A/N

Warning, there be smut ahead

Chapter 37

Harry

My back slams hard into the wall, as Hermione loses her balance and all of her weight crashes into me. Her eyes go wide in shock, and she looks over her shoulder expecting, I think, to find the person who pushed her.

That would be gravity, love.

"You're pissed," I say with amusement, enjoying the freedom in which she smiles. Her eyes remind me of a forest tonight, a thousand different browns blending and sparkling in her happiness. She gives every air of being offended; nose in the air and sniffing loudly before she bursts into laughter and tries to kiss me.

Tries being the key phrase. She doesn't hit my mouth quite centre but instead plants her lips off to the side and above some, so she's kissing me below my nose.

Earlier, I let Draco take a picture of her at the kitchen table. Mi was trying to drip noodles into her mouth and missed completely. Rather, she dribbled them down her cheek and chin and then chased them drunkenly with ill-coordinated lips.

It's only fair. She took several pictures of him in the Converses and dinosaur shirt. Besides, it was adorable.

Hermione giggles mindlessly against my lips, her body all soft and pliable. She pulls her face away just enough to give me a stern glare.

"No, I'm not," she insists, but doesn't even finish the sentence before she's giggling again.

Yes. She is. My head is fuzzy with it. The liquor buzzes in my veins, even though I didn't take a single sip. I'm not positive what the point of this particular experiment was, other than as entertainment. Because watching my swotty, proper wife slowly deteriorate into a babbling, laughing, trolly has been entertaining indeed.

"You can't blame me," she concedes, as we finally make it to our bedroom. She's plastered herself to my front with her arms draped over my shoulders and we're taking baby steps across the hallway. Her kisses are sloppy and wet, and I can't wait to remind her of this tomorrow. "I'm supposed to be tipsy. The Order's," she seems to hesitate, trying to figure out what she wants to say. "Orders," she finally announces before bursting into more giggles. "Remus is the one who kept refilling my glass with that elf made wine."

I grope around beside me until I find the door handle and we spill into the bedroom in a tangle of laughter and limbs.

She peppers dainty kisses over my neck, like she realizes she's been a smidgen looser than normal and is now being extra careful to make up for it. I kick the door shut behind me, and the lock automatically clicks shut with an audible snap. I fall heavily against the thick wood with my arms full of my drunken wife.

Alone at last.

"You're such a good kisser," she mumbles from somewhere under my chin.

I snort through my nose, which turns into a crickety moan when Hermione drags her teeth over my Adam's apple.

She's very unsteady on her feet, and I grip her hips tight in my hands to ensure she stays upright.

"And your kissing reminds me slightly of Fang tonight, love."

Hermione digs her nails into my chest as a sign of pique but doesn't so much as pause in her ministrations on my throat.

"Ow!" I pout through laughter and reach up to rub the newly forming bruise on my peck.

I can't wait for the time when it's only the two of us living here. If such a thing is even possible. I'm going to fuck her muggle-born arse on every piece of antique pureblood Black Family furniture that still exists in this house.

Woah.

I shake my head to clear it of the fuzziness.

Hermione pulls her face away from my neck and gives me an incredulous glare.

"Really? My muggle-born arse?"

"Sorry," I say sheepishly.

"Don't be," she says distractedly. "I liked it."

Maybe I'm more affected by her imbibing than I thought. If that was the point of this test, then we passed. Or failed. Whichever the case may be.

"We're going to run another experiment," Hermione mumbles as she sucks a mark into my neck below my ear.

She must have felt me thinking about them. I'm sick and tired of Bond experiments.

Her hand has found its way to the front of my trousers, and if she keeps rubbing the heel of her palm up and down my cock like that, I'm liable to agree to anything she says.

I'm not sure whether to be terrified or excited.

"Okay…"

"We're going to see if I can bring myself to orgasm," she says. No complaints yet. "By only touching you."

Oh.

My mind and body freeze as one, considering the possibilities. That's…I give my head a shake. I am drunk.

"H-how do you expect to do that?"

