Chapter 1: Toronto
Summary:
After the Battle of Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy and his friends disappeared. Where have the Slytherin snakes been for the past five years?
Chapter Text
Short fic inspired by Bellemedusa's drawing.
(L to R: Harry, Pansy, Draco, Hermione, Theo, and Blaise.)
Please visit Bellemedusa's Pinterest to see more of her work!
The Weeknd - Wicked Games
Draco
It had been years since he’d seen anyone from the Wizarding world besides Pansy, Blaise, and Theo. They left right after the Battle of Hogwarts. Armed with their hundreds of millions of galleons, all they needed to do was disappear.
First, it was Ireland. Then Australia. A few months in South Africa. Then across the waters to the US, Washington, California, and New York. And then for some reason, they stayed here. No real reason, other than it was unassuming, metropolitan, and the food was brilliant. Toronto.
While Blaise bitched about the winters, he didn’t take any real initiative to leave. Theo would never leave him. And Pansy would follow Draco to the ends of the earth. They bought out two floors of an industrial condo building, and expected to stay hidden there for the rest of their lives, drowning in wine, weed, and women. After 5 years, his place was still spartan and bare. He didn’t need anything more than a bed, a couch, and a table.
Dressed in a light trench and a worn-out T-shirt and jeans, he was taking his daily constitutional along the Harbourfront, huddling from the wet, cold winds that slapped his face. Draco didn’t mind; it was a good attempt to wake himself out of his drunken stupor from last night. Another faceless woman he picked up from a King Street bar. Good legs. Short skirt. Another pliant, willing body. An–Andrea? Andy? Whatever. He woke up, showered, told her to walk herself out, and left some money for her taxi.
While he was waiting for the elevator, Pansy in a kimono-style robe opened her door to watch him. Her normally-neat, black bob was disheveled. He grunted an acknowledgement as he pulled out a cigarette. She sighed, looking over the bite marks on his neck. Her brows furrowed for a second. He knew he was hurting her, but he couldn’t be arsed to care. She knew he wasn’t any good. Wouldn’t be any good to her. He told her that. They hadn’t even had sex in over a year. But she stayed.
“Where would I go?” she asked.
All their parents were either dead or sentenced to life in Azkaban. They took the temporary lull after the Second Wizarding War to work quickly. The Slytherins commanded their elves to drain their Gringotts’ vaults. They never looked back. Nothing courageous. No loyalty. Just survival.
So as he walked on in the chilly spring morning, it was a surprise as he felt a familiar electric humm of magic glaze over his skin. Draco, suddenly wide awake, looked all around him. Just people. Walking their dogs. Eating and drinking coffee. Watching the boats.
Then he felt it again. The magic raised the hair on his arms. It was electrifying. Draco knocked his head around. Where was it coming from? Was he going crazy? Was it the drink? He pushed out another cigarette from his pack. One day, if he were lucky, this would kill him.
When he looked back up with a cigarette between his teeth, a middle-aged man with dark blonde hair dressed in a grey peacoat approached him. He looked familiar. A man he knew from a different life.
“Alright there?”
“Alright,” Draco gave a slight nod.
A few more minutes of silence as they both looked out on the rolling waters. Draco lit up another cigarette.
He hissed, “Draco Malfoy.” A statement, not a question.
“Nah. You got it wrong, mate.”
“I don’t think so.”
“What’s your name then?”
“Not interested. Go to Yonge and Wellesley for that.”
Draco began walking away. Fast steps. He stuffed his cold hands inside his trench. But his traitorous body hummed with magic, recognizing like for like. He quickly slipped his hand through his hair. He needed to get out of here, walking up the industrial area of Wellington Street. His loafers clicked on the grey sidewalk.
CRACK.
A sudden bolt of yellow light appeared in front of him, twisting and turning until a body, the same man, stood in front of him. Draco had to cough from the thunderous clap. He felt the boom in his chest.
Dressed in a professional attire: his peacoat was gone. Only white button-up shirt with a leather wand holster strapped around his broad back and clipped across his chest. His trousers were dark grey and neatly pressed. He plodded forward, as if stalking a prey.
“I should have introduced myself, Mr. Malfoy. My name is John Dawlish. I work for the Ministry of Magic, Department of Magical Law Enforcement.”
“Don’t know what you’re on about, mate. Perhaps you hit your head a bit too rough?” Draco tried to sidestep around the man, but Dawlish’s arm reached out and held him, much stronger than he looked.
“Minister Shacklebolt has something to request of you and your friends.”
“I don’t know what to tell ya. You’ve got the wrong person.”
“No, I don’t believe so, Mr. Malfoy.”
Draco started to turn away from him. A fleshy hand lands on his shoulder, spinning Draco around. “Narcissa was quite insistent that I deliver this message to you.” Dawlish smiled obscenely.
With blinding rage in his eyes, Draco pushed the impish man into the concrete wall of a building, “Don’t you fucking say her name.”
He sneered, “Hello Mr. Malfoy.”
They walked silently to a cafe around the corner. Dawlish looked like the cat that got the cream. Draco hid his chin, crouching down in his light trench.
Blaise, Theo, and Pansy all sat around one of those shite quality, sticky patio tables with one or two of the legs missing a cap, leaving it unstable.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK.
Dawlish dragged another table toward the trio.
Not so fucking inconspicuous for an Auror. Draco scowled and lit up another cigarette.
“Good. You’re all here.”
They were silent. Blaise shot daggers at Draco, while squeezing his tumbler, his knuckles white. Theo’s posture was stiff and took a deep sip of his IPA. Pansy watched all of them, waiting for someone to break first. Her eyes flashed at Dawlish.
“Say what you have to say,” Pansy demanded.
John’s mouth quirked. “As Mr. Malfoy has no doubt already told you, I’m John Dawlish. From the Ministry. You four were really hard to track down.”
Blaise shrugged, “We didn’t want to be found.”
The Auror chuckled, “Certainly. But your magic still can be traced. It’s just a matter of if we want to. Like your moth–”
The glass cracked, amber liquid spilling and sending shattered shards at his feet and to the floor. Thin trails of blood from the gash on Blaise’s hand, mixing with the whiskey, dripped down to the crisscross pattern of the patio table.
A server gasped, “So sorry, sir! Are you okay? I’ll get a new–” She grabbed a flannel and started dotting up the liquid on the table surface.
“Leave it!” Blaise snarled, eyes never leaving John.
She froze. Theo looked up at the young girl and sent her an apologetic smile, “Don’t mind him. Could you get us another round?” He pulled out a hundred dollar bill and slid it across to the girl, “For your trouble.” Then he slid his hand around Blaise’s clenched fist. “Darling …”
That seemed to break the spell. His furious hazel eyes blinked and softened at Theo’s urging.
“What do you want, Dawlish?” Pansy repeated, her voice taut and clipped.
“For you all to head back to wizarding society. For your parents to be freed from Azkaban. What’s left of them anyway.”
“How will I know it’s my contact?” Draco leaned against the chain linked fence, breathing out a puff of smoke into John’s face.
“You won’t. They’ll find you,” Dawlish explained.
“Where?”
“They’ll find you.”
“When?”
“Next week sometime.”
“And?”
“They’ll hand you an enchanted galleon. That will be your only communiqué to the DMLE through them. Keep it close to your body. Don’t lose it. If you get caught, we will have no record of you or your friends.”
Chapter 2: Guest Bedroom
Summary:
Flashback from Hermione's perspective.
Mind the tags.
Chapter Text
Dark Waves - I Don't Wanna Be in Love
Hermione
She looked down below to the clear glass floor. Her heart dropped. War. Death. Torture. 147 stories up and she never got over her fear of flying. Children were running around the tower, shouting and laughing gleefully. She felt a warm, strong arm wrap around her waist, and some familiar black strands fell around her face.
“You okay?” Harry whispered into her ear. She nodded.
It was her idea to climb the CN Tower. No matter how far removed from Hogwarts she was, she couldn’t resist visiting the historical sights of each new city they arrived in. It was one of the swottiest things she still kept about her. She wonder what it would feel like if the glass floor gave way.
Freeing.
She’s been partnered with Harry for the last 18 months. She wouldn’t have it any other way. She knew him like her own body. They shared one mind … and a heart, if she were so inclined to be a romantic. But she wasn’t.
It wasn’t always like this.
When Ron left, everything around them shattered. They had four really good months after the war before things got really bad. His migraines and night terrors worsened. Then the fights started. His drinking got worse. He started taking Draught of Peace , at first to keep the anxiety attacks at bay, but then because he wanted to.
Hermione gave it as good as she got. She matched him drink for drink. She was hurting too. She had nightmares too. All she saw was the Pureblood Wizards and Witches who still thought she didn’t deserve her Magic. The ones who didn’t move an inch while she was tortured. A pair of tortured grey-blue eyes. And Bellatrix’s cackle. She didn’t resent Ron for doing what he had to, to keep sane.
It was okay until it wasn’t.
His suspicions and insecurities emerged tenfold. Accusing Harry and Hermione of sleeping together. Leaving him behind for the Auror training program. Spitting everything he had at them for his perceived lack of options and success. Hermione took it in stride, because he wasn’t wrong.
Then one day, she walked into Grimmauld Place. Harry was at the Ministry, tying up loose ends and making formal statements about the Battle of Hogwarts. Making testimonies for people who didn’t deserve it. Narcissa. Malfoy.
She was alone with only the Grandfather Clock in the living room ticking to keep her company. She knew the place like the back of her hand. One finger trailed up the bannister as she started to remove her clothing–first her T-shirt, then her trousers, and then her knickers and bra.
Kreacher appeared at the top of the stairs, checked her once over, and sneered, “Mudblood whore.” With a snap, he was gone. She scoffed at the air, still rife with smoke and a hum of Magic. She continued on her way.
A parchment note was left on the guest bed. They never fucked in Harry’s bedroom. She knew where she belonged – the guest bedroom.
She smiled, expecting it to be some naughty note about being naked and splayed open on the bed waiting for him. But the script was different, yet familiar.
I hope you’re happy.
Underneath the note was a pair of her soiled knickers. Her stomach dropped. And her heart pounded in her ears.
Hermione didn’t know how or when Ron found them. If he’d found them at Grimmauld Place or if Harry dropped it out of his trousers somewhere. They hadn’t had sex in months.
She checked around the note, desperately looking for more details, more information. More something. She must have looked like a right idiot. There was nothing else.
She quickly left Grimmauld Place, back to her tiny apartment in Muggle London.
Then the Floo calls started.
