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She’s working on something. In the garden, where the last of the flowers are starting to wilt. It smells like nature out here and it helps, to get at that thing in her head, scratch at it until it gives. Clarity.
Hermione could use clarity. It’s like she’s mist rolling over a frozen lake, looking for cracks so she can get into the cold, clear water beneath until she’s dissolved completely. Bathe in that sharp, freezing clarity. Bells in the breeze.
It’s good that summer’s over. It’s a hazy season, she finds.
She’s holed up under the Huntington elm, the trunk of which is looking rather like a notice board. She still feels it, the guilt of Muggledom past, like she’s used glue to stick her fluttery little parchments to this majestic piece of nature. She hasn’t, it’s a sticking charm. Or forty of them.
But it’s difficult, isn’t it. It is. The thing she’s trying to get at is obscured from view, just behind something, she knows exactly where it is, can even make out the shape of it, but it’s the grabbing of it that’s the tricky bit. All day she’s been at it, trying different approaches, jabbing her wand and whispering things. It’s always good fun to try and take something apart. If she hadn’t been a witch, she would’ve made an excellent mechanic.
Her head’s going. Like a migraine, but painless, just pressure in her brain stem, crawling its way up.
But the breeze is lovely. Fresh like peppermint. It gently flushes her back into her body. Feels heavy, good-heavy. A little breath escapes her.
She needs some action, probably. Her eyes are tired and her fingers feel too used. There’s an indent in her palm where the handle of her wand’s been digging in. Harry will scold her, won’t he. She sighs and starts to gather the things on the ground, but leaves her parchment collage up. She does ward it, against the elements and prying eyes, until it’s crackly-shimmery-see-through. Rather a futuristic look, she thinks. Not really wizarding-style.
She walks inside the house and dumps her things on the dining room table. It’s silent inside. No one’s home, not even Crookshanks.
It’s been very tidy since Sirius moved in. The orange-brown floorboards shine in the last of the late-afternoon sun. There’s a decorative blanket over the back of the sofa, the cushions on it neatly arranged. Sometimes it reminds her of a magazine, this house. She thinks she’ll leave her mess on the table, the parchments and books and quills. Maybe she’ll throw some on the floor, for good measure.
It’s time to start on dinner. The men’ll be getting home in an hour.
Hermione feels a flash of resentment. Merlin, but she’s tetchy today. All these feelings swirling at the same time, that restless feeling sharpening into a point, but ultimately managing nothing. Like a perfect pencil in a little toddler’s hand, bludgeoning its way through parchment.
What’ll it be? Potatoes? Tomatoes?
She has no patience for gardening, but she wishes she did. She’d just be able to take what would be available; courgette, onion, Brussel sprouts. Winter cress.
That’s not a meal either, though, is it.
She opens the fridge. Its magic wafts over her like someone’s blown glitter in her face. She has to take a second to breathe before she can see anything again. Her hands tingle.
There’s meat. Lamb. She’s sure that’s Sirius doing. He’s a very domestic kind of man, the perfect type to have a wife and children and a dog and a house and a job, all things he doesn’t have at all if you don’t count himself as the dog, this house as his, and his strange everyday busybody schedule as a job.
She’ll make lamb with spring onion, and gratin dauphinois without cheese. She hopes there’s nutmeg. Rummaging, rummaging. How much of her life has she lost to rummaging?
No nutmeg. It’ll be sad potatoes and happy lamb.
She giggles a little into the back of her hand. Her breath is hot on the skin in a weird way. She shivers.
She gets to work on dinner. She chops manually, but does everything else magically; lets the garlic come fly into her hand, sends the spoon dancing into the double cream. She puts on the wireless, then turns it off again.
She’s just got the potatoes in the oven when Sirius comes in. He doesn’t say anything, just throws himself onto the sofa and opens the Prophet.
He doesn’t acknowledge her unless she does so first. It doesn’t feel half as rude as it probably is. Usually she likes boundaries; likes predictability and silence, and to be safe in the knowledge that he won’t fuck with her unless she asks for it. Harry he’ll bother until the wheels come off. Her, he absolutely won’t.
Is she boring?