Hermione is working the buckle of my belt free, and with an uncoordinated tug that almost knocks her sideways, yanks it from the loops.

"Through proprioception."

Huh?

"English, love."

Hermione shakes her head in exasperation.

"Our bond is sentient, Harry. You know what I'm talking about. Stop playing stupid. How many fingers am I holding up?"

She squishes up her face like it's hard for her to concentrate then wraps her arms around my waist.

"Three. Two on one hand and one on the other."

She beams at me like I just won first prize in a spelling bee.

"This is a clothes-free investigation, Harry," she says, yanking down my zipper. She runs her nails up my sides as she hitches my shirt up my torso.

It's a jumble of clumsiness and ill-coordinated kisses as we try to strip each other, stay on our feet, and manoeuver to the bed all at the same time. Hermione is still in her jeans, though I'm down to my trunks when she presses me into the mattress.

"Do me a favour?"

"Mm-hmm," I answer, still sucking on her tongue.

"Consider it an experiment. Could you take some of the buzz from me? I may have drunk more wine than I realized, and I don't have the coordination to do what I have planned right now."

Another blasted test, to see how far our connection goes. I took the pain from her injury into myself on instinct. I couldn't tell the others how I did it, despite how many different ways they attempted to get me to describe it to them this afternoon. Which irritated Remus and Nate to no end. All I know is she was in pain, and I didn't want her to be, and I knew I could handle it better.

I don't need to understand how something works to be able to use it.

I've been thinking about this a lot. Not this per se, but…Hermione always refers to our Bond like a physical link. Something she can see and touch. An invisible string linking me to her.

It didn't manifest like that for me.

Maybe it's because our magics are different, or maybe it's because she's a girl and I'm a bloke. I like to think it's because she's always been a part of me. She's been the little voice in the back of my head telling me what to do for much longer than is appropriate to admit. But I can feel her inside my head. Her influence, her thoughts, and her feelings. I can touch her like a separate being, living inside my brain. Some days, if I didn't know better, I'd almost think I had multiple personalities.

For a few weeks there, when I couldn't breathe without her next to me, while I felt her moving down a hallway half a castle away, we did wonder if we were going quite mad.

Still, without knowing how I do it, I siphon her lightheadedness, and her giddiness, and take it into myself, then erect a wall between us so she can't feel it anymore. Her eyes dim, then brighten again as she shakes her head.

She pushes me flat on the bed, then straddles my hips still wearing her trousers.

"You're going to have to teach me how you do that," she says with a smile.

"Steal the know-how from my head one day," I say instead, my muscles taking on a loose quality. My head feels less fuzzy than previously, somehow, now that I'm dealing with her drunkenness directly instead of filtered through her. I must have a much higher alcohol tolerance than Hermione does because I feel less drunk now than I did when she did.

If that makes sense?

Hermione reaches into her pocket and pulls out her wand. I didn't see her shove it in there. All of our holsters are on the floor. She's already made our twin core wand her primary.

With a flip of her wrist, a bottle of Ogden's finest appears in the air in front of her. My eyes go wide as she twists off the lid and swallows back a gulp as if it were water. Which lasts all of five seconds before her eyes pop out of her head and she gags. Her face screws up and her entire body shudders, like a dog shedding water.

"Ugh, that's disgusting," she mumbles.

I cover my mouth with my hand, trying to hold in my laughter.

"What was the point of my siphoning off your inebriation if you're simply going to get pissed again?

My shoulders droop as the alcohol hits her bloodstream.

"You took too much," she whispers conspiratorially. "I need a little liquid courage."

With another swish of her wand and a mumbled spell under her breath, my arms stretch from my body, and invisible binding cinch around my wrists.

"Hermione!" I demand, giving my arms a tug.

"I don't need your participation in this particular experiment. Just your willing body and hard prick."

My eyes roll back in my head at the crassness of her words.

"Bloody hell, Witch!"

I give my wrists another pull and though my muscles strain and bulge, my arms don't move at all.