She didn’t take any calls. She avoided the Weasleys and Harry. She couldn’t face them. She’d left the note and her knickers in his guest bedroom, forgetting them in her haste. She was never going back there again.
Ron disappeared. Presumed dead. She waited for months upon months for news. Harry and her stopped seeing each other. All of his owls went unanswered.
She drank herself to sleep, to wake up, and every other time in between. In the rare times when she looked at herself, her face was gaunt, pallid, and haunted. One night, she couldn’t stand the reflection of herself anymore, and punched the mirror.
The glass cracked into several pieces, falling to the ground. Her fist bleeding, she allowed herself to step over the broken pieces on the floor. Wincing, but deserved.
73 days later after she found the note, a knock came to the door.
Her hand still bandaged and bruised, Hermione limped toward the sound.
It was Harry. He had a knapsack and a duffel bag. She didn’t say a word. She stepped aside to let him in.
Chapter 3: Acquainted
Summary:
Some more backstory here.
Mind the tags.
Chapter Text
Rihanna - Desperado
Harry
He couldn’t look at Ginny afterwards. She never knew explicitly. She never asked.
When Ron disappeared, the guilt consumed him. He had to leave.
He remembered the day so clearly. After his day at the Ministry, he Floo’d home, already hardening at the thought of Hermione on his bed. As he walked up the stairs, he undid his belt with a soft clink.
When he reached the guest bedroom expecting a waiting lover, instead was a note in Ron’s handwriting and Hermione’s knickers he’d kept in a wanton moment.
Did he leave them around the house? Did it drop out of his pocket last night?
It took a few minutes longer to piece together what happened.
Where was Hermione? She said she was going to be here. She saw the note and left. It didn’t matter. Ron knew.
He started to sweat, and his mouth ran dry.
He had to see her. But Hermione closed her Floo.
Hermione
She flew to Australia, the Muggle way. Adelaide, to be exact.
For two months, she watched her parents leave their house, head to work, go on dates, and take walks. She allowed herself to get closer when they went to the beach, watching them on a beachfront patio. She even smiled at them a few times. They always smiled back. But each time, they greeted her as if she were a stranger they had never met before. It seemed like they couldn’t even retain memories of her afterwards.
It stung, but it was right. Deserved.
Three days before she was about to head back to London, she was on the same patio, watching her parents throw a ball with their new puppy.
The back of her neck prickled. She turned to see no one, in particular. Hermione exhaled a sharp breath. Just a couple of brunch ladies. A few people on dates. And a small table of four.
Closest to her was a slim, dark-skinned man dressed in a dark navy T-shirt with his back toward her. He had long dreadlocks with round sunglasses. Her line of sight followed his hand, which laid on top of the thigh of another man’s grey trousers. This dark-haired man was long and lanky, whose legs reached half away across the table. Dressed in a collared white shirt and suspenders, there was a vintage quality to his outfit. He smiled sweetly at his lover(?).
On the other side of the handsome Black man was a small-framed woman, whose raven-black hair was shaped into a bouncy bob. Her lips were red and skin pale, looking sartorial in all-black crop top and leggings.
Facing her staring or perhaps glaring was a blonde man dressed in a black V-neck shirt, dirty jeans, and scuffed up chelsea boots. His grey eyes bore into her skull, like he wanted to kill her.
She gasped.
Draco fucking Malfoy.
In Australia.
She threw down some money and left.
When she arrived back at her tiny apartment in London, 30 different owls laid on her table. Most were from Harry. A couple from Molly. And one from the Ministry.
Two weeks later, Harry arrived at her doorstep with everything he owned.
Chapter 4: Gladstone Hotel
Summary:
Flashback from Harry's perspective. Then we move onto present day.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
David Bowie and Nine Inch Nails - I'm Afraid of Americans
Harry
Harry tried to sell Grimmauld Place, but it turned out he couldn’t. Some Blood Magic tying him to the land.
The unpleasant goblins in Gringotts informed him that if he wanted to relinquish the property, it would go immediately to the last surviving Black family member. He was fine with that.
Until he learned it was Malfoy.
Fuck that.
Instead, he packed up everything he needed and walled up the place with wards. Kreacher was placed with Andromeda and Teddy.
Ginny knew the end was coming. Neither of them had the courage to end it. She tried holding onto him, but he wasn’t there. Ginny knew he loved her, but he hated himself more. His heart in one place. His guilt in another. He couldn’t look at her without seeing Ron and his own betrayal.
Harry and Hermione spent the first month in bed, fucking and drinking. They barely talked. They could hardly look at each other.
For the next week, Draco is on edge. He heads to regular haunts with Theo and Blaise. Pansy tags along sometimes, but has no interest in watching him bed another woman. So she takes her leaves early.
Nothing out of the ordinary until the fifth day.
He is at the Gladstone Hotel with Blaise, knocking back whiskey sours, when he feels the familiar hum of Magic against his skin. Only this time, it’s heavier. Clings to his skin like a humid day.
A few people brush past his back, but no one lingers. The darkness of the bar and his own inebriation makes everything look a bit hazy. He feels eyes on him.
Draco stays for another hour, but nothing changes. As he throws down some cash, a young woman walks in front of him. The air vibrates with Magic. He swallows thickly. Dressed in a tight, black tank top and loose-fitting khakis, there’s something familiar about her, although he’s never seen her before. Black wavy hair. Freckles. Thick-rimmed glasses. Attractive. For a second, he wonders about what it’d be like to come on her glasses. Her skin is pale, luminescent.
Glamours.
He knows this Magic well. They shimmer off of her bare, freckled arms.
The young woman doesn’t even linger for a second. A few beats behind her, a blonde man with a scar on his face and his hair tied up in a short ponytail says “Tomorrow.” Barely perceptible. The blonde man’s skin blurs too. Draco watches them leave through the side exit. He can only see that the man was dressed in a vintage T-shirt and hole-y jeans.
That night, he dreams of the girl in glasses. Tangled in his limbs. Sweaty. He licks her neck. When Draco wakes up, his bed is wet and he came in his fist.
Notes:
Mind the tags!
Chapter 5: Coatroom
Summary:
The first present-day interaction between Draco and Hermione.
Chapter Text
Tricky - Teardrop
Hermione
They arrive at the Gladstone again. They sit at separate tables. Waiting. Watching.
She’s glamoured into the same raven-haired, bespectacled woman from yesterday, drinking a whiskey on the rocks. Instead of khakis, she’s wearing a simple black tank dress.
Harry sits a few tables away with his back to the door, nursing a beer. He’s glamoured into the same young, blonde man. He knows she likes it when he looks like this. They’re texting.
“2 min. Coatroom.”
“We’re on assignment.”
“Are you going to tell me no?”
She doesn’t tell Harry that she’s already seen Draco. Already caught his eye. He’s sitting at the bar, watching her watch him.
“I’ll hit the loo first.”
And suddenly, it feels like they’re the only two people in the room.
Hermione remembers him well. Her bully turned youngest Death Eater, watching frozen as his aunt carved those hateful words in her arm. She doesn’t blame him. Not really. She wondered if she would have done the same thing if her parents’ lives were at risk. What she didn’t forgive were the years before. He searched her out to spew slurs at her. His hateful eyes watched her. They were the same ones she remembered from Adelaide. Now his eyes were filled with something else. Suspicion. Curiosity. A hint of attraction.
Draco
Draco feels the Magic thrum through him. It’s heavy. Liquid. Pulls on his lower abdomen. It’s been so long since he’s been around such powerful Magic. And it makes him half-hard.
With the slightest crook of her lip, she draws his attention and walks back to the coatroom.
Draco waits five minutes. Then he follows.
He walks through the tight, dark corridors that are sticky and dirty, and adorned with posters and graffiti. Walks past the gross W.C.s that smell like piss. Looking for the young woman in the black dress.
Draco hears grunting and whispers. A clink of a belt. Rustling of fabric. A zip. Pushed up against the wall of the coatroom is the woman he saw yesterday and the one he’d been watching all night.
She doesn’t smile as she undresses her lover. There is nothing light about her. No playfulness. No fear of getting caught. Just a dark hunger she shows through the assuredness and practiced skill of her movements. She doesn’t hesitate as she pushes the man’s trousers down just beneath his arse, revealing it to Draco’s sight. Draco almost wants to walk away in disgust, but he doesn’t.
He sees the back of the blonde man rutting against her, breathing hard and lifting her up. Her hair is pushed against the wall, making it frizzy. Each thrust knocks her head loudly against the cheap plastic, makeshift room. The woman’s eyes widen at every thrust. He knows it hurts her, but she doesn’t say anything.
Her eyes are lidded. She doesn’t grunt or say contrived things like “Right there,” or “Oh yeah.” But he can smell sweat and sex in the small room. She doesn’t moan; she whimpers. Exhales heavily. Sometimes her breath catches. Her black dress is hitched up around her waist, legs obscenely wrapped against the man’s body. Bare feet except with one gold sandal hanging off her ankle. That ankle would haunt him from the rest of his life.
Draco wonders why no one is coming to the coatroom. Then he realizes that she probably cast a Muggle-repelling charm. He stands frozen at the door, but he can’t tear himself to look away.
The man’s moans get rougher and deeper. His thrusts are more erratic. She grabs his lover’s neck and pushes it against her breasts. Her hands slip in between their two bodies, as she touches herself. He can hear how wet she is from the thrusting. They don’t kiss.
Instead, under her heavy lids, her eyes lift up. She watches Draco watch her, then lets her mouth drop slightly open. With each thrust, the woman takes it further and remains unblinking. There is no way this is a mistake now. He is painfully hard. Straining across his jeans. Her face is expressionless, if a little dazed.
One of her hands wrapped around the nape of her lover’s neck slips between their bodies. Draco thinks it’s to touch herself. He fidgets, his cock even harder now. But she slips her hand under her tank and bra, bringing something small out. Her mouth starts mumbling something.
An enchanted galleon slips out of her hand and levitates to Draco’s fist gripped against his side. It glows red and gold.
She’s close now – her breaths are louder now, but she still doesn’t moan. She never breaks eye contact with Draco. The grunts get a little bit louder. He wishes he could Vanish the annoying man and just watch her play with her tits. They were small, freckled, and perky. He’d love to nip at them. He wonders what colours her areolas are–a dusty pink, light brown, or caramel?
Her head tilts and her eyes roll back. She comes. Shatters around the blonde man. She doesn’t cry out but shudders. Her thighs try to close around the man rhythmically. Her pants are heavy. Wet. Draco feels them in his hazy head and his crotch. Against his throat. Like a hand wrapped around it. Pulling under his belly button. Her legs squeeze tight around the blonde man’s waist. And she stops breathing for a few moments.
