August

tick tock

"It bit me."

Draco would have loved to say those words came out strong, that his voice carried even, controlled, and devoid of unreasonable worry.

But all he could think, after the words left his mouth, was how similar his voice sounded to the time that great bloody Hippogriff had tried to maim him.

Hermione had given him one shelf. One shelf with one measly yellow rune to handle, and he'd clearly done something incorrectly, because the lattice work frame meant to house rows and rows of expensive wines had splintered and surged, goring his right hand with several wooden shards. He supposed technically that meant the shelf had stabbed him, not bit. But biting was the first word that came to mind when the sting of pain shot up his arm and blood welled in his palm.

Hermione appeared at his side, wand drawn, already extracting the splinters from his hand.

"Oh, yes. This had been happening a lot in here," she said, an image of the composure he wished he'd had. His first instinct had been panic, then a ridiculous thought about his own demise via disgruntled shelving, then the more reasonable thought, which he vocalized, about having been bitten. And while that had been the most reserved of his initial reactions, it still erred towards ridiculousness.

"A lot?" he asked, hissing as she removed a particularly large splinter from his skin.

"They've been registering as orange on my runes, though," she said. "I wonder if the runes take into account the perceived threat due to blood status…" she trailed off, a thoughtful expression crossing her face as she healed him.

She didn't drop his hand once she'd finished. She laced her fingers between his, taking a quick glance around the cellar, as if she expected to find an audience, admonishment for a display of affection when she was meant to work. When she looked back up at him, he saw her eyes dart to his mouth, broadcasting her thoughts.

"You aren't thinking of kissing me, are you, Ministry Representative Granger? You know you're on duty right now." He grinned at her: easy and lazy and simple, how it should be.

She frowned, eyes narrowing as she lifted an index finger and jammed it in the center of his chest.

"Don't you dare pretend like you have any interest in me maintaining professional boundaries."

He reached up to grab her offending finger, halting her ruthless attack on his sternum.

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean, Hermione. I'm very invested in your professional boundaries." He released both her hands, stepping back.

She made a small, annoyed sound.

"So, if I were to request that you kiss me until I can't breathe or have me on one of these casks you'd decline out of respect for my professional responsibilities?"

He could feel his focus contracting, as if everything else in the room had dropped away: leaving her and that beautiful sentence and nothing more. Fuck his banter. Now he had an image in his head of her bent over a wine rack, and if she was offering—

"Show me to the nearest safe surface," he said.

She laughed, stepping forward to give him a light, wholly unsatisfactory kiss. When he tried to pull her closer, she wriggled out of reach, still smiling.

"I'm not saying it isn't tempting," she said. "But you were right. I'm working."

Well, that had backfired spectacularly. It wasn't so much that he actually expected her to shirk all her responsibilities and let him shag her senseless in a mostly decommissioned wine cellar, but having so recently been reintroduced to a version of his life where he could touch her again, he opted to take any chance he got.

He massaged his recently healed palm, not even a twinge of pain beneath the skin. She'd vanished his blood, too. He'd barely even noticed.

"Thanks for saving me, Granger," he said just as she'd turned to tackle more work.

She tilted her face, features mostly in profile as she acknowledged him, a smile pulling at her lips.

"You're welcome," she said. "I'm sure you'll find a way to repay me later."

Playful Hermione, almost irreverent to the rules Hermione: she'd discovered how to tease him, and he loved every minute of it.

—

Draco loved sex in the high heat of summer. If he already had to suffer and sweat under the several layers of robes and cloaks that magical fashion required—and that cooling charms never could quite chill in the right way—he figured he might as well make the most of every opportunity to disrobe.

Hermione liked to banter when the heat got to her. It was as if the temperature literally boiled something in her blood, turning her irritation into a sharp tongue that had her sniping at his every move, every word, every thought. It riled him up in the best kind of way.

Kissing her stalled that sharp tongue, robbing her of retorts he'd only paid half-attention to anyway, distracted by how freshly fucked she looked with humidity inflating her hair and glistening on her skin.

Cooling charms could only do so much in the throes of a heatwave. But taking one's clothes off? Well, that always did the trick. If Draco's flat had to feel like a heating charm gone awry, even with the large windows thrown open for the sake of a cross breeze, he would at least enjoy his ability to cast a privacy charm and divest his girlfriend—confirmed, discussed, decided between the two of them—of her clothes.

