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Hermione sits curled up on the settee in Harry’s sitting room, listening to the sounds of her tipsy friends enjoying yet another Friday night get-together at Grimmauld Place.
She hears Harry laugh across the room with Theo, his face pink from drinks and happiness. Hermione feels a tug in her heart, a gratefulness to Theo for being the one to put that smile there.
Ron is locked into a game of Wizard's Chess with Blaise, bickering over a match Hermione knows will last for hours.
Luna paints Ginny’s nails, Neville and Pansy are snogging, not concerned in the least by anyone else in the room.
And despite being surrounded by people she loves, Hermione has never felt more lonely than she does here, caught in the wispy space between belonging and not.
She refuses to let her gaze wander over to the chaise lounge by the window where a certain other someone is sitting with a Greengrass girl on either side of him, both sisters leaning into him as they laugh at something undoubtedly snarky he'd just said.
Of course, inevitably, involuntarily, she's staring.
She forces her gaze away from him before anyone else notices, though she can tell by the way his jaw ticks that he already has.
He won't look at her.
He's not drinking, something that has become more commonplace lately even when surrounded by booze and friends trying their hardest to get him pissed.
Hermione knows he doesn’t like to lose control.
Except when he does. Her cheeks warm as her mind catalogues all the times he’s lost control with her and her heart throbs painfully in her chest.
They're pretty, the Greengrass sisters. Tall and willowy, and painfully nice, despite how hard she'd tried to dislike them. Especially now, with their easy rapport and certain rumours swirling of potential betrothals.
The pit in her stomach grows at the thought, and Hermione decides her best course of action is to slip away and head to bed.
She's over the evening, over the lot of them.
With so many guests, it's easy to slip away quietly, unnoticed. Ron certainly won't.
Hermione walks down the darkened hallway and enters her usual guest room, leaving the door open a bit.
Just a crack.
Just in case.
She changes out of her jeans and jumper, strips off her bra, and pulls an oversized grey T-shirt from her overnight bag. She presses it to her face and breathes him in as she always does before pulling it over her head.
Right before a teeth-cleansing charm, she summons the sobering potion she packed and downs it in one go.
She climbs into the queen-sized bed she always uses at Grimmauld, and as the potion does its job, she begins to ruminate.
Hermione doesn't fancy being hungover in the morning. She and Ron have been summoned to go to the Burrow to discuss wedding plans with his eager mother.
The mere thought of it makes her stomach churn, far worse than even a hangover would.
Sometimes, Hermione wonders why he’d bothered asking her to marry him, though she suspects it's likely for the same reason she'd said yes.
Because she is afraid.
Afraid of the unknown, of disappointing her friends, of defying expectations - hers and others - and more than anything else, she's afraid of choosing what she truly wants over what she should.
They've been together almost eight years, and at least half of them had been some of the loneliest years of Hermione's life.
She tries to picture tomorrow, to visualise it in a way that makes it less anxiety inducing - Molly making lists, Ginny offering bottomless mimosas, Ron's attempts at enthusiasm. It should feel exciting, planning a wedding.
Instead, she just feels a bit trembly and ill, like she'll be closing a door on a whole other life.
One she can't have and never should have even entertained.
She sighs, forcing herself to relax, trying to think of beaches and rain and other soothing things to get herself to sleep. Trying not to think of silver and alabaster, and the sounds he'd made, and the way he looked at her that made her toes curl.
She's just barely drifting off when she hears the sound of the door creaking, then clicking closed.
Immediately her heart begins to pound.
Her breath catches when, a few moments later, she feels the mattress shift. When someone slides into bed behind her, her eyes fly open in the dark and she holds absolutely still. Doesn't even breathe.
It could be Ron. It should be Ron. He’s the one she's supposed to share a future with, the one she should be happy to feel sliding into bed behind her.
And he’s been drinking, the only time he shows interest in her physically.