As the spasms wrack through her body, he watches in awe. This woman he doesn’t know–She is breathtakingly beautiful. The luminescence atop her skin rolls slowly down her body. The glamours wear off for a few seconds as her body convulses around her lover. Black turns to brown; dark eyes become flecked with gold; the pale skin turns tan. Her freckles stay. Her glasses are knocked halfway down the bridge of her nose. He’s so fucking hard right now.
While she comes down from her orgasm, she continues to look at him. She knows he’s watching. She quirks a small smile. She knows he knows who she is. He can barely hear the sounds of the man putting back on his trousers and muttering sweet nothings to her.
Hermione fucking Granger.
Just as quickly, her glamours come back up.
Draco backs out of the room, gripping the galleon.
Chapter 6: Motivation
Summary:
We need to get some of the plot points out of the way.
Happy Birthday, Minister of Magic Hermione Jean Granger! (19/09/1979) Our favourite self-insert character!
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Garbage - Paranoid
The galleon burned bright a few days later.
Meet at Hemingway’s. Rooftop. 9p. Bring snakes.
Draco threw the galleon against the wall.
It was an unseasonably warm night. The rooftop patio boasted a view of the Toronto skyline. It was a casual and unassuming place. Dawlish, Granger in glamours, and the blond guy were already there when Draco, Theo, Blaise, and Pansy arrived. They all were nursing a beer. “Welcome!” Dawlish exclaimed saccharinely. “Sit. Whatever you want tonight is on me.” They grunted and all ordered top shelf whiskey except Pansy who got a bottle of Prosecco.
They sat in silence until their drinks arrived, sizing up one and another.
As Draco poured the whiskey down his gullet, he couldn’t help but glare at the bespectacled Witch he knew to be Granger who was dressed in ripped Muggle jeans and a T-shirt. Dawlish did not miss this. He was bemused, “You’ve met, have you? Good. She’ll be your handler. Her name is Ally.”
“Bollocks,” Draco muttered.
“Excuse me?”
“I said it’s bollocks. I know who they are. At least the girl–”
The blond guy with the scar spoke up, “The less you know, the safer you lot will be.”
He knew that twangy, holier-than-thou voice. It was–
“Fucking Potter,” Draco sneered.
The blond froze. The table erupted in loud murmurs. Theo and Blaise whispered in angry hushes. Pansy shrieked and made to leave, pulling Draco’s shoulder and coat. He didn’t budge. His eyes never left Dawlish’s. He leaned ever closer toward the man in the trench and spoke loud enough so that everyone could hear. “I should have known. Where there’s the Mudblood, there has to be Scarhead sniffing around.”
“Go fuck yourself, Malfoy.” The first words she’d spoken all night.
Blaise
A few moments of silence.
“Our lives aren’t a game, Dawlish.” His posh voice cut through the tension. “We’ve lived well enough being left alone.”
Dawlish tucked into his third beer, “It’s not a game, Zabini. The DMLE needs your services. And we’re willing to pay the price.”
“Our vaults are not wanting,” Theo snickered.
“Of course not. Nothing as simple as galleons would persuade Purebloods. We do not expect it. We want to trade. Your connections in Pureblood society for the release of your family members from Azkaban into house arrests. You can even return from your self-exile. Go back to London, if you so wish. Wands snapped, of course. All is forgiven,” Dawlish finished and leaned back against a rickety plastic chair, resting his chin on steepled fingers and looking pleased with himself.
“If we refuse?” Blaise’s jaw tensed.
“You four will be fine. We certainly can’t force you,” Dawlish gave a smarmy smile. “You all were underaged when you took the Mark and you could argue that you were influenced by your family members. Even though some in the Magical World may still despise you, the Wizengamot could probably only get you for 1-2 two years at most; most likely probation. We have no interest in prosecuting baby Death Eaters. However, your parents, on the other hand—their stint in Azkaban could be made far more … cruel, let’s just say. You do know that Dementors no longer function as the guards, right? They’re just, um, red blooded squibs now. Think of what they’d love to do to the top tier of Magical society. The very same society that turned their back on squibs.” The horror of what he implied was not lost on any one of them.
Dawlish was disgusting. I’ll get you back for this.
As if that were not enough, Dawlish added one more twist to his knife, “I hear your mother is very beautiful. Perhaps I could pay her a vis-.”
Blaise’s eyes twitched. He gripped his tumbler, ready to smash it against the Auror’s head. Theo immediately circled Blaise’s knuckles with his thumb, calming him.
His mother–he hadn’t seen her in almost five years. The last thing she remembered was a hurried kiss on his forehead as the dust settled after the Battle of Hogwarts. He immediately Apparated home, only to see his mother frantic with her luggage packed. They only had a few days–maybe hours–before the DMLE descended on all the Death Eater families. Her hazel eyes glowed with fear when she saw him appear in their hearth. She took a key out hidden in her brassiere and pressed it into his palm, “Empty the vaults, amore mio. Don’t come back. Never come back. Dimenticami. Forget me.”
“I guess we can all stop pretending now.” Harry slowly let his glamors slough off him. Hermione sat behind him, put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed, whispering in his ear. He grunted. His glamors went back up.
Dawlish admonished them, “So fucking careless, blowing your covers like that. You have the arrogance of youth.”
Harry retorted, “I don’t know how Malfoy found out.”
“You can thank your little slag of a baby Auror there,” Malfoy jutted his chin to point in Granger’s direction.
Harry’s chair immediately screeched back and he grabbed Malfoy by the lapels. His green eyes burned. “Give me a reason, Malfoy. You think I won’t do it? I’ve been waiting years to do this.” Harry hissed in his ears. Draco’s eyes showed no expression, as if bored by the exchange. Harry suddenly felt a strong stab in his stomach. In Malfoy’s sleeve was his hidden wand pointed directly at his liver. He dug it into Harry’s skin.
“Entirely too much testosterone,” Pansy noted as she sat back down and checked her nails for chips.
“Sit down,” Dawlish commanded. His initially playful tone was gone. “I don’t care what kind of history or pissing contest you two have going on. You’re drawing attention to yourselves.” It was true. Several patrons were whispering and looking over at the table. “You’re going to get debriefed and this will be the last time you ever see me. Granger and Potter will receive orders from me. You all will learn to work together or blow each other up. Either way, less paperwork for me.”
Harry pushed Malfoy back onto the wobbly chair. When Malfoy sunk into his seat, it let out a sick plastic-y squeak. Granger did not look amused.
Theo finally spoke up, “Just tell us what the fuck is going on. I’m going to miss the Real Housewives.” He snapped his suspenders to emphasize his point.
Dawlish lit up a Muggle cigarette, his hair falling across his eyes. Open air and whatnot. After taking a few drags, he began, “Someone’s been killing Wizards and Witches. Leaving their bodies to be found in Muggle areas. New York. A few in Montreal. The most recent victim was in Toronto. It started in London.”
“How? Avadas ?” Pansy asked.
Dawlish answered, “Muggle means. Violent. Up close. Sometimes a rope. Knife. Sometimes a gun at close range. There’s no pattern except a slow and drawn out death.”
Blaise crossed his arms.“So who’s to say it’s not a disgruntled Muggleborn?”
“Evidence left at the crime scenes,” Granger clipped.
“Which is?”
“It’s better if you don’t know,” Granger said. The Slytherin snakes all scoffed at her.
Draco reasoned, “You have to give us more than that. You expect us to risk our lives just on your word, a would-be rapist Auror and two thirds of the not-so-Golden Trio. Where’s the Weasel anyway?”
Neither of them answered, choosing to look away instead. Hermione focused on the skyline.
Draco filed that away for later, “How do you know the killer’s a Wizard? Could be just some unfortunate Wizard meeting his doomed end by a mugging gone wrong.”
Dawlish responded, “Jewellery, wallets, and purses stay on the person’s body. There are other signs too. For one thing, two playing cards are left near each victim, a two and an eight.”
A heavy silence fell on the reluctant motley crew.
“Sacred 28. Basically, you’re telling us we’re potentially next,” Blaise surmised.
“Precisely,” Dawlish offered a sick smile. “Think of it as extra motivation.”
“All Purebloods?” Blaise asked.
“So far,” Dawlish let out a long exhale of smoke. His end of his cigarette crackled and burned red as he pulled another drag in.
“Any motivation to think of? Semen on the scene? Communique to the DMLE? Floo calls? Owls? Howlers? I’ve read that some serial killers like to brag.” Everyone looked at Pansy. “What? I like true crime,” she shrugged.
“Other than killing off Purebloods one by one, no clues. No Magical trace. No DNA,” Dawlish nodded to Pansy pointedly. “We figured we start here. The most recent murder in Toronto. The proximity to the victim during the murder act suggests the killer and victims know each other."
"Or they really hate Purebloods," Pansy suggested.
Dawlish nodded. "They want to see them suffer. Here’s the file. Info there is on a need-to-know basis,” Dawlish slid a folder toward Blaise and Theo.
Theo immediately got his grubby hands on it and devoured the information. He curled his upper lip, “So there's not much of us left. Purebloods, that is. Can't say I'm too sad about that.” Dawlish's eyes immediately trained on him and gave Theo a curious look. Before Theo could comment on it, the expression was gone.
“Precisely the problem,” Potter agreed. “Add to that the money these families bring in to Wizarding society–”
“And these crimes get bumped straight up to the top of the list for the DMLE. No expenses spared for Purebloods,” Hermione’s voice dripped with sarcasm.
Draco said pointedly, “ You’re here. They pay your salary. You’re not such a bleeding heart that you won’t take their money.” Her eyes flashed golden much like that night in the coatroom. He felt his cock twitch. Her gaze flickered across his lap. She smirked, like she knew the effect she had on him.
Fucking cunt.
“Spoken like a little boy who’s never had to work a day in his life. You think it’s so wrong for the working class to get fairly compensated for their work; that we need to feel guilty about earning a living wage? Oh, of course not. Your whole lot thrives on slave labo–”
“Spare me your social justice spiel, Granger. Do you see a fucking elf around you?”
“Shut it, the both of you,” Dawlish grunted.
“What do you need us for?” Theo asked.
“Your Pureblood society connections. We need you to leverage them. The Sacred 28 are notoriously private. Most of them have barely even admitted their family members have passed.”
“Wouldn’t it be a little suspicious if we all go back together after being missing for five years? Even I know that,” Theo drawled.
Dawlish said, “We need some of you in London; some of you here. We’ll give you a DMLE-sanctioned Portkey , so you can move back and forth. Ask around. Figure out who the victims were seeing and doing up to the day they died. ”
“Do you have any suspects?” Blaise inquired.
