Author's Note: I haven't written in a while. This is inspired of course by my handsome muse and a shameless rip-off of a short story "In Dreams" by Elissa Wilds. I find my summary displeasing. Hopefully, someone can give me a better one? Rated T for sex scenes that aren't too graphic. Should I give this a higher rating?

Sorrow, Desire and Comfort

Summary: Ronald Weasley's death sent his wife careening into depression. Hermione decided to escape from the realities of sorrow by travelling to the astral realm.

Chapter 1: Interloper

This is the in-between, where time doesn't exist. The air is charged with electricity and magic flowing through Hermione when her feet touched the soft-as-silk sand and made her limbs shiver with excitement. Here, she breathed in the salty ocean air instead of city smog. No sadness touched her mind. Nothing of the world she called reality could penetrate to this realm.

The whole reason she'd decided to attempt astral travel was to escape from an unbearable reality. A world where her husband and good friend was dead and she was alone. Two years had passed since Ron's death, but time seemed to drag on. Harry of course has his own life.

Here in the astral realm, a quiet peace filled her being and made the world she called home seem to be a sad nightmare. Hermione glanced around with a quiet calm she had only recently developed. The first few times she'd attempted to astral travel, she'd been nervous and uncertain.

She'd read books on the subject, but as much as the authors of those books reassured that nothing could hurt her here, it had taken a few successful trips for her to believe them. Especially with movies like "Insidious" out in theaters. She'd learned quickly and now, Hermione could create what she wanted to see and experience in this realm. So of course, she came back here. To her dreamtime beach.

She loved the beach, but hadn't seen much of it since she'd accepted the job in D.C. But she remembered her childhood, when her parents who still has no idea she exists, brought her to beaches in the continent. She'd been anxious to get out of England. To go anywhere as long as it was far away from her life in England and the life she'd shared with Ron and everything that reminded her of him. But running had proved pointless. The sadness clung to her like an ever present robe.

Hermione dug her feet farther into the sand and stared at the water rippling along the shore. Light flickered off the tourmaline blue waves. She wandered closer to the shore and knelt, catching her reflection in the water. Her brown hair sparkled gold and her face was free of sadness. She smiled with the realization once again that in the astral realm she was her brightest, most radiant self. The few extra pounds she'd gained over the holidays were irrelevant. Here, her slightly rounded hips and shorter than average frame was exotic, beautiful. A slight breeze brushed over her skin, not too cool, not too hot.

"Perfect," she murmured. "Of course," a deep voice spoke at her side. "All is perfect in the astral realm."

Hermione started, but before the sensation of fear could creep into her gut and send her hurtling back to her body; a lesson she'd learned the hard way the first few times she'd encountered another being during one of her astral trips. She forced herself to calmly turn and face the individual who'd spoken.

Her breath caught. He was tall, dark and lean. His almond eyes smiling. He wore white pants and nothing else. The material hugged him in all the right places. The man stared, his dark eyes studying her, his lips curved into a half smile. "I know you," he said.

She shook her head. This was not a man she'd soon forget. "No, I don't think so." He circled her, his limbs moving in that soft, unfocused way in which everything moved in the astral realm. Images, places, things, seemed to shift on a sigh. Hermione still found the process disorienting. He was disorienting.

He was behind her. She shivered as his hand touched her hair and he fingered the strands lightly. "Your hair shines like gold." He trailed his fingers over her shoulder and arm, then her back. His touch was soft, fleeting, yet it seemed to Hermione that there was fire beneath his fingertips. A heat that made her insides quiver and dance in a way they hadn't in a long time. Another time, another place, she would have yanked herself away from this man, this stranger who approached her with such strange familiarity. But she didn't have to follow normal convention here. She didn't have to behave with propriety.

It had been so very long since she'd been touched by a man.

He stood in front of her again, hands at his sides. Hermione frowned, wanting those large, elegant hands on her body again, caressing her. The stranger tilted his head to the side and studied her, his expression curious and confused. Then he leaned in close. His face nuzzled her neck as he breathed in deeply. "Ah," he murmured. "You smell so good. Like fresh honeysuckle. So sweet . . ."

His breath danced over her skin, tickling her flesh. "I – I love the smell of honeysuckle," she managed to gasp out, struck by her own stuttering. How she smelled of this, she didn't know, but anything was possible in this place. It delighted her to know that her scent pleased him.

Hot lips touched her neck with the slightest of caresses. Desire arched through her body and dipped between her thighs. "Oh!" Her breath hitched. She certainly hadn't experienced a reaction like this to anyone in a long time. His face hovered in front of hers, his eyes filled with a certain knowing, a confirmation of sorts. Of what? She wished she knew.

"You enchant me. Are you a witch? Or are you an angel? Who are you?"

She opened her mouth to tell him her name, but he halted her words with one finger to her lips. "No, don't tell me. I will call you Angel. Your beauty rivals a being from the heavenly realms, and I'm told that any number of various and sundry creatures travel through these planes." He smiled, his full lips pulling across straight, white teeth. His finger traced her mouth. It took all of her self-control not to let her tongue snake out, not to nip at his finger playfully.

'Odd', she thought. 'I don't even know this man, yet I want to do something so intimate with him?' The internal thought was both question and statement. An image flashed through Hermione's mind. The stranger's finger in her mouth. His other hand between her thighs. Her lips clutching his finger, mouth suckling the digit in rhythm with the hand that touched her womanhood. 'Oh! Intimate, indeed!'

"Yes," the man continued as though oblivious to her sensual thoughts, "I'll call you Angel. My Angel. Although I've never before seen your lovely face, my body knows yours. I think, perhaps, we have kissed before." He removed his finger, and leaned in, his lips hovering over hers. "And I ache to do so again." He was so close she could taste his breath, could inhale his scent. He smelled like chocolate and burgundy wine and everything decadent.

Her flesh hummed from his nearness. Her stomach muscles quivered, taut with anticipation, waiting. He cupped her arms, his hands hot, searing her skin through the thin cotton shift she wore. Hermione's lips parted in invitation, and her eyelids fluttered shut.

Yet, the stranger hesitated. "The anticipation is so very sweet . . . isn't it?" he murmured. He tilted his head to the side, allowed his cheek to brush hers ever so slightly, then dipped to her neck, nuzzling, inhaling sharply, breathing her in. Then, before she could fully register the gamut of emotions trilling through her, his gaze met hers once again, and his lips parted into a half smile.

She couldn't take this. She had to touch him. She had to kiss him. Taste him. She had to…

His mouth pressed hers, stealing her thoughts. His lips teased her with slow, sensual movements that whispered of a deeper, more intimate joining. His fingers left her arms and caressed her neck, twined through her hair, and left her own hands free to roam.

Her hands roamed. To his lean waist, over his bare, flat stomach and his hard chest. He touched his tongue to her lips with a quick, tentative exploration. Just enough to stoke the fire burning in her belly and send licks of flame between her thighs. Hermione gulped air, her head swirling. The kiss deepened and became more aggressive. She suddenly couldn't feel the sand beneath her toes, couldn't hear the water lapping at the shoreline. The stranger's heartbeat beneath her fingertips accelerated. She could feel his heart beating, frantic and erratic. So was her own. The two beats grew louder, filling her head, making her dizzy with want and need.

Hermione's body seemed to melt into the stranger's. They were as one being. The sensation was erotic and exciting.

Suddenly, the man was gone. Cool air brushed her lips and wove around her empty arms. Hermione's heart plummeted as disappointment washed through her. No! A white void surrounded her. And she felt that familiar sensation of falling. . .

A/N: Should I still continue this?