Chapter Text
The library was too warm.
Firelight flickered along the spines of old volumes, shadows stretching long across the carpet. Hermione stood at their usual table, parchment scattered around her, frustration simmering beneath her skin.
“You’re insufferable,” she snapped.
Malfoy leaned against a bookshelf nearby, sleeves rolled to his forearms, watching her with that infuriating calm. “And yet you keep inviting my opinion.”
“I do not invite it,” she shot back. “You insert it.”
His mouth curved faintly. “Semantics.”
She rounded the table before she realized she’d moved.
“You don’t get to disappear for days and then act like—”
“Like what?” he cut in, pushing off the shelf. “Like nothing changed?”
They stopped on opposite sides of the table.
The fire cracked softly behind him.
Her pulse quickened, but she refused to step back.
“You don’t tell me anything,” she said, voice lower now. “You keep me in the dark.”
His jaw tightened. “You don’t trust me.”
“Give me a reason to.”
Silence stretched.
Then he moved.
He came around the table in three slow steps. Deliberate. Controlled.
She held her ground.
“Tell me to leave,” he said softly.
The words hovered between them.
She didn’t say it.
His hand came down on the table beside her hip. The wood thudded softly under the impact. The sound seemed to echo through the room.
Her breath caught.
The argument thinned into something else.
Heat.
Challenge.
She grabbed the front of his shirt without thinking. “You’re impossible.”
“And you’re furious,” he murmured, lowering his head slightly, “because you missed me.”
Her grip tightened.
“That’s not—”
He kissed her.
It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t careful. It was sharp, almost punishing, like he meant to prove something. She kissed him back just as hard, fingers tangling in his hair, pulling him closer as the edge of the table pressed into her thighs.
His hands found her waist. Lifted.
The sudden movement stole her breath as he set her on the table, papers sliding to the floor in a scatter of parchment. Instinctively, she wrapped her legs around him, drawing him in.
The room tilted.
Her fingers slid up beneath the edge of his shirt. His hands traced the curve of her hips, firm and certain. Every movement was charged, controlled, but barely.
The argument was gone.
There was only friction. Urgency. The desperate need to close whatever space remained between them.
His mouth moved along her jaw, her throat. Her pulse hammered beneath his lips. She arched without meaning to, fingers clutching at his shoulders.
“We shouldn’t,” she murmured, though her hands were already roaming his body freely.
“Then tell me to stop,” he said, voice rough now.
She didn’t.
He kissed her again. Slower, deeper, demanding. Her fingers tangled in his hair as his hands found her waist, then slid to her thighs, guiding her legs wider around him.
The table creaked softly beneath them.
His mouth trailed to her jaw, her throat. She tipped her head back without meaning to, pulse racing wildly.
“Granger,” he breathed against her skin.
Her name in his voice did something dangerous to her spine.
Her legs tightened around him.
He pulled her closer to the edge of the table, one hand firm at her hip, the other sliding slowly upward along her thigh. The anticipation alone made her breath hitch.
She felt reckless. Unraveled. As though the entire manor had fallen away and there was only the heat of him, the scrape of fabric, the press of his body between her knees.
“Tell me to stop,” he said again, but this time it sounded less like restraint and more like a dare.
She pulled him back to her mouth instead.
His hand slid between them, under her skirt, finding her clit. He pushed her knickers to the side and began rubbing slow circles.
The contact sent a shock through her, sharp and intoxicating.
She moaned.
“Fuck Granger, you’re so wet,” Malfoy groaned, before slipping a finger inside her.
Her breath came faster now, uneven. She began rocking her hips to meet his movements.
He added a second finger.
Her body arched toward him, chasing friction, chasing relief, chasing something she refused to name. He was deliberate, and the world narrowed to sensation. To the pressure of him, to the rhythm he set, to the way her body betrayed every rational thought she possessed.
She felt herself tipping.
Right at the edge —
Hermione woke with a sharp inhale.
The ceiling above her bed swam into focus. Her sheets were twisted around her legs and heat lingered low in her body. Her heart pounded like she’d run a mile.
For a long moment she stared at the ceiling, furious with herself. Furious with her mind. Furious with the way her body had betrayed her.
It had only been a dream.
Heat flooded her face.
“Merlin, Hermione,” she muttered under her breath, dragging a hand over her eyes.
Four days.
Four days since Malfoy had left, and apparently that was all it took for her subconscious to conjure him with wandering hands and a mouth that knew exactly how to silence her.
Pathetic.
She rolled onto her side, pressing her face into the pillow as if she could smother the memory of the library, the shelves, the argument, the way he’d lifted her so easily...
Enough.
This wasn’t about Malfoy.
It had been years since she’d been with anyone. Since Ron. Since anything that resembled intimacy that wasn’t tangled in strategy and war and survival.
Of course her body would react.
Of course tension would bleed into desire.
She was human.
That was all this was.
It was just a dream.
Just frustration.
And she refused to let it mean more than that.
Every day since Malfoy had left had been identical.
She woke.
She ate.
She read.
She walked the length of the East Wing corridors.
She ate again.
She summoned house-elves for additional texts on obscure Dark artifacts (particularly anything that could resemble what the Dark Lord had retrieved in Dover).
She bathed.
She read.
She slept.
Repeat.
It was structured. Logical. Productive.
And yet the Manor felt too quiet.
She pressed her fingers briefly to her temples.
She did not miss him.
