He woke in the middle of the night to a sensation so startlingly exquisite it didn't register as real at first—just a flicker of pleasure in a dream, a soft pull from the edge of sleep into something warmer, needier. But it didn't fade. It grew. A pulse of heat low in his belly, a gentle stroke that sent a ripple up his spine and anchored him instantly to the now.
His brow furrowed, breath catching as he surfaced from the velvet fog of slumber, body already responding before his mind fully caught up. He blinked slowly, the shadows of the room sharpening into shapes—soft candle remnants still flickering faintly in sconces, the moonlight pooling across the duvet in silver ribbons. The world was quiet. Still. Except for her.
"Love…" he rasped, voice cracked from sleep, a low rumble in his chest. His hand found the curve of her back beneath the sheet, palm splayed across warm skin. "What are you doing?"
Hermione didn't lift her head right away. She was draped across him, her hair like silk against his chest, her breath steady, focused. But her hand was wrapped around him in a slow, deliberate rhythm, stroking him from root to tip with the kind of reverent attention that felt like worship. Each movement was unhurried, almost innocent in its curiosity, but beneath it was something deeper. Intentional. Knowing.
"I woke up," she said quietly, finally glancing up at him, eyes drowsy but bright, like she'd been thinking about this long before she acted on it. "And I couldn't stop thinking about it."
She tightened her grip slightly, just enough to make his hips twitch, to draw a groan from somewhere deep in his throat. Her thumb ghosted over the head of him, smearing the first bead of slickness, eyes flicking down to watch the motion with fascination.
"I wanted to see it," she murmured, the words brushing over his skin like a spell, "to feel what it's like in my hand… the weight of you. The heat. Maybe…" She leaned in, lips grazing his collarbone as her voice dropped to something darker, "...maybe taste it."
His entire body stiffened beneath her—not in protest, but in pure, unfiltered reaction. His hands curled into the sheets, breath stuttering out of him in a single, shaky exhale.
"Hermione," he groaned, her name a prayer, a warning, a plea. "You're going to kill me."
She smiled, slow and soft and impossibly wicked, her gaze full of mischief and fire. Then she shifted further down his body, her breath trailing lower, lips brushing a path over the ridges of his abdomen, each kiss a deliberate act of devotion.
"I just want to taste it," she whispered against his skin, her voice so gentle it made his heart ache. "Let me."
She didn't wait for permission.
Instead, she shifted down between his legs with that lithe, confident grace that always knocked the air from his lungs. Her hand tightened slightly as she leaned in, brushing her lips over the tip in a featherlight kiss—soft and maddening. Then she licked him. A slow, wet stroke from base to crown, her tongue flattening against him like she meant it, like she wanted to taste every inch.
Draco choked on a groan. His back arched, eyes fluttering shut as his hips twitched toward her mouth. "Fuck…"
She hummed in response, and the vibration made his entire body jolt.
Then she took him in.
Not all at once—not yet. Just the head at first, sucking softly, swirling her tongue in teasing circles while her hand worked the rest of his shaft in steady, gliding strokes. She moaned low in her throat, like she was the one being touched, and the sound of it went straight to his spine.
"Gods Hermione—" His voice cracked, hips straining upward, his hand finding her hair and twisting into the curls at the nape of her neck. Not to guide. Just to hold on.
She hollowed her cheeks and sank deeper, eyes fluttering closed, one hand braced on his thigh while the other kept moving in time with her mouth. Her lips slid down, inch by inch, her throat relaxing as she took more of him, slow and steady, relentless in her focus like she had something to prove. Like she wanted to ruin him with nothing but her mouth.
And she was. She was ruining him.
"Merlin—fuck, baby—" His head fell back. His voice was wrecked, almost hoarse, his chest heaving as her tongue did wicked, clever things that shattered every remaining thought in his skull. "You feel so—fuck—you're gonna kill me—"
She pulled back with a lewd pop, just long enough to whisper, breathless and smug, "I want to make you fall apart. Let me."
And before he could even respond, before he could beg or praise or worship her like she deserved, she took him again—deeper this time. Her nose brushed his skin, her throat fluttering around him as she swallowed him whole.
And Draco? He nearly lost his damn mind.
Draco's hand clenched tighter in her hair as her mouth slid down his length again—slow, steady, merciless. The wet heat of her, the silky drag of her tongue, the obscene, perfect suction as she swallowed him down—it was driving him mad. His muscles were taut, thighs trembling beneath her as though every nerve had been pulled too tight.
And still, she didn't rush.
She savored him.
Her pace was maddening—teasing and coaxing, building him up only to back off just enough to keep him right on the edge. Her mouth was heaven, her hands confident and sure, and every time he groaned her name, she hummed around him like it was praise, like it fed her.
His head thumped back against the pillow, breath shuddering as he tried—and failed—to keep some semblance of control.
