Chapter Text
“Shh, Hermione,” a voice murmurs, ferrying her away to a far-off place, “it feels better when you’re sleeping.”
Shell Cottage is wistful in the winter; Hermione notices sea lavender shivering in the wind, alive but nostalgic for the first days of summer, and the faint taste of the ocean water’s salt carried up from the nearby coastline, briney and bitter on her tongue.
“It’s going to rain.”
She looks over her shoulder at Draco, his looming figure framed by the sky, a calico of frothy white and pewter gray.
“You should come inside,” he says, gesturing back toward the cottage with his thumb.
Inside, where there is a fire going, and dinner on the table— a basket of yarn and knitting needles by the love seat— Crookshanks curled into thick wool blankets on her bed— an apron hanging on a kitchen hook— Draco’s worn boots by the door.
A dreamland disconnected from the war, a castle in the clouds where magic is found in the commonplace rather than the end of a wand.
Hermione follows him back inside, and he serves her cod fish he caught himself, just before winter took over the sea, along with a glass of aged wine from the Weasley’s cellar.
They fight well together.
And then they trudge back to this safe house, where seashells line the roof and the hum of the waves soothes their battle-worn nerves.
Occasionally, another Order member stays with them for a few days. It could be Harry, tired of the bustle of Grimmauld Place, or someone she barely knows, traveling from battle to battle.
Hermione cooks breakfast— often crisp toast with fresh blueberry jam, eggs from the village muggle market, orange juice she squeezed as the sun rose— and Draco takes them on silent walks across the beach, to his small fishing boat when the weather permits, and carries back the errant flowers they find along the way.
Draco records each mission in his ledger. Tonight, she thinks he probably writes: December 29, 1997— Spinner’s End. 2 casualties.
They sit quietly on the love seat in front of the fire, the chatter of her knitting needles merging with the crackle of the flames. The faces of the two dead people linger in her mind— one was a teenaged boy, younger than she was when she joined the Order, and the other a middle-aged man. Hermione focuses on the smoothness of her needles (glossy beech wood, left behind by Weasley matriarchs) and the nearly finished wool scarf coiled in her lap.
A nice shade of brown, like the swallows she’d seen last summer.
His body heat licks her when he shifts and snaps his ledger shut, watchful eyes fixated on her hands as she knits and tugs on her yarn. She tenses slightly, always overwhelmed by his single-minded attention, never knowing what to do when she’s pinned under his gaze.
Draco leans back and breathes deeply, twining his fingers together over his stomach.
“How are you feeling?” He asks.
“I’m okay,” she says, nearly slipping a stitch. “It’s— it’s just that— the boy, he was so young.” Just a child, just like us.
“I know. But he was trying to kill you,” Draco says, stretching his legs out and bumping his knee against hers— so warm and comforting and please don’t move away— before retracting it. “I don’t regret it.”
The room has grown hotter. A crown of sweat forms on her forehead, and she pauses her knitting.
They are not lovers. She doesn't know his touch, his kiss, his embrace— and he doesn’t know hers. She has her own private bedroom, just as he does, and she sleeps alone, just as he does.
Their partnership is strange, she knows. They tend to each other, like spouses do. She washes his laundry, his shirts and cloaks and trousers and underwear and socks— she knows each article of clothing intimately, knows that his favorite button-up is starting to fray at the sleeves, and that he’s inclined toward the color black. He cooks them dinner, often fish he’s caught out at sea, and always refills her glass without asking. And in the evenings, they lounge in the placidity of Shell Cottage, wishing each other a sardonic sweet dreams before heading off to bed.
(But he is not her husband, and she is not his wife.)
Hermione wakes to the tea kettle whistling— a sharp gasp stealing her breath— a crick in her neck from falling asleep on the love seat. She relaxes her fists and realizes how tightly she was clutching her needles, even in sleep.
“Do you want tea?” Draco asks from the doorway of the kitchen, lamplight illuminating his hair, the color of a citrine crystal.
“Oh, sure,” she nods.
Draco returns with their cups of tea and saucers, handing one to Hermione before sitting beside her again. As she sips, she tries not to notice how handsome he is.
He’s taller than her, but Ron and Cormac are too— yet there is something about him that makes her feel safe, like she can lower her defenses and relax her shoulders. And though he does not make much conversation, she finds it a welcome change from the screams and spells hurled across a battlefield. In Order meetings, he does not argue with Kingsley or Moody, only nods or calmly offers his thoughts.
He is easy to live with, to fight with. Even now, she is the noisy one, her cup clanging against the saucer. Before long, she drains her drink, the dregs at the bottom like strands of earth lining the cup.
Languid is how she feels, the warm tea steeping inside her, the late hour ushering her to sleep. She can barely raise her eyelids, can’t even press her lips together. Her heartbeat has slowed to that of a light breeze wafting across a field of barley.
“Hermione?” Draco says, and she looks at him through bleary eyes. “Can you walk?”
She shakes her head— no, can’t even think — he says let me help you get to bed — wraps an arm around her waist and lifts her off the love seat. Hermione’s too tired to be embarrassed, but not tired enough to overlook the sturdy feel of his body against hers, how he smells clean and musky.