The question’s like popping a balloon. She’s thought it before, a lot, when she was a teenager, with Ron in her ear all the bloody time. It used to bother her. It doesn’t now. That is, until now.
Last week she had a birthday. Her own, her twenty-sixth. It had just been Harry, Ron and her. Sirius and Ginny had come in late, around ten thirty, with booze. She’d smiled, genuinely, and then she’d gone to bed.
How is it possible that she feels like a sad little housewife? She’s very career-focused, thank you very much. Unmarried, no children, some very alternative living arrangements. What is it, this thing that’s gnawing at her? Why does it live in her limbs?
It’s fucking hot in here. She about runs into the garden.
That peppermint breeze again. A little less tethered. Breath in and breath out, and so on. Hermione feels, and feels, but she cannot pinpoint.
It’s time to give up.
“Sirius?” she calls without looking.
“Should I set the table?’ He’s closer than she’d anticipated. She turns to find him leaning against the doorframe. The white paint’s peeling, she should do something about that.
“No, it’ll take a minute.”
“It’s fucking freezing. You should put something on.” He does look cold. He’s wearing a thin grey jumper and unassuming black trousers, a pair of metal-framed glasses perched elegantly on the bridge of his nose. Domestic, again. Like a dad.
She looks down. She’s barefoot. Her purple capri’s show her calves, which are quite red, just like her feet. Huh.
Sirius is looking at her intently. “You been all right?”
Well, there’s quite a question. Yes, she has been. But she can’t deny something feels a little bit off-kilter, like her center of gravity has shifted slightly forward. She never sits outside, preferring the warmth and safety of home; sometimes she sits still for so long she forgets she has a body at all. Just a head with a point on it, trying to find something to aim at.
She hates that he noticed first. It’s worse because he looks so dad-like, she thinks. She doesn’t exactly know why. Again.
“Yes.” Her face feels flushed.
Sirius is still staring. He’s got a little frown on, a crease between his eyebrows. He looks young for forty-five, an absolutely ridiculous thing to do after twelve years of Azkaban. But he does. He’s cut his hair shorter than she’s seen it before; it’s barely past his ears. He’s starting to grey a bit.
He looks like a Muggle professor. One that would start an affair with one of his students in a French film.
“‘Mione, you…”
She waits. He’s searching for words, so she waits.
“…Could it be that you’re cycling?”
She initially thinks he’s talking about bikes. That’s ridiculous, she hates sports. Then she catches on, and oh, that’s embarrassing.
She does take it seriously. She thinks. If it’s that, it’s not like she remembers. She had one heat, at fifteen, which had been fucking awful, so bad she’s been on the best suppressants St. Mungo’s had on offer since. She remembers the shaking and the sweating, the simultaneous need to be close to someone and to keep everyone at a mile’s distance. She remembers the wetness everywhere, a bit of blood, and the pain. Three days of crying, holed up in an abandoned prefect’s dorm. McGonagall, checking up at the end of the day. Bone-deep embarrassment.
This is not that.
But she is hot where she’s usually cold, and she does feel woozy, and flighty. Sensitive, like. Like everything’s dialed up to, say, twenty-five.
Which could go to fifty, and then hundred.
“I’ve never…”
Sirius’ eyes bulge out of his head. “You are aware of your status?”
“Yes, yes! I’ve just never had a breakthrough heat.”
“You’re sure that’s what it is?”
She thinks again, does some adding up and simple retraction. The heat of her face is slowly dripping down her body. It’s leaked down to her chest, where she feels a little itchy. She feels the impulse to yank off her jumper. She lets it pass.
Denial isn’t her style, even in this already quite pitiful state.
She nods. Sirius folds his arms over his chest, nodding too. He seems to be studying the brickwork on the ground.
“All right then. You should eat, while you still want to.”
He turns around and heads inside. Hermione doesn’t know what to do, so she follows. He gestures for her to sit down, and she obeys. The mess on the table bothers her, but she doesn’t feel like doing anything about it.
Sirius busies himself in the kitchen. She’d meant to start the lamb thirty minutes before the potatoes were ready, so it could rest for a bit, but the timer still has almost two hours to go. That kind of rest would surely lead to death. She huffs out a breath. A double death for a sad little lamb.