"Hermione—fuck—baby, please—" The words were torn from him, hoarse and broken, his voice barely more than a gasp. "You're gonna—fuck—please, don't stop—"
She eased off him with one final, deliberate lick, dragging her tongue slowly up the underside of him as her hand kept stroking him with practiced, devastating rhythm. Her lips were swollen, cheeks flushed, curls wild around her face like a halo of sin. She looked wrecked—and she hadn't even been touched yet.
"You like that?" she murmured, voice like velvet soaked in honey and smoke. "Being in my mouth like this? Letting me taste you? You're so fucking hard for me, Draco…"
Her thumb swept over the head of him again, teasing out more slick, more heat. Her eyes were locked on his, intense and utterly feral. "I can feel how close you are," she whispered, leaning in to kiss the tip, lips brushing against it like a prayer. "You gonna come for me?"
He was panting now, the muscles in his stomach clenching as pleasure coiled low in his spine, sharp and inevitable.
"Gods, yes—yes, Hermione—fuck, I'm—"
Her mouth was back on him before he could finish, and this time she didn't hold back. She took him deep, her throat fluttering around him as she moaned, low and possessive. Her pace was faster now, precise and relentless, and it was too much—her tongue, her lips, the obscene sounds of her mouth working him with such devastating hunger, as though she'd made it her life's mission to destroy him.
And then he shattered.
With a desperate cry that cracked something in his chest, Draco came hard, hips jerking helplessly as her name spilled from his mouth like a litany, raw and reverent. His whole body convulsed, hands fisting in her curls as his climax tore through him like lightning, brutal and blinding.
But she didn't stop.
She took it—all of it—moaning around him like he was her favorite spell, her tongue still flicking gently, coaxing him through every last wave until he was shaking beneath her, gasping, ruined.
When she finally pulled back, her lips were swollen, her mouth glistening, her eyes dark and so goddamn proud of herself.
Draco couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. He just lay there, chest heaving, heart pounding, staring at the woman who had just completely and utterly unmade him.
And she smiled.
Like she knew.
"Best head of your life?" she asked sweetly, voice soft and smug as she crawled up his body and kissed his jaw, his cheek, the corner of his stunned, slack mouth.
He blinked, dazed. "Baby. I saw stars. I think I left my body."
She laughed, low and wicked, settling herself against his side with the satisfied hum of a woman who knew her power. "Good."
Then she whispered against his ear, voice silk and sin. "That was just the warm-up."
He was still panting, still dazed, still trying to remember how his legs worked, when Hermione straddled his hips in one smooth motion. She moved like she'd been waiting for this moment forever—like his body was hers to command, and she was done being patient about it.
Her bare skin dragged over his, slick and hot, and he whimpered. Actually whimpered, low and broken, like a man who'd already been ruined once and was about to be ruined better.
"Hermione…" His voice cracked. "I need a second, love, I—"
"Oh no," she whispered, leaning down to kiss the corner of his mouth, her breath wicked against his ear. "You don't get a second. Not after the things you did to me last night. I'm not done with you."
Her hips rolled—slowly—and he gasped, the overstimulation blurring with fresh, dizzying arousal as she reached between them and guided him back against her, dragging him through the slick, aching heat of her folds. Not taking him in yet—just letting him feel how ready she was.
How much she wanted him again.
"Fuck—" His hands flew to her hips like instinct, fingers digging in, desperate to anchor himself. His eyes met hers, wild and glassy. "You're going to kill me."
She smiled like it would be an honor.
Then she sank down onto him in one long, excruciating slide.
They both groaned—him in wrecked disbelief, her in breathless bliss—as her body took all of him, deep and tight and impossibly warm. Her nails scraped down his chest as she settled fully onto him, head falling back, chest rising in a trembling gasp.
"Gods, yes," she breathed. "You feel—fuck—so full. So perfect."
His hands couldn't stop roaming—her thighs, her waist, the curve of her back. "You're unreal," he rasped, utterly shattered. "You're fucking divine."
She started to move—slow at first, drawing her hips back until just the tip of him remained inside her, then slamming back down with a moan that made his toes curl. Her rhythm was purposeful, punishing, like she wanted to ruin him again—and Draco had never felt more at her mercy.
Every time she moved, he felt the drag, the clench, the shudder of her around him. And she watched him—never breaking eye contact, drinking in every gasp, every broken sound he made like they were her favorite confessions.
"You gonna come again for me?" she murmured, voice sultry and low as she rocked harder. "Gonna let me milk every last drop out of you?"
Draco nodded, helpless, already on the verge.
"Say it," she whispered, leaning down to kiss his throat, sucking a mark into his skin that would definitely show in the morning. "Say you're mine."
"I'm yours," he gasped. "Fuck, Hermione, I'm yours."
Her pace snapped into something deeper, needier, and he was gone again—eyes rolling back, hands scrabbling at the sheets as his release crested sharp and overwhelming. His cry echoed off the walls, and Hermione followed seconds after, shaking above him, head thrown back, a moan breaking loose from her throat that sounded like pure worship.
