"I hope not," are the words out of her mouth before she can stop them. Hermione decides she shouldn't stop them, anyway. He's had his fun. It's time to have hers. The anticipation of this chases the drained post-orgasm sensation from her body and she's suddenly alert.
His eyes darken and he starts to drop more kisses between her breasts, moving steadily downward.
"Use your hands and your mouth," she says. "Hit that spot with your fingers and use your teeth. Not too hard, but hard enough. You'll know."
"Gotten over your reluctance, have you?" he smirks, pausing over her nipple to make things take longer. She waits until he has her nipple trapped before shoving him downward, hissing at the feeling of the release.
"You've shown you can do it."
"Oh, thank you for your consideration, my Queen," he quips, but she can feel the urgency in his touch.
She parts her legs again and Draco puts her feet on his shoulders. "Press down – not hard enough to move me, mind, unless you want me to stop – and I'll use more pressure."
"No," she breathes. "If I want more, I'll draw my feet up. I'll spread for you if I need more."
She feels his heavy inhale and exhale, as if he's steadying himself. She pictures his jaw locked for a moment, rolling at her words.
"The only time I'll push down is if I'm pushing you away."
Draco still wants to figure out what places make her twitch. He grabs one ankle, kissing up it slowly, stroking with his fingers as he moves higher up her leg. He holds both feet firmly against his shoulders as he moves into position right between her legs. Hermione reaches to her knees, placing her hands right inside and holding herself open.
"Tongue first. Then fingers. Use your mouth like you did on my nipples."
His lips are already pressed against her and she feels the rumble of his assent. His tongue snakes out to flick at her rapidly, several times in a row, and she sighs her approval. Her hands part her knees, her face turning to the side. She lets her eyes close.
Then, feeling the loss of him, she glances down to find him staring up at her. His eyes are dark, dark blue. Like sapphires.
"The way you smell… I've never imagined anything like it." He strokes a finger against her, deliberately teasing, and Hermione feels her body respond. He licks it up and she hears his breath catch. "The way you taste…"
Hermione used to be self-conscious about this, years ago. Ron was never particularly enthused to do it. It was a means to an end, the prelude to him getting his end wet. But now…
Draco presses his tongue back to her clit, flicking with pressure, and she feels his finger swirl up her wetness and spread it around. He takes it slow, inhaling deeply several times, letting the bare tip of his tongue touch her. His fingers spread her wider and Hermione tries to help with her knees.
"Use your fingers," she directs. "I want two of them."
He does this, still taking his time and making it drawn out. He teases her clit, light breaths on it, and asks, "and my thumb?"
"Yes," she breathes. "That, too."
He waits another second, his fingers moving deep inside her, before adding his thumb. She gasps, welcoming the pressure, before saying, "Your tongue again, now."
He goes to this eagerly, sliding it from base to slit, and she groans. He latches onto her clit, suckling and tapping pressure against it.
"Teeth, just a little."
He nips at her and she stuffs her knuckles in her mouth. Bloody hell, that's good. She lets him do this for several cycles until she feels she's close. Gods, she's so close. "Stop," she says in a rush. "Stop."
He does at once. "Is something wrong?"
"No," she pants.
Before she can define it further, he asks, "What do you want? What do you like?"
Hermione doesn't give it a second thought before saying, "I like to be held."
He pauses. "Like… cuddled? After?"
He's adorable, she thinks. "No. Well, yes, I suppose, but now – I like being supported. Held up. Hold me up."
Draco looks around for a moment before sliding to the floor and pulling her with him. He slumps with his knees against the bed, up like a ramp, placing her above him and holding her above his face with his arms.
Hermione slips down, feeling his knees at her back but able to lean her head against the bed. Her hands go back to her knees, holding herself open for him, and she loves the feeling of his strong hands supporting her weight.
She feels like she's floating here, and his tongue goes back to work. His teeth trap her clit lightly and pull, just a little, and she twists her own nipple in time. She opens her eyes to find his locked onto her hand, her fingers, and she twists again.
"Just like that. Feels like I'm floating," she manages, and he begins to suck at her. Just a little, enough to alternate the pull/push of his mouth, and her breath starts to hitch. "Keep going. Please."
He growls against her and the rumbling vibration starts to send her over the edge. She rests slightly against the bed and his knees, Draco's hands supporting her. She feels the lightest tremble in them, unsure whether it's excitement or exertion. When she opens her eyes, he's watching her face from between her legs.
