, a hitch in her breath, and her mother’s thumb brushed the wet tracks from her cheeks.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, feeling too small to hold the weight in her chest.

Mum tutted softly. ‘Hermione.’ Her voice lowered. ‘Do I love you or do I love this table?’

Hermione’s heart stuttered. The question felt important, more than it should be. Bigger than the kitchen, bigger than the milk, bigger than her. Her throat burned.

A stutter—hesitation constricting her throat—but: ‘Me?’

Mum’s lips curved, the faintest ghost of a smile. ‘That’s right. I love you.’

The words curled around her, warm like a blanket pulled up to her chin, soft and safe.

‘Do I love that glass or do I love you?’

‘Me.’ Hermione’s voice wobbled, but it came easier.

‘Too clever for me,’ Mum murmured, pressing a kiss to her forehead. ‘What about the milk, then? Do I love you or do I love that milk?’

Hermione’s breath stuttered on a laugh, wet and half a sob. ‘Me.’

Mum hummed her approval, smoothing Hermione’s hair back, her fingers combing through the curls, none of her rings getting caught on the coils. It always seemed like magic.

‘Of course I love you,’ she said softly. ‘I don’t even take milk in my tea.’

‘Dad does,’ Hermione managed.

‘Well,’ Mum leaned back, smiling crookedly. ‘We’ll ask him, then, shall we? See if he loves his spilt milk more than his favourite girl.’

Dad’s voice rumbled from the doorway, amusement plain. ‘Is that what we’re doing now? Testing my loyalty against dairy products?’

Hermione looked up, and he was standing there with an old dish towel in his hands, eyes crinkling at the corners as they flickered between them. He had a way of staring at the things he cared for: her mother would whisper it to her, truth interwoven with the fantasies spurned on bedtime stories. She’d call him a dragon, a man covetous and loyal, able to find his treasures with little more than a glance. He stepped closer, inspecting the puddle with exaggerated solemnity.

‘Tragic, really. All that milk. Gone too soon.’ He sighed, shaking his head. ‘But…I suppose I’ll keep the girl. She’s less likely to spoil.’

‘Maybe,’ Mum huffed, but she laughed, eyes bright. ‘I reckon after a bath. Have you had a sniff?’

Dad grinned at Hermione, and the warmth in his face reached her, settling curled up in her ribs. The pesky ache in her chest loosened, uncoiled soft, a little ahhh exhale, held breath finally given back to the atmosphere. He stepped closer, knelt by her chair like Mum did, and took her hands in his big, calloused ones. His thumb traced gently over her knuckles, like he knew where she was spoiled, knew the little troubles held up in her metacarpals. His fingers smooth where her nails left crescent moons behind.

‘Your hands are fine, poppet,’ he whispered. ‘They’re clever hands. Brave hands. They’ll stop shaking soon.’

She wanted to believe him.

‘Do you promise?’

‘I promise.’

The milk kept dripping, slow and steady against the floor. The memory was fuzzy now—dripping at the base of her skull—but she thought, even then, that it sounded like a clock ticking down.

⨳

Draco, I’m really sorry–

You really ought to learn to control your—

Malfoy, look. I don’t know what your problem is—

No.

The quill stutters, her arm jolting with a leftover pang—a ghost of pain that makes her seethe, flinching from nothing. The sudden movement sends her hand skidding across the parchment, a black smear over the lines she’s already crossed out. The spilt ink spreads like rot, seeping in with finality. With a frustrated groan, Hermione vanishes the mess, and with the same burst of spent energy, lets her head thunk against the desk. The parchment beneath her is a graveyard of half-written apologies and brittle reprimands, a letter she knows she won’t even send.

What could she possibly say to him? Admit she’d been cowardly? Not a chance.

After watching him disappear from the Great Hall, Hermione waited, holding Snape’s journal and listening as the room was put to rights. Professors hemmed and hawed with speculation, wondering how a hurricane might have descended upon breakfast.

The hours that followed dragged claws through the day, scraping her raw. Each class was a slow, dull ache. Every time a door opened, she looked up, foolish heart stuttering in expectation, greedy tongue folding into her cheek as her neck craned long, trying to picture a boy that just wasn’t there. She thought she might catch a glimpse of him in Potions, perhaps see him rounding a corner with his deliriously long gait. Once sat in class though, Theodore Nott informed Slughorn that he wouldn’t be in class today.

She thought she imagined the way his gaze slid to her as he said, “Some sort of bug.”

She wondered why it hit her like a threat. She chewed on that thought, really working it between mandible and maxilla.

It isn’t until now, hours later in the dark of the library, with her quill pressing down into the splatter of ink, that she draws in a breath—realisation settling like a cold compress against her heated skin.

One confirming glance thrown over her shoulder reminds her. The moon sits fat in the sky tonight, slashing silver through the tower’s windows. The rock taunts from its perch among the stars, nearly full, heavy and swollen like an omen. Tomorrow, it’ll crest.

Her quill lies abandoned on the desk. The ink has stopped spreading now, dried into a jagged, ugly stain.

Hermione is already several steps away. The echo of her wooden chair legs scraping against the floor is lost to her footfall as she scurries across the stone floor, heart and veins thudding due north, pulse pinned in her throat. Her legs move before her mind catches up, carrying her down through the castle’s winding belly.

She nearly misses a step on the stairs, her shoe skidding on cold stone. Her fingers splay against the wall to keep her balance, palm smacking against rough brick. She doesn’t feel it.

Her thoughts are very singular, feet carrying her with no real thought behind the conviction. Just go go go.

She thinks the singularity is better than the former—wherein her mind was a jumbled mess of her dead professor’s shorthand, hissed words against the nape of her neck, and the feeling of resurfacing in her body despite being nowhere near a lake. That was messier, harder to deal with, as chaotic as the ceiling of the Great Hall cracking open above her. She doesn’t know what she’ll do—perhaps an emergency brew so he doesn’t miss a dose? As if there would be the time.

She doesn’t know why she cares.

She shouldn’t.

He is cruel. He made her feel foolish for trying to help him—pushed her away, threw up his walls and let her take only what he allowed, never more. Her chest aches yet, like she owes him every exhale, like it was her hand that crushed the glass, her fault his potion spilt out like mercury over the tablecloth, wasted and ruined. The look on his face, the tension in his jaw, the way his throat worked like he’d swallowed something barbed and couldn’t get it back up.

He broke it. He ruined it. And still, the guilt hooks deep beneath her breastbone and festers ugly. It burns.

Her hand trembles. She doesn’t notice.

She is too focused on thoughts of him, images twisting and filling in the cracks, and she wonders if she’s even been herself since the start of term, if her mind has been her own since that touch. It had to be what was wrong with her—whatever was wrong with him—but that’s not right. Not when she hadn’t been bitten.

He knows. He has to know. He knows what is wrong with them, why her thoughts mix up like this, why it all hurts, and she deserves answers. He’ll tell her. She’ll make him tell her.

The smell hits her first—smoke, thick and sour, curling in the cold air. It doesn’t belong here, not in the quiet hush of the corridor. .

She stops short, breath snatching in her throat.

Goyle steps forward from an alcove like he’s always been there, carved from the same damp stone. The cigarette smoulders between his fingers, ember flaring red as he takes a slow drag. His eyes, heavy-lidded and sunken in shadow, find hers.

“Granger.” His voice grates. He lifts his fingers—still hulking but more carved now, less of a wall and more of a boy—and exhales as he plucks it from his lips. He mutters a spell and the smoke clears—leaving spiced and candied nutmeg in its wake. “Want one?”

“No, I–” She blinks a few times, trying to understand how this is happening. How she managed to find herself in a corridor with Goyle offering her a smoke. How the whole reason she’s down here in the first place is—

“Draco, I assume,” Goyle says.

“Yes.” She stutters on it. “Our project.”

It strikes her how ridiculous that sounds. Seeking out Draco Malfoy in the dark of night to have a riveting academic discussion on potions? It is a hollow, obvious lie.

Goyle lulls his head towards one shoulder, inspecting her with a pensive intensity she’d honestly never thought him capable of. The thought grants her an instant guilt, and some petulant pillar in her chest whinges over her capacity to harbour empathy for the same people who thought she should keel over for happening to be born with magic.

He rights his posture, taking another pull and letting it sit in his chest. He exhales in the same breath that he says, “Not there, I’m afraid.”

Hermione, stupidly, glances towards the window like she might find a full moon dead ahead. He’d said he had another night, but if it was tonight instead—somehow—and he hadn’t taken the potion—

“Narcissa checked him out earlier today.”

Her chin shakes, a little tick of her confusion. “What?”

“Well, considering he’s an adult, he didn’t really need her to do it, but ya know how McGonagall is—” she thinks she doesn’t, at least not in the way his tone carries insinuation, “—always eager to send us to Azkaban.”

“McGonagall wouldn’t ever want that for her students.”

Naïve out loud, even to her ears.

Goyle huffs a dry, humourless laugh, smoke spilling from his nose like a dragon’s snarl. “Wouldn’t she? Maybe not before, but now? After what happened last year?”

Hermione’s stomach twists, throat too tight to swallow. She wants to argue, to tell him that McGonagall isn’t like that—that she’s fair, that she wouldn’t punish someone for surviving the only way they knew how—but the words tangle up and die before they make it out.

Because she isn’t sure it’s true. Not when it comes to Malfoy. Not after everything.

“He didn’t do anything,” she says instead, and she just sounds pathetic, too quiet. She stands a little straighter, trying.

Goyle’s eyes flick to hers, and for a second, something unreadable flickers there. Gone too fast to name.

“Didn’t he?” he says, and his voice isn’t cruel, not quite. It’s worse than that. It’s tired.

Hermione’s heart twists so acutely it aches.

“He’s not here, Granger,” Goyle repeats, softer this time. He sounds almost sorry for her. She could die. “Be careful, yeah?”

She doesn’t answer. She can’t.

The cigarette burns low between his fingers, and when he flicks it to the stone floor, the ember dies with a hiss. He doesn’t say anything else, tilting his wrist in a lazy arc and vanishing the stick where it lands. No fuss, no lingering look. Just walks past her, footsteps echoing in the empty corridor.

She doesn’t watch him go, gaze already turned toward the narrow sliver of sky she can make out beyond the window. The moon is barely visible—isn’t full, isn’t a pale, luminous face grinning down on Hogwarts—but it doesn’t matter. Tomorrow, it will be.

Chapter Text

It starts with a chocolate egg.

Molly Weasley is a lovely woman. From the age of fourteen, when Hermione first made her acquaintance, to now, she’s always been pleasant. She nurses commitment to her family, sets boundaries and expectations, shows an unparalleled love that is so rooted in self and security that it actually ties up Hermione’s insides, making her acutely aware that this sort of motherhood and surety has no place in her future.

The matriarch isn’t without fault, but no one is. It’s almost worse for Hermione being so piteously self-aware, sternum heavy under the weight of her hypocrisy, harbouring resentment that isn't earned. It is resplendent to be flawed, starkly human to exist among the circumstance and persist in spite of this.

There’s no crime in who Molly is. The guilt comes anyway, a sour, persistent tang at the back of her tongue, because Hermione is too practical to deny that the fault is hers alone. No one asked her to measure herself against this version of motherhood, this sturdy, sun-warmed certainty. No one expects her to win a fight she started in the quiet of her own head, ever pious in her self-flagellation.

Molly is a lovely woman.

The sort who presses a foil-wrapped egg into Hermione’s palm during her Easter at the Burrow, all while bustling past to scold one of her sons. No ceremony, no expectation—just a quick smile and a "Happy Easter, dear," before she's on to the next thing. But Hermione is fourteen and far from home, and that small, effortless gesture lodges itself somewhere deep, a place that sits sore.

It starts with a chocolate egg, and it never really stops.

Molly doesn’t deserve this. Hermione knows—she knows—that it makes no sense to have this much animosity toward a woman who has constantly gone out of her way to include her. Yet it sits there, somewhere along the ladder of her rib cage, sunk so deep to the bone that Hermione thinks it won’t ever vacate the premises. It hurts to be loved when the love is wrong, hurts to be pulled into a hug and smell perfume which holds up in her olfactory glands, hurts to be shuffled and nurtured when the hands tremble, overripe and kind and not Mum.

Hermione keeps a lot to herself, like how much she misses her own mother. How each passing milestone without feeds a hunger that cannot be sated. Childish, she thinks, to miss being someone’s baby. Better, she knows, to hold her tongue, endure.

This Hogsmeade day, with a windchill chattering their teeth, and pressing her lips tight enough to not let anything slip, she remains quiet, trying to remember who she was just a few years ago, trying to fit again. When Molly innocently asks how the last semester has been for both girls, she lets Ginny answer for her.

The youngest omits, always saying just enough, only scraping the surface of every answer, finding loopholes and easy exits in the conversation, that by the time they’re in Gladrags, relegated to the back where private alterations occur, Madame Kalmin is pinning them in their dresses, the day already half-over. Hermione’s head tilts, admiring how the fabric catches the light.

Ginny’s dress is ethereal, a silvery-grey, shimmering like winter’s first frost kissing her skin. Straps icicle-thin hold the bodice, fit as a glove to her chest. The skirt billows out in a sharp A, latticework criss-crossing and reflecting the light of the shop. Molly asks for a spin, which Ginny obliges. It’d made Hermione’s heart plummet, knowing if they were to match, the frost would freeze her over.

But as Madame Kalmin pins her into place, Hermione’s fingers run over the diaphanous fabric, and it isn’t dread that begins to effervesce in her throat.

Ginny had been wrong. They’re not matching completely, but rather complementary.

If Ginny’s skirt is the dusted snow settled on the outside of the cabin, Hermione’s is the warm flame beckoning in the window. The light left on, calling you home. The soft champagne flickers a lambent gold against the light of the dress shop. It moulds to her skin, sinewy and delicate.

When she emerges from the curtain, both of them pull in a breath of air.

“Oh, Hermione,” Ginny blurts, the edges of her mouth curling into a shocked grin. “Mum, you’ve outdone yourself.”

“I used thread from the same skein,” Molly says, pressing a gentle finger over her mouth as she inspects the dress with an artist’s narrowed eye. She points idly, not outright, between the two. “An old stash,” —before the war, she didn't say out loud— “I was saving for something special.”

Silver ivy coils in delicate whorls across one bodice, counterpoint to Ginny’s taut latticework—both drawn from the same spool, spun in different moods. Their dresses answer each other as variations on a theme. And at the hem, the designs scatter, like sparks flung from the edge of a flame, vanishing into the dark, no trace of where they land or what follows after.

The dress is beautiful. The moment is beautiful. Everything is beautiful, and she has no issue recognising as much to be true. But she can’t do this; can’t pretend that she adds anything of value to this which will one day be memory. It feels like she’s stealing something, dropped into a tableau of such warm familiarity that it fills her with the sense of a primal wrong. Her jaw pops, teeth grinding close.

Spot the difference.

Like a sore thumb, she sticks out.

One of these things is not like the other.

It’s her. Even dressed in robes that fit, nearly perfect, that were designed with the idea of her in mind, she doesn’t fit. She wants to shout. Wants them to tell her that she’s different, wrong, an impostor, that she isn’t the girl they remember. She thinks her heart is breaking, that she’s driving herself mad.

Then the bells of the shop chime, like giggling pixies unseen in a bed of moss. Her gaze lifts in time to connect with green eyes.

The door closes behind Harry, who wears a smile just for her.

“Surprise,” he says softly. “Miss me?”

And that ache in her heart that she theorised on, this splitting of self internally, the last few months, the way that certain things never change; all of it closes in on her.

She doesn’t think her heart is breaking, she knows it has. Cleaved clean in two.

⨳

Harry James Potter, hero of the wizarding world, the Boy Who Lived, the Chosen One, saviour of Britain and figurehead to every cause that followed a war he ended, frowns down at his stew.

To Hermione, he is just Harry. But it’s easy to forget, especially seeing him now, decked out in his Ministry-appointed robes, a bit of shadow dusting his jawline, glasses fit to his face with no visible cracks. Staring at him, because there’s really no other way to describe how she inspects him now, Hermione tries to catalogue all the ways that he’s grown and bloomed.

They settle into a table in the cramped confines of a newer cafe, The Burrowed Bean. Inside, it smells of caramel-drizzled coffee and warm cinnamon buns, sweet spice baked into the walls. Every other table at any eatery was full of other students, excited to be free from tomes and parchment for the day, and imbibing in as much butterbeer as they could handle. Hermione had waved a hand, stating they could run along without her if Harry wanted to meet up with everyone else, but he shook his head and jutted a thumb behind him, mentioning that he’d heard about this place when reading the Prophet.

He seemed excited enough when they first arrived, though now his forearms—free from his cloak and pushed up to his elbows—tense on either side of his bowl as he lours at the steaming contents.

“Something wrong?” Ginny asks, inspecting him from the corner of her eye, a chip paused in its journey toward her cherry chapstick scented lips.

Hermione glances from her own plate—a neatly folded sandwich, greasy where it’s been patted down against the blacktop. Her lips twitch at the corner, amusement braided with a painful notch of familiarity.

“Harry doesn’t like peas in his stew.”

Ginny doesn’t hesitate for even a second. “Poor wittle baby.”

It’s astonishing Hermione ever forgets that the redhead grew up with six brothers touting matching menace.

“Would you—” Harry says, lightly smacking her hand away from his blushing cheeks where Ginny has tried to pinch him.

“Need me to pick them out for you, handsome?”

“Quit it.”

“I won’t let a single pea hurt my man.”

Harry pinches beneath his circular frames as Ginny looks across the table, wriggling her eyebrows.

“You’re going to give him a complex,” Hermione says quietly, though she smiles.

“He’s fine.” Ginny munches on a chip. “Someone has to toughen him up for Auror training.”

“I’m nearly done.”

“And if they set you in front of a Boggart and a can of peas rolls out?”

“It’s just peas in stew,” Harry corrects with all the surety of a man who thinks he’s making a real point. Ginny starts to snort, but he continues. “They’re mush. If I wanted baby food, I’d pop into Tesco and go crazy. Mushy little bogeys.”

“He makes it so easy,” Ginny mumbles, looking at Hermione with pleading eyes. As if she’d ever wait for permission. “Hermione, he makes it so easy.”

“Ginevra, I swear,” Molly chides, returning from the loo and sliding into the booth next to Hermione. “Harry will flee for the hills if you keep treating him like that.”

“Mum, he likes it.”

Harry flushes and, to avoid gracing that with any sort of confirmation, shovels a spoonful of the stew into his mouth.

Molly starts a rebuttal which Ginny spars with in equal skill, leaving Hermione and Harry to make eye contact. He smiles at her and she manages a grin back. How often had the two shared a moment like this, relegated to quiet as the Weasleys went toe-to-toe like the two of them were part of the pack.

She glances down at her plate, deciding she should take a bite.

“You know,” Harry says, speaking low enough that Hermione knows it’s just for her. “A long time ago, I knew a girl who sent me a letter every other day. In fact, she promised she’d always do that.”

She swallows the lump of bread, looking up to find his inquisitive eyes.

“Just wondering what happened to her, is all.”

“School has been—” she starts, and then clamps her mouth shut. Hard to spin a lie to someone who knows you to the bone. “Haven’t been in much of a writing mood.”

“Gin writes,” he says, brow softening. “Says…a lot.”

“Harry,” Hermione pleads. “Not here.”

He sighs, spinning the spoon in his bowl. She watches the peas swim to the surface, mocking him in their garish green. “I know you’re busy,” he starts. “I just…it’s weird, isn’t it? Not having you close by, I mean.”

About as close as her best friend can manage to an I miss you. Her cheeks twitch, a pang of nostalgia because even though he sits before her, more man than boy, he’s still one of hers.

“It’s hard for me, too.”

“You’ll be at the Burrow for Christmas, right?” he asks, hopeful as he picks around the peas.

As if she has anywhere else to go.

“Of course,” she says.

Harry grins at her. “Good. Ron’ll go nuts. He’s been trying to think of a way to break you out of Hogwarts.”

“It isn’t a prison,” she retorts. She takes another bite of her sandwich, chewing slowly.

“If you answered our letters, we might not think so.”

“I said I’d be there at Christmas, didn’t I?” she snaps.

Harry’s eyes narrow for a flash before he looks down.

“I’m sorry,” she continues quietly. “I’ve been in a bit of a slump.”

“Does it have anything to do with Dean?”

It isn’t the name she is expecting. Hermione hears the accusation in his question. He would think it was Dean’s fault, would imagine that he’d heard whispers of what she’d done in their absence and came to his own conclusions.

“No. Dean is perfectly–”

“Ah,” Harry interrupts with a frown. “I don’t want to know that.”

“Harry,” she laughs his name, a bright bubble of amusement. “I wasn’t going to go on about his–”

“Hermione, please.”

“Dean is a nice boy,” Molly says suddenly. Hermione’s head whips to the side, flush hot on her cheeks. Ginny starts to seethe a ‘Mum,’ but Molly continues with “What? He is! I think he’d make a lovely date to the Gala, dear. Harry here ought to be supportive of–”

“I don’t think we’re going as dates,” Hermione interrupts.

“Well, you should ask him. Take the reins. You know, Arthur loves when I–”

Ginny sharply cries, “Mother.”

Hermione continues with, “I don’t–”

“She’s not going to ask Dean to the dance,” Ginny says.

Molly tilts her head. “Someone else then?”

“Who else?” Harry asks.

“No one,” Hermione blurts. She drops her sandwich on the plate; the weak appetite she managed gone completely.

“I’m sure Ron would be–”

“Mum,” Ginny snaps. “Ron is going with Romilda. You know this.”

A flicker of disdain crosses Molly’s features before she schools her face into apathy. “That girl is just–”

“She’s nice enough when she’s not brewing love potions." Ginny stares blankly at Molly, waiting. "Ron likes her.”

“Been a big help in Curse Breakers,” Harry adds.

Molly’s lips purse, quiet but still unconvinced. The din of the cafe hums ever on as Ginny and Harry speak in tandem, finishing one another’s thoughts in a way that bleeds knowing.

Hermione leans back, grateful that the attention has shifted from her, but still wearing a thin coat of discomfort on her skin. The sweet scent of The Burrowed Bean is sickly now, the syrups too much, the steam of coffees and teas suffocating as they layer in her lungs. Her head leans against the back of the vinyl seat, lolling to the side as she directs her attention out the frost-covered window.

She makes out the figures of her peers, rosy cheeks cold in the snow, as life continues on. Everyone looks older, and Hermione is left to ponder if she has sprouted too, whether she looks more mature to Harry, and if the months of absence sit on her face too.

She gazes out at the snow-covered cobblestone, thoughts swirling like a brewing storm, when her attention settles on one figure, shoulders concealed in an onyx cloak which starkly contrasts the white backdrop.

Goyle tilts his head inquisitively at the shop front, hands stuffed in his pockets. He’s alone, and she shouldn’t care—doesn’t care—but she stares at him anyway. His warning rings in her ears, be careful, and just as it echoed last night, she doesn’t quite get it.

Hogwarts was safe, and she didn’t need to worry about traversing the halls after hours. It felt almost cliche, something murmured to a friend who you sent off on a trip.

What did Hermione have to be scared of?

Goyle’s posture straightens as the shop door in front of him opens. Amidst the churning snowflakes, a figure steps out into the street. The woman’s platinum-blond hair is white as bone where it is pulled into a strict chignon, one loose strand curling under the line of her jaw where it is pulled free. Her poised demeanour clad in a navy cloak that just barely dusts the frost-covered street.

Narcissa Malfoy is not an anticipated sight in Hogsmeade.

And yet, there she is—cut from night-sky and snowfall, looking straight through the glass at Hermione.

Her blue eyes narrow, and Goyle casts a glance over his shoulder, attention settling straight on her, too. It’s enough of a shock that she blanches, air puffing out of her chest as if she’s been punched. Hermione glances away with an unsteady heartbeat, straightening in her seat and making her knees knock the table, drawing the attention of three other sets of eyes.

“Alright there?” Harry asks, holding the edge to keep the plates from rattling anymore. Ginny casts a worried glance at her as Molly turns too.

“Yes, I–” Hermione shakes her head, gaze sliding back outside to find…nothing.

Goyle and Mrs Malfoy are gone.

“I thought I saw something,” she finishes quietly. Then, as if she can’t stop herself, she starts to slide out of the booth. “Actually, I was…I was thinking of heading to Tomes and Scrolls.”

“...why?” Harry asks.

“She loves books. Goodness. Keep up, Potter,” Ginny says with a curling grin. Harry shoots her a look, and then they’re staring back and forth before she knocks her fist into Harry’s shoulder. He laughs slightly, then, remembering himself, glances back at Hermione.

“I’ll go with you,” he says.

Hermione raises a hand. “No, I’ll be right back. You finish your stew.”

“I don’t even want–” Harry’s face pinches with disgust as he glares down at the offending meal.

“You are hovering,” Ginny deadpans.

Offended, Harry bristles. “I am not–”

“You are a bit…” Molly murmurs as the bickering continues.

“Oh, if Mum is saying so, then you are definitely–”

Molly sniffs, incredulous. “Ginevra Weasley! Be nice to that boy!”

“I’ll be right back,” Hermione says as a way of evacuating the situation. Harry starts to rise, but Ginny grabs his arm and pulls him back down.

Hermione shrugs her hood over her head as the wind whips around her once she’s free on the street. It is crisp in her lungs, the cold a bite to her cheeks and nose. Face gone sore already, her head turns from side to side, trying to figure out which way they might have gone. She glances at the storefront across the way, hoping it might offer some clue as to why Narcissa was here.

Nestled snug between two lopsided odds-and-ends shops, is Dogweed and Deathcap, the potions apothecary.

Hermione feels a strange lurch in her chest.

She takes a step forward, then stops. She knows she shouldn’t go in the shop, it would be a dead end anyway. Worse, Harry’s gaze is surely narrowed on her back as she lingers outside the cafe. She glances over her shoulder in time to see his head turn sharply, hair still shaky from the sudden jerk, to appear as if he wasn’t watching her.

Goodness.

Hermione takes off from the curve, moving as quickly as she can without looking suspicious, thoughts churning. She heads in the direction of Tomes and Scrolls until she thinks she’s far enough that Harry might not be able to see her and glances around, hoping for any sign.

Her eyes catch on the rigid posture of Goyle. He walks with an even gait down the narrow path behind Narcissa, whom she can only just make out when he pulls the door open for her. Hermione’s eyes flick to the sign of the building they’re about to enter, though she’s already intimately familiar.

The Hogshead.

Hermione freezes, boots stuck to stone as she watches Narcissa slip inside. Goyle casts one glance over his shoulder, and she has the wherewithal to duck into a store’s entry nook, out of sight.

What would someone like Narcissa Malfoy be doing inside the cramped Hogsmeade inn? It doesn’t make sense. Did that mean Draco was there too?

She bites her cheek, wondering why Goyle would lie to her that Narcissa had pulled her son to take him home. Perhaps that is the one element that does make sense; Goyle has no loyalty to Hermione. He might’ve just been having a go at her.

But none of that makes any sense. A sharp pain radiates through her head, and she places her palm there, pressing in in hopes of driving it out. At the same moment, the door to the shop she’s been taking cover by opens, spitting out a smiling pair of seventh-years who instantly hush at the sight of her.

Hermione smiles, or tries to at least, before rounding the corner. No one is outside the inn anymore. She briefly debates the pros and cons of her next move before slipping into an alley and tugging her wand loose from her cloak.

If anything, it makes sense to check what Goyle and Narcissa are up to. She thinks if Malfoy—Draco—is there, planning to complete a full moon inside, she ought to warn Aberforth.

But would she?

Even now, it feels like that’d be some sort of betrayal to him. She wonders why, at all, she cares. They were nothing, he was nothing to her. Her wand feels heavy with the weight of decisions already made. She tells herself that it isn’t even remotely due to Malfoy and points it at her face.

The transfiguration charm is minor. She lengthens her nose slightly, coaxing lines around her eyes, and dulls her hair with a grey undertone to strip it of lustre. She shifts the colour of her cloak to a dusty brown, plain and forgettable, then for good measure, hunches her shoulders a bit. She walks around the corner, casting a passing eye at the mirrored window of a shop, and pauses.

She looks like Mum.

It’s just a few extra years, but it does the trick. She feels her pace slow and tries to swallow it all down, turning and walking with more determination than necessary toward the inn.

When she opens the door, the scent of beer and sodden wood chips crackling in the hearth pours into the street. Though teenagers don’t filter to and fro in the compressed hall, bodies still pack tightly together, pints slosh and laughter murmurs over a distant tune.

Hermione bypasses the counter, sticking close to the walls and shadows of the bar, attempting to crane her neck to catch a view. Thick air carries sweat, smoke and the damp bite of old ale, and every step makes her pulse tick faster. She can’t see them yet, not through the press of bodies and the low light that flickers more than it illuminates.

She continues moving before she can think better of it. Always prone to impulsivity, Hermione tries to justify her actions to her conscience. This is about preventing something worse, about trying to understand why Narcissa is here and not with her son, about the protection of Aberforth and every one of her peers on the other side of these four walls. Her heart hammers like it keeps a secret even she won’t admit.

This is not about him.

And she isn’t thinking of him when she catches a flash of platinum blond hair ducking low behind a few bodies. Her steps don’t increase, stumbling one foot over the next. She doesn’t tuck herself into a table, and the sound she makes—this sort of loosening of a sigh—isn’t marred with an undercurrent of disappointment that the hair is longer, pulled into a strict style, and the neck is too feminine, not someone else.

Goyle glances over his shoulder before turning back to Narcissa, trying to make himself smaller, but he still takes up too much space. “—better at the Manor?”

“Travel would only exacerbate—” Narcissa’s voice is silenced by a gruff voice to Hermione’s left.

Goyle looks thoughtful, running a hand through his hair.

A glass shatters, and jeers ring out. Hermione tries to lean in but can’t hear as Narcissa speaks, tilting her head in a picture of gentle inquisition. Once the sounds quiet, she hears her say, “—has been strict in his routine for months. What changed?”

“I—” Goyle starts, but stalls. His big shoulders shift, uneasy.

Narcissa’s voice, edged with a precise bit of softness, the kind you hardly feel as it slips beneath the ribs, cuts through the liveliness of the room. “Did something upset him?”

Hermione’s throat goes dry, pulse stuttering. Her feet won’t move, stuck fast to the sticky floor.

Goyle huffs, scratching at his jaw. “I dunno. Maybe…school? He snapped at Theo. But we know—I mean, we expect that.”

Narcissa’s lips press into a thin, bloodless line. Her eyes narrow, calculating a problem Hermione can’t begin to make sense of. “Of course. And he’s been distracted. Skipping meals. Agitated. Something has unsettled him—someone.” She leans back, fingers steepled under her chin. “It might be the proximity. I have my suspicions. We didn’t know that she–”

Goyle nods mutely, but when he lifts his head, his eyes snag on Hermione, half-shadowed in the dark, watching too hard.

For a breath, he stares back at her.

Hermione’s stomach flips, nausea sharply somersaulting, muting the rest of Narcissa’s suspicions. She still wears her transfigured face, but his stare prods recognition. She doesn’t wait to find out if he sees more.

Her body jolts into motion, boots scraping against stone as she wheels around and bolts for the door, heart pounding so loud it smothers the crackle of the hearth and the rising noise behind her.

She doesn’t stop when the cold air bites at her skin, the white sun too bright and blinding, nor when her feet make sluggish work of the escape. Her hood falls back as she rounds a corner too fast, wind burning her ears.

I have my suspicions.

Hermione pushes past a knot of students loitering near Zonko’s, earning a few startled glances she doesn’t return. Distantly, she thinks of the transfiguration on her face and the panic in her eyes. Just a mad stranger to them.

She barely knows where she’s going, only that she can’t go back to the café, can’t face Harry with the tremble in her hands and the flush of guilt hot on her neck. It’s not her fault—that’s…that’s illogical. And Narcissa hardly even knows her, there’s no way that she was speaking about her—

She blinks

and the sun disappears.

Confusion blisters brightly as she stares ahead. Her gaze drops to her feet, sunken in the mud like she’s been standing here for hours. But…that can’t be right.

She was at the Hogshead. The sun was still shining. Even when she pushed past those people at Zonko’s—it was bright. Wasn’t it?

The wind howls, mournful and drawn.

She turns in a slow circle—and realises, with a tightening cold deeper than the weather, that she is utterly alone. The life within the shops has vanished, shutters drawn like slitted eyes, and the street stretches on too long. She is hopelessly alone as the sky hangs dark. Dusk creeps in fast, pulling long shadows over the path. The time she’s lost, it must be that, has deposited her a way off the main road. To her right, the trees bend and beckon. The forest breathes, soft and wet, and the wind seems to whisper—her name, come. Her pulse thuds a response. It feels like go.

In the centre of the starless sky, the moon hangs heavy, fat and full—a swollen beam brushing against her shoulders.

If she turns around, she’ll be in Hogsmeade. Maybe she’ll find Harry and Ginny, waiting in the warmth of the Burrowed Bean, probably Molly too if she’s stuck around. She can re-enter the fold and pretend that she doesn’t have Goyle’s muffled honesty and Narcissa’s accusations tucked at the back of her brain. She can put her back to the treeline and pretend.

But the forest calls her, and she falters as her feet slide in the wet earth, escape murmured sweet as a promise.

Twigs snap underfoot as she steps forward, the cradle of trees yawning wide and open, ever quiet as its jaw distends. She slips into the dark, forgotten.

Chapter Text

The woods feel like home. The brambles and branches curl in on her, blanketing Hermione from the breeze, the stars, only the barest hints of moonlight pooling in the muddy prints she leaves behind. The forest seals her in. Small paws scurry over and across, covering her tracks. A little disappearing act, was she ever real to begin with?

Each step that carries her farther from Hogsmeade loosens the knot in her chest. It’s always better when she’s away. Better when she’s alone. But quiet—real quiet—is rare now, and rarer still the kind that soothes. She can’t tell if she feels more like herself or if the silence just makes her forget who she’s supposed to be. With no one watching but the shadows and the breeze, led by instinct alone, she thinks this might be the most her she’s been in months.

Hermione’s boots sink into the soft earth, muffled by a carpet of wet leaves. Ahead, the ground dips as she angles down a hill, far off any marked path. Over the hum of her thoughts, she hears a slight trickle. She closes her eyes, to listen…better, and hears it.

Running water.

Logic reasoned that she knew the bodies of water surrounding Hogwarts, including the streams that bled into the Great Lake through the Forbidden Forest. Still, there is something unsettling about being this far into the forest—further than she’d ever travelled before—discovering earth already mapped from page numbers she’d skimmed over and notated as not pertinent.

The air is frosty, and she’s reminded that she’s out here, all alone in December, with only her cloak protecting her from the wind chill. The slope drags her down, loose earth shifting underfoot. At the bottom, the stream stumbles over its own stones, spilling fast and bright, too wild to freeze. It flashes between black rocks, hissing through the silence, ripping through the hollow of the ravine.

And for a moment, she thinks of her father—his voice rough with fear, muttering about dry riverbeds and dying elephants. All the streams and rivers will be bone dry, he’d warned. The world was on fire, wasteland, hopeless.

But here—here, the water runs fierce; shouts at her, alive and angry. And maybe, she ponders while watching the water crash and claw in defiant streaks, maybe that’s why it unsettles her, this jagged seam cutting through silent winter. A force that refuses to die, even when it should, even when the world ices over to ensure it.

She is aware of her body in a way she hasn’t felt in some time, able to feel the slow, thick thrum of her blood beneath the epidermis. Every bit of her sore, so sore, it makes her wonder how long she stood still in the cold, or how much is from going without.

She touches her lips, pressing in and imagining it’s someone else, the curve of his mouth tilting into a grin.

She pushes the thought from her mind.

Despite the chill, despite the cold, despite the way her fingers are frozen and her lashes are frost-flaked, a warmth spills into her gut, heat and him. Like he’s here—is he near? There it is, that feather dragging along her neck.

She glances up, expecting darkness, expecting soot, expecting nothing.

But from the murky black of the trees, a shape begins to emerge. At first, it’s nothing more than a shift in the shadows—a subtle break in the night’s stillness, a shade with edges blurred—but then it becomes clearer, defined in the gloom. A figure, tall and unnaturally broad, rising from the forest floor.

She can’t move from where she stands. Across the riverbank, the sounds deafened by the thud of her own heart, she watches eyes beam, a slight tilt of a head. A wolf, its coat gleaming white like moonlight on snow, peers across the bank. She, unlike the river, freezes.

Rigid, pinned. Watching, waiting. Silver, soot.

You know him.

A hulking paw thumps down in the mud as it stares, eyes bright and watching from the vantage point, perched on higher ground where Hermione stands inside the ravine. Its ears twitch towards her, innocent as a fawn’s. Curious, too, looking at her with that brief tilt of its snout.

Some stupid, soft part of her brain purrs, Pretty.

It’s honest curiosity, this sudden desire to get close. A better look, is all. Because Hermione believed in reason and logic. There must be a logical reason for this.

The wolf stares.

Her feet shift before she can stop them. She takes a step forward, then another. The river is wide but shallow in places, she thinks, easy enough to cross if she’s careful. And she will be careful, she just needs to get close. The wolf waits for her, she can tell, and that pull in her chest grows heavier, tangled up in wonder, imagination colourful about the feel of its fur beneath her cool palm.

Her boot finds the first stone, slick but stable. She inches forward, cold biting at her ankles where the water seeps in. Another step, closer.

Then the river lurches. Hermione’s breath starts to punch out of her lungs in a startled cry, but too quick; all it took was a slippery second, and then she's gone—plunged beneath the freezing water, the world above swallowed whole.

She swallows a stomachful of freezing water as her body tussles under the current. Her head pops up like a buoy just to get splashed in the face with an icy switch. She thrashes and kicks, her wand slipping from numb fingers, swept away downstream. The river claws at her, slamming her against rocks, spinning her until she doesn’t know which way is up. Her lungs burn, panic and lack of oxygen hot in her chest.

When she breaks the surface again, sputtering and gasping, the world is chaos. Water, darkness, and—a white streak, blurred and moving fast.

The wolf.

It’s running along the bank, keeping pace with her flailing form, muscles rippling under that shining coat. With a burst of impossible speed, it lunges across the wide bed of water right at her. Teeth close around the back of her cloak—not her flesh—and yank her sideways, out of the current.

She crashes against the muddy bank, coughing up river water, bones trembling, but alive.

Her vision swims; every breath rattles in her chest. The mud clings to her hands as she pushes up on weak arms, blinking hard against the stinging blur in her eyes. She almost died—the sudden realisation sweeps through her chest. Every rasping gasp is a reminder, every knock of her heart feels like a gift. She wants to cry, or maybe laugh. Delirium creeps in.

The wolf is still there.

Closer now. So close she can see the frost clinging to the long threads of fur, see the rise and fall of massive ribs as it pants, steam ghosting from its mouth in the freezing air. Its eyes catch the light again—silver and gleaming, pupils black as soot-swallowed night—locked on her.

Her heart hammers.

It saved her.

The thought flares bright and foolish through the haze of her exhausted terror. It pulled her from the river. It didn’t let her drown.

And that same dizzy voice murmuring about pretty now whispers, Touch it. Thank him. He saved you. Would never let anything bad happen to you.

Her hand lifts before she can stop it, trembling and wet, reaching out with open fingers. It goes to her, he comes forward, too.

"You–" she rasps, voice shredded from the cold, from the river. "Good—good boy—"

She’s so close now, near enough that the heat the large beast carries whispers against her palm. The tickle of fur right there.

Careful, her dad warns. Hermione’s mind drifts, loose and free-falling, to when she’d wanted a pet. Dad’s voice sternly telling her to let the muzzled canines smell you first, familiarise themselves with your scent. Slowly, she draws her hand down, setting her shivering fingers right by the wolf’s snout.

I know you.

The wolf’s ears flatten, head dipping suddenly, wet nostrils flaring as it brushes against her hand, sniffing her.

For one heartbeat, it’s still.

And then the world, and his jaw, snaps.

A growl rumbles from deep in its chest, vibrating through the air like a warning bell. Its lips peel back, revealing long, milk-white fangs that drip in anticipation.

Hermione’s breath freezes in her throat. She jerks her hand back, shock slamming against her ribs.