They collapsed into each other, shaking, wrecked, trembling with aftershocks.
And when he could finally breathe again, when the stars stopped sparking behind his eyes, Draco rolled them gently so she was beneath him, kissing her like she was the last bit of magic left in the world.
"I'm never letting you sleep again," he whispered, voice raw.
She just smiled, breathless. "Good."
The room was quiet now, save for the soft hum of candlelight and the sound of their breathing—deep, uneven, slowly syncing into something calmer, quieter. He didn't pull away from her. He couldn't. His body was still pressed to hers, chest to chest, heartbeat to heartbeat, like if he moved even an inch he might lose the only thing that had ever truly grounded him.
Hermione's fingers threaded gently through his hair, slow and tender, scratching lightly at his scalp the way she knew soothed him. "You alright?" she whispered, voice hoarse but warm.
Draco let out a shaky breath against her skin, his face buried in the crook of her neck. "No," he said truthfully. "You've absolutely destroyed me."
She smiled—he could feel it against his cheek—but her arms around him tightened just a little more, like she needed him just as much. "Good," she murmured. "Maybe now we're even."
He rolled them gently onto their sides, cradling her against him, brushing sweaty strands of hair from her face. His thumb traced the curve of her cheek, her jaw, the soft flutter of her pulse under his touch.
"I didn't know I could feel like that," he said, voice barely more than a whisper. "Not just the sex—gods, that was—" he laughed softly, like he couldn't believe it himself, "—but you. The way you look at me. The way you see me."
Her eyes glistened in the dim light. "I always saw you, Draco. Even when you didn't want me to."
He kissed her then, slow and reverent, like her lips were an answer he hadn't dared to ask for. His hand moved across her back, soothing and gentle, tracing idle circles as they breathed each other in.
"You terrify me, you know," he murmured.
"Why?"
"Because I think if you ever asked me to burn the world down for you, I would."
She went quiet at that, eyes searching his—serious, unflinching. "I'd never ask for that," she said softly. "But I'd stand beside you if it ever started to burn."
Something in him cracked at that. Something deep. And for the first time in years, he didn't feel the need to hide the break. He just let it show.
They stayed there, wrapped in each other, bodies still tangled, hearts wide open. Her fingers played lazily at his chest, drawing invisible constellations on his skin, and his arm curled tighter around her waist, like he'd never let her go again.
And when sleep came—slow and warm and honest—it came to both of them at once.
Still holding each other.
Still home
***
The drawing room was flooded with light, not the demure kind that slipped between curtains and hesitated on thresholds, but the brazen, burnished blaze of late afternoon sun at its most unapologetic, streaming through tall enchanted windows in sheets of gold that set the entire room aglow like a cathedral just before vespers, gilding the edges of mahogany furniture and pooling in quiet, deceptive warmth across the patterned rugs. It was the kind of sunlight that could lull the unknowing into ease, into the illusion of calm, softening corners and gilding glass with honeyed tones that almost masked the underlying pressure that saturated the space, a tension so subtle it did not crack or shout but shimmered in the periphery like heat rising off stone, making the wards prickle faintly in the corners like they were bracing for impact, as if the house itself knew better than to trust this peace. It was a room waiting to exhale, and the air inside it had grown too thick with unspoken things to carry the weight of light comfortably.
Astoria Greengrass sat with perfect poise at the heart of it, her body arranged on the velvet chaise as though it had been sculpted there by ancestral hands, an heirloom set into place not for comfort but for display, a portrait in motion. She did not sprawl, she did not sink—she anchored, deliberate and devastating, every inch of her posture singing with the kind of composure that came not from ease, but from discipline, from years of silken warfare disguised as etiquette. Her robes, spun of champagne silk so fine it shimmered when she breathed, clung to her body with that impossible balance of drape and structure, whispering of softness only to those too far away to touch it, and reminding anyone who looked too long that softness was not the same as weakness. A single curl of pale gold hair curled along her jaw like punctuation—perfect, precise, impossible to dismiss—and her lips, painted in a tone that hovered somewhere between innocence and threat, curled into the kind of smile that felt like a lock clicking shut. She didn't need to speak. She didn't need to posture. Her presence alone stretched across the room like a spell laced with civility and the faintest trace of venom, weaving itself into the atmosphere with the subtlety of perfume and the inevitability of a storm not yet on the horizon.