He licks and circles her again, and she starts to tremble under his eye contact. The coil in her stomach tightens, tightens, and then tears loose. She cries out twice, hands over her face, as she rocks her hips onto his mouth.
Her orgasm racks through her and Draco's eyes are dark, his pupils wide.
He stands with her, now, hoisting her up on his forearms.
"You like to be held?" he says, in that husky voice she'll hear in her dreams from this night on. She nods, breathless, sore, swollen, anticipating. Never in her life has she had a third orgasm – much less a fourth – but he hasn't even had one, and she wants to see what he can do.
"How have you not come yet?" she asks, still winded. "Not that I wish you had, exactly, but -"
He laughs, a short, harsh sound. "I think I've just been edging this whole time. Have you edged?"
She shakes her head, wondering how many new things she'll still get a chance to explore.
"Well, it's staying on the very cusp of an orgasm… on purpose, for later. We'll try it sometime, shall we?"
She nods but feels like she owes him the truth. "I don't know if I can come again. But I want you. And I want you to come."
Draco hefts her higher and leans her against the wall. Her knees are crooked over his elbows, his hands up her back. "Let's just see. But I know I will. Can I…" he looks down, unsure for a moment for the first time all night that she can recall. "Can I come inside you?"
Hermione doesn't see why not. And again, communication about spaffing is key. She nods quick, kissing him and loving the taste of herself on his lips. She licks his bottom one and his breath catches.
"How much longer can you edge?" she asks slyly, and he coughs an exhale.
"Well, this isn't quite that. This is more like lying back and thinking of England," he quips. "And the licking isn't helping, but the talking is."
"I hope it's not like lying back and thinking of England. And I don't want more talking," she tells him simply, letting her fingers slide back into his hair. "I want you to fuck me."
She leans into his supporting hand on the wall as his other reaches down to grip himself. She can feel him shrug down his skin-tight boxer briefs and wishes she could see it. Trying to help, she grips around his neck with her hands, tightening her legs on his waist.
She feels something twitch against her left arsecheek and then vanish. He's centring himself. His fingers slide into her without warning and she tucks her face into his neck. As he slicks them in and out, she twists her face and bites down on his earlobe, loving the way he sucks in a breath.
"Please?" she asks quietly. "I want you."
He groans, a more robust version of the addictive noise he makes against her mouth, and she feels him quiver. Her chest is pressed against his, her hands in his hair. "Please?" she says again, although she doesn't need to. She knows he will, now. He's just trying to keep himself under control.
She doesn't want him under control, though. She wants him to lose it.
"Draco," she whispers more firmly, right into his ear. "Draco, fuck me."
She'll never forget his full body shudder, the way he grips her. He has one hand braced against the wall so he doesn't crush her into it. She's holding herself around his waist with her legs while his other hand positions himself at her entrance. She feels his thick tip part her and she buries her face where his neck meets his shoulder.
His spare hand, now unneeded for aim, clutches her hip so hard she thinks she'll have bruised finger marks. He's holding her, though, keeping her in place as his hips start to move.
Draco pushes inside and she gasps. Maybe she's swollen and sore. Maybe he's thicker than she's had. Maybe both. He fills her completely, and she grips more firmly with both her legs and her hands around his neck to help hold herself in place.
"That's not the idea," he breathes. "You wanted to be held, if I recall."
He steps back from the wall slightly, slipping both hands under her arse. Her back still brushes the wall but she lets her legs relax a touch, loving the way his fingers tighten in her skin.
He thrusts up into her and she cries out, hardly daring to breathe.
"Good?" he asks, winded.
"More," she responds, tugging at his hair between her fingers unintentionally. She moves against him as he pushes up again, and she feels him bury himself to the hilt.
He stills there, face in her hair, for a microsecond before driving back in.
"Could never have thought -" Draco pants, and she feels the rapid pace of his heart against her breasts. "- you could feel -"
Hermione pulls her heels into his arse and he slams upwards.
"Come," she tells him. "It's your turn. I want you to."
He shakes his head, or maybe he's getting his hair out of his eyes. She grips her legs around him, rolling her hips with his next thrust, and memorises the grunt he makes in return. She does it again, starting to meet him, and feels the bulge of his tip slide along her inner walls.
Hermione arches her back until her shoulders are against the wall, keeping a certain angle, and pulls his hair again. He looks up and she says, "Keep doing just this. Please. Again."