She feels ravenous, like she could eat a horse. Sirius is mumbling to himself, his wand out. Hermione doesn’t know what to do with herself. She grabs the first parchment on the pile.
It’s a good one; some notes from a muggle book on mechanics. The specific chapter delves into solid ones, possibly useful for a specific area of warding she’s been interested in lately. She’d been trying to find the right trick to layer multiple inimica, which is awfully tricky. The wards are slippery and need to be contained to be stacked. She’s been to three libraries, tearing through the protective magic section, trying to find something befitting her research. She cursed the idiotic Wizarding world three times over, and herself too, for being so awfully limited. Wizarding physics is still in its infancy, which it does not have to be. The information she needed had been easily found in a muggle library; just some clues about linear elasticity and she’d been right back on track.
Sighing, she puts the parchment down.
Sirius is suddenly there, next to her. She starts. He’s stacking her parchments, sorting the ink pots and the quills, then with a quick flick of his wand sends it all flying out of the room, up the stairs. She assumes she’ll find it in her bedroom later, neatly lined up on her desk.
He puts a plate in front of her, and another, and another. Rice porridge with nuts and seeds, peeled orange slices, buttered rye bread, sardines and olives and some plain broccoli. It’s an odd meal by anyone’s standards, and Hermione feels thoroughly annoyed. She misses her sad lamb.
Sirius sits down two seats over.
“What the hell do you think I’m going to be doing later?”
He shrugs, apparently deeming her question unfit to answer. Hermione suppresses the need to roll her eyes and maybe send a stinging hex his way. She tucks in, despite herself. The porridge is bland, so she puts some of the olives in there, which actually does improve the taste.
He’s smirking a little, watching her eat.
She gets more and more adventurous, first putting the sardines on the rye bread, which isn’t bad at all, then mashing some into the porridge, which is quite a lot worse. She finds the sardines do go well with the oranges and the broccoli.
Sirius is well and truly smiling now. He’s being really calm, she thinks. Not unlike herself, really. What’s happening right now really isn’t very good. Potentially disastrous, actually. She doesn’t feel that now, munching on her bird dinner.
She’s slowly getting hotter, her skin feeling clammy. She does take off her jumper. Underneath it she’s wearing a short-sleeved white blouse. It’s made of cotton, thank Merlin.
Sirius’ eyes flick down and back up in a millisecond, but she sees.
He ignores it, or just isn’t fazed by it. “So.” he says, crossing his legs.
She shoves the last bit of broccoli in her mouth. Sirius gets up and retrieves her plates, bringing them to the sink. She catches a whiff of him. It immediately triggers the horniness, so overwhelmingly she cannot believe it wasn’t there before. Her skin flushes further. Of course, Sirius is an Alpha, which she knew before. He goed through rut every couple months, as Harry does. They leave the house for a couple days and come back wrung-out and hungry. She’d never given it much thought; it was just one of those things she didn’t really have to worry about. You could skip heats your entire life, if you wanted.
She’s having a breakthrough heat, she’s realising. Her first heat in something like eleven years. She’s not in a relationship and she’s living with two Alphas, one of which is feeding her like a pig for slaughter.
Is that what he’s doing? Is he intending to…
“What d’you wanna do?” he asks, standing in the kitchen. He seems fine. Hermione’s having some trouble breathing. She doesn’t answer.
“Look. This is… you could ride it out here. We’ll get out of your hair, stay at the Leaky. That’s fine.”
She thinks again of the last time, that nagging pain, the overwhelming horny discomfort. The loneliness.
Well, she’s not gonna bloody ask. He’s…
She doesn’t know if she wants it for real, or just for now. She’s honestly never considered it. Of course, this is something of a medical emergency, and it happens quite a lot, that…
“Riding out a heat, it’s…” Her voice sounds raspy, like a dehydrated Dementor. The heat’s getting to her head, making her strangely giggly, and she still has some trouble breathing.
Sirius is nodding again. “Listen, Hermione, it’s…”
“Not Harry. I can’t do Harry.”
He holds his hands up. “Whoa, whoa. It’s…” He laughs quietly. Hermione wants to die a little bit, but she also feels jittery and out of it, like the time she took one pain potion too many and got high as a kite.