He might not love being hot, but he loved making Hermione sweat. Making her squirm. Making her flush red and pant for breath as she struggled to form coherent words with that brilliant fucking brain that never stopped.

He dragged a knuckle down her spine, dropping a kiss on her shoulder blade as she whimpered from the contact. He rocked his hips forward, driving into her from behind, and appreciating every nuance of the shudder it wrested from her. She made a louder sound, something half-breathed, half-moaned, against the velvet cushion.

Draco wanted to see her face. For as lovely as fucking her over the arm of an antique sofa was, she'd buried her head against the green seat cushions and beneath her mass of hair. He not only wanted to hear the pretty sounds she made, but he wanted to watch their origins in strangled expressions that danced across her face.

He slipped into a lazy, easy pace: one meant for sweltering days and meandering, delicious sex. He leaned forward again, breath releasing as a groan from the new angle. He brushed her hair to one side, exposing the beautiful line of her throat. He sampled her skin there, tasting the salt on her neck, the heat radiating off of it. She arched against him, a halting, broken moan wrenched from her lungs.

"Quiet, love," he said into her skin, winding an arm around her ribs to pull her into a standing position. "The windows are open."

She let him move her, pliant clay beneath his touch: warm and moldable on a hot day.

"You cast a privacy charm," she said, sentence ending on a whimper as he withdrew from her completely, stepping back just enough to turn her towards him. He smirked, memorizing the tide of her flush as it rose and fell on her chest and cheeks.

"Did I?" he asked before capturing her lips in a kiss, desperate to taste her. She canted against him, and he could feel her stretching on her tiptoes, trying to bring their hips as close together as possible. She made a desperate, whining noise when he rolled a nipple between his thumb and forefinger, dipping his head to follow the action with his tongue.

"We're long past foreplay, Draco—please."

Her hands skimmed the surface of his chest, descending, before she gripped his hips, pulling him closer. She kissed his chest, hot, open-mouth kisses tempered by a soft, delicate brush of tongue. She kissed once at the center of his chest, then again directly over his heart. He wondered if she could feel it, the way his pulse sputtered and stuttered, starting and stopping entirely at the behest of her lips and tongue, hostage to her in every way.

He wound her curls around his fist, gently angling her head away, stemming her assault on his heart. She pulled at his hips again, a desperate plea in the action as she looked up at him. She bit her lip and begged again, hitching one of her legs around his.

"Please."

How could he possibly deny that?

He pressed her against the arm of the sofa again, lifting her to sit on it, angled towards the wall. She'd need support. He'd had his fill of languid strokes and slow sex; he intended to earn this swelter.

He brought his lips down on hers, one hand trailing along her collarbone, soft touches as the spaces between them shrank, slick skin coming together to generate even more warmth. He groaned against her mouth as he sank into her: the best kind of heat. She swallowed his sound, greedily kissing and clinging to him with arms wound around his neck, nails dragging through his hair.

Every thrust, every kiss, every shiver, every moan. They were his. Draco did this to her, he drove coherency from her brain and watched her fall apart beneath him: a writhing tangle of limbs and curls and pants pleading for more, yes, Draco. These were the moments when he felt like she might keep him, might let him stay in her schedule, planned into her life over months and years, not just days and weeks. Or maybe she'd give him even more time to please, and fuck, and love her, unbound from a single day in her busy week.

He buried his face in her neck, sucking at her skin, committing her taste to memory. He could feel her teetering on the edge, all quivers and flutters and broken attempts at speaking his name.

Two syllables were all it took. He measured the depth of her pleasure in the number of shattered seconds between dra and co as she tried and failed to speak through the sweet torture he delivered via friction, and fire, and sheer willpower to please her.

He could feel his concentration slipping. His words, his thoughts, his dreams, all spiraling into a single set of sensations, monopolizing his focus: the sound of her breathy whimpers against his ear, the smell of her vanilla shampoo wafting from her curls, the taste of salt on her skin beneath his lips, the feeling of her cunt enveloping him with each thrust, and the sight of stars, bursting in and out of existence behind his closed lids, a personal constellation.