His hand finds the wall behind her once more and he drives into her harder. Hermione keeps the angle of her back and the roll of her hips, feeling her orgasm building from afar, the elusive kind from penetration.
"I think I'm going to come again," she tells him, breathless. "Don't stop."
His fingers tighten around her arse, grasping so hard she grits her teeth, and he spreads her before his thrusts. She meets him, increasing her force as he pounds into her, and savouring the bulge of him moving inside.
"Fuck -" she gasps. "Again."
He drives deep inside, burying himself, and she feels him start to shudder. Hermione rocks her hips, canting against him, against that precious slide inside herself, and begins to clench around his thick length.
He groans desperately, his knuckles white, and she cries, "One more, please."
Draco slips out just enough and slams back in, and her heels lock him there. She thrusts against him, riding him viciously, and feels him jerking inside her. It goes on and on as he collects her body to him, his hands clutching her back, her shoulders, her hair.
She has no idea how he's walking but he lays them down on the bed, still hard and deep. It's twitching, still, and she thinks it can't last much longer. But he's content to let it remain there, and he acknowledges it after he lays down.
He places her directly on top of him, his cock still throbbing lightly. She feels the remains of his orgasm drain out of her, sliding down her legs and past his own.
"I don't ever want to be outside of you," he says. "That was… incredible. Perfect. More than I've ever thought, or imagined, or… whatever. Fuck."
He's drifting past words and Hermione doesn't mind. She's physically exhausted. She's emotionally drained, too, after the past week.
But she can't help asking. They've never talked about it. "Are you… staying?"
He glances down at her, eyes half-closed. "This is the first time we've slept together. I plan to sleep together. Unless you object."
She doesn't.
The next morning, Hermione is sore. She doesn't think she's ever actually been sore hours later, but then again, she's also not (1) finished a four-orgasm stretch with (2) hard, against-the-wall shagging, either.
Draco's still asleep and she winces as she rolls out of bed, the mattress providing its usual robust complaints. He doesn't seem to notice. Maybe she'll finally fix that today.
She swallows down her two daily potions quickly and brushes her teeth, doing this last to clear out the bitter flavour of them. Glancing in the mirror, she cringes a bit. Her hair looks like it had four orgasms. She starts trying to tame this, at least enough to not resemble a pygmy puff recently struck by lightning, when Draco enters the little bathroom.
"Morning," he yawns, moving over to have a wee and Hermione flees the room. She's not sure why, precisely, except that she certainly isn't comfortable having a wee in front of him, yet. Evidently he is, but she doesn't have to be there.
She can hear him laughing. "You've seen it, you know."
"I haven't seen it wee," she returns obstinately, making the best of a bad job with her hair. "Loos are – are private spaces. That's all."
"Even the tub?" he counters with an innocent expression, coming back to the bedroom. "And any loo, or just yours?"
She knows what he's getting at and gives him a look.
"There are a lot of interesting loopholes here to explore sometime," Draco notes. "Is there any coffee?"
"There can be." She moves towards her kitchen.
"For instance, what if I wanted to shag you in your loo? What if you wanted me to shag you in a different loo? What if I had to wee after I shagged you in a loo? Maybe it's not even shagging, maybe it's just -"
"Alright, I get the point," she huffs.
"How many loos have you shagged in?" he asks with a mischievous grin.
"Not enough." An honest answer.
"See, there you go. And speaking of shagging," he yawns again, drawing it out, "Merlin's tits."
"Could have done it a week ago," Hermione points out deviously.
"I'm aware."
But now he's looking at her again with that look, the look, the one where his eyes grow darker and begin to scan her up and down. Hermione's standing in a long t-shirt barely covering her knickers, one leg propped up by the other as she leans against her kitchen wall. She feels the heat start to gather in her stomach again and move lower, lower.
Draco covers the distance and scoops her up with an arm behind her knees.
"Hold the coffee. There's something else I want for breakfast."
Hermione's so sensitive from the prior night's adventures that it takes him hardly any time at all to have her shaking beneath his mouth.
She wants to shag him again, right now, but she thinks that might be
ill-advised until she gives herself a bit of a break. Instead, once she no longer sees what look like her yellow avis canaries fluttering about overhead, she tells him to lay back.
Draco looks hilariously optimistic, an expression he quickly tries to moderate before she sees it. She covers her mouth with a cough that's really a laugh.
