Granger needs a distraction. We both do, so we don't just sit here and stare. I call for Suz who appears at once, and I ask for another chocolate lava cake. Two spoons, again, and I'm going to use mine this time.
If the scars are gone tomorrow, we'll have banana splits for breakfast. Both of us.
Jasper appears holding a bottle of wine and two goblets. "Suz says the Miss looks upset. Is the Miss alright?"
Indeed, her eyes are extremely red, her cheeks a little flushed. The streaks from the tears are still visible. Granger wipes her nose and gives a small laugh. "Yes, Jasper, I'm fine. Tell Suz thank you. What's that for?"
"Suz told Jasper to bring it while she bakes the cake. And to offer to run the Miss a bath if she wants."
Actually, a bath while drinking wine sounds… brilliant. Divine, almost. I can tell Granger is thinking along the same lines but we both say, "No, thank you," and look at each other. I'm smiling and I can tell she's biting back a grin. Neither of us want to risk washing off the lotion.
"Maybe tomorrow, Jasper," I say, taking the goblets and wine from him. "Thank you."
He dips low in a bow and vanishes. I look over at Granger, her eyes locked once again onto her left forearm. "I think I'm going to send Suz with you when you go."
She looks up at me, stunned. Distraction accomplished, and I wasn't really even trying for it. "What do you mean?"
"She takes such good care of you. And you won't even need the Floo. Her Apparition magic is better; untraceable." Unless my father calls her back. Hmm. Going to have to research that one a bit; Suz is mine, but my father's rule here circumvents my own. Either way, Suz could Apparate Granger out and as long as she's not touching Granger when my father calls her back…
It's better than the Floo. The untraceable Apparition alone makes the risk better, and I'll work on making it permanent. If this lotion really works, I'll have time to spare - for the next few days, anyway.
"I don't like it when you talk like this," Granger tells me quietly. "About when you're going to send me away."
"Well, I don't think of it as 'sending you away' as much as 'getting you to safety.' Maybe just reframe it a little," I recommend, and she wrinkles her nose at my playfully condescending tone before I get serious again. "It's going to be necessary."
"Not if Harry kills him," she insists. Stubborn witch. Lovely witch.
"If Harry kills him, you can leave or not leave of your own accord," I agree, not letting myself believe for a second that she'd stay. "But I'll be standing trial alongside my father for war crimes, crimes against humanity."
I see the set of Granger's jaw, the look in her eyes that says she's only getting started with something, narrowed and piercing. Vexed. Suz pops back in, just in time, lava cake in hand and I pour us some wine.
"I can't have a house elf," she asserts after we're alone again and eating.
Ah, this should serve as a perfect distraction. "Of course you can. She adores you. You can offer to pay her, and she might even take it. The only thing I don't recommend is giving her clothes; tell her she can use her wages to buy something if she likes, but if you try to give her some she'll assume you don't want her. You'll break her heart."
Giving me a flat look over her cake, Granger actively blocks my spoon so she can get a specific bite from the melty middle. Now she's cross with me. I stifle a laugh. "Would you like more duelling practise after pudding?"
We both keep sneaking glances at our skin. This is pointless, I'm almost certain; I don't expect the scars to reappear after an hour or two, not with Snape's time-extender still in the mix. But neither of us is able to help it.
I have a shameless opener for distractions, though, spurred on by the wine.
"I promised you I'd tell you every step of what I did to make that. Unfortunately, there weren't very many new ones."
Granger gives me a crooked smile as I take her hand and tug her into my room. "I'm sure you can figure something out."
I lean into her mouth, kissing her softly at first, then more urgently. My hands in her hair, I nip at her lower lip and she slides her tongue in between mine. Slowly, I lean her back until she's sitting on the edge of the bed, one hand supporting the back of her head as I lay her backwards.
I love the feeling of her hair between my fingers and am almost reluctant to leave her lying prone on the bed as I stand up straight between her legs. She looks so perfect, looking up at me.
"Will you let me do something new?" I ask huskily, bending closer to her now, tracing my fingers down her body lightly. It's not new, technically; we'd done this before but I'm stubbornly refusing to let any of that come here.
Granger shivers at the touch and I shiver, seeing what I cause her body to do. She's just looking at me, eyes dark, almost black, and I pull down the top of her bra just enough to plant a kiss on her breast, working her nipple into my mouth.
She makes a small noise that goes right to my groyne, and I close my eyes briefly as I trap it gently between my teeth. She unsnaps her denims and I help her tug them over her heels and off, onto the floor.