And then there was Draco, standing as if the concept of sitting had somehow become impossible, as if his body had decided that movement, even the smallest shift, would betray something he wasn't yet willing to name. He didn't lean casually against the hearth like he had nothing to prove, nor did he pace like a man with too much fire in his bones; instead, he stood with one hand pressed against the marble mantelpiece, his fingers splayed with a precision that looked, from a distance, almost deliberate, almost elegant, but Hermione had memorized that posture long ago and knew better. Knew the way his hand only braced like that when his body was one wrong word away from shaking, the way his spine locked into place when stillness was the only remaining weapon he trusted not to betray him. His other hand, half-curled and forgotten at his side, twitched now and then, not enough for anyone else to notice, not enough to interrupt the illusion of calm, but Hermione saw it, recognized it for what it was: the tremor of a man holding too much under his skin, trying not to let it spill.
His expression, as always, was a masterpiece of restraint—eyes distant, mouth set into a perfectly neutral line, brow smooth with the kind of composure only decades of aristocratic expectation could teach. To the untrained observer, he was the perfect host: silent, poised, offering his company with polite distance and no warmth. But to Hermione—who had learned the language of his silences better than anyone—he looked like a man wearing his own body like armor that no longer fit, like the weight of presence alone was scraping the inside of his ribs raw. His jaw was too tight, the muscle there ticking with every breath he didn't take too deep, and his shoulders, broad and sharp beneath the fitted black of his coat, were squared in a way that looked composed but was anything but—too rigid, too stiff, as if any shift would be a surrender.
And she saw it—everything—all at once, from the shadowed threshold of the doorway where the sunlight still slanted behind her in long, warm beams. She hadn't stepped fully into the room yet, hadn't made herself known, but in that suspended moment, the world held its breath. The house itself seemed to quiet beneath her gaze; the enchanted vines that usually danced lazily along the greenhouse glass stilled, the air turned heavier, and the wards curled softly at the edge of awareness, like a cat watching with eyes half-closed but wide awake. And in the center of that stillness stood Astoria Greengrass.
Astoria didn't reach for Draco like someone desperate for touch—didn't crowd him, didn't giggle nervously, didn't stumble into his space. No, she leaned in with the confidence of someone who had always been granted proximity, who had never been denied access, her body angled with the exact degree of elegance that made closeness look accidental, her shoulders dipping just so, her voice spilling into the space between them like crystal over ice. Her laugh, airy and too well-placed, rang out at something Draco hadn't said, and her fingers—long and pale and manicured to an impossible shine—drifted forward in that practiced, careless way women used when they wanted to be noticed but never blamed. The tips of her fingers ghosted across the inside of Draco's wrist, a motion so soft it might have been innocent, might have passed for etiquette, but it lingered. It lingered the way perfume does after the wearer is gone. It lingered the way power does when no one is sure who still holds it.
And Hermione—still in the doorway, still unseen—watched it all unfold like a scene written in a language she knew too well. Not jealousy, no. Not even rage. What rose in her chest wasn't fire—it was ice. Sharp and clean and ancient. Because she didn't need to ask what was happening. She saw it. Saw Astoria's smile tilt too far, saw the calculated gleam in her eye, saw the way Draco's body didn't lean back but didn't move forward either, caught in that terrible no man's land of civility and discomfort, of duty and resentment. She saw the theater. Saw the stage. Saw the trap.
And she didn't make a sound.
Because the house was already listening. And so was Hermione.
She stood in the doorway—not advancing, not interrupting, simply existing there like an inevitability, silent and unmoving, her figure caught between shadow and light, framed by the delicate geometry of the carved archway and the golden spill of late afternoon sun filtering through panes of charmed stained glass that turned the air around her into fractured color, the kind that softened sharp edges and gilded everything it touched in the warm, ancient glow of life remembered. The sunlight caught in her hair, which was unbound and falling loose around her shoulders, each curl illuminated as though threaded with gold, and though there was no wind to stir them, a few tendrils lifted as if responding to something more primal than weather—perhaps to the tension in the room, or to the magic coiling beneath her skin, the kind rooted in the earth, in intention, in the quiet weight of knowing. She didn't look uncertain. She didn't look out of place. If anything, she looked like something the manor had conjured on its own behalf—a guardian or a reckoning, called forth not to confront, but simply to witness.
Her dress, soft and worn from work, hung in gentle folds around her body, the fabric brushing her bare ankles like fog curling around stone, and the wide neckline slipped just enough to reveal the elegant line of her collarbone, where a few smudges of earth clung like evidence of a life touched by green things. She'd come from the greenhouse, clearly—there was a faint stain of rosemary across one wrist, a trace of soil beneath a fingernail, the ghost of crushed sage at her elbow—and none of it looked out of place on her. If anything, it made her more elemental, more present, more real. She carried the scent of something alive, something breathing, something not manufactured or polished but grown with time and intention, and it followed her into the doorway like the scent of rain after a long drought, quiet but impossible to ignore.