He held her steady, both arms bracketing her, keeping her angled against the wall as she perched precariously on the edge of the sofa. His arms burned, ached from ensuring she stayed where he wanted her.

She fastened her legs around his hips, heels digging into his backside. He hissed as her nails dragged down his neck and shoulders—too hard, harder than she intended, probably—but he'd savor the red lines they left behind. She could mark him as much as she liked. He already belonged to her.

Her head fell back, exposing more skin for him to explore. Her curls tumbled over his forearm as she rested against it, lost to the world. The first grip of her orgasm stole his breath: uneven, broken gasps of air against her neck as she spasmed and writhed beneath him, a magnificent example in undoing.

The privacy charm had been a good call: between the pitch of her whimpered moans as she came apart, and the staccato of his grunt as he found his own release, they'd made little effort to hold back.

He heaved several labored breaths against her chest, echoes of an orgasm buzzing beneath his skin. Hermione barely moved, barely breathed, body taut beneath him. Still inside her, Draco pulled her against his chest with his remaining, unsteady strength and straightened to his full height.

He brought one hand beneath her thigh, offering both support and warning before he lifted her off the sofa's arm.

"Hold on, love," he breathed in her ear. Despite his considerable build and her compact frame, he'd been thoroughly spent. The two steps and a pivot it took to walk them around the arm of the sofa nearly did him in.

They melted into the cushions in a tangle of sweat and limbs and heavy breathing.

Gods it was hot.

She practically burned him with her skin, with hot air against his neck as she burrowed against him. But gods, was it worth it. Even as he could barely think, world still struggling to coalesce, he could imagine no finer use of his time than holding this woman in his lap and trailing his fingers up and down her spine.

He dropped a kiss to the top of her head. A wild curl assaulted him, tickling his cheek. She squirmed, her mouth finding his neck, then his jaw, before beginning a sated exploration of his lips. Draco closed his eyes, savoring the impossibility of having her after the uncertain stretch of time when he thought he'd lost her.

She ran a finger from the base of his throat, down his sternum, and let out a quiet, happy laugh.

"We need a shower," she said, voice quiet against his lips. "We—made a mess."

He hummed a chuckle in agreement, letting his hands knead her arse.

The Floo flared to life across from them. Draco pulled her closer, instinctively wrapping both arms around her in a feeble attempt to shield them.

Theo's voice followed the flash of green.

"Draco, you would not believe the progress—oh. Oh no. No—gods."

A series of several unfavorable things happened over the course of the next five seconds.

First, it took one solid, horrified blink—wherein Draco, completely naked, post-coitus, with his girlfriend in his lap, made direct eye contact with his lifelong friend—for Theo to whirl back around, frantically grabbing for the pot of Floo powder.

Next, Hermione squealed, jumping away from him. Perhaps she had intended to hide, but she only ended up exposing even more of both of them. Thankfully, Theo already had his back to them, mitigating the potential amplification of everyone's embarrassment and discomfort.

Last, Draco groaned, failing to summon his wand, distracted and incapable of the requisite focus. Hermione found a throw blanket and haphazardly and belatedly preserved her modesty.

Scant seconds had passed but it felt like a lifetime's worth of humiliation.

The Floo pot shattered.

Theo twisted to reach for it, still frantically muttering to himself, a bright red flush crawling up the back of his neck. He grabbed a handful of powder from the floor, leaving the shattered pieces of the pot behind, and threw it into the fireplace, spinning away with his eyes screwed shut.

Draco wasn't sure he'd breathed during the entire, agonizing five-second event.

He glanced over at Hermione, wrapped in an atrocious crocheted monstrosity that Molly Weasley had given her, blushing redder than he'd ever seen her. She hovered near the corner of the sofa, one large step from disappearing into the hallway.

"Thank you for not abandoning me," Draco said with a smirk. He couldn't drum up the self-consciousness to be embarrassed about nakedness, still planted on the sofa. He'd already spent every drop of mortification on Theo's interruption.

"I thought you were kidding about not putting up privacy charms," she said, lifting the back of one hand to her cheeks, testing the heat of her blush. "I was—a bit loud at the end there."

Draco's smirk turned to a full-on grin, pride swelling at that statement.

"I did spell the windows. I just"—he waved his hand at the fireplace—"forgot to lock the Floo."