Moving my hand between her legs, she parts them, bringing her feet up to the bed to raise her knees. I move farther down, placing my hands on her thighs and separating them slightly, glancing up to check her face.
"Will you let me kiss you?" I ask softly, working one finger around the hem of her knickers. She's wet through and shy about my proximity to them, one hand over her face. She uncovers it long enough to look down at me. "Please?" I ask, and she nods once.
She's flat on her back on my bed and I'm kneeling in front of it - in front of her. I leave her knickers on for now, to keep her more comfortable. Pulling them to one side, I'm struck by how perfect she is. Even partially covered, she is perfect - hot, swollen, red. Wet. It's everything I can do not to come right here.
Starting out like I always do with a finger slipping through her to feel her slick, I rub it slowly across her folds and her clit. I do this several times until she's starting to move against my finger like she always does, and I push one gently inside of her.
The moan of wanting she makes here is one of my favourite noises, and I position myself between her legs. Waiting until she moves herself forward into my hand, I'm ready with my mouth to capture her clit. She stutters her cry of surprise, and my other hand steadies her hip, helping her maintain the motion she was trying for.
She keeps gently shifting against my hand, my finger inside of her curling where she likes, as I let my mouth move forward and back with her hips. My hand stays still for her to work, but my mouth moves with her, keeping a constant licking, sucking, teasing.
The sounds she's making have me as hard as a rock, and I have to let go of her hip to release myself from my trousers. I can't take it. She tastes so good, smells so good, sounds so good.
I make myself look up to see how she's doing, and after a brief moment of inactivity, Granger's eyes meet mine. That distressed look is in them, that 'why are you stopping?' plea, and I go back to work.
I let her continue to move against my hand, moving my fingers inside her at the peak of her roll, but while my mouth traps her clit, I'm working myself, too. I can't help it. It doesn't take much thought; it's easier to focus on her when I'm doing this, in fact, giving it the barest amount of attention makes it leave me alone.
But my own rhythm matches the one she's setting with her hips, and I catch her clit gently with my teeth as I feel myself getting close. I want her to come on my tongue. I want to lick it off her, out of her.
Curling my finger, I add a second one and my cock throbs with the muffled wail she makes when I push it deeply inside. She starts to grip me with her inner walls as I tweak her clit trapped between my teeth with my tongue. She rocks down onto my hand once, twice.
"Oh, fuck, Draco…" she cries, and I can't stop my own orgasm, too.
Raking my own hand upwards until I shoot up and out, I press with my tongue against her. I scrape my fingers deep inside her and she clenches around me. I can't help but wonder what it would feel like on my cock, but I have what I wanted: I'm licking every drop of juices she left as she quivers in short spasms beneath my tongue.
I know she's sensitive now, so I end with a gentle lick out, around, up, over every part of her perfect cunt before I place a final kiss at the top of her folds. Glancing up, she's splayed on the bed, limp, her chest heaving.
Crawling up next to her on top of the covers, I tuck her into my side, brushing her hair back from her face.
'I love you.' I almost say it again, and only just stop myself from doing that or lifting her arm to inspect the scar. Nothing will have happened yet, and if she's not currently fixated on it that's a good thing. I kiss her forehead instead.
But after a moment, she tilts her head up to look at me, eyes dark and sleepy.
"What is it?"
"You didn't tell me what you did." She gives me a mischievous grin and I cough out a laugh.
"You're right. I didn't. Tell me when I should try to get it right, won't you?"
Granger cashes that in the following morning and I do a better job remembering the task at hand.
Her scar is nearly gone. Some of the deeper slices, mostly the straight-down cuts, need another coat of lotion.
I rub this in like she's the most fragile thing in the world; to me, she is. Every bit of her is perfection.
My own scar needs a good bit more treatment, especially the deepest parts in the middle. I really don't care about this scar; I wouldn't bother treating it at all except it's the best test we have for serious, deep scarring. The edges are completely gone, with a slow reveal of still-visible scar tissue as it moves towards the centre of my chest.
I still refuse to believe it truly works. I keep thinking the other shoe will drop; yes, it lasts longer than my original formula, but sooner or later, the mask will fade.
Almost to prove this, I start testing batches of alba pellis without Snape's addition. If I've really made something permanent, the time-extender additive shouldn't be needed - in theory.