Hermione twists her wand in a circle, and a dark green bow appears in the air. She grabs it in her other hand and slaps it against my forehead. My eyes go crooked as I try to get a look at it and only succeed in making my head hurt.

I tilt my head at her in question.

"You told me I could tie you to the bed and stick a bow on your arse."

I snap my jaw closed, vividly remembering the circumstances in which I uttered those fateful words. I have to swallow several times to work enough saliva into my mouth to speak properly.

"I said you could do it for my birthday. We're days past that now."

"Fine," she sighs, and the bow disappears. The invisible bindings do not.

Hermione climbs off my lap, then shimmies my trunks down my legs. My cock, completely ignoring the fact that we should be angry at being tied up, is instead waving hello to our wife with enthusiasm.

She places her wand and the bottle of Ogden's on the bedside table, then quickly picks the bottle back up and takes another healthy swig. I count to fifteen before I feel it hit my bloodstream.

The tension in my back and neck releases with a pop.

I watch with hungry eyes as Hermione crawls off the bed and pushes her jeans down her legs, taking her knickers with them. Midnight blue and sparkly, they came with a matching bra. I know. I picked them out at the shopping centre when no one was paying us any attention.

I try again to loosen myself, but it's a lost cause. I could break the bindings with magic, but where would the fun be in that?

"You realize fair is fair, right? Everything you do to me I'm going to do to you."

She gives me what can only be considered a Slytherin smirk, and I make a mental note to start supervising her study sessions with Draco. She's obviously been spending way too much time with the wanker.

"I'm counting on it," she says in a sultry voice, and it may be the alcohol, but the way her tone drops and becomes all breathy makes me that much harder.

Fuck.

When Hermione climbs back on the bed, she reminds me of a tiger. Golden brown hair, long limbs and crawling on all fours with a predatory stare. She runs her fingernail down my sternum, and goosebumps break out across my body.

The same thing happens to her. Her nipples pebble in the cool air of our room, and her lips tighten into an o shape.

"I like that," she whispers, then runs her nails down me again, all five fingers curved like claws. "I like the sting of sharpness against my sensitive places."

I already hate this. I want to touch her. I consider bursting through the bindings, but Hermione shushes me verbally, even though I haven't said anything out loud.

My head is swimming.

She gathers her hair over her shoulder and dips her head to lick across my chest. Hermione sighs in pleasure, her face going all soft and blissful. My nipples grow achingly hard, and it's a sensation I've never experienced before. Hermione throws her leg over my hip, so she's straddled above me. My dick twitches with need.

Hermione whimpers with want.

She kisses me languorously, swirling her tongue around mine and nipping on my lips when she stops for breath. Mi rears her head against my forehead and puffs deeply, warm air cresting over my face.

"It's so scary, being this connected to someone. It's like I can't keep any secrets anymore."

Obviously, she can, because I didn't know she felt that way. I try to catch her lips in a kiss, but she's just out of my reach.

"I don't need to know your secrets, Hermione. I don't want to lose you, to us," I tell her truthfully. She's always known all my secrets anyway. I've never been able to keep anything from her.

"I know," she breathes against my face. "That's what makes it so terrifying."

When she kisses me again, it has a taste of defiance to it.

Hermione laps at me like a cat. I angle my head this way and that, so she can lick at the skin on my neck and nibble little marks into it. Her breath ghosts against me in little sighs and mewls of contentment. She works her way slowly down my shoulders, nipping at my collarbones.

"Have I told you how much I love having my breasts played with?"

I can't tell if it's a rhetorical question or not, but it doesn't matter. I don't think she's looking for a response. She runs the flat of her tongue over my hardened nipple and keens at the contact. She circles the nub with her tongue, then rubs against it with her thumb. Hermione grazes my nipple with her teeth, and her body bucks from the contact, her hips twitching and her stomach muscles clenching until the smooth surface concaves.

Her head and hair are blocking half my view of her, and I want to growl in frustration.

"The first time you sucked on my nipples, the sensation was so great I thought I was going to die."