He's only wearing his pants, the same ones that clung so well to him after the bath last night. They're just as fitted dry, she appreciates, getting herself into position.
"Hands off," she tells him seriously. Ron had cultivated a few bad habits during this activity that had made Hermione somewhat reluctant to volunteer to do it for him. By the end, she'd avoided it altogether. And with her more recent random shaggings, it usually hadn't come up. She's not averse to it, though, provided Draco can behave himself. She thinks he can.
"Theo was right," she says, dragging a finger up his leg. "You do have shapely knees."
"No mentioning of Theo now, if you please."
"Only to draw things out," she promises, and he squeezes his eyes shut.
Really, she's not been having nearly enough fun with the knowledge that he's fancied her for a decade and a half. He's overcome his awkward discomfort so completely that it's nearly a shame.
Hermione takes a moment to soak in his torso again, the defined musculature of his chest down to the ridges of his abdomen. He's tense at the moment and it's helping the definition in all the best places.
She bumps a finger down each muscle of his stomach until she reaches the band of his briefs and hooks them down. She tugs and he lifts his hips, helping her slide them down and free him.
He is thicker than she's used to. No wonder she's sore.
Hermione nestles down between his knees, crouched on her own.
Draco's breathing heavily, watching her look. She takes her time just touching him, base to tip, appreciating the way it jerks.
"When did you first realise you fancied me?"
"…What?" Draco tries to get on track and she muffles a giggle. "Um…"
She traces her finger around the tip, the bulge she so enjoyed last night.
"You'll think I'm mental. But – but when you hit me, in third year. My thirteen-year-old dick didn't know what had happened. It took me a while to understand why I had the response to it that I did."
Hermione tilts her head. Hm. She does remember that. She rewards this with several fingers wrapping around him, light touches without any pressure yet.
"When did you figure it out?"
"Well, thirteen-year-old wizards get hard nineteen times a day, on an off day. It took me a while to realise you – that slap – was coming up an awful lot. But before the end of that year I had a pretty good idea."
"Do you like being hit?" She's curious and strokes him again.
"…No. Not like that. At least, not by anyone else." She notices he left the door open to try it sometime.
"What else?"
"Fourth year. The… the ball. You were with Krum."
She rests her head on his inner thigh, watching her own fingers play with him. It throbs again and he inhales.
"You were with Pansy."
"I didn't want to be, though."
He's figuring out the reward system she's cultivating. She drags her nose along him, her cheek, her lips.
"Fifth year. You were so pretty. You didn't know it, which made it that – that much more. You were so righteously angry, too, about Umbridge and her Inquisit – Inquisitorial Squad. Ah, gods."
She lets her tongue escape her mouth and slide along his base.
"In Slughorn's classes, my Amortentia potion smelled like you. Like your shampoo, I think. Or maybe lotion. I don't know. I had lotion, too. I tried to match yours -" he groans and his hand slips down to her cheek, his fingers in her hair.
Hermione slaps it so hard it stings. "Hands to yourself."
She's not sure if the accompanying jerk of his cock is from him yanking his hand away, or if part of him liked it. She files it away for later.
"Sorry! Sorry. I used to dream about shagging you all over the castle. Any room. Every room. Every surface. Parks got tired of it and broke up with me in sixth year."
Once she sees his hands tucked firmly behind his head – further defining that delicious torso – she gives him a long, slow lick up to the tip. He shudders and she waits.
"When – when you started dating Weasley, I wanted to throw myself in the lake. Blaise tried to tell me I should have made a move, but that was – it was absurd. It never could have worked."
He's probably right about that. Hermione can't hold it against him. She circles the tip, letting her tongue dip around the ridge of it, her lips holding court.
"Fuck. Ah, this is mean."
"Is it?" she inquires, not feeling guilty in the least – about the way she's playing with him or about removing her mouth to speak. "You seem to be rather enjoying it."
He does, too. A bead of milky pre-come has emerged from the tip. She licks it off and Draco groans into the pillow.
"After sixth year, you were on the run and I was worried sick. I think I lost three stone in weight. I followed the broadcasts by the Order, the radio ones about captures or deaths, listening for you."
Hermione's intrigued by this titbit but she doesn't really need him to get further into it. In fact, chronologically speaking, she'd rather he didn't continue. Bit of a mood-killer, the rest of it.