But time and again, this fails. Granger has her own theory, that the restorative powers of the leaves we added last need the time-extender to heal the scar tissue over hours and hours. A shorter period of time simply isn't long enough for the effect to really sink into the skin, into deep scarring.
This makes plenty of sense and eventually I give up. The lotion works. It works. It's still not perfect - serious scarring takes multiple applications to heal the skin cells, but it's revolutionary. It truly is.
"Should we rename it, do you think?" I ask her one afternoon in the lab as I've determined I'm done with it. For now.
She tilts her head, thinking it over. "No. What we named it roughly means 'creamy skin,' and while we had the additional nod to what else 'cream' could mean, no one else does. 'Creamy' could mean 'smooth' or 'silky' skin just as easily. I think it still fits. And you don't need to keep the old formula on its own, with its own name."
Granger's arm looks perfect, though. Well, almost. I know what was there and where it was, and I'm privately insistent I can still see it. It's not quite good enough, it should be better, I could keep -
But she always stops me, as if she can tell my mental train of thought when I look at it. She tends to cry when she looks at it, or at me half the time - silent little tears she tries to hide, swiping them away with her hand before she thinks I see. I always grant her the privacy to not call her on it.
As the days creep closer to the day, I notice a change in both of us. Neither of us is joking around as often as we were, the heckling, the banter.
We're both feeling the impending timeline, the end of things - one way or another. The stress in the air is becoming palpable.
One day when we go out for duelling practise, Granger tells me she's been working on her transfiguration skills with the yew wand, moving steadily towards more and more advanced magic. I don't think much of this in itself until I see the practice dummies I'd conjured up for her to use.
From the last time I was out here with her, one is torn up completely with a hundred slicing hexes, top to bottom. Two hundred; I can't tell. Granger hadn't done a reparo on it to use again, as she's surely had to do a dozen times over for each one, and I take a closer look.
The dummy resembles Dolohov. If it weren't torn to pieces, the likeness would be eerie. She left it here visibly destroyed, using the other two dummies instead.
Blinking several times, I don't outwardly react one way or another. Granger has been keeping busy; Snape's been by to discuss the mist and not answer the questions Granger had
('he won't tell me anything useful! says I have to figure it out')
and she writes constant letters to her friends, responding to theirs as soon as a reply arrives. Butterworth has been by again, too, and maybe this here is a good sort of therapy for her. I wonder how many times she might have repaired the Dolohov dummy before destroying it again, finally leaving the one I see now.
Her frustrations that she's on the sidelines here is evident, even though she never voices it openly. She's not accustomed to being uninvolved and pours her efforts into her letters, desperate to find a way to help them. But there's nothing, really. There's nothing left to discover or hunt; there's only the final attack.
Granger takes it out on me during practise and it's obviously cathartic to her. I'm a proficient enough dueller that it doesn't bother me in the slightest.
I get a thrill out of watching her, eyes flashing, plait whipping around her as she spins and moves to block me or cast a hex. She stretches her limits with her new wand, so powerful and strong with all the offensive magic she can muster. We're really quite well matched, our sessions becoming a dance of sorts that inevitably end in the shower together, hot and sweaty even after the cold winter air, or right into bed.
She's letting herself feel things: good things and bad things. But there's a feeling of desperation all around, and it's not just me.
Whether we're brewing things or not, we still spend most of our waking time in the lab. Granger alternates between working on the arithmancy and runes for the mist and writing to her friends. I brew more alba pellis, bottling up as much of the tan lotion as I can to send to Snape, and research house elf law.
Granger would be extremely useful at this bit but refuses to help. I'm not surprised.
My mother has stopped asking for tea. The tense atmosphere is permeating everywhere.
I sent Snape a somewhat-nasty note asking why he wouldn't help Granger with the mist and he wrote back, just as short, 'You have an exit strategy for her. She has a wand. The mist is superfluous.'
Fine, well, maybe so, but she still wants to figure it out. The least he could do is tell her whether she's got the arithmancy she has done is correct. We can't test the destination part until last and in a fit of frustration, I spent thirty solid minutes conjuring and then replicating small cologne bottles to use to trap it in when we're ready to begin that part.
My mental list of things I want - or need - to do before the final battle seems like it never gets shorter.
I finally have a fleeting stab of relief Thursday. I head for the library and call Suz, explaining to her what I want to try.
Suz is, of course, thrilled. She's mine, but my father isn't exactly a cheery and kind presence in the Manor. The thought of being sent with Granger sends Suz into something of a tizzy, and she trips all over whether to not insult me with her delight at the idea, or express dismay at my idea and risk offending me that way, and I finally stop her.