But it was her eyes—those strange, golden-washed eyes—that changed the room. They weren't fixed on Draco alone, nor did they land squarely on Astoria in challenge or disdain. They were fixed precisely on the distance between them. On the space that shouldn't have been there at all, or worse, the one that had grown too small. Her gaze, calm and heavy, didn't accuse. It didn't scold. It simply saw, in that way she had always seen—cleanly, fully, without flinching—and it landed like pressure beneath the skin, like gravity reminding everything in the room exactly where it stood. She said nothing. Didn't move. But her presence slipped into every crack in the moment like water through old stone, gentle and patient and utterly unstoppable, and there was no question—none at all—that she had seen everything: the carefully timed lean, the perfectly measured smile, the brush of fingers across a wrist that wasn't offered, the tension that pulsed beneath Draco's skin like a spell barely contained.
She hadn't entered the room. But she didn't need to.
She was already in it.
She stood as still as a statue, but the energy around her shifted, subtle at first—a tension, a pulse, a vibration humming low through the air. And then, behind her, in the corridor she had just stepped from, the vines that draped the archways and curled along the baseboards began to move. Not wildly. Not with violence. Just a slow, sinuous stir, as if the house itself was drawing breath through green lungs, as if something deep and ancient had awakened.
"You have some nerve," Hermione said, the words low and laced with steel, her voice no louder than breath but honed to an edge so fine it sliced through the buttery afternoon light like wire through silk, leaving the drawing room's warmth bleeding at the seams. She didn't stride in—she glided, barefoot and silent, every movement threaded with the kind of poised stillness that didn't demand attention but drew it anyway, the kind that shifted the air in a room not through sound or speed, but through gravity, a pressure that sank into the walls and into the spine of anyone foolish enough to think her smallness was silence. The house responded like it always did—subtly, reverently—its old, sentient magic curling around her ankles like smoke, thickening the air until the very stones seemed to hold their breath, until the flames in the hearth bent ever so slightly toward her, and the vines along the walls slowed in their restless movement as if they too understood the difference between invitation and intrusion.
Astoria turned with the syrupy grace of someone long used to getting away with things—smiling as though nothing about the situation was beneath her, not the accusation, not the room, not even the woman now standing across from her. Her robe shifted as she moved, champagne silk catching the light like sharpened glass, and she tilted her head in that infuriatingly deliberate way, lips parting in a lazy curve that was far too calculated to be casual, far too smug to be civil, the smile of someone rehearsed in courtly warfare and delighted to be on stage again. "Oh, Hermione," she said with a voice soaked in mockery disguised as gentility, her tone the exact pitch one might use when addressing a poorly trained pet that's wandered into the drawing room uninvited, "I hadn't the faintest idea you were back. You really must stop slipping about so quietly—it gives people the wrong impression," and she said it like the wrong impression was already hanging in the air, like the room had been her domain until a ghost dared to cross the threshold, like Hermione wasn't the mistress of the house but a scandal walking barefoot across imported rugs.
She didn't blink when she said it. She didn't need to. Every syllable was measured, a pearl of venom wrapped in satin, designed not to cut with blunt edges but to slide beneath the skin and fester, to pretend civility while daring the other woman to bare her teeth first. But Hermione didn't bare anything—not rage, not offense, not even the breath that might have turned the moment into something hotter. She kept walking, soundless, endless, deliberate, every step stitched with the kind of serenity that felt earned rather than inherited, the kind that came not from self-control but from complete certainty of what she could do if she chose to. Her voice, when it came again, was even softer—more intimate, more dangerous, the kind of softness that only meant one thing: you've already lost. It held no tremor, no lilt, no flair—only calm, coiled precision, the weight of inevitability carried on syllables shaped like silk drawn taut across a blade. And when she stopped in front of Astoria—bare feet kissing the marble, magic humming in the floorboards beneath her, hair wild and unbound and crowned in light—she didn't need to raise her hand or her voice or her heart rate, didn't need to posture like she'd won, because she already had.
"Get out," she said.
And the words didn't boom or ring or echo—they sank, slow and terrible, into the marrow of the house and into the breath between their bodies, a command so pure in its finality that the magic twisted toward it like gravity, a word so old it might have been a spell before language ever existed. The air shifted. The warmth withdrew. The house listened. And for the first time in years, Astoria forgot how to smile.
The house heard it. The room, which had moments ago been filled with forced laughter and feigned civility, now crackled with something raw and uncontainable. The vines along the wall twisted and pulsed, blooming violently with crimson and violet flowers that seemed to scream open before immediately wilting to ash, one after another, as if the very flora was unsure whether to obey her wrath or her heartbreak, unsure whether to bear witness or flee.
Astoria blinked slowly, something almost—almost—uncertain flickering in her eyes before she forced it down, replaced it with a brittle laugh, high and lilting and just slightly too loud, like a harp string pulled too tight, the kind of laugh that had always followed veiled insults at garden parties and biting remarks behind fans. "Jealousy doesn't suit you, darling," she said, lips still curled, but her voice didn't carry quite the same weight, and her fingers twitched slightly on the hem of her robe, just once, just enough.