All of the Aurors shook their heads, “Whoever it is can move through the Magical and Muggle world seamlessly without being noticed or raising any hackles.”
“Another Pureblood,” Draco surmised. Dawlish nodded glumly. “What’s the other thing?” he pressed.
“What the what?” Dawlish asked.
“You said there were a few things that identified the killer as a Wizard,” he explained.
“Or a Witch,” Hermione admonished.
Blaise and Theo snickered derisively. “Only you would make a murder case into a gender issue, Granger. I believe the correct term you’re looking for is Magical folk,” Pansy added with a sneer.
Dawlish ignored the bickering and continued, “That’s classified.”
Draco scoffed, "You want us to risk our lives for incomplete information?"
"For gods sake, Draco! Don't be so dramatic. All we want is information from your inbred Pureblood circle. You have a chance to do one good thing for the world. Make amends for the huge mistake that is your life. The galleon will burn bright when we need you. Keep it close to your body,” Hermione commanded.
“I’m not a fucking dog,” Draco snarled.
“Well, here’s your leash,” Hermione retorted. She pushed three black watches across their table. “Those are your Portkeys. It’ll activate at specified times when we need you to travel.” She thrusted another one in his face, “Take it.”
With that, they were dismissed. Harry and Dawlish headed to the bar to order one more drink. The Slytherins stood up and filed down the stairs. Draco was last. He looked Hermione up and down, clearly ogling her and further encouraging her ire. Before leaving, he squatted down in front of her, studying her for several moments, "You called me Draco."
"That's your name, isn't it?" Her chin jutted out in defiance.
He smirked, changing the subject and keeping her on her toes. "You know even with your glamors on, your freckles don't change. Just like in Adelaide. And. Just. Like. In. The. Coatroom." Her eyes glowed behind her thick-rimmed glasses. The only sign that she acknowledged what he said. She wonder where he was going with this. He slowly leaned forward, reaching to cup her jaw. She leaned forward ever so slightly. His hand skated across her skin to reach behind her ear, "You tried, Granger. The slutty thing. The eye contact. The power move. But I know something you don't want me to know."
Hermione hated that she leaned forward. Like a moth to a flame. She was going to burn. She was going to pay for what she did. She lost already. Her mouth dropped open slightly.
"What?" Barely a whisper.
His long fingers ghosted her dark hair and the nape of her neck. Just hinting at a touch, but never touching. When he pulled back, he had the enchanted galleon in his hand that he flipped up in the air, "You called out my name when you came. And ever since that night, you think about me when Potter is between your thighs. I'm who you see when you come."
As the Slytherins walked home in the dark, Draco lit up a cigarette and took a deep drag. They were silent. Suddenly, it came to him as they walked down Yonge Street. Each corner smelled like piss and wet garbage. The seedy lights of sex shops and strip clubs gave their faces an unearthly yellow glow.
“Dawlish didn’t tell us everything.”
“No shit, Draco,” Theo exclaimed.
“It’s because we’re also the suspects.”
Notes:
Hermione is just talking about herself when she yells at Draco. And vice versa for Draco. 😏
Chapter 7: Do it
Summary:
Nothing to see here except Draco and Hermione fucking.
CW: Rough sex.
Chapter Text
Foals - Late Night
Draco
October crashes into November. They rarely spoke unless they had to. They communicate mainly through the galleon. Most instructions are straightforward. Bring a partner. Watch the factories on Richmond West. Men coming in and out. See who brings in old items.
They got a lead on a Half-Blood who made illegal Porteys. That person was likely to have met the killer, or so Dawlish reasoned.
Tonight, Hermione sends another message. The coin glows fat and gold. His pulse quickens. He hates himself for it.
“Go to The Pub. Corner of Portland and King. Watch where the man on the velvet couch goes. Bring Pansy. He likes to watch.”
For some reason, this sets him off. He sends a frantic message to her without thinking.
“Rivoli. 15 minutes.”
He doesn’t stop to think if she’ll come. The place is disgusting. The floors are sticky. Dank. Dark. Smells like piss. Drunkards spend the day at the bar or playing pool on the frayed green wool surface. Everything there is broken or old. There’s a secret burlesque bar at the back that he sometimes frequents.
Draco sits at the bar with a finger of whiskey, hunched over and slouched in his light trench. He waits. Just as he finishes the last of his drink, the door opens and he sees her. Without glamours. Ridiculous hair. Tight black sweater and loose black trousers with just a hint of her waist peeking through. She frowns at him, but sits on the stool next to him.
“Whiskey on the rocks,” she calls to the bartender. He nods his acknowledgement.
“What?” Hermione asks curtly.
“What? What do you mean ‘what?’ We’ve been on this–whatever this is for months. I don’t know what we’re doing. I have no idea who we’re looking f–”
She cuts him off, “It’s better that way. Keeps you four safer.”
Draco snorts, “Like you fucking care.”
She shrugs. They drink in silence. Hermione is the first to speak, “So you’re going tonight?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Of course you do. Bring Pa–”
“I heard you the first time,” he growls. Draco grips her by the wrist tightly, so tight it hurts. But she doesn’t make a sound. He throws money on the bar and drags her out to the alleyway behind the burlesque dancer entrance.
He may or may not have fucked one of them against the dressing room wall a year or two ago. Who remembers?
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” She screams the second they are out in the cold. The grey day turned into night. They are surrounded by high plastic trash bins and an open, dark blue dumpster blocks them from passersby. It smells horrible. Sour. Banana peels. And piss.
“I’m not some fucking puppy that you can just order to do whatever you want. I’m not Potter! I don’t perform on command. I’m definitely not you,” he sneers, his contemptuous meaning clear.
Hermione doesn’t miss a beat, “No, you don’t, do you? But you like to watch. That’s. All. You’ve. Ever. Done.” Her meaning was clear.
Draco slams her into the brick wall. If it hurts, she doesn’t let on. She pants. Puffs of white breaths hang in the cold autumnal air between them. He looks at her with pure anger. Almost hatred. She reminds him of everything he is. A coward. And everything he isn’t. A man.
Her chin juts forward. Her eyes burn bright. “Do it.” He rams her mouth against hers. It’s not so much a kiss, as it is a punishment for making him feel all these things he long wished were dead. Inadequacy. Anger. Jealousy. Feeling small and unseen. He bites her lower lip and pulls. He wants her to hurt. She yelps and pushes him away. Only to grab his belt and undo it. Then she grabs him by the nape of neck and pulls him back against her chest. Their first proper kiss is bruising and tastes like blood.
He never wanted anything more.
He Apparates them back to his flat. She looks around when they land. His place is cold and grey. He discards his trench and waits to give her an out. She pulls him by his belt and undoes his zip, pushing down both his pants and boxers. Draco slips one calloused hand up her sweater to squeeze her breast roughly, as he continues to kiss her and lick the blood off between their lips and her jaw. She shudders. He nearly tears the sweater off of her. He can hear the fabric rip slightly as he pulls it off up and off her head.
They’re quite the pair. Her topless. Him pantsless.
They drink each other in, heaving. Hermione pushes off his white dress shirt, nipping at his neck, chest, and stomach, while she undos each button. When she reaches his belly button and the dark blonde, wiry hair near his cock, she licks everywhere–his belly button, his hips, the trails down his thighs–but his cock. He moans and wills himself to remember to flagellate himself later.
Draco pulls her up and kisses her. Like he’s trying to eat her. Like he’s trying to hurt her. It’s wet and messy. There’s no art to it. It’s all teeth and tongue. He licks up her jaw and down her neck. He walks them back to his room. There’s a small lamp beside his bed that offers miniscule lighting. He pushes her onto the unmade bed.
Hermione
It smells like him, she notices. Masculine. Deep tones. Woodsy.
She allows him to pull down her trousers. They’re easy to divest because of the elastic waistband. Now they’re naked in front of each other. Her laidback on her elbows with a slightly rounded belly and muscular legs slightly spread out in front of him. Him with his pale, strong arms girding around her waist. His hard, thick cock standing up between their sweaty bodies. She tries not to stare at it twitching.
“Is this what you want?” he asks ominously.
“No, it’s what you want.” Hermione grabs his cock and slides it into her. Draco is surprised and groans loudly at the tight wetness of her cunt. He grunts and pushes deep inside her, taking over. She breathes lower and harder. A sound he memorized in his dreams.
He fucks her harshly. Up and into her. He wants her to come. He wants to hurt her. He wants to do both. He wants to imprint his cock into her body.
She stares at him. Barely blinks. The only way he knows she’s enjoying it is the wetness between their thighs and her clenching around him.
Hermione lifts her right arm that was previously gripping his back and turns it toward Draco. She wraps her legs around him-holding him in place-and in the most vicious voice she could muster, she whispers, “Look at it.” His pace almost stutters.
The letters carved into her skin are now a pale pink, but still stands out, puckered against her arm. He yells something horrible into her neck.
Yes. Yes. This was good. Let him hate her.
Draco grabs her arms and pushes them on either side of her head, caging her in. His pace increases. She can feel her orgasm building as each thrust of his hips press against her clit. He is experienced enough to push a second longer against her pelvic bone. She almost wants to cry at how perfect the sensation is. The rolling waves. The curls of her toes. The flex of her tight calf muscles. She wraps her legs tight around his hips, urging him on. The motions mimic what her cunt is doing. Her breathing is so heavy now that it dampens the shell of his ear.
His longer body stretches up and over her head, and he’s no longer looking at her. Instead, Draco positions himself slightly askew so his mouth catches her right forearm. He’s still thrusting. Never stopping. Only deeper now. Slower. More intentional.
She feels it coming. She prepares herself. Her body stiffens. And then a cool sensation surprises her. Draco is licking her arm.
No, her scars.
Her orgasm recedes, but she clenches tighter around him. He grits his teeth and grumbles against the pulse on her wrist. She continues to pulse around him. He continues to lick the word ‘Mudblood,’ trying to remove it from her skin. He’s getting close. His thrusts are becoming more erratic and staccato.
Her free hand reaches down to pull and play gently with his balls. He screams against her arm and bites down. As soon as he does, Draco continues to lick her salty skin. Five more thrusts. They’re long, hard, and deep. Spilling everything he has, wants, and owns inside her.
“Fucking bitch,” he mumbles into her skin.
She starts to move from underneath him. He doesn’t let her up, using his body weight to crush her. But he doesn’t look at her. His head is buried in the space between her neck and shoulders and the sheets. His hands let her arms go. They tingle.