“This is gonna be so embarrassing.” she giggles, and Sirius laughs again, but not whole-heartedly. He doesn’t quite look at her.
“Look. I can, er, provide heat relief, so to speak. If you want that. But it’s… ‘Mione, most of it’s not going to be fun. You know? I’ll go into rut. D’you know what…”
She does. Elevated stamina, aggression. Some cognitive impairment, maybe, like mild aphasia. Generally lowered inhibitions, lowered to the point of there being basically nothing left. He’ll want to stake his claim, and he probably won’t let up. There’s no fairytales in the land of reproductive biology.
“I can’t ride it out. I can’t. It’s indescribable, really, like…”
“It’s fine. I can do it. Just… are you all right with it? While you’re still cognisant, are you… I don’t want…”
She nods. “I’m obviously already quite… you know,” she waves her hands around vaguely, “and I… I mostly want this because the alternative is really awful. Like, absolutely awful, not like riding out a rut on your own, I don’t think. But I don’t think that’s an illegitimate reason to want you for this, although I’d understand if that makes this difficult for you.” She cannot bear the idea of him saying no. She wonders how she’d be if Harry had gotten here first. She doesn’t really want to know. But the heat’s really got its claws in her now, shaking her senses around, and she wants him. She’s imagining the heat of his neck, the taste of his gland, his hands on her. What his hair looks like when he’s hanging over her.
He’s thinking. He’s going to say no.
He sighs. “I’ll send a patronus out to Harry.” He does so with mechanical movements, bending down to whisper in the large dog’s ear so she can’t hear.
She’s so immensely relieved she almost moans. She’s holding onto the table like it’s a lifeline, she notices. She lets go.
“Hermione.”
Sirius is closer now. His scent is so overpowering, she can almost see it in the air. Vanilla and black pepper, with something sharper, like the taste of lemon or salt, high-pitched. She takes big breaths of it, like it’ll soothe her. Her clothes feel awful on her skin, like sandpaper.
“Hermione. Listen. Are you on any type of contraceptive?”
She swallows. “Yeah… Just the regular potion. Not…”
“Right. Okay. Look, it’ll be a lot better to do it without…”
“Yeah, yeah. Do it.” It’s starting to hurt. A low pressure in her abdomen, unkind, like it really doesn’t belong there. Semen’ll help. She’ll take anything that can help.
He takes her by the arms, carefully, and she moans. He leads her to the stairs, over the landing, into his bedroom. His room’s about half the size of hers, with only one window. It smells like him, sharpened to a point.
“Close the blinds?” she asks. He complies immediately. It feels good.
She starts stripping. Her clothes feel like bugs crawling on her skin. She’s not being very sexy, she doesn’t think, but that’s not really what this is about. Even if from the outside looking in, it seems like it should be.
When she’s completely naked she gets on his bed. He’s still standing by the window. She burrows under the blankets, where the smell of him is thicker yet, and she moans again, a pitiful sound. The pain in her uterus is worsening from a dull ache to a sharper pinch.
Sirius snaps into action. “You want to nest?”
She mewls. Everything is disorienting, especially her own mind, like a maze. Like, like…
“Omega.” he says. She immediately stops moving, her eyes snapping to him. He sighs. He’s looking quite flustered: eyes wide, pupils blown, pink-blotched skin. She trembles, breathing shallowly, waiting for his word.
“Relax.” She does, a little.
“Do you need a nest?” he asks, and she shakes her head. He nods curtly. He takes off his glasses and puts them on the nightstand before taking off his jumper. He has a rumpled T-shirt on under it. He unlaces his shoes, takes them off and flings them under the bed.
“Wait. Wait. Hermione.” She looks up at his face, which is grave. “I don’t know… Rut is quite a serious thing. I can’t guarantee I won’t bite you. I can’t–”
She nods feverishly. “It’s fine, it’s fine, Alpha, please...”
He grits his teeth, furrows his brow. The discomfort grows; he looks sad, or angry. Hermione’ll cry.
He notices and reaches out to pet her head. She sighs softly.
He resumes his stripping. With every article of clothing he takes off, Hermione grows more desperate. His ratty old shirt comes off and the sight of his bare belly makes her moan again. He’s slim and sparsely haired, with a little trail leading down into his boxers. She wants him on her, the pressure of him on top of her, so she can live in that scent of his.