She dips her mouth back onto him, sliding him further in. She goes slow enough to feel every ragged breath his body makes, moving enough to let Draco know she's not waiting for him to keep talking.
He is thick. She wonders if his girth will make it harder to take him deep and decides to find out.
It's harder in a different way. She does respectably well, she thinks, and he seems to agree. His throat makes a strangled noise that would be alarming under different circumstances. She holds the position for a couple of seconds, all she can manage for now, and withdraws. She takes a peek upward.
His hand is over his mouth, his eyes closed, and he's delivering a steady recitation of curses under his breath.
This won't take long. Hermione readies herself to go back down, preparing to start a rhythm that she'll add her hand to. She's nearly all the way when his hands again come to rest on the sides of her face. She slaps one again, without the verbal rebuke, and he leaps them off.
If he does it again, she'll restrain him.
Dimly, she can tell he's moved them to the ends of her hair, tangling it in his fingers, and she decides to allow it so long as she can't feel it. No tugging on it. No pushing on her.
"Sorry," he exhales again, almost pitifully. "Didn't mean to. But please, Hermione. Please finish me."
That is the goal. She starts a slow rhythm of deep-throating him, holding it for a couple of seconds, and withdrawing with a slight sucking pull, her tongue catching every ridge.
Draco's begun cursing afresh, a truly creative stream of vulgar consciousness Hermione wishes she could hear better. 'Salazar's rod' and 'Merlin's tits' seem to play a part, possibly together. She wonders if they got spaffed on.
He only lasts three or four more dips and he taps her on the cheek in a warning. She glances up and nods, going down again, and he groans loudly as he starts to jerk.
She holds him with one hand around his base, letting him come and relishing the violent throbs in her hand and mouth. She's never understood holding it and spitting it out; it's already in there, might as well just swallow it. Much faster that way.
She's always been a practical sort of witch.
Looking up, Hermione's gratified to find Draco in the same sort of boneless puddle of a person that she herself has been several times in the past twelve hours.
Patting him kindly on his (shapely) knee, she excuses herself to the loo, shutting the door and locking it to have a wee of her own. In the meantime… what now?
Hermione's never stuck around after a hook-up. She's always invented something to do to make the bloke leave the morning after if they happen to be at hers. Usually, she knew she wasn't going to see them again. She's entertained morning shagging a few times, but then the usual order of things would take shape.
This is different. She's vividly aware of her lack of real relationship experience outside of Ron – and they had been so young, she can't even recall the particulars of their earliest encounters like this. What should she do with a man she doesn't want to toss out the door, but doesn't know how to fill the time if he stays?
Draco hasn't mentioned having anything to do today. Hermione certainly doesn't have any other ideas to offer up.
Coming up with nothing specific to fill the gap, she wanders back into her bedroom and begins sorting out something to wear. Draco appears over her shoulder, pants back on with a delightful lack of anything else, and peers down.
"Is that the knicker drawer?"
"...it is."
"Give us a tour, then."
Draco suggests brunch, which sounds splendid, and Hermione knows she must come to terms with the fact that this most definitely is not 'casual' – if it ever really was in the first place.
While they work through their first mimosas, Draco lifts her foot into his lap and drops her shoe on the ground. Hermione doesn't say a word. She watches him, sipping her champagne, as he touches her foot and plays with each toe.
"Aren't we about to eat?" she asks at last, somewhat amused. "Not very hygienic."
"I have two hands. Is it much different than if I got you off under the table with one?"
No, probably not. That low heat builds up inside her again, imagining this. He chose the knickers but why hadn't she worn a skirt?
"So no touching when you go down on me," he comments, fingering her toe. "I'll do better next time."
"Presumptuous sort of wizard, aren't you?" she arches an eyebrow and he tickles her foot.
"Really; I apologise. You clearly don't like it. Next time I'll be less – overcome. I'll remember."
"Don't make assumptions about that, either," she tells him, sipping more of her mimosa, and his blue eyes darken.
"What is it, exactly? Understanding will help me remember." She hears the sincerity in his voice and has no problem telling him.
"The only way I can control my own gag reflex is if I'm in control of it – something that should be self-evident, but a lot of men seem to have trouble accepting basic anatomical facts."