And Hermione, whose gaze hadn't wavered once, whose posture remained as fluid and grounded as water given form, tilted her head to the side—just barely—and let her smile bloom like something poisonous and soft. "Then let me try something else," she said, and it wasn't a threat, not the way Astoria might've recognized, not a challenge or a declaration—it was a promise made in bone and breath—and in a motion so smooth it could've been an extension of her pulse, she lifted her wand from the folds of her dress, slow and precise and without any hurry at all.
Draco's tone was sharp enough to slice through the thick air of the room, colder than it had been moments before, laced with something dangerous and final. "Tori," he said, jaw tight, voice low, "don't disrespect my wife. It's time for you to go."
Astoria didn't flinch. She only blinked, slow and feline, then leaned further into the chaise, draping herself across it like a queen bored of her court. "But we've only just begun," she murmured, voice honeyed and vile. "You used to have better manners when I was the one in your bed."
Draco's eyes narrowed, but his posture didn't shift. "Get. Out."
Astoria laughed—a sharp, brittle sound that cracked through the drawing room like shattered glass under a velvet heel, too loud for the sunlight, too smug for the silence, the kind of laugh that didn't come from amusement but from the need to wound. "What's the matter, my dragon?" she purred, her voice curling like smoke through poisoned wine, every syllable drawn with surgical precision, meant to reopen something old and festering, "One night of fucking a mudblood and suddenly you think you're a hero? You've grown a conscience now, is that it?" Her eyes, bright with spite, flicked toward the doorway, to where Hermione still stood—silent, immovable, crowned in sun and shadow, her bare feet rooted like she'd been grown there rather than born—before flicking back to Draco with all the grace of a knife twisting into flesh. "Since when do you care about anyone but yourself?" she sneered, her voice slick with honeyed venom. "Let alone her, the girl who drifts through your manor like a ghost wrapped in secondhand silk, playing pretend at power, wearing your name like it means something, like you didn't both lose the moment they tied you to her like a dog on a leash."
Draco didn't flinch.
Didn't even blink.
But the air around him changed.
The wards of the house groaned low in the floorboards, deep and seismic, the walls responding like something ancient had been disturbed, like the very bones of the manor had decided enough was enough. The magic flared—not loud, not chaotic, but controlled and terrible, coiled around him like a predator stirred from sleep, dragging its claws slowly through the air between them. His posture didn't shift, but power radiated off him in sharp, invisible pulses, and when he finally spoke, his voice was quieter than before—lower, colder—but every word struck like ice driven through bone, threaded with steel and sovereign authority that had never required volume to be heard.
"Since now," he said, and it was not an answer—it was a verdict.
Then he took one step forward.
Just one.
But it was enough to make the temperature drop, enough to make the vines along the skirting boards ripple in a slow, deliberate curl, no longer passive, no longer ornamental, but awakening, stretching, listening. "She," he continued, and now his voice was venom-dipped silk, low and cutting and cruel in the way only a man capable of extraordinary violence could make sound elegant, "is my wife—not my weakness, not my leash, not some inconvenience you get to sneer at like you're still relevant. You forget yourself, Astoria. You think your name means something here. It doesn't. This is my home. And you," he said, letting the word rot in his mouth like spoiled fruit, his eyes burning with something far more dangerous than rage, "are a guest. One I no longer wish to entertain."
Astoria's smile stuttered—not enough to be called fear, not enough to be seen as retreat, but it faltered, flickered, frayed at the corners like paper left too close to flame. Her fingers twitched once, instinctively adjusting the sleeve of her robe, as if fine silk could cover the fact that the room had turned on her. She glanced down—just once—where the vines were now unmistakably creeping toward the hem of her dress, slow and curious and hungry for trespass. Her throat bobbed once. Her gaze darted back to Hermione.
Hermione hadn't moved.
Hadn't spoken.
She didn't need to.
She stood like the judgment itself—silent, sunlit, watching.
And then, with the faintest flicker of magic and pride and nothing left to say, Astoria vanished.
No dramatic exit. No final word. Just the sharp crack of apparition, and the scent of her perfume left curling in the air like smoke after a fire.
And then—silence.
Heavy. Charged. Unforgiving.
Draco exhaled like he'd been holding his breath for days. He turned slowly, chest still heaving with unspent adrenaline, and looked at her—really looked. Her shoulders were squared. Her jaw was set. Her magic still hummed in the air, a soft pulse around her like the quiet promise of lightning before it strikes.
"Hermione," he said, her name spilling from his mouth like a confession dragged over coals, softer than the rage in the room but rough around the edges, like even speaking it carved something into him, like every syllable scorched the back of his throat with the weight of everything he hadn't said soon enough, hadn't protected fast enough, hadn't held tightly enough when he should have known better. "She means nothing," he added, the words frayed, unraveling even as they hit the air, a truth too desperate to sound like reassurance, too raw to land clean. And her eyes—gods, those eyes—flashed with something that shattered him more than fury ever could, not just anger or disbelief but that devastating shade of hurt, the kind of pain that didn't bleed, didn't break, just… bruised in silence, deeper than bone, a storm she didn't know how to stop once it had started.