"How could you forget—"

"I was clearly more focused on getting in your knickers."

Hermione sent him an exasperated look before she cast a cleansing charm and retrieved Draco's wand from the table, tossing it to him.

"I suppose Theo has learned a valuable lesson about inviting himself over unannounced," she said, handing him his shirt and trousers as well, still wrapped in the blanket.

"Unlikely. It's a horrible habit, been doing it for years."

"This wouldn't have happened at my flat. My friends don't barge in uninvited."

Draco snorted. "I'd have to actually go to your flat for that to be the case."

"You can. You're more than welcome to, whenever you'd like. It's just—small. Your bed is literally twice the size of mine."

Draco leaned into his smirk, lazy and satisfied, "Not that we made it there."

She drew her lips together, shielding the smile that might have been his reward.

She sighed. "It sounded like Theo had news. Why don't you pop over and see what he needed, and I'll get cleaned up?"

He didn't immediately respond, eyes lingering on the way she had the blanket clutched around her chest, slipping off her shoulder: criminally distracting.

"I'll just throw some clothes on," he finally said. "I suppose I was hoping to get cleaned up with you."

If not for the fact that Theo was likely experiencing a mortification-related crisis on the other side of the Floo, Draco would have locked the Floo grate and never left.

—

"What the fuck, Draco?"

Theo had a tumbler in his hand, filled to at least four finger's worth of liquor as he lounged in a dramatic leather wingback. Draco shook his head.

"No," Draco said. Theo didn't get outrage. Draco did. "What the fuck, Theo?"

"That poor sofa."

"My poor girlfriend."

"My eyes."

"My cock."

"Couldn't see it, Hermione was in the way."

"Were you looking, Theo?"

"No, I was not. But there was a moment of staring I wish I could take back. It's burned in my retinas. Do you think Hermione would be willing to obliviate me?"

"No, and don't ask her to."

Theo blinked at the sudden steel in Draco's tone.

"I should apologize to her," he said, tilting back his drink and gulping at least three shots worth of liquor.

Draco lifted a brow.

Theo set his glass down with a thud, sucking in a strangled breath through his grimace. "That was not the good stuff," he said. "I really wasn't planning on being drunk tonight."

"It's barely half two in the afternoon."

"I'll need a sobering potion. You have one at your flat? I can apologize to Granger while I'm there." Theo stood suddenly and then paused, as if assessing whether or not that alcohol had taken effect.

Draco held up a hand, stopping him.

"Wait a full sixty seconds before coming through. I'll make sure Hermione has dressed."

Theo threw his hands up, pushing out an exasperated sigh. "Is there a question that she might not be?"

"We were spending the day together."

"That doesn't explain nearly as much as you think it does." A pause. A frown. A groan. "Actually, it explains too much."

"Sixty seconds," Draco said again. He pulled out his grandfather's pocket watch, made note of the second hand, and grabbed a handful of Floo powder, returning to his flat.

When he stepped through, he called to Hermione in warning, apprising her of Theo's imminent arrival, or, as it were, return.

She walked into the room just as Theo stepped through the Floo. Draco's pocket watch had only counted forty-five seconds. Theo clearly had a death wish.

Draco's inquiry into whether Theo had actually used a clock or just counted in his head—as if that were a precise unit of measurement—stalled in his throat as Hermione stepped into his field of view, piling her curls into a messy bun atop her head.

He needed to get Theo out of his flat.

Hermione wore a pair of his boxers and his Slytherin Quidditch jersey. Green looked good on her. And he desperately wanted her to turn around so he could see his name written across her back. She looked indecent, more alluring than if she'd been standing there stark naked.

"What are you wearing?" Draco managed to ask, throat dry, already half hard in his trousers.

She smiled, lifting her shoulder in a small shrug. "Isn't this what girlfriends do? Wear their boyfriend's clothes?"

He could hear her attempt at sounding casual, confident, like her statement was nothing but a face-value series of words strung together. But he could see the uncertainty lingering beneath, the hint of a question. He would have kissed every ounce of it away if Theo wasn't standing right next to him, freshly traumatized.

"This is not better," Theo said, pulling Draco from his dangerous thoughts about his gorgeous fucking girlfriend. "In fact, this might be worse."