She latches her mouth around my flat chest and sucks, then moans around the mouthful of muscle. Mi's teeth make a small indention as she laps her tongue across the pebbled flesh, tightening her lips as much as she can and sucking until her cheeks hollow.

This—whatever this is, it's my new obsession. With every flick of her tongue across my chest, her body reacts to it. It feels good for me. Wonderful even. I'd not really thought of my chest as an erogenous zone. But Hermione doesn't give a shit about that. She's sucking on my nipple, and tugging slow and firm on the other, because it feels good to her.

Mi doesn't give a shit about my pleasure, and I never realized how addicting that could be. I'm just a conduit for Hermione's desires. That is enough to get any man off.

I have to close my eyes and think of Crumple-Horned Snorkacks to stop myself from coming on the spot.

She switches sides, biting and sucking as she goes, and I fucking love it, because by this time tomorrow I'm going to make sure there's barely a square inch of skin on her body that doesn't have a mark made by me.

When she kisses down my stomach, she dips her tongue into my belly button.

"I loved it when you suckled me here," she whispers before latching her mouth onto the skin beside my hip and laving me with her tongue.

My cock is weeping pre-come.

"I want to touch you," I beg, pulling at the bindings on my wrists. Hermione doesn't acknowledge my words.

She settles lower between my legs and begins to kiss and lick up and down my thighs.

"And here," she says, before biting me again. Hermione cries out around the meat in her mouth, and her arse snaps back in the air. I can smell her slick. Almost taste it against my tongue. Her quim is hot and swollen. She's tired of being teased, but she loves it too. She's doing it to herself after all. My participation has not been required.

Her mouth finally makes its way to my prick, but she doesn't take it in her mouth. Instead, she licks across my balls like a kitty cat drinking cream.

Her hips are twisting in the air, moving this way and that. She roughly shoves my legs apart, and with a muttered spell I don't understand, begins to lick the skin underneath my cock.

Frissons of electricity fire across my body, and I moan at the same time she does. Her hand wraps around my cock, and she starts to stroke it in lazy distracted tugs. Fingertips graze past my balls, to the cleft between my legs.

Oh, Merlin.

I can't watch this anymore.

I jerk my head to the side, hiding as well as I can. But I can't hide at all. I could run to the farthest edges of the earth, and Hermione would still be able to see me clearly.

I'm pinned like a bug on display, and Hermione isn't even in her right mind to appreciate I'm bare and at her mercy. Her fingers slide up and down my arse crack, and she mewls as it teases her own entrance, running her fingers in soft probing circles. She's so blasted wet. She's almost dripping down her legs.

My cock is leaking a steady stream. I'm pulling on the bindings again, only now it's out of my control. It's a subconscious demand that I touch her as soon as possible.

Hermione whispers again, and the next time she touches me, her fingers are wet and slick. Her tongue never stops flick, flick, flicking against the skin under my balls. When she starts that damn sucking again, I almost come on the spot.

She seems to sense it, because she pulls back her mouth and begins to concentrate on my cock. The sudden stop after the build-up is agony, and a groan slips from my lips as she changes tactics and the tension in my balls recedes.

Mi licks up the length of my shaft, angling it this way and that and twisting her hips in a circle. She wraps her lips around me and I feel her pussy tingle. Her clit is throbbing in time with the bobbing of her head.

Oh, God. I dig my head into the pillow. My muscles tighten and release in a rapid sequence.

"Hermione," I beg. "I'm gonna—"

"I like it when you're rough with me."

Hermione releases my cock and smacks my inner thigh, and the slap of skin on skin sounds like a gunshot in the silence of the bedroom. I jerk under the impact, though it was more in surprise than any actual pain. The shock is enough to send me back from the brink.

My whimper turns into a grunt as my balls tighten painfully.

"You're killing me, Mi. Let me come. Please."

She doesn't even hear me.

"But I also love it when you're gentle. When you take your time and make it last and ruin me underneath you."

She's for sure ruined me.

Her fingers are still probing gently between my arse cheeks. I try to open my mouth to complain. To tell her to stop. To say anything at all. But all that comes out is a desperate sounding whimper.