Time is slow, not quite real. She feels the slosh of river water in her ears, her body still fighting against a current she’s been saved from. She’s slow, sloppy in her reaction time, and the wolf…he is much quicker.

It lunges with a snarl, biting at her. She scrambles away, limbs slipping in the mud, but a massive paw comes down hard on her ankle. There’s a sickening crack—bright red pain explodes up her leg, stealing the scream from her lungs. Her vision whites out.

Instinct takes over. Blind with panic, she grabs for anything, her fingers closing around a river-slick stone. She swings it wildly and connects with the wolf’s snout with a wet thud.

The beast recoils, growling, teeth sharp inches from her face.

Adrenaline floods her, numbing everything but the primal drive to get away. She claws at the earth, dragging herself up the ravine’s slope, her broken ankle trailing uselessly behind her. Mud cakes her nails, rocks and twigs tear at her palms, but she goes, she has to go, she doesn’t dare look back.

All that matters is forward—up, out, away, away, away. Branches leave red-streaked lashes on her face as she crashes through the underbrush, half-crawling, half-running, heart ticking a steady metronome in her chest. She can hear nothing else, not if he follows, not over her pulse, nor the sweet voice that begs her to bare her throat.

You don’t need to run, the voice coos. You know, you know, you know. Only you. Near and far, even wearing the face of another, it is always you. He knows what pulls beneath our skin, what calls when night is thin.

Her mind is a blur, things don’t align, she’s only on the fringes of alive and set to be a chew toy if she doesn’t get away, and quickly. No dark promise ties her feet up, she just has to go.

And in her haste to create distance, Hermione forgets her ankle; surges forward on adrenaline and vitriol, she puts all her weight on the detached ligament and instantly sprawls to the ground, screaming so loud that it chokes into nothing but a dry heave. Mud and woodchips land on the corner of her mouth, wide open and agonised. She rolls onto her back and glances down at the protruding bone, white as cream and bathed in moon, grotesquely wrong and crimson-rimmed. But all she has is that breath, before she feels the tremble of the earth.

Her eyes connect with the blown pupils of the wolf as he lumbers up the bend, clawing through mud and thicket, straight towards her.

I know the shape of your need. It matches my teeth.

Searing heat bursts through her, fervid and blinding, the moment she forces herself upright. How easy it is to cease existing, to feel nothing but the sting, the roll of her stomach, the crippling sense of finality. She is pain’s factotum, nothing more, burning and shooting from where her sole connects with the earth and pulsating through the rest of her body. But she’s never been allowed to stop, not before, certainly not now. Perpetual motion, always going.

She goes, limping, because not moving means dying. Simple. Like it was when she was a girl—if she stills, if she freezes, if she doesn’t try, it’s all for nothing.

She is not going to be killed by some overgrown dog in the Forbidden Forest.

She runs, it isn’t fast, but she can duck more than the wolf can. She crawls in between roots and through narrow slots in the brush, never truly knowing if she’s moving in the right direction or if she’s being corralled, perhaps fated to meet her end where the ground dips and the trees thin, and maybe that’s all this has been: a chase meant to exhaust her before the real tearing begins.

But then the air changes, ticking cooler, less suffocating, and light flickers through the branches in thin silver ribbons. The heavy thud of paws closes in, creeping closer and closer. She shuts her eyes and runs into the light.

And connects with a soft wall of flesh.

“What the fuck?” a voice seethes from above, and it’s only then that she realises she’s horizontal, flat to the earth with her face pressed into the chest of someone.

“Please.” She claws at the fabric, clutching what feels like safety. “Please.”

Hands grab her, pulling her back.

“Ma’am, are you…” Another voice, familiar, cuts off as she blinks back the light. “Hermione?”

“Is that…Granger?”

Something pokes into her side, and she winces, pressing away.

“Pans—Parkinson, please. Give her some air.”

“She’s the one who—”

Warm hands envelop her sides, and she’s lifted, cradled in arms that are big. “Hermione? Why are you transfigured?”

She blinks, staring up at Neville. His cheeks and mouth are flushed red, probably from the cold, his hair tousled from where she’s barreled into him as—

Fear whips her head around, eyes searching the treeline.

“What is it?” he asks, following her gaze.

“We have to go, there’s—something in the woods.”

Pansy scoffs, swallowing a laugh when Neville’s neck snaps in her direction. “Oh, what?” She can’t stop the short giggle until she rolls her lips together. “It’s just her, of all people, stating something so painfully obvious—”

“I’m serious.”

“I believe you,” Neville says with a quiet nod. “C’mon, you’re freezing.”

He shrugs his cloak off and wraps it around her. She tries to get to her feet, but the pain radiates through her entire left side. “I think it’s broken.”

Neville doesn’t hesitate, just slides a hand underneath her legs and back, pulling her close to his chest.

“Let’s get you back to the castle,” he murmurs, casting a glance over his shoulder. Then he turns fully, and Hermione sees what’s captured his attention: Pansy staring into the woods with a defiant jut of her chin.

“Pansy,” she whispers with aching teeth.

She hasn’t moved. She stands a few feet back, wand drawn, peering into the dark. The forest hums with life. “What's in there, Granger?” she asks. “What exactly is following you?”

The forest is alive with noise: the steady drone of frost moths, the rustle of leaves as chirping wildlife scuttle about, and so far away, Hermione thinks she’s imagining it, she hears the steady rush of a riverbed, taunting her. An owl hoots once, far off. Wings beat overhead, sudden and jarring, and they all flinch.

But it’s nothing. No proof of Hermione’s worry, no evidence to co-sign her panic.

Pansy’s shoulders ease, mouth curling into a self-satisfied grin, her mocking curiosity sated. She doesn’t believe Hermione, probably assumes she twisted her ankle up on a gnarled root and lashed her face on her own. Hermione watches her start to turn when suddenly, all sound vacates.

The forest dies.

The frost moths fall silent. No wings, no wind. Not even the leaves whisper. The air thins, stripped bare, as if the earth itself has gone still.

Pansy faces the forest head-on, but her shoulders shrink, and Hermione knows she feels it too. The silence isn’t proof of safety; something is out there, sharp-toothed, watching them.

Her ankle pulses, and she seethes. Neville folds her tighter to his chest but waits for Pansy, a whisper of her name on his lips. Pansy hesitates for a moment, eyes seeking the woods, searching in the morbid quiet, until her head shakes and she looks away.

“C’mon,” Neville urges. He throws a glance out towards the treeline, and Hermione watches his jaw feather. What he seeks, he doesn’t find. “It’s cold out here.”

⨳

Pomfrey wears her irritation in the cold line of her lip. The door creaks open, and from where Hermione lies, curled in Neville’s arm, all she can see is a wall of green checkered fabric and the gentle waft of antiseptics. But the healer tuts, and Hermione glances up—seeing that look on her face.

“Ms Granger,” she says, interrupted sleep evident in the slight rasp of her voice. She pulls the viridescent robe tighter around her body. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Hi, Madam Pomfrey.”

“Mr Longbottom. Put her there,” Pomfrey says as she turns, motioning toward an empty cot. She disappears around the corner. Neville sets her down easily, and she tries to sit up, putting her back against the headboard. A wide palm settles on her shoulder, pressing her down.

Neville leans in as he whispers, “I feel it’s imperative that our stories coalesce.”

“You don’t need to lie for me,” she says quietly, frowning.

His lips twitch, a bit of a grin. “Actually, in this case, you’ll be lying for me.”

Hermione huffs a breath through her nose, trying not to wince as she shifts. “Coalesce away.”

Neville straightens, pulling his face into something solemn as Pomfrey returns with a clatter of vials. He squares his shoulders like he’s facing down a particularly snide portrait.

“We were in Greenhouse Three,” he says, voice a little too loud and bright. “Late maintenance. Professor Sprout asked.”

Pomfrey narrows her eyes at him over the rim of her glasses. “At midnight.”

“Time-sensitive fertiliser,” Neville adds quickly. His palm stays firm on Hermione’s shoulder, like he’s afraid she’ll blurt something incriminating. His touch to this point had been fine, ignorable, but now her skin begins to prick. Wrong, wrong, wrong. “Reacts to the moon.”

Hermione swallows a snort. Her ribs protest.

Pomfrey sets the vials down with a sharp clink, and casts a diagnostic—the purple haze of the spell floating above Hermione’s head. She squints, hardly paying them any mind as she asks, “And Ms Granger?”

Neville hesitates. “Helping. She’s very knowledgeable about…”

“Moon phases,” Hermione supplies.

Pomfrey’s sigh could strip paint. “Of course.”

“I’m lucky that Neville was with me.”

“Right.” Pomfrey vanishes the spell and fixes Hermione with a pointed stare. “And will you be sharing what sort of fertiliser shattered your ankle and bruised half your ribs? Shall I ring Pomona to ask?”

Hermione presses her lips together.

Pomfrey sniffs. “No? Fine. I’ll assume it’s the rare and elusive Fleece Fly Moon Mulch—known for exhibiting acts of aggression when handled without gloves on a full moon.”

Neville clears his throat. “It was an accident.”

“It always is,” Pomfrey mutters, summoning a splint with a flick of her wand. It zips through the air and snaps against Hermione’s ankle with a smart little jolt. Pain flares hot; she grits her teeth.

“Comminuted fractures of the tibia and fibula, complete tear of the deltoid ligament, and extensive soft tissue trauma,” Pomfrey ticks off, brisk as a shopping list. She twists her wrist and a large bottle of Skele-Gro materialises on the table next to the cot, a glass already full. Pomfrey picks it up and cocks a brow at Hermione. “You’re lucky it didn’t sever circulation. You’ll stay here tonight.”

She hands her the cup. “Drink this. And next time—whatever it is—make sure you come straight here before it gets worse. I care less about your coalesced stories than I do about ensuring none of you kids lose a limb.”

Neville and Hermione nod dumbly, and with a final, pointed stare, Pomfrey turns and leaves them alone.

⨳

She doesn’t sleep. Not when Pomfrey finally shoos Neville out of the room, nor when the lights of the infirmary go out, leaving her in the murky haze of dark and moon. She curls on the cot, arms folding underneath her head and glares at the offending orb in the sky.

The pale light trickles in, drawing lines of shadow across stone. It bathes everything in that same eerie glow, submerging the world in some unearthly stillness. The moon seems to stare back at her, silver and pupilless, no flicker in its presence, even the clouds keeping a wide berth as it hangs among the stars.

As she lies there, ankle only dully aching now, Hermione’s thoughts churn, restless as the rapids that swept her in their current. She knows what a Werewolf looks like, what they do.

She does not know what she encountered in the woods.

When she breaks for air, or blinks, or grants herself one fleeting moment to simply think, her thoughts, lattice-work, gleam complementary. They glow, spun from the same silver spool.

She doesn’t sleep. Behind the black of her lids, the wolf blinks slowly. And then, he does too.

Chapter Text

She is surprised she hasn’t noticed before, the knowing making it all a bit obvious in hindsight.

Neville’s eyes, black as midnight, are always trained away. In the Great Hall, across classrooms, gazing out over the corridor. Hermione supposes she’s been a bit self-absorbed in recent months, hardly paying attention. Now that she is, she begins to paint a picture.

Neville doesn’t look at the table, or his work, or even who speaks to him, not when she is nearby. He watches her with a quiet intensity, head tilted, gaze flickering every few seconds like he can’t help himself.

“How long?” Hermione asks on Friday when the rest of the table is enraptured in a spirited discussion about an ongoing inter-house prank war.

He looks down briefly, shaking his head. “Not sure what you’re insinuating, Hermione.”

“You and…” she starts, thinking he’ll take the hint—the little lilt of her voice. He glances to his left, catching her eye.

“How’s the ankle?” he asks.

“Fine,” she says quickly.

“Good.”

And then, as if it costs him nothing at all, he turns his head and resumes openly staring at Pansy.

Hermione looks, too. Across the hall, Pansy Parkinson sits stiff-backed, a sleek black bob slicing against her jaw. As Hermione watches, Pansy’s hand stills on the handle of her teacup. Her gaze slides to Hermione for a brief second, lips pressed in a flat line before she glances away.

Yes, she wonders how she never saw it before.

⨳

Deep in an unmarked room, on the Fourth or maybe the Fifth-floor corridor, nestled between a portrait of Roland the Rotund and Kgosi II of Mapungubwe, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry keeps a reserve of Lost, Misplaced and Not-Nearly-Right-Enough wands to be used by students who can’t seem to locate their own. The cupboard is tall and crooked, stuffed with slender boxes tied in mismatched string. No two wands behave quite the same, and most of them have developed tempers about being secondhand.

There is a delay in action, and the days without a wand make her skin itch. When she is released from the infirmary with a quiet warning from Pomfrey to please mind your ankle, Hermione is issued one: eleven inches, willow, with a unicorn hair core that frays at the tip like a split end. It stutters when she casts, offended at being handled by someone not its true match.

She hates it. It hates her. She makes do.

Dean carries her books between classes even after she insists she’s fine. Her ankle twinges, but it’s more the indignity of being off-kilter, a lopsided incomplete, than any pained step. Being put back together again is hard—new bones that haven’t navigated battlefields, grown to replace the ones she’d known all her life—but not an impossibility she can’t swallow. She doesn’t know how to explain that she misses the hum of her wand more than her footing.

When she arrives in Potions that afternoon, the wand vibrates against her palm, antsy to escape. She curls around it with a tighter grasp, twice as stubborn and the owner of opposable thumbs. It lets off a honk of defiance but quiets as she settles into her seat.

The room shifts. Hermione feels the prickle at the back of her neck before she even looks at him properly, and her gaze slides to the door.

Malfoy is back.

He stands in the door frame for a breath, clad in black that hugs his arms, out of uniform but still polished enough that no professor would dare comment. He doesn’t look at her, instead sliding into his usual place next to Nott. His hair hangs a little looser, and there’s a faint shadow under one eye. She notices everything until he curls his arms on the table and drops his head down.

Slughorn’s voice booms across the dungeon.

“In the spirit of inter-house unity,” he declares, clapping his hands together, “and ahead of the upcoming gala, I thought we ought to mix things up today! Random partners for brewing. Yes, yes, all in good fun.”

A few groans ripple through the room.

Hermione doesn’t look away from Malfoy. He lifts his head, curiosity piqued, though he wears exhaustion in the slow flutter of his lashes. Her chest tightens, her mind spinning too fast to catch up.

Slughorn points around the room. “Smith with Brocklehurst, Zabini with Longbottom, Nott with Bones, and—ah, yes—Granger and Malfoy. That’s the ticket!”

Malfoy’s jaw flexes, and her lips part, watching the muscle cord beneath his skin. He doesn't glance in her direction.

“Go on, pair up, pair up!” Slughorn waves his hands cheerfully, oblivious to the sudden, palpable silence that’s settled over a few tables.

Hermione feels the wand in her grip twitch again, feeding off the restless energy under her skin. Walking towards him is not easy, not while she watches him stand, chair scraping against the floor as he extends to his full height. She forces herself to breathe through her nose, steady and slow, and march those short steps toward his table. She turns toward the ingredients tray when she arrives at the table, willing her attention anywhere else.

Nott lumbers over, having forgotten his quill, and mumbles an apology as he reaches across the black slate. Hermione steps back, and Malfoy moves at the same time. Their shoulders nearly brush.

He flinches first.

The wand in her hand gives an enthusiastic buzz, almost leaping out of her grip. She slams it against the table before it can bolt entirely.

Malfoy glances, a step away now, when she forces herself forward, the grey of his eyes unreadable. He doesn’t say anything as she drops her books with more force than necessary next to the wand.

His mouth twitches—not quite a smile, not quite not—and for a second, their eyes lock.

The wand lets off another low honk.

He lifts one pale brow. “New wand?”

Her teeth grind. “Temporary.”

His gaze drops to where the wand begins to spin against the tabletop without manipulation, some magical torque making it pick up speed. Hermione slaps her hand down to halt the wretched wood and tucks it under the arms she crosses over her chest, composure thin and white-knuckled.

He glances away from her. “Looks thrilled.”

“My dearest and most valued students,” Slughorn booms, interrupting the scrape and shuffle as everyone settles at their stations. He spreads his arms wide like he’s addressing a grand hall rather than a half-empty dungeon.

“Today, we will be brewing a Draught of Peace. Yes, bit on the nose, I’ll grant you!” He chuckles at his own joke, his great stomach shaking. “But an important brew all the same. Calms agitation, soothes anxiety, steadies the mind. And Merlin knows, after the years we’ve all had…”

His voice softens slightly, enough that the room leans in to hear. “It does us good to remember that peace isn’t just something we celebrate. It’s something we work at. Together.”

Hermione’s stomach twists. Next to her, Malfoy’s posture stiffens.

Slughorn brightens again, oblivious. “So! In the spirit of that hard-won unity—and ahead of our little celebration of such—I thought we’d do today’s brewing with these randomly assigned partners and continue this little exercise for the remainder of this term. Teamwork to keep you on your toes!”

Distantly, she hears Zabini’s low drawl of, “Brilliant.”

Slughorn smiles and snaps his fingers. Four flames crackle with magic as the cauldrons begin to heat.

Hermione’s new wand jitters in her grasp when retrieved, vibrating against her palm like it wants nothing to do with her. She tightens her grip, bites down on her tongue and, aching from the effort, slices through the stewed Mandrake with more force than necessary. The pieces come out uneven. She mutters a curse under her breath.

Malfoy doesn’t look at her. He’s pestling the unicorn horn, a deep grunt as he grinds it to dust in the mortar. His face is a mask of blank disinterest, eyes fixed anywhere but on her.

The wand twitches again when he makes a low sound, a thrum from someplace deep in his chest. A spark pops from the tip and singes the edge of her sleeve. She hisses and drops it with a clatter.

“All right?” he murmurs without removing his attention from the material he grinds.

She looks at him and then immediately back down. A slight shake of her head, mirroring her hands that tremble.

“I’m fine.”

She feels rather than watches him tense next to her. He doesn’t grant her any response. She uses her wand to levitate the Mandrake toward the cauldron.

“What are you doing?” he asks lightly, and she can tell he looks at her now because she can feel it.

Her body heats, and the steam of the room, tendrils swirling towards the ceiling in billowy arches, suddenly sits on the surface of her skin like oil, and everything—the walls, the lights, the sounds, him, and her, and no one else—everything just presses in, pestling, pulsing, dizzying, and too much. Her wrist falters, concentration obliterated.

The Mandrake falls in a wet heap against the table. Hermione’s eyes narrow, thin as slits before her attention slides to him. “Do you mind?”

“Do you?” he sneers, gaze snapping to hers. “Stewed Mandrake is the second-to-last ingredient to be added. Drop it in now and the atropine properties will vaporise, sending the whole class into delirium within minutes.”

Hermione scoffs.

“No. If the Mandrakes were fresh and not pre-stewed, then we would cause a reaction. As these are already perfectly moist, it halves the boil time and thus—” She flicks the temperamental wand toward the Mandrake and a glittery spark shoots off from the end, fizzing out with a sizzle where it lands on the wet root. “We could have added it in the preparation phase, but now,” she huffs and he leans in, which makes her mind blank. She sucks in a seething breath and mutters, “Now we’re behind.”

He comes closer, keeping his voice low. “Perhaps if you could maintain a simple levitation charm–”

“Perhaps if you could not gawk–”

A low rumble slips from his parted lips as he murmurs, “I could offer the same advice.”

She crosses her arms over her chest, hiding her shaking palms.

“Maybe if you didn’t sound like that every time you used the pestle, I wouldn’t—” She flushes, angry, thoughts jumbled up. “Never mind. Just—forget it. I know what I’m doing.”

As if emboldened by Hermione’s bubbling irritation, the wand audibly hums in agreement.

His mouth sets in a firm line, and for a brief second, he looks like he’ll insult her. Her nerves tingle, keyed up, blood racing through her veins as his jaw works on a retort.

“Why don’t you just listen to simple instructions?” he says, sounding bitter. His grey eyes flicker away, catching on anything but her and he starts to turn.

This lands like a stone upon her chest. He means in other ways, and she knows that for some inexplicable reason, and he knows that she knows, which is obviously the very worst part. She exists, merely a live wire, this pendulum of restraint twisting dangerous from one extreme to the next. She briefly thinks about how this is unsustainable; surely her brain is too tender for such sweeping neurological chaos, synapses sparking like faulty wiring with each turn of his mood. Her fingers curl into her arms, nails leaving crescent moons, and then she goes and blurts the only thought in her head.

“Why don’t you trust me?”

Immediately, she regrets having said it. Far too vulnerable, and—her attention shifts, eyes passing over the other cauldrons—no one watches but it still feels akin to having vomited up some secret, a little worry she’s tucked away and sworn didn’t matter.

Malfoy blinks slowly, lips thinning before he drops his head, staring down at the mortar.

“Fine, Granger.” He takes a beat. “Let’s do it your way.”

He resumes the motion, grinding it down, a fine dusting of shimmering unicorn horn clinging to his cut knuckles.

The stewed Mandrake is compromised, so she’ll have to get more. She doesn’t say anything to him, slips from their shared workstation and heads toward the ingredient closet.

When the door slips shut on its weight, Hermione is trapped with an overabundance of herbal scents. The Lethe River water stored in vials seems too pungent, thick with the scent of a stale stream. The Boomslang skin is a face full of rot, full of funk and wrong. She debates casting a Bubble Head charm as some means of protection but finds herself more exhausted than actioned. She narrows her eyes, bites her cheek, and looks for the stock of stewed Mandrake.

The wood is rough against the hinges as it’s pushed open.

Hermione turns in time to see Theodore Nott, whose wide eyes and slight droop of his mouth at the sight of her suggest he hadn’t expected to find her in here. The door begins to fall shut, stopping against his splayed hand to keep it open, and they stare in silence.

Finally, Hermione shifts and says, “Nott.”

“Granger,” he returns with a brisk air. He seems to realise he’s frozen and starts to step out of the room.

“It’s fine,” Hermione blurts. “I’m nearly done. There’s space enough for two.”

He throws a glance over his shoulder before mumbling under his breath.

Hermione, frustrated with boys and their mumbling secrets, twirls around, prepared to tell him to enunciate when her elbow flies into a jar of powdered asphodel. Precariously kept at the shelf’s edge, the prodding of her limb sends it diving to the floor in a bright crash of broken glass.

“I’m fine, it’s fine,” she says quickly though glass shimmers all around her feet.

“Oh, shit, are you—” Nott steps into the room and the door clicks shut behind them before quickly reopening. There’s a sharp grunt, the scrape of shoes against stone, and a thud that doesn’t sound like glass at all.

Hermione doesn’t look up. She’s already on her knees, wincing as her ankle protests the squat. “I said I’m fine,” she snaps.

He gets two steps closer to her, or so she thinks, just the flicker of a shadow in the swaying light of the closet until it’s abruptly yanked away like she’d been bathed in a solar eclipse until God said no more. He bends down next to her, only it is not Theodore Nott, not at all. Her eyes meet grey.

“Let me,” Malfoy says, beside her like he’s always been there.

The sudden distance closed between them is too much, to have him looking at her, really, honestly, noticing her is too much. She rasps a little breath and backs up, still perched on her knees.

“Malfoy?” she stutters. “When did you–?”

“Be careful of the glass. Your ankle.”

A commotion stirs on the other side of the door.

“Mr Nott, are you—”

“I’m fine,” he snaps, muffled by the wood. “Closet was a bit cramped.”

“It looked like Malfoy…” Mandy Brocklehurst starts, a startled lilt to her voice before Nott continues over her.

“I’m fine.”

“Are you bleeding?” Malfoy asks.

“No, I’m–” Hermione falters, pulse leaping to her throat. Her ankle throbs in protest, a little swell of pain. Had she winced that loudly?

But she hadn't said anything. Had she?

“How did you know about my ankle?”

He doesn’t blink. “What?”

“You said, ‘Be careful of your ankle’.” When she says it out loud, she’s suddenly more sure of herself—of what she heard. “How did…how did you know?”

“I said, be careful of the glass, Granger.” He tilts his head, an innocent turn of his mouth before his eyebrows draw together. Quieter still, he asks, “Did you hurt your ankle?”

She shakes her head, blinking at him in disbelief. “You just said!”

Hermione is on her feet in the next breath, staring at him for only a beat before he rises too. Then he’s standing over her and looming, and the walls of the ingredient closet shrink too.

“You must be reacting to something in here.” He jerks his chin toward the shelves lining the walls and reaches out, adjusting a jar that’s slightly off-centre. His eyes return to her, and he’s doing that thing—making his voice sound sweet, fitting sense where it shouldn’t. “Maybe the stewed Mandrake is making you think things happened.”

“Don’t—don’t do that.”

He tilts his head, too calm. “Do what?”

“Pretend I’m not sure.”

His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Aren’t you?”

She stares at him—really looks at Draco Malfoy. For a brief second, the sconce flickers, and the flame catches in his eye. It strikes silver.

Her mind is slow, muddied, clawing through thickets toward a truth she doesn’t want to face. But she knows, she’s known—it’s something stored in her bones. Her breath catches in her throat.

“You didn’t go home, did you?”

His mouth thins, choosing silence.

“You were in Hogsmeade, weren’t you? And the other day, at breakfast…You—your Wolfsbane,” she whispers. “I saw you. It was destroyed.”

He still says nothing. Just looks at her.

It’s the silver in his eyes—it had haunted her after the forest. Not the yellow-gold of Lupin’s transformation, nor the blind, frenzied look she’d studied in textbooks. This was something else, a beast lucid and bright, a mind that hadn’t gone all the way dark.

The large wolf hadn’t lunged at her, not at first. It had stared, still, the way a person might; the way he might.

It had looked at her and paused.

It hadn’t been random, hadn’t been instinct or madness—it had seen her. It had tilted its head, low and slow, and taken her in like it knew her.

She clutches the edge of a nearby shelf, dizzy with the memory. His hand comes out, hovering just above her like he wants to steady.

His grey eyes are levelled on her. Her chest shudders.

She remembers screaming—the bright blur of pain, the flash of silver and white. Sharp teeth snapping. And beyond that—no, before that:

I know you.

Her gaze sharpens back to the boy in front of her.

“You were the wolf,” she whispers. “In the woods. That was you.” She blinks. “You hurt me.”

He touches her then, soft fingers pressed into the muscle of her bicep. Her heart slows, her mind fuzzy. His lips part, and he’s wearing that look, this pained pinch pulling his brows taut, looking at her like he wishes to wind his eyes shut and will her out of existence.

It hurts so much, makes her bones ache, makes a sharp lick of pain pulse in every bit of her that is sore, tightens her chest like it’s been flattened by an anvil dropped from heaven.

“I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I’m so sorry.”

Worse than a confirmation. It should scare her, but she realises then—a pale underbelly exposed, arching and eager—she hadn’t even thought to be mad.

“Miss Granger?” Slughorn’s voice comes from the other side of the door.

Hermione jolts, Malfoy’s hand dropping instantly from her skin. She scrambles away too fast and nearly slips, clutching the shelf.

The door groans open.

“There you are!” Slughorn blinks at the pair of them. “What on earth happened in here?”

Hermione clears her throat. “I broke a jar.”

Malfoy stands behind her, silent. Then he reaches without looking and grabs the crock of stewed Mandrake above her head.

Slughorn chuckles. “Well, accidents happen! Hurry along, both of you. We still have a cauldron to salvage.”

Hermione shuffles out of the closet to her classmates' eyes on her, Malfoy close to her heel but maintaining the distance he’d abandoned inside the closet. She goes back to their workstation and ignores the feeling of him next to her, ignoring the way her entire body pulses with a realised truth.

It was Malfoy in the forest. Malfoy’s jaw snapping close to her fingertips. Malfoy running after her, chasing her through the brush.

No breath can steady her. He slides the jar toward her, making sure they don’t touch, and resumes his work.

This time, when she levitates the stewed Mandrake into the cauldron, his lips don’t part to speak.

When Zabini and Neville’s turquoise-blue potion begins to bubble, emitting the tell-tale silvery fumes of a perfectly brewed batch, Slughorn’s weathered hands clap together in delight.

“We have a winner!”

The rest of the class hadn’t known it was a competition. But eventually, Nott-Bones’ cauldron bubbles up, and then Mandy and Michael’s. Finally, their potion twirls in success, the proof bottled in delicate glass and thrust into Malfoy’s hands.

“Now, my peaches, use this newfound unity to decide amongst yourselves who might be the lucky ducky to consume such a fine potion. The rest has been donated to our infirmary for continued use throughout the year. And that—” a bell tolls, “is our time!”

Malfoy turns, meeting her eye, before extending the vial to her.

“I don’t need–” she starts.

“Take it, please.”

And then he presses it into her hands, in the same display of brute force as he had with his sweater in the library, and slips from the room. Hermione grumbles unhappily, but likes how warm the glass is, even if it’d only been in his grasp for a minute.

Dean, ever-constant, meets her with a soft smile as she walks through the door. His hand extends to take her bag when her eyes snag on Nott, back to her and only a few steps away. He’s talking to Zabini, who sees her over his shoulder. His lips press into a thin line before he bumps Nott, and they begin walking away.

Anger, or something close to it, burns hotly in her chest.

“I was thinking we might–” Dean starts.

“One moment,” she says and beelines for the two Slytherins.

Nott is halfway down the corridor when Hermione catches up, her shoes scuffing against the stone as she falls into step beside him.

“Nott—wait,” she says, breathless. “Are you alright?”

Nott doesn’t stop walking. His eyes flick to her and then away, jaw tight.

“Fine.”

“You don’t look fine.” Her voice drops. “Malfoy—did he– did he throw you out of there or something?”

Nott exhales, a sharp sound, and he stops suddenly. Zabini trails a few feet ahead before turning too, letting his head hit the wall behind him, limbs eternally languid.

“I’m right as rain, Granger. Honest.” He waves his arms as if to show off how fine he truly is. If she wasn’t so thoroughly wrung out from the proximity of Malfoy and the steam of Potions, her lips might have even twitched into a smile. “Thanks for your concern but really, ill-fit for the likes of me.”

“What did you say in the closet?”

He blanches, dropping his arms. “Nothing.”

“I heard you–”

“Granger,” Zabini interrupts. He rolls the small, shimmering vial over his knuckles, stepping forward. On his lips sits a mollifying grin, seeking to quell her rage like she’s some simpering beast. “The bloke said he didn’t speak.”

Hermione’s mouth pinches. She’s tired of this—tired of being treated like she’s mad, tired of feeling mad.

“What is it?” she demands, gaze shifting between them. “Why are you all so bloody difficult?”

“Just—” Nott looks frustrated before his eyes flick over her head. His mouth instantly snaps shut.

Hermione whirls on her heel to find Malfoy a ways off, glaring at the trio. Her head tilts, overwhelmed with his attention. When she turns away, the two Slytherins have abandoned her, walking away with long strides.

Like she’s been yanked on a leash, she glances back at him.

Malfoy’s gaze drops a head, meeting her eyes. Flames lick between each gap in her ribs as his face blanks, rage softening to…something else, some attention just for her. Then he turns slowly and saunters into an open classroom near the lab. Surely empty.

Dean’s voice finds her as the echo of Slytherin footsteps fades.

“Hermione—hey,” he says, catching up to her again. “I was saying, maybe we could grab a bite—head down to the Greenhouses, or–?”

“What?” Her raspy voice is clipped, distracted, her eyes still locked on the space Malfoy had occupied moments before, on the door of the room he’s disappeared into that is open, waiting and inviting.

Dean frowns, reaching for her arm gently. He’s always gentle. “Are you alright?”

She sidesteps him without thinking. “I need to speak with him.”

“Who—” But she’s already gone, pushing through the flow of students with purpose.

She follows him into the third room of the corridor, dimly lit, windows shuttered, dust motes dancing in the stale air. Malfoy stands by a row of desks, hands braced on the edge of one, head down tucked into his chest.

“You can’t keep doing this,” she says without preamble.

He doesn’t look up. “Doing what?”

“Pretending I’m imagining things. Acting like...like I don’t know anything.”

Malfoy exhales slowly through his nose. “We shouldn’t talk here.”

“No, we should,” she snaps. “We’re going to.”

He straightens, finally turning to face her. The light catches the bruising under his eyes, the tension stored in his jaw, the uncharacteristic sag in his shoulders. “What do you want me to say?”

“That you were there. That it was you. That I’m not going insane.”

His gaze softens. “You aren’t.”

“Why did you do that to Nott?”

Malfoy stares at her blankly as she debates repeating herself. Finally, his lips thin and he mutters, “He was…too close. I didn’t want to—” he glances away; from her, from this confession, “smell him. On you.”

“Oh,” she breathes, sounding more like a surprised bleat.

She bites her cheek to keep her mouth flat, suddenly thinking maybe she is insane with the way her pulse flutters.

“It was you…that was you out there.”

Silence, and then, he nods.

“Why do you– you don’t look like—like Remus. I mean,” she blows out a breath, words and thoughts rushing out like river water over cracked stone, “Werewolves don’t look like that.”

“Some do.”

“You have to tell me things–” she starts and then stops. “I deserve to know.”

He doesn’t respond, but his eyes are locked on her, drifting up and down like he might be seeking a crack, some chip in her exterior, some weakness she can’t hide.

“I’m not going to stop until you do. I– I can’t,” she whispers, stepping forward. He doesn’t retreat, so she manages another few paces, closing the distance between them and finding it easier to breathe. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me.”

He starts to open his mouth, but she speaks quicker.

“Except staying away. But…I can’t. You know I can’t.”

“Granger,” he murmurs her name slowly, rolling it on his tongue, memorising each letter’s shape.

“I didn’t know you were out there. I wouldn’t have gone if you were honest with me to begin with. You keep putting me at a distance, but that hasn’t helped anything. And now, I've lost my wand. I can’t…I can’t remember time. Please.”

There’s a heartbeat. Then another. His voice breaks when it comes. “I’m sorry.”

Something crumbles inside him like the words have scraped their way, raw, up his throat. He says it again, quieter.

“I’m so—” His voice cracks again. “I didn’t—”

He doesn’t finish the thought, and she doesn’t question it. She’s not angry at him; her brain can’t manage it.

So suddenly it’s like the words have broken out of him, like he doesn’t mean to ask, he blurts, “Are you okay? Please. I need to– tell me you’re okay. I haven’t—” He inhales sharply, jaw clenched. “I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. Please.”

“Yes,” she stutters, finding that she’s as calm as a summer’s afternoon in the way they’ve come so close. She puts a hand on his chest, stepping between his legs where he leans against the desk. “I’m okay.”

He nods several times, like each one fixes something for him.

She watches the way he swallows, throat working around nothing. His whole body seems strung tight beneath her fingers, tension dropping in stones when she smooths the black of his shirt, soft beneath her palm. When he speaks, the words are barely there. “Your wand.”

“The river,” she says softly. “It slipped.” She rolls her lips together, tries not to overthink the way she leans in, just a little. “Do you…you remember it?”

His eyes flicker to the door, and the shake of his head is minute, so small she’d think she’s imagined it if not for his quiet answer of, “Not here.”

“Then where?”

“You said you lost it in the river?” She nods. “I’ll find it for you. I’ll bring it back.”

His eyes flash, hopeful and sad, and her chest concaves. She pushes through because she has to; he has to tell her.

“Let me go with you,” she says casually like her heart isn’t racing.

He opens his mouth—she sees the excuse forming, the retreat setting in—but she cuts in quickly, light and soft and just a little playful, even as everything inside her trembles.

“We can just…talk. Be normal.”

Out there, she knows that no one will hear. And maybe in the forest, without the threat of others stumbling upon them, Malfoy would help her make sense of this. Maybe in that quiet green, where trees keep secrets and air mixes up breath and birdsong, they could suspend whatever it is that ticks between them.

Amber-suspended silence covers them, heavy with what goes unspoken, and maybe secrets would prosper here, too. Her fingers, tentative in touch until now, splay more firmly, brushing against the moored rhythm of his heart. It flutters beneath her palm.

“You shouldn’t have been out there,” he says, but he doesn’t move. He lets her touch, and she doesn’t look up from where they’re connected. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I am,” she answers, quiet, counting the tempo of his pulse.

He lifts his hand, slow, but it doesn’t quite land, hovering a breath away from the bend of her elbow.

So low, she barely hears him say it: “You could’ve died, Granger. If I had—”

He cuts himself off, biting the words as his jaw tenses. She meets his eyes then, finding that he has already been watching her this whole time.

“So could you,” she murmurs back.

His lips twitch like that’s funny to him. Then he moves, brushing a curl from her face, somehow not coming into contact with her skin. “There are far more important things.”

How easy it is to forget what she’s meant to fear. Her pulse thuds, and they’re so close, that she wonders if he notices. Her head tilts forward, wanting to hear him better.

“Like what?” she breathes. “You can tell me.”

And for a second, he looks at her like he might.

Their mouths are so close now. The air between them isn’t enough.

“Saturday,” he murmurs, a non-answer that stirs a little movement. She leans in, and he doesn’t back away. “I’ll wait for you.”

She cocks her head, nodding a bit, lips parting and mumbling a confirmation. His neck mimics the movement, drawing him closer like he can only find relief from her exhales.

She whispers, barely there, weak and dusted on her lips. “Malfoy…do you think we could—”

The door creaks.

Dean’s voice slices through the moment. “Hermione?”

She stiffens, her hand dropping from his chest as though scalded. Malfoy moves slower, only lifting his head with a low exhale like it’s all terribly inconvenient—being interrupted, being witnessed like this.

“Your bag, I—” Dean holds it up as if explaining. He steps inside, hesitating. “I was…worried.”

His eyes land on them; her flushed cheeks, the too-small distance between her and Malfoy, the almost coiled in the air like a pulled thread. He falters.

Hermione starts before Dean can continue, or, worse, assume things. Flustered, awkward, heat blooming on the apples of her cheeks, she gestures vaguely, an arrested motion, as a scoff pulls the frigid breath from her chest. She flounders for an explanation as her sleeve slips back, baring her wrist.

Malfoy catches it.

She blinks down at where his hand clasps hers. Malfoy isn’t even looking at Dean; his eyes are locked on her. His fingers curl lightly around her wrist as he lifts her hand, tugging it close until she can feel his breath on her skin. Awareness sparks in the proximity of his lips, the flex of his fingers firm but not unkind, her pulse rabbiting beneath his thumb as she waits; waits for him to press in, for that more her muscles clamour for.

But he doesn’t give.

He leans in, brushing his cheek against her wrist as he draws her closer, her stumbling feet skipping a step until their chests nearly meet. She braces both palms on his sternum to catch herself. His jaw sits in the crook of her neck, his mouth hovers near the shell of her ear and the pulsing skin of her throat, ghosting along, the heat of him dizzying.

“Wear something warm.”

He pulls back as she stammers on an exhale, smoothing the sleeve over her wrist, and then brushes a curl from her face, gentle and soft, warm. He’s so warm.

Dean clears his throat at the doorway. “Am I interrupting?”

Malfoy finishes what he’s doing, silver eyes lingering on Hermione’s face a beat longer. She’s beet-red, wrists and cheeks aflame where he’s touched.

Malfoy looks away from her, dropping his hands to the tabletop, though his expression is unreadable as she stares at his profile. Braced against the desk, he cocks his head slightly, looking like he’s only acknowledging Dean to be polite. When he speaks, it’s too even and anything but.

“No,” he says. “She’s done.”

“She’s not some—whatever, Malfoy,” Dean says, frowning. He holds out his free hand, beckoning her. “Hermione. C’mon.”

Turning back to Hermione, Malfoy’s body brushes hers when he reaches out again, adjusting the lapel of her cloak like it’s second nature. His thumb drags, featherlight, down the side of her neck.

“Go on,” he murmurs, only for her. “You’ll be late.”

How does a statement so simple feel like a secret? His lips curve, his eyes flash, and somehow it splinters the steady ground beneath her with a nick so thin she almost doesn’t notice the cut, only the bleeding after.

Hermione swallows, her throat dry.

His hand falls away from her neck, the brush of his fingers leaving static in the shape of his absence. Straightening, he steps to the side once, away from her, and it burns, the gaps of her fingers protesting the space he no longer fills. An ugly beast—jade and snarling, arching in her chest—aches to curl into the fabric of his sweater, pull him close, demand he sit and stay.