Draco ponders the sage wisdom of this and Hermione thinks they're on the same page without verbalising more. Ron had liked to direct her movements, holding her head and manipulating her this way and that. Up and down. It made it uncomfortable at best and miserable at worst. She'd decided against further oral sex the night she'd almost vomited on his dick – something that, in hindsight, she ought to have let happen. Far too polite, she'd been, for far too long.
Draco's been paying attention to where she's ticklish, deliberately provoking her. She tries to pull her foot away and he won't release her ankle.
"Now, now," he admonishes her. "If you can't act natural while I do this, how could I ever get you off under the table?"
Hermione feels the rush of warmth between her legs and wishes she could cross them. Tighten her thighs, at the very least.
Brunch takes entirely too much time.
He shags her in the restaurant loo.
Hermione obstinately stands facing the corner while he has a wee, reciting potions ingredients in her head as he laughs.
Draco sets up a meeting with the Healer his family knows. Healer Vasile, originally from Romania, will meet with Hermione Granger privately on Wednesday. She's given the direct Floo information to the Healer's office, the one she uses outside of Durmstrang Institute, and she tries to keep her nerves calm.
"What did you tell her?"
"Nothing," Draco reassures her, "outside that it was a miscast Dark curse of unknown origin. She's intrigued."
Hermione certainly hopes so, because her problem isn't going to be solved by people who are going to tire of it quickly.
She's nervous.
She hasn't let anyone else in on this secret in so long, she's forgotten how it feels to have a sliver of hope dangled before her. But what if this Healer, this specialist in Dark magic and curses, can pinpoint something?
They've tried before, obviously. Stotch always respected her desire for privacy but she knows he's reached out to other Healer professionals with different areas of expertise. Most of it was much earlier on, though. They'd brainstormed and crowdsourced and gathered ideas and theories to their bosoms like squirrels hoarding away nuts. Hermione had distributed those ideas across myriad labs for testing and exploration, and it's what provided a load of mastery qualifications and Healer certifications for hundreds of students and interns across the past decade.
All she's had to show for it, personally, is the lack of scarring on her body. Which isn't nothing, by the by. She tries to remind herself of this.
But Hermione is nervous now, in a way she hasn't been for a long time. After her last meeting with Stotch and Kingsley, all of them admitting to a general head-scratching level of bafflement at where to go next – it had hit her harder than she'd expected. She'd thought she was braced for it. Turns out all she'd been braced for was getting smashed at the pub the next night.
That wasn't even a week ago, which is a bit hard to believe.
Tuesday finds her staring, once more, at the stack of labelled folders in a neat pile. She's been sitting here for some time, now, half blank. She can't decide where to start.
She's been trying to update them and not doing very well. Somehow, the task seems monumental, especially now that she feels she's approaching the end of the line. She's having a hard time finding the motivation to tackle what to say, or how to say it.
The oldest ones read almost like one-sided correspondence – which, essentially, they are. The idea had begun in the woods hunting Horcruxes with Harry and Ron. There'd been so many silent nights on watch, alone, so much time to think. Of course, at the time, Hermione was not taking the potions Madam Pomfrey and Slughorn had cultivated for her, since they were on the run and out of contact from everyone else. She was hoping the curse was gone.
But after Obliviating her parents that summer, Hermione had a burning drive to write down all the things she wished she could have said to them. Explained things, the necessity of her actions to protect them.
Finally, she'd done just that. Even knowing the likelihood of them reading what she wrote, reading and understanding, was nominal, she'd felt immensely better. It was a confessional she felt like she needed.
There deep in the woods, keeping silent guard by herself, Hermione had begun two more for Harry and Ron. She knew the odds of them all surviving the Horcrux hunt and final battle were probably slim. She found that there were things she wanted to say to the pair of them, tell them how much they meant to her and how much she'd loved their friendship over the previous years.
She could have said it in person, but that felt like admitting they were going to fail, a 'So glad I knew you' type of mentality. And the overall emotional aspect of it would have been bizarre to the two of them anyhow. They'd have either told her to stop being sappy or stop believing they weren't going to survive. To have faith in the mission at hand. She'd kept it to herself.
Writing it all down was cathartic, though. It helped her organise her mind to the dangers they were facing. It made things feel more planned, a tiny modicum of control Hermione could cling to.
Then she'd collapsed at Hogwarts just after the final battle and they took on a different meaning.
Sadly, Hermione opens Ron's folder. His and Harry's are the thickest, of course, pages and pages. She's never thrown out a previous entry when she sits down to write something new. As a result, the miscellaneous entries are dated like a journal, one on top of the next.