But Ron isn't the quiet sort, especially after so many pints. He'd be stumbling, kicking shoes off, swearing and muttering under his breath before collapsing bodily onto the mattress and snoring straight away.
Not only that, but at parties like these, it’s far more common for Ron to end up passing out on the settee or the floor of the sitting room sometime in the wee hours of the morning than to join her in bed.
No, the quiet click of the door, and the smooth shift of weight onto the mattress behind her doesn’t feel like Ron at all.
Hermione’s pulse races and she focuses on breathing slowly and quietly through her nose.
She absolutely cannot assume it’s him. If she assumes it’s him and she’s wrong, it’ll destroy her. If she assumes it’s Ron, and she’s right, it’ll destroy her in a different way.
He slides closer, until his chest meets her back, and his pelvis meets her bum. A body wraps around hers in a perfect fit that makes her chest ache, and she’s no longer lonely.
His breathing is slow and even, and she can’t help but melt into him as his familiar scent hits her.
No beer, no firewhiskey, just something clean and sharp, like mint and pine. Comforting and addicting. completely dangerous.
When he brushes his lips across her shoulder and gently works her t-shirt up to caress the skin of her stomach, her core clenches. Her nipples harden beneath the borrowed—alright, stolen—shirt, and his hand is warm as it cups first one breast and then the other, then slides down to splay across her belly in a way that feels almost possessive if she didn’t know better.
He pauses, as if waiting to see if she’ll push him away.
She doesn’t. She never has.
Instead, she whimpers. And it’s enough to encourage him to dip his fingers into the waistband of her damp knickers. When he barely brushes against her heated flesh, her cunt clenches and her clit throbs in response. His face burrows into the crook of her shoulder, and he inhales deeply, as if breathing her in.
She pushes her bum back into him, and he lets out a low grunt. She’s relieved, though not surprised, to find him hard.
The thick press of him against her makes her dizzy with want, and Hermione reaches back to stroke him through his trousers.
Her fingers find the silky, swollen head of his cock pushing out the waistband of his pants and she circles her thumb and index finger around the tip, pressing her thumb against his frenulum. He groans softly, and thrusts to fuck through her fingers. His tip is sticky with a rivulet of precum, and leaves a wet trail on her hand.
He freezes. For a brief, terrifying moment, Hermione thinks he might pull away. She doesn’t know what she’ll do if he does. Die, possibly.
When he doesn’t, she exhales slowly, her foolish heart pounding painfully in her chest and between her legs.
She wants him so badly, she could weep. As much as she’s tried not to, she wants him more than she’s ever wanted anything and Hermione is so tired of denying herself of the things she wants.
Her body aches, pulsing with heat, and the only thing she can imagine is the relief of him pushing his cock into her, over and over, until everything else in the entire world melts away.
To hear the sounds he’ll make when he first slides in, the one he makes when she tightens around him, the one he makes right before he comes, and the one after. Sounds she’s memorized by heart.
She wants all of them.
You’ve been ignoring me, she wants to say. It made me want to die.
But if she speaks, she fears the spell will be broken and he’ll never come to her again. And then she’ll die in a different way.
His fingers draw lazy circles around her clit, one finger sliding through her lower lips to her pulsing, clenching entrance.
She whimpers, needing more, needing him—his finger, his cock, his tongue. Him—so deep inside her.
His breath comes out in a warm rush when she rocks against his hand. She can’t remember the last time she’s been so needy to be filled, frantic to be fucked.
Sometime just before he’d stopped talking to her, she supposes.
She shifts away and wriggles out of her knickers, then settles back down on her side, her entire body trembly and shivery. The sound of a belt buckle hitting the floor almost undoes her.
This is it; her last chance to stop what she knows is about to happen, with her fiancé just rooms away. Knowing that it means something different now.
But when her leg is lifted up over his, and the head of his cock is pressed to her entrance, any semblance of guilt or even common sense is gone.
She whimpers softly, squeezing around the tip, and they both groan. She rocks back into him and he lets her be the one to nudge him into her, to guide him inside.