He’s as businesslike as she was. She barely gets a look at his cock before he’s climbing into bed with her, on top of her the way she wants. She mewls, feeling like crying again. It hurts quite badly now, a persistent whine bleeding from the center of her to her extremities.
He shushes her using his normal voice. He looks down between them, his hair falling onto her chest. She feels the blunt head of his cock against her where he lines himself up. He feels around her vagina, rubs her clit once or twice, more to check than anything else. Her body seizes, but it just kind of hurts. He shushes her again, kindly.
“It’ll be better after.” he promises softly. She nuzzles his neck, drinking in more of his intoxicating scent. He pushes in slowly, groaning softly throughout. The relief of it’s already fantastic, like nothing else. Her head falls back onto the pillow, her eyes closed as her first orgasm slams through her like a battering ram, making her seize up around him. She hears his breathing, slow and laboured as he waits. Once it subsides he pulls back and thrusts, and Hermione chokes on her scream. She tilts her head forward until her forehead’s on his shoulder, where he’s sweaty and warm, and he smells the sweetest.
He sets a punishing pace. She can’t catch her breath, doesn’t want to, just huffs out small sounds as he fucks her. He’s growling in her ear, sounding increasingly like an animal. His cock in her feels so good, so good, so good, like a fucking siren going off, like an ocean moving through her. He moves with intent, obviously chasing his own orgasm. She lifts her head to look at his face. The room’s quite dark, but she can see the furious glittering in his eyes, the thousand-mile stare. He’s entered his rut.
She comes again, quickly. He doesn’t stop, just keeps giving it to her, his cock pistoning in and out of her wetly. He’s getting thicker inside her, drags along her entrance in a way it didn’t before. It doesn’t take long before he lets out a grunt and takes her wrist in his hand, pushing it back into the mattress as he thrusts one last time. She moans brokenly as his knot takes and settles behind her pelvic bone, filling her with his semen and ensuring it stays there. It feels so good she can hardly believe it, the dull pain immediately quieting down to nothing but fucked-out bliss.
Sirius slumps down on top of her. The weight of him’s delicious, almost as good as the thick fullness of his knot lodged inside her. It feels massive, like her body’s completely reduced to the accomodation of him.
He dips down his head to mouth at her mating gland, which sends sparks of pleasure coursing through her again. She feels a little clearer now, with his seed fresh inside her, topped up and stuck on him. She brings up a hand to bury in his hair. He growls lowly.
She kisses along his jaw, softly. He moves a little, a slow rocking motion. They’re still firmly stuck, so it pulls on his knot inside her. It feels good, warm.
His hand comes up to sneak around her jaw. He pushes her head back to expose her throat, bending down to suck on it softly. She feels his warm mouth, his tongue licking the sensitive skin just above her gland. She shudders a little, slick pooling around the base of his cock. He noses along her jaw, as if to feel out the shape of her.
“Sirius…” she says. He moans in response, low in his throat.
“In rut.” he says. She just nods and brings up a hand to clamp around his bicep. He moves again, slowly. The knot has a tiny bit more give to it, allowing him to thrust very shallowly. He does so, quickly. Hermione hears herself give a thin, high whine. Everything’s mottled down to the feeling in her pussy, the insistent ache of him inside her, the fullness of the experience; his weight, his size, his smell, his sound, he’s all up in her senses in exactly the way her heat needs from him.
It takes a while before he’s able to pull out again. By that time he’s fucking her in earnest again. He pauses and pushes her, willing her to turn over. She does. Her pushes her hips down, not allowing her to get up on her knees. Slides into her like that, through the slickness of her. The angle’s insane, much deeper. He wraps a hand around the back of her neck, not to push, just to hold. She’s stuck in a sort of perpetual state of orgasm, a sort of blissed-out subspace where nothing feels quite real except right where he’s fucking her, his cock sliding in and out where she’s slick and wet. His body slaps against her arse. She hears it distantly, just as she hears herself let out these brittle, high noises.
He knots her again like that, flat on her belly. When he does, she gasps for air, the stretch of it almost too much. He puts his body flat on hers, pushing her down into the mattress. It feels nice, grounding. He’s warm and sweaty.
