Dear reviewer, you & I've traveled in different fanfic circles, because since I started in fanfic, I'd always been told drabbles were "100 words min, 700 max", including fics in which the chapters are simply drabble-length (I'm completely sincere about this, in 15 years, this is the 2nd fic I've done in this style [3rd if we can count one from years ago I eventually pulled for personal reasons] & you're the 1st person to bring this discrepancy to my attention). We'll have to agree to disagree; I don't see it as either of us being right or wrong, simply we learned different parameters. I appreciate you being open & honest about your feelings on the story & its pacing, but again, I hope you appreciate that the format will not change. (I did try to reach out following your first review, but after I sent the message, I read your profile & realized 'oh, they probably don't check their messages given those past experiences,' I wish I'd looked beforehand [though this misunderstanding still would've happened due to the aforementioned discrepancy], so I could've left an A/N in an earlier chapter & we could've gotten this out of the way then :) .)


FIFTY-ONE

Hermione shuddered, breaking the kiss with a gasp as she dropped her head down against his chest. She bit her lip to hold in a moan at the feel of him withdrawing and sinking into her again and again. Every motion sent tingling warmth shivering through her limbs, her muscles, arcing across her skin.

Yet, as frantically as it had begun, the rhythm they settled into was slow, careful ….

Loving.

The way his arms slipped around her, the grip of his hands tender.

The way her legs squeezed tighter at his sides as her arms circled him beneath the heavy weight of his robes, her hands brushing the bare skin between his shoulder blades.

She let out a little whimpering sound, her tone pleading as she felt that sweet, small ache pulsing through her, telling her body to tense against his thrusts.

Antonin held back a growl at how she clung to him. At the sensation of her clenching tighter around his thrusts.

He thought for certain at first that he must be imagining it when, through that haze of touch and warmth and pleasure, she seemed to be guiding him. Seemed to be leading his mouth back to the wound he'd opened at her throat.

He quickened his pace, aware how close she was …. Of how close he was.

He struggled to speak around the feel of her body gripping him. "Won't it … be too much?"

"No," she answered, her voice no more than a keening breath. "I think it'll be … it'll be perfect."

Nodding, he unreasonably found himself trying to hold back even as his motions grew faster, still. But then she froze in his embrace, her orgasm crashing over her, and he lost what precious little self-control he possessed around her.

He brought his lips to her throat, drawing blood from the open wound, sip by gentle, careful sip as he came.


Hermione found herself in darkness. She could still feel what was happening, the blissful tremors wracking her, the delicious feel of Antonin buried inside her as he spent himself. But she was alone, nothing before her … nothing around her …. Just dark ….

A wash of glittering illumination blinded her and she threw up a hand to shield her eyes.

She struggled to focus, aware whatever she was seeing now was not what was really happening. There was something ….

Something trying to show her ….

The light faded and she lowered her hand, finding herself watching a scene not so very unlike what was happening right now.

Night. The forest. Her, Antonin, a naked, sweaty tangle of limbs. Blood on his lips … and on hers.

And around them, decorating the forest floor, some sort of ritual circle.

Beside the circle, raised on an ancient altar carved from the trunk of a long-fallen tree …. A book. Not just any book—the pages were not paper, nor even parchment, but thin wooden slats, strung together with animal hide and bearing impossibly detailed, intricate reliefs.

She rose up over Antonin, her hips rocking hard, grinding her against him and reached toward the book.

Her fingers trailed over the edge of one such relief and she saw a memory ….

A hiding place.


"Hermione!"

She snapped back into herself, body languid, the sense of her so-very-recent orgasm still radiating through her limbs. His hands cupped her face, those crimson eyes wide as he stared at her, unblinking.

"Thank God," he said, his voice shaky in a way she'd never heard it as he gathered her into his arms, holding her tight to his chest. "I thought I'd taken too much. What happened? Where did you go?"

Where did she go? Did she recognize the place she remembered in that vision? Divination was really proving to be a pain in her arse lately, even if it did have certain benefits.

Swallowing hard, she simply let herself breathe for a few heartbeats before she said, "I think I know where the Book is."