Malfoy walks toward the door, brushing past Dean, who watches with a rigid posture. When he opens it, he does so gently. Then he leaves without another word, the click behind him so quiet, it’s a wonder he was even here at all.

Dean exhales, fingers tightening around the strap of her satchel. “He talks like you belong to him.”

Hermione doesn’t answer.

She’s still looking at the door.

Chapter Text

McGonagall keeps a tidy office. The headmistress favours a much more organised rendition of Dumbledore’s whimsical stacks of tomes and scrolls. The same frames are nestled on exposed surfaces, though the oil paint occupants are gone now, required elsewhere. The walls are deep burgundy, but the room's perimeter is lined with bookshelves so high they only offer a brief hint of the colour behind them. Each shelf seems to shudder under the weight of gold-foiled text, encyclopaedias rife with knowledge on everything there is to know about the wizarding world.

Hermione’s name is surely there. Something you can search in an index—twelve-point, Times New Roman, bold. From there, flip to the page, nestled between Ronald Billius and Harry James, find some recount of the way it is told.

McGonagall rests one hand on the base of her saucer.

The summons had been left on her pillow, marked with her name. The contents of the parchment, flicked open by Hermione’s nervous fingers, asked that she stop by at her earliest convenience. McGonagall knew her timetable, as she knew everything else there was to know about Hogwarts. Hermione immediately felt a sense of idiocy, thinking that because she and Neville came in with a story that matched, the situation in the forest would not be reported.

McGonagall lifts her teacup to her lips, swallowing a small sip. Hermione mirrors the action. When she sets it down, the clink of porcelain feels deafening.

“Miss Granger, thank you for coming to see me today,” she says.

“Thanks for having me, Professor.”

“I have come to feel protective of certain students in my tenure at Hogwarts. An after-effect of the war, yes, but in general…as a teacher, individuals stand out.”

Hermione nods.

“I’m sure you are aware that you are one of these students for me.”

“I think, yes, Professor. I know.”

McGonagall’s lips twitch faintly as she adjusts in her seat.

“I also want you to know that I cannot make exceptions because of my personal…feelings.”

“Of course.”

“But ultimately, Ms Granger, you are a rare case.” The older woman gently folds her hands in her lap, leaning back in an uncharacteristic display, and all of her limbs loosen. “You, in particular, have done enough for the rest of this country that you warrant things. You are deserving of a kindness in this way.”

Hermione starts to murmur a “thanks,” but it becomes lodged somewhere in its journey up her throat.

“I will ask you two questions, and I hope you can find it in yourself to provide me with honesty. You understand that a student turning up, harmed to the degree that you were injured, certainly instils a bit of fear, what with our knowledge of the last two decades here at Hogwarts.”

“I understand, Professor.”

“My first question, which, I sincerely apologise, I fear is overdue: Are you okay?”

Hermione stutters.

“Yes, Madam Pomfrey regrew the bones and–”

“I’m sure, Ms Granger, that your ankle is just fine. My concern falls, for lack of a better word, over you, in general. With everything else that is happening this year, I haven’t had the opportunity to check in, and you’ve always been…astoundingly mature and self-reliant. Your friendship with Mr Potter and Mr Weasley is likely the one element that saved the sanctity of the wizarding world.

“I don’t think that this is fair of me, of course,” McGonagall continues. “You should not have been expected to rear your friends simply because you were a girl. That is the thing, isn’t it? Boys are allowed to blunder. Allowed to shout, to lash out, to fall apart and still be seen as whole. But clever girls? Brave girls?” The dry smile she manages is thin. “Expected to keep the peace, to carry on and tug everyone else along.”

Hermione doesn’t speak.

“You were all so young,” McGonagall says, as though the thought still staggers her. “And yet, you became the voice of reason. You made plans while they concocted trouble. And we—myself included—we let you. We needed you to be that girl. And now I worry that no one ever gave you permission to stop.”

Something buckles in her chest, weak foundation stuttering in a storm.

“I don’t mean to take anything from Mr Potter or Mr Weasley,” McGonagall goes on, “but I think it’s worth plainly stating that your strength never looked like theirs. And for that reason, it was taken for granted.

“That ends here, Ms Granger,” McGonagall says with a firm nod. “You’ve given enough. If you need rest, take it. If you need help, ask for it. You are not required to be composed just because you are capable.”

The older woman inspects her, perhaps for evidence that Hermione understands, that she has listened. Hermione’s chin wobbles as she meets her eye.

“All that being said, I’d like to ask again. Are you okay?”

“It has been hard,” Hermione says, the simple answer already choked, seeking the words but coming up empty. “This year has been very hard.”

“I should have assumed as much. Having you all back, so soon after the war.” McGonagall trails off. “You should know that every student is entitled to the opportunity to test by correspondence.”

“I don’t–” Hermione doesn’t know how to say she can’t leave, that the prospect of being alone, without the structure of Hogwarts and the proximity, would only exacerbate the feeling churning in her chest. “I think it’s best if I stay.”

“Very well, Ms Granger. Then I hope it’s alright that I ask my second question.”

Hermione nods.

“The details that you and Mr Longbottom provided by way of explaining your injury do not align with what we know to be true. I’m sure that you know that already. And I stress that I know everything that goes on inside this school. So if there is anything that I can do to alleviate some of your burdens…”

“I’m sorry, I don’t follow.”

McGonagall purses her lips.

“If there is someone on these grounds that is taking advantage of your kindness, Ms Granger, I can and will deal with them.”

Her thoughts fill with a flashing grin. Heat. Her lips asking for things that make her flush. The snap of bone beneath fur.

“No,” she says quickly. “No one is– no.”

“Very well.” McGonagall studies her a moment longer. Then, with a brief inclination of her head, she glances back at her tea. “I won’t press further. But the offer stands, should you need anything.”

Hermione nods, her throat tight. “Thank you, Professor.”

“Get some rest. That’s an order.”

The corner of Hermione’s mouth twitches. She gathers her bag with careful fingers and moves to the door. Her hand lingers on the knob before she turns and finds McGonagall watching her.

“I’m okay,” she says, not sure why she feels like she needs to repeat herself. But she’s nodding and trying to smile, and meeting McGonagall’s eyes. The last seven years have folded in her throat, and not for the first time, she wonders what others see when they look at her. She wonders if she’s different. “I’ll be alright.”

McGonagall’s voice comes gently. “You don’t have to be.”

Hermione pauses, then turns and leaves before she can cry.

Anticipation clots like silk over her windpipe.

The rest of the week passes as any other. Malfoy never invites her back to the Potions laboratory for their meetings, so she doesn’t go, burying herself in end-of-term papers and preparation. The Remembrance Gala looms overhead, a fine threat that still feels too far to be real.

She writes to Harry in her quiet moments, which are plentiful, trying to imbue a spirit into her correspondence that falls short upon each re-read. Does she dot her ‘i’s the same way? Does he know what sits, lurking weight in the dark of her?

She never makes it to the Owlery to send them off.

Her wand thrums with life, alive in a way she isn’t used to, its pulse a shaky rival to her own. At night, when she twists awake from dreams that feel like fact, panting, stomach knotted in fear, this pulse beckons her. She plucks it from her bedside table and presses it over her sternum. It pulls and pulls away like a cat might, angry in its capture, resentful. It burns her once, a brief kiss of pain that leaves her fingers buzzing. Enough to remind her it is not hers.

“You are mine,” she whispers. “Do as I say.”

I am no one’s, she can imagine it chanting back. It pops, sends little sparks, and demands its release. Let me free, let me free, let me free.

At least this way, she thinks, lying in bed and intensely arguing with an inanimate object, her madness is relegated to her immediate proximity. She isn’t clutching Neville’s robes or ignoring the pointed looks from Ginny. It is Hermione, her temporary willow wood, surrounded by letters addressed to her friend that she’ll never post, and the blanket of night.

“Listen to me,” she demands, a moonlit hoarse rasp.

She casts Aguamenti. The carafe on her nightstand fills with butternut squash juice.

⨳

Friday, the eleventh night of December, brings a rousing game of truth or dare to Gryffindor Tower. Laughter and firelight bounce off the walls, and a bottle is pushed into Hermione’s palm. She takes a sip, trust forcing her to not look at the label, no matter how curiosity bites so, the contents burning her throat as it's swallowed down.

“Hermione! Truth or dare?” Seamus asks from his pillow nestled between Dean and Parvarti.

“Pass,” Hermione murmurs to a chorus of boos.

“Truth it is, then.” Seamus leans forward, and their eyes meet. His sport a little glaze, evidence of more than one sip. “Is it true your ankle is broken because of some angry fertiliser mishap?”

Her lips work on a lie, but what passes through is “No.”

The room quiets to a murmur.

“Ah, I knew it!” Seamus bellows and shaky laughter begins again. “What was it then? Give us a story.”

“It was—”

“Not how the game works, Seamus,” Luna says serenely from her seat near the hearth, knees tucked to her chest. “You asked for one single truth. Not an interrogation.”

“Oh, come off it, Loony—”

“It’s Luna,” she corrects, her voice never rising.

Hermione swallows down the metallic taste rising at the back of her throat. Her chest feels hot and tight, something nasty pressing outward from beneath her ribs.

“She probably fell,” Dean offers, a truth he believes, trying to defuse the tension. “Slipped on some mulch, didn’t you?”

Hermione nods mutely, though her throat works against it.

She doesn’t wait for the next question. She rises, too fast, the bottle slipping from her fingers and clinking gently to the rug.

“Where are you going?” Parvati asks, but Hermione’s already moving, blood thudding behind her eyes.

“I don’t know,” she answers honestly.

Luna catches her wrist. Not hard, but enough to stop the motion, to make her look back. It stings.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, that must hurt.” Luna releases her arm. “I wouldn’t fight it too much,” she continues with a gentle lilt. “Truth has claws when it wants out.”

Hermione doesn’t get it, so she nods without deigning a response.

She ascends the stairs and comes down, and then goes back up again. She grabs her wand off her bedside table and paces a few more steps, trying to decide where to go, if anywhere. Her hand slides under her pillow, fingers connecting with the cool material of Snape’s journal, and she tucks it beneath her armpit. A few more seconds of mindless wandering, before her wand honks in protest, and she makes a decision. Her feet take her to where she knows Ginny to be, a fist not connected to her brain rapping against the wood of her door before she even thinks better of it.

“Come in!” she says.

Hermione pushes inside.

“Hey, you!” Ginny calls, looking up from her desk. A slew of pictures in front of her, scattered like a deck mid-shuffle—Hogwarts over the years, mostly. Ron with icing on his nose from the Christmas feast third year, Harry mid-laugh with snow caught in his lashes, a blurry one of the Gryffindor Quidditch team gathered on the pitch.

Hermione’s eyes catch on one near the corner. Her own face, surprised in motion, mouth open mid-word. Harry beside her, looking at her instead of the camera.

Ginny follows her gaze and offers a small smile. “I’m making him a scrapbook.”

“Oh,” Hermione says, voice thin. “It’s lovely.”

Ginny squints at her. “What’s going on?”

Hermione shakes her head. “I’m–”

What is the truth?

“I’m tired.”

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

She wants to laugh at that—how accurate it feels. Instead, she crosses to Ginny’s bed and sits down at the edge, perched stiffly.

“There was Veritaserum,” she says. “In the game.”

“What?”

“Just a few drops probably,” Hermione continues, eyes fixed on a loose thread in the duvet. “Enough to nudge things.”

“Who–?”

“I don’t know,” Hermione cuts in. “But it doesn’t matter. Not really. I’d rather come sit with you and not have to speak.”

“Fair,” Ginny hums before turning and grabbing the thick leather book. It is a deep brown, bound with thin straps of golden ribbon, the pages rough on the edges where they protrude, mismatched, from the perimetre. “Think he’ll like it?”

“Yes,” she says, nodding because, of course, he would. Ginny could cut off a strand of her hair and wrap it with a bow, and Harry would explode into a fit of satisfied sparks.

“Whatcha got there?” Ginny asks off-handedly. She is busy smiling down at a photo of Harry posing suggestively, biting the tip of his finger on loop as he wears a cropped Gryffindor shirt of Ginny’s.

“Snape’s journals,” Hermione blurts before folding her lips in.

Ginny pauses, gaze glazing over as it slides from the photo to the floor, staring hard at the stone before she exhales audibly.

“I don’t think it’d be fair to ask anymore, what with the state you’re in.” Ginny’s voice sits low, practically hovering near their feet. “But…I will ask you about this in full. Tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Hermione whispers.

“Does this have anything to do with—”

“Yes,” Hermione interrupts before she can finish the question. Best to bend of her own volition, she did not want an audible snap. “Yes, it has everything to do with him.”

⨳

A pale pink sock rests atop her chin as she blinks awake. Her limbs are contorted, an ankle here, an elbow where it oughtn’t to be, twisted and folded after having fallen asleep head to toe with Ginny on top of her sheets.

Wrestling out of their puzzle of body parts, Hermione rolls off the bed onto unsteady feet. Every bit of her is heated, burning from an uncomfortable night’s sleep and the overwhelming intensity of body heat. She pads gently toward the door and then blinks, whipping around and collecting the journals where they’d fallen to the floor.

When she arrives back in the cool air of her own dormitory, she is surprised to find her roommate Lara already awake.

“What time is it?” Hermione mumbles in a bleary daze.

Lara blinks, unaccustomed to Hermione acknowledging her existence.

It isn’t anything personal—Hermione simply didn’t think she could manage the infeasibility of a task like getting to know someone new. She knew from sheer polite conversation that Lara had transferred from Beauxbatons, that she’d spent the last year and a half in hiding with her family, and that after the war, she’d been betrothed to a wizard twice her age. He’d done her the polite favour of allowing her one last year of girlish whims, that is—completing her academic career before she was expected to swallow any lingering plans for her life and go off to have wizarding babies in the south of France.

Hermione remembers Ginny telling her that Lara didn’t mind. Despite being a Muggle-born, Beauxbatons had hammered into young witches about the importance and expectation of preserving magical lineage.

So if they couldn’t talk about the unfair circumstances that had brought them to share two four-posters in a tiny, cramped room Hogwarts had cleared out in the Tower of Gryffindor, then what could they talk about?

“Six,” Lara says evenly, still blinking at Hermione as if she didn’t know she could speak.

Hermione debates saying more, but then her eyes flicker to her trunk, where a delicate note is folded pristinely.

“When did this come?” she asks, stepping towards the chest. Her fingers graze the crease, and a jolt shudders her body.

“An owl woke me around four,” Lara mutters icily. Hermione glances over her shoulder to see a flat line pressing into Lara’s otherwise full lips.

“Sorry,” she mumbles.

“Who is it from?” Lara asks.

Hermione looks down at the parchment and flicks it open with her thumb.

Granger,

Get breakfast and then set off. 10?

Malfoy

Hermione nods; stupid, he can’t see her. All the same, it inspires the same sense of euphoria that is typically reserved for surprise chocolate frogs or the staticy hum of well-loved Christmas lights.

I’ll wait for you.

“Well?” Lara asks in the silence that follows.

“Nothing,” she responds, blowing out a breath. “I mean, no one. Adverts.”

“Junk mail at four in the morning,” Lara deadpans.

“Sorry,” Hermione chirps. Then, for some reason, turns around and meets Lara’s eye. “Did you want to get breakfast?”

Lara tilts her head. “Uh. No, no thanks.”

“Right.” Hermione sits down on the edge of her bed and absentmindedly runs a finger along the length of the parchment.

“Maybe another time, though,” Lara says after a moment.“I have a hard time finding my appetite when I wake up too early. And the options at Hogwarts differ so much from Beauxbatons.”

“Really?”

“Yes, a full English rarely sounds appetising. Especially not at six in the morning.”

Hermione laughs softly, and the sound seems to surprise Lara, who quirks a grin.

“Another time then,” she says, and Lara nods.

Hermione settles into the silence after that, on a mission in her own mind. She opens her trunk and sets every scarf on her bed, seeking the one that might keep her warmest from a windchill.

⨳

By nine, the Great Hall is bustling. Voices topple one over the next, excitement tinges every consonant, and the air just tastes sweeter. The gala is soon, and everyone who’s anyone is going. Did Hermione hear? Even Viktor Krum will be stopping by. Delivered with a wiggled brow from Padma and met with a huff from Dean. Sixth years gush about how fit Auror Potter has gotten—did y’see him in Hogsmeade? I’d sure let him magi-cuff me—and Ginny guffaws, throwing her hair over her shoulder.

Today, Hermione finds it easier to respond, settle into the folds. She laughs a bit, smiles more. The anxiety that ebbs at her normally seems pleasantly soothed by a promise, promptly at ten.

Saturdays at Hogwarts are typically reserved for Quidditch and lounging; tableued teenagers of various degrees of imbibition will drape themselves around the Common Room, a marvellous, sprawled-limb tripping hazard.

Hermione gets out of the day’s promised nothingness by bringing up the library. Not even Dean, who softened since walking with her after Malfoy’s exit earlier that week, feels up to keeping her company. The lie tastes good, but she doesn’t let herself indulge for too long.

She waves goodbye to her friends and promptly exits the castle. He was right to tell her to dress warm, the day is freezing. Clouds cover the dreary grey, and she wonders briefly if it might rain. She casts an extra padding charm on her ankle; despite being mostly healed, she thinks Pomfrey will have her head if she injures herself. She’s only entering the cradle of green, throwing a glance over her shoulder when the trees call her name.

“Granger.”

Hermione slips on a sleek patch of grass, but her descent to the ground is quickly caught by one wide hand.

Malfoy sets her on her feet and takes a step back.

“I didn’t hear you walking behind me.”

“I wasn’t,” he says and then grimaces. “I told you I’d wait for you.”

She wishes he wouldn’t just say things like that so casually. It has an unwelcome effect on her senses.

“Right,” she breathes. “Shall we?”

Hermione manages another step into the brush when his hand shoots out once more, locking on her elbow. She glances down at where they’re connected and then back up at him.

“Your ankle,” he says, glancing down at her shoe-clad foot.

“I’m feeling a lot better, actually.”

Malfoy hums, eyes lifting to meet hers.

“Did you eat today?” he asks.

“Yes, I– I ate.” She doesn’t understand what is happening, so she asks, “Did you eat today?”

Malfoy’s lips part, and it takes her a second longer than it should to realise that he wears a small grin. It’s gone as quick as it came. Then gently, he says, “Yes. I ate today.”

“That’s good,” she says, then winces. “Important, yes. To eat.” Her voice trails off, and he tilts his head, watching her. Hermione claps her hands together. “So, we should go then?”

“Tell me if your ankle hurts.” He releases her arm, and the frigid air suddenly bites with teeth. “I’ll carry you if you need.”

Again, saying things like that. She wants to ask him in what world he’d carry her, then her thoughts eddy to her slip in Potions, and she remembers that it’s already happened, in this world. She opts for silence and a nod.

Malfoy looks down at his feet, then sweeps a hand in front of himself in a chivalrous, silent sort of after you. Hermione bites her cheek, thankful for the cold. She can’t possibly have him think that the flush settled on her cheeks is from anything but that.

“Right,” Hermione starts, keeping her vision down to navigate the intricate roots littering their path. “You are…not a Werewolf.”

He laughs from behind her, close enough that his body heat seems to radiate and bleed into her personal space. “I am a Werewolf for all intents and purposes.”

It’s the first time he’s admitted it outwardly, saying the word himself. She told him that they could be normal out here, that she was someone he could trust. So she channels her throat to swallow her rasp and tucks her hair behind her ear.

“Werewolves are much more humanoid,” she counters.

“I know that,” he responds.

“Right, I’m not– I know my reputation precedes me and I do have a penchant for…explaining where I am unneeded, I just– you’ll forgive me if I’m a bit…sceptical. The other day in the forest, I mean, you were…”

“An overgrown dog.”

“Yes,” puffs out of her all too easily, because that indeed had been her thought, but she doesn’t want to say that to him. Probably offensive—no, definitely offensive. She pinches her features. “No, that isn’t what I meant–”

“Granger, it’s fine,” he says mildly, lips twitching. “I’m messing with you.”

She exhales. “Oh.”

The shock of that—Malfoy joking with her—makes her laugh, only it is choked, stuck in her throat in a way she deems unattractive. She bites her cheek.

“It’s a long story anyway,” he says.

“You can tell me.” That's what this was supposed to be, wasn’t it? Hermione averts her eyes to the forest floor, watching the sun slip through the canopy of leaves above them. She’s going for nonchalance when she looks up at him, tilts her head a bit, and adds, “Please.”

Malfoy sucks in a shallow breath as he stares at her for a beat longer. She can see his pupils dilate when she stands this close to him. His lips part, and she watches his tongue move, pressing against the point of his canine as his eyes flick lower on her face. Quickly, his mouth sets in a harsh line, and he blows out sharply through his nostrils.

She must be aggravating him, and they haven’t even been walking for ten minutes. She wonders if apologising would warm him at all to the idea of spending time with her. He seemed responsive to their normal procedure when he was brewing, so long as Hermione wasn’t attempting to climb him like a tree. And the other day, he hadn’t made it seem so awful before Dean walked in, she even thought, from the way he was touching her and the way he was speaking, that maybe—

“I was bitten the night you all escaped the Manor.”

She can’t help her surprised gasp. “At your home?”

“It’s not—” he starts before his brow comes together, and he looks put off. “I wouldn’t call it that, not anymore.”

Hermione shakes her head. She knew the shape of cruelty, but this felt different. She couldn’t understand why. “But your family—they were loyal to Voldemort’s cause.”

Malfoy looks away. “You can’t honestly think that made any difference.”

“I don’t see why not. They were his–”

“I was his.” He looks at her then, astoundingly open. “I failed to kill Dumbledore. I failed to identify Potter. You escaped the Manor, Potter took my wand. I was his and I failed.”

Malfoy takes in a breath, but his demeanour is the picture of control. He pushes a branch out of her way.

“You were a child,” she says after a moment, stepping in front of him. She hears the soft crunch of his footsteps as he follows.

“Hardly,” he says behind her. “I didn’t bring you out here to seek sympathy or pity. That isn’t what this is.”

“So…” she leads, trying to get him to say something. He remains silent, so she turns, expecting to connect with his chest, but he stops a breath short, eyes already on her. She shivers but swallows down the rising out of sorts and asks, “What is it?”

“I wanted–” He cuts himself off as he stares at her, and then blinks rapidly, taking a step back.

Annoyed, she steps forward.

“Can we not do this?” she says with a bit of a huff. Their eyes meet, and confusion furrows his brow. “The cryptic non-answers. Speaking around the subject but never stating the truth.”

“I—”

“No, Malfoy. I’m very…I’m tired of you and your band of friends talking about me like I don’t have a clue what’s right for me.”

“I know–”

“And I’ve spent the last week trying to decipher Snape’s journals, breaking into Slughorn’s office with the idea that I might—help you. And you just yell at me and act like I can’t think for myself, well—” Her breath catches and she whirls. “I can! I can think for myself, and I want to help you. I can.”

“I really—” he interrupts, holding up a hand.

“Don’t try and deny it.”

“I’m not,” he rasps. “I wasn’t. I’m– I wanted…” His voice breaks off. He looks pained, like the words are physically hard to say. “I wanted to make you happy.”

Hermione blinks. “What?”

His mouth opens, then closes, agonising on the shape his thoughts seek to take.

“That’s what it was supposed to be. You studying, finishing school, living your life without—without this. I thought if I could just—keep it away from you, then maybe…”

He trails off again, his expression flickering, guarded, then bare, then panicked at being so bare.

She wades in the silence before saying, “I don’t—I don’t get what you mean.”

He shakes his head, jaw flexing. “You don’t understand what you are to me.”

His voice is low, fraying at the edges now. And here he is again, saying things that are vague enough for her to attach some meaning to.

“Make me understand.”

His eye twitches. He shuts his eyes tightly and grunts like he’s frustrated.

“I don’t want to make you do anything,” he snaps. “Don’t you get it? I don’t—this thing I am. It isn’t…I’m—I knew, fuck, I knew you’d try. Because that’s who you are. And I hate that I—I hate it because I—”

She doesn’t think she can handle him saying that he hates her.

“I’m different too,” she whispers. “I just want to know what happened; why things are like this.”

He exhales shakily and looks down at his hands like they might offer an easier answer.

“It’s not a choice,” he mumbles. “It’s deeper than that, old. Like my blood decided you.”

Hermione goes still, lips pulling down.

“I’m not saying it right,” he mutters, watching her face carefully, adjusting every word for her like he wants to please. “It’s not…romantic. It’s not even kind. It’s just true. You’re not just someone to me. I’m…wired wrong around you. My whole body knows you’re meant to matter.”

He glances down at her and she stares back. His lips move slowly. “And I hate that, as I’m sure you do, too. I don’t ever—”

Want to be with her?

The sentiment goes unsaid, but Hermione is positive that this is what he means. It was a matter of a lack of choice. Malfoy wouldn’t choose her, obviously. And she didn’t—doesn’t want to be with him either.

“It’s not a choice,” he finally says, looking down at his feet, “and I would never do that to you.”

“Right,” Hermione says, not really listening. She can’t hear much over the thud of her heart anyway. “I wouldn’t—either. I know you wouldn’t choose me. It’s the same for me.”

Malfoy’s lips thin before he nods once, glancing off.

She turns away, sniffing, taking in the crisp, wet air of the forest and tasting the familiar brine of unshed tears sliding down the back of her throat. Stupid, she thinks. She starts walking, hoping it's the right direction because she doesn’t think she can turn to face him.

“Do you imagine it’s something like Tonks and Lupin?” she asks as they continue their quiet journey.

Malfoy is silent, very thoughtful; the only sound is the crunch of earth beneath his boots.

“No,” he murmurs, and she looks back to see him tuck his chin down as he takes a large step over a stick. “No, I think it’s different.”

She thinks of Tonks and Lupin, the way he curled over his wife—never far, not at the Burrow, nor during an Order meeting. She can still see their bodies reaching, some drive to get close that couldn’t even be paused in their death.

A gust of wind threads through the trees, warm air colliding with cold. Leaves stir restlessly overhead, ambivalent to the conversation beneath them, death as unpoetic as life—grow, sway, fall—just a circle and then repeat, repeat, repeat.

She feels Malfoy at her back and tries to imagine him reaching for her; a hand at her hip, his shoulder brushing hers, the curve of his lips before he covers her. Similar but not the same because Malfoy never stays.

The breeze mourns, branches sigh.

“Yeah,” Hermione says quietly, nodding once even though she isn’t sure he looks at her. “I agree.”

They enter the silence once again. Her body hums with awareness, but hesitation curls in her throat. He has offered a lot already, and she doesn’t want to annoy him.

Malfoy clears his throat and then asks, “What was she like?”

Hermione’s brow furrows as she stares down at the ground. Confused, she clarifies, “Tonks?”

Malfoy pauses. “Yes.”

Hermione glances back, just to catch him turning his neck, looking away from her. She swallows and nearly trips over a branch. His head whips around, and their eyes meet, but she’s already steady, doesn’t need the help.

She mumbles an apology for her lopsided gait and then asks, “You didn’t know her?”

He leans forward and adjusts her scarf, pulling the loop tighter until her neck is covered again. She doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t move.

His throat bobs once, and he retreats, knotting his hands into fists at his sides.

“Andromeda was disowned before I was born, and had Nymphadora after that,” he says quickly, looking over her head at some faraway point. “My mother never spoke of them.”

Hermione nods slowly, turning away from him to set her eyes on the path ahead. The leaves are damp beneath their shoes, the ground soft.

“She was kind,” she says, before her breath catches, foot sliding on a bit of mud. Malfoy’s hand is on her elbow, keeping her upright before he drops it. She ignores the warmth and continues. “In a loud sort of way. Funny, too—completely chaotic. She’d show up late and apologise with biscuits, or a story about some workplace disaster that was somehow her fault and yet not at all.”

Malfoy falls into step beside her, and she hears him huff. She cocks her head and watches his brow furrow, lips pressed flat.

Their arms brush as they walk a little too close along the narrowing arc of trees. Neither of them moves away.

“I think she would’ve liked you,” Hermione thinks, but also blurts aloud.

At this, his lips tilt. His eyes cut to look at her from the side. “You’re taking the piss, aren’t you, Granger?”

“No,” she laughs suddenly, feeling warm before she glances away. “I mean, she’d’ve definitely taken the mickey out of you, especially when you were younger—what with the hair and that huffy voice you get.”

This is met with his laugh, puffed out and curling white in the cold air. Now, heat really does bloom all over for her. She smiles back before biting her lip and glancing ahead of them. Malfoy cuts it short, humming almost to himself.

His hand swings close to hers again, doesn’t touch.

“I’m sorry that you lost her.”

She can’t help how she turns, surprised. “Thanks, Malfoy. I’m sorry–”

“I didn’t know her.” His jaw sets.

Hermione debates arguing, but it’s nice like this, just speaking with him. Even if the topic is rather depressing. They continue in a natural silence, hallmarked by the crunch of twigs and the skitter of small paws navigating the brush of the forest. When they reach the riverbank, they both still and she realises the impossibility of the task at hand.

“Should I attempt to summon it?”

He doesn’t respond, so she turns, wondering if he heard her over the swell of water.

“Malfoy?”

“I suppose I never finished telling you that story.”

He stares at the river, the thrum of water flowing even in the cold. Hermione shifts, feeling a phantom pain linger deep in her leg.

“The Dark Lord had Greyback bite me, and I was only half-conscious. I won’t…that part doesn’t matter.”

She tries to remember Malfoy that day, but only comes up with the image of him standing in the corner, silent, a pale hue to his already ashen features. Hermione blinks, and all she sees is Bellatrix’s gaze, words clipped and cruel: What else did you take? What else have you got? She feels her blood seeping down, glinting off the tip of a wrought silver blade, staining the floor beneath her back.

Malfoy shifts uncomfortably, blowing out a harsh breath. At the sound, Hermione opens her eyes, swallowing the lump occupying her windpipe.

“As it happened, he was rather fond of magical creatures. Werewolves had potential in his eyes,” he says as a beam of sun cuts through the canopy of trees. It reflects off the water, washing him in stripes of white and blue light. “He wanted to harness certain properties—hone the Lycanthropy into a weapon he could wield at will.”

This is strange, she thinks, speaking about Voldemort with someone who resided down the hall from him.

“I don’t remember much of that night,” he continues. “Greyback had me on my back just a second after Vol—the Dark Lord asked. I put up my arm, rather foolishly, and had a scratch to the bone. That’s not—that’s not important.

“Most of what I know came after. Snape, actually. The Dark Lord had been researching ways to weaponise and control Werewolves. He had done tests with Greyback. Had used rituals, blood wards, things even Snape wouldn’t speak of, to coax the Wolf out. To master it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Werewolves are deadly but ultimately useless aside from the full moon. The Dark Lord wanted to expand his power, create something new that wasn’t restricted by the moon.”

“But that’s…impossible.”

“Yeah. Turns out it wasn’t.” He pauses and his jaw tilts, like he’s considering something before he looks at her. “What is Lycanthropy?”

“It is a transfigured blood-curse, right? The person is bound through the bite, but there is no—”

“Venom, you’re right.” Malfoy nods, glancing away. “It’s not like a basilisk, it’s symbiotic magic. The bite is a transferral condition, it requires a host, has to be bound to your core to take effect. And with magic, there is…” he trails off before looking at her again. She straightens. “Think of the Alchemical principle of interstice. Fourth year, if I remember–”

“Third,” she corrects.

He smiles slightly. “Third year, yeah.”

Hermione exhales audibly before she looks down at her shoes.

“Interstice,” she mumbles. “The gap between casting and when a spell takes root? Because…Magic hesitates.” She thinks of her textbook, the pages dog-eared and worn, but she can’t make the connection. “Merlin decreed there must be a pause between cause and consequence—even with curses. That’s the interstice. But what does that have to do with–?”

“The bite is a magical affliction. It abides by the same laws. There’s a gap, a few lingering moments of humanity, as the transformation takes place. He wanted to exploit it. But he couldn’t very well go around having every one of his followers bitten to test his theory.”

Her hands are clammy cold, her wrists itching. She wipes her palms against her trousers. “He had others bitten?”

“Prisoners. A few without the Mark. None survived it; they tore themselves apart or went mad. He lost interest.”

Mauled bodies pile in her mind.

“It wasn’t until I failed him that he saw an opportunity.”

Hermione looks at him, throat tight.

“He was clever,” Malfoy says quietly. “Clever enough to invent the Dark Mark. Clever enough to realise it wasn’t just a brand—it was a conduit. His magic threaded through each bearer like a web, feeding off them.”

“The Mark,” she breathes. “It was parasitic.”

“When he summoned us, the dead didn’t rise. It required a living host.” He glances down at his forearm, where a faint scar twists beneath the remnants of the Mark. “Just like a Werewolf bite.”

Hermione’s mind spins.

“There was an aperture,” he continues. “If something else already has hold of your core, the bite doesn’t only bind to you. It binds to that, too.”

She pales. “The curse fused to your Dark Mark?”

“It didn’t have a choice. My core was compromised. He had already forced his magic into me. The Mark wasn’t a tattoo. It was a brand, a magical tether. When Greyback bit me…” He trails off. “It couldn’t bind cleanly.”

Hermione whispers, “Voldemort hijacked it.”

“He paused it, probably used a stasis charm to slow the fusion. Then he opened the wound wider and…”

Malfoy presses two fingers to his forearm, not looking at her.

She steps closer, voice trembling. “What did he do to you, Draco?”

Hermione watches his eyes shut as he blows out a soft and steady breath.

“I only know because of what others told me. He drew from the Mark and channelled his magic through it. Carved a series of runes directly into the bite while it was still in flux.” He doesn’t meet her eyes. “I never saw them. By the time I was lucid, they’d healed over. Snape found remnants in the scarring, but most of it is lost.”

She is silent, wide-eyed.

“He altered it,” she whispers over the rush of the river. “He made you into a weapon.”

Malfoy’s jaw tenses.

“You could transform when he wanted you to.” Her eyes flick over his face. “When you want to.”

“Yes.”

Hermione frowns. “But when you change…you don’t look like any of them. You don’t look like a werewolf at all.”

“No. Whatever those runes were, they bypassed the curse’s usual form, like some derivative of Animagus principles. I don’t become something half-human. I shift fully—bones, blood, everything—into…”

He falls silent.

A wolf.

“But how?” she asks, more to herself than him. “That’s—Lycanthropy is a blood-bound curse. It’s instinctual, not programmable.”

Malfoy looks away.

“Once he died, his magic didn’t vanish. It fractured. And the fragments that were inside the Mark, etched on my bones, stayed.”

She nods, because she thinks otherwise she’ll spew. “Then you’re hosting a bit of residual Dark magic.”

“I think it’s more than residual. It’s mutated. Half him, half Greyback, and anchored in my magical core. And when I...want it...” he hesitates, “it answers.”

Hermione sways where she stands, overwhelmed by the scope of it. “You don’t need the moon.”

He nods faintly. “The rest of the time, I can control it. Mostly.”

She latches onto the word. “Mostly?”

Malfoy’s eyes cut toward the river again. “It is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.”

Her question is small. “The Wolf?”

“There are instincts I don’t always recognise; thoughts in a voice that’s mine but not; reactions that feel too quick,” he says.

“Like–?”

“I can smell you from across the room.”

Her breath catches.

“I know when you’re scared. When you lie. When you bleed.” His jaw tightens. “I know when you’ve been with someone else.”

The silence between them stretches, and in the gaps, she feels flayed open.

“Why me?”

He glances at her for a second, and it feels like the world stills, the leaves slowing their descent as they fall to the frosted brush beneath, the calls of distant birds nestled away silent, not bearing any response. Malfoy’s eyes pin her in place as his mouth opens, more ready to spring forth before he shuts his lips, looking away.

Nature resumes her song.

“I don’t know,” he says, mouth setting into a flat line.

Hermione swallows hard, sensing his irritation and wishing she weren’t so curious. But now that she knows, she can’t halt her tongue against the persisting urge to know more.

“But you take Wolfsbane. That’s what you’ve been brewing.”

“I have to. His command of magic was good, but it couldn’t change that the moon’s dominion is absolute. During the week of the full moon, I’m as much a slave as any other Werewolf, even with all his magic buried inside it.”

“And the rest of the time, it’s your choice?”

“Sure,” he says bitterly. “My choice.”

She thinks of the riverbank, of her hand hovering in front of a wolf’s snout.

“The other night, then,” she starts. “You—you realised it was me by my smell.”

“You were transfigured,” he says. “I didn’t recognise you at first, not consciously. But it’s like…I felt you nearby. I didn’t know I would—” His voice thins to a whisper, and his hand moves, brushing his hair back before he tugs at it. “When I realised it was you, I wanted to scream. I was so mad and I couldn’t—couldn’t stop it.”

“I know you didn’t want to hurt me.”

He blinks at her like she’s mad, dropping his hands and taking one step toward her.

“Granger, you didn’t know. I was a fucking beast. I was gone. It wasn’t me. You—” His jaw ticks. His eyes flash. “You are the cleverest person I’ve ever met, and yet you continuously do the most infuriatingly st—”

“I’m–” she shrugs, pulse thudding, and tries to say it. “I don’t need you to act like you care. I’m fine.”

Suddenly, he’s right in front of her. Distance closed in a single blink. His hand fists the edge of her cloak, and before she can breathe, he yanks her toward him.

“You don’t get to say that,” he snarls. Her palms press into his chest, curling around his jacket. “You don’t get to nearly die and then shrug and say you’re fine.”

Her breath stutters. “You wouldn’t have hurt—”

“No. I would have. You don’t understand.”

He’s shaking his head, shoulders tense as he tugs her closer.

“I wasn’t afraid,” she whispers, trying to swallow the lump in her throat.

“You were. I tasted it. Don’t lie.”

He’s so close she can feel his breath on her lips. One of his hands lifts, hovering near her jaw and it’s like even the split-ends of her hair reach back to him.

“Not before,” she clarifies. “You saved me.”

“You could’ve died,” he mutters. “You should have been afraid. I want you to be afraid. You went into the fucking Forbidden Forest. On a full moon. Alone.”

“I didn’t think—”

“No,” he hisses. “You didn’t. You don’t. That’s what makes me fucking—insane.”

Hermione hasn’t ever heard his voice like this, never knew it could go so low. A faint buzzing settles in her ears, her mouth parting, open, eager, pliant.

His eyes search hers. He presses his palm on her chin until her neck is craned, lips angled just beneath his mouth. Her entire body is aflame, heat burning with every slow blink, heart thudding in every gap between his.

“You’re so—” He exhales, and she tastes it, exasperation and rage and yielding—sweet, lovely resignation—woven in his frown, trembling with it now. “You’re so stupid, Granger.”

And then Malfoy leans forward and presses his lips to hers.

Chapter Text

Every morning, at half-six, Dean Thomas wakes up. The boys of Gryffindor’s sole eighth-year class are divided into smaller rooms, so he rouses in the cramped confines of his shared dorm with his friends, Seamus Finnegan and Neville Longbottom.

Seamus can sleep through anything, and on weekends, he normally does. Dean walks past his snoring form, shuffling towards the loo.

Mornings are calm, blissful in their absence of tasks. In Dean Thomas’s honest opinion, weekends are the only time that the chaos of Hogwarts ameliorates. He appreciates the time to himself, the way the sun is slow to crawl up over the trees, the way the wind sounds as it hits against the windowpane. Saturdays are sacred days, and this one is holy. They’ll take to the Quidditch pitch around eleven for an early match, likely to bleed into the afternoon. McGonagall was happy to let them use the pitch today, so long as they include the younger students and adhere to her stipulation that those from every house are to be included.

Dean waits for the shower to warm, divesting himself of his pyjamas. As the temperature of the water slowly creeps higher, launching a smooth, billowy wisp of white steam into the small bathroom, his thoughts tend to linger on his duties. Though he isn’t Head Boy, there is an unspoken agreement that as eighth years they all shoulder an extra responsibility. They’re not technically supposed to be here, not technically supposed to be alive in his case.