Hermione seemed to have remembered her recent embarrassment, expression torn between anger and humiliation.

"Have you perhaps learned something valuable today, Theo?" she asked him, putting her hands to her hips.

Draco smirked; he rather enjoyed seeing that posturing directed at someone else.

"Yes. I'll never be touching that sofa again."

She frowned, narrowing her eyes at him.

"I thought you were planning on apologizing?" Draco asked, abandoning his lingering stance by the fireplace. He walked to Hermione and dropped a kiss at her temple before continuing to the green velvet sofa, sitting and crossing an ankle over his knee as he watched Theo's wary reaction.

Theo cleared his throat.

"Right. Apologies, Granger. If we could all agree this never happened, that would be excellent."

Hermione didn't give, hands still planted on her hips, eyes narrowed at Theo. She pressed her lips together, and Draco watched as she tried and failed to suppress the smile that ultimately broke free.

"Fine. You're forgiven." She let her arms drop as she moved to sit next to Draco.

Theo looked incapable of processing his level of his disgust at seeing them sitting on the sofa together, which felt like appropriate punishment to Draco, all things considered. He stretched his arm around Hermione's shoulder as she curled against him.

"You came over for a reason, Theo?"

"Blaise is my best friend now, so you know. Indefinitely, I think."

Draco rolled his eyes. "That's what you came to say?"

"No, no. That's a very recent development after"—a pained expression crossed his face as he gestured vaguely at them—"all this."

"And why were you here in the first place?"

Theo rocked on his feet, looking suddenly like a lecturer presenting to his rapt audience.

"The door. Behind the painting. To the vault."

A pause, several breaths, as Draco waited for him to elaborate.

"I got it open," Theo said. "I got the door open."

"And?" Draco asked, leaning forward in genuine curiosity.

"There's a hallway. Can't see around the corner and it's warded—extensively."

"How extensively?" Hermione asked.

"Melt-your-skin-off, extensively."

Draco heard Hermione make a humming noise of acknowledgment. Both she and Theo seemed disturbingly unaffected by the idea of skin-melting defensive wards. They bonded over some of the strangest things.

"Do you think that's it, though?" Draco asked.

Theo considered. "There could be another door after the hallway that I can't see. But I think I'm close. These new wards have family magic in them, old blood magic, like the kind for the estate's primary wards"—he grimaced—"unpleasant, but familiar enough. I think—maybe a couple of months?" He smiled, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

"Congratulations," Hermione said. Draco realized she had a hand resting on his thigh. Draco found it very, very distracting.

Theo swayed a bit, still grinning at his accomplishment.

"Can I have that sobering potion now?" he asked. "The whiskey's starting to hit me and I need to get out of here before you two start"—a gagging noise, a vague gesture, a general sense of trauma—"again."

—

With Theo sobered and departed, Draco leaned his head back against the sofa and let out a long exhale. Sure, he was excited about the progress Theo had made. He'd been trying to access that vault for five years now, but the timing had been terribly inconvenient, and the emotional whiplash sufficiently jarring.

Hermione stood by the fireplace, wand in hand. She arched a brow at him. Then, silently, she locked the Floo.

"Shower," she said. "Now."

With orders like that, he'd be willing to let Hermione boss him around any time she liked.

He kissed her halfway down the corridor. As much as he loved seeing her in his Quidditch jersey, he pulled it off, desperate to taste her skin again, trailing lips and tongue across her chest.

She divested him of his own clothes as they crossed the threshold to the bathroom, a frantic, stumbling mess of limbs and fabric and rapidly rising temperatures.

She took him in her mouth as the shower nearly scalded him, hot and steaming. But that heat held nothing in comparison to seeing Hermione on her knees, beautiful and soaking wet, lips on his cock. The water was hot; his temperature rose, her mouth seared, his entire body aflame, feverish. She was burning him up, burning him alive.

He realized he'd let her. He'd let her ruin him, melt him down and remake him if that's what it took.

He had to brace himself against the tiled walls, a surprising coolness against his forearm as he leaned against it. He wound his other hand through Hermione's hair, fisting it as she mesmerized him with the sight of his cock disappearing inside her mouth. If this was ruin, he welcomed it. Pleasure and heat and her beautiful face.