"You can take care of her when I can't, Suz," and that finally seals it. It's not that I don't want Suz anymore. The job I want her to do is important and involves Granger, not the Manor or myself.
I cut my hand and drip a circle on the floor of the library in my blood. As I draw a series of runes outside the circle with my blood, tracing over them with my wand, I call Jasper and tell him to fetch my mother.
My mother is properly horrified, shrieking at me openly bleeding in the library and I realise a little late I should have prepared her for this.
I explain once again what I want to do with Suz and Granger. "I need your blood to approve the transaction of Suz from you and Father to me."
"Isn't it Lucius's blood you need?"
"No; you're Lady of the Manor. You're her Mistress. You can give her formally to me without Father's seal."
Her eyebrows lift in a fleetingly doubtful movement. "Draco, are you sure?"
I snort. "About which part? Yes, I'm sure. You can relinquish your mastery of Suz to me, and I can then give her to Granger. I wouldn't do it at all if I wasn't sure."
Suz stands off to the side, little hands clasped, and I motion her forward and into the circle. Narcissa points her wand at her own hand and cuts a small slice in her palm. Fisting her hand, she opens it to drip her blood into the circle where I direct her.
I say the incantation as I hold my own bleeding hand in, and the circle closes over Suz in a flash of a bubble before vanishing.
All three of us look at one another, blinking.
"Did it work?" my mother finally asked, healing the cut on my hand before healing her own. "How can you tell?"
"I'll give her one command and you tell her to stop," I suggest. "If she can still follow my order, that means she can ignore yours."
This seems to make sense to everyone, and I tell Suz to go get me a specific book. My mother tells her not to. Suz retrieves the book and presents it to me proudly, a huge grin on her face.
At least one thing is going smoothly, not requiring weeks of trial and error. "Alright, Suz, your job is still to take care of Granger. You're doing a great job at it and nothing changes. She'll never bind you to her, I'm sure, but I won't call you away."
She bows to me and starts towards the door when I realise I should probably prepare her for something else, too. "Suz."
My favourite little elf turns back expectantly, a sweet expression on her face. "Granger is going to try and pay you for your service. Take it if you want it; there's nothing wrong with it. Use it to buy yourself things you like or want, things that could make your life easier, or just things you enjoy. Alright?"
My mother is looking at me like I've grown a third head.
Back in the lab I tell Suz the rest, what I couldn't say in front of my mother. "When Granger leaves here this weekend, you'll go with her. You'll take her somewhere, wherever she wants to go, but you'll keep her safe."
Granger looks up abruptly. "I told you -" she seethes, but breaks off, shaking her head in disgust. She goes back to her parchment, almost angry, stabbing at it with her quill.
"I'll feel better knowing she's with you," I quietly say, and leave her to it. I sit on the end of my bed for a moment or two, my head in my hands. We're almost out of time and all I can do is try to give her every advantage I can. I think I have. I think -
I stride into the bathroom and crank on the shower without even really thinking about it. Sometimes standing under the hot water is relaxing. It helps me think. Placing both hands flat on the wall and hanging my head, I let the hot water rake down my back as I breathe deeply in and out several times.
I don't know how long I've been in here. I don't even notice the door open.
Granger steps into the shower, openly livid.
"I'm not going to apologise about Suz," I say wearily.
"You think I'm furious about the bloody house elf?!" she shrieks and I… don't know. Yes?
"You're acting like it's all over," she cries and throws her hands up. "Like this is it, no more, the end!"
Flummoxed, I stare at her. "It is. I don't want it to be, but -"
"Fuck you!" Granger hisses, and whacks me across the face.
I realise I haven't seen her mad like this since our earliest fics two years ago, and we really have come full circle. My back hits the shower wall behind me and I stare at her. Aside from her occasional lapses in bed, Granger does not curse. It's one of the things that makes those naked lapses so tantalising in the moment, but all I can feel now is the sting in my cheek.
"Why do you think I'm here?" she screams at me next and I really don't know. Haven't I been racking my brain for that all along? She should want nothing to do with me.
The hot water sheets over both of us, Granger's tears mixing with it. Her fists are clenched and she blinks the water away, huge droplets catching on her lashes. Her chest hitches and she starts to cry in earnest, and I can't help but go to her.