His fingers make their way across her chest, down her stomach, to the small tuft of hair on her mound, and finally to her wet, puffy lips, now dripping with their combined fluids. He pushes his cum back inside her. Hermione starts squirming. The pressure is intense. She’s swollen and oversensitive.
Draco uses the slick to draw tight circles around her clit frictionlessly. She huffs. He knows enough not to touch it directly. He patiently draws tight circles around her pelvic mound. Gathering up more of her slickness along her slit every few passes. Despite herself, she starts to move her hips in tandem with his movements. Her pants grow heavy again.
Each press and circle around her clit brings her closer. She squeezes against his shoulder, digging into his skin, to let him know. Or maybe she can’t help herself. She doesn’t say anything but she wants to leave her marks everywhere. Hurt him.
Because fuck him.
Draco
Her breaths become erratic. Deep. Whiny. And he presses one finger inside of her, feeling her heavy throbs around him. He can’t help it and removes his hand. She cries out at the loss–thinking he’s done–until he maneuvers her body and pushes his already-hard cock inside of her again. Fast, punishing thrusts to make sure she rides out her orgasm. Wave after wave. Her body twists and turns underneath his. Hermione cries out at the unexpected intrusion. The thickness of him. The heaviness of his body. His thrusts. His hips meeting hers. It feels so right.
She comes again. Flailing her limbs. Low, deep throbs that pulse through her hips and into his. He groans into her at each pulse. She still doesn’t make a noise beyond her laboured breathing. He licks up and down her neck. Savouring the salty taste mixed with flowers from her perfume behind her ear. It’s just like his dream.
Hermione moves to leave again, pushing him off of her. She doesn’t get far. She sits on the edge of bed, trying to regain her bearings and her knickers. Draco senses her skittishness, and he grabs her by her hair, pulling her back to bed. He’s rough. She screams in pain and punches him in the face. It barely lands. He flinches slightly. His left hand reaches her sternum and shoves her back down, leaving red fingerprints across her chest. She pushes back with her upper body, leaning into the pain. He hopes it bruises. Grabbing her elbows, he thrust his half-hard cock back into her, still wet and sticky from his cum. This time, she screams. Gripping her hip and deliberately digging into bone, he pushes him inside for several thrusts. She stops resisting and for a second, gently squeezes his bicep with one hand and the other curls around the nape of his neck, pushing his face onto her. They fall asleep for a few minutes.
When he jolts awake, his body responds immediately. He can’t seem to get enough of this stupid Witch. She opens her legs agreeably with a dazed look in her eyes. He fucks her lazily with his pelvis never leaving hers, providing her clit with the friction and pressure she needs. Her orgasm comes in slow waves, as his cock glides and catches against her inner walls. Finally. Fuck. There. They come together in a slippery summit.
The sounds are wet and loud, echoing throughout the room. Filthy. Dirty. Just like him. Her pulsing around him as he pushes inside once more, fucking her until he’s soft.
When it’s over and she’s spent, falling asleep in his arms. Head dropping low. Sideways on his mattress. The last thing he hears before he drifts off is, “Fucking ferret.”
Chapter 8: Sloppy seconds
Summary:
The aftermath of that night.
CW: Hate sex.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Stone Sour - Through Glass
For a more immersive experience of Ch. 8, please press play.
Draco
Draco reaches for her several more times that night. Each time, she’s amenable, her hot breath hitching in his ear. He lifts her legs up and folds them into her chest until she’s nothing but a hole to fuck.
The last time, he holds her from behind, hitching her leg above and across his hip, and rocks into her slowly. So slowly. Pressing down rhythmically on her pelvic bone as he pushes into her. His fingers bathes in their combined fluids, then brings his finger to her mouth. Hooking inside it. She swirls and sucks. This enrages him for some reason. His grip on her becomes punishing. He pulls out, then slips back in. Again and again. Harder and harder. Bruising her tailbone.
She doesn’t cry out. If anything, her watery eyes egg him on.
There’s no gentleness as he grips her small breasts. Twisting and turning her nipples. He pounds into her with more force than he should. Until they reach a slippery summit, climaxing together with her pulsing around his cock in hot, silky spasms. Hermione falls asleep with him still inside her, dozing until she feels him soften and slip out.
In the grey light of dawn, he hears a rustling next to him. With her naked back to him, he sees the marks he left. Bruises. Bites. He wants to trace them. Leave more. But she pulls on her black jumper.
He tries to pretend he was asleep, but her Auror instincts tell her he's awake.
“This was fun,” she says without affect.
He grunts in response.
Draco doesn’t move until he hears the click of his door.
Blaise
The population of Magical Britain is small and close-knit.
Theo and Blaise are called to London for a week with Dawlish monitoring them by proxy. They go through their society connections, the Bulstrodes, the Burkes, the Carrows, the Rowles, the Prewetts, the Warringtons, and so forth, trying to find if anyone is missing. They tell them they were in hiding. Not a lie. Many families were Voldemort sympathizers, so they understood and didn't ask too many more followup questions.
Nothing turns up.
Blaise itches to visit his mother in Azkaban, but he remembers her last words, “Never come back. Forget me.” As they make the rounds through Diagon Alley, he remembers everything. The way that he and Theo had to hide their relationship. Stolen kisses that tore at each other. Quick, angry fucks in dark alcoves. Telling Theo awful things so he would stay away until they both broke again. He digs his wand into his hand until it bleeds.
Theo knows him better than he knows himself. He offers a calming touch on Blaise's shoulder. Blaise immediately shrinks back, “D-don’t.”
Theo’s blue-green eyes flashes, “Old habits die hard, don't they?”
Harry
Hermione has been distant. When he reaches for her, she acquiesces but there is no fire in her eyes. She smells different.
Is there someone else?
They never talk about it. But he’s been almost certain there hasn’t been. Whenever he tries to broach the subject over the years–making it official–she slinks away, saying “Isn’t this enough?”
He stubs a cigarette out, twisting his boot heel on the butt.
What else is there?
Glamoured, Harry follows a lead to the Half-Blood, making illegal Portkeys. He corners him in a factory down Shuter Street, and forces Veritaserum down his throat.
“Stupefy.”
When he comes to, the Half-Blood is tied to a chair, with his hands twisted back unnaturally. He groans in pain. Harry, squatting down, wipes away the Wizard’s long, black, straggly hair stuck to his face with blood and sweat. Glaring at Harry, he spits on the floor.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Harry says quietly, as he draws his wand along the Half-Blood’s face.
“Spare me, blondie. What do you want? Galleons?”
Harry chuckles, “Nothing so pedestrian. Just tell me who you’ve been making Portkeys for, and I’ll let you go.”
“I make lots of Portkeys,” the Wizard grits his teeth, resisting the serum.
“I want to know about the one that takes you between Toronto and London.”
The Half-Blood gives a crude smile, “Of course you do.”
“I’m getting impatient.”
His eyes turn a steel grey. Harry knows he’s Occluding . So Harry punches him. Again and again. Bringing his head back each time. The sick squelch of skin on bone excites him. He thinks of Hermione. Her body writhing underneath another man. Blood, teeth, and snot fall to the floor.
By the time Harry is done, the sun has set.
“You ready to tell me?”
“Fuck you, baby Auror.”
“You know me,” Harry states simply.
“You and your whore. I can see through your glamours.”
His face then started to bubble and shift.
Polyjuice.
Hermione
Hermione avoids Draco for weeks.
She made a mistake. As she leaves his apartment in the harsh light of day, the door to the apartment next to his opens. It’s Pansy, looking her up and down. She wasn’t prepared for the look Pansy gave her.
Horror. Anger. Disgust. Jealousy.
Before Pansy slams the door, she whispers, “Why did you come here?”
Harry returns to their hotel. She insisted on two rooms. Harry is distraught. Glamours gone, his dark hair tousled and eyes red rimmed. He fucks her into her bed. He’s rough, his green eyes glaze over. She doesn’t mind it. She comes with a whimper. She deserves it.
Right before he leaves, he tells Hermione they have a meeting with the Snakes in 20 minutes at the hotel bar. There are new developments. His trousers are still undone when he walks out. Harry pauses outside her hotel door before shutting it loudly.
She cleans herself up and prepares to leave the room.
Outside, leaning against wall in the hallway is Draco.
“Harry called you here,” she states.
“He did,” he clips.
She wishes she could lie and say she doesn’t feel anything. But that’s what she does, doesn’t she? Break things. Her parents. Ron. Gin. Harry. Now Malfoy. She schools her face into an impassive expression, “Our meeting’s downstairs.”
She doesn’t meet his eyes, the only indication of her shame.
Before she can pull the door close, Draco pushes her into the room.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” she yells, pushing back.
He crowds her face. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Having Potter’s cum drip out of you when mine has barely dried. You’re a disgusting whore.”
“Why do you care? I didn’t ask you to be here!”
“No, Scarhead did. He did it deliberately.”
“We’re nothing, Malfoy. A mistake.”
“Is that what this is?”
“It was a one-off. You got to stick your cock into some Muggle cunt. Scratched that itch.”
Draco laughs dryly, “You think you’re the first one? I’ve been living in the Muggle world for five years. You’re not special.”
“Then stop acting like I am!”
Draco
The room smells like sex. Resentment coils in the pit of his gut. His mouth goes dry, and his cock hardens just from being around her.
He pushes her down on the wrinkled bed easily. He hates this. He hates this. The sheets smell like Potter. But before he can stop himself, he strides forward. Her legs part for him as he steps between them.
Her eyes are big and stupid. She looks tired. Her face is too thin, gaunt and her cheeks sunken in, miles removed from the chubby cheeked teenager with tangled hair and a snaggle tooth he knew. If he liked her even a little, he would ask her how she was, but he wouldn’t. Shouldn’t. Couldn’t. Would never.
“Don’t,” she says, but it's without bite.
He frowns at the Witch before him. He hesitates, and she stands to slip past him. His cock throbs. Aches to be inside her again.
So he grabs her right arm to pull her back and bites down on her scar. Shocked, she slaps him. It doesn’t hurt much, but it angers him anyway.
“I’m not a whore.”
“If it walks like one and talks like one,” he grits out.
She slaps him again, “You’re the one who’s here!”
“Come on now. We both know you want it. What’d Potter say when he saw his precious Golden Girl all marked up?”
“You’re being cruel.”
Draco grits his teeth and grabs her waist, flipping up her casual black dress and yanks down her white cotton underwear. He’s so rough that one side rips from her hips. He doesn’t bother to take off the rest. He turns her around, pushing her face down into the bed. She doesn’t struggle. He doesn’t like that. He pushes two fingers inside her, making her flail at the unexpected intrusion.