But Dean Thomas has always nursed a sunny disposition, has always wanted to help others. He thinks that’s why the Sorting Hat put him in Gryffindor. Harry had told them all once—nursing the syrupy veins of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans long before they’d had access to Butterbeer—that you could choose if you just spoke with the Hat. But Dean remembers his first year at Hogwarts in the same way he remembers every other year at Hogwarts, through the mesh screen of nostalgia. It blurs the edges of memories, sends a pang through his chest if his focus stays there too long. He’d told himself a long time before that he only wanted to fit in, only wanted to prove himself, and for a long time, going where he was expected had been easy. He was happy to go, no matter the place, and was thankful that the breeze knocked him into Gryffindor Tower.

He wonders if somewhere along the way, his easy contentment inexorably hardened into compliance—if the desire to belong dulled into habit, and habit blurred into silence.

Dean never knew his wizard father. His name was never spoken at home, just a blank space that no one seemed interested in filling. Dean had always been a little outside things—too magical for his family, too Muggle to feel entirely at ease in the wizarding world. It had still been easy to go on the run if it meant protecting the sanctity of what was his—even if it wasn’t truly his—because Dean did that sort of thing, the thing that was expected.

He didn’t much care for the war, but who did? He wakes sometimes at night, still thinking he’s locked in the dungeon of Malfoy Manor. He still sees Luna’s matted hair and Griphook’s bloody hand. He still hears Hermione’s screams leaking through the stone.

The water scalds Dean’s hand when he tests the temperature. He doesn’t flinch, just steps into the steam.

Dean dips his head towards his chest, letting the hot water burn his neck, and closes his eyes. Dean doesn’t know what he’s doing at Hogwarts, but he knows the second chance is meant to mean something.

The heat of the water pulses meaning into the tender skin, and he relinquishes those thoughts to the drainpipes.

Every day, Dean wakes up at half-six. Ask any roommate he’s had in the last eight years, they’ll tell you it’s expected. The repetition is good for him.

He averages a ten-minute shower, each second feeling like a luxury, skin tingling when he exits and pulls on a jumper. When he leaves the lav, steam curls out of the door and the crisp air of the dorm settles on his pulsing skin. He kicks Seamus’s cot and returns Neville’s yawned good morning. He doesn’t wait in the room for them, not feeling keen on listening to Seamus mutter about the ungodly hour as he pulls himself out of bed. He goes down to the Common Room and waits there.

Flames still crackle in the hearth, so he pulls out a book and starts to read. He greets those who filter down the stairs with a grin, eyes catching on Hermione as she pulls a scarf around her neck. Her eyes flick to his, and a wide smile splits her cheeks.

“Hey,” he says softly, watching her as she approaches his seat.

“Good morning.”

“Chipper today, aren’t you?”

“Must be the weather.”

Dean’s attention drags outside, watching the sun’s ascent on the horizon—the bright light blurred behind soft grey clouds. He tilts his head, a wry grin.

“You’re very funny,” he says, and she only hums, still smiling.

He likes it when Hermione is happy. Dean often wonders if the warmth from their interactions is simply him attaching meaning to things where there isn’t, or if he does feel more than friendship for her. When she ‘propositioned’ him (her words, not his) earlier in the year, she approached the whole thing like a business deal.

‘I think we’d match well,’ she’d said with a firm nod and rosy cheeks.

It was unexpected—Dean had thought she was still with Ron. But she shook her head when he asked about it and said something like, ‘Just forget I asked.’

And while yes, it did catch him off guard, he’s a guy, and he wasn’t going to say no. So he sort of paused, dumbfounded, and stared at her.

Hermione has always been pretty, a bit reserved, but pretty all the same. She was untouchable, not just off-limits but constantly curled between Ron and Harry like their missing link, somehow balancing whatever mission the trio was whispering about while the rest of them merely tried to shoulder the responsibility of getting through school. Dean thought, really, everyone assumed that she and Ron would be together. He wasn’t blind; he knew their friendship was more, but the reality seemed to make them something closer to family than lovers in the end.

But when he caught her arm as she was turning away and said, ‘No. No, I’d be happy to help you,’ her whole face lit up.

And she was very eager. Dean had felt that he couldn’t keep up with her; she was nearly insatiable, and he felt strangely as though he had something to prove. She seemed to appreciate that he asked questions, tried to learn what she liked and adjusted his pace to her preferences. He was probably better for it, most girls were quiet and would take whatever you gave, but not Hermione.

Now he just feels oddly attuned to her. There’s something—alluring about her, and he notices her more now, fully clothed, than he had in the last seven years. Maybe it's responsibility, maybe it’s a crush.

Dean doesn’t know. And besides, it ended rather abruptly, hadn’t it? The last time was at a desk when he thought he might’ve been too rough with her. She came, he felt it, but shortly thereafter, she seemed to jump from Dean to Malfoy. He didn’t believe it at first, because honestly…Hermione fucking Malfoy? But it was true, Hannah Abbott had sworn to it, and the next time he saw Hermione, she essentially ignored him.

He tries not to nurse hurt over it, but old habits die hard. He didn’t need to fuck her, and he sort of regretted it, wondering if he should’ve just told her all those months ago that he really could just be a friend for her. He knew she was sad, knew what he heard in Malfoy’s dungeon, remembered the way she had been, crumpled and screaming at Ron’s brother’s cottage.

He also knew that Malfoy was a terrible fucking option for her. Everyone assumed that he had done it as some sort of revenge, Imperius and assaulted her in an alcove against her will. Send one final message before he was whisked off to Azkaban for good.

But Hermione was silent, and it all trickled down before falling right in Dean’s lap, the truth evident even if she wouldn’t say it out loud: she wanted to be with Malfoy. Strangely, it all blew over relatively quicker than Dean had anticipated, almost as if everyone was so focused on simply forcing normalcy that they couldn’t be arsed to try and fathom some possible universe in which those two would be together. So everyone moved on.

Dean stayed there, still cared about it. Or maybe he cared about her. He didn’t know how to differentiate anymore.

“Hey, I wanted to ask–” Dean starts, only to be interrupted by Seamus’s cheerful rendition of the Gryffindor fight song as he descends the stairs in full regalia.

Hermione looks away from him, and the moment is gone.

If she doesn’t want anything else from him, that’s fine, but he is going to be her friend. It is a responsibility, some debt he owes to Harry and Ron and her. He won’t let her be alone.

Something is different about her. She smiles at him again, bumping his shoulder, and his heart jumps a bit. He swallows it down, gives whatever flutters in his chest back to the universe. Those butterflies don’t belong to him, not anymore, aren’t his to keep.

They walk down to the Great Hall together, comfortable silence between them, and she surprises him when she reaches for a muffin first.

Dean smiles; maybe she is getting better.

By nine, more have filtered down. Seamus is banging on through a series of sure-fire ways to ask Luna out, and failing miserably at every turn. Padma is going back and forth with another girl about the upcoming gala. Dean hadn’t thought it’d be an event you take dates to, but apparently, it very much is. She tells Hermione that Viktor Krum is going to be there, and he grimaces, huffing under his breath because Krum’s a step up from Malfoy, but he’s still old.

It’s quickly glazed over, and the crowd starts to disperse. Ginny and Dean linger, talking match logistics and Hermione mumbles about going to the library. Dean feels some urge to go with her, maybe if they were alone, he could just ask her how she is, but he’s quickly reminded by Seamus’s hand slapping against his shoulder that he is expected at the pitch soon. He shoots her an apologetic smile, but she isn’t even looking his way.

As they exit the Great Hall, Dean’s eyes linger on her. She looks brighter, more alive than she has since her injury and almost antsy. He tells himself that the way he watches her is only out of that negging sense of responsibility, friends are expected to look after one another, and turns on his heels to head to the Tower. He doesn’t watch to see which direction she goes when she leaves.

⨳

He is being mean.

Kissing with intent to bruise, pushing her back, crowding her space and dragging his teeth along every inch. It is still colour, excellent hues of reds and shimmering blue. She falls into the black of his attention, letting it consume her, fix her up somewhere that is neither discernible nor important. Because this, him, her underneath, is enough.

His words echo in her ears.

So stupid, Granger.

He doesn’t know the extent of what she’ll do to understand, how it's never been a choice for her, doesn’t know the depth of her resolve. The last time he’d seen Hermione at the brink when he stood across the room and watched her bleed, she parsed that as a technicality. The girl who was tortured wasn’t her.

Malfoy doesn’t know what she is capable of, and he keeps putting her in this box, trying to make her feel crazy and chalk it up to stupidity, but he’s wrong.

His mouth breaks open first, and his tongue slides against her lips. She parts for him, and his hand slides under her jaw, pushing her until her neck is craned. His fingers press against her windpipe, and then she’s swallowing his breath, stuck in a daze of him.

She doesn’t even remember why they’re out here in a forest, only that she’s cold and Malfoy is here and he will keep us warm. Her mind dissolves like that; the fracture so hairline it isn’t even visible. There is one moment of Hermione, and the next, she splits in two.

She doesn’t know which part reaches around his neck, tugging him closer, wanting the heavy weight of him pressing her flat. His mouth kisses hers angrily, trapping her body between him and tree bark. He comes closer still when she beckons with touch, collapsing in to grant her better access, parting wider. His defeat tastes sweet when she licks it off his tongue.

Malfoy pulls back when her teeth close down on his lower lip, and when he tugs back, she doesn’t release at first.

“Fuck,” he seethes when she loses her grip. His mouth is red and frowning, and she wants to keep kissing him until she’s blue. “We need to– we need to stop, Granger.”

She shakes her head, not comprehending what he’s telling her.

This is very much what she’s wanted, what she’s been asking for. More, and he can give it here.

Malfoy comes back down, kissing her, pulling her and touching her all over. His hand never slides closer than her hip, never pushes up her skirt, but it’s more brutal this way—the agonised ache of hunger rumbling the weak underbelly of whatever this is. He punishes her, punishes them both, not giving in. His teeth trail her collarbone but never sink into her flesh, and it hurts, everything hurts. Every inch of her is aflame, burning, needs him.

“Please,” she croaks into the frigid air. The woods are silent, creatures tucked away now, sensing an inevitable shift. She thinks even God might’ve abandoned his creation, maybe the rapture came and went and left only them.

She feels him thinking, can nearly hear the cogs of his brain as he considers the plea.

It’s strange, she thinks, to be so aware of him, to recognise his thought patterns, and anticipate his next move. It’s why when he pulled back, she already knew he would. So she wraps her hand around his arm and guides it lower, to where she aches, to where proof blooms slick, whispering into his neck, “Just this.”

“You’ll hate me.”

“I can’t,” she says, not understanding. Can’t you see? “I won’t. I couldn’t—I don’t think I could stomach it.”

“No?” he asks, and his face bears something like disappointment. “What have I done to deserve your kindness?”

“You’re not…you’re not bad.”

“I am.”

“You hesitate,” she whispers. “That’s enough.”

Her feet slide on earth, trying to scrabble up, to see him better. His hand tightens on her waist, the other still held in place by her own hand, but he makes sure she’s close, makes her listen.

“You think I’m good because I haven’t fucked you in the dirt yet?” he mutters. “That’s your bar?”

She opens her mouth—he sees the protest coming—but he cuts her off. He leans in then, close enough that she can feel his breath on her mouth.

“Tell me no.”

The trees watch, sentient voyeurs to his knee drifting between her thighs. The river hums, rushing wet over the stone.

“I don’t want to.”

Sad, a little tut. Then he speaks, though she isn’t sure the words are even meant for her.

“I know.”

Malfoy kisses her again, hard, proving a point. She trembles, arms looping around his neck, body stretching for more.

Quiet, all life has fled, leaving only the cold gust of exhales. It is two teenagers, affixed, not even a breeze slipping through. The ache is cerebral, felt to the core, a thundering pulse of her beating heart. Clench, then release, gasp in, swallow down. She won’t let herself exhale, won’t spit any part of him out. Her lungs, full, burn.

“Please, won’t you?” she asks against his lips.

Is it even her voice speaking? She knows what she’s asking, and he knows what she needs.

His breath, brittle, comes rasped.

“You are impossible,” he whispers as he pulls her down.

The dirt is wet and gives beneath her knees. She sinks, spine curled, hands braced in the mulch. Something in her flickers at the posture. It feels familiar, submissive. She shudders, feels correct.

He goes with her down to the earth, the warmth of his sternum radiating in her grasp. His left arm slides beneath her head, curling around the back of her neck like he means to shield her from the cold, holding himself up, and keeping her curls from matting completely in the dirt. His lips hang above hers, the mint of his tongue wafting and mixing with the scent of soil. Mud clings to her shoes, drawn sticky and stuck when her knee bends, then falls open.

She breathes out, shaking. The mist curls into a white fog, curling up and past him.

“I’m cold,” she says, and it scrapes the roof of her mouth on the way out, soft and scorched. She’s trembling. She hadn’t realised.

Malfoy exhales, jaw tight. His hand moves, fingers catching the corner of her scarf to draw it closed, but she jerks beneath him, arching into his chest, asking but not verbose. Wanting the heat directly, not through fabric. Not fragments, give me more.

His breath still hovers, agonised. His lips brush the line of her cheek, the curve of her nose.

“Say no,” he murmurs. “Please.”

She can’t oblige. The words won’t fit in her mouth.

“Please,” she mumbles in return.

She hardly gets it out before he is on her. Their lips meet, and the reds, and the blues, mix until it’s black. The bruise of his adoration unfurls cherry-ripe, and though he is gentle, it stings. He grips her thighs, trying to force her to close, but she can’t, she won’t, she doesn’t think she can fathom it.

She tilts forward, his bottom lip caught between her teeth, and tugs.

“Fuck,” he rasps into her mouth. “Can’t—say no to you.”

She wants to argue that he does and often.

But then it is tongues and teeth, and his hand on her thigh, sliding closer to where she needs. Her skirt is bunched, her tights damp, and his touch is hot, trailing up until it settles between.

A finger presses insistent, and she moans; it slips out without permission. Her head drops back as the sound floats up into the dark, swallowed by trees, lost somewhere in the vast hush of the forest. His touch doesn’t retreat. His hand holds firm, palm cupped high between her thighs, one finger already sinking in, slick and welcomed by heat. He draws it back and pushes in again, the rhythm not yet steady but wanting, like he’s matching her breath, like he can feel how badly she needs the friction, even if her tights prevent him from satisfying the depth.

Her other leg shifts, sliding flat beneath him, caught between his knees—trapped there, stretched and shaking. His right thigh presses in harder, wedging between hers, anchoring them together, and her hips rock up against him, feeling the jump of the bulge between his legs.

Still, she moves again. Her hips lift into the curl of his fingers and then down, grinding herself against his hand as her knee flexes, angling up to meet the thick press of him. There’s so little space between them now, just soaked fabric and the thin barrier of restraint.

She’s burning. Every nerve is lit. Her tights are wet and clingy where his fingers work against her, her skirt twisted around her waist. The cold is a distant thing, peripheral, chased out by the warmth of his hand and the firm, steady grind of his hips as he ruts against her leg, clothed but desperate.

Her own hand, trembling, slips between them and finds him—hard under his trousers, pulsing against the weight of his arousal. She palms him, slow and uncertain at first, then with more pressure, cupping, dragging, feeling the damp heat spreading at the tip.

His forehead presses to hers, and he groans; his breath floods her mouth. He pushes deeper inside her, stretching sticky cotton until it drags over her clit, and she shudders, pressing her heel into the earth to rock up, needing more, needing all of it.

He moves faster now—thrusting against her thigh with sharp, jerking rhythm, his hips stuttering every time she squeezes. His arm beneath her head tenses, clawing at the ground, stabilising himself and keeping her locked in. She’s gasping into his mouth, wet, an unthinking thing, lost in the unbearable fervour of him grinding, fingering, rutting.

“More,” she gasps.

It's met with a rip.

He fists her tights, pulling them from her body, and splits a hole. The cold air tries to bite her skin, but his palm is quicker, sliding in, stretching the opening until his fingers find her wet knickers. Then they’re shoved aside, and he pushes into her without resistance.

art by LuckyorNot

“Told you to dress warm,” he rasps, though it seems unthinking.

“Oh,” she bleats, rocking against him as her palm tightens over his length. “Yes, yes, please.”

He kisses her lips, then the corner of her mouth, trailing down until he presses to her jaw. Her head arches back, granting him access as her hips cant into his touch, grinding her body against his. Hermione’s hand is trapped between them, awkwardly scrabbling for purchase, her fingers desperate and clumsy against the hard line of him.

“Granger,” he says, breath hot against her skin.

“Can I?” she asks, hand sliding, trying to work at his buttons but impeded by his belt. “Can I touch you…without–”

“Bleeding fuck,” he rasps.

His fist behind her head opens and grabs a handful of her curls, yanking her head to the side. Her neck stretches, and she’s dazed in the jostle, lips opening to cry out when he puts his lips to her throat, then opens up and presses his teeth down.

It isn’t a bite, but molasses fills her brain. She’s teetering somewhere sweet, a sugared sort of in-between, brought so near to this base desire with his finger stretching her open. Then he gives her another and twists his hand in all the fabric, bringing his thumb to rest on her clit as he picks up speed. And yes, this is it, here’s that cognitive dissonance, this is exactly how it isn’t with anyone else.

She knew that the high she got from him was worth it, was worth all the effort, was worth following what beckoned her forward. Because here, under the silent branches and songless birds, mouth breaking open so close to soil and foliage, with his teeth grazing the skin of her throat, and some part of him inside of her, here is where she’s always wanted to be.

He’s mumbling against her skin, whispering things she can’t decipher with his teeth so close to her pulse, feels the shape of the words more than hears them. His breath is hot, damp, lips grazing the flutter of her neck. Each syllable brushes her, thick with want and cracked at the edges.

“Sweet thing,” he coos, pulling back slightly when she twists up in his arms.

She moans, fingers still working at the buttons of his trousers, her palm occasionally sliding over the firm heat straining beneath. He shudders, fingers loosening in her hair, hips jerking, sentences fragmented.

“Draco,” she mumbles, little more than a whine. His thumb arcs in a circle, pressing messy through desire, plucking a sound from someplace deep.

“Perfect,” he chokes out, dragging his mouth lower, pressing kisses like confessions down the side of her neck. “I’ll be—swear I’ll be good—for you—just let me—”

His voice breaks. He noses into the crook of her shoulder, letting her scarf fall loose, breathing her in like it might soothe him. His hand fists in the dirt beside her head, knuckles white. He thrusts into her palm.

“I want you to,” she rasps, turning her head to him. She’s cresting, the fingers of desire curling around something deep, clawing tighter. In the gaps of shuddered breaths, she kisses wherever she can reach. Against the prominence of his Adam’s apple, she begs. “Please. We can–”

“Fuck,” he groans, agonised, eyes shut. “You’re so—fuck, you’re so wet. Dripping all over my hand. Are you always like this?”

“No,” she whispers. “Just you.”

His head turns, and their lips meet. Malfoy bites down in the kiss, and her body, electric, combusts.

His arm tightens beneath her head, tugging her closer until she’s rasping into his mouth. His fingers don’t stop their rhythm, diving deeper even as her orgasm dissolves every thought, so close, she tastes it on her tongue, feels the bright of it down even in her numb thumb. She shudders against him, gasping, pressing down into the pressure, caught in the spiral he’s built beneath her skin.

“Right there, is it?” he murmurs, lucid, cracked open. His eyes pin her, and it’s him—really him—looking down at her. His fingers curl, and the world goes dark when he brushes against it. One second, she’s there, and the next, everything is just blown apart. “Go on.”

Her thighs seize, her back arches, and her cry is swallowed by the trees and the soil and him as her orgasm spins in the sediment. She’s gone in it, lost, safe in his arms as he keeps his hand there, steady, letting her ride it out like he’s the only one who knows what to do with her.

She writhes, whining, body shaking, and her hand grips his cock firmly through his pants, thumb pressing beneath the head. Her eyes break open to watch his close, his whole face pinching as his lips break apart with a moan. And when he thrusts against her leg and palm, his hips stutter as he lets off a string of colourful vows. Her palm is wet, but she presses again, more insistent, feeling him through his trousers.

Wet, sticky fabric presses against her wrist. Her hand slides to the base, his come seeping through the fabric, as his orgasm stretches out, and when she wraps a palm around the base, it swells in her touch. She startles, curiosity ripe and touches again.

Malfoy retreats so quickly that she lets off a gasp of surprise, thrown back by the sudden absence of him. He is on two feet, breathing hard, looking at her where she lies, a wet heap of limbs against the brush.

He glances down at himself, shaking. A fine tremor of his jaw. “What the–”

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” he bites, then softens. He crouches back beside her, lifting her off the ground, but her knees are too weak to stand, so she shakes her head.

“What?” she repeats.

He stands quickly again, stepping back, one hand slipping down to the front of his trousers. His fingers press low, awkwardly, like he’s trying to shift something beneath the fabric.

“I don’t—” he starts, then stops, neck tight. She watches the way his palm subtly presses in, adjusts, as if to hide.

Does he think this is another thing she can’t handle? That she’d be startled by his…by his cock? She bites her tongue in frustration.

“What is wrong with you?” she asks, more bite than concern.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts. “I shouldn’t have–”

She looks away, fighting her flush, grumbling, “I wanted you to.”

“I know,” he mumbles. “That doesn’t mean I should have listened.”

She scoffs, irritated. She’d thought—she doesn't know what she thought. Maybe that he might…be reasonable. If he hates touching her so much, she doesn’t get why he continuously does. He knew she wasn’t a virgin.

You’re so stupid, Granger.

“I don’t understand you,” she snaps.

She misses the way his face falls, and when she looks up, he’s walking towards a tree, putting the grey back of his coat to her. “It’s better this way.”

“For whom?” She fixes her skirt, searching for her temporary wand in her pockets. Now that he is off of her, she feels the cold seeping against her wet thighs. “I have yet to see any benefits to this arrangement.”

“One day, Granger,” Malfoy sighs, “I really think you might thank me for being halfway decent to you.”

“Decent?” she snaps. “For refusing to fuck me when I ask of sound mind?”

He turns over his shoulder suddenly, taking off his coat, eyes dark. “Yeah. That’s decent.”

She closes her legs and stares at him as he walks over, putting his coat over her tights. It’s huge and clings to the heat of his body. He turns again, walking towards a tree.

“What’re you doing?”

He shakes his head, then takes off his sweater. His arms flex as he tugs it over his head to leave him in only a plain white t-shirt, muscles moving when he balls the coarse weave of the jumper up and throws it onto the ground.

“Going to find your wand,” he says without turning.

“The water is freezing,” she stutters. “You’ll die of hypothermia.”

Malfoy’s hands are at his front; she can hear the clink of his belt. “I’ll be fine.”

“Malfoy,” she snaps. He ignores her in favour of kicking off his shoes. She scrambles upright, ignoring the tremble in her knees. “You’re not seriously going in like that.”

He doesn’t answer. Just keeps unbuckling his belt with a clink of metal and a sharp jerk. The wind flattens the fabric of his shirt against his back, tracing muscles she can’t help but look at.

“You’ll freeze,” she tries again. She steps towards him and puts her hand on his bicep. “The water’s glacial.”

Malfoy freezes at the touch before he turns, his face blank, and doesn’t say a word.

She scowls at him—he’s always going on about her not thinking, but what sense does it make to have him dive into the water with no regard for himself? He’s so staggeringly self-important.

“You call me stupid? Yet you’re the one about to induce magical hypothermia.”

She waves a hand toward the river. “I mean, honestly, who knows what sort of properties affect the water? For all we know, it’s cursed or charmed to drown anyone foolish enough to touch it. You might sink like a bloody stone. And then what? I’m just meant to sit here on the bank in your coat, waiting while you freeze to death under some noble, idiotic delusion of masculinity?”

His mouth quirks in a familiar way as he comes a bit closer to her.

“And what’s so funny?” she demands.

“You’re a bit more like yourself now, you know?” his amused voice murmurs.

Her eyes narrow. “What is that supposed to mean?”

He takes her face in both of his hands, warm hands spanning her jaw, leans down and kisses her. It’s so sudden that it steals her breath, and gods, it’s like—like he’s burning up, it hardly makes any sense. One hand grips his wrist because she’s stupidly dizzy, unsure and staggering.

He leans away from her, then presses forward once, a quick peck to her mouth. And again. And once more. Then he kisses her cheek, face pressed to her jaw, and then her throat.

When he finally pulls back fully, she’s dizzy, unaware if it's the lack of oxygen to her frontal lobe or some effect that's reserved for only him. He takes a step back, her arms drop to her side, and she blows out a puff of air.

He peels his shirt over his head. “I’ll be quick.”

She nods, lips still buzzing. Then he tugs his trousers down, and she can see the dark blue of his briefs. Her mouth runs dry.

“It’s faster this way,” he says, half glancing over his shoulder. A crease is nestled between his brows. “I won’t…hurt you. I have more control without the moon.”

She shakes her head. “No, wait. Wait, what are you–?”

Bones shudder beneath his skin. There’s no pause for her to prepare, no gentle fade from man to something else. One breath, he’s human—barely covered and pale in the morning light—and the next, his back snaps in a sharp curve, the seams of his briefs rip, and his shoulders widen grotesquely. Fur bursts from skin. His spine extends, ribs stretching, distorting massive. Crunch goes the bone, the wet shift of transformation, and then there’s fur rippling in the breeze, the breeze heavy with magic, sharp with musk.

She takes a step back as he falls forward onto his paws.

He’s a wolf. The same shimmering white fur, almost blinding in the spots of sun that break through the trees.

“Malfoy?” she whispers, eyes wide.

He doesn’t answer her; he can’t speak like this. But he lowers his head slightly, tilting to look at her, and she sees his eyes. The same pale grey, silver flashing behind the black of his pupils. The sunlight flashes off his coat: dense, ash-white, tipped with silver along the ridge of his spine. His tail thuds against his hind leg. His snout is broad, his chest massive, and his paws dig into the dirt, wide as saucers.

And that same voice, proud, oil-slick, caresses the back of her mind.

Pretty, it purrs. And then, gluttonous and dark, that same voice says, Yours.

She shakes her head, blinking, and his head raises, turning to look at the river. He sniffs and his eyes close, then he turns sharply and jumps across the bank to the other side. She hears the thud of his paws as he runs off, disappearing into mud, thicket and shadow.

The sun climbs higher. Hermione sits back, tugging his coat over her legs and pressing her cheek against her knee, ignoring the ache between her thighs and the way she draws him in on an inhale, just scent kept close.

⨳

The match goes great.

At least if you ask anyone else, they’ll say so. The stands are roaring, banners snapping high in the wind, the pitch still echoing with cheers and victory chants. Dean coasts down on his broom, his face wind-sore, ruddy and warm from exertion. Ginny is already on the ground, grinning like she owns the day. He slings an arm around her shoulders, letting her laughter fill the space between them.

But his eyes catch on movement beyond the edge of the pitch, and his smile wavers.

From the shadow of the Forbidden Forest, two figures emerge.

It’s Hermione, he realises only a few seconds after she does. He has to squint to see her because she’s got on a coat, swallowing her frame and pushing up over her hands. She pauses at the treeline, turning back like she’s waiting.

Behind her, there’s Malfoy, letting whatever branch he’d been holding for her swing back into place as he steps from the forest. Then they’re side-by-side, him looming over her. They pause, and Dean swallows. Malfoy closes the distance between them by a step, then reaches out—fingertips brushing the curve of Hermione’s jaw to tuck a curl behind her ear.

Dean stiffens because Hermione doesn’t bat him away. He wouldn’t expect her to, what with the way they were in that lab in the dungeon.

Malfoy lifts his head, and his gaze lands on Dean.

It stretches long. There’s some sort of energy rolling off Malfoy, so much so that Dean feels it even standing across the pitch. He’s suddenly too aware of his heartbeat, too aware of the distance between them and how it doesn’t feel like enough. It lasts only a second—but something in it knocks the breath from Dean’s lungs. There’s a pressure to it, the same fear he’d felt as the Snatchers blew in the door of the room he’d been staying in, the same coil of despair as he sat in the dungeon feeling like his days were numbered.

Malfoy stares at him. Dean recoils, though he isn’t sure why.

Then Malfoy glances down, cocks his head towards the castle, and Dean sees Hermione nod.

Dean lingers, glancing once more across the pitch, toward the place where Hermione walks quietly and Malfoy walks beside her—shoulder brushing hers, head angled down, enthralled by her silence, dwarfed in his coat.

Ginny says something as Michael comes over, but it falls on deaf ears because Dean is wondering if it’s always like that; if Malfoy’s always watching.

Chapter Text

The hearth blazes in the common room, casting low, aurelian flickers across the worn armchairs and faded banners. A scattered deck of Exploding Snap lay discarded on the table near the fireplace, half a hand abandoned mid-game. Burnt cinnamon and old parchment twist in the air with the crackling flames, a hundred sleepless nights caught in the drapery.

Hermione waits by the window, smoothing her dress as she watches the snow spin outside. Her skirt billows out from her waist, flowing down to the floor in an array of smooth fabric, lattice work lovingly hand-stitched.

In the crease of her skirts, Molly had been thoughtful—such a motherly instinct—and sewn a large pocket, deep enough to store her wand. Hermione’s fingers trace the vine wood, the ache in her hand long evaporated since it’d been returned to her the prior week.

Every night since, she dreamt of the water dew dropped on the wolf’s lashes when he emerged from the river, fur plastered to muscle. His paws thudded past her entirely until he was behind the tree. She craned her neck, though the preternatural crack echoed and she felt the shift. She only had a few seconds to theorise before he emerged again, this time a boy, wand hanging loose in his fingers, buttoning his trousers as he crossed toward her.

She’d accepted it with a whispered “Thank you,” and then shifted to stare at the ground where she’d been laying minutes prior, his body covering hers. She avoided glancing up because watching him dress felt indecent, despite where his hands had been before. Curiosity ate at her all the same.

The words claw up her throat, she should’ve figured they would. She had to say something, because the silence was louder than anything, so Hermione asked:

“Are you cold?”

He was pulling on his jumper, his head popped through the collar. He paused, half-caught in the motion, his mouth curving as his eyes settled on her and he finally tugged it into place.

“No,” he said, shaking his hair out and straightening his hem. He motioned at her with his chin, still dwarfed in his overcoat. “Keep it.”

That wasn’t what she meant, but she’d been too bewildered to correct him.

So now she owns Malfoy’s winter coat.

She supposed he had others—probably more than a few. She’d seen him moving through the corridors since, always in tailored black, sleek lines, eyes trained on the floor in front of him. But none of those coats looked quite as expensive as the one she’d shrugged over her shoulders that morning, half-swallowed in its wool and warmth as he led her out of the treeline.

His smile lingered on the edge of her dreams, too. She spent her mornings staring at her canopy, palm pressed to palpitating pulse, consumed.

She turns at the murmur of voices, excited chatter that brings her back from where she’d just been. Harry emerges first, clutching a dusty bottle in one hand and haphazardly shuffling five mismatched glasses in the other.

"Still had a stash in Fred and George's old hiding spot," he says, plonking everything down on the table with a grin.

Ron follows behind him, turning over a ball in both hands. “Look! The bloody thing was there too.”

“Ronald,” she groans, though her lips are lifted and it’s really just a laugh.

It is so strange to have the two of them back at Hogwarts, in the common room no less, especially with the way they both have grown so tall and defined in their formal Auror robes. Ron beckons her over with a wave and a grumbled, “C’mere, ‘Mione, I want to see if this works.”

Romilda smiles from where she sits on the couch as Hermione walks over, past Ginny, who assists Harry in pulling the stopper from the bottle. The three Ministry officials had arrived earlier while she and Ginny were getting ready, easily gaining entry into the Tower with a simple flash of Harry’s grin to the portrait of the Fat Lady.

Hermione sits next to Ron and offers her hand, which he takes and rubs the ball against.

“Okay, you have to say something like Reveal thy fate, or maybe Spin the stars, or—wait, no, listen—Oh Great Orb, show us the truth!” Ron intones dramatically.

The toy, a cloudy orb of glass about the size of a Quaffle, hums in his palm. Swirls of iridescent smoke begin to gather inside, coalescing into vaguely legible shapes.

“Honestly,” Hermione mutters as the blue light swirls inside the glass, “who makes these things?”

“It was all the rage before OWLs one year,” Ginny says, pouring the firewhisky with one hand while watching over her shoulder. “Luna swore by it.”

“Luna also thinks Kneazles are reincarnated star-beings,” Ron mutters, frowning as the toy flickers. “Right, it’s doing something now.”

The orb pulses once, and a wavery voice floats out. “A dance awaits, shadows past. Silver slants, half mast. Choose your steps, or be outclassed.”

There’s a beat of silence, then Harry laughs. “That’s ominous.”

“Better than the last time I tried. It told me to always check my left before my right,” Ron says.

Hermione smiles, watching the orb flicker back into dormancy against her palm. The firewhisky is passed around, and she lets herself forget the weight of the night ahead. If she simplifies along the way, it won’t be so impossible.

Like now. Now, it is the group of them in the Gryffindor common room. They’re just five friends getting pissed with a bottle from an older sibling, playing with a silly toy and trying to put faith in fortunes too purple and ornamented to be deciphered.

She can fit that inside of her. It slots in a crevice someplace deep, and she chases down her neatly stripped fact with a warm sip.

“Right,” Ginny says, clapping her hands. “Give it here, then. I’d like to know if a dance awaits me, too.”

By the time they’ve all received particularly excessive fortunes—Ron told that he’ll face a choice involving the sail, Romilda instructed to keep her eye open for what glitters brightest in the dark, Ginny to be mindful of height, and Harry something about the weight of his pockets—they’ve nearly finished the bottle and all sport more of a rouge to their cheeks.

Music kicks up, a reminder of why all the friends are here.

“Oi, Harry,” Ron says suddenly, deathly serious as his eyes widen. “Aren’t you giving the welcome speech?”

Then it’s laughter, and the click of heels and boots as they scurry from the common room, running through the dark to the Great Hall. Hermione’s curls tickle her nape as she breathes through her laughter, a chorus of shouts and giggling bouncing off the walls. Harry picks Ginny up and throws her over his shoulder to lap her. The race continues through the castle, and the past melds with the present. Ron almost looks twelve when he jumps down three steps, then a man again when he waits for Romilda, offering his hand to swoop her next to him.

Her heart threatens to burst from her chest, because this is different from her memories, but still blisteringly sweet. The world is cast away—responsibilities nil—as they spin toward the Great Hall without the threat of danger looming on their horizon. The seconds pass how they should have been all those years ago, mindless and juvenile, a peace they couldn’t have afforded, chests warm with fire and grinning as their heads rush.

What she wouldn’t give for a do-over? More than one night of peace.

She pushes down the thought and breaks it all down, she can control it that way.

Soon, they arrive at the entrance, chests stuttering and hair askew. Students and adults meander around before they take their seats, the hum of small talk in wait before Harry is expected to be on stage. They’ve got seconds, but it all stretches long like this—a bit drunk and playful.

She feels silly, loose-limbed, breath caught in the laughter stuck at the back of her throat, heart beating erratically from the exercise, or the anticipation, or the way this night, the simple presence of her friends, is nurturing something that’s gone long unsoothed. Her eyes tilt, golden lights beaming around them, and she watches, a spot of fear that if she misses anything, she’ll forget entirely.

Ginny smooths Harry’s uniform, and his hand glides up the side of her neck, pulling her in for a kiss as she starts to laugh against his lips. Ron and Romilda’s fingers touch briefly, like neither wishes to part, high on the simple pleasure of having who you want close. Hermione looks away politely when Ron’s head tilts forward, their lips brushing in that same light way.

“Hermione,” a voice calls behind her, and she turns.

“Dean, hi,” she says as he walks forward.

He looks fit in his own dress robes, a strange mix of Muggle and wizard fashion that suits him perfectly. Charcoal-grey tailoring over a crisp white shirt, the collar left open just so, and sleek robes falling behind like a shadow. His trainers peek out beneath the hem, charmed leather, black as ink.

Hermione smiles, flushed, cinnamon and fire on her tongue. “You clean up well.”

Dean grins, a dimple flashing. “Thanks. You—” he exhales a low laugh, looking her over with a kind of quiet awe. “You look really nice, Hermione.”

She ducks her head, though the compliment lands warm in her chest. She wonders if she’s a bad person, with how she so easily pockets his kindness. Though Dean’s never outwardly made her feel guilty, not even a little bit. She’s good enough at it on her own.

She doesn’t want to think those thoughts, and her face falls a bit, reminded of the fence she balances on—the balm of a strong drink and the threat of teetering off one side. She focuses more on putting all her weight on the balls of her feet, steadying herself though her heels ache, even with a cushioning charm.

He steps a little closer, offering his arm with a smile that rarely fades. “You got anyone to escort you in?”

Dean is balanced, always sure. Hermione hesitates but shakes her head.

His smile doesn’t dampen as he dips his head. “Someone should have the honour, and I’ve been recently informed I clean up well.”

She tucks her hand into the crook of his elbow. “Then I suppose we make a good pair.”

Together, they step toward the golden doors. The music is louder behind them, and as they cross the threshold, the Hall glows, warmed in light and laughter, the weight of their very recent war carefully concealed beneath twinkling fixtures and orchestral swells. She focuses on standing upright, being sure and steady on her feet.

Hermione blinks at the splendour, finding it hard to focus with the sheer number of people in the room. There are students, of course, all years from fourth through eighth invited to attend, but also familiar faces from the Prophet and Ministry. At the centre of the room, directing everyone with waves and pleasantries, stands interim Minister Kingsley Shacklebolt. They walk towards him as if captured in his orbit.

“Minister,” Dean says with a polite nod.

“Mr Thomas,” Kingsley greets, his voice smooth as aged oak, a touch of warmth laced through the authority. “A welcome sight.”

His gaze shifts. “And Miss Granger.” He inclines his head with a quiet smile. “It’s always an honour.”

Hermione steps out from Dean’s side, placing a hand gently on Kingsley’s arm. “You’re too kind, sir.”

“Not at all,” he says, clasping his other hand over hers. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again—you’re exactly the kind of witch we need more of. If you ever find yourself drawn to the Ministry, I hope you’ll come to me. There are too many rooms in that building that still need a voice like yours.”

Hermione blinks, momentarily overwhelmed. Too often, each day feels like a weight around her ankle, the sheer obstacle of existing capsizing her resolve. She tries to consider the girl she once was, who Kingsley knew her to be. Before, she wanted so many things: a chance, one second, her friend’s safety, to make real change.

Recently, she hasn’t even thought of anything past the present day.

The Hall is bedecked with cheer—the sort of cinnamon and mint-tinged magic that is reserved for close to Christmas. Hogwarts is a physical representation of the healing. When had she slipped through the cracks?

Kingsley’s gaze sharpens slightly, almost reading her mind. “And if you ever need anything,” he adds, “guidance, a door opened—I’m only ever an owl away.”

Her mouth parts, the words rising before she can quite stop them—I want to speak to Greyback—but before she can voice it, the swell of orchestral strings intensifies. A hush begins to fall over the crowd.

Surprise buttons her lips shut. Logically, she had no reason to request this, yet the urge had been there. Right at the tip of her tongue.

Kingsley glances toward the platform at the far end of the Hall. “Ah. Almost time to begin.” He squeezes her hand once before releasing it. “We’ll speak soon, I hope.”

Hermione nods and feels Dean’s arm beneath her palm. He walks her to the table where Ginny and Romilda wait, both of their cheeks rosy, be it the snogging or the whisky. Dean pulls out her chair but doesn’t sit beside her, walking off to find Seamus before the speeches begin.

Ginny leans forward, smiling. “So Dean escorted you in.”

“I think just to be kind.”

“Right,” she tuts, exchanging a glance with Romilda. They both grin. “Just to be kind.”

“I’ve told you—we’re just friends.”

“Yes, I trust that you think you’re just friends. I’m not so sure he believes the same.”

Hermione doesn’t respond, rolls her eyes, and works to tuck her hair out of her face once again. Ginny knows it isn’t like that, not between them. Still, she considers the optics of what it might have looked like; her showing up on his arm. Unconsciously, her neck cranes, glancing around with the sudden desire to find…

She doesn’t know what. Or maybe the firewhisky makes it easier to pretend as much.

“Hermione!”

She twists at the sound of her name, the accent unmistakable. Her face lights up as Viktor takes wide steps, green dress robes swishing as he gets closer.

It isn’t exactly right, but her spirit lifts all the same.