He keeps licking her gland like he’s trying to take care of it, rather than trying to chomp down. She doesn’t know if that’ll change soon, if this is just the soft beginning of rut, instead of the real thing. Maybe he’s just a nice Alpha, with nice, cookie-cutter instincts.
She doesn’t know him all that well, she realises. Not like this, obviously, but maybe not beyond this, either.
This time his knot takes a lot longer to go down. The pain starts to build again, gradually. Every time she moans her discomfort he growls, as if to shut her up.
“It hurts, Alpha, please.” she mutters pathetically when she’s in the throes of it, wiggling underneath him, trying to find some relief. “Need more. Alpha, please, please, please, I need…” She chokes on a sob, her vision blurry, a ringing in her ears.
He makes a noise that sounds dangerous, like a final warning. He slides his hand under her throat, but doesn’t curl up his fingers. She clamps her hand around his wrist. He swats at it, before taking her fist and pushing it into the mattress. He moves his hips and Hermione screams, an awful sound. She’s pouring out slick around him. He manages to pull out a bit. He’s noisier now, growling into the side of her face, his jaw snapping around her neck without actually biting her. She feels a restless unease creep up, even where the shallow back-and-forth of his cock inside her soothes her. It’s a strange thing, like whiplash.
He changes position with his knot still half-lodged inside her. Sits up a bit so he’s straddling her, bracing his hands on her back. It still feels so good, so good it’s scary, like this is all she’s ever going to want again. To be impaled by him and pushed down, to feel him everywhere, all the time.
He makes quick work of her, and of himself. Comes inside her again, with a shout, biting her shoulder remarkably softly. He wants her gland, she knows. But he’s not taking it.
“We have some time.” he grumbles after a moment of silence. Hermione feels it too, a bit of looseness in her limbs, some awareness of her brain inside her head, rather than just her vagina.
They’re stuck, still. Will be for a while, probably. It feels good, if overwhelming, to have something as big as him lodged inside her. She turns her head the best she can, but it’s not really any use. He lies down on top of her again, pulling the blankets over them. She almost feels sane again.
“Have you done this often?”
“What, heat sex?” He sighs. “Not really. Once or twice.”
He sounds tired, his voice gravelly. He leans down to kiss the side of her face. It lands somewhere in her hairline. She smiles.
“Once we’re loose I can get you some water.”
She hums in acknowledgement. She doesn’t know how long they’ve been at it; time feels syrupy, like it’s the least real thing occurring at the moment. But she is a little thirsty.
“How does it feel? For you?” she asks, voice small. He chuckles softly.
“I don’t… ‘Mione, I’m a… fucking animal. It’s like the whole world doesn’t exist, you’re that good.” He noses along her jaw affectionately. Kisses the side of her neck, sweetly. “I hope it’s not too much.”
She shrugs. She doesn’t really know. “I like you’re better when you’re you, I think.”
He doesn’t respond to that. Pulls out a bit to test the knot. It’s slimmed down considerably. He slowly pulls her hair over her shoulder and strokes her head with a feather-light touch.
“Just one more minute.” he says, like that’s a relief. She wants to kiss him, she realises. She feels shaky, confused. Maybe it’s better for the heat to pull her back in already, to reduce her to nothing, until there’s nothing to feel but him.
He comes loose. There’s a rush of fluid. She realises that there’s a very good chance she could come out of this both mated and pregnant, but she’s not quite herself enough to let that thought linger. She rolls over, onto her back.
He reaches for his wand on the nightstand and sits back to murmur some gentle cleansing spells. It feels nice, like tingling. She watches him. His cock is mostly hard and quite red. She looks away from it to focus on his face. His pupils are still massive. He smiles at her, tentatively. As if he isn’t quite sure she’ll smile back.
She’s not sure either. But she reaches for him. He puts his wand back and falls forward. She kisses him. It’s sweet. His mouth is soft, warm. Wet when he opens it and their tongues touch. He makes a little noise and pulls back, his breathing a little heavier.
“Water, first.” He scrambles off the bed and out of the room. Hermione sighs. There’s a dull ache in her abdomen, slowly making itself known. He’ll be back, and that’ll be that again.