Chapter warning: explicit sexual content.
Hermione slouched into Charms and sat at her usual spot with Harry and Ron – mercifully near the back of the classroom.
"Hey. Heard you got detention yesterday," she greeted them listlessly.
"Snape was being a dick," Harry said. "Gin said you were ill."
"I'll be fine," Hermione replied, relenting and pulling her bangle off. "Can I share your book today?"
Bet you have a full class schedule too, her bangle gloated. Hermione's first off day.
Of course I have a full class schedule, she replied as Flitwick tasked them all with practicing a Liquid Transformation spell.
You replied to that and not my question about your nipples? I'm hurt.
"Hermione, what was that theory about converting a liquid to a gas and back again called?" Ron asked, flicking through a textbook unsuccessfully.
"Uh…can't remember, sorry," she replied, etching into her bangle.
Why am I even in class if you're going to bother me the whole time?
Granger, don't ruin the best day of my schooling life. You can go back to being the star student tomorrow.
Hermione looked at the clock. It was 9:20am. She sighed heavily.
Fine. What was the nipple question?
By the time Potions rolled around that afternoon, Hermione had a splitting headache, a fever, and a body screaming at her for release. Draco barely glanced at her as she followed Harry into the classroom, and she fought down an aggravated scream at his complete lack of acknowledgement.
"That's the third class Malfoy's been in today," Harry whispered. "Why isn't he skipping like normal?"
Hermione groaned and fell into her seat and slumped over the table, head buried in her crossed arms. "Just ignore him," she mumbled. "What are we doing in class today?"
"We started that advanced poisons section yesterday," Harry said.
"Great," Hermione said, pressing her fingers into her eye sockets. "Did the Prince have anything useful to say?"
"Do you know how good his notes are for this chapter?" Harry asked, rhetorically and excited. "He even included a citation for a Herbology book."
"A man after my own heart," Hermione sighed, sitting up and fiddling with her bangle as it warmed treacherously against her wrist.
I've never seen a woman look so miserable and so desperate to get fucked.
I have a pressure headache and a fever, she replied.
If it's any consolation, you look fucking fantastic.
Hermione snorted at his lie. I look a mess, she sent back. And I will only accept your apology if it's accompanied by a railing and a super strength pain potion.
She looked up and pretended to pay attention to Professor Slughorn, watching Draco enchant a message into his watch face like he was merely fidgeting with boredom. His reply flashed up on her bangle:
I think the heat death of the universe might occur before I apologise for anything that's happened today.
She tried to ignore Draco as best she could for the rest of the class, leaning fully into Harry and that blasted Prince to carry them through to 5pm. As Slughorn came by to smooth talk Harry, she zoned out and sent Draco one final message.
Are you going to do anything about this or am I going to throw myself off the Astronomy Tower?
Well we can't have that. Lose Potter.
Hermione wondered if it was the first time an Unbreakable Vow had been used in such a fashion.
"You'll hang back to catch Slughorn?" Hermione whispered to Harry as they packed up.
"Yeah," Harry said, triangulating Slughorn's position from the door. She swung her bag over her shoulder and left quickly, dawdling outside the classroom door as the other students headed to dinner, chatting loudly and happy as classes were finished.
Draco emerged, hitting them both with some sort of avoidance spell as he veered to the right rather than the left like the other students. "Let's go," he said quietly, taking her hand and pulling them out of everyone else's perception.
Hermione walked with him round a corner into an empty hallway, where he pulled her up against a wall, moved her hair off one shoulder and started kissing her exposed neck.
She sighed, relief washing over her. "That was impossible," she muttered.
"Yet here you are," he replied in between kisses. "How was the trip?"
"Mm…there were mermaids," she replied, wrapping her arms around his neck and relaxing against him.
"Mermaids?" he repeated. There was a delight in his voice she had never heard before.
"Beautiful mermaids," she said, "with pearls, and nails, and very long tongues."
Draco pulled away from her and grabbed her hand again. "I've got an idea," he said, and hurriedly headed towards the stairs.
She walked quickly to keep up with him as he pulled her along. "Are we hidden?" Hermione asked.