She used to update them more often. Her last entry to Ron's was nearly three years ago. They'd been together. Happy. Happy-ish, anyway.
Ron, I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I'm sorry you found out like this.
She started nearly every entry to every person this way, even though she'd said it every time. She never stopped apologising, and she pledges to vary things up a bit more from here on out. She'll stop hashing out everything from the beginning every sodding time and focus more on recent things. Current goings-on, what she feels lately. Glancing back down at the last entry of Ron's folder, the next line makes her stop.
I tried to tell you you'd be better off without me.
Her eyes sting with tears. This would mirror her first entry to Draco, now. What is she doing? What is she doing to him, knowingly, deliberately?
How horrible for him, to wake up next to her in the morning and Hermione doesn't wake up.
He'll never understand if Hermione tries to chase him away either, though. He's already shown that almost fifteen years of feelings for her hadn't changed things in the slightest for him. Surely, if he could have gotten over her, he would have done. Why would it go any differently now? Now that they've gone out and gotten to know each other, found they do have a real connection – and one that isn't just sex, isn't just conversation. It's – it's everything, everything she knew was missing in a thousand little abstract ways, ways that aren't abstract any longer.
Hermione dissolves in tears, burying her face in her arms. She slumps over the table and lets herself cry.
It's everything and she doesn't want to let go of it.
She's just begun to straighten herself out again, having once more done absolutely bloody nothing with the folders before her. Why does she even come to work these days? The only valid reason Hermione can see is that everyone expects her to be here. Her little lab mimics King's Cross station lately, after all. She ought to bring some books or something here, though, she thinks, wiping her eyes a final time.
She hears a throat clear and jumps a little, whirling around to see Draco in the door.
Bugger, what does she look like right now? Under the very valid pretence of collecting the folders, she turns her back to him to collect herself a bit and hopes she's not puffy and flushed.
"Are you alright?" The concern in his voice is evident and she curses.
"Fine," she lies, tapping the folders back into a neat stack and walking to her desk to put them back in the hidden drawer she keeps. "What's going on?"
He's eyeing her with clear suspicion and she clears her own throat, determined to wait him out. If he'd come upon her mid-sob, she thinks his inquiry would be quite different. He suspects she's upset but that's all.
"I came to see if I could take you to lunch," he says at last, taking his time looking around. "Can I? I hope you don't mind me saying, but you, ah, don't seem very busy."
"Of course." She offers a smile she hopes is reassuring. "I told you I've hit a bit of a standstill with my projects."
"Lots of open table space," he comments, giving her a healthy side-eye and she starts to feel a little warm under the collar. "Have you… shagged in here before, by any chance?"
"No!" She's shocked and tries to rebound. "I never – I've never shagged anyone I work with before, for starters -"
"We don't quite 'work together,'" Draco observes but she ignores him.
"- or brought someone to where I work to shag them."
"So you've never shagged anywhere in this building?"
She starts to feel a little playful. "Which building is that? Where are we, exactly?"
"No man's land, it would seem. We could christen it. I'm hearing that every surface in here is a virgin."
Hermione can't hold in a giggle. "Do you have to put it like that?"
"The things these tables haven't seen."
"I suppose it would only be polite ownership for me to broaden their horizons. And I shouldn't let them hang about bored. At least they could have something to do."
"Yes, they should support some weight for a while."
Draco's flipped his collar up, methodically removing his tie with professional order. Hermione, not one to be outdone, starts to take off a shoe, changes her mind and decides to keep them on.
"Don't you have things to do?" she queries. "You're very busy and important, I hear."
"My assistant thinks so. But right now? Nothing better or more important than this. And I hope it keeps me busy a good long while. There's lots of surfaces in here. We could make a checklist."
"You do like lists, don't you?"
They end up marking four off that hypothetical list, violating three before lunch and another one after. Hermione's shoes stay on for two out of four. Her lab coat makes a brief appearance, as does Draco's tie. It dangles between her tits, Draco responsibly moving it to the side before he finishes, and Hermione thinks of other uses for it later. He cleans her up after, gently by hand, and the tenderness of it gets her randy all over again.
Draco reminds her after that the 'no man's land' of her lab still leaves both the whole Ministry and St Mungo's up to their use and misuse, too.
Quite right, she thinks, sweaty and far blotchier and red-faced than she'd been when he arrived.