"She touched you," she said, not like she was questioning it, not like she needed confirmation, but like she was marking the wound, naming the betrayal even as it pulsed between them, not from suspicion but from the unrelenting weight of truth, and he flinched—not visibly, not enough to seem weak, but enough that his breath caught hard in his chest, enough that the lie she hadn't spoken scraped against his ribs like punishment.
"And I didn't touch her back," he shot back, too fast, too harsh, his voice cracking like glass dropped in the quiet, stepping toward her now with a desperation barely leashed, his words no longer guarded but fraying into something close to pleading. "Because I already have everything I want," he said, every word guttural, splintered, shaking with conviction he didn't know how to make beautiful. "Right here."
But her laugh—gods, her laugh—cut through him like a blade dragged through soft flesh, sharp and bitter and breathless, the sound of someone who had been pushed too far, too hard, for too long. "Don't insult my intelligence, Malfoy," she snapped, and the way she said his name wasn't cruel, wasn't cold, but full of venomous precision, like it was a title she no longer recognized, like it was a crown she'd decided not to wear. "You can still fuck her, for all I care," she continued, every word a hammer against the fragile bridge still standing between them, her voice rising with the kind of hurt that had nowhere to go but out. "This marriage is just a leash around your neck, and you hate the hand that holds it."
His expression changed, not subtly, not delicately, but entirely, his eyes darkening with something dangerous—not rage, not defensiveness, but pain, unflinching and unpolished, and his next words weren't shouted but dropped, heavy as stone, as if even speaking them required the kind of courage he'd spent years pretending he didn't need. "It's not fake," he said, and the truth of it stretched through the room like something sacred and terrible.
"Oh no?" she said, her voice breaking just slightly at the edges, but her power gathering beneath it like rising water, ancient and inescapable, stepping toward him now, her bare feet soundless on the floor, her magic blooming outward in steady, trembling waves, not wild but deliberate, like the truth inside her had been caged too long. "Since when?" she asked, not mockingly, not even bitter anymore, but broken and furious in equal measure. "Since you chose to fuck me instead of her? How convenient. How rich."
And he didn't flinch this time.
Didn't hesitate.
Didn't blink.
Because the words were already there, waiting, carved into the back of his teeth like prophecy, trembling on the edge of who he used to be and who he was now. "Since I'm in love with you," he said, not gently, not even kindly, but with a force that cracked open the silence like a fault line giving way beneath years of pressure, a sentence hurled like a weapon, caught like a lifeline, delivered like it was the only thing he still had to offer that mattered.
And then everything stopped.
The magic. The breath. The light spilling through the high windows. Even the vines, half-curled around the doorframe in some slow, creeping warning, stilled like they'd been struck by a spell of their own. The air in the room held its breath. And between them, where all the words had landed and burned and lived—there was only silence, thick and sacred and utterly unrelenting, the kind of silence that came not from absence, but from everything suddenly, terrifyingly present.
She stared at him, stunned. Unreadable. Her fingers flexed once at her sides, then curled back in. Her lips parted, but no sound came out. Because that wasn't what she'd expected. Not now. Not from him. And certainly not like that.
"I don't need you to believe me," Draco said, voice shaking now, not from fear—but from the terrifying, impossible truth of it. "But it's real. For me. It's always been real."
The silence between them stretched taut.
And somewhere in the house, the vines retreated.
The war, for now, had paused.
She stood very still.
Her arms hung at her sides, fists trembling—not with fear, not with weakness, but with something far more dangerous: restraint. The vines at her feet pulsed once, curling tighter as if absorbing the shock that had just ripped the air between them. Her mouth parted, but no sound came. Not yet. Her breath stuttered like a spell held on the edge of release, and her eyes—gods, her eyes—burned with something Draco couldn't name, something bright and furious and wounded and impossibly beautiful.
He had said it—too loud, too raw, too devastatingly real—and now it hung between them like a spell uttered without a wand, heavy and unrepentant, crackling with all the dangerous finality of truth spoken too late, too boldly, with too much heart and not nearly enough warning. The words didn't float; they didn't drift gently into the air like petals or prayers—they landed, messy and holy and irreversible, rooted in the floorboards, in the walls, in the space between their chests where breath should have lived but didn't. There was no going back, not now, not after this, not after the kind of confession that felt more like rupture than resolution, and when she echoed it back—low and still and too calm in that way that came before collapse—it wasn't disbelief that twisted her voice, it was devastation held so tightly in her ribs that it came out soft just to keep from breaking. "Since you're in love with me?" she asked, and though her words were hushed, there was something in them that roared, something deep and jagged and infinitely tired. "Now? Now you say that?"