“Viktor,” she says, standing before she even thinks to. Her chair scrapes against the floor, only taken a step from the table before he’s bending down and lifting her.

“Zdraveĭ, umnichka,” he murmurs near her ear as he twirls her. Her head spins, and she laughs, reminded of their lessons at the Black Lake.

Hello, clever girl.

She didn’t remember everything he taught her, but this one used to make her stomach flip. Now she leans into that nostalgia, held in the arms of someone she thinks she’ll always consider a friend.

“Hello to you, too,” she laughs.

She squeezes his shoulders as he sets her down, and they’re both flushed, grinning like mad. It suddenly occurs to her that perhaps she and her friends weren’t the only ones who needed to indulge to settle with the reality of tonight.

“Have you already got a seat?” she asks, motioning back to her table. The world is a tilt-a-whirl of colour and motion from her spin, and she finds she has to focus a bit more on standing upright. Viktor catches her elbow and nods.

“Yes, yes, I am sitting with—mm, how do you say? The company?” His grin is playful, and she’s sure that he’s had more than a few. She arches a brow, and he tilts back a bit, all fond amusement. “My Elena is asking to meet you, but I tell her—wait, first I must make sure my clever girl hasn’t forgotten her favourite Bulgarian.”

Hermione hums, nodding along. “Your Elena?”

He does a little shuffle of his shoulder, smiling small all the while. “She is mine. I am hers. This is the good kind of problem.”

She laughs. “I’d love to meet her.” Music starts to quiet behind them, so she cranes her neck back to the podium to see handshakes and officials taking their seats. “Come and find me after?”

“Always, umnichka.”

By the time Viktor weaves back through the crowd and Hermione takes her seat, most of the tables are full, making it hard to see over the heads which are huddled and laughing; a soft murmur spreads throughout the room. Her head is on a swivel, lying to herself about who it is she seeks.

Before she can find him, lights dim, and a voice clears through a Sonorus. Harry smiles and introduces himself, which only makes everyone laugh. Hermione turns her whole body to watch him.

His Auror robes are pressed, but slightly askew at the collar—Ginny’s handiwork had lasted until the podium. He smiles in that nervous way he’s always done, like he still wonders why people might want to listen to him.

“Ah. Hi,” he says plainly, and the room quiets without further prompt. Hermione wonders if Harry even realises the influence he still holds, the weight of his word after everything. “Thanks for being here. I admit, I didn’t much know how to start. Still don’t, really. And now, being back here, I’m not sure I’d have ever gotten it right.”

His eyes lift to the ceiling, bewitched as always to mirror the sky. Tonight it’s midnight-blue velvet streaked with stars.

“I remember smoke and blood. I remember thinking I’d never come back. That even if I lived, this place would never…belong to us again.”

A ripple passes through the room as some drop their eyes. Hermione keeps hers on him, even as her throat tightens.

“But somehow, we did come back, and it is ours. Not because we won, not just because we survived, but because we remember. We remember everyone who isn’t here. The ones who fought. The ones who didn’t have a choice. The ones who were braver than they ever should’ve had to be.”

Harry’s voice catches, but he presses on.

“We lost too many. People who made this place feel like home. People who deserved more time. And I won’t pretend tonight fixes any of that. It doesn’t. But I think they’d want us to be here. Laughing. Eating terrible treacle tart. Dancing like we’ve never been hexed in the knees.”

A light laugh rises.

“So let’s honour them by living, by saying their names, by telling stories and sharing memories. And, I know, I’m the very last person who should ask anything of any of you, but I have one more request.” He pauses and pushes the frame of his glasses up his nose. Then he says, “Let’s remember.”

He lets the silence stretch a breath longer before adding, with a quiet smile, “And if someone—ahem, me—cries during the second waltz, pretend it’s allergies and pass the brandy.”

The applause comes gently at first before it builds into something richer and fuller than the string quartet had managed. A warm undercurrent flowed through the Great Hall, pulsing like a heartbeat. It’s hard for anyone to follow that, but a few do; Kingsley greets everyone and holds a moment of silence, McGonagall reminds everyone that grief is a lifelong process, and she’s there for each of them. Hermione finds it hard to focus on any of the words or the bodies in the room.

Everything begins to blur at the edges.

By the time the formalities taper off into murmured applause and the gentle rustle of chairs, a collective breath seems to escape the Hall. As if the whole room had been holding itself taut through the remembrance, spine straight, lips pressed shut against grief. The strain ebbs, and music rises.

It coaxes the professors out onto the floor, demure and all hands visible as the younger crowd still murmurs on the sidelines. Harry and Ron arrive at their table, and that is around the time that Romilda pulls a flask from a charmed pocket on her dress and offers it with a smirk to Ginny first.

“Ah, Ron, have I mentioned how fond of Romilda I am?” Ginny says, pulling the stopper from the flask and taking a sip. Her face pinches in a cough, but she holds it to Harry next.

He quirks a brow at Romilda, who laughs and says, “Perfectly legal, Auror Potter.”

“Please, we’re off-duty tonight and absolutely meant to be well-sloshed.” He takes a deep sip and instantly coughs at the burn. “Merlin. What is this?”

“Chimaera-spiced rum,” Romilda says, tilting her head for Harry to pass it to Hermione. Her hands grasp the cool metal as she continues, “Charlie gifted Ron a bottle, which quickly became mine.”

“Still sore over that, you know,” Ron responds, bumping her lightly. Romilda smiles and glances at Hermione.

“Best to take it quickly.”

Hermione nods, briefly wondering if this is a good idea before deciding that Harry is right—if any night calls for her to be inebriated, it is this one. She tilts her head back and swallows the sip.

⨳

What she remembered most was spinning.

Dance class, playground, in the kitchen while Mom boiled pasta and Dad browned the meat, in the garden between rows of rosemary and late-blooming lavender. She spun through time—golden chain and hourglasses—in the Great Hall, face pressed against a red sleeve, in the dungeons, head dizzy, spinning, spinning, always spinning.

The world was ribbons of colour, bones at odds with gravity, and motion—streaks of light. Faster than Earth, barrelling through space and time, she spun. Spinning around until faces blurred. Ribbons and colour. Time twisted up. A red sleeve. His poppet.

Dad whispered to his little girl, “You’ll make yourself sick.”

She once spun in circles outside the planetarium, too. Her father took her on a Wednesday when the exhibit was nearly empty. She remembered the domed ceiling, the lush velvet seats against her summer skin, still sun-warmed and tender, the impossible hush of space projected into the dark.

“See,” Dad murmured, gesturing toward the vaulted black above them, where the observatory displayed the easy sweep of the solar system. “They spin because they’re moving. But they remain, because they’re bound.”

“To the sun?” she asked, small fingers laced through big ones.

“To gravity,” he explained. “Everything orbits something.”

Hermione thought that if she were a planet, she’d be Pluto, at least right now—she was little but important. Dad laughed a lot and told her they’d named her wrong.

Our little Hermia, he’d whisper when she screamed. Fierce.

She’s strong-willed enough, Mom responded.

Dad would be Jupiter, and Mum’d be Earth. And their daughter would spend all her days trying to be bigger and get closer, and Dad would eat up all the meteors, and Mum would be the heart—the planet, lonesome, that sprouted overripe with life.

She stared upward, tracing the arcs of the planets. But after a pause, her father’s voice dropped lower.

“D’you know, even the sun isn’t still, poppet? It moves too, plunging forward through the galaxy. And it pulls all of us with it. Not circles, really.” He paused, looking off, searching for the word. “Spirals.”

Dad used his free hand, pointer finger extended, a little loop, then again and again and again. Spinning.

She blinked at him, frowning faintly in that serious way children sometimes do when they suspect they’re on the edge of something important.

“So even when it feels like you're just going round and round,” he said, “you’re still moving. Still going somewhere. That’s the nature of orbit. Stability in motion.”

“What if something bigger than the sun comes?” Hermione asked. “Or what if—” she gasped, thoughts moving too fast for her to keep up as she rushed to speak, “what if it’s always been there and we just don’t know we’re circling it?”

Dad smiled. His hand tightened around hers. She searched his face, not noticing all the bits of him mixed up in herself, waiting in anticipation. Dad knew everything.

“What if, Hermione?” he said.

The Earth, indifferent, spun some more.

⨳

It’s not really dancing, not quite, but she’s there and—gods, it feels almost normal again. Everything she is has settled, dropping off of her in stones, and she’s more of herself right now—she can’t see it, but she knows. A loopy daydream of a girl, mouth wide in a laugh. The music has turned, changing, kicking up into something with more bass, less discernible. Her hair has long slipped free of the intricate updo, bun turned into a ponytail that grazes the tip of her spine each time she’s passed from Harry to Ron or Ginny to Romilda. She spins and spins and spins some more.

They huddle intermittently, as bodies push against them, passing Romilda’s flask with secret grins and swallowed laughter. Technically, they can; so grown now, with the way Harry fills out his Auror robes, or how Ron’s chin grows scruffy with the beginning of a beard, but isn’t it fun to pretend otherwise? Breaking the rules like they used to, always on the edge.

Her head is spinning, everything is light and air. She moves with everyone, laughing, catching the starlight from the ceiling, a champagne twist and twirl. She’s everything she used to be and all that she has become. She’s the candlelight in the window, the sun speeding faster than her spinning mind can comprehend through black nothing. The lights cut lower.

She recalls the child she once was, spinning in wild abandon, striving to outpace the earth’s slow turn; how the world would sway beneath her feet, and she’d collapse upon the grass, stomach flipping with joyous abandon. Having Mum and Dad’s eyes always tracking her even in the safety of their garden, small ribs rising and falling with shallow breath, gaze fixed upon the boundless blue above her. How even that stability didn’t stop the motion, the eddy of cloud coverage drifting across the sky. Twelve blinks put it back to rights, but she’d lie for a while longer, breathing hard and alive.

She spins and spins, right into a stranger’s chest.

There are stars in her eyes, and warmth in her belly, her tongue tastes like cinnamon fire, and she’s laughing, she never did stop, even as she presses her hands into the navy robes and tilts her head back, trying to work out an apology.

It all aligns then, somewhere between dazed and embarrassed, that she’s been looking for him all evening.

Because here he is—midnight blue and shining, the fine lines of his dress robes melting stars into the dance floor. The blonde strands of hair are pushed back from his face, and the light catches his jaw. In the dim of the hall, with the pulse of the music under the balls of her feet, Hermione exhales a sigh of relief. He’s here, he’s found her.

Some silly, pleading voice in the back of her mind reminds her of something, maybe, inconsequential as it were, just pixie dust and whispers, all twisted up and muffled. Before she can remember too many should-nots, his arms wrap around her, and then there’s one quick

tug.

“Granger,” he whispers, and she thinks she ought to respond.

But Draco Malfoy looks quite nice in blue, and as that’s the only thing on her mind, the streaked colour of him, she only blinks as they move further from her friends. Her hands won’t listen to her brain. She knows she should push back against him, should return, but she doesn't want that. Not even a little bit.

“Are you drunk?” he asks innocently, and she frowns, shaking her head.

His lips twitch as his hands extend long, from where he’d been pulling her by her waist, to run his arms next to her, the thin skin of their wrists brushing.

“Are you sure? You’ve got a bit of a smile for me right now.”

The hand he isn’t touching goes to her lips, and she realises he’s right, they are tilted up. Malfoy laughs, grabbing her hand and settling it around his neck, her fingers brushing the nape beneath soft hair.

“I’ve had one or two,” Hermione whispers over swelling music, wondering if he even hears her.

As if to prove his point, he steps in closer, their bodies flush in the centre. One of his hands hovers low at her back, barely touching, but she feels it—his palm warm through the fabric of her dress. His other hand skims her hip, settling just above the curve.

They shift together, swaying in the shadows. Her thoughts are a fizzy sweet, like her blood’s gone effervescent. But their proximity, the warmth of his chest pressed to hers, cuts through the haze.

He doesn’t say anything to her weak response. Malfoy watches her, eyes flicking over her face, her throat, her mouth. And then, he leans in. She feels his breath at her jaw, soft and warm, lips parted like he might give her a whisper. Her heart stutters strangely in her chest.

Instead, there’s an inhale. He breathes, she feels the rise and fall of his chest against her sternum. Her skin flushes hot, all the air’s gone thick and buttered. A big arm curves tighter around her waist, and he moves again, his chin hovering against the top of her head, tucking her into his chest. It is his breath at her hairline, the light scrape of his thumb where it brushes her dress.

“I don’t think you’re just tipsy,” he murmurs, low enough that she has to tilt her head to hear him. It sends her curls brushing his chin, and she swears his fingers twitch.

She tries to scoff, but it comes out breathless. Her hand is still on his neck, her fingers curling ever so slightly, nails dragging lightly along his skin.

“I’m not the one behaving uncharacteristically,” she says back. “You’re dancing with me where anyone might see.”

His hand curls at her waist, pinching her like he means to admonish, warm through the silk of her dress. The other glides up, brushing the edge of her ribs, the curve of her back, like he’s adjusting her, but there’s no need. She’s already facing him, already pressed in. His wrist brushes hers as his journey continues, grabbing her hand finally to hold it out, and pushing her out but not far, guiding her in the spin.

“I didn’t think I could manage respectability tonight,” he murmurs when she steps back in toward him.

They shift, slow and swaying, though the beat has picked up. Her thoughts are fuzzy around the edges, and yet her body’s gone hyper-aware. She feels every point of contact. Every inch of him.

“Not with you looking like this,” he adds quietly.

His nose skims her temple. The sweep of his jaw brushes her hairline. His lips graze just beneath her ear.

Her fingers tighten at his words, nails scraping the nape of his neck again. She tries to scoff or maybe it’s a laugh. Her mind is static. “You’re confusing me.”

She feels it again—him—his cheek dragging lightly across hers as he bends to be close, the long stroke of his throat against her jaw as he turns his head. His chest to her shoulder, his chin dipping low, breath stirring the side of her neck. Again and again, the lightest touch.

“You’re a very beautiful girl, Granger,” he says against her ear. “I think I’ll always regret never having told you that before.”

art by LuckyOrNot

The lights shift overhead, golden stars blooming and fading. She stares at them, letting her head fall back a little, dizzy in the way she used to be as a girl lying in the grass. The world is spinning again, but this time—this time it’s not the sky she feels anchored to.

As the song wraps, and everyone’s attention settles, his grip loosens. He collects her limbs, a tentative swipe of his thumb along her inner wrist, before he puts her hands at her sides. His head dips like he’s bowing to her, and she starts to open her mouth, tell him he doesn't have to go and do something like that, when someone grabs her wrist.

She’s turned quite suddenly around to find Harry looking at her as if she’s gone insane. He tugs her, putting her behind his back, and Ginny is there, rushing words one over the next until Ron bumps into her shoulder and stands next to Harry, forming some wall between them and Malfoy.

“Problem, Malfoy?” Harry says.

“Yeah, what gives?”

Malfoy stands straight, tucking his hands into his pockets.

“Nope.”

“Didn’t look that way,” Harry says. “You don’t get to sneak up behind her like that. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

His voice is a cool drawl. “Dancing.”

“That didn’t look like a dance,” Ron adds.

Malfoy’s head tilts to look at him, frowning as he replies, “The fuck did it look like then, Weasley?”

Ron’s mouth starts to open when Ginny speaks, putting a hand over her brother and turning to Harry.

“Alright, no harm done. We’re all meant to be dancing here.” She casts a glance at Hermione. “Interhouse unity and all, right?”

“Don’t touch her,” Ron says.

Malfoy’s eyes flick to her, not speaking, but both of them catch it. The unspoken, doesn’t look like she minds seeming to make her friends flare.

That's when Nott and Goyle appear—sweeping in from the edge of the crowd, Theodore’s jacket askew and Goyle’s necktie hanging loose, though both sport tight expressions. Hermione’s eyes catch on Blaise, just behind them, rolling a cigarette with a relaxed ease so openly, like he’s begging for confrontation. Nott steps cleanly between them, lays a hand flat against Malfoy’s chest, and starts pushing him back.

“Let’s not do this here,” Nott says to the middle space, then he glances at Malfoy. “Come on.”

Malfoy’s jaw tightens. For a second, Hermione’s sure he won’t budge, but then, he exhales through his nose and lets himself be moved. His gaze drags across hers before he pushes his friend's hand off his chest, scowling and turns, disappearing into the crowd.

“Harry,” Ginny says, pushing against Ron. “Harry, let her go.”

Harry scoffs, releasing Hermione’s wrist. She instantly tucks it to her chest, rubbing at the tender, buzzing skin.

Ron rounds on her first. “The fuck was that, Hermione?”

“Don’t be a dick!” Ginny seethes.

“Why were you letting him touch you like that?”

“We were just dancing,” Hermione rasps. Her face is hot, skin burning all over and ticking higher still. The attention of everyone leaves her peeled open and raw, the lights overhead are too bright, even dimmed, and the floor beneath her isn’t steady.

“You just disappear,” Harry says, his jaw tight, “and then we see you with—” he stops, grimaces, the name tasting of bile. He reaches forward to hold her arm. “Why were you dancing with him?”

She scoffs, brittle. She registers Romilda’s hand only when it’s already on her shoulder, some half-hearted gesture of comfort.

Hermione jerks away, flinching. “Stop—just—stop touching me.”

Romilda backs off without a word, appearing next to Ron’s side with that look on her face like Hermione doesn’t make a lick of sense. Hermione turns and narrows her eyes, trying not to shake.

“I’m allowed to dance with whoever I choose.”

“Bloody Malfoy, though?” Ron blurts. “You chose him?”

She pivots back, angry now. “Yes! Whoever I choose!”

Harry blows out a breath, dragging a hand through his hair. “Hermione, it’s not that simple.”

“It is,” she snaps. “You don’t get to decide who I speak to. Or dance with. Or—”

“You know what he did,” Ron says. “How he’s always treated you.”

Hermione’s eyes flash. “And what, I need your approval now? Do I need a signed permission slip from the two of you before I make any decision?”

Ginny interjects, “Come on, don’t be like that—”

“No,” Hermione snaps, lifting her chin. “Because every time I do something that’s even slightly inconvenient, or uncomfortable, or not in perfect alignment with what you think I should be doing, suddenly I’m—what? Too much?”

No one answers. The silence as the music kicks up, and everyone else laughs like a reminder that she—of all people—doesn’t get to be normal, or thoughtless. Like her indiscretions bear more weight and consequence. Haven’t they always? There’s the pause and beat and the pulse, all a reminder. That heartbeat where no one rushes to say of course not, you’re not too much, you’re not a problem, we’re sorry.

Harry’s mouth moves like he might try. But he doesn’t.

Some part of her, that little voice that gets harder to ignore, louder now with the alcohol and her growing resentment, purrs softly.

He would never do this to us.

Ron mutters, “We’re just trying to look out for you.”

Hermione blinks.

“Right. Because I can’t be trusted to look out for myself. Sorry if it doesn’t feel like your sudden concern for my decisions bears any weight after—”

The words catch in her throat. Hermione stares at them and sees the hurt—Harry’s expression shading into a mask. Guilt turns over in her gut.

She is ruining the night.

She turns sharply, skirts sweeping. “I’m going to get some air.”

“Hermione, wait–” Harry starts.

Ginny’s voice rings out, interrupting. “Give her some space. C’mon.”

No one follows. And it’s—that’s what she wants. She thinks. She can’t think. Her mind is back and forth, and him and her, and spinning, spinning, bile in her throat.

She feels Harry on her wrist, and smells Malfoy all over her, and gods, what is her problem? The walls are closing in, and its immeasurable weight, orbit, gravity, her and him, and them. Hermione pushes through the bodies that press in, people are staring because she has gone and made a scene, ruined the night.

Dad’s voice in the back of her mind, sweeping behind Mum in the kitchen and pressing in against her neck. Why are you grown so rude? What change is this, Sweet love?

Dramatic man. A laugh from Mum.

Dad again: Methought a serpent eat my heart away, and you sat smiling at his cruel prey.

She breaks free from the bodies and tries to draw air into her lungs. Ridiculous, this is all so ridiculous. Little things like who she is and what she’s been through, all bearing some weight.

She doesn’t mean to go far, just away. The corridor beyond the Great Hall is cooler against her flushed skin. Her pulse is a mess—loud in her ears, louder in her throat. She leans a hand against the stone wall, trying to pull herself together.

Behind her, laughter floats up from the courtyard steps. Zabini’s voice, then Nott’s. Pansy chides someone, and then snow, pittering to the ground. There is a crunch beneath shoes, closer now, and she looks up.

Malfoy is standing in the dark, watching her. He’s got a cigarette between his fingers, and despite the haze of alcohol or the events running through her head, she frowns at him.

“Those are awful,” she says quietly, eyes on the little white stick burning in his long fingers.

He takes another step closer, and she sees the corner of his mouth twitch. Then he flicks it to the ground, not needing her to explain further. The smoke curls up and then goes invisible as the ash turns cold.

“I don’t, usually,” he murmurs, lips parted. The moon and flames flickering distantly along the wall sconces catch his cheeks—she sees they’re pink. He catches her staring at him, blowing out a laugh as he looks down and amends, “Often.”

“I know,” she says, surprising herself. “I mean, I think I’d smell it on you.”

Malfoy hums thoughtfully, then looks past her back towards the corridor that houses the party on the other side of the door.

“They’re not following me,” she explains, guessing at his curiosity.

His eyes flick back to hers. “I’m pushing my luck.”

“To what?”

“Steal a bit more of your time,” he answers. His eyes narrow. “Fuck it, I suppose.”

“You’re being very…” She trails off, unsure of what she wants to say. Telling him that he reminds her of how he used to be, a bit rude—more prone to satisfying his own whims. But she’s already said so much tonight, spat things out that had no place being uttered.

Malfoy looks down at his feet, then focuses on some distance point, smiling at the possibilities of what she might say. “You weren’t the only one to have a drink or two.”

Hermione gives a tight little laugh, and almost immediately regrets it. Her head is buzzing again. “Right. Well. You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?”

She shakes her head, wincing, why did she say that? She refrains from pinching her eyes shut. That fence of sobriety feels less like a balance and more like a free fall now. She rolls her lips together, regretting every sip she took, not thinking he’d be so chummy with her tonight.

If he’s offended or put off by her response, he is remarkably adept at schooling his features into that neutral look. He glances back at her, doing that half smile he’s fond of.

“It’s really anyone’s guess,” he says.

She looks away because watching him is making her feel strange and hears him as he steps closer. It is quiet, just snow and the distant sound of his friends and, further still, the party she’s run from.

Malfoy shifts, weight settling over the icy ground, and continues. “I’m sorry I ruined your night.”

Her eyes cut to look at her hands, trembling in the cold. Right, that’s why she is out here. She exhales, a little laugh.

“It’s not your fault. I’ve—I don’t really know what it is that is…wrong with me.”

This is too personal, too much. But it’s so easy out here—with him, with the silence, in the faint scent of winter and cigarette smoke.

“I can’t be who I used to be. And I think I’m mad at that. I think I’m mad at many things.”

She glances back at Malfoy, who stares at her like he’s giving her space to speak. And that’s a selfish thought, like he’s doing all this for her. But right now, she feels selfish, wrong, and drunk. Her mind flits from thought to thought, each one dusting before she can get it off her tongue. And finally, the truth—what she couldn’t say all this time—jumps clean off.

“I’m a bit of a burden these days. It’s something I should fix for myself.”

Malfoy frowns. She’s tottering and frankly well and pissed, with the truth, and the evening, and his smile in the forest, his cheek against hers on the dance floor. The words curl under the night sky to be met with his silence. It isn’t self deprecation, or maybe it is. No matter, she’s purged it all, can’t take the words back.

“Sit,” he murmurs.

“What?”

He tilts his head towards an arch on the wall, one of the many where she, Harry and Ron used to talk logistics. She goes because she has no reason not to. Malfoy follows her slowly, and she’s so focused on her shaking hands and everything she can’t un-say, that she hardly realises he’s kneeling before his hand slips beneath her dress, touching her ankle.

She shivers and jerks at the touch, looking first from side to side, then down at him by her knees.

“What’re you–?”

“You’re wobbly.” His other hand meets around the clasp of her heel as he starts to slip it off.

She flushes, stupidly, mind whirling and sputters. “You don’t need to do that–”

“I know,” he says firmly. “Let me.”

The first buckle comes undone with a quiet click. His fingers are deft, warm where they brush against her chilled skin.

Hermione tries not to shift, but she’s already too aware—of him kneeling by her knees, of the stone pressing into her spine, of how exposed this all feels despite the layers of clothing.

The shoe slips off, and the relief is instant.

He does the same to the other, slower this time, thumb grazing the bone of her ankle like she is something delicate as he loosens the strap.

She watches the top of his head. His hair is a mess now—too much of it falling over his brow, and she wonders if he’s been standing out here long, tugging at it. She wonders if he had wanted to stay inside, if he hoped for another song. He doesn’t speak, neither does she, and before long, he sets both shoes next to her.

When he rises, it’s quiet.

Hermione draws her feet up onto the ledge, curling them beneath her. She doesn’t know what to do with her hands. She folds them tightly in her lap.

“You’re not a burden.”

She lets herself meet his eyes, finding the silver slanted in his narrowed gaze. “I think I just needed to get that out. I wasn’t looking for pity. You don’t have to say that, Malfoy.”

“I know,” he repeats, quieter. “Let me.”

Hermione’s throat burns. She tips her head back against the stone, eyes on the stars she can’t quite make out.

Ginny rounds the corner, immediately catching sight of them. Her eyes flick between Hermione, curled up barefoot on the ledge, and Malfoy standing beside her, still and unsmiling.

She arches her brow. Hermione groans softly, covering her face with one hand.

Malfoy, predictably, says nothing and Ginny, to her credit, doesn’t pry, but tilts her head, eyes narrowing with amusement. “Be glad I didn’t let Ron come after you like he wanted to.”

Hermione peeks at her through her fingers. “Ginny.”

“What?” She glances at Malfoy and motions with her hands. “Hello to you, ferret.”

“Weasley,” he returns in a low timbre, the smallest upturn of his lips before he glances away again, focusing on the dark of the sky.

Ginny catches it and grins, victorious. She turns to Hermione.

“We’re headed up,” she says. “Just thought you might want to come and see them before they leave.”

Hermione nods, slowly, the weight in her limbs creeping back. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Ginny glances between them again, her tone softening. “Take your time.”

She disappears behind the wide door, the sound of her footsteps fading into nothing. His eyes return, watching her. She stares back, trying to guess at what he wants, or what he is thinking. Alone again with Malfoy. Isn’t she lucky?

A beat passes, then distant: “Oi, Draco!”

Another voice joins it; Zabini, by the lilt of it. “He’s fucking hogging the light.”

He huffs, annoyed but somehow fond. His eyes linger on Hermione, who still hasn’t moved.

“They don’t know how to shut up,” he mutters. He snaps and a little flame lights from his index finger. “Or, evidently, remember first-year party tricks.”

Hermione smiles, watching the flame flicker before he vanishes it. “They’re waiting for you.”

He doesn’t argue, just straightens quietly, adjusting his sleeves. 

Softly, “Have a nice night, Granger.”

Hermione nods. She watches him turn, watches the navy hem of his robes, almost onyx now, as he disappears back to his friends for the night. When she finally slips her shoes back on and walks up toward the Gryffindor common room, Hermione pauses on the stairs and tilts her nose to her shoulder. There, she breathes in. She smells like him.

And her feet ache less.

Chapter Text

Dear Minister for Magic Shacklebolt,

I wanted to thank you for taking the time to speak with me at the Remembrance Gala. I was hesitant to attend, but I am thankful that I did. It was a pleasure to see everyone—my friends, members of the Order, and my peers, who deserved one night to celebrate and remember how far we’ve come already. So, thank you for that.

Please forgive me if this is overstepping, but I wondered if I might be able to ask a simple favour. Lavender Brown was my roommate for nearly all of my time at Hogwarts. As I’m sure you are aware, she was killed by Fenrir Greyback. It is my understanding that he is currently incarcerated at Azkaban.

I would like the opportunity to speak with him. If for nothing other than closure. I hope you can consider my request and seek your discretion. It is a private desire to reclaim my agency and make sense of one of the atrocities we’ve been left with.

Thank you,

Hermione J Granger

⨳

Harry,

I did not keep anything from you with explicit malicious intent. I’ve told you that it’s hard to write, and frankly, my potions partnership with Malfoy was not the most immediate thing on my mind. It doesn’t mean we’re no longer friends, nor that I don’t want to share things with you.

I’m just having a hard time discerning what is noteworthy and what is simply passing. Thanks for talking to Ron for me.

I’ll tell you everything at Christmas. I think Ginny will like the green one best—you’re right.

Love,

Hermione

⨳

Warden Yarrow Lillypilly,

Thank you for responding so quickly to mine and Minister Shacklebolt’s inquiry regarding a supervised visit to Azkaban. I appreciate your prompt response, especially with the upcoming holiday.

December is perfectly fine for a visit. I have a break from school and can come any day, except Christmas, due to previous plans.

Please know I am flexible.

H. J. Granger

⨳

“Secret admirer?”

She looks up from her response to find Malfoy tilting his head inquisitively. Her eyes drift behind him to the cauldron, bubbling steadily.

“No, I–”

It’s not that she doesn’t want to tell Malfoy about her plan to confront Greyback for information on his condition. Rather, as the faint scent of potions lingers in the air, she knows he’ll do his very best to convince her not to do it. Her fingers trace the edge of the parchments on her desk, deciding it’s best to let him in on the plan after the fact.

“I was trying to prepare for the holidays. I haven’t been too great at sending letters, so I figured Christmas is as good an excuse as any.”

Malfoy nods, and she’s prepared to push all of her missives away in favour of kissing him as their routine normally calls for around this time, but he surprises her, walking around the desk and sitting next to her.

“What are your plans for the holiday?”

“Oh,” she flusters. Her hands prickle and go cold from nerves, so she moves, sweeping the papers into a neat stack that she then taps against the desk a few times. “I’m just going to the Burrow.”

“For the entire break?”

“Yes.” She shifts in the silence, and she peeks at him, just a glance, to find him watching her as if he is waiting for more. “I could go to Australia but…”

“Australia?” he repeats.

“My parents, they’re—that’s where they are. And I could go visit, I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to get approved for a Portkey, but they don’t remember me. So.”

Malfoy’s lips part before he looks away.

“I didn’t know that. I thought…I mean, you’re—” Malfoy starts then stops. “I would’ve thought the healers or Ministry would have stepped in to assist by now.”

She waves a hand, trying to usher the conversation to its end entirely.

“They did, or tried to, I guess, but...” She trails off.

Malfoy leans forward, face so open and curious, like he just needs her to say it. “But what?”

“But they’re Muggles, Malfoy,” she says briskly. It hardly makes sense that she has to explain this aloud, but he looks so earnest, chin tilted and staring at her. Hermione bites her lip and turns away, overwhelmed. “Too much time passed. There were…more important things that required the immediate attention of the Ministry.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Malfoy’s face pinches, and he leans back, brow furrowed and frowning. “You’re—you’re you.”

Hermione can’t help the scoff, a rough tug of air slipping from her throat. “That’s just how it works.”

Malfoy’s voice is harsher now, less composed than she’s used to. “What about Potter? Can’t he—shouldn’t he be trying to assist you?”

“Harry is in his first year of Auror training. There’s little he can do.”

Her response sounds almost defensive, but she doesn’t mean to be harsh. It’s just hard…discussing this, pretending she doesn’t wonder all the same things. Malfoy’s face softens all the same at her tone, and her eyes flick down to watch as he balls his hands into a fist.

“I’m sorry,” he says finally, so sincere and taut with the ache of someone who wants to fix it and can’t, that her throat thickens.

“It’s fine,” she says, just to fill the silence. “It happened a long time ago.”

He makes a sound, a tut of disbelief, maybe. “That doesn’t–”

“What are you doing for Christmas?” she asks, trying to change the subject now that he’s decided they talk.

“Ah.” Malfoy straightens in his seat, uncrossing his arms to press his palms flat against the table. “I was planning to visit my mother.”

“Of course,” she says, nodding.

She bends to put her papers into her bag. When she straightens, Malfoy faces her, forearm braced on the table, the other gripping the back of her chair. Her attention flickers to his fingers so close. For all that his proximity and his conversation startle her, her limbs ache and stretch, an elongation into him. She leans as if tugged on a leash, the warmth of his exhales so close to reach.

“I was…” His eyes drift to her lips, the bottom she’s pulled between her teeth to gnaw on as he speaks, before he focuses just past her. She watches him swallow, shutting his eyes tightly before he opens them again. Then his words come quickly, one on top of the next. “I was wondering if you would be open to a visit.”

Her face scrunches because—

“A visit?” she asks.

His head jerks. “Over the holidays.”

“From…whom?”

“Me,” he rasps before he takes a breath. His eyes flick down to hers, staring, and he says, “I was wondering if you’d be open to a visit from me.”

He sounds so formal. Try as she might to quiet the thoughts, part of her drifts in imagination to what he might be like if he were to court someone.

She exhales some air and the question. “You want to see me?”

“Yes,” he says slowly. “I thought that the distance and time apart might exacerbate some of your symptoms.”

There’s a fine line when talking to Malfoy. She often has to remind herself of where all her limbs are, mind fuzzy with the drift of his breath and the way his lips shape syllables, slowly then, an elbow creeping closer or her head leaning in. Her body goes before her mind catches up. Now, for instance, when heat flares at the innocence of his voice—the explanation in simple words—it takes conscious effort to sit back and make sense of his words.

Her voice is quiet when she manages a response. “But I’ll be at the Burrow.”

“Well, no,” he responds. “I didn’t know you’d be spending it there. I think Weasley and Potter would murder me if I showed up.”

Hermione blows out a brittle breath and looks away from him. It is just some hypothetical offer made to ensure she can’t later guilt him with any periods of losing time or complaints about pain. She should know this, and yet, hurt cinders bright in the very centre of her gut.

“Right,” she grumbles, wishing she hadn’t brought up Christmas at all, “so you wouldn’t.”

“No, I would,” he says, and she glances to watch him run a hand down his face. “I just won’t if you think it’ll ruin your hols.”

Hermione’s heart stutters in her chest.

“Should I write to you at the Manor then?” she asks after a quiet moment, trying to eviscerate every scrap of nerves that claw along her throat. Her entire face hurts from how thoroughly she’s bumbling the conversation. “Perhaps when a…need arises.”

“I won’t be staying with my family,” he says. “But yes, wherever I am—you can write and I’ll come.”

“Oh.” She flushes at the thought of him showing up like her caller if she only asks. The truth is more clinical, but it is easier to pretend when he goes and says things like this. She wills her brain to focus, please, focus. “But your mother–”

“I’ll visit her, but I’m not–” His face slides from pain to impassivity, the curl of his lips softening as his mouth goes flat. “I’d rather not stay there,” he decides, landing on the words with a faint nod. His hand drifts from the back of her chair to muss his hair before he props his temple against his knuckle. “The last real memories involve Greyback and Voldemort, so I’d prefer to be anywhere else.”

A knot of unease twists in her stomach, but beneath it, her surety hardens at the mention of Greyback. Perhaps when she talks to the prisoner, she'll be able to uncover the gaps in the night Malfoy had been changed. She might uncover what runes lay etched in his dark mark, solve the mystery of what not even Snape could find. She feels her spine straighten, and knows she will. If not for him, then for herself, too. Yet, the risk of failure looms large. If she returns with nothing, Malfoy's condition may deteriorate beyond help, leaving his fate uncertain and haunted by a darkness he did not choose. The urgency to succeed presses heavily upon her.

Then, maybe, Malfoy will see that she only means to help. Greyback must know something, there has to be an explanation for this.

She shakes her head slightly and questions, “Won’t you get lonely?”

Malfoy’s head shifts, pressing his mouth against his hand. She can see the indent of a dimple as he smothers his smile. “I’ll be fine.”

“Of course, I don’t mean to assume–” A thought occurs to her. “Well, there’s an inn nearby. The Ottery.”

His head cocks, palms resting flat again as he inspects her. “In Devon?”

“Yes,” she blurts. She tries to focus on some distant point just past him, truly studying the wall of the empty Potions lab and biting down the embarrassment of her suggestion. “If you didn’t want to go home. I know they’ve got a Floo, and if you wanted to go from there. It’d be close.”

Malfoy remains quiet, then nods when she looks over at him.

“That works, yes. I can stay there. Perhaps the proximity would be enough–”

“No,” she clarifies quickly. “I don’t– I mean, if you still wanted to meet up, it might just be easier if you were there. To get in contact.”

“Yes,” he says. She waits for him to go on, but he doesn’t.

“Just don’t feel like you have to,” Hermione amends with a hot face. “I don’t want to ruin your holidays either–”

“Granger,” he tuts, like she's being ridiculous. His mouth tilts, a laugh caught between breath and sound, suggesting more than he's saying aloud.

Need surges, but how embarrassing for her to read into that grin. She turns away, looking off so he can’t see her.

Malfoy once admitted that he felt the pain too, that whatever worked against her rationale at the very least also tested his resolve. So she can see, logically, why he might make this suggestion. Why being with her, however brief, over the break would help him too.

But when his hand brushes her jaw, and he turns her face towards his; when their eyes connect in the little sliver of space of where they sit, side by side; when he leans forward, pulling her to him and their lips meet, the little exhale of air that breaks through his mouth and she swallows down feels a lot like relief.

Warm satisfaction churns in her gut, with their plan and the conspiratorial way that their bodies lean into one another.

⨳

“Missus Granger, there you are!” bellows Roland the Rotund from his frame, as Hermione attempts to slip past the narrow hallway.

She stops, her mind still tugged toward the pleasant prospect of finally ridding herself of the letters weighing down her bag. “Good day to you,” she says, not quite accustomed to conversation with him.

Beyond the closed door, Kgosi II of Mapungubwe shifts within his gilt frame, the beads across his chest clicking faintly. “Is this the one of whom you spoke?”

“The very same,” Roland declares. “Missus Granger, we are beset! Beset, I tell you!”

Hermione frowns. “Beset? With me?”

“Yes, you,” Kgosi says gravely. “There is an object in the closet-between, a supposed and most treacherous wand, that refuses to conduct itself with propriety. It scratches. It mutters. It demands your attendance.”

Roland leans forward, his jowls quivering. “An undisciplined instrument, Madam! In my day, a wand knew its station—at the feast table, resting in a loyal wizard’s fist, not rattling the joinery like some common vermin.”

Kgosi’s dark eyes narrow. “It has not ceased since it was returned. I have endured sieges with greater quiet.”

“This is most irregular,” Roland huffs, puffing up as though ready to mount a charge. “I, for one, cannot be expected to sleep with such a clatter in the air. My digestion suffers.”

“Missus Granger,” Kgosi concludes, “you will remedy this disturbance. Immediately.”

Hermione’s stomach twists, unease furrowing her brow. “You’ll excuse my confusion, but I have my wand.”

“So it would seem you actually have two,” Roland corrects, raising a finger as though delivering an incontrovertible truth. “Missus Granger, this—this dastardly miscreant of a magical conduit will have no others. It clamours for you alone, and frankly, it is most indecorous.”

Kgosi inclines his head in slow, regal agreement. “It calls your name, though not in words. Do not keep it waiting.”

With a reluctant step, Hermione crosses to the door, unlatches it, and is met with a sharp thrum from within. The wand rattles against the shelves in a feverish rhythm, a plucked string of discord as she closes the gap.

The moment her fingers close around the wood, it stills against her palm, only offering a toot that makes her teeth grind. A faint, residual vibration lingers against her skin as she curses her luck.

She slides it into her bag beside her own wand, the vibration dying away, and mutters a parting “Thank you for the warning” to the portraits. Then she turns on her heel, letters still needing posting, and now an extra passenger tucked far too close at her side.

⨳

The trains are due to arrive at eleven.

By ten, she’s fully packed and pacing in her dorm. Lara has warmed more to small talk, and Hermione knows that the tumultuous burden of their relationship is heavily borne of the way she spent the first half of the school year cooped up and evading conversation. Still, she tries now to learn more about her.

When the topics fade off and there isn’t anything more to discuss, Hermione says she’s going for a walk before they plan to be seated for several hours. They smile at one another and say their goodbyes, Hermione not anticipating seeing her unless they happen upon one another on the train.