She missed the arguments. The strategic sparring. The way he noticed things no one else did.
That was all.
The kiss before he left flickered at the edge of her thoughts.
She shut it down immediately.
There were more important things to focus on.
Still, as she swung her legs over the side of the bed and reached for her robe, she couldn’t quite shake the phantom sensation of being lifted, pressed against wood, held too close.
Her jaw tightened.
“Get a grip, Hermione.”
She decided if she kept to her routine, she would go mad.
So instead of waiting for a house elf to bring her breakfast, she would go on a walk first today.
She dressed quickly. Simple jumper. Trousers. Hair twisted up, though loose strands immediately escaped.
The East Wing corridors were quiet at this hour. Pale light filtered in through the tall windows, dust drifting lazily in its path. The wards hummed faintly along her skin.
His magic.
Layered. Precise. Protective.
She hated that she felt safer because of it.
She refused to linger on that.
Hermione moved slowly, hands clasped behind her back, cataloguing her thoughts the way she might catalogue a problem set. The artifact in Dover. The Dark Lord’s expansion to France. If she focused on logic, on strategy, there would be no room for dreams.
She rounded the bend near the eastern gallery and stopped in front of the largest window. The one that overlooked the gardens.
She hadn’t meant to pause here.
But she did.
This was where she used to watch Draco and Astoria walk together.
Astoria.
Malfoy’s fiancée.
The word settled heavily in her chest.
Engaged.
It wasn’t as though Hermione didn’t know that. She had known it from the beginning. Malfoy hadn’t hidden it from her.
And yet.
The memory of the library rose again, unbidden. Malfoy’s mouth against hers, the desperate edge to it, the way his hand had tightened in her hair like he was holding onto something that might disappear.
Hermione had initiated the kiss.
Willingly.
Hungrily.
She didn’t even know where things truly stood between him and Astoria. They walked together. They spoke quietly. They shared a history Hermione didn’t understand. Perhaps the engagement was merely political. Perhaps it wasn’t. She had no right to assume either way.
But assumption didn’t matter.
Astoria wore his ring.
And Hermione had still kissed him.
A flare of shame burned through her.
This, the hiding, the secrecy, the wards, was already morally precarious. She had told herself she was here because she had no other choice. Because survival sometimes required uncomfortable alliances.
But kissing him?
Dreaming of him?
That was not survival.
That was a distraction.
She forced herself to look out the window.
Today it wasn’t Malfoy beside Astoria.
It was Daphne Greengrass.
Hermione stepped closer to the glass.
For a moment, she almost didn’t recognize her.
At Hogwarts, Daphne had been the picture of composure. Always immaculate. Always poised. The sort of girl who moved through the corridors with a quiet, calm, confidence. The perfect pure-blood lady. Polished manners, measured smiles, emotions carefully curated for public display.
Hermione had rarely seen her flustered. Never loud. Never visibly shaken.
And, if she was being honest, Daphne had been one of the very few Slytherins who had treated her with something resembling civility.
No whispered slurs in corridors. No theatrical sneers at the Slytherin table. On one occasion in fourth year, when a particularly cruel comment had echoed a bit too loudly in a hallway, Daphne had simply looked at the offender and said, “How tedious.” The comment had died there.
It hadn’t been kindness in the Gryffindor sense.
But it had been something.
The woman in the garden now was nothing like that composed girl.
Daphne was pacing.
Her movements were sharp, uneven, hands cutting through the air as she spoke. Her posture was rigid, shoulders drawn tight with strain. Whatever she was saying, she was saying it quickly. Urgently. Desperately.
There was no elegance in it.
No polish.
Her blonde hair, usually sleek and deliberate, was slightly disordered, as though she’d run her fingers through it too many times. Even from this distance, Hermione could see the tension carved into her expression.
This wasn’t the Daphne Greengrass who had once presided over Slytherins like a quiet queen.
This was a woman unraveling.
Astoria stood firm in front of her, intercepting her pacing. Calm but intent. One hand lifted, then lowered, as though urging reason. Reassurance. Containment.
But Daphne grabbed her sister’s forearm , gripping too tightly, too desperately, and Astoria didn’t pull away.
Hermione pressed her palm lightly against the window, straining to read lips, to catch even a fragment of what they were saying.
She couldn’t hear a word.
But she could see the tension.
Something is wrong.
Hermione’s stomach tightened.
When Daphne’s voice rose, Astoria stepped closer, not to soothe her, but to lower the volume. Her hand caught Daphne’s wrist briefly, fingers pressing in a silent warning.
Careful.
Hermione’s breath slowed.
This wasn’t a disagreement between sisters.
It was damage control.
Daphne leaned closer, speaking urgently now. Too urgently.
Astoria’s expression shifted, not shock, not panic.
Assessment.
Daphne shook her head once, sharp. Frustrated. Frightened.
Frightened of something beyond this garden.
Beyond this manor.
Astoria released her wrist slowly.
And then—
Astoria went very still.
Her head lifted.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
Her gaze rose toward the East Wing windows.
Toward Hermione.
The wards were intact. Hermione could feel them humming. Astoria could not see her. Could not sense her. Malfoy had layered protection upon protection.
Still—
Astoria’s eyes locked onto the very window Hermione stood behind.
Searching.
Hermione’s pulse jumped.
Astoria could not see her.
She knew that.
She knew it.
And yet—
Astoria’s gaze did not drift.
And for one suspended, impossible second, their eyes met.