Hermione reaches down, aiming him at her entrance, desperate for him to fill her up in the way that only he can.
She’s so aroused, her skin hurts, and her body aches as if she’s feverish. She shivers and pants, her fingernails digging into the sheet in front of her.
For a moment he stays still, just barely inside her; but then his control snaps. His fingers dig into her hip as he pushes in deep in one hard surge of his hips. She rolls forward slightly, just enough to bury her face in her pillow and moan.
Anyone could hear them. Anyone could catch them.
If anyone other than him had ever bothered to come find her, she would’ve been caught long ago.
Though judging by the volume of voices floating down the hall, they’re safe for now.
Briefly, she thinks about the Greengrass girls. Wonders how he’d slipped away. Wonders which one he’s supposedly courting, if the rumours are true.
She thinks of Ron, and how he’s a good man, but they’re not a good match. And maybe she doesn’t deserve either.
Hot, ragged breath on her neck and a hard thrust inside her bring her attention back to the present. He gentles as if sensing it, rewarding her with slow, deep rocks of his hips that have her eyes rolling back.
Her sensitive walls cling to him, sucking him back inside, and every drag of his cock has heat building in her lower spine.
“Fuck Granger,” he rasps, and she whimpers in response, cunt clenching in response.
His free hand slides up her hip to her belly, and he cups first one breast then the other, trying to hold both in one palm.
His hands are soft, large and warm. Soothing.
When he rolls her nipple between his fingers, she bucks in a jerky movement, and when he rests his thumb against her swollen clit that’s all it takes.
The dark room turns white, and tears leak out the corners of her eyes as she jerks and whimpers and gasps and moans his name into the pillow.
He freezes, as deep inside as he can get, letting her come undone around him, allowing her body to work through it on his cock.
She’s still coming when he swears under his breath, hissing as he pulls out.
Hermione gasps at the sudden feeling of emptiness in her still throbbing cunt, feels his cock, warm and sticky from her, bobbing against her bum. He fists himself and begins stroking rapidly, huffy impatient groans coming from the back of his throat.
He’s never done this before. He always comes inside her.
But Hermione knows that everything changed after she and Ron had announced their engagement during a party like this, a few weeks back.
After that night, he’d stopped coming to this room—their room. For weeks, she’s laid alone here, willing him to come, fearing he never would again.
Until tonight. He followed her almost immediately, not even waiting for the others to go to sleep.
Something had called him here, and she’s not sure what. Perhaps he’d missed her, or perhaps he’d just been horny.
But for the first time, he’d pulled out, and Hermione knows that the rules have changed.
If she doesn’t do something—and quickly—this will be the last time she gets to have him, like this, in their bed.
Hermione’s not above begging. Not for this.
She needs this, needs to feel him claiming her in the way only he ever had.
Needs his cum spilling inside her, warm against her walls, leaking out, reminding her for days that he’d been there. That what they’d done was real.
“Inside,” she gasps out and he freezes.
“I’ll do anything.” She is, indeed, begging. “Please. Just please. Come inside me.”
She doesn’t have to ask twice.
One hand covers her mouth just in time when he grips his cock with the other and surges back into her. He feels so good, she doesn’t realize right away that she’s crying.
“Come inside me. Please.” She sounds near-hysterical but she doesn’t care. He’s heard her like this before, seen her at her most naked and raw, felt her pulsing center milking him.
“Gonna. Fucking. Come,” he grits out just before she feels him start to pulsate within her. “Fuck you, Granger. I fucking love you—fuck.”
Her world tilts, but he bites her shoulder as he comes in hard, hot pulses deep within her walls, and when his thumb brushes her clit, she comes again, biting down on his palm even as he groans her name into her ravaged curls.
“Fuck, I love you,” he says again, and, Hermione holds her breath, heart clenching, beating out of her chest at the impossibility of what he’s saying.