Hermione leaves her belongings behind, knowing they’ll be brought down for her, and grabs her purse. She’s already changed out of her robes in favour of a large sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. She thinks she stole them from her mum a long time ago, when her hips had begun to widen and she had to stop shopping in junior’s apparel. They’re well-worn and comfortable, the type of denim that goes forgotten, soft where it shields her legs from winter’s bitter edge.

She doesn’t know where she’s going, just that the Tower is stuffy and she’d like to get out. She passes people giving tearful goodbyes in the Common Room, trying not to judge them.

She winds up in an empty corridor, the faint echo of her footsteps bouncing off the stone. Somewhere far off, a suitcase thumps down a staircase, followed by laughter and a muffled farewell. She breathes easier here, away from the crowded hands clamouring in tears elsewhere in the castle.

The sound reaches her first, rowdy voices spilling into the corridor, the boom of laughter that belongs to boys in a knot. One voice in particular rings out, cut with a bark of amusement.

Her head peeks around the corner to watch Theodore Nott, all wide grins and pantomimed actions, say, “—chaps got his fucking boot in it and I’m there, hauling on his arse–”

Another roar of laughter follows, deep and unrestrained, echoing off the stone. Hermione’s stomach tightens with that old, adolescent wariness prickling along her skin—the instinct to avoid the gauntlet of teenage boys. The air sits heavy, nerves pressing hotly at her ribs.

He steps back at the same moment she makes the decision to turn around, go the other way. He still smiles, huffing the end of a laugh as his grey eyes narrow. His head tilts, blond strands bobbing with the motion, and then quickly turns in her direction.

Hermione backs a step, now feeling silly for eavesdropping, especially being so quickly caught by Malfoy. He must think she is insane.

Immediately, she turns around and heads in the opposite direction. The nerves cling like static to her skin, crackling faintly with each hurried step. She’s only taken six when the sound of his stride closes in, eating the space between them far too fast.

“Granger.” His voice is low, almost chiding, as though she’s been caught sneaking out. She presses both hands to her cheeks then blows out a breath, dropping them and turning on her heel to face him. He carries a box in his hand, small and easily concealed.

“Oh. Hi.” She swallows, trying to keep her face neutral. She glances behind him, furrowing her brow. “I wasn’t– I haven’t gone and followed you. What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be–”

He doesn’t answer. He keeps walking until he’s close enough for the heat of him to press against the cool air between them. His eyes flick to either side of the corridor, a subtle sweep, before he tugs her by the elbow into a shallow recess in the wall.

“Malfoy?” she begins, but she quiets because he’s smiling, sort of, and his hand, it’s warm as it slides to the back of her neck, then his mouth finds hers.

Her hands fist his sweater, frumping it in her grip as he pushes her gently into the wall. Her trainers squeak against the stone as a rush of air leaves her chest. Surprise parts her lips, but it is languid, the way that he completely distils her thoughts. Her breath is quick, mind turned to mash, and he is steady in his grip.

His head tilts, and hers follows, and she doesn’t know how long Malfoy kisses her against the cold stone, mind a shallow thing of breath and buzzing, just that she lets him. When he pulls back, his exhale skims her cheek.

He stares at her, thumb passing along her jaw before he glances away, huffing down at their shoes.

“Sorry,” he murmurs. "I should ask-"

She shakes her head. “That’s…really, that’s fine.”

He rolls his lips together and then his eyes flick back to hers.

“Write to me.”

“Yes.” Her lips are still tingling, her mind unwilling to restart. “Yeah, uh. I will.”

His gaze lingers for another beat, then he lets go. He takes a step backwards, still peering down at her. His eyes narrow.

“What?” she asks.

“A little something,” he says, and his hand extends to wipe just beneath her lip. Her eyes drift to see the faint hue of her lipcolour along his skin. His hum is low, amused. “There.”

“Thank you,” she stutters. She hates it.

He nods in acknowledgement. His thumb drifts to his mouth, absently brushing the mark across his lower lip. His eyes linger on her a beat longer, then he eases back, leaving the space between them to grow cold.

“I’ll see you, Granger.”

Just like that, he’s moving down the hall, hands in his pockets, head lowered as if he’s just another student on his way out for the holidays.

“The fuck did you disappear off to? Appearing back like a ghoul,” Theodore says as Malfoy reappears around the corner, then there is only the sound of rustling and a pained and loud “Watch it!”

Hermione stays where she is until the sound of their footsteps fades, her pulse still kicking up a drumbeat, her sweater collar smelling faintly of his cologne.

She doesn’t find him on the train, not that she’s looking consciously, but it’s hard not to. Ginny pulls her toward the middle when they get on, and she’s soon surrounded by her friends again as they excitedly go over their plans.

She bets he’s tucked in toward the front, probably where the Slytherins all normally sit. She doesn’t have any logical reason to go prowling, and why should she? Her lips are only just softening back to pink, still faintly buzzing from where he’d been.

Her bag presses uncomfortably into her hip, so she slides it into her lap as the train pulls off from the stop. The motion jostles something inside, heavier than she remembers packing.

Frowning, she tugs at the zip and parts the fabric just enough to peek in. On top of her stack of letters sits a small tin, the deep green enamel polished to a shine. It’s not hers.

She glances around. Ginny leans forward in conversation with Neville, her voice rising over the clatter of the tracks. Dean sits across from her with Seamus, the pair trying to organise a game of Exploding Snap. No one is paying her any mind.

Hermione pulls it out and turns it over in her hands. The label reads Fortnum & Mason, and she huffs out a soft laugh—of course. She pries the lid open just enough to catch the buttery, spiced scent of shortbread, chocolate-dipped sweetness rising like an afterthought. In the very centre lies a delicate scrap of paper, folded once.

If I don’t see you before Christmas.

He hasn’t signed it. Her thumb slides over the swirls of his script before she bites her cheek. She closes the tin carefully and tucks it back into her bag, her fingers lingering on the smooth metal before she lets go. The weight of it sits warm in her lap for the rest of the ride, a quiet, solid reminder that somewhere in another carriage, Malfoy is thinking of her.

⨳

The familiarity of the Burrow has the power to overwhelm. Passed from warm embrace to warm embrace, the Weasleys envelop her, tugging her back into the fold. She can almost ignore the way her skin seems to blister and itch because she is happy to see all the smiling faces. When she gets to the end of the line, it is Arthur grinning down at her. He touches her shoulder, and she doesn’t even frown when he pulls her into one of the quick, tight fatherly hugs. Hermione watches as he leans back, moving his hand and pulling something from his overcoat pocket.

“This arrived a few hours ago,” Arthur says in a low voice.

She glances down at the letter he has held in his freckled hands, though his thumb covers part of the return address, the name of the sender is clear. Of course, her response from Warden Lillypilly would come here; it makes sense. She had anticipated being here to receive it, ahead enough to curb any questions, and her heart thumps treacherously beneath her breast as she exhales a defeated sigh.

Arthur turns, sliding his hand over her shoulder and tugging her away from where everyone is razzing Ginny and Harry about ‘what comes next’. Hermione feels sick, found out and guilty, as he takes her into the kitchen. Guilt rises sharply, metallic on her tongue. She feels found out.

In the kitchen, he releases her and lays the letter on the counter. Around them, Molly’s bowls float and clatter, the scent of roasting meat and herbs thick in the air.

“It’s not–” she starts.

Arthur holds up a hand. “Hermione, you do not need to explain a thing to me. None of you kids do.”

She swallows, still feeling the heat of tears pricking her vision. His hand drops as his brow furrows.

“Thanks, Mr Weasley.”

“I just want to make sure you’re okay,” he continues, tilting his head down like he might meet her eye. “That’s all I wanted to know.”

“I’m okay,” she exhales. Behind them, laughter rises, and they’re both quiet for a moment. “I just—I wanted to speak with–”

Again, the hand. “Like I said, no need to explain a thing to me. If you need a ride, I’m happy to go with you.”

“I can’t ask that of you.”

“You didn’t.” He smiles, the lines beneath his eyes deepening. Funny, she thinks, how people age.

He palms the letter again and passes it to her. Her thumb has only just slid beneath the seal when her thoughts drift, wondering if there is something Arthur can help with.

“Actually, I am having some trouble with a wand.”

“Your own?”

“No, well, it’s–” she starts when Ron comes in, Harry in tow. She slides the note into her pocket before their eyes can snag on it, but their attention appears singular.

“Abduction,” is all Ron says before bending down and throwing Hermione over his shoulder.

“Ronald!” she yells, smacking fruitlessly against his back. Her pleas go unanswered.

Outside, a broom waits—three, actually, though Ron doesn’t give her a choice. She’s plunked unceremoniously in front of him, legs dangling until she hooks them over the handle. The cold night air snaps against her cheeks as they rise, the rooftop of the Burrow shrinking beneath them. Laughter carries over the wind, Ginny and Harry streaking ahead, weaving lazy loops through the clear night sky.

“What’d Dad want?” Ron asks when they’re at a nice coasting height, though the chill of winter bites hard. Hermione’s eyes break open, and she glances down, which only makes her stomach flip.

“He had some of my mail,” she manages to rasp. She closes her eyes again and asks, “Shouldn’t you be focusing on the–”

He drops them a good four metres through the black air, laughing as she screams in the freefall.

She imagines wringing his neck for the entirety of the flight. Soon enough, the pub appears below like a beacon with a crooked chimney puffing pale smoke and windows spilling golden light onto the cobbled street. Ron tips them into a gentle dive, and they land with the satisfying crunch of boots on stone, still breathless from the flight.

She rounds on him instantly, smacking him with her hat. “You gigantic oaf!”

“Ouch, ‘mione. You know I’d never let you fall.”

“You just made us fall for fun!”

“Not seriously,” he grumbles, rubbing his arm where she’d swatted him good. He wraps an arm around her shoulder and tugs her next to him. “Missed ya.”

“You just saw me,” she gripes, but she lets him hug her, mostly because she would’ve killed for them to show a little affection all those years ago. And maybe, she missed him too.

As her heart dulls to a normal rate in her chest, she finds herself smiling at him, even if he is dim to work her nerves. Glad they’d moved past the Remembrance Gala, she hopes that they can return to something like normal. Ron tells another joke as they watch Harry and Ginny land, and Hermione’s chin tilts away, glancing across the street.

The Ottery Inn sits in the dark like something forgotten, a place left to rot quietly beneath the firm thumb of nostalgia. Smaller than the grand thing she’d built in her childhood mind, it sags in places, its roofline stooped. The blackness of the night presses up against it, pooling thickly in the corners, climbing the walls until the shadows blanket every window.

The sign above the door is almost grotesque in its stubbornness—a relic from the seventies in blaring Dutch disco font, all bubble curves and faded tangerine paint, as if it had been imported from some doomed dancehall and nailed there for eternity. It glows faintly under a single buzzing bulb, trapped in the amber of another decade.

She is embarrassed to have suggested such a place to Malfoy, and imagines the way his eyes will widen if he does decide to check in. But then the image shifts—his long limbs sprawled across the narrow bed upstairs, the muscle of his back flexing under a too-short shower spout, muttering a curse when the water runs cold. The thought lingers longer than it should until her chin lifts almost without her meaning to, gaze dragging up the face of the building.

Her eyes trace each window in turn. They’re orange- and fuchsia-curtained, but not completely; small slits of glass glint back at her, the way eyes might catch torchlight in the woods. She tells herself he’s not there—he must be with his mother—but the thought doesn’t stick.

Something in her chest goes taut, breath slowing, every sense straining toward that façade. The longer she stares, the more the rest of the world fades, Ron’s voice a distant rumble at her side. She can almost convince herself she sees movement behind one of the upstairs panes, the faintest shift in the darkness.

Ron tugs her backwards, and they turn into the pub behind them. Hermione glances once more over her shoulder, appetite unsated, before she lets herself be sealed indoors. Inside, the warmth swallows them whole, and the night truly begins.

The pub is full enough that they end up huddled around a table, Ron and Harry lauding tales of their Auror training. Hermione folds in on herself, sipping a cinnamon-spiced butterbeer and licking the foam from her lips as they express frustration and excitement.

“You know, I have to ask,” Ron says, eyes set on Hermione, and Ginny groans.

“What?” Hermione laughs.

“I mean, I talked to Harry, but I still don’t get it.”

“Really, Ron? Can’t we have one night?” Ginny says.

“Hermione did say she’d explain it all,” Harry supplies, and his girlfriend shoots him a frustrated look.

“Oh,” says Hermione. “Well, are you talking about the dance?”

“Yeah,” says Ron.

“I just– I think it’s silly to–” she swallows, trying to find a way to explain it. “I don’t really know. It feels silly to harbour so much resentment.”

“But Malfoy? Shit, I’d get if you were into Nott, he’s not so–”

She bites her cheek. “I’m not into Malfoy.”

“You were with him–”

“I’m not,” she says, flustered now. “It was just a dance.”

“Okay, just a dance,” Harry responds, seemingly satisfied.

But Ron isn’t. “Don’t you remember all the things he did to us? Everything he said?”

“I haven’t forgotten.”

“But still you–”

“A dance is hardly anything,” Ginny says. She knows, of course, that it hadn’t been just a dance—the whole of Hogwarts knows what happened earlier that year—but Hermione is grateful to have someone on her side.

Ron grumbles, a frown sitting on his lips. “Just be careful, yeah?”

Hermione’s voice is brittle, muffled against the noise of the pub surrounding them. “He wouldn’t hurt me.”

“He already has,” Ron says, leaning back. “Apparently, I’m the only one who remembers that.” He swallows the rest of his glass before saying, “I need to take a leak.”

She watches the broad lines of his shoulder as he turns to disappear into the crowd. Ginny bumps her hip sympathetically.

“I’ll talk to him,” Harry says after a moment, nodding at Hermione as their eyes meet.

When they ride back, she resolves to keep her mouth shut and focus on the twinkling lights beneath them. Ron stays silent, a mercy she’s thankful for until they find their feet back on the ground.

The earth is soft beneath her steps, the walkway cleared of snow and ice, but she hears him clear his throat, so she glances back with the front door warm beneath her palm.

“Hermione,” he says quietly.

She inspects Ron in the dark night, his orange hair curling behind his ears, his jaw hard, even hidden behind his growing beard.

“I meant what I said,” she murmurs.

Distantly, she can hear Harry and Ginny, racing and looping in the sky, still high on their brooms. She looks up, but the cloud coverage and light of the moon don’t illuminate their figures. Ron doesn’t respond, and when she looks down, she can see his face scrutinising her gaze. He shakes his head faintly, eyes unmoving.

“Sometimes I think that I’ll never know anyone better than you and Harry,” he says quietly. “I don’t know if it’s because of everything we went through, or if it’s just something I made up in my head, but…I feel that way. Like I’ll never be as close to someone else as I am to the two of you.”

Hermione’s mind drifts; Shell Cottage, Ron’s hand cold in hers, that bleak stretch of days when the world felt like it was tipping into nothingness. Hadn’t she thought the same? At their core, they were bound together by things no one else would ever fully understand.

“That hasn’t changed,” she says.

Ron studies her for a long moment. “Then tell me the truth. Are you…is there something going on with you and Malfoy?”

Her breath stutters for half a beat, the tin in her bag presses against her hip like a brand.

“No,” she whispers.

“I can handle a lot of things,” he starts, “but watching you get close to someone who—” He stops, jaw tightening. “Someone who used to treat you the way he did…”

Her throat is tight, but she forces calm into her tone. “I’m not.”

He looks at her for another long beat, then exhales through his nose. “Okay.”

“I love you, Ron,” she murmurs. “Thanks for…thanks for caring.”

His mouth opens, and because they know each other, she knows he wants to say more. Then he breathes out and glances away. “Love you too, ‘mione.”

She turns before he can say more, the warm air from the Burrow spilling over her as she steps inside, leaving Ron and his doubt outside in the cold. She hopes her lies wither with the frost.

⨳

To Missus Hermione Jean Granger,

You are hereby granted permission to attend an interview with the aforementioned inmate, Fenrir Greyback, on Thursday, 24 December 1998, at 10:00 a.m., to be conducted within the confines of Azkaban Prison.

Access has been authorised solely on the recommendation of Minister Shacklebolt; this allowance shall not be construed as precedent for future requests.

You will present yourself at the Ministry-approved dock no later than fifteen minutes prior to departure, bearing the enclosed authorisation parchment. Attendance outside the designated date and time will not be permitted.

In accordance with prison regulations, the interview will be conducted under constant supervision, and no physical contact with the prisoner will be permitted.

Warden Y. Lillypilly

Ministry Holding Cells, Level Ten

Chapter Text

Snow veils her vision, a blur of sun-bright white. Sock-padded and warm, her winter boots crunch footprints into the icy path as she trudges behind Charlie and George. The brothers pass jibes and jokes back and forth, tossing inclusions over their shoulders to rope Hermione into the conversation.

Sleep hasn’t come easily since they arrived, and often, she is among the early risers of the Weasley brood. Charlie is strict in his routine—rising at four to begin his workouts, the set schedule of habit ingrained in him from long days in Romania. Hermione tip-toed down the worn steps around five to find him moving quietly in twilight. He gave her one of those familiar grins begetting his ancestry, made her coffee, black and astringent, strong enough to ‘put some hair on your chest’ as he stoked the flames of the fire he’d started. They’ve never been much for conversation, but it was an easy comfort in the way he navigated the kitchen with her perched on a stool, warm and polite in conversation, so obvious in the way he still thought of her as a girl.

The next to arrive was typically George, who hardly slept since the final battle, eyes supporting twin bags of blueish hue that he covered with a glamour, and everyone was kind enough to never ask about. The grief that radiates off of him is suffocating, but really, who is she to judge? So she settles into the familiarity and lets the dawn pass with each of them, relegated to the routine of poor sleep hygiene.

Charlie treats them like his whelps, clapping two big hands together and ushering them into their winter coats. That's how she got here now, walking behind the two brothers through the woods, the sun fulgent through a canopy of alder and ash. Her breath comes misty as her lungs try to expand, keeping stride with both of them.

“Where’s the destination?” George asks once they’ve covered a good distance, sparing a glance back at Hermione. She tries to smile, but she doesn’t think she has to pretend with him, not how she might with Harry or Ron.

“Through here,” Charlie’s gruff voice responds, spoken forward as he pushes past a branch. He holds it until Hermione passes and watches when it flings back. “See?”

When they emerge in the clearing, the morning sun has only just begun to scintillate off the pond. The earth is soft beneath their feet as they pad into the opening, Hermione glancing at Charlie in question. Nestled in the tall grass just before the foliage turns to the wet dirt of the shore, her eyes catch on tufts of dark grey fur moving in the ground. She steps a bit closer, breath pinned in her throat as she makes out the line of a long ear, flickering up in attention at their arrival.

“A rabbit,” she whispers, eyes still trained on the nest. An eye black as coal blinks once at her, alert but drowsy.

“Found her this morning on my walk,” Charlie says quietly, crouching low to the earth.

“Her?” she asks.

“Look,” he instructs in a whisper. Her attention wavers a touch, looking more intently at the nest to see small bundles, curled and writhing, burrowing deeper into the warmth of the larger hare.

“I didn’t realise they had litters so late,” she says, watching the kits wriggle.

“Not always,” Charlie responds. “But stranger things happen every day.”

Hermione waits, thinking Charlie might have the same placating words that everyone else has. Some dulcet cliche to glaze over the improbability of what they’ve endured, a way to wrap it up neat. But he stays quiet, only shifting enough to tug George down, whose eyes have gone red and puffy.

A thing no one prepares you for, in the aftermath of horror, is the way the ordinary keeps going. Your brother dies. A rabbit births her kits. Your parents don’t remember your first steps. The sun glances off the water. The girl you loved through every phase of your adolescence won’t know what your kids look like. Snow spins down in slow flakes from the heavens. And still, with every reset by the inky black of night, you’ll wake and live through everything you’ve lived through all the same.

Charlie’s voice, warm and understanding: “I figured if anyone gets it, it’d be you two.”

What he means: Fred is gone, and tomorrow he will still be gone. But tomorrow they will not be. A rabbit will stir in the grass with its kits. They will rise early enough to remember. And that, Charlie’s silence seems to say, is reason enough.

George is the first to cry, a warm tear disappearing in the snow as it glides off his cheek. Her mittens rub under her eyes, the warmth stinging the backs of her lids. The morning sun creeps slowly over the trees, and the three of them remain still before they turn and head back.

Behind them, and always, life writhes undeniable in the soil.

She only realises Arthur is awake because his workshop whirs with sound as they emerge from the treeline, the easy silence between the three working like a smear of salve over the parts of her she’d long tried to bury. She breaks off from Charlie and George, waving a hand and walking toward where she knows the Weasley patriarch to be.

She knocks on the door, and suddenly, a crash sounds.

Hermione bursts into the room only to find Mr Weasley toppled beneath a large fondue fountain.

“Mr Weasley!”

“Hello, hello! Come in.” He flicks his wand, and the contraption lifts off him, but the mess remains—sweet-smelling chocolate spread along his robes and trousers. “I’ll admit, I am…quite embarrassed. Please, Merlin, don’t tell George."

“I’m sorry, I feel as though this is my fault.”

“Nonsense, come in, come in. It’s cold out there.”

Hermione pulls the door shut against the window, the breeze blowing harshly once more against her face as if to punctuate the point.

Though Arthur’s cheeks are red and his voice is thick with mortification, he asks her, “Cup of tea, dear?”

“Yes, please,” she says, pulling her mittens off to blow warm air against her reddened palms.

Arthur flicks his wand, ignoring the chocolate to charm a mug to fill from a heated pot. It floats directly into her hands, the bite of warmth like a zap to her nerves. She mumbles her thanks, taking a long sip and watching as Arthur’s wand vanishes the mess on his clothing and floor.

“I don’t suppose you’re very familiar with these? It was located in a local church hall, the pastor claiming it to be the work of God. Found it charmed to endlessly flow with chocolate, though we can’t seem to locate the source of the sweet. By all logic, it appears to be defying Gamp’s Law.”

“My parents weren’t too fond of sweets,” she says. “I’m sorry to disappoint.”

Arthur hums thoughtfully before shaking his head and smiling at her. He pops a finger through the chocolate and takes a swipe directly into his mouth. “Would you believe me if I told you that I’ve had worse days at work?”

Hermione smiles back, sipping her tea and glancing around. The shelves are full of contraptions and items more likely to be found in the bin than anything of consequence.

“Something I can help you with then?”

Hermione’s attention returns to the present. “Maybe.”

“What’ll it be?”

“The letter I received. It was an approval, um, a sort of clearance for a visit.”

“Right,” Arthur says. “I’m happy to chaperone.”

“Thank you.”

Arthur wipes his hands on an old cloth, pulling each finger clean as he inspects her, still with that keen eye. Hermione finds herself comparing how much Ron favours his father as he grins at her, nose scrunching faintly and says, “And is there more, Hermione?”

“I had mentioned that I was having trouble with a wand.”

“Of course,” Arthur says. He sets the cloth down and leans an arm against his workbench. “I’ve personally never seen it, but when you’re at the Ministry as long as I’ve been, you hear a thing or two.”

“The thing is, I—well, I lost my wand a while back and Hogwarts loaned me a spare. But once I had my wand returned to me, it’s almost like the spare…couldn’t let go, I suppose.”

“How do you mean?”

“It behaves erratically. Hums, and honks, and vibrates.”

Arthur hums, twisting his mouth to one side. “Have you got this wand with you now?”

“Yes,” she says. “I find that it behaves most peculiarly if I leave it alone.”

“Interesting. May I see it?”

Hermione fishes the wand from where she keeps it in her pocket before she removes it, holding it out to Arthur.

⨳

Hermione watches the wand spin on her desk before she rolls her eyes, slapping a palm down and stuffing it into her boot. At least this way, it won’t have space to move. The morning of Christmas Eve saw Ginny awake before her, eyes aglow with excitement. Hermione spent the previous night fielding questions from the redhead as they lay in her room, with Ginny trying her damnedest to spoil what Hermione knew of Harry’s gift for her. It was nice to have a distraction and a companion in her insomnia, as she knew her body would fight sleep with the promise of her visit with Greyback looming at the base of her skull.

She’d asked George for a Pepper Up potion, which he blessedly slid against her palm without any inquisition. With the renewed energy, she smooths her hair behind her ears one last time as she stares at her reflection and exits Ginny’s room.

She walks down the stairs and into the dining room, where everyone sits around the table, all at various points in the breakfast.

“I’ll be off, then,” Hermione says, pulling the scarf tighter around her neck.

Ron looks up from his flakes as Harry’s brow furrows, setting his mug down.

“Where on earth are you headed on Christmas Eve?” he asks, running a hand through his thick black hair.

“I’ve got some things to do.”

“What?” Ron asks, muffled from the bite he still chews.

“What if it were related to getting your present, what would you say then?”

“I’d say you’re doing this awfully last-minute,” says Harry.

She rolls her eyes. “I’ll be back later today.”

“Hermione,” Harry says, standing and coming closer. “Is there something going on? Is it your parents?”

Hermione swallows a lump in her throat. She wonders how these lies have been compiling, why they sit heavily on her spleen. Even still, she nods.

“Are they remembering more?” Harry asks. Before her thoughts can catch up, he’s continuing. “I know not having your parents around has been hard for you, but you have to trust the Healers when they say–”

“Yes,” she interrupts, voice coming smoother than she feels. It’s like it’s someone else smiling for her, nodding along with the answer Harry’s offered up. “Yes, I know, Harry. I need a bit of time to process. This is only my second Christmas without them.”

“We’re here for you,” he starts.

“I know.” Hermione nods again; it should be a comfort, but it makes her neck ache. “I’m just meant to do a few things. I’ll be back in a flash.”

Before she can protest, he wraps his arms around her, tugging her into a hug. She inhales against his chest, the whole of his sternum where he smells just so Harry—the same hint of a boy that he used to be, all tangled up with man now. It sits wrong in her nose, but she pushes past the discomfort, surely caused by her own inability to keep the truth on her tongue and pats him once. He leans close to her ear and says, “Don’t think you’ve got to do this alone.”

“I’m not,” she whispers. He backs up, and their eyes meet. “Mr Weasley said he’d go with me.”

“And we’re going to be late if we don’t head off soon,” Arthur says, tumbling around the corner. His cheeks are rosy with the evidence of the cold outside, and his sweater is atrocious—greens and tinsel and tulle, a Santa winking.

Ginny blinks at his jumper before letting out a laugh. “Gods, Dad, that’s terrifying.”

“What?” Arthur asks with a furrowed brow. “You kids used to love my holiday sweaters.”

“I’m almost positive I’ve seen that Santa in my nightmares,” Ron says with a shudder.

“Just don’t look it in the eyes,” Percy says on his way out of the room, ducking through the doorway with his coffee in hand.

Arthur frowns.

“I think it looks nice, Mr Weasley,” Harry says, and Hermione nods in agreement.

“Thanks, kids. I’ve never been too keen on naming my favourites, but I think I’ve raised some real mongrels.”

“No taste,” Hermione says.

“Absolutely,” Harry agrees.

The room fizzles into smaller pockets of conversation, then, some recount stories of Christmases past, Harry tucks into conversation with Bill, Ron and Ginny arguing about Quidditch. Hermione watches them for a second that draws longer in her memory, like she seeks to memorise.

A hand touches her shoulder, and she loosens, a little sigh tumbling from her chest.

“All set?” Arthur asks.

Hermione tries to smile as she grabs her bag, and they walk toward the Floo. She feels overdressed, a neat pleated skirt, plaid and past her knees, some laced boots of Ginny’s and a turtleneck. Hermione has never been to prison and doesn’t know how one might dress for the occasion. Having everything covered feels like some form of protection, however thin. She fidgets with the collar, finding her neck hot, but knows it’ll be best to have some resistance between her and the frozen winter air.

It is a short trip. Arthur stays close to Hermione, helping her navigate the polished floors of the Ministry. She’s due to use a direct Floo located in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and when Arthur tells her that he’d go there with her, she insists that he wait behind.

So now she fidgets alone on the dock, pressing her palms together and twisting her fingers until they’re a jumbled tangle of bone. She glances over her shoulder, and Arthur shoots her a small smile, nodding.

She’s been through worse—it is a sentiment no one has said aloud, but the fact sits unspoken. Greyback may have been powerful; he may have stood over her and whispered about the vile things he planned to do, but now, he is harmless. He will waste away inside his cell until he is nothing but ash, and Hermione will live her life. She will demand answers, and he will give them.

A guard counts down from three, and then there is a big flash of blue, and she feels cold air press on her from every side. The trip takes little more than a heartbeat. Her eyes take a second to adjust to the darkness, one blink, then two, and finally she can make out the figure of the large man looming in front of her, two shorter men flanking his side.

The chamber is colder than she expected, touting a dampness that seems to crawl beneath her clothes, burrow into her skin, as though the walls themselves were exhaling centuries of rot. The stones stand slick with condensation, gleaming faintly in the torchlight that gutters green instead of gold, charmed to keep flame alive where ordinary fire falters.

Her gaze darts upward, and there, high above, the ceiling disappears into shadow, and from somewhere distant comes the low moan of the sea, the occasional crack of waves battering the rock face.

The man before her shifts his weight, heavy boots scraping on the wet flagstone and drawing her attention again. He stands tall, broad-shouldered in a way that seems not wholly born, half-hewn, with thick, greying hair that curls damp around his collar. His eyes are pale, colourless, a startling contrast to the flush of ruddy skin beneath his beard. When he speaks, the sound is a drawl dragged slow and easy, consonants softened, vowels stretched wide.

“Miss Granger,” he says, her name rolling in his mouth like a coin flicked between fingers. “Welcome to Azkaban. I’m Warden Yarrow Lillypilly, and I’ll be seeing you don’t lose your head while you’re here. Most don’t keep it long.”

“Hello,” she returns in greeting, holding out her official letter for his examination.

But Warden Lillypilly merely raises a hand, the rough beginning of a smile flashing on his face before it disappears again.

“No need for formalities,” he says briskly. “We are well aware of who you are.”

She stands straighter, clutching the parchment closer to her chest.

“That being said, in the interest of transparency, I’ll speak plainly. There are plenty out there who’d see you locked in here yourself, Miss Granger. Gringotts wasn’t so long ago. Some of us remember the damage done, and not all of us were impressed by the justifications.”

He lets the words hang in the cold silence.

“The Ministry’s put their stamp on this visit, so you’ll have your audience. But don’t mistake that for approval. You’ll follow the rules, you’ll keep your wand stowed, and you’ll be out again as quick as you came. Azkaban has no patience for improvisation.” His expression hardens, that almost-smile long gone. “Do we understand each other?”

“Yes,” she says.

“Very well.” The warden moves then, taking a step closer, and holds out his hand. “I’ll do you the courtesy of asking for your wand flat-out.”

She fiddles in her skirt pocket, hand gripping the vinewood before she passes it to him. His eyes seem to gleam faintly in approval, and she wonders if he was expecting more resistance.

But ultimately, Hermione is getting exactly what she wants right now, and doesn’t have a thing to complain about.

The wand disappears into the warden’s robes with a flick of his wrist, tucked away as though it were no more than contraband. His eyes linger on her a moment longer before a voice calls from the corridor beyond.

“Warden! We’ve need of you!”

Lillypilly’s jaw flexes, displeasure ghosting over his face. He gives a low grunt, then turns back to her, gaze cool. “Business elsewhere. My officers will see you through.”

Two guards in dull grey uniforms step forward at his nod, the chains on their belts rattling faintly as they move. Each gives her the briefest look before one gestures toward the archway, its iron gate half-swung.

“This way, Miss Granger.”

The long corridor stretches narrow, the flagstones slick beneath her shoes. The air grows heavier the deeper they go, clinging with salt and damp, until she feels like the weight of the sea presses down from above. Shadows sway along the walls, thrown by torches that hiss with those strange, greenish fires.

They stop at a low-bolted door banded with dark metal, one guard stepping forward with a ring of keys that clank like bone. He unlocks it, the door groans with exhalation, and pushes the door wide.

Inside, the visiting cell waits, a stone table fixed to the floor, two chairs opposite one another, chains set into the wall that scrape along the rock with every slight breeze, staggered because the air hangs heavy, stale and stinking of rust. Her eyes burn, struggling between the dim and the copper.

“Sit,” one of the guards says, his tone brusque but not unkind. “He’ll be brought in presently.”

Hermione can’t feel the cool press of the metal against her skin, not through the denier of her tights or the warmth of her woollen skirt. Her mind repeats the mantra, telling herself that he can’t hurt her, that she can do this, that she is a person deserving of answers.

Despite what the guard says, she waits for a while. Time feels incomprehensible, seconds into minutes and minutes groaning on months, the way it felt when she was little. The anxiety of her wait commingles with her heartbeat until her thundered pulse kicks up, a sharp thud against her breast, a physically straining sensation. She taps a drum beat against her forehead, then her cheeks, and finally her collar. She names all the things she can see. She deserves to know.

At her calf, a pulse that isn’t her own.

Her breath falters. She can’t have a second wand; they can’t know she has a second wand. If they do, the warden will accuse her of…illicit planning and devious behaviour. Has he not already shown a desire to lock her away?

Hermione crosses her legs, willing the wood to listen and quiet, wrapping her ankle around and pulling tight.

She hears a shuffle of bodies, footsteps, thud, thud, thud against the stone. She leans back, folding her hands in her lap, pulling in a big breath of air, preparing herself for what she might see.

When Fenrir Greyback enters the room, his figure catches a certain slant of the greenish light. His undereyes are sallow, his skin grey, clinging to bone, not yet devoid of muscle, but it isn’t hard to imagine that if given a few more months, he’ll be skeletal.

Greyback keeps his eyes down as he is deposited in the chair in front of her, just a table’s length away now.

She has prepared for fear, intimidation, even.

She hasn’t prepared for this.

“Miss Granger, Fenrir Greyback. You’ll have twenty minutes with the prisoner—no more.” The guard stands in the corner of the room before tilting his head to glance at Hermione. As he takes note of the curiosity sparking in her inspection of the prisoner across from her, he lets out a light laugh. “I wouldn’t fret too much.”

She looks away from Greyback, meeting the guard’s eyes. “Sorry?”

“Well, he won’t give you any trouble. And you aren’t the first to come in here, you know?” The guard raises a brow. “Looking for answers, as you put it.”

“I don’t–”

“If you’re looking for some time alone, just say the word. You’ll find we’re very easily persuaded.”

A rush of bile fills her gut suddenly at the implication. Staring at the guard, she considers his words.

“You’d leave?” she asks.

The man nods. “I suppose for others, I’d name a price. But if anyone deserves a pass, it’s the Golden Girl.”

Hermione nods.

“Yes,” she breathes. “Yes, thank you. I think he will be more receptive if it’s just him and me.”

“Course.” The guard flashes a smile. “Sorry about your wand. Warden’s trying to be more proactive.”

“It’s fine.”

“We’ll be able to see through the door, but it’s soundproof. No need to worry about the screams.”

“Right,” she says. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” he says with a grin like they’re in on the same joke.

And with a slam of the door, Hermione and Greyback are alone. She stares at the door, unbelieving of the luck. Greyback shifts slightly, chains tinking against the floor, and her eyes flick to him or what remains of him. Skeleton and bone, a shell of a man.

“Look at me.”

He doesn’t at her request, just stares down.

“I said, look at–”

Greyback’s head tilts, and her sentence stutters off. The malice in his gaze is evident, the black of his eyes soulless. His lips are curled, repulsion rolling off of him in waves.

“Took you longer than I thought,” he rasps.

Hermione doesn’t respond. She doesn’t completely understand the feeling working outward from her gut, the flame that is being stoked just by this proximity. Greyback’s mouth doesn’t close completely on the last word, a bruised lip leaving his sentence fat, the grey of his teeth exposed.

“You’re here because of your dog, yes?” His head tilts, and she watches his shoulders rise a bit, the straightening of his posture.

He is not scared of her. That much is clear.

“I was curious,” he says. “To see how it worked. I figured if I didn’t die, you’d sort it out eventually. You’re fabled for your brilliance. I thought you’d be here sooner.”

Her voice is clear; she doesn’t cower in his doubt. “What did you do to Draco Malfoy?”

Greyback surprises her, though, expelling something between a cough and a laugh. His incisors catch the green flame, but she is not afraid of him, not here, not again.

“Me?” he asks.

“He told me it was you.”

Hermione doesn’t recognise her voice, nor the way it comes out of her like she’s spitting at him. Venom seeps into her core, and she wonders where empathy has gone, when it abandoned her. It is a tightrope balance on the dichotomy, her need for justice, that pragmatism to do the right thing and all this rage she feels but never names. The blade of it slices into her feet; who she should be, who seeps out of her now.

Greyback, unfazed, rocks back, pressing his spine into the cool metal seat.

“If he had told you the whole truth,” he says slowly, “you wouldn’t be here. He’d keep you under lock and key. His pretty little Omega.”

She bites her cheek. Blood blooms, hot on her tongue. But her mind goes to Snape’s journals, where she first read that term. Omega. It confirms that he knows something, that coming here was the right thing to do.

“Tell me what you know.”

Greyback tuts. “It doesn’t work on me. Though I’ll admit, you are more delectable than you were bleeding out on his floors.”

“What doesn’t work?”

“Can’t you feel it? Has he made use of you yet? Bent you to see how far you'll go?” Greyback licks his lips. "I can hardly smell him on you now."

“Speak plainly or I’ll…”

“You’ll…what, exactly? I’m afraid I’m not in the arena of being bargained with. The guards do what they want with me, and I’m buried under stone.”

“I don’t feel sorry for you.”

Greyback’s laugh is wet, half-cough. “You watched me tear out the throat of your classmate. I’m long past thinking I’m owed any sort of mercy.”

“Is that meant to scare me?” she asks.

He narrows his eyes. “Does it?”

He’s used to wands levelled, to hexes and chains—not this. Not the idea that she might put her clever mind to breaking him apart with nothing but her bare hands, and enjoy it. The air between them thickens until it feels like she’s the one with the teeth. Let him decide what she’s capable of, what lines she might already have crossed.

“No,” she says finally. “And we both know, this isn’t about me. Answer the question.”

Her hands stay loose as she straightens in her chair.

“Insipid girl. It was always about you. About punishing your hero of a friend. Voldemort wanted to put you back in your place. Luck that Bella knew just the way.”

“Whatever it was didn’t work.”

“It must have worked,” he says. “That’s why you’d come here. Why you’d be so foolish as to seek me out. Couldn’t fucking help yourself, could you?”

She’s on two feet before she even realises what is happening. Her palms sting from where she’s slapped them against the stone table. And she’s shouting, voice booming in the malodorous cavern.

“Stop,” she snaps. Her chest heaves. “I didn’t come here to be taunted. You don’t scare me.”

“I thought you were bright. But the change would affect that, too, right? I’m curious. Have you lost time yet?”

“What?”

“Yes, then. I’m right, aren’t I? You’re lying, even now.”

“Tell me what you did.”

Greyback’s smile curdles, revealing a split gum, the rot lining his teeth.

“I bit him like I was commanded to,” he says. “But it wasn’t the bite alone, was it? Bella brought her clever hands, her clever little knives.”

“She only had one blade that night, and we took it—” she trails off. Because she isn’t sure, not positive. Too much happened at Malfoy Manor, the memories of it overlapping with the burn of her forearm as her back was pressed into the floor.

Bellatrix could have had another blade.

Greyback’s smile widens, pleasure at having made her falter, at the way she second-guesses what she knows.

“Foolish of you to think that was all. That it was over once the blade’s sister was buried in your friend’s chest.”

She can’t help it; her recoil at the allusion to Dobby, the small elf bleeding out on the beach. She shakes her head in an attempt to clear her mind.

“Two knives, then,” she says. “That doesn’t—so what? What good is a knife?”

“Our Dark Lord wanted a trinity.”

Hermione’s fingers curl white against the stone table. “A trinity?”

“Wolf fang. Your blood. And his soul.” Greyback licks his lips like he can taste her confusion. It makes him stupid, makes the truth spill out of him in rivulets. “Laid it out in that drawing room like a proper altar. You remember bleeding on the wood, don’t you? Hadn’t even thought to clean up after yourself. Didn’t think of what you left behind. You thought it just pain, cruelty, but you bled for us, gave the Dark Lord a sacrifice.”