He begins to fuck her with his fingers, not caring if he’s thrusting too hard. He pushes and pulls, trying to find that rough spot inside her. Finally. Finally, she starts pushing back against his hand. She whimpers and his cock jumps.
Fuck her.
She drips down his hand and her thighs, his fingers glistening under the lowlights of the room. He slaps her arse harshly, leaving a red mark and a trail of her wetness. It only makes him harder.
He hates her.
He threads his wet fingers through her tangled mess of hair and pulls. He whispers against her hair, “Don’t pretend you don’t like this. You want me to use you like this.”
Hermione yelps in pain and falls backwards to the bed. He unbuttons his jeans and pulls at the zip, freeing his cock. She hardens her gaze as she roams over his body. For some reason, her eyes make him pause.
“Do you live with him?”
“Not anymore,” her chest rising and falling.
He nods and lifts her legs around his waist. She lets him maneuver her, while he lines himself up at her entrance. Her cunt is pretty. He’s never described a woman’s anatomy like that before. But looking down between them, she’s small, swollen, wet with a peek of pink, protruding lips that grab and suck him in so perfectly. He will lick and suck on them one day.
His grey-blue eyes searches her face for one brief moment before he sinks into her. She squirms around his cock, growing hotter and wetter. Her inner walls clench around him, and fuck, it feels good having her wrapped around him. It takes all his concentration not to cum instantaneously. So he buries himself into her neck, mumbling hateful, filthy things to her about sloppy seconds and fuck Potter.
“Stop it!” she yells. Draco pauses, for a second wondering if he’s gone too far. She pushes back on his chest, snapping her head forward and catching his lips into a frantic kiss. Then she bites him, drawing blood.
He growls and reaches between their bodies and slaps her cunt. She moans. He does it again. Then she’s squeezing his cock, milking him. He pulls out, and pushes in again slowly, forcing through her spasming walls. He looks down where they’re joined, and is mesmerized by how her pink, fluffy lips stretch around him. He presses down on the space between her breasts–feeling how her heart beats and how tight her light brown nipples are, poking through her thin dress–and slides one hand to her mound, while the other keeps tight around her hips.
He doesn’t stop fucking her. She bites her lower lip and turns away from his face.
He hates that she’s not looking at him. Thinking of Potter or someone else that isn’t him. He hates her.
But she angles her pelvis up, so he slides deeper into her. He slams into her hatefully and digs his fingers into skin. She wails in pleasure.
He likes that she finally makes a sound. Those sounds he hears in his dreams. That he hasn’t stopped thinking about since that night.
Draco presses down on her again and pinches her clit. She cries out against his mouth, pulsing around him like molasses. Slow, heavy throbs. She reaches out to massage his balls, almost gently but fuck, it’s perfect. Their eyes meet for a brief moment. And that's it. He comes, hot and hard. Spilling into her everything he doesn’t want. Everything that he does.
The kisses come gentler now. They kiss and kiss while rocking slowly into each other. She tastes like salt and blood. He likes that. He wonders if there’s anything about her that he wouldn’t like.
When they finally come down and separate, Draco watches as he spills out of her. He replaces his cock with his fingers, and pushes his cum back into her. Harshly.
Then he abruptly stands, pulling up his trousers and leaves the room.
Hermione
Hermione is the last to arrive at the bar. She’s changed and her hair is wet.
Harry eyes her up and down, but she doesn’t look at him. All the Snakes have ordered their drinks. Pansy shoots daggers at her. “Do you want something?”, he asks.
“No. Just get this over with. I have a debrief with Dawlish in the morning. London time.”
“Well, the lead was fruitful. Found him in a factory downtown, milling about. Stupefy'd him and I stuffed some Veritaserum down the Half-Blood’s throat. Kept him with me until he had to spill everything.”
“Harry–”, she admonished.
“Shut up! Spare me your lecture about ethics. You’re not the one.”
Draco snapped at Harry, “Is this your way of staying the centre of attention, Scarhead? Just tell us. Some of us have lives to get back to.”
Harry gripped his wand but Hermione lightly squeezes his arm, and his hand lowered. He lets out a deep breath. Draco's eyes flashes at her hand placement. “By the time we were done, his Polyjuice potion wore off. And ... it was Seamus. He was helping out a friend.”
The small group broke out in loud murmurs.
"Finnigan?" Theo exclaims. "From school?! He's the Portkey maker?"
"What?!" Blaise asks. "How-he was barely literate."
“What does this mean?” Pansy shrieked.
Finally, Harry said, “It’s Ron.”
Notes:
Mind the tags.
Chapter 9: Waterfront Trail
Summary:
A short filthy chapter for you to get back into the swing of things. True crime will follow.
Please read the tags. This is not a nice love story. The characters are not coping healthily. They are mean, unhappy people.
CW: Angry sex.
Chapter Text
Suggested listening: Solid Gold - The Pendulum
Draco
Hermione leaves with Harry to London soon after the news breaks. She doesn't say goodbye. He doesn't expect her to. Draco does not see her for weeks, maybe months. He doesn't know. The days run together. He doesn't care.
Orders come rarely. When they do, they're usually for Theo and Blaise. A Portkey to there or here to make appearances with the Sacred 28 and ask seemingly mundane questions. It's better for Draco to stay lost. He was too close to it all. No one would tell him anything willingly or regard his sudden re-appearance with anything but apprehension and suspicion.
Life goes on. He still frequents bars, sometimes with Pansy. But he rarely does it now. He can't stand the look on her face when he approaches yet another woman. It's easier to ignore her. Treat her with indifference. He knows he's only hurting her more.
Good. Maybe one day, she'll smarten up and leave.
Even Blaise stops going with him. "That's fucked up, mate. Put Pans out of her misery."
Draco pushes him away. "I don't fuck her!", he slurs.
Blaise straightens his blazer. "Don't be daft. There's more than one ways to hurt a Witch." He throws a bill on the counter and leaves him in a stupor.
He takes them home. Leaves them cab money and always is out of his apartment before dawn.
Sometimes he wakes up alone. The sun isn't up yet.
He finds an impossibly long, dark curly hair somewhere in his flat. He never takes home a woman with curly hair.
Pansy notices before he does.
It's disgusting, she says.
He sneers at her and she shuts up.
That night, he wraps the hair around his cock and fucks his fist.
When he doesn't fuck faceless women, he builds Ikea furniture by Muggle means. To keep his hands busy.
If he ever thinks about it, there is some sort of irony to this.
One night, a woman observes as she rolls down her tights. "You have a lot of projects going on." She looks around his cold, vast place filled with partially built, cheap furniture.
Draco grunts his acknowledgement.
"They're not the best quality, y'know. With the kind of place you have, I assume you can afford bespoke furniture."
He doesn't look at her as he divests himself of his dress shirt. It doesn't matter. "Not really looking for financial advice."
She shrugs. "It's not even real wood."
"Keeps me busy," he says noncommittally.
The woman arches a brow. "Are you some sort of fuckboi heir?"
Draco laughs hollowly. "Probably."
"I think maybe you're more than that."
He doesn't miss a beat. "Turn around."
In the grey morning, Draco pushes himself up from the bed. The coin he always keeps close by burns hot. His chest expands painfully. It tells him the location.
He leaves money on the woman's side of the night stand and slams the door.
[Image: Waterfront]
Draco climbs down the stone steps toward the lake. He sees her at the harbour in her disguise: pale, straight black hair, square glasses, in a simple dark dress and runners, looking out into the water. Her freckles are the same.
It's too early for there to be a large crowd. But there are a few transients and houseless individuals far away.
He finishes his cigarette and slows down his steps. He knows she knows he's here. She stiffens.
As he approaches, he mumbles, "Finite."
Her disguise slowly melts away. If she's surprised, she doesn't show it.
It's her ugly, frizzy hair and tanned skin again.
A breeze from the lake comes in. She smells warm, wet, and salty. Without saying anything, he immediately latches onto her neck, pushing her against the metal railing. He lifts up her dress, exposing her cotton knickers that he rips off with a snarl. He smells them.
They smell like her. Musky. Without further thought, he shoves the fabric down the front of his trousers, wrapping her knickers around his cock haphazardly.
He's hard. Just like that. He bites her skin for making him hard.
"Malfoy—"
It isn't resistance. It's a warning.
"Shut up." His fingers dig into her skin. Clawing at her thighs. Gripping her hips so tightly that the flesh sprang up between the spread of his fingers. He cups her mound and roughly pulls at the curly hair above her clit before slapping her cunt. Hard.
With a rough push, he slips a thick finger inside her. She shakes, her walls pulsing around him. He adds another without ceremony. It's not gentle. He wants to hurt her. She tries to widen her stance to accommodate him. He doesn't let her.
"Malfoy—"
"I said shut the fuck up." He presses harder against her naked arse. She grips the metal in front of her, curling her fingers around the poles. "Turn around."
"We're in public."
"I don't fucking care." He bites her collarbone. She doesn't give him the satisfaction of crying out. The mark is red and angry.
Good. He hopes it bruises.
Draco mumbles a featherlight charm and lifts her against the boundary. He steps between her legs and ruts wildly against her naked core. She shivers as the cool morning air meets her wetness.
"You smell like fuck," she says blandly.
He pulls back a half-step and looks at Hermione for the first time, considering her words. He looks behind her, eyes searching the harbour. Grabbing her wrist, he pulls her by the stairs and sits down on the dirty cement steps, dotted with bird shite and trash. His arse is cold, only undoing the top of his pants enough to release his red, angry cock that reaches out in her direction.
He doesn't wait. He doesn't ask. He pulls her over him, pushing her down hard on his length. "Payback," he says coldly.
She cries out in pain.
He doesn't care about her pleasure. With the featherlight charm, he commands her body, lifting her up and down like a fuck toy around his cock. Hermione balances herself with her knees over him on the concrete steps. Her skin is bruised and bleeding. He watches in lust and anger, as her abused hole grips him tightly. Sucks him in. It only makes him thrust up harder.
One hand is in his hair. She pulls his strands harshly. He growls and tears at her lower lip, then licks her blood off. Her other hand squeezes his shoulder with each thrust.
Draco can't help it. His hand snakes between them to push down on her lower belly, feeling him fuck her.
He takes the wetness between them and rubs the side of her bundle of nerves.
She lets out a low, grumbling moan.
Her hips catches his, hitting his pelvic bone.
"Fucking hold still." His other hand keeps her from bouncing on his cock, while he uses her. Hates her. Punishes her. For leaving. "You're going to fucking take it. Take all of it. Don't you fucking move." He feels her clench down on him. It's so tight that he forgets to breathe.