***
Once the orgasms fade, they’re calm and quiet, her back to him still, the position they’d wordlessly chosen from the very first time this had happened.
He pulls out with a grunt and she’s suddenly freezing when he shifts away instead of holding her close for a little while, like he used to.
And she knows this is another new rule, the only way he can be with her like this.
She could roll over. She really should.
Roll to face her problems rather than keeping her back to them, as if they can’t see her if she can’t see them.
But she’s not sure she’s ready for what that might mean. For all the things it would mean.
She’s also not sure she can live without knowing.
There’s a swell of laughter down the hall and the sounds of the party remind her what’s at stake.
At any moment, they could be caught.
A thrill shivers through her at the thought of Ron opening the door, finding them. Seeing with his own eyes what she’s done.
Because it’s not just that she fucks Draco Malfoy. That she lets him come inside her, begs for it even.
The truly unforgivable sin is that she needs him. Loves him, though she’s not ready to examine that truth just yet. She’s been avoiding it for months.
“You said my name tonight.” His voice is low, almost an accusation. “I heard you.”
She bites her lip guiltily. She had.
After the first time, when what they’d done had quickly become a habit, they’d wordlessly made the rules.
They had an understanding.
She never turned around. They never spoke, except for the occasional swear or groan or whimper.
Always, she’d lay on her side and as long as she faced away, as long as she kept his name inside her chest, they could pretend that what they were doing wasn’t wrong.
In the beginning, guilt had eaten at her. But as the weeks went on, any guilt was overridden by hunger, by the need for it to happen again.
Remembering what she is to be doing the next morning has her stomach swooping. It’s nausea and a sense of wrongness she is so tired of running from.
“You said you loved me,” she accuses softly, and hears him sigh in response.
“I was kind of hoping you’d been too preoccupied to hear that.”
Her heart thuds irregularly in her chest and if she wasn’t so focused on him, she might have worried.
“Well, I wasn’t.”
“Hm,” is his response. “Still planning on marrying him?”
It strikes her then, what part of her has known long before her brain could catch up, something deep, deep within her that she hasn’t wanted to face.
The last thing she wants is to marry Ron. For a multitude of reasons, not least of all being that it wouldn’t be fair to anyone.
She loves Malfoy. Has loved him so much that she’s lost a stone over the past month. Can barely focus on anything anyone else says, that her attention only snaps back to conversation when his name comes up. That she wanted to
For the first time in weeks, she remembers that she has choices—always has, even when she’s too afraid to consider them.
The urge to turn to face him is impossible to resist, stronger than any other urge she has at the moment.
And if she does, it’ll be a moment of truth she can’t come back from.
If she does it, there will be no more pretending. Turning to him means closing one door herself instead of waiting for a different one to be slammed on her.
Choosing this will hurt someone. But not choosing this already has, so so much.
Hermione doesn’t want to hurt anymore.
And so she turns over and faces him for the first time here in this bed—their bed.
There’s just enough moonlight coming in through the window that she can make out hair so blond it’s almost silver, and molten-grey eyes that watch her as hungrily as she watches him.
There’s a softness there too, as he understands what she’s done, what she’s chosen.
She reaches out and lets her fingers trace his lips. She’s never kissed him before.
She’s sucked his cock, let him kiss her cunt, but they’re never face-to-face like his, his soft, cupid’s bow mouth a hair’s breadth away from hers.
She wonders if he’ll taste like peppermint and parchment and pine, too.
Leaning in, she finds that he very much does.
The sound he makes when he clutches her to him shoots straight to her heart and down to her cunt.
Their mouths meet, a gentle slotting of lips at first, then it’s explosive, all whimpers and gasps and groans, tongues sliding together in perfect rhythm. He gently rolls her onto her back, licking filthily into her mouth before pulling back to look at her.
His gaze flicks over her face, searching her eyes, lingering at her mouth, then darts away like he’s not sure he’s even allowed to look at her this closely.