My heart is beating out of my chest, and once again I can't decide if I'm terrified or excited. Hermione is...needy. She's so very desperate. Her quim, her gorgeous, delectable quim is clenching around nothing.

"Before you, I didn't need anything inside me to come. Now though," without any warning she slips a finger inside me, and my back curves off the bed.

"Merlin, Hermione!" I whine, trying to lift my head to look down at her between my legs. Her forehead is on my hip, her eyes are closed. I don't think she's even cognitive in what she's doing.

"Now, I need the sensation of being filled by you."

I'm shivering. But I'm not. Hermione is shivering, her body spasming so fast it feels like she has the chills. She slowly presses inside me, and the burn of the stretch feels so good. Her hips thrust backwards then rock forward when she retreats inside my hole. Again, and again she does it, lazily fisting my cock, tilting her hips forwards and backwards in time to her thrusts, until suddenly it's no longer enough.

"More," we say as one.

I whinge in embarrassment when Hermione lifts my leg and tosses it over her shoulder, then starts her attack on my flesh again.

"I'm so close," she chants. "So, so close. I just need a little…"

Hermione pulls free of my body and whispers the charm again, and when she presses back inside, the sensation of being filled has multiplied. She's using a second finger. The burn is quick to bleed into pleasure, and I plant my foot on the mattress and bow my back. Whether I'm squirming away or pushing her deeper inside me I really couldn't tell you.

She starts to quiver and shake, and her hips are snapping relentlessly. Her magic swirls around the bedroom, dipping and surging in between us. Her clit is tingling, her quim is clenching. Her muscles coil tight in her belly, the tension reaching a fever pitch. She keens where her lips are latched onto my cock and simulates sucking her clit.

Her fingers graze against something inside of me and she breaks in a beautiful wail of pleasure. I come all over my stomach as Hermione falls apart between my legs, her mouth hot as she pants and groans through her orgasm. Her fingers freeze inside me, but don't slip out, and I need to writhe away at the sensation of being filled but not taken.

My wife loves it though, when I press as deep as I can and hold my body still against hers. When she finally pulls out, I hiss at the sting and sudden feeling of emptiness.

I feel spent, in every way possible.

My head is spinning. Hermione is collapsed across my legs, body still spasming at sporadic intervals, her hips and chest twitching like she's been electrocuted. I break the binding spell holding my arms in place, run an Evanesco over my stomach, then dig my fingers soothingly through her hair. She moans in delight when I drag my nails over her scalp.

"As soon as I can move again," Hermione pants in a weak and breathy voice. "We're doing that again."

Finally. A Bond experiment I can fully get behind.

The witching hour. It's appropriate that it's become my favourite time of the day. The entire world comes to a standstill at this time of night, and it's just my witch and me secluded and alone.

We're both going to need magic to stay on our feet tomorrow, but I wouldn't give up this time with her for anything, and certainly not simply because it's going to irritate Nate and Moody that I'm dragging arse.

We're laying side by side in our massive four-poster, legs entwined and heads sharing a pillow.

If I could, I would never leave this room again, and let the pieces fall where they may. But Voldemort would never allow us to live in peace, and even if he did, I couldn't live with myself if I let him win when I had the power to stop him.

Hermione must see the dejection on my face, or feel my despondency through our Bond. Her smile blooms soft and pitying.

"I'm sorry about this morning."

She whispers it into the dark, which is silly, because it's just me and her. But it's that time of the night, where even though you're the only two on earth you fear breaking the silence.

The Order wants us to practice strengthening our connection. Remus suggested we only communicate telepathically. Try to anticipate the other's thoughts. I truly detest the idea. When we're training, then it's fine. We've always been good at anticipating the other's moves anyway. A little practice is only a good thing.

I could pull her thoughts from her head. After earlier, there are no barriers between us.

I know exactly what she's feeling. Hermione's aura, her magic, is wrapped around me like a warm blanket on a cold night. I know that she's content, and sated, and at peace with the world. Despite everything, Hermione is happy, and I made her that way.