Wrapping her up in my arms as she cries, I know everything we're facing is finally hitting us both. I turn off the water and scoop her up, carrying her over to the bed.
I whisper several drying charms so we don't just end up in soaking wet sheets, too, and I pull Granger into my chest while she sobs. It's nowhere near night but our mutual exhaustion is catching up with us and she cries herself to sleep.
I doze off too, but I wake up to her nearly manhandling me.
"Do you know what makes me the most angry?" she asks me in a low whisper, her chin on my chest as she stares at me. Her hand is gripped around me in a fist.
I do not know. I'm a little afraid to guess. She doesn't wait for a response, thank the gods. I woke up hard and I'm not sure if that's a help or a hindrance at this exact moment.
"You're still making all the decisions for me. You're still acting like I'm in the park, and you know best - trying to keep me safe or out of the way, or whatever it is."
Horrified, I start trying to explain. "No, I don't - I'd never again, I wouldn't -"
But Granger nods calmly, chin digging into my chest. "You are. You're still treating me like I can't make my own decisions - for whatever reason. Maybe it's because I don't have a memory or magic, or maybe it's because you just think you know better than me. But I can decide whether or not to leave, when to go. Haven't I been making that exact choice for weeks now?"
"Of course you have," I manage. "But -"
"Then let me keep doing it."
I close my eyes miserably. "Granger, don't ask me to keep you here when the Dark Lord shows up. What good could that possibly do, to have both of us die here instead of just me?"
She grips her fist. It feels almost involuntary but I still wince as it throbs in her hand. Of all the times… why does my cock think this is a turn-on? My brain is adamantly stuck in limbo over it, just trying to keep up.
"See, that's part of it, though. You're acting like that's the only possible outcome. Like this could never go any other way."
I have to admit she's right about that. I've given next to no thought to Potter actually killing the Dark Lord. Maybe I just doubt it's possible, doubt that Potter has another miracle up his sleeve - even if the Dark Lord has lost all his Horcruxes. Maybe because that outcome seems worse to me, to my circumstances. I'd rather go out fighting than die of old age, locked up.
"Even if the Resistance wins… I'm going to Azkaban, Granger. My father, too. There's no future for us there, either. Why pretend?"
Granger actually grabs my face in her other hand and turns it towards her, her fingers pinching my jaw. "You're right. Why pretend?"
She climbs up my body, swinging her leg over my waist until she's sitting on me. It's almost angry; no, it is angry, and she makes it obvious when she leans down to my ear, hissing, "Can I make this choice, at least?"
Taken aback, I check if she's serious. She seems to be. But we haven't even been close to sex; she hasn't even seemed tempted to take things there. So, no. I can't do this. I can't let her make this choice.
Not furious, not like this. It goes against everything she's saying, but I feel intrinsically that she'd regret it this way. And don't I get a choice of how it happens, why it happens? I don't want it to happen like this. I would want it to be love. Not this.
I position myself just in front of her instead and put my hand down between her legs as she straddles me. Her knickers are damp, and with two quick strokes to her, I move them aside.
Granger accepts this offering of foreplay, coming to rest right on top of my hand and wriggling slowly, tantalisingly against my fingertips. After a moment, she leans forward and rests her head on my shoulder, starting to make little noises of desire.
"Go on," I encourage her softly, stroking her gently with one finger. She hesitates before stretching her knees out to the sides, coming down onto my hand with cautious deliberation - as if I'd let her come up wanting.
She shudders as she lets her weight settle down, and I shudder as the brace of her hand on my chest takes a commanding force. Using the weight on her knees and that hand, she starts to move on my fingers, and I do love this part.
I know exactly where Granger's going to slant forward slightly, not just down, and I know exactly where to flex my fingertip in; almost a twitch, really. I know how many times she can take it before she'll start to speed up, and how long she'll help me work myself before she has to grip her own hair back in a perfect frustrated ecstasy of feeling as she rocks her hips.
I can't think of anything sexier than watching her fuck herself on my own hand, my fingers, while I stroke my cock right in front of her hips.
She's so angry at me, at the loss of her autonomy, but I'm determined not to take her virginity like this. I love her. I love this witch, and the best I can give her is a life of freedom - free choices to lose her virginity to whoever the hell she chooses, but hopefully not because she's livid with them. I'm trying to give her her life back, not ruin it by chaining her to me in this Manor, to my war criminal future, or to my early grave at the hands of the Dark Lord.