Her stomach turns, nausea crawling up her throat. “That night–”

“Bound together, bound through,” he presses, leaning forward now, eyes glinting. “Him marked by me, you marked by the blade, and the Dark Lord pouring the last of himself in the cracks. They wove you both into an old curse, one of dominance and yielding.” His lips pull back, mockery etched into every line of his face. “Alpha and omega. You think it chance? Fate? No, girl. It’s his hand still on your neck.”

The torches spit, one guttering hard enough that shadows writhe over the walls. Hermione sways where she stands, the words working their way down into her marrow like ice.

“You’re lying,” she says, though her voice isn’t as sharp as she means it to be. “Curses don’t work like that. This isn’t—Tom Riddle is dead.”

Greyback lifts his hands as if to surrender, chains rattling. “Lying, telling truth—what does it matter? Dark magic doesn’t just fade with mortality. You feel it. That voice scratching in your skull, the scent of him crawling under your skin. You’d come here even if you didn’t want to.”

Her breath is hot, quick, burning against the damp. She forces herself still, forces her voice steady.

“And what of you? What do you get from this?”

His head tilts, animal-like, and he laughs again. “Didn’t take on me, did it? Didn’t matter. I was only the fang. The rest belonged to you two. That weak whelp would take you as his spoil of war. And maybe that’s the joke—” his eyes narrow, sharp with satisfaction—“that after all the war, after all your saving, he made you his bitch in the end.”

The air wooshes from her chest, and it happens again—movement without thought. The wand is in her hand too fast, summoned from her boot without a word from her lips, the curse tinged with copper on her tongue.

The blast smashes across the table, a flash of green-white light that sears his face. Greyback’s head whips sideways, flesh ripping, the jagged edge of his ear split open to the skull. Blood arcs, spatters hot against the stone, against her cheek.

“You fucking mudblood cunt–” Greyback starts, lifting onto two feet.

He crumples immediately, writhing and twitching on the ground. Hermione’s gaze shifts to the door, open, Warden Lillypilly standing tall with his wand raised.

“Miss Granger,” he says. His eyes drift to her extended arm, the wand pulsing in her palm. “Sneaked in another, have you?”

“I can explain,” she starts, only for the warden to lower his wand, jaw setting as he stares down at her.

“No, Miss Granger. You’ve done quite enough. It’s best if your visit ends here.”

“I–”

“Enough.” The warden waves a hand, and her true wand snaps out of his robes, landing in front of her on the table. “I suppose we can come to a mutual agreement that my staff’s oversight and your actions don’t merit reporting, hm?”

“Yes,” she says. She picks up her wand, sliding both into the pocket of her skirt. Her eyes drift to Greyback on the floor, paralysed in a grotesque arc of a man, foam seeping from his mouth as blood spills from his wound in dark pulses.

The warden says, “Don’t ever request to come back here, Miss Granger.”

She nods.

Hermione is not left alone again for the entire walk back to the entry docks. Warden Lillypilly’s stiff back looms over her like a shadow, an exiguous effect on her psyche. As she turns away, prepared to leave, he shoves a handkerchief in her direction, staring at her hard. She lifts it to her face, and when she wipes away, the fabric is stained with red. He doesn’t take it back when she offers it out, like she needs any souvenir apart from what Greyback told her, echoing in her ears.

She tucks it all far back in the recesses of her mind as the iron corridors dissolve, and the cold weight of the prison is replaced by the simple carpet of the transportation dock in the Ministry. The noise here feels distant, muffled, as if she hasn’t quite stepped out of the shadows. She stays quiet, holding the handkerchief tight in her fist. A voice ushers her off, and when she blinks again, Arthur is looking down at her with a curious expression.

He must have been speaking to her.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly. “What was that?”

“How’s about we take a little detour, hm?” Arthur asks.

“But it’s Christmas Eve? Shouldn’t you want to be with your family?”

“As far as I’m concerned, I am.” Arthur smiles at her in that way of his, and she pushes down the guilt in her gut, shoving the handkerchief next to the still-warm wand in her skirt. “Though I do need your help.”

She inclines her head, wondering what she could do for him, if she’s even got anything left to give.

“I need a gift for Molly,” he says. “Something…different though. Special, I guess. You’ve been with a girl so long, you start to imagine you can’t possibly surprise her. Perhaps you know of a Muggle shop?”

She exhales a surprised laugh. “Of course. Let me think.”

The thought occurs to her before she can think better of it. It’s her father’s hand in hers, tugging her into a shop around the corner in their village.

“Hampstead has a place. Maybe we can try there?”

“Perfect,” he says, patting her shoulder as he navigates them out of the office. “I’d appreciate it.”

The shop is a whirl of decorations and busy bodies shuffled together. Despite it being the day before the holiday, the till ticks, and lines pour out into the streets from every storefront. Red noses and puffs of icicle-cold laughter mark the holiday, if the wreaths and low Christmas music don’t alert anyone to how close they are.

Hermione and Arthur stand side by side, waiting to enter. She treats him to hot chocolate in a styrofoam cup that he keeps inspecting with a curious eye.

“It maintains the heat,” he whispers, angling his body towards hers even as his eyes stay on the cup. “There aren’t any charms, though. How curious.”

“Insulation,” she responds with a nod.

Arthur drums his fingers against the drink, mystified. “Perhaps I ought to get Molly a few of these. Do you think she’d be a fan?”

Hermione smiles, distracted as she watches a family pass. “You know her best. But maybe something else, too.”

“Of course, of course.” Arthur looks up then. “I don’t want to keep you. If there’s something you need to–”

“Oh, no. It’s just—” Hermione draws in a breath, the cold air expanding her lungs. “It’s strange being back here, I guess.”

“I understand. Have you…had any word on your parents’ condition?”

“Not anything worth mentioning.” She starts but stops, folding closer to his side when a couple shuffles past, tucked together. “I don’t think they’re going to remember me.”

“Stranger things have happened,” Arthur says, taking a sip of his hot chocolate. “We’re all here for you. You’ll never be alone, Hermione.”

“I know,” she breathes.

Arthur lets it simmer momentarily before he jolts, a thought making him shift to look at her.

“Actually, I had a thought. While I was waiting for you at the Ministry, I thought of an old story from Beedle the Bard. You surely recall 'The Wizard and the Hopping Pot'?”

Hermione nods, her interest piqued. How often she’d reread those stories, they were practically imprinted on the backs of her lids.

A wizard, kind and true to the villagers of his small town, died and left a special cauldron to his son. The son, who bore none of his father’s good-naturedness, was enraged by the gift. Even more so by the single slipper found in the basin with a note from the father, hoping his son would never need the shoe. And when the son failed to follow in his father’s footsteps, when he ignored the townspeople’s problems and isolated his magic, not an altruistic bone in his body, the magic turned and punished him.

“The cauldron that grew warts and the foot,” she says, and Arthur nods.

“Yes, it took on the ailments of the villagers until the kind wizard’s son developed his conscience and made things right. I suppose the message of it isn’t too important, but I had the thought, you see, rather we focus on the cauldron itself.”

“What of it?”

He pauses, watching Hermione closely. “Well, imagine your new wand in a similar light. It’s not just an object; it has a purpose, a drive. It may have responded to you because it sensed a need. Perhaps because of what you’ve gone through, whatever it might be, it senses something. It's not merely a tool; it's a partner with its own will.”

Hermione's fingers tighten around her cup, the analogy unsettling. Sentience only because of need.

Arthur doesn’t notice her posture and adds gently, “Some versions of the tale suggest the son was never quite the same after that, always pulled between his will and the pot's. Magic, once it notices, doesn't forget.”

“Right, that—that makes a lot of sense.”

Arthur looks at her. “I wouldn’t put too much stock in old tales, mind. But I’m happy to check the attic, maybe the book is in there. We could dust it off, really put our minds to it later.”

“I’ve got a copy,” she says quickly. “Actually, Mr Weasley, do you mind if I check another shop? I’ve only just remembered I haven’t squared a gift for Harry.”

“Of course, of course, go ahead.”

“Have you got the Muggle money?”

He pats his pocket with his free hand, smiling. “I can sort it. We’ll meet back in an hour or so?”

“Perfect,” she responds and turns, disappearing into the throng of bodies.

She can’t breathe, can hardly think as she pushes her way through the crowd. She drops her drink, the contents spilling dark along the white path beneath her feet. The wands in her pocket carry the weight of lead.

She tucks her arms over her chest and moves as fast as she can. Her body moves as if on instinct, boots trudging along the slippery pavement without any thought from her. She thinks if she moves fast enough, she might escape whatever truth bites at her heels.

But it makes sense, doesn’t it? There’s a cool voice in her mind, lapping at the wounds that simply won’t heal. She carries a rot within her, a fester that won’t close. And then, there’s Greyback’s voice, an amused taunt. Telling her that she’s mixed up in this, something she’s known, that even Malfoy had confirmed in his own way out in the forest.

He told her it wasn’t romantic, was hardly even kind.

She’s past the shops entirely, the quiet of a suburb enveloping her as she tries to even her breath. It’s so familiar that it makes her ache.

And when she glances up, she realises how far she’s come.

8 Heathgate is a charmed tomb. The Ministry was kind enough to make it disappear to Muggles, who keep passing the street, probably wondering why Hermione is there, a strange girl, staring at nothing.

But she can see it—the windows she used to look out of as a girl, the cool blue paint, the tipsy topsy curve of the shingles on the roof. Her pulse thuds under her breast, and she fights the urge, but it takes away all her breath.

Because she’s home, she’s back.

And she’s logical enough to know that going inside will shatter the illusion, that it will only cause her more strife. She knows it’s a mausoleum. But she can’t stop herself, not now, not when her subconscious retraces the steps, as if seeking a comfort she hadn’t even been sure that she needed.

None of her former neighbours are in their gardens, surely tucked inside, finalising the last bits of the holiday, basting the turkey, or placing bows on gifts. No one is there to witness her walking up steps they can’t see, pushing in her front door, disappearing in a breath.

She looks around at all the evidence of the lives she stole. The curtains are drawn, and though the sun is out in the way familiar to London, the inside of her house is cool and grey. Her hand drifts out, flicking on a switch, and it all comes back to life, like it’s any other day.

There are envelopes left on the side table near the door, dropped and forgotten entirely. A fine dust covers everything. Dad left his slippers by the front door.

Hermione moves from room to room. First, the living room, eyes catching on her parents’ awards along the mantel. She doesn’t let herself look too long at every photo of her, of the girl she used to be. She rubs the back of her hand beneath her cheek, though she’s too tired to cry.

The kitchen next, where she finds a stray mug left in the sink, rim stained with Black Honey pressed in the familiar arc of her mother’s lips. She turns on the tap, and it gurgles once before expelling a rush of water. She goes through the motions, letting the water warm before she fills the cup entirely, a small squeeze of soap, and then her fingers dip in past the mouth, erasing the last bit of her before leaving it to dry on the counter.

She walks past the hallway, twenty-four steps through all the evidence of her childhood, up the stairs and to her parents’ room. The bed is half-made, stray clothes hanging over the sides of the laundry basket. There is a photo of them on the nightstand, from their wedding day, dusted and sunbeaten. She slips beneath the duvet, not realising she’s captured it in her hands and pulled it close until it’s tucked beneath her chest.

She apologises to the empty bed, which smells like them and not them all at once. She says it a hundred times. The words leave sores in her mouth and don’t even feel real by the time she’s had enough.

She rolls onto her back and stares at the ceiling, smack in the centre of their bed like she used to when she was young. Her cheeks are wet; she can’t remember when the tears finally started. Either side of her is cold, and the bed feels too small now in this body she occupies, like she’s taking up too much space.

She’s up on two feet again, trudging down the hall. She pushes in her bedroom door, and it’s exactly as she left it, and of course, of course it is. She pulls a wand from her pocket, which she isn’t sure of, and aims it at her bed.

It explodes in springs and wool.

Next are the posters on her wall. They split, and then split again, raining down like confetti. The walls hum with the aftershock, plaster dust drifting down like ash. Hermione doesn’t lower her wand. Her arm trembles, but it isn’t exhaustion; it’s release.

She turns next to the bookshelf. Every spine that once kept her company in the dark, every page that shaped her. A slash of her wrist and the shelves buckle, wood splintering, covers exploding outward. Pages whirl through the air in a cyclone, paragraphs torn into syllables, knowledge reduced to shreds. She thinks, dimly, how easy it is to undo a lifetime.

But she’s known that, hasn’t she known that?

Her desk goes next. Quills snap, ink pots burst across the carpet in black stars, letters bleeding until they’re unreadable. She steps into the mess, and it coats her shoes, a spreading stain. The mirror above her dresser fractures with a single wordless flick. Her reflection splinters into jagged fragments—eyes, mouth, cheek, nose, tears—none of them whole, none of them hers. She can’t tell which shard is looking back at her, accusing, or pleading.

Her wand hand shakes harder, but she doesn’t stop. The wardrobe, the chair, the bedside lamp and it all falls, cracking, breaking, collapsing in waves until the room is unrecognisable.

Only when the air is thick with dust, her lungs burning, does she falter. Her knees hit the floor, and for a moment, all she can hear is her own ragged breathing.

Time passes. Doesn’t it always?

She peels herself off the ground, cheek red from where she lay among everything she used to be. She straightens her skirt and closes the door behind her.

When she walks down the stairs, the soles of her feet are still heavy, no catharsis found in her destruction. Her hand reaches out, flicking the switch, and 8 Heathgate returns to its stasis. Before she leaves, she bends down, straightening her father’s slippers where they sit in the entry. The door shuts behind her, and the house disappears without so much as a click.

⨳

Arthur chose a lovely trinket bracelet for Molly, several charms catching the light when he opens the small box to show Hermione. She runs him into a small shop at the end of the way so he can pick up the styrofoam cups and a box of instant hot chocolate as another gift.

By the time they arrive back at the Burrow, it is dark out. They emerge from the Floo to find no one in the living room.

“Odd,” he grumbles, shuffling his packages beneath his arm. “Perhaps they’re—”

Harry and Ginny walk in through the front door, smiling mid-conversation, before their eyes catch on Hermione and Arthur.

“I’ll take this to my workshop. You kids get washed? Mum’s not made dinner yet, has she?”

Arthur doesn’t wait for their answer, disappearing out the door they’ve left open.

“Have a good day?” Harry asks, vanishing the light dusting of snow atop Ginny’s head. Hermione swallows and nods. “Good, then. You’re back just in time. Ron sent his patronus to tell us that Romilda’s just arrived with Susan–”

“Susan Bones?”

The world slows.

“Yes, she’s–”

She feels him before she sees him. The sort of radiating disappointment rolls off of him in waves. Hermione turns to meet Ron’s red face.

Her eyes flick to the side, catching Romilda’s curious tilt of her head and Susan brushing a hand over her mouth.

“You lied,” Ron says.

“What?”

“You lied, Hermione. To me. To Harry. To Mum. All of us, you’ve just–”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she whispers.

“You’ve been fucking Malfoy this entire time.”

Her jaw works, mouth gaping. Next to her, Harry looks shocked. Ginny straightens into action.

“Ron, go cool off somewhere—”

“No. Fucking—I asked you, Hermione. All I wanted was your honesty, and you couldn’t even do that.”

“I don’t have to share my life with–”

“Since when? When did it change between us? When did you have a desire to choose a Death Eater over your best friends?”

“He’s not–”

“Now you’re defending him? Bloody ridiculous.” Ron scoffs, looking her up and down. “You—Merlin, fuck—you disgust me.”

“Ron, stop.”

“Fuck off, Gin. You knew too!”

“You knew?” Harry asks, turning to look at her.

“It’s none of our business–”

“I didn’t know you hadn’t–” Susan interrupts, and Ginny whirls on her, throwing her hands up.

“Gods, Susan. No one asked you! Haven’t you done enough?”

“I’m sorry, I–” Hermione starts.

“When did it change?” Ron asks. “I mean, when the bloody hell did you decide to disrespect yourself–”

“Stop!” she yells, pleading. “You don’t know at all what’s—”

“That’s why I’ve asked you, Hermione. We keep trying to help you, and you just—you’ve been selfish.”

“Ron,” Ginny starts.

“No, she deserves to know,” Ron snaps, waving a hand at his sister. “We get letters every three days from Ginny worried about you. You don’t respond to us. You’re a fucking shell of who you used to be. I don’t even—I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

“I wanted to tell you.”

“Do you hear yourself?” he yells. “Stop lying. If you wanted to tell us, you would have. But I have to find out from Susan that you’ve been traipsing around Hogwarts like Malfoy’s—”

Greyback's taunt flashes through her mind, and her palm flexes.

“You don’t get to talk to me like that,” she spits, malice colouring every word so distinctly that she flinches once it's out. Her neck tingles and she blinks, trying to correct her breathing.

“You’re not even denying it!” Ron shouts.

George walks around the corner, hearing the commotion. Hermione glances around the room, withering and wilting under their stares.

“I haven’t—" Her voice is quieter now, she twists her fingers at either hip. "I didn’t tell you everything, yes, but can you blame me? Would you have had a rational response–”

“I’m sure you did this wholly to protect me,” his voice drips in condescension. “Yeah, that sounds about right. Who even are you anymore?”

“I’m still–” Her voice cracks. “I’m still me.”

“No, you aren’t. You don’t lie to us and sneak around with someone who, as recently as last year, wanted you dead. He tortured people—he’s probably killed people, fuck—did you forget? Where’s the logic in that, Hermione? Who are you doing this for? It’s beyond stupid. You’re—I—I can’t even look at you.”

He turns suddenly, putting his back to her to really drive home his point. “You shouldn’t be here when Mum gets back.”

The air is punched from her chest. “What?”

He turns quickly, but his voice is lower now, like she’s not worth yelling for. It’s loud enough to be heard by everyone, all the same.

“I don’t want my mother around someone who’s fucking the same person that killed my brother. Get out, Hermione.”

Ginny’s protest is weak. “It’s Christmas Eve. Where can she go?”

“I don’t care,” he says before he stalks through the kitchen, disappearing through the side door. Romilda shakes her head but doesn’t say anything as she turns too, following him.

“Ron!” Ginny calls, running after. Susan stares at Hermione for a blink before she goes too. George takes a step back, a stunned look on his face, before he disappears down the dark hall.

Hermione stares at the empty kitchen.

Harry makes a soft sound, and she can’t even turn her head; she can’t move at all.

“Is it true?” he asks.

She can’t answer; she knows that he knows she can’t answer.

All that works from her dry throat is, “Harry.”

It’s enough. It’s nothing but somehow everything. He scoffs slightly, taking a step away from her. And when she looks at his face, she sees it, the abject disgust, unfamiliarity, the passover one might squint at a stranger. Her heart lurches.

If they don’t see her, can’t recognise her, then who can?

“I don’t want to say anything I’ll regret.”

“Harry, I’m–” she starts again.

She should just say it. But how can she without sharing Malfoy’s secret? And why is this consideration of his privacy even enough to warrant her sealed lips?

Not that it matters. The air is stale, and the lights are too bright, and Harry doesn’t let her finish anyway.

“Give him a few days,” he mumbles as he pushes his glasses up, pinching the bridge of his nose. He makes a low sound like a groan before he shuts his eyes, wrinkling his whole face, putting years on him in the same fashion he’d looked mid-war.

It is kinder than she deserves, but cuts just as deep as Ron’s shout. Get out.

She nods. Her neck moves up and down, and she knows, gods, she knows she should say more, should say something, but she can’t, she just can’t, the words are stuck, voice pinned down flat.

The winter air bites at her skin, holly and cinnamon and the distant, low lull of siblings arguing, carried on the frigid wind. She should go through the Floo, but she doesn’t think she can speak, doesn’t know what to say, and just needs out. So the green welcomes her, and the moon guides her path, and Hermione disappears into the garden, deeper still across the orchard, surrounded by apple trees that have lost their leaves to winter’s kiss.

She keeps walking until the voices quiet against the skitter of woodland creatures, and the crickets chirp, and it’s hard to discern where she is other than out. She prays for air, but each inhale only expands her chest with the heft of implication.

Her boots crunch over the frost-hardened ground, the orchard stretching pale and skeletal in the moonlight. Apple trees claw up at the sky, branches bare, bone-like. The night hums too loud, alive with Greyback, and her parents, and that furrow of Harry’s brow, the wobble of Ron’s chin.

She wants—she doesn’t know who– what she wants. Air, warmth, somewhere to hide, to be seen. Someone to reach for her.

Silken and terrible and true, some other part of her fills in the blank.

Draco.

She recoils. She shouldn’t want him, shouldn’t even think it, but it shimmers there all the same, undeniable. Her chest aches with the burn, a single flame lit, with him.

A hook beneath her ribs and then,

tug.

Her stomach turns, vision narrows, the orchard blurs and spins and stretches. She gasps, reaching for a tree trunk that isn’t there, her body moving before she can question, before she can breathe. And then she’s gone. Apparition cracks around her like thunder, the orchard swallowed up behind her.

It is a soot-spun swirl of night and candle light. The moon, a fire, and grey, grey, grey.

The cold of winter is gone, replaced by the hush of warmth and stone and a fire she knows is not her own. Her heart slams against her ribs, and she drops, feet too numb to catch her weight. She’s folded into night and dust one moment, and there in the next.

The narrow room bends into focus: firelight flickering over stone walls, a chair pulled half-crooked, the smell of old wood and smoke. On the bed—too long for it, even at an angle, legs stretched carelessly past the frame—he lies with a book open in his hand.

His eyes flick up, confused at the creak of the floorboard, widening when he realises what he sees.

And the world tilts, ends there, as her vision vignettes, black licking at the edges. He sits up straight, mouth breaking open, concern in the flex of his jaw. But she goes first. Though it isn’t her voice at all.

“Found you,” her lips purr.

Forward and backwards, a rebound, swaying to and fro, here or there, and found you, found you, found you. Though the Apparition is done, and she no longer feels the tug, she is still compounding in on herself, layer after layer. Folded neat and tight.

Fading to black, not in nor out. Clang, clang, clang went the brass-footed pot. It answers a need, Arthur says, magic never forgets. Alpha to Omega as strength unto submission. A paw thumping in wet dirt. Her wand vibrates against her leg, humming in her skirt. Grey eyes blinking down at her. She is neither here nor there, everything, everywhere, the very centre of the universe.

Nowhere,

nothing.

“Granger?” he says, and the whole of it falls silent. Draco reaches for her.

Too slow.

And then it all goes to soot.

Chapter Text

Sometimes, people want too much. It’s a tale as old as history—even before we had the words, much before. It’s why Cain killed Abel, why kingdoms rise and fall, why everything is a circle.

Magic has rules. That was the first lesson, on the first page, that first day. A gift cannot be taken without cost. A vessel will crack, a cup will spill. There are doors in this universe that should not be opened, laws etched deeper than runes, free-flowing dark through the veins of time. To trespass them is to be marked.

In late March of 1998, Malfoy Manor bore witness to the cost of trespass.

A dark wizard wanted to send a message, wanted to dictate the very hands of fate.

Long ago, others paid the price. When those bodies sink into the earth, whispers are buried with them, ripening the soil as time smudges the vowels, story blooming into artefact, beginnings entangled always with their end. Their blood sealed it into memory. What begins as a warning becomes a bedtime tale, and truth sinks into myth.

But memory fades—isn’t it easier to forget? Human hands tremor and crack, minds wither, and teeth gnash at the sweet rot of this purported opportunity. We are simple beasts, greedy and exalting, pulling on the leash, overconfident that this time will be different.

Magic has rules. Gamp’s Law, for example. Life feeds on life. It’s why they had begun to starve in the Forest of Dean: one cannot break bread that never touched the soil. A tangible root is required to harness and hone, to bend matter to your will, and their aching stomachs could attest to the principle that to summon is not to create. Intent must be anchored in dust, in something real, be it dirt, bone, blood. The earth demands a price.

She left part of herself behind, blood not yet cooled where it spilt. She was there even when she was absent. Her vision was full of Greyback and Bellatrix, of rotten teeth and curled lips. Ron’s cries, a dagger pressed against her skin. A chandelier crushing her, scattered glass and matted hair.

It was not chance. It was law.

But she was not the first. Others had bled before her, their names lost, their stories turned to warnings whispered in the dark. The circle always closes, one life feeding the next. She stepped into an ancient pattern, a tale that only repeats.

Life is a wheel. Blood keeps it turning.

⨳

She’s somewhere in between, not quite real. Flayed, stripped to the criss-crossing thread of nerves, milky white bone exposed to air. Need claws through her, an urge carved into her marrow. She thinks if she doesn’t sate it, she’ll die. That’s what it feels like, like maybe, yeah, like maybe she is dying.

Her nerves prick. Blackness engulfs her, blinding her completely. The dark is cold, sits in the centre of her stomach and radiates outwards, the way fear takes you over completely.

And her mouth. Her mouth is full of cotton, and every intake of air comes like she’s breathing through a screen. It doesn’t feel good, none of this, it—it hurts. All she knows is pain.

But deeper still, there’s an instinct. A will, something she’s not fully in control of. It’s what sends the birds south for the winter, what pricks the ears of doe standing still in the treelines. This is survival, and Hermione—she doesn’t want to die, she’s never wanted to die. She follows this urge, sniffs after it.

There’s a hum—some voice lulling her to consciousness, guiding her out of the dark. If she follows, maybe her body will start listening to her. Maybe she can come back from wherever she’s gone, take a mighty step from the fringe.

And it's in this way, with the voice’s help, that she breaks the surface.

Days pass, or maybe it’s hours.

Her back is pressed against a rug, her head nursing a knot. She blinks against the sable, mind a rapid-fire of everything she knows to be true.

A solid slides underneath her head and neck, propping her up. Whatever it is, it is warm, but nothing so much as to make her flinch away from the heat. Rather, she’s nestling closer, arm moving subconsciously while the rest of her limbs stay still. Her fingers curl against smoothness, pointer catching on a divot. This warm thing shivers at her touch.

Her sloggy mind fills in the blanks belatedly. Skin to skin. Hermione is touching someone warm.

She can’t stop rubbing over the heated skin, fingers tickling. Her eyes won’t open, lids pinned shut. All she craves, all she needs is heat.

A voice—this voice that isn’t hers, but belongs to her—murmurs from above. It’s familiar in baritone. She thinks whoever it is is concerned, words dipped in weariness. She keeps rubbing the skin, unaware her lips are moving.

When she focuses very hard, she finds she is mumbling.

“Cold,” comes repeatedly.

She realises around the same time that the warm skin realises, and then she’s no longer supine but has hands curled beneath her spine, folding her up so she’s half-seated. Gravity begs for acknowledgement in the form of her cheek catching on a hard protrusion as she dips forward.

Skin and bone.

“Cold,” she repeats, and then the body is shifting once more. She’s aware of being cradled, held close and lifted, then sinking low, like she’s been picked up and this other body has settled somewhere softer. Gentle presses go to her cheek and then fall to her neck, and she tilts, providing more access.

The voice murmurs something, then she explodes in heat. She flinches at the burn, the sting of her fingertips from whatever is happening, and it ends instantly. Cold again, the only warmth from whatever holds her. This is better.

“Granger, please.”

She likes that; it lights her body up having these words spoken against her throat. She drops her forehead against the bone again, lets her lips open and finds herself there, dragging her teeth against it.

Hands cradle her head, a tender swipe against her cheek. Her bleary eyes open.

What a lovely sight.

A hard jaw, eyes that are wide and inspecting her, lips moving.

She likes this person. This person can help her. She feels it in her bones, the way her cold crawls outward, seeking his heat. She thinks if she can push out enough of the cold, there will be space for him to slip in. Him. He can help her.

She shifts, moving closer. He flinches enough to evade her.

Oh. That hurts. She thought she knew pain before. Rejection splits her, tearing her into strips of flesh and bone.

She doesn’t understand why he’s pulling away. The loss feels like frostbite, and he’s being so cruel to her, so unfair. She wants to claw him back into her orbit, press him flat against her skin.

She should tell him. Yes, if she can find the words—

No. No, that isn’t right. That’s not what her bones want. She has to show him.

His lips move again, maybe, but she can’t focus. She forces her attention to the shape of these teeth, the way they are pushing out nectarine vowels that drip syrup-sweet along her spine. It forces her into action, and then she’s got all her strength back, reaching up and pulling his mouth to hers.

He mumbles against her lips, whispers that mix with breath, and she greedily swallows down his rasping exhales. She can’t get enough and yet doesn’t know what exactly it is. She only knows that she is cold, absolutely freezing and pocketing stolen warmth from him.

He moves back, and it’s like she’s been kicked in the chest.

She starts to cry.

“No, please,” he whispers, holding her face. “Don’t do that.”

“You don’t want me,” she states, and it hurts how much it feels like fact.

“No,” he says. “I need to–”

“Take care of me,” she whispers.

She reaches for him again, and he kisses her hard, groaning against her lips.

She presses closer, desperate, sliding her tongue against his, tasting him. His chest rumbles with a sound she’s never heard before.

Warmth, and fire, and information slowly trickling back to her. Facts that matter but don’t, not here. An incomplete picture of who she is.

Harry’s body crumpled, held up in Hagrid’s arms. He walks towards her, four paws thumping on the ground. She’s in the Forest of Dean, or no, somewhere with trees, watching from a distance as her father snaps the doe’s neck, the crack loud even over the hum of the engine.

It’s heat, and burning embers, and the way her arm remains snug in the socket when she’s tugged.

Us, us, us, you.

She cries out because she needs more, or maybe less; she isn’t sure. He growls, there isn’t any other word for it, and then he’s come back to her. Frustrated puffs of air huffed against her forehead, then lower. Punishing her each time he exhales a rough whisper of “Granger.”

His lips are on her skin, and his nose is against, then gone.

The absence is violent. Frost rushes in, makes her choke. She claws for him, but he has gone still above her, his breath ragged, body locked.

“Where,” he asks, jaw so tight it looks like each word hurts. He stops himself, face ashen as he blinks. His voice is softer the next time his lips part. “Where have you been?”

She can’t push any words out. His head jerks as his features pinch.

“You smell like—”

He sits back, and he’s disgusted. They’re all disgusted, and she’s wrong. She keeps doing wrong. She doesn’t please him. He doesn’t want her.

Air won’t enter her lungs.

“Hey,” he says, hand trailing her cheek and sliding wet along her skin. “Hey, I’m here. I won’t let you be cold. I—don’t know what to do. Please don’t cry.”

Big, fat tears are rolling down, spilling from her eyes, and she wants to call him a liar, wants to say that she’s come all this way, and he won’t give—he won’t help her, he doesn’t want her.

He leans forward, pressing his lips to her cheek, right over the streaks and kissing her. Then again, and again, until the streaks are all splotches, and her whole face is wet, and his lips glisten with the saltwater.

“Please don’t—Granger,” his voice is so low, whispering against her skin. She feels his teeth as his lips pull back, grimacing while he speaks. “I’m—I’m here. And you are mi—” His voice chokes off. An inhale, husky and uneven, then a shuddered breath against her throat. “I’m…I’m going to help you.”

“Yes,” her voice cries, reaching for him, and then his body is over hers and their tongues are in each other’s mouths, and his hand is trailing down her body, fingers notched over the curve of her hip.

He rasps against her lips and then pulls off, kissing her chin and jaw, and then nuzzling against her neck. He groans and pulls back once more.

“We have to—I need to know why you smell like…”

“You said you’d help me,” she insists.

“I will. I am,” he says, frowning. And then he whispers, “I’ll take care of—I’m here.”

His face flushes, before his eyes squeeze shut, pressing his lips in a firm line.

“Now, then, please now,” she says, and her hands move, tugging at the hem of her shirt. His eyes snap open as it comes off, and she’s shivering, freezing without him.

His pupils are wide, big coals in his sockets as he stares at her with that tight look, the line of his jaw flexing as he grinds his teeth together.

His fingers trail up, running the length of her hip, until he’s settled beneath her breast. She is reaching to find the hook and eye, when his hand closes over her wrist, wrestling it from behind her and pinning her back against the bed. The air whooshes from her chest in a sobered little moan that makes his nostrils flare as he bends over her.

“Stop,” he rushes, firm where he presses against her wrist. “I can’t—stop taking off your clothes. Please.”

She arches beneath him, wishing and whining and waiting for him to warm her up. She can taste frost at the back of her throat, like a tongue stuck to an ice pole. And he’s here, summer, the sun come round again, mumbling about how he can’t think like this and he just needs a minute, but he won’t give—he’ll let her freeze.

Her hips shift and drag along his front, against the hill of his arousal. His hand moves from her wrist, settling over her throat, pinning her down. She hasn’t realised her neck is craning towards him in invitation until she’s all but immobilised by this press.

“Hermione.”

His voice fractures, almost a snarl, her name dragged through his teeth. His jaw works as though he can grind the sound back down, but he can’t, and her pulse kicks up at the acknowledgement; her heartbeat beneath his grip only thumps harder.

His scent spikes, dizzying, and he goes taut all over, body bowstring-tight. He presses harder against her, pinning her with the weight of himself, breathing her in like he can’t stop.

“Don’t—just please be still,” he rasps, but his lips are already brushing the corner of her mouth, his nose buried in her cheek, her jaw, her throat. His restraint is a thread fraying fast, every breath a growl low in his chest.

“If you don’t,” she whispers—though she doesn’t recognise her voice, so soft and sweet as it pours from her mouth, “he will.”

She’s never seen an avalanche, but she knows the mechanics. A single flake atop a precariously topped mountain can spell destruction, destroy cities, bury it all beneath the cold.

Some part of her knew, taunted a beast she didn’t completely understand. She knows the shape of the threat—there is a loose outline on the edge of her mind, but she can’t pin exactly who she’s referring to. She doesn’t have to understand, though. Because he does.

She feels it in the sudden stillness of him, the way every muscle locks as though her whisper had drawn blood. His breath halts, then surges again, hot against her throat, a crucible tipped to spill liquid metal.

The hand at her neck tightens, not to crush but to claim, his thumb pressing beneath her jaw so her head tips back further, her throat bared in a way that makes something low in her belly spark and twist.

“Don’t you dare,” his deep voice demands. His teeth scrape her skin as he speaks, his lips trembling with the restraint he’s already losing. “Don’t you ever put another name in your mouth.”

Her lashes flutter, a thrill running through her as his hold firms, as though her body already knows this is the answer it sought.

He drags in another breath, nose pressed to her pulse, and the sound that rumbles through him is pure possession.

“You should—you’re mine. You should smell like me,” he seethes, and then, wrenching her head to the side, his teeth graze her neck.

She’s not sure if it’s the word or his teeth that sends her over the edge, both working her pulse up until she can feel it knocking hard against her ribcage. She’s plunged back beneath the surface, snow catching her heel and taking her down, then all she knows is murky black and cold.

And him. Mine.

She smiles, feeling the heat of his skin as he presses against her. She is too aware of the air on either side of them, and reaches past him, suddenly needing to close them in, make them safe. He tips back on his knees as if he knows, and she takes the pillows, splitting them apart, until they’re little barriers on either side of them.

And then she’s whining because this isn’t right. He won’t like it. She scrambles onto her knees, and her head moves like she’s got slush for brains, but she can’t think, not like this, not when she’s not even ready.

He doesn’t move, but she feels him, right behind her. Waiting for her to do whatever it is that instinct calls for her to do.

She pushes the covers until they’re all bunched up near the pillows, and then there’s a bit of a crescent moon-shaped fortress against the headboard. She draws the fabric up to her nose before smoothing it back down, and it smells like him, mostly. So she slides off her skirt and tucks it up with all the bundles, and then it’s him and her.

He watches from the edge of the mattress. Only when his shadow leans closer does she still, gripping a pillow like prey clutching spoils. Her heart thrums, wild, shaking, thumping out the truth: it isn’t finished until he’s in it too.

She doesn’t realise she has gone and mumbled, “For you,” until it’s already out.

The silver of his stare is all gone, black peering at her.

“I like it,” he murmurs. Pride is a lit firecracker beneath her breast. “This is very nice. Thank you.”

A shaky exhale and a nod mark the whole of her response. She turns back, unaware of why she’s smiling so hard, or why his admiration for her handiwork punctures her heart like a bullet. That haze seems to cast over her vision again, and then she turns completely now, tucking herself in the centre of this silly, little fort.

He blinks, throat working as she extends a hand.

He doesn’t go, instead letting his hand slide along the mattress before he grips her ankle. She’s pulled flat, staring up at the ceiling. When she cranes her neck, he’s got her calf next to his mouth, tilting his head to press a kiss to her medial malleolus. She shivers as his tongue traces a path up her skin.

Then, he tilts, his lips pressed to the back of her knee. His stomach flat against the sheets, her legs pushed open, falling over the smooth and hard slope of his shoulders. His mouth hot over her knickers before turning his head, kissing her thigh, tongue laving over the thin skin pulled over buzzing muscles.

“It hurts,” she whispers, the syllable a rush of air exhaled.

He kisses along her upper thigh, mouth hovering over the fabric. She shifts, and his chin pumps against her, punching a gasp from her chest. He exhales a curse, then presses his face against the hill, nothing more than the pressure of his lips and the groan he extends. Her body explodes in heat.

She pleads again, fingers twisting in the sheets, in the little nook of pillows she’s made. She begs for him, for movement, for more. He buries his face against her knickers again, drawing a breath in. Her hips move, little circles, arcs to make him do something.

His hands wrap around either thigh and split her legs apart, holding her down. The indent of his fingers against her thigh feels like an impulse, the hot pants of his mouth against her feels like truth. She lets herself fall pliant, sinking into the covers, feeling the scrape of his jaw along her inner thighs, drawing heat from what he gives.

“I need you,” she mumbles, clinging to the fact.

The words are sticky; her knickers are, too. She’s covered in a fine sheen of sweat, and rationally, deep in the caverns of logical thought, words like hypothermia spring forth. The cold, the laboured breathing, shivering and sweat. She’s dying, she should tell him as much. She’ll die if she doesn’t have him.

He licks a messy line up the front of her, over the fabric.

Her pulse thunders, and her toes curl, and she desperately tries to push herself against his face. He holds her firmly, and does it again, and again. It’s torment, punishment for existing, driving her mad.

Her tongue is heavy, a flat weight behind her teeth. Still, he won’t move past the barrier of fabric plastered to her skin.

She thinks she begs. She isn’t quite sure, the thud of her pulse sending her into some void where she can’t discern up from down, left from right. It’s these little coltish licks, the swallowed groans, testing to see if what he’s doing is enough.

It isn’t; her heart is hammering, and she’s breathing too quickly. Her vision is black at the edges. Dying, she’ll die without him.

She cries out, and his eyes flick up, and then they’re staring at one another and—

He must feel it, too. He has to know. There aren't any limits here. She needs all of him. Doesn’t he know?

She reaches for his shoulders, and he goes to her. His mouth is open, staring like he doesn’t quite know what to do with her, like the desperate pleas she slurs aren’t in the same language.

“You’ll hate me,” he mumbles before he kisses the corner of her mouth.

She turns her head, catching the end of the kiss and mumbles, “No. I need—you.”

Desperate and clumsy, his fingers slide between them, down over the cold centre of her belly button. She grips his wrist, shaking her head. She barely has the energy to protest, but she does.

His hand moves south, even with her pawing at him, and he kisses her jaw. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t,” she says. “You can’t.”

She doesn’t add that this body was made for him. That if Eve came from Adam’s rib, then she must have been carved from his hunger, that her need slots like a canine in his jaw, that destiny, intertwined, fills the hollow. The ache inside her is ample proof.

Doesn’t he know when she’s lying? When she’s hurt? Surely the speed of her breath and the tone of her voice convey the depth of her earnestness.

And she can’t breathe.

“Inside me,” she whispers against his ear. “Please.”

He presses his face into the duvet and breathes in, presenting her with the long line of his neck. She tilts her head and barely bites his shoulder.

He seethes, yanking back even as his hips snap forward. She stares up at him and sees the sudden way his pupils expand, eating up the thin line of silver until the whole of it is dilated. Wild and beautiful and mine. Like the sharp pinch from her jaw is enough to make him lose that modicum of control.

His nostrils flare, and then they’re moving. He is off of her, tugging off his pants, mumbling a string of words too low for her to make out, she picks up on wet and taste and a host of curses. She can’t focus anyway because then, she sees his length and her mouth—waters.