"Hidden enough. Shush," Draco said quietly. He kept them close to the walls as he pulled her behind him up several flights of stairs, avoiding other students. No-one noticed them, so it seemed he must have been correct that they were reasonably unobservable. He stopped suddenly and she bumped into him, looking around.
"Oh!" she said, recognizing the door as Draco entered the Prefect's Bathroom wand first.
"Great," he declared at seeing it was empty, and he reached out to pull her in.
"You're the hex champion, what are we putting on this?" he asked, locking the room behind them.
Hermione pulled out her wand and joined him. "They'll suddenly remember something else...and will be bored by the white noise," she said, relying on the Prince once more to cast Muffliato alongside a Distraction Charm on the entrance. Draco laughed and aimed his wand at all the taps into the enormous pool to turn them on, thousands of litres of water rushing into the bath.
"Fantastic," he said, and wrapped an arm around her shoulders and yanked her towards the bath.
She shrieked happily and kissed him as Draco hurriedly removed her clothes, pulling them down to the tiles beside the pool. "Tell me more about these mermaids," Draco said, yanking on her tie to loosen it.
It was so cute how he wanted to know what happened in her hallucinogenic adventure. "They were beautiful," she said, kicking her shoes off. "Men and women, and they had the longest, sharpest nails -"
He cut her off as he dug his nails into the small of her back and raked them across her skin up to her shoulder blades. Sense completely left her as she moaned and leant forward, hair falling off her back and across her face, wrists stretched out in pleasure as some of the unbearable heat left her body.
"And did they have beautiful hair, like yours?" Draco asked, brushing the rest of her curls off her shoulders.
She made an indistinct happy noise underneath him. "You like my hair?" she asked, deliriously fishing for compliments.
"How could I not," Draco replied. "You have some nerve looking this good. You went to class looking like this?"
"You told me to," she said reproachfully, pressing up on her hands to turn around and look at him, but he shoved her back down with one hand and scratched her hard with the other. Hermione's mind went blank again with ecstasy, and she sighed as she felt the sting of her skin breaking and warm, wet blood droplets roll down her spine.
"I suppose I did," he demurred. "I knew you'd fucking love it, you freaky witch." He moved his hand to between her legs and she started whining happily, babbling a stream of unconscious pleas under his fingers.
"And tongues, huh?" he asked as she said please, over and over. "Mermaids with tongues?"
"Tongues everywhere," she breathed, but any further explanation died and gave way to a quiet scream as he licked her clit.
"Please please please please," she begged, but Draco withdrew and suddenly picked her up. Hermione squealed, and then shrieked in protest as he threw her into the bath and jumped in after her.
It was as deep as a swimming pool, and Hermione fell quite far into the water, kicking to reach the surface. Draco grabbed her arm and pulled her up, and she managed one breath before he kissed her again.
She wrapped herself around him as tightly as possible, hands on his neck as she kissed him hard, desperately trying to convince him to fuck her. She could feel happy laughter shake through his body.
"No wonder all those sailors died," he said, pulling them both along gently in the water. "I would happily drown to death like this."
"Please," she begged, mouth against his ear, reduced to groveling. "You have to make me come, I'm going to die…"
"Poor Hermione," Draco hummed happily. "I did promise, didn't I?"
He broke out of her squid-like embrace and pulled her behind him out of the pool, where he finally – finally – entered her by the edge of the water, on the hard tiles.
Comprehension of time, sound and sight left her as she wrapped her legs around him. A wave of chemicals washed across her mind and body as she finally came, hands falling heavily but painlessly to the tiles as the tension subsided.
Eventually, she started falling gently back to earth. Brain functions resumed, one after another.
Hermione opened her eyes and blinked. She was back in the bath, arms resting against the edge and stopping her from floating away. How much time did I lose? She had been so crazed there were blank spots in her memory.
She looked up and saw Draco sitting on the edge of the bath beside her.
"Hi," she said.
"Did you hear me?" he asked.
"I think I might have passed out," Hermione said, frowning slightly.
"You were kind of present," Draco said, not managing to fully suppress a laugh. "I think your brain might have struggled to keep up."
She sighed happily and pushed off the bath edge, diving under the water to do a gentle somersault. "I don't remember a lot," Hermione said after reemerging from the water. "Just feelings. I know it felt great," she said firmly.