Draco moved instinctively, his body pulling toward her before his mind could catch up, as if the sound of her voice—trembling but standing—was gravity itself, but she lifted a hand, just enough to stop him, and it wasn't violent, wasn't laced with magic or accusation, just a motion born of necessity, of self-preservation, of needing space not from him but from the weight of what had just been placed between them. And when she spoke again, it was no longer soft—it was raw, her breath catching like a blade lodged behind her teeth, her voice slicing through him with every syllable because there was no venom in it, only pain, only the clarity of someone who had stayed silent for too long and now couldn't afford to anymore. "You think you can finger me in a hallway like I'm something to be claimed," she said, "and then shield me from the wreckage of your past with one sentence? You think you can say that and erase everything that came before?"
His answer came rough and immediate, but not defensive, not a counterstrike—just a man trying to steady himself in a storm he'd helped create. "I didn't know how else to say it," he admitted, his voice uneven in a way that betrayed him completely, the edges of it worn raw from weeks of restraint, of silence, of want, and regret, and need, "and I didn't—I didn't mean for it to happen like that," he continued, each word scraped from the bottom of his chest like it hurt to be honest, "but I meant every word. Every gods-damned word."
She looked away then, just for a breath, not in retreat but as if she needed to gather herself, as if the room had become too loud with unspoken things, too full of memory, of skin and noise and guilt that didn't belong to her but had soaked into her anyway. When her gaze returned, it was shining, not with tears, but with something trembling just beneath the surface—anger, maybe, or heartbreak, or the knowledge that she could no longer pretend she hadn't heard the one thing she'd needed and feared most. "You don't get to say it like it's a shield," she said, and now her voice was steady again, dangerously so, the kind of stillness that didn't beg but dared. "Like love is something you throw on the ground when you're caught. You don't get to say it when your wrists still remember her fingers."
And he flinched—not outwardly, not enough for the world to see, but somewhere deep, in a place she had once touched without even trying, a place he hadn't realized could bruise until now. "My wrists remember you," he said, and though the words came quiet, they rang through the space between them like thunder wrapped in velvet, like the kind of vow that didn't need ceremony to be sacred. "My skin remembers you. Not her. Not anyone else."
She opened her mouth then, as if to reply, to refute, to say something that might protect her from what was coming—but the words didn't come, only breath, only the widening of her eyes and the silence that followed like an omen. The air between them shifted, thickening until even the light seemed to dim, the walls of the manor pressing in with a hush so deep it felt reverent, like even the house had decided to bear witness. And when she spoke again, it wasn't anger that lived in her voice—it was ache, pure and unadorned. "I wasn't supposed to fall for you," she whispered, and the sentence fell like rain, soft and devastating, full of everything she hadn't wanted to feel and couldn't unfeel now.
"I know," he said, and the way he said it was quiet, but not small—not broken, but changed, softened around the edges like metal cooled after the forge, steady with acceptance of what neither of them had expected. "I wasn't supposed to fall for you, either." He stepped closer, slowly, deliberately, giving her the chance to stop him, to turn away, to protect the walls she still had time to raise—but she didn't stop him this time, didn't lift her hand or move back or flinch from what was coming. She just stood there, breathing like someone who had finally stopped drowning.
"You were supposed to be my punishment," she said, and the words were bitter and brilliant all at once, a truth that tasted like iron on her tongue. "A name on a contract. A chain." And he stepped closer still, until there was no more space to hide behind, until the air between them trembled with all the things they hadn't said out loud but had written in every breath they'd stolen from one another, and when he reached for her, his touch was slow, reverent, not a demand but an offering, as he whispered, "And you were supposed to be my leash—but you turned out to be the only thing that's ever set me free."
Her breath caught then, not because of shock or fear, but because the truth of it had finally settled inside her like light in the dark—unforgiving, undeniable, and real.
His hand cupped her cheek.
And in that charged silence, the fight burned out of the room—not because it was gone, but because it had been transfigured. Transmuted. Melted into something deeper. Older. More dangerous.
"What am I supposed to do with that?" she asked, and her voice wasn't loud, wasn't trembling, wasn't dramatic—it was still, steady, a blade without a hilt, a question carved from bone and breath that lingered between them with the kind of weight that didn't demand an answer so much as expose him for offering something she hadn't asked for, something so raw it trembled in the air between their mouths like a held breath. She didn't move, didn't lean forward, didn't retreat either, only stood there, eyes locked on his with that devastating steadiness of a woman who had survived too much to be swayed by pretty words—but who was still, impossibly, listening.
"Anything you want," he said, his voice low and hoarse, not because he was trying to seduce her, but because it hurt to speak through the ache in his chest, because the truth tasted like blood and hope in equal measure. His thumb brushed against her skin with the reverence of someone who had dreamed of this contact and hadn't dared to believe he'd be allowed to feel it again. "Break me," he said, barely louder than a prayer. "Banish me. Or—"