Hermione was cooking breakfast when she heard her lover let loose a horrified shriek. Dropping the spatula (she had been planning to introduce Bellatrix to flapjacks), she rushed to the source of the alarming outcry - the master bathroom. When Hermione burst through the bathroom door, wand drawn and out of breath, she saw Bellatrix standing before the mirror in her nightdress, completely unharmed. Hermione scowled, and stowed her wand in her back pocket before marching up behind Bella and enfolding the smaller woman safely in her arms.
"You scared me," Hermione growled angrily, gripping Bellatrix tightly around the middle. She placed a kiss on the warm skin of Bellatrix's exposed shoulder, then released her.
"Do you see this? How long has this been here?" Bellatrix cried, gesturing wildly at her head and completely ignoring Hermione's annoyance and worry.
"What?" Hermione prompted, her brow scrunching in confusion, wondering if her paramour had finally lost what remained of her mind.
"This! This!" Bella exclaimed, agitated, pulling on a particular segment of unbrushed hair. Hermione rolled her eyes at Bella's histrionics.
"Oh, you mean your grey streak?" she replied nonchalantly, relaxing.
"You knew?" Bellatrix's voice tore through an octave. "And you didn't tell me?"
"I assumed you knew," Hermione said easily, shrugging.
"I- You- Grey-" Bellatrix sputtered, still tugging at the offending corkscrew of hair. "I'm going to change it back to black, at once," Bellatrix stated abruptly and decisively, raising her wand and narrowing her eyes in concentration.
"Don't you dare!" Hermione blurted, unthinkingly bring a hand up to clutch at Bellatrix's wand hand. The young woman's fingers closed around Bella's skinny wrist, and Bellatrix raised one eyebrow at Hermione's outburst.
"I love your grey streak," Hermione explained, her voice much more gentle, her expression softening. She cupped Bella's cheek with one hand, and with the other she captured the tendril of hair in question, allowing it to slip through her fingers. "Just like I love your worry lines, your laugh lines, and your smile lines," she continued, punctuating her list with kisses, her lips moving from Bella's forehead, to just beside her eyes, to either of her mouth. Hermione's lips were slow and deliberate, their soft warmth leaving Bellatrix's resplendent, yet aging face tingling with heat. Bella's first instinct was to scoff at Hermione's unexpected tenderness, but the older woman suppressed the urge and forced herself to remain still and silent. Unsure of how to respond, Bellatrix dropped her gaze, unable to meet Hermione's kind eyes. Hermione ran one hand soothingly up and down Bella's side, the lace nightdress slightly rough against her palm.
"They're your story, Bella, a lifetime of emotion. These prove that you care, that you worry," Hermione said softly, running her thumb across Bellatrix's faintly creased forehead. "These are a reminder of you nutty laugh," she continued, her lips quirking up into an indulgent smile as she traced the lines around Bellatrix's coffee eyes. "And these...These are my favorite," she breathed, leaning in until her lips were merely an inch from Bella's porcelain skin. Bellatrix trembled in Hermione's arms as they tightened around her gracile waist; Hermione recognized that this was a language Bella understood better than sweetly whispered words.
"Mm?" Bellatrix prompted, desperate for either further explanation or demonstration.
"Oh, yeah," Hermione grinned. "Every time you smile, these little lines appear here...and here." Hermione pressed her lips to Bella's flushed cheeks, tracing barely visible smile lines with the tip of her tongue. Though she would never stop showing Bellatrix tenderness and immeasurable care, she knew that right now, gentle affection wouldn't be very effective. She needed to convince Bellatrix that even with - and often because of - her age, Hermione still found her deeply desirable and was outrageously attracted to her. Hermione maneuvered an increasingly compliant Bellatrix with a practiced ease, until she had the older woman pressed up against the wall. An involuntary moan slipped from betwixt Bella's lips as Hermione nudged her legs apart and hiked up her nightdress. Twenty year old hands made their way up forty-nine year old thighs, stroking and caressing, loving every inch of skin with care and purpose. The soft pads of Hermione's fingers brushed over the subtle ridges of decades of self-inflicted scars with a tenderness that knocked the breath from Bella's lungs. However, Hermione didn't linger on the scars for more than a moment; her fingers continued their path upward, her palms sliding against well-muscled thighs. Bellatrix squirmed, pushing against Hermione's hands in an effort to achieve more contact.
"Patience, you," Hermione chuckled, forcing her lover more firmly against the wall. Bellatrix let out a strangled groan of impatience, eliciting more quiet laughter from the younger witch. Hermione's lips were at Bella's collar bone, and her fingers positioned at the hem of her lace skivvies, when the smoke alarm started shrieking from the kitchen. Hermione felt Bellatrix jerk violently, startled by the sudden and strange blaring noise. Hermione glanced up into Bellatrix's disgruntled, perplexed face, and burst out laughing. Bellatrix frowned, and Hermione kept sniggering, peppering the uppermost swell of Bella's voluptuous breasts with placating kisses. Then, Hermione spun away from the staggered witch, and sprinted back to the kitchen, shouting over her shoulder,
"The smoke alarm's gone off!"
Several minutes later, Bellatrix stumbled into the kitchen (charcoal curls all awry, grey streak still intact, and lace nightdress askew) to find Hermione sitting calmly near the kitchen table with a mug of tea. Hermione looked up as Bellatrix entered the room, smirking at the state of her lover.
"Want a cuppa?" Hermione offered serenely. Bellatrix snorted with an elegance to match her appearance, and sauntered over to Hermione, carrying herself with a familiar haughtiness. Bella slipped onto Hermione's lap, straddling her and draping her arms over Hermione's shoulders.
"What was that God-awful racket?" Bellatrix asked, settling more comfortably onto her partner. Hermione grinned sheepishly up at Bella before answering.
"Well, before you had your little vanity fit in the bathroom and screamed loud enough to scare the daylights out of me-" Hermione glared with mock irritation at an affronted Bellatrix "-I was in the middle of cooking breakfast for us. I was going to introduce you to a muggle food that I grew up on. But then you went and freaked out about your grey streak, and now the breakfast is dead."
"Oh, so it's my fault, eh?" Bellatrix challenged, her hands winding casually through Hermione's chestnut tresses.
"Yes, it is," Hermione replied defiantly, lifting her chin slightly, though her warm chocolate eyes sparkled playfully.
"Sure about that, are we?" Bella taunted, tugging lightly on Hermione's hair, her fingers scraping against Hermione's scalp. She shifted slightly on the bright witch's lap, just enough to create friction between her bare legs and Hermione's jean clad pair. Hermione's breath caught in her throat at the dual sensations, and she brought her hands up to rest on Bellatrix's lower back.
"Stop that," Hermione warned, "or we'll never get around to having breakfast."
"Is that a promise?" Bellatrix winked salaciously. Hermione's face split into a grin as she enjoyed Bella's impish side, and she ran her hands up a bony vertebral column. Bella arched her back, the simple feel of Hermione's hands dancing up her spine reigniting the embers that had begun burning during Hermione's ministrations in the bathroom. Hermione shuddered at the concept that the brilliant, puissant, intoxication witch who sat atop her desired her, mind and body, heart and soul.
"Yes," she said forcefully, "it is." And in the moment before Bellatrix apparrated them both back to the bedroom, Bella understood with perfect clarity just what it was Hermione was offering - promising - her. A future.