"You looked so happy," he replied, sliding back into the bath.
"I was! I am," she said. She hesitated before continuing. "You seem happier than I've ever seen you."
Draco floated on his back past her. "You make me happy," he said simply, eyes closed and face relaxed as if he were asleep.
She swam over to him and kissed him on the cheek, joining him in floating on the top of the water.
Time got away from her again – she couldn't tell how long she floated, half-asleep in the bath. Eventually the post-sex bliss could no longer withhold her thudding headache, and she sighed, swimming to the pool edge.
"Where are you going?" Draco called out. She turned around – his eyes were still determinedly shut.
"Headache," she said. He sighed and flipped out of his floating serenity, swimming past her to the edge of the pool.
"You stay here," Draco said. "I have a pain potion."
Hermione frowned, looking at her fingers that were more pruned skin than anything else. "We have to get out eventually," she said, swimming over to him as he reached for his wand and summoned something from his bag.
"Never," Draco replied, unscrewing the top of a pain potion and handing it to her. "I will live in this bath for the rest of my days."
Hermione giggled, growing quiet as he ran his fingers gently over her collar bone. This again, she thought, feeling her body stiffen as she became nervous.
"What does it feel like?" he asked quietly.
"What does what feel like," she replied automatically, already knowing exactly what he meant.
Draco kissed her shoulder. "Being in love."
She looked away, drumming her fingers on the pool side tiles. Maybe the truth would be a good place to start. "Terrifying," she replied.
He moved some water droplets around on her shoulder blade with a finger, and Hermione decided to be brave and answer as best she could.
"It's different with different people," she continued. "I didn't know there were different ways to be in love."
She looked back at him, but his expression only seemed thoughtful. "What's it like with me?" he asked.
She bit her lip, thinking hard about how to put it into words. "It's really difficult to describe," Hermione said. "It's like…I looked into a void. And I am the void. And when I'm with you, there is either no void or there is only a void." She sighed. "Or like, there's some sort of huge, abstract…feeling, or something, between us. But then I am that feeling, and I'm no longer me." She shook her head, and finally looked at him. "I'm sorry, it probably makes no sense."
Draco was holding the edge of the pool, staring at the ripples on the water – Hermione realised he must have let her go some time ago. After a moment, he turned to look at her, and to her surprise he seemed worried and upset.
"But…it's the same for me," he said. "There's like a…huge numbness, or despair, or something, and it's suffocating, and it swallows me up. But when I'm with you, it's like…it's not just that it goes away, it's like the concept has been eradicated. Like it never existed."
A tiny part of her felt exhilarated at learning that he loved her too. But mostly she shared his anxiety about the strangeness of what they both felt. The dread felt like a cold trickle of water down her spine.
"But because I am that feeling, when it's gone, it's like I don't exist," he continued. "But then, there's a new me that is realer than anything. And this all happens at the same time."
Hermione didn't know what to say. Her heart thumped and the only feeling she could register now was an overwhelming nausea. The anxiety was clear on Draco's face.
"What does it mean?" he asked, voice barely above a whisper. "If we're in the same kind of love? It's not…normal to feel like this, right?"
Hermione shook her head. "I don't know," she replied, voice cracking. "Did we mess something up when casting the Vow?"
Draco shook his head. "I haven't heard about anything like this and Unbreakables. Have you?"
"No," Hermione replied. She reached out and placed her hand on his, trying to be reassuring. "Maybe it doesn't mean anything? Or it means something we can't understand?"
Draco laced his fingers through hers, and a few moment of uneasy silence fell between them.
"Maybe it doesn't matter?" he asked after a time, uncertainly. "I can't change it…I don't know how I know, but I do." He looked at her. "And even if I could, I wouldn't."
Hermione wanted to look away but she felt paralysed. "It's unnerving," she whispered.
He let go of her fingers and pulled her into a hug, kissing the top of her head. "It'll be ok," Draco said, clearly not believing what he said.
"That's the worst lie you've ever told me," Hermione mumbled into his chest, and he laughed, digging his fingers into her ribs. She shrieked and pushed him away as he chased her around the bath, tickling her, the both of them resuming deliberate emotional ignorance until the water grew lukewarm.