She starts to reach out, gripping his shoulders, and he’s back on top of her, fisting at the front of her knickers and splitting them off, tossing the mangled fabric across the room.

“Inside,” she babbles, and his lips cover hers.

“I know what you need,” he mumbles into the kiss. “Going to—help.”

“Yes,” she encourages, feeling him notch at her entrance.

“Going to help,” he repeats, though he’s not sure he’s even speaking to her. “Just a little and that’ll—help.”

She nods, starting to say, “Please.”

But the word ends up choked off, incomplete as he slides into her. The cold turns to mist, and then there’s steam, burning hot—enveloping her completely. Her limbs sing, she clamps down, and he groans, so lovely as he works himself inside of her.

“Just a little,” he murmurs, even as his hips jolt forward, giving more. Her arms slide around his shoulders, tugging him forward, tugging him in, making space. “She just—only—fuck.”

Her stomach jolts, excitement bursting through her veins. She squirms beneath him, and he presses a hand to her hip, holding her down. She’s reduced to the basest need, desire at its very foundation, him and her, and it was always going to be this.

She draws in a breath, just as swiftly letting it go in a desperate moan. He shudders over her, hands sliding beneath her arse, tilting her hips and giving her more. She is aware her eyes are wet, cheeks stained with rivulets of escaped tears, but the ache is starting to dissipate, the fear of dying and slipping away evaporating the longer he holds her, the deeper he goes.

“More,” her voice begs.

“Granger—” he cuts himself off as he pulls out slightly. And though he denies her, he still pushes back in.

She kisses him, chasing his mouth, peppering every press of her lips with please. Her mind is an echo chamber, this want is corrosive as it pools saliva in her mouth. It pours from every inch of her, carved deep in his back with her fingernails, a controlled burn in every thrust. Warmth oozes in pulses from the centre.

It is a kindling dropped in a field of dry brush. A strike of lightning upon a tree that cracks under the weight of nature’s passive strength. He pulls his head away with a pained rasp, rushing breath against her neck. And she hears him speaking, the words flowing out of him.

“Just a little—that’s it. You’re so good. For me. I can…Just this,” a mantra in his deep voice, the words not for her sake but maybe his own. She digs her nails in and tilts her pelvis to meet him, and his mantra tilts to babbles—sweet mindless possession. “You’re mine. I’ll never let you go—cold. Never.”

His hand reaches beyond her, curling around the end of the mattress and she hears the sheets split as he grabs hold. His jaw tenses as he buries his face in the duvet, suffocating his voice. And still, no matter what he says or how much she arches for him, his pace stays the same. She watches his throat tense with each thrust, feels the strength as his biceps flex where he holds on—skin over muscle, muscle coddling bone—and it all clicks, occurring to her in a blink: he’s holding back.

She kisses his shoulder, watching the way he shivers before her face is notched near his Adam’s apple. She licks a stripe along his neck, tongue dancing over his pulse, and then as he shudders, she bites down.

Her teeth tear the skin, and his blood spills into her mouth. His breath catches, and he answers with a complete thrust, bottoming out inside of her.

“Fucking—hell,” he spits.

Nirvana, inner peace—she’s achieved it here with his blood, warm and curling past the edge of her lip. She won’t let go, her bite firmly latched, perfect and snug in the curve of his collar and jaw. She hears his teeth grinding as he picks up the pace, none of the agonising slowness of his earlier strokes, a sort of claiming spills forth.

“You’re mine. No one else. No one will touch you—ever again. Only me.”

She slurs happily against his skin, blood bright on her tongue, metallic dripping down her closing throat. She laps over him, nearly complete, and when his mouth shifts like he wishes to suffocate what jumps from between his teeth, she feels his warm breath beneath her ear, and her whole body nearly convulses.

It comes like a burn, a hand placed directly over flame. There is the nanosecond of warmth, too quick for conscious mind to register, the start of ignition. Then growth, neurons pinging, a flashover like her entire body is working it out. Danger comes in kindlings, pleasure that way, too. The brain acts in self-preservation, suppression, dulling the pain which simmers, but embers flicker long after you flinch. Ashes to ashes, beginning and end. Smouldering cinders, snap goes a deer’s neck. Decrepitate, an audible death and then rebirth, the light bursts bright, and all she knows is char, heat, smoke, warm, crackle, fire, she’s on fire.

This bed is a pyre, and she’s consumed.

A sharp cry spills from her throat as she lets go, tumbling over the edge. His hand curls beneath her hip, her leg wraps around him, and he drives into her hard.

He fucks her because she is his. The thrusts are hard, and he repeats filthy, gluttonous praise in a low thrum. His hands are covetous, sliding along her hip, fingers brushing over her bralette, a palm wrapping around her throat to tilt her neck, presenting her whining mouth for him.

“Said no teeth,” he whispers with a wild grin, thrusting deep into her, pulling out before he kisses her again. Then his hand drops back to her hip, pushing her down with force enough to bruise and thrusting so wholly that the frame quakes.

Wood splinters and cracks. Her teeth graze his tongue, drunk on the taste. The bed dips where he’s broken it, but she clings to him as his pace increases. And every single little death is slow-rolling, tugging her through the pleasure, a dull haze of satisfaction, footnoted by the honeyed blood sliding down her throat, mixed up with the pretty promises he mumbles into each kiss.

“Only me,” he seethes into her whining mouth, cracked open on a moan. “You only bite me.”

She flutters and tenses, nodding, and then feels more pressure against her centre. He coaxes her open, hips tilting from left to right as the stretch burns. Gasping and panting, her fingers curl around his back and then his hip jerks forward, and she comes again.

Though he isn’t moving, there is a distinct growth, and the feeling of him twitching inside of her, almost swelling. Then, it’s there; this pop.

“Fuck,” he hisses, peeling back enough to look at where they’re connected. His head shakes. “Holy fuck. Are you–”

“Draco,” she mumbles. His gaze flicks to her.

They freeze for a second, then she shivers, slick and clamping down, pleasure still pinging every nerve in her aching frame, and he leans forward, catching the very end of her exhale with an apology and sliding his tongue into her mouth. It’s filthy, like he’s really savouring the taste of his blood on her lips before he wrenches back just so, hips still fucking little thrusts into her even though he’s locked inside of her.

He stares down, gritting his jaw before his teeth glint, mouth open on a warm pant. Her heart thuds in anticipation, fire spreading through her veins. He presses the tip of his tongue against his canine, eyes wild.

She mumbles, blinking slowly, vowels messy and uneven. “Please.”

She tilts her head, presenting her carotid for his attention, still keeping her gaze on his. The world is so soft, perfect. Then she watches him blink.

His neck cords as he tightly shuts his eyes, and a snarl breaks from him, animalistic—scary, even.

She anticipates pain, the bite she begged him for, but it never comes. His arm wrenches free, his mouth finding his skin. His jaw grinds, lips sealed tight against the mark he carves into himself. The tendons in his neck stand out and when his teeth break flesh, the sound makes her flinch.

Chapter Text

The longer this lasts, the more cognisant she becomes that this is not sleep. Her body moves without premeditation, and she sails along like a passenger, lulling in and out of consciousness.

Rise to the surface. Float, she floats, float. Sink like a stone.

Her limbs are liquid fire, scorching heat slowly threading through her veins, and she rocks on him, full and somehow seeking more. Sometimes the seconds feel real, tangible minutes in his grasp, holding her up, meeting her eye. When the smooth edge of his palm slides along her throat, tugging her down, and he mumbles apologies into her neck, his other hand fixes to the soft lower skin beneath her belly button, thumb catching her clit, keeping her steady as he presses in.

“Just a little more,” he repeats when his lips are over hers. It makes her smile; what is a little more in relation to what they’ve done?

Is he really here?

The question only bubbles up when her muscles have long grown sore, far past the point of pleas perfectly portioned in her mouth. The wonder fizzes on her tongue as he flips them, when she’s bent over and he’s behind her, when his pace grows rough. She thinks maybe it’s mere chimaera, hardly half a lucid dream, something she’s strung together with the knotted skein of hormonal fantasies.

And then there’s that fullness, the way he’s stuck inside her, and pulsing. Her thoughts are slippery when his hand is loose over her stomach, drawing patterns with the rough edge of his thumb.

Need never truly erodes; not for her, not with him. The flames have been stoked by a proper touch—at long last, her mind sighs. Easier here to lose herself in sensation; the voice slipping between her lips isn’t something she fights. How can she, when it’s provided her him? When he is so lovely?

When she climbs on top, he lets her push him into the sheets. There, she focuses, forcing herself to attention, committing every detail to memory; the press of his hands into her hips, the furrow of concentration between his brows as he watches her move, the way his lips part, hanging open like the sight inspires some sort of awe. There is magic in these hours, neither able to sate their needs.

She doesn’t let herself slip in these moments; she just won’t, not then; those are real and whole and hers.

Still, threat looms; each second she’s present haunted by the promise of her vision fraying, her head seeming to split. And then he takes over, sliding into the role as he turns her over gently. He promises things in a voice that is hardened, and does not let her anywhere near his neck. She shuts her eyes.

Float.

“You’re doing so good,” he murmurs. He’s on his back, hands sliding up and down her hips.

She blinks, gulping in a heaving breath, not remembering how she got on top.

One of his hands trails south, and then he does that thing with his thumb as he firmly locks on her other hip. Her thighs spread, and a weak sob spills from her lips.

He gives a little more then collects her in his arms, chasing his release with an apology that breaks her concentration. Her lips part, prepared to question it, but instead she sinks deep down into the murky dark.

⨳

Sunlight creeps through the curtains, shadows long as they catch and stretch across the gnarled floorboards. She twitches, first a wiggle of toes and then her fingers. Her muscles are atrophied, like she’s been twisted in these sheets for the whole of winter, limbs weak as she stretches. She breathes in, holds it and then exhales, slowly running her hand over her face, moving the curls from her vision. Adjusting her body to shift on the side, she burrows into the pillows, the scent warm and divine.

Once she’s stilled, the rustling of the sheets falling silent, she hears the soft sound of his voice, speaking just above a whisper.

“I will come, just not today.”

“Not today?” a woman’s clipped voice returns. “It is Christmas, and we have had this event planned for months.”

“You have had the event planned, Mother,” he snaps before he immediately quiets, exhaling roughly. “I’m sorry. That was—I’m sorry. I know this is not convenient for you.”

“It is not merely inconvenient; it is inconsiderate, Draco. You will return to the Manor this instant.”

“No.”

A choked sort of indignation before Mrs Malfoy seethes, “And why is that?”

The bed creaks when Hermione sits up, and Malfoy’s head snaps instantly, eyes locking on her. His jaw is loose, and he barely shakes his head in confusion, scrutinising her as Narcissa asks, “Is someone there with you?”

His jaw works on an answer, pushing out a low, “Ah.”

And then he stares at her. She flushes at the attention, pulling the sheets over herself. He doesn’t say anything, despite his mother’s increasingly erratic rambling from the flames.

“Draco,” Narcissa snaps. “Are you with company?”

Hermione shakes her head, willing him to just lie, but Malfoy stutters instead.

“I—” He pauses and sets his shoulders. Hermione shakes her head again because there is a strange glint in his eye, and for whatever reason, she feels positive he is about to behave incredibly stupidly.

“No,” she mouths.

“Draco Lucius Malfoy,” Narcissa seethes.

“Yes.” Malfoy turns and stares straight into the flames. “Actually. Yes. I’m with Granger. Hermione Granger.”

Hermione’s heart jolts, heat licking up her neck. Then he turns over his shoulder, meeting her gaze, expectant as he tips his chin, just barely.

Right, she thinks. As it’s my fault for coming here, and now I’ve gone and made him late for his plans.

The very least she can do is bolster his excuses for his tardiness.

She swallows, then shoves back the sheets, scrambling for her clothes from where they’re scattered. A blouse is tugged over her head backwards; she nearly tears the button placket in her haste. By the time she stumbles barefoot toward the fire, belatedly realising that this shirt is not the one she arrived in, her skirt clutched against her thighs, unzipped and held with trembling fingers, Narcissa’s face has hardened in the flames.

The older woman’s lips part, but she does not speak at once. Her eyes rake Hermione up and down in one quick sweep.

“Mrs Malfoy,” Hermione begins, breathless, bowing her head slightly in one awkward bend. She smooths her curls back from her face. “Good morning.”

“Miss Granger,” Narcissa returns. “How…unexpected.”

Hermione glances sideways at Malfoy, but he’s leaning against the mantle, arms folded, jaw tight. She lifts her chin a fraction. “I assure you, I didn’t intend to interrupt.”

“You are interrupting nothing,” Narcissa clips, though her mouth twitches as though she’s swallowed something sour. Her eyes flick to her son. “I had not realised your failure to return home was due to…company.”

Draco’s voice comes firm, final in its shape.

“I’ll be by. Later.” He looks away, inspecting the fuchsia curtains and adds, “With Granger.”

Narcissa stills in the embers.

“With–?” Her nostrils flare slightly, but when she speaks, every consonant is crisp. “I hadn’t anticipated adding another seat to the table.”

“Granger will take mine.”

“Why, I—” Narcissa scoffs, quickly reining back. Her chin lifts. “Very well,” she says primly. “I will inform the elves that you have insisted upon a last-minute guest.”

Her eyes narrow, though her smile remains pleasant. “Do not be long, son. You know how thrilled Miss Greengrass is to spend time with you.”

The flames sputter, and then her face is gone, leaving behind only a faint acrid smell of ash. Hermione breathes out, tugging her skirt the rest of the way. She turns to him, and yes, of course, he’s right there, staring at her, and her immediate urge to question him dies on her tongue.

“You’re awake,” he murmurs softly, gaze narrowing in inspection.

“Yes,” she says, cheeks still warm. “I– you didn’t have to do that.”

“Yes,” he blurts. “I mean—of course not. Fuck. I know, that's what I mean.” He looks away quickly, toward the roof and then back down. “I should’ve asked if you had plans.”

Ron’s face comes to mind, and she shrinks in on herself. “I guess I don’t.”

There is a brief second when he narrows his eyes at her, a crease forming between his brows. Curiosity, no doubt, because why has she gone and ended up here? Just as quickly, he turns his attention to his wrists, twisting up sleeves that lie perfectly flat. Hermione watches his movements, content to let the silence suffocate her.

“Gives me a reason to attend then,” he mumbles.

She finds her voice. “But you already said you were going.”

Their eyes meet as he flatly states, “And you said you’d be at the Burrow.”

She supposes she walked herself into that one.

“I had planned to see my mother, yes,” he continues, adjusting his sleeves. “Until I received a letter from Astoria thanking me for inviting her family to our Christmas dinner.”

“Oh,” Hermione mumbles. “I see.”

“My mother,” he says, terribly low as his eyes flit to hers, “likes to meddle.”

“I didn’t intend to…” Her voice falters. Before she can plan a more eloquent string of words, her throat cracks, and she shakes her head. “Malfoy, I am so sorry.”

Gods, she cannot cry. But sadness crashes into her like a wave, a saltwater slap over her skin and plunging down her throat. Because she hadn’t considered—no, she’d really never thought that he might have had a girlfriend this entire time.

“I had—perhaps the worst day I’ve had in some time yesterday, and that’s no excuse for my behaviour, I don’t…Gods, I got into a row with Ron and I just—I don’t even know how I ended up here.”

Hermione presses her hands to her face because this is so embarrassing, becoming weepy as if she is hormonal but it all dawns on her that she’s gone and…

Her breath hitches, uneven, as though every word she speaks only worsens the fracture.

“I wasn’t in my right mind—I don’t know what I thought I was doing, I only know that I shouldn’t have done it. That I should have stayed away.”

Her fingers tremble as she presses them hard against her eyes, willing the sting to fade.

She imagines the way she must’ve appeared, conjured like some haunted ghoul. An apparition in the middle of the night, both uninvited and unthinking. And now—gods, now she can’t even trust her memory. She sees herself with strange double-vision, a creature starved, greedy, shame burning where heat once roared.

She risks a glance at him, and instantly regrets it because he’s staring at her with that strange look on his face, proper horror at her hysterics. So still and too pale, a marble restraint she has come to associate with him, like he exists above appetite.

And she is nothing but hunger, as evidenced by the memory of her teeth in his neck.

Her stomach twists. Was he promised to another? Is that why he’d always kept his hands back, his mouth close but never closing in? Every time he’d done more, it’d been her own fault, like she pushed him. The thought lashes her, and she bites the inside of her cheek to keep it down, knowing she would die before admitting it aloud.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers again, softer. She turns away from him and crosses towards the bed, a complete mess of sheets and scent all jumbled up into a pillow fort.

The memory slams right up to the surface, heating her face as she thinks about the thick whimpering she’d done, telling him she’d organised the fabric as if it were some gift. Him, smiling and telling her it was nice. Tomatoed, Hermione collapses in on herself.

She wishes she were dead.

“I’m so sorry,” she starts again.

“Stop,” he rasps, the word bitten through his clenched teeth.

Her hands fly higher against her face. “Don’t—just—don’t be cruel. I know what I’ve done.”

“Fuck’s sake, Granger,” he says, muffled like he’s dragging his hands down his face. Then softer, almost pained, “Please, for the love of god, do not cry.”

There’s a rustle, then the surprising weight of his hand around her wrists, tugging her gently down. When her blurred vision clears, his face is close to hers.

“You think you forced yourself on me?” he asks.

With a tight throat, she responds, “Didn’t I?”

His face bends, sneering at her, anger twisting his features into a frown. She glances at her coiled fingers, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt she has tossed on.

Malfoy draws in a breath, sitting on the edge of the mattress beside her, then he lowers further, slipping off entirely until he’s on his knees, his hands resting lightly against her skirt, forcing her to meet his eye.

“I should be the one apologising.”

Her lips part in disbelief. “It was me.”

“I knew,” he says, scoffing. He chews his lip then repeats, “I knew from the moment you showed up here that you weren’t…yourself.” His jaw flexes. “Still, I touched you. Still I—”

His eyes pinch shut for a second, just while he shakes his head.

“If there was a line crossed—” he opens, his gaze sharpens on hers, “—it was by me.”

Her head jerks from side to side, and she wants to protest, to insist that she went to him, that she all but begged, but his sincerity, this grim certainty, knocks the words from her mouth.

“I’m sorry, Granger.”

“I don’t remember it that way at all,” she says. “And you don’t need to apologise to me.”

“Yes, well, as we’ve established.” The look he gives her is pitying. He starts to tip back and stand to his full height. “You weren’t thinking with a clear mind.”

“No,” she argues. Her arm shoots out and locks on his wrist. “No, I don’t mean it like—don’t make it something ugly. It wasn’t that. It wasn’t that for me.”

Still, no matter how firm she is, his face remains resigned.

“I think you think it wasn’t like that,” he says gently, “but I remember everything.”

Mortifying.

He pulls himself free from her grip, then turns on his heels, carding long fingers through his hair. He continues speaking with his back to her.

“You need to eat something. I thought I might pop out before you were awake, but…” He pauses, shoulders a bit rigid, then glances down at her. “Plans changed.”

Maybe it’s the rouge-tint heating her skin and the memories she wishes to bury beneath any warranted distraction, but she suddenly nurses a nauseating frustration. She crosses her arms over her stomach.

“I’m not hungry.”

He sighs, eyes shutting. “Granger.”

“And you don’t need to,” she winces, “invite me to places like I need looking after. I can—I’ll go to my parents’ and—”

“You’ll go to Australia,” he deadpans.

“No,” she snaps, regretting having told him, baffled that he even remembers, “just—my old house in Heathgate.”

A strange look crosses his face and he says, “I’m not going to let you be alone on Christmas.”

“You’re not going to let me do anything. I’m not your charge. I understand you think I was a bit wily last night—”

“A bit wily?” he repeats.

“—but that doesn’t mean I’m your responsibility. You should be with your–”

“Fine,” he interrupts, frowning. He turns, walking toward the nightstand, mumbling curses under his breath. Malfoy pulls a few pamphlets from the drawer and tosses them next to her on the bed. “We won’t go.”

“That isn’t what I meant,” she says.

He waves a wrist and a random leaflet flies into her hands as he says, “We’ll stay in.”

“You can’t just—no, Malfoy.”

“Pick whatever you like.”

“Fine!” She stomps to her feet and pins him with a stare. “We’ll go! You’re so—” She doesn’t finish the thought, in favour of groaning while gesturing at his posture. “I don’t even have anything appropriate to wear.”

“Where is your trunk?”

“I didn’t have much time to pack my belongings,” she grumbles.

Malfoy’s expression grows a shade darker despite the morning sun that settles warmly through the curtains, casting a beam against his jaw. She watches a muscle flex there, and now she’s sidetracked, biting her lip in thought.

“There’s a small cafe around the corner that’s open,” he says slowly.

She glances to find he’s staring at her mouth, eyes fixed on where she’s pulled the bottom between her teeth. She instantly releases her lip, embarrassed to have been caught gawking, and he squints slightly, grimacing as he meets her eyes.

“But my clothes–” Hermione starts.

He mumbles, and magic ripples over her, cinching her skirt completely at her waist. Next, her turtleneck flies from wherever it’d been discarded, glowing faintly with a refreshment charm as it folds itself neatly over the brochures on the duvet.

“The water pressure,” he starts slowly. “It’s fine.” He tilts his chin down, face blank but not unkind. “And there are towels on the rack.”

She probably ought to shower. She supposes she must smell a lot like him. The thought lingers in her mind, and then Malfoy says, “Unless—”

Like he might’ve thought the same.

She glances up, and he silences immediately. He looks away, first at the wall before glowering blindly at the ground. He shakes his head and blows out a sharp laugh, spat down at his feet. She watches him struggle silently with whatever he won’t voice. “I’ll be…I think I need some air.”

Then, with another unamused, rough laugh, Malfoy summons his coat and leaves her alone in his room.

Maybe she does stink.

She exhales, scrubbing her face with her hands. After a lofty moment of intense mental compartmentalisation, she stores last night somewhere very deep in the recesses of her mind. By the time she emerges from the shower, charming her hair into spirals and glamouring the bruises on her skin, Malfoy is back. She stuffs her feet into her boots—cleaned of mud, she thinks, noting that she’ll have to thank him at some point—and ducks beneath his arm as he holds the door open.

Malfoy shortens his steps to match her stride and lets the quiet persist as they trek into the cold winter morning. The ‘cafe around the corner’ isn’t really a cafe at all, but rather a narrow, lopsided teashop crammed between two shuttered buildings. The silent street is mostly dark, save for the windows of Dar Al-Kamar, steamed and golden with light.

He pulls the door open for her, and a tinkle of bells chimes musically through the cardamom-scented air. A rush of warmth steamrolls her, fragrant with spices and orange peel, underpinned by the dark scent of brewed coffee and smoke curling off the glowing coals in a low brass brazier near the counter. A man with smooth brown skin and silver threaded in his beard looks up from arranging trays of pastries, eyes brightening when he catches Malfoy looming.

“Ah, Mister Draco, we did not expect you this morning with the holiday,” the man starts before trailing to a mirthful silence when his eyes slide to Hermione at his side. His voice ticks up a register, smile broadening. “And you’ve brought company!”

The man nods as if this is great news.

“Yes,” Malfoy says stiffly. “This is my—Granger. This is Hermione Granger.”

“Khalas,” the man returns, waving Malfoy off. He turns his smile to Hermione. “He thinks I am a dull old man, you see? I am Amir. I would be a fool to not recognise the face of such a noble witch. It is an honour to have you in my shop.” He holds up a finger, already retreating from the counter with little backwards steps. “In fact, you should meet my wife.”

“Amir, I don’t know that—”

But the man only smiles at Malfoy’s protests, then turns toward the narrow stairs behind the counter and calls out in another language. Hermione can’t follow the words, only their warm cadence. Footsteps descend, and a woman appears, her dark hair wrapped in a pale scarf, dusting flour from her hands.

“This is Nadira,” Amir says, pride bright with obvious adoration. “Nadira, this is the one who rode the dragon. You remember.”

Nadira’s eyes sharpen on Malfoy, and then flick to Hermione, widening with interest. “So this is why,” she says, her smile sly but kind as her gaze finds Malfoy once more. “We wondered what drew you to Devon, to our little shop. Every morning, every afternoon—even once in the evening, wasn’t it, Amir? Always tea, always your books, and never a word about why you were here.”

Her husband chuckles, nodding. “We thought perhaps you were escaping something. But now—” He tips his chin toward Hermione. “Now we see.”

Malfoy exhales, the line of his jaw stiffening. “I appreciate the quiet.”

Nadira hums.

“Quiet, yes. But quiet is better when it is shared.” She turns her smile fully on Hermione. “Welcome. You have rescued him from looking like a solemn statue in the corner of our shop. Very, eh—spooky.”

“Yes,” Amir agrees. “Hallow’s Eve.”

Hermione, caught between laughter and embarrassment, feels the air grow warmer. Malfoy’s ears are faintly pink, but he doesn’t contradict them.

Amir places them in a private booth, the warm amber cushions of the seat aglow with the mosaic-rainbow light from an overhead ballast. He leaves without taking their order, telling Hermione he would like her to sample his new menu. Once alone, the soft hum of music filtering through the air is somehow quieter than her racing thoughts.

“You’ll have to be firm when you’re full,” Malfoy says, breaking the silence. A small grin sits on his lips before he feigns pain and continues, “They’ll keep serving you until you pop.”

She nods, eyes still wandering around the cafe.

The walls glow with ochre paint dulled by time, broken by framed calligraphy where black ink loops and knots into patterns she cannot follow. A woven cloth in deep reds stitched with gold drapes across the counter, its fringe swaying when Amir passes.

Everything is neat and orderly, but it differs from other teashops, a slice of a place she can’t name, transported to Devon. Glass jars line the shelves in uneven rows filled with dried flowers, curls of bark, dark seeds that release their sharp perfume even through the lids. Her subconscious draws on the familiar to make sense of the jarred wares, and without thought, her mind drifts to the similarities of Molly’s kitchen.

If things had been different, she’d be there now. Probably pushed between Harry and Ron, both of them trying to organise a pick-up match of Quidditch before the food finishes. She’d be stuck sampling Molly’s food, offering little hums of more salt or just right until she was too full to stack her plate later in the evening.

Hermione’s throat feels tight.

There are trays of sweets, some sticky with honey, others dusted with a thin layer of milk-white sugar, their shapes unfamiliar, but the scent of browned butter clings to the air and makes her mouth water. Near the brazier, a kettle hisses, coals beneath it breathing their orange glow. Brass coffee pots and long-handled ladles gleam where they hang above the counter, catching the lamplight like small suns.

And there it is—the thought rising back up. The same sun must linger on the various mixing bowls the Weasley matriarch would have flitting in the air of her station, the same spiced air that holds laughter and memories.

She swallows the ache stirring beneath her breast and lets her eyes focus back on the table. Malfoy looks at her, eyes half-lidded.

He must have been waiting for her answer, watching her that whole time. How rude of her.

“Oh,” she says softly, straightening under his attention. “Sorry.”

His pupils spark before he blinks several times and glances off, narrowing his eyes and frowning as he inspects a painting across the room.

“Nadira said you’ve been reading while you have tea the last few days,” she starts. The crease in his brow doesn’t waver as his attention settles on her once again. “Anything fun?”

“I wouldn’t call it fun,” Malfoy returns as his gaze drops to the table. A muscle jumps in his cheek, lips twinging like he might smirk. His eyes flick to catch hers. “Though, you might.”

Hermione laughs before she can think better of it.

As she starts to respond, a wicker tray floats toward their table, settling in between. It lands with a soft pat, and before they can reach for the pot of tea in front of them, there is a little burst of glitter. From the empty vase in the centre, a single white jasmine bloom unfurls, its fragrance slipping delicately into the air.

Malfoy’s face drops, colour draining as he stares over Hermione’s shoulder. When she twists in her chair, Amir is whistling an old tune and polishing a spotless glass, the very portrait of innocence.

“I’m sorry,” Malfoy says in a low voice. She turns back to see that his ears are pink once more. “We can take tea to go.”

Hermione shakes her head, reaching toward the kettle. It has a long spout, reminding her of the trip she’d once taken with her parents to Morocco. Too young to remember the exact name and more details than the colour, shape and sound of the world happening around her, the small flicker of the memory warms her.

She should be thinking of her parents today.

“I imagine it’s a slow day for them,” she says. “I don’t mind.”

She goes to pour for him, and he puts a hand over his mug.

“Malfoy,” she hisses, quickly pulling back the pot to keep from letting the hot liquid burn him.

His hand stays firm, palm hovering over the cup, as though he’d rather scald than allow her to tip the spout.

“Ladies first.”

She blinks at him. “Honestly.”

“Granger.” His tone edges closer to warning, though his eyes soften. “Pour yours.”

Heat gathers in her cheeks, more from his insistence than the curling steam. She sets the kettle down, a bit awkward under his watch, before resetting and pouring into her own cup instead. The liquid glints amber in the lamplight, perfumed with a sweet-smelling floral.

When she lifts the cup to her lips, he draws his hand away from his mug. Still, he doesn’t reach for the kettle. He leans forward, plucking a small square of pastry from the tray. He places it on a delicate plate and slides it across the table until it rests just beneath her fingers.

“Eat,” he says.

His stare holds until she takes a bite. The sugar crumbles against her tongue, rich with butter and honey, and when she swallows, he finally sits back.

Then, finally, after he’s ensured she’s taken at minimum four bites, does he serve himself, but not before cutting another piece and setting it down beside her saucer. She rationalises it as some bizarre Pureblood tradition, an unspoken condition—that his female counterpart be cared for before he touches a thing.

“I’ve been researching,” he says finally. She looks up from the pastry, eyes widening. “That’s what I’ve been reading.”

“Oh,” she swallows the bite and reaches forward, wiping her hands on a small napkin. “About what?”

Malfoy doesn’t respond, tipping his head in a conspiratorial way, and she understands. Of course, he wouldn’t want to discuss it here if he were looking into Lycanthropy.

“Did you find anything noteworthy?”

Malfoy shakes his head. He dips forward a little bit, bracing a hand on the table as he leans in. It occurs to her that she ought to lean back, but she just…can’t.

His breath comes in warm, even exhales, clinging to the scent of tea. It has a sort of dizzying effect, or maybe that’s the proximity, or the way his attention is settled on her, that makes this moment feel private.

“Granger,” he murmurs her name.

She swallows. Is he…does he want to kiss? Here?

“Yes?” she whispers.

“Where were you yesterday?”

“Oh,” she stutters a laugh, banishing the thought. “—I was with Mr Weasley.”

He hums low in his throat.

“We were in London,” she continues. “Hampstead.”

His eyes narrow. “At your parents?”

“I suppose I was overwhelmed. I haven’t been back since–” Her voice tapers off to silence.

His brow knits in frustration, but he keeps his voice low, staring at her so earnestly. “You came from there?”

“No. I mean, yes, technically I–” she starts. He frowns. “I was–”

Amir siddles over, huffing as he sets a large tray on a nearby table, gathering plates heaping over the sides with warm food and settles them in front of each of them. Malfoy pulls back, offering a rough thanks.

“This,” Amir says, extending his hands toward both plates with a smile, “I think you will like.”

He explains each dish: a stack of warm kisra, the thin, tangy sorghum folded in loose triangles; pastries stuffed with spiced vegetables, their seams browned crisp; and a small bowl of falafel, the fritters flecked green inside from fresh herbs. Another plate gleams with bowls of thick date paste, dark as molasses.

At the centre, a new pot of black tea, steeped with fresh mint, curls steam in front of Malfoy’s blank expression.

“Eat, please, eat,” Amir encourages with a smile. He turns and heads back up the stairs to where Nadira cooks, tossing over his shoulder a simple, “Enjoy.”

Hermione waits for Malfoy, but his eyes slide down, even in obvious irritation, waiting for her. She sits back and crosses her arms over her chest.

“Granger,” he says. “Eat.”

“Obviously, you’re…upset with me, so we should just get that out of the way.”

“I’m not upset with you.”

She sets her stance and widens her eyes at him, wishing she could shove a mirror in his face.

“I’m not,” he repeats. He reaches forward and grabs a plate, not meeting her eye as he starts piling food onto it. “I’m not upset with you.”

Hermione watches him in silence, wondering if he’s got any more to give regarding how he feels about her. There’s this silly twinge twirling at the base of her skull, a strange inclining instinct to be self-conscious in every interaction with him. When he doesn’t expand, she widens her eyes in expectation, setting her lips in a thin line.

“You told me that you’d be at the Burrow for Christmas,” he continues slowly. He scoops a bit of the date sauce onto her plate, but a glob lands on the edge of his pinkie. He grimaces, setting the plate down and pops the finger into his mouth. The first half of his response is muffled, the words bitten around where he sucks off the sauce. “I’m trying to understand why you aren’t at the Burrow.”

He pushes the plate to settle in front of her. Malfoy widens his eyes in the same expectant way she had. Annoyed that he’s employed her own methods against her, she picks up her fork and pushes some falafel around as she mulls over her response. He piles food on a second plate, presumably for himself.

She tilts her head a bit, still speaking down towards her plate. “Do you remember earlier in the term when…Neville stupefied you?”

She hears him shift and then, “Yes.”

“Well. Hannah Abbott is very good friends with Susan Bones, and they both have a penchant for being unable to keep their mouths closed.”

“Ah,” he breathes. “Your friends. They didn’t know.”

“No,” she mumbles. “I know you don’t want anyone to know.”

“That isn’t for my sake.”

“Isn’t it?” Hermione has no appetite, only a dull ache repeatedly pinching her gut. “You’re not registered with the Ministry, are you?”

He doesn’t respond, just sets his lips in a firm line.

“I didn’t get it at first, but…I do now.” Hermione meets his stare. “You think you can cure it, don’t you?”

Malfoy pinches his brow, still silent.

“Why haven’t you said anything?”

“I did,” he says roughly before fixing his collar and quieting. “I told you I don’t want you involved. It was always my intention to not have any of this affect you.”

“But you can’t cure—” she quiets, “—Lycanthropy.”

“I know. It’s harder to research when all the resources are at my home, so I’ve only been attempting to manage the symptoms with Wolfsbane, but…my mother, she’s been trying to uncover more to help us—me—reverse it. The curse.”

Her jaw slackens. “This whole time, you’ve known–”

“I’ve been honest. I don’t know much.” His eyes cut to hers. “Almost everyone who could shed some light on that night is dead or–”

“In Azkaban,” she finishes.

His silence is the haunting sort. She fills in all the gaps of his curiosity before he even gets the words out. It clicks; how he’s been leading her to this exactly, his question plucked from the edge of memory. The threat she’d given, in a grotesque ultimatum.

“Why did you smell like Greyback, Granger?”

She swallows. “I got approval to visit.”

His nostrils flare.

“I thought,” she stutters, “that I could find out more for you. And help—”

“I don’t want your help,” he hisses before quickly folding his hands on the table and pressing them against his mouth.

“Well, obviously, you were getting nowhere on your own,” she snaps. “I can’t…do this. I can’t sit idly by and pretend I don’t feel what’s happening to me. And I knew you wouldn’t be able to go and speak with him, so I tried to do it myself, but—”

Malfoy rips his hands from his mouth and asks, “Did he touch you?”

“What? No,” she says. She can tell he doesn’t believe her. “No,” she implores. “Not directly.”

She looks down at the fork in her hand, watching the little jitter of her trembling muscles. She sets it down against the edge and presses her hand against the table, flattening her palm to keep it still.

“I lost my temper,” she continues. Malfoy doesn’t respond, and when their eyes meet again, his expression is softer, wiped clean of his earlier sneer. “He…he was saying horrible things. About you and me. And he said that despite the war, I would always be your bitch.”

“Granger.”

“It’s not that for me. He tried to make it—” She wants to say ugly or wrong, but her thoughts are all compounding in that distracting way, and she doesn’t think she can get the words out. The same surge of emotions captures her throat. “And I—it isn’t like that for me. He doesn’t—he doesn’t get to make it that—”

His fingers bump hers. Her words go airy, the puff of surprise pushing whatever explanation she’d had clean out of her brain. His thumb and index trace her ring finger, a slow graze of an arc, under and then back.

“Are you okay?” he asks, still looking down at her hand, at his fingers lightly skimming her own.

“Yes.” The honesty springs forth, popping out the answer like a fresh cork. “I—I sliced off his ear.”

Malfoy stills, his thumb caught mid-arc against her skin. His eyes flick up, pinning her in place.

“Oh,” he breathes. “…you–?”

“Yes,” she says, finding that maybe she should feel some remorse or take penance for her actions, but nothing stirs in her chest. “He was saying foul, unhelpful things. You’ll probably tell me that I’m behaving stupidly–”

Malfoy hums in consideration, the rumble louder than wherever her sentence might have been trailing off to, and her face grows hot.

“And that’s why you aren’t at the Burrow?” he asks. He resumes the tracing, dropping his stare once again. “They found out you were violent and didn’t like it?”

“No,” she mumbles. “It’s…like you said. I lied to them. They didn’t know about us, and once they did–”

“They threw you out,” he finishes.

She studies the shape of his face, the tilt of his chin and how his lips pull flat as he speaks. Her curiosity is pervasive, indulging in his focus until his words catch up, a second too late. Quietly, she says, “Ron didn’t–”

“He did.”

The rainbow mosaic paints an abstract along his jaw, awash with watercolour strokes of purple and blue. She wonders if the same hues settle against her skin, or if her flush is blatant under the lamp.

“I suppose I should thank you then,” he says. “For keeping my secret.”

“I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t tell anyone what you are.”

Malfoy drums his finger once against hers as he blows out a warm breath, then he pulls away, leaning against his seat, eyes scanning her across the table.

His lips pull just a fraction, a whisper of an indent in his cheek as he appraises her.

“Your morals continue to perplex, Granger.”

Her brow furrows. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“Just–” He exhales another laugh, a rush of air, straightening slightly as she peers at him. “The whole Golden Girl thing.”

Hermione frowns, shaking her head as she glances away. A thick slab of sarcasm pushes the words from between her teeth. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“Not disappointing,” he quickly counters, pulling her attention. “It always felt a bit like the rest of us were left to watch them martyr you in real time. Easier to swallow the eventuality of your demise if they made you out to be fanatical, let you shove yourself to the frontlines.” His gaze trails down before sliding back up. “You know, good all-over.”

She still doesn’t quite get it, but thinks that he might be having a go at her. She straightens, scoffing.

“And now, what? You think that I didn’t truly believe in everything we fought for?”

He grimaces, picking up his fork to push at the food in front of him. “I’m only saying it’s comforting to realise you’re not chasing some divine idea of right and wrong. Evens the playing field.” He glances down. “You act for yourself—every time.”

Hermione sits back, feeling the slow, dull pulse of her heartbeat under her ribs. “And you?” she asks. “Do you only act for yourself?”

“In some ways.” His mouth curves as he keeps his attention pinned to the untouched food. “To some people.”

“Cryptic,” she huffs.

Her gaze drifts to the window as he laughs again, watching where frost webs across the corners of the glass. Beyond it, the street looks washed in pewter light, settled atop the black stones lining the street.

She thinks of all the times she’s been told what she is: clever, loyal, brave, good. But it was never quite right, was it? Because she certainly did many things that were not good. She thinks of Rita Skeeter in the jar, Neville’s petrified face, Snape’s robes aflame. Perhaps her morals had always been corrupt—skewed slightly in favour of what best served her personal interest.

“I suppose that’s the difference then,” she says softly. “You think acting for yourself is honest. I think it’s a compromise.”

“So which are you doing then, Granger?” He glances at her, eyes narrowing slightly. “When you lie for me?”

Hermione taps her fork once against the plate, staring at him. “I haven’t decided.”

That earns her the faintest twitch of amusement from him—barely there, but warmer than his usual reserve. He reaches out, nudging her plate forward with a brush of his knuckles.

“Eat, won’t you?”

When Amir reappears with a final plate of sweets wrapped in paper, she thanks him. Malfoy stands first, smoothing the sleeve of his coat, and nods his farewell. Outside, the cold greets them sharp and silver, their breaths clouding in tandem as they step into the empty street.

He holds the door for her again, and when she passes, his fingers brush the small of her back, an afterthought of a touch.

Still, she feels it long after the bells above the door stop ringing.