Granger comes quickly, her emotions roiling under the surface of every movement she makes and I'm right behind her. She looks hacked off at me all over again when she realises I'm done, the opportunity of sex gone for the moment.
Grabbing her clothes, she stalks back into the lab, calling over her shoulder, "I'm close to something with the mist. Come and help test it, you arsehole."
Well, fair enough. I sigh and roll out of bed.
Granger's fury at the situation is channelled into something amazing in the lab. She really is close to figuring it out. I watch as she casts the runes to trap the potion with the bottle as its only possible exit, and begins to heat it to the point of evaporation.
She looks at me icily. "Any ideas on a test destination?"
Hm. I think about it. The Manor as a whole is probably considered 'one' destination. How granular can she get? But we can't exactly test it into Diagon Alley, arriving at random, or, gods forbid, the park.
I share this wisdom and she stares at me like I'm thick. "Of course you could test Diagon Alley. If you Apparated there, you'd just appear, wouldn't you? I couldn't, obviously -" she scoffs, "- but you could."
Well, alright then. I'll go to Diagon Alley and Floo home. We haven't figured out the return bit yet; Granger will know more as this test proceeds. As I prepare myself, I wonder if maybe I should have shagged her after all. She's awfully salty with me. I'm trusting her arithmancy a whole lot here; how many failures did we have with the potions before we found what worked?
Slightly nervous, for more than one reason, I swallow hard and watch Granger fiddle with the pad. She looks up and her gaze might be a fraction less cold, but it's probably just her absorption in the test.
Her parting shot to me is, "We didn't need this many testing bottles, you know. We only have one pad. We can't exactly hand them out like candy."
She spritzes a bottle into my face and I sneeze as I vanish.
I land in Diagon Alley. She's done it. Crowds are all around me and I field a few surprised glances. This isn't considered a standard Apparition point, but my arrival isn't so bizarre as to cause a fuss.
Making my way to the Leaky Cauldron to use their public Floo, I can't help wishing I could land right into Snape's office in the park. He's obviously got the destinations dialled in for extremely specific fics. I still don't know how granular Granger can make it and I couldn't risk landing in the lobby on top of Dolohov, but I wish I could show Snape she did it. Somehow, getting an owl about it isn't the same.
Upon my arrival back at home, she's somewhat less pleased than I'd have hoped, our altercation still weighing on her.
"Come on," I say into her ear when she finally lets me put my arms around her. "It's getting dark, but let's go practise."
Granger does perk up at this, as I suspected she might. She gives me hell, too, flinging everything she can think at me. It's a stimulating duel. I focus, as always, on countering her hexes - tonight they're rather more like curses, I notice - with rebounding shield spells, causing something for her to react to without outright hexing her myself.
I know she'd rather be fighting with the Resistance. She's electing to stay here for mine and my mother's benefits, and it chafes on her. She's angry that I'm planning for them to lose, and she takes all of it out on me in this faux duel.
Over to the side, the Dolohov dummy is still shredded into pieces.
This works up an appetite for us both and Granger's visible frustrations seem to be winding down at last. Suz fixes her fish and chips and Jasper brings up wine. It's a classy dinner anywhere.
Suz runs us a bath without even telling us and Granger gives in, agreeing to it for Suz's benefit. Almost certainly not for mine.
We finally get our relaxing bath and wine, and I feel the tensions in her start to seep out of her shoulders as she lays back against me. But I don't know how to talk about what happened, our fight. Nothing has changed; the situation is still here, and I still want her as far from it as possible. I can't bring myself to apologise for it.
Tomorrow night is our last night together and I can't bring myself to ruin the time we have left.
Granger doesn't seem willing to, either. We lay in the bath in silence, relatively relaxed in our comfortable verbal stalemate.
I trace my fingers up and down her arms, nudging stray curls of her hair to the side to kiss her temple. Her hair is piled on top of her head, held in place with her new wand, the way she said she always used to trap it.
We stay in the water until it finally gets cold, the warming charms wearing off. I have no idea how long it's been but the wine is long since gone, and I stand up. Taking her hand, I help her out, wrapping her in a towel, and her eyes catch mine.
I'm struck by how lost Granger looks, with dark circles under her eyes. She climbs into bed with me without a word, snuggling up tightly in the nook of my arm and body. I clasp my arms around her back and shoulders, feeling her breathe in and out.
I think she's almost asleep when I realise my chest feels wet. Something's trailing down it. Trying not to disturb her, I glance down to see silent tears running down her cheeks.