She’s never seen Draco Malfoy seem unsure before, and somehow seeing him this visibly vulnerable makes her chest ache.
They’ve never done it like this before, his lips on hers, hands in hair, her thighs cradling his hips.
She tightens her legs around him keeping him close to her, feeling his twitching cock hard against her, and savours his sharp inhale when she grinds her wet cunt against him.
There’s a sound in the hallway and they both freeze, both hold their breath. But they don’t take their eyes off each other.
“I don’t want to marry him,” she whispers and his silver gaze widens. She’s never admitted this out loud to anyone. Not even to herself. “I never have.”
Footsteps in the hall grow closer and closer, then they both breathe again at the sound of a bathroom door closing, several rooms away.
His eyes are almost solid black, his pupils overtaking the iris as he watches her.
“Then don’t.” Malfoy says it as if it’s the simplest thing in the world.
Maybe it is.
“What about you?” she asks in a tiny whisper. “I heard you might be betrothed.”
Malfoy breathes a laugh, shaking his head. “You heard wrong. I told my parents no.”
The relief Hermione feels then is so great, she thinks she really has no right to it.
“I’ve been a mess these last few weeks, Draco,” she admits. “I—I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
“Really?” he asks, and Hermione gazes up at him. There’s a hopefulness in his silver eyes she’s never seen before and for a moment, she forgets about the other people in the house, in the whole world even.
Everything narrows to him and her, and choices.
“Yes.” She touches his cheek.
She’s not ready to say the words yet. Or maybe she doesn’t deserve to say them yet. She certainly didn’t deserve to hear them.
But gods, they’re true.
His eyes drift over her face in a way that makes her tummy flutter and her cunt clench, hard enough for him to feel it, cock nestled snugly between her lower lips. Enough to make him inhale sharply as he lifts his eyes to stare into hers.
“Are you sure?”
There are so many possible meanings in his question and Hermione knows he’s made himself vulnerable in a way he goes out of his way not to.
It doesn’t matter which meaning she chooses to ascribe to it, no matter what, the answer is yes.
“I’m sure,” she answers, pulling his face to hers, and gasping into his mouth when he slides out, then thrusts back inside her—like every other time, it’s the most devastatingly perfect stretch she’s ever known.
“I feared you’d go through with it,” he breathes into her ear. “That you’d keep your back to me forever.” He sighs then slowly begins to move inside her. “Or that you’d stop leaving the door cracked.”
“I’m wearing your t-shirt,” she says needlessly, gasping when he shifts his hips forward just enough to press against her clit.
“I noticed.” She feels him smile against her throat, that damnable smirk that had gotten them here in the first place.
His hand slides up under her—alright, his—shirt to fondle each breast. A pinch to her nipple sends a jolt straight to her clit and she whines when he shoves the shirt up over her breasts, and bends down to kiss and suck them.
“Fuck,” he murmurs into her nipple. “Missed these. Missed you.”
“I never even washed it,” she gasps, meeting his thrusts, not even minding the creaking of the bed. She’s still thinking about the shirt. “Your shirt. I put a Stasis Charm on it, to keep your smell.”
Draco lifts his head, and even in the dark, she sees the emotion in his eyes. Heat, longing, hope. Fear, too of course. But he smirks, a slow curl up in the corner of his beautiful mouth.
“And I still have your knickers. Well,” he rasps, his hips speeding up as her legs tighten around him. “Several pairs of them.”
Hermione huffs but she’s never felt lighter, like she could levitate right out of this bed with Draco inside her.
“I’d wondered why all my knickers were disappearing.” And then his lips are back on hers.
In the morning, she’ll do one of the most difficult things she’s ever had to face. She’ll tell Ron the truth. Most of it, anyway.
And he'll hate her. Maybe they all will.
Even if it costs her everything else, Hermione will no longer have to pretend she’s something she’s not.
Because in the dark, Draco sees her and she is no longer alone.
Tonight, in their bed, she chooses him.
She chooses.