Hermione and I…we don't have a Bond. We share a soul. She is mine and I am hers and I know in my heart without a doubt that I could still feel her from around the world.

But I don't want to know everything about her day with the blink of an eye. I love listening to her talk to me, at me. The way her face lights up when she tells a story. I'm even rather fond of the occasional lecture, not that I'd ever admit that out loud.

Hermione jumped into testing and strengthening our connection with enthusiasm. To her, it's academic. It's just common sense to learn everything she can about Bonded Mates as quickly as humanly possible. Remus may have shared her eagerness to further his knowledge, but that's not what the rest of the Order members had in mind this afternoon.

They want to take everything we are to each other and narrow it down to something compliant, something they can use to their benefit, and I refuse to let that happen.

I wanted to be taken seriously by the Order. But just like everything else in my life besides Hermione, even that backfired on me. They still don't see me as one of them. They see me as their weapon. They see us as their weapon.

I'm so tired of being used for other people's purposes.

I trail my finger down her face and over the curve of her jaw

"You know why they did that to us today, right?"

Her face squishes up into that adorable little thinking expression, her brows drawn inward and her lip between her teeth.

"To prove a point, I guess. That I can take care of myself, which I can." Her nose scrunches up and she half-heartedly glares at me. It takes all my self-control not to smile. "That you are too overprotective, which you are. We screwed around during that stupid duel, and we can't skive off until all this is over. Plus, I think Voldemort making such an open attack so quickly after returning to a corporeal form really sent them round the bend."

I shake my head.

I'll accept the reprimands on the duel, and the additional training. The stronger we are together, the better as far as I'm concerned. But that wasn't their only point. Not even their main one.

"No. You heard what they said. 'Who would you choose? Her, or the world?' They're absolutely right, Hermione. I choose you. Every time."

Her doe-like eyes widen at my words.

"No, Harry," Hermione says and covers my mouth with her fingers. "You can't say things like that. You can't even think things like that. They are right. I am disposable."

"The fuck you are," I growl.

I roll over onto my back, pulling her with me. She settles herself on top of me, her chest tight against mine, her legs straddling my hips. She places her forearms on the bed to either side of my head, so I'm trapped inside her embrace.

"Every decision I've made since I was eleven years old has been to save the lives of others. That's why there's a Malfoy living in my house. I'll do everything in my power to limit the loss of life in the upcoming war. If they don't realize that, then fuck them. But if it comes down to you or them? You win. Always, Hermione. Before this life and into the next. You should know this by now. I'd burn a path to hell if that's what it takes to keep you safe."

The glow from the fire backlights her, and she looks like an angel on top of me, the browns and golds and reds in her hair giving her a halo.

"There's a saying attributed to romance novels," she says, running her fingers over my scalp. "It goes something like the hero would sacrifice you to save the world, and the villain would sacrifice the world to save you."

She's so beautiful.

I love the scattering of freckles over her nose, and the way her eyes change colour when she's angry or sad. I even love the tangles in her hair and the way my fingers catch when I bury my hands inside her curls.

I gather her hair over one shoulder so I can see her face without impediment. She closes her eyes when I tuck a stray strand behind her ear.

"I love you so much, Hermione."

When she brings her lips to mine, it feels like this is the place I was meant to be. Everything feels so easy, so right, when Hermione is kissing me. Gentle or rough, beseeching or answering my call, when Hermione's heart beats against mine, I feel like the Chosen One.

Chosen to belong to her.

"I don't mind being the villain of their story, so long as I'm the hero of yours."

This time when she smiles, it lights up her face. Merlin, what she does to me…I know she can read my mind and everything, but she can't possibly have any idea of the effect she has on me when she smiles at me like that, because I couldn't describe it if our lives depended on it.

My heart wants to burst out of my chest, and I know I'd do anything, anything, to have her smile at me like that forever. I can't let them all die because Hermione would never forgive me if I did. But that doesn't mean she won't forever come first. She brings her lips to mine again, but pulls away when I try to close the distance between us.

"You've always been my hero, Harry."

Then she kisses me.