He guides her to her room and holds her to his chest, and she thinks, oh, how can something be firm and soft at the same time? And he laughs, a distant sound that confuses her, as he lifts her blankets and helps her slide into bed.
Moonlight casts a shadow across his very, very pretty face — a slurred thank you from him, from her? She isn’t sure, but—
—her body aches. Pleasantly, painfully, almost like the morning she’d woken up after being petrified in second year.
Crookshanks meows a hello as he rests on the windowsill, his orange fur glowing brighter than the faint sunrise. She nods back to him before slowly shuffling out of bed, sliding her feet into the fleece slippers that Draco had bought her from their first winter market.
In the bathroom, she looks at herself in the mirror but what she sees does not align with how she feels: sore breasts, throbbing core, smarting lips. Her naked body looks the same as it ever does. Tired and dubious-eyed.
Perhaps, she thinks, the teenager’s death affected her more deeply than she anticipated. That happens, sometimes— a death so painful that her body shoulders the burden of her mind.
She roughly scrubs a loofah across her skin while she showers, hoping it will cleanse her of her sins, knowing that it won’t.
“You okay?” Draco asks at breakfast, mouth pursed in a concerned line, and she nods tiredly as she spreads margarine on her toast.
“Yesterday wasn’t— wasn’t good for me,” she says.
He nods, and they slip into silence amidst the morning babble of birds chirping outside their window and waves crashing nearby.
Over the next few weeks, she wakes up with the same odd sensation of being used. Not every day, though. Mostly when they’ve returned home from a mission, after a warm cup of tea, when she’s finally able to placate her thunderous heartbeat to its normal rhythm. The war is catching up to her; she is only surprised it happened so quickly.
And Draco, sweet Draco, always unlaces her boots and tucks her into bed.
She’s stopped feeling embarrassed about him witnessing her lethargy; part of her even enjoys how kind he is during those moments. When she’s out on a mission, she yearns to return back to the cottage, to Draco’s gentle touch. It reminds her of her parents, of her mother brushing her hair before bedtime, and her father kissing her forehead before flicking off the light and whispering goodnight, kiddo.
Hermione’s face is pressed into her pillow, slack-jawed and immobile, a few locks of hair in her mouth, eyelids too heavy to open. Only her senses of hearing and touch— being touched— are lit up, something soft and petal-like trailing down her back. Reverent kisses on each notch of her spine, someone else’s breath puffing across her skin. Hands kneading her arse. She can’t speak, can’t even moan, although she wants to, wants to make her pleasure known, but she can only breathe as something blunt enters her sopping-wet cunt. It feels so good, so full. She can’t move, can’t shift her hips back for more friction as she’d like, can only take it, take whatever is happening to her. If she could whine, she would; if she could squirm, she would. That spot inside her, the one she can’t reach alone, that Cormac once touched with his fingers, is finally touched again— nudged and massaged, causing her cunt to contract and squeeze whatever’s making her feel so good.
A deep voice, familiar and desperate, moans out, “Take it, sweetheart, just like that, quietly now, be good—”
With every word, she floats further and further away from consciousness.
Her eyes open, and she feels soreness spread throughout her body— the best kind, the kind she hadn’t felt since before she broke things off with Cormac.
Hermione shoves the bed covers away and lifts her nightdress, swiping a finger between the lips of her cunt. She had been so wet last night—
But she is dry. Drier than usual in the mornings.
She had thought— perhaps she and Draco had finally—
Well, it was probably a dream, then.
Hermione can’t look him in the eye anymore— she imagines him in her bed as she sleeps, fucking her to kingdom come. And it arouses her. She can smell the humiliating wetness gathering between her legs each time she forgets herself and stares at him or just gets lost in daydreams of her limp body and his eager hands.
As she knits the final row of her scarf, her yarn basket sitting on the cushion next to her (a deterrent, really— she doesn’t want to risk Draco sitting close and smelling her), he taps her on the shoulder from behind the love seat.
She yelps, nearly tossing her knitting needles in the air.
“Sorry,” he says, cupping her shoulders. To relax her, probably, but it only unsettles her further.
“Draco, you scared me!”
The pressure of his fingers, even through the fabric of her shirt, makes her squirm.
“Didn’t mean to,” he says, releasing his hold. She lets out a relieved breath.
Draco walks around and stands in front of her, a frown dragging his lips down. “I just— you’re not mad at me, are you, Hermione?”
“Why would you say that?”
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
For your own good, she wants to say, because I want you in such a fucked up, perverted way.
“No, no, I’ve just been a bit overwhelmed,” she says, and it’s not a lie. “The war is getting to me a bit.”
“Hmm.” Draco’s eyes flash to the basket on the love seat, where she used to let him sit and work on his ledger.
“I can move this if you want,” she offers. (She wants him to say yes — she needs him to say no.)
“That would be nice.”
Hermione smiles weakly, laying her needles in her lap and then placing the basket at her feet.
Draco sits down heavily beside her, cracking open his ledger. “Thank you.”
The only reprieve she has from his warmth is when he leaves to go make them tea.