Her hand moves from his shoulder to drag lightly along his cheek, thumb dotting his eyelashes. Her other hand slithers down to rub soothing circles on his back. And he feels the emptiness he's carried for months release.
She doesn't mean it.
Hermione purses her lips and tightens around him again, almost vindictively. He feels himself being pushed out. And he slams himself inside her.
His growl is beastly. "Fucking look at me."
Her chin drops at the exact moment that he spills inside her, watching her emotionless brown pupils expand and constrict. His orgasm continues painfully and his mind is only filled with her fluttering tightness, only feeling the warm fleshiness of her arse.
She continues to fuck him, using his spend as lubrication, until she comes with a shout. Her body convulses around him. It hurts but he stays inside her, fucking her roughly through it.
Hermione stills. There's a slight sheen of sweat on her nose and chest. He licks it off and rocks against her.
"Dawlish has new orders," she says as she milks him, squeezing and releasing her inner muscles, wringing him dry.
Chapter 10: Flashback
Summary:
A reminder that this fic is a Dead Dove (or DD-adjacent). Tags have been updated.
CW: Implied/referenced suicide. Violence. Homophobia.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Suggested listening:
Two Feet - I Feel Like I'm Drowning
Ron
Ron remembers everything like it was yesterday. It is a year out of the Battle of Hogwarts. He alights the creaky stairs of Grimmauld Place, a bit drunk, looking for a drinking partner. He forgets that Harry was at the Ministry, making statements for the likes of the Malfoys and Zabinis.
Of course, Harry—ever the hero—even when no one asks him to be ... He speaks on behalf of Theodore Nott, Blaise Zabini, and Millicent Bulstrode. He speaks on behalf of Pansy, even though she tried to hand him over to Voldemort. He even speaks for Malfoy, even though they were academic rivals and he was marked as the youngest Death Eater.
Hermione is with Harry a lot. Their obligations to Minister for Magic Kingsley Shacklebolt often takes them away from the Burrow. Few times does the Ministry bother with the ginger third wheel. He’s afraid of public speaking. He drinks too much. And he wants to fight too often and too much. Most of his rage is directed at those in the prisoners’ dock.
The Ministry knows who is the face of the winning side of the war; and who is the brains. After the war, Ron lacks a proper place and a purpose.
Hermione and Ron initially are great. Or so he thinks. They have absolutely nothing in common outside of Hogwarts. They fight. Their cycle—fucking and drinking and fighting. About each other’s drinking. About his flirting. About her closeness with Harry. About their precarious future. But there is a lot of good too. They hold each other while they cry over lost family members or wake up in cold sweats, screaming or clawing at the mattress.
Her nightmares are of herself writhing on the floor while Bellatrix laughs and Malfoy watches. Or of running after her parents but when they turn around, they’re faceless. His are of seeing Fred’s grey, dead face. When he cries and yells and rips at the body, his siblings’ faces replace Fred’s. They’re dead. They’re all dead. He also hears her screams in his nightmares. He always tries to get to her, but when he frees himself in the dreams and runs up the cellar stairs, he can only find a growing puddle of blood and Voldemort feasting on it
They are in love. Or some semblance of it. They have their whole future to figure it out.
Ron misses Fred. Hermione misses her parents.
George is no longer the same. He goes to work at the Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes, but the joy is gone. He comes to the Burrow for dinner, then closes himself off in his flat above the store. It is hard for Ron to watch his older brother become a shell of himself.
His pub nights with Seamus, Dean, Padma, Parvati, Neville, Justin FInch Fletchley, Michael Corner, Hannah Abbott, Susan Bones, Terry Boots, and others from Hogwarts give him comfort. To feel safe. To be surrounded by familiar faces. Everyone is full of anger and pain, and it feels good to share with them.
One night after yet another fight with Hermione about his drinking, Ron storms out to the bar, finding George sitting amongst his friends and other Hogwarts alumni. He scooches in. He forgets about Hermione, happy to see his brother socialize.
Ron watches George and Seamus grow closer, bonding over their shared pain and love of the drink. He is happy to watch George blossom into some semblance of his old self again.
One night, Ron stays late to help with the inventory and walks in on George and Seamus in the storage room. They immediately jump apart, with Seamus wiping his mouth and pushing George away.
“Don’t fucking tell anyone.” Seamus grips the collar of Ron’s flannel shirt, then pushes him against the wall and storms out of the shop.
But that isn’t the end of it. Ron knows because George keeps coming out. Not very often but he does.
Ron carefully announces his entrance into the storage room and knocks loudly before entering his brother’s flat or turning a corner.
At least George smirks at his artlessness.
When Ron tries to talk George about it, George would shake his head and say, “Leave it.”
Seamus denies everything. “You don’t know what you saw.”
While Ron knows Molly wouldn’t approve, he doesn’t care. He is just happy to see some life blossom in George’s eyes again.
Besides, he has his own Witch problems to worry about.
Almost overnight—at least it seems the way to Ron—Hermione stops wanting to get sloshed. She doesn’t smile as much. She stares off into space when she’s with him. She doesn’t want him to touch her anymore. She wants to get up early. Get a flat of their own. Make dinner with him. Like adults. Or so she says. Not hurried fucks in dark corners of the Burrow or behind the barn. She says she wants to do something with her life. Not spend time with him at the pubs and his mates.
She retreats from him or maybe he does. He wasn’t sure. He could hardly be arsed to care.
The worst fight he remembers was when they fought about her parents. Hermione didn’t want to go to the Burrow. Ron kept pushing.
She screamed, “Have you ever considered how hard it is for me to see Molly dote on you? And you’re not even grateful for it.”
“If you want the mother treatment so badly, why don’t you fucking come to dinner when I tell you to?”
“Excuse me? ‘Tell me?’ Who the fuck do you think you are?”
“Your fucking boyfriend, ‘Mione. Believe it or not, I want what’s best for you. You think drinking and mea culpa’ing your life will bring your parents back?”
“No, but I expect some support—Maybe some interest in looking up memory charms, some help, something.”
“What do you think I’ve been doing these past few months?”
“You call that support? Me watching you get drunk with your mates? Do potions?”
“You act like you’re some paragon of virtue. You get sloshed with the rest of us.”
Hermione huffed. “Maybe I don’t want to do that anymore.”
“Fine. You live your life and I’ll live mine,” he muttered, grabbing his jacket and heading out the door.
After that, Hermione spends even more time at Grimmauld Place. She recoils at his advances. Soon, it’s days, then weeks before they had sex.
When she looks at him, there is no affection any more in her gaze. Almost as if she resents him for being himself. Not being more. Not being like Harry.
Ron crawls home in a potion-induced haze after finding Hermione’s ruined knickers on Harry’s bed.
He ruins everything in his path.
“What’s going on?” Molly screamed. He ignores her.
He stumbles blind into Ginny’s room, who is reading Seeker Weekly on her bed. He rips apart the magazine and yells, “You’re going to break up with Harry right fucking now,” then storms out the Burrow.
All that’s left is the shop and his brothers.
What happens after is a blur.
Nights are spent at the Leaky or Three Broomsticks, drinking until he can't see straight anymore.
Hard, cold fucks in the alleyways with whoever nods. They hardly even register to him.
George and Seamus seem to grow closer over their concern for Ron.
“She’s just a slag,” Seamus snarls. “Not worth it. Golden cunt, my arse.”
George stays silent, but drinks with Ron.
After another night out, Ron comes home to find George bloody—one eye swollen shut, nose twisted—and Molly treating his wounds with an iced flannel. His shoulder was hanging limply out of socket.
He grips his wand. “What happened?”
“Just some tossers,” George mumbles. On the table is a bottle of half-empty Ogden’s.
“Who?”
“Flint and a couple of the Yaxleys. They found me and Seams—” He cuts off and winces as Molly applies a dollop of salve onto his cut above his eyebrow.
“Distract him,” Molly commands.
Ron looks helplessly around the kitchen and finds a deck of playing cards that Hermione left. She showed him a couple of Muggle tricks. “Pick a card. Look at it, don’t tell me, then put it into another part of the deck.”
George flips over a card with his unbroken hand, then slips it in between the deck.
Ron shuffles and pulls out a seemingly random card. He shows it to his brother. “Is it the ‘two of clubs?’”
Before George can answer, Molly swishes her wand over his shoulder. “Brackium emendo.”
A sickening crack echoes through the kitchen.
“Fuck, woman! A little warning.”
Ron grabs his wand and runs out into the night.
It’s easy to find them. They’re loud and inconspicuous. Patting themselves on the back. Their knuckles are bruised.
Ron watches them from the bar. He downs several fingers of fire whiskeys and walks straight toward them.
Marcus sneers at him. “You alright there, Weasley? You're looking us up and down. Never took you for a poofter. Maybe you take after your brother—”
Without another word, Ron Levitates him out and slams him against the dirty walls of an alley. Flint scrambles to take out his wand, but Ron is faster.
Schtick. Schtick.
“Diffindo.” His wand slashes Flint’s face from ear to ear. Ron digs his finger into the wound on the side of Flint's mouth. He screams. High-pitched and satisfying.
The Yaxley brothers are suddenly there, frozen, at Ron’s brutality. Their stupid, fucking moon faces and slack jaws.
Ron slices his wand through mid-air. “Immobulus. Silencio.” He doesn’t know where all these spells come from. He just follows this invisible line of fate. It feels good. Right. Justified.
Marcus falls to the ground. Ron sees nothing but blotches of white behind his eyes. He keeps kicking the body. It bends and bows and breaks. He feels the crush of Flint’s elbow under the heel of his boot. Then his ribs. Marcus screams again. But it only serves to anger Ron more.
He sees Fred's face. George's blood. Hermione's knickers.
The grinding sound is satisfying. He’s a little hard. He grips himself on the front placket of his jeans.
He keeps kicking. And kicking.
Until it’s quiet.
No more wet gurgling or sniffling. No more crunching.
Ron looks down. He doesn’t recognize Marcus’ face. It’s caved in. Red liquid and jelly pool around him.
The Yaxleys’ dull eyes widen in fear. The spell is wearing off. Ron can see their fingers moving. He spits in one’s face, and for the other brother, he jams the reservoir of his wand into his eye. The Wizard flails in pain, trying to grip onto the handle. Blood and viscera dripping down his face.
The sibling gawks in horror.
Ron doesn’t know their names. He doesn’t care.
It’s unsettling. Seeing a human howl out his pain without sound.
Ron stuffs his free hand in his pocket for some reason. Flicks a playing card at one of their faces. ‘Two of clubs.’
He needs to run.
Ron finds himself somewhere in Ireland. It’s wet, gloomy, and green. It’s perfect.
He grows a beard and dyes his hair dark. He Transfigures himself with a larger nose and taller frame. He loses himself in the drink.
He’s there for almost 6 months. He makes sure he’s untraceable. Living off of work that pays under the table. He does the work with Magic, but slowly, so no one suspects him.
He sits at the bar in a pub called The Dog’s Bollocks, nursing a Guinness and a serving of chips.
A short man sidles up to him. “I’ll have what he’s having. Get ‘im anotha.”
Ron grumbles, “Not interested, mate.”
“Listen,” a quiet, reedy voice begins.
Ron slams the bar with his fist. “No, you listen! I don’t want to fuck. I don’t want your drink. I don’t want—” He freezes.
It’s Seamus.
“Molly and Ginny are beside themselves. They can’t find you. You haven’t reached out. Skeeter is saying the worst things in the newspaper.”
“Better off this way. I’m gonna be dragged off to Azkaban after what I did.”
“You’re alright, Weasley. I get it. You’re a good one. I wish I had some better news.”
“W-what? You hear from Hermione?” Ron was tipsy and had to concentrate on the blurry images surrounding Seamus’ big head.
“George—”
“What?” He turned his stool completely toward Seamus.
“Fuck, man. I’m sorry. I’m not the person to—He’s dead. In his flat. He just couldn’t handle it anymore. You left. And the Prophet ...”
The last part of Ron’s humanity dies that night.
Notes:
Flint and the Yaxleys are all part of the Sacred 28.
Chapter 11: Bait
Chapter Text
Suggested listening: KALEO - Way Down We Go
Draco
John Dawlish arranges for Draco to stay in an old cottage, off the coast of the North Sea in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. They step out of the hearth. Dawlish brushes Floo powder off his dark trench.
Draco coughs, waving the upended soot away from his face. He takes in the surroundings with a sneer.
Decrepit, is the first thought that comes to mind.
As if reading his thoughts, John said, “It has to look convincing. Like you’ve been in hiding for years. Ron needs to think that it’s reasonable why he couldn’t find you.”
The cottage is a near-delipidated, three-room, flat. One floor and almost completely square. Large, dirty floor-to-ceiling windows streaked with Merlin knows what. Creaky wooden floors. Dusty furniture is covered by eggshell coloured bed sheets. Bare necessities. A kitchen with a wood stove and an ugly, mid-sized mint fridge with convex edges. An island separates the kitchen from the living room/dining room. At each end of the cottage are bay windows that open out onto the wraparound porch—its only saving grace. Through a narrow hallway is the primary bedroom—of an acceptable size, Draco decides—a bathroom with shitty water pressure and a leaky faucet, and a smaller room that holds a writing desk and some chairs.
John rattles off, “The cottage will be heavily warded, and the Floo will only allow necessary people through. The nearest town, Fraserburgh is about a 15-minute walk away. You can get more supplies there. You need to look as if you’re keeping a low profile but somewhat integrated into the community. Like you’ve been living with the Muggles for years.”
“I have,” Draco butts in.
John ignores him. “You can do whatever you want to the place, but you can’t use Magic, of course. It’s too conspicuous and would draw too much attention from Magical folk in such a small town. We need it to be believable.”
Draco walks out onto the porch. The hinges moan loudly.
That’ll need some oil.
He leans against the rickety railing.
Paint job. Some L brackets.
“You got me a nice, little death trap here. The DMLE really spares no expense.”
“Not for a fugitive.”
Draco grunts, “After this, I’m done? You’ll leave me and my Mother alone?”
John follows him. “If you have your wand snapped, you can return to England. Otherwise, we won’t follow you. You can stay here for all we care. It’ll be as if you’ve never existed. And if Ron is arrested and charged, we’ll even petition Narcissa to get released into house arrest. She was never an active Death Eater unlike—”
“Unlike me,” Draco finishes for him.
“Only the dead have seen the end of war,” John clips.
“Plato.”
John arches a thick brow. “Impressive. Didn’t take you for a reader of Muggle philosophy.”
“Like I said, I’ve been living among them for years now. It’s not all rubbish.”
“Wouldn’t it be great if your lot figured that out before all this?”
Draco sucks in through his teeth. “No sense in thinking about changing the past. Waste of time. I’d do a lot of things differently. But I can’t. So fuck it.”
“You’ll get a monthly stipend owl’d to—”
“I don’t need your galleons.”
John blinks, then smirks. “Live your life here. Wait for him to find you. We think because of your past with him and after Seamus’ arrest, he’ll be more … aggressive.” After a pause, he asks, “What do you think?”
“Do I have a choice?” Draco walks out onto the porch, looking into the vast grey water, sea salt fills his nose and lungs. He lights up a cigarette and inhales deeply. “Can I at least bring my Ikea furniture?”
The hinges of the old cherry wood door squeaked and the door swung open, but nothing appeared in the threshold.
A prickle of dread rolls over Draco’s body. John narrows his eyes as he looks over his shoulder.
Draco reaches for his wand in his belt, curling his fingers around the smooth wood.
But then Harry’s infuriating messy hair pokes out. He removes the cloak surrounding Hermione and Harry, and several bags of groceries, paint cans, and other home improvement supplies.
There is a flush to Hermione’s bare neck after being caught underneath the Invisibility Cloak. She wears a black V-neck tank top with a lace overlay and dark Muggle jeans. Her eyes catches Draco’s but she quickly turns away.
He walks in to help, but meanders in the living room, kicking his boot at the mouldy area rug.
That’s got to go.
He doesn’t care. He couldn’t.
He thinks of her tangy taste then. It has been almost two weeks since he last fucked her. He stayed in Toronto, while Hermione, Harry, and John figured out the logistics for an untraceable international portkey.
For a fugitive.
While Draco waited for the Aurors to pull their heads out of their arses, he got his affairs in order.
One grey Sunday morning, he walked over to Pansy’s flat. The circles under her eyes were dark, but she straightened upon seeing him. She left the door ajar for him and walked over to the bar, making him and her a strong gin and tonic.
As she handed him the tumbler, the front of her silk kimono fell open and gave him a view of pert tits, her nipples dark and hard for him.
Draco downed the drink, then stood up. He loomed over her.
Pansy’s breath hitched, her round, green eyes expectant and full of hope.
Maybe a long time ago, he could have loved her. Maybe he did.
His rough hands folded the silk lapel over her chest. He reached around to undo and tighten the sash over her waist. He fumbled through his jean pockets. “Here,” he said hoarsely.
Draco handed her the key and fob to his loft, a bank card, and a slip of paper with some strange combinations and letters. “There’s galleons in my cabinet. Here’s my bank card and password, if you need Muggle money. I’ve transferred the deed in your name. You just need to sign it and send it to my lawyer. The documents are on my coffee table. If you need more, talk to Theo. He’ll know what to do.”
She pushed him painfully on the shoulder. “I have my own money,” she spat.
“Here’s more of it,” he said without affect.
“It doesn’t change anything. I don’t forgive you. You’re leaving me again. You promised you never would.”
“I don’t expect you to.”
“When this is over, don’t come crawling back.” Her perfect, button nose turned up.
Draco headed toward the door.
Pansy’s voice tried for accusatory, but came out frantic. “You act like you aren’t coming back.” She ran after him, clawing at his arm.
“I’m not.” His grey eyes dulled when he faced her.
Pansy’s eyes widened, suddenly panicked. “You are! You always come back.”
“Even if I survive—which I doubt—I’m not. This isn’t a life, Pans.”
Pansy gripped his hand so tight that it burned. “I want you. Even if you—I need you here. You’re all I have.”
“Don’t you want more? More than I can give you.”
“Is it her?”
“Pans—”
“Tell me the truth. You owe me at least that.”
He sighed, squeezing his eyes shut “I don’t know. All I know is that it's a chance to get something right for once. If I do, you won’t have to hide anymore. You, Blaise, and Theo.”
“What about you? Don’t act like there isn’t some self-serving aspect to this.” Pansy’s words always cut and gave him whiplash.
“I’m not. They promised a retrial for my Mother.”
“What if they renege the deal? What do you get?”, she demanded, eyes brimming with tears she fought to keep down.
Draco wrapped her tiny, shaking body in his arm and kissed her temple.
She shuddered, gripping his shirt that smelled like smoke and leather. Him.
He pulled her hands down. Gently but decisively. And took the elevator down without looking back at her.
Draco shakes the memory of Pansy, as he walks closer to Harry and Hermione. Somewhere between putting away the supplies, she put her hair up in a messy bun. He catches the subtle scent of her body lotion. There’s a slight sheen of sweat along her collar bone and nape of her neck. His cock twitches.
Merlin, his dick was the stupidest part of him.
Since Hermione came back to Toronto, they both stopped denying their attraction to one another. They don’t talk about Harry or even Ron, unless John is around. In fact, they rarely talk at all.
Whenever they have a spare moment between their meetings with Harry and Dawlish, he pushes her against a wall, a dark corner; turns her around on the toilet; or fucks her into a threadbare mattress. He slips inside her hot, tight cunt and pounds into her until his vision whites and he drips out of her.
Sometimes out of spite, he marks her clothing with the leaking head of his softening cock.
It’s never slow. Always rough and hard. He never allows himself to savour her. Except.
Except when he crooks his finger against her walls and pushes and pulls against that spot. The rough, spongey place that he imagines and fucks his fist to when she’s not around. The same spot that makes her groan gutturally and her juices run down his wrist.
He has ruined more of her skirts and knickers than he could count, but she never says anything about it.
The last time, he pocketed her ruined black ones.
Hermione noticed and an indecipherable expression ran over her round, freckled face. Instead of saying something, she pushed down her dress and walked out of the loo.
With a lewd smirk, he eyed the glisten on the back of her thighs.
Harry’s hand finds the small of her back and leads her to the study to meet with John.
Draco swears inwardly and takes another long drag of his cigarette, then stubs it with his shoe.
Before Draco can join them, he feels a firm grip on his shoulder.
John orders, “Give me your wand.” He performs a complicated wiggling motion over his hawthorn and a glimmering, yellow light coats his wand from tip to tail. “If you use Magic, you’ll notify the Aurors. We’ll be able to Apparate to where you are. Only use in case of emergencies. Otherwise, Magic is strictly forbidden.”
Draco rolls his eyes. “Yes, Dad.”
“I’m not your Father. If I were, I wouldn’t have let a little pissant 15-year old become an unimpressive Death Eater.”
When the meeting is finally over, John finds Draco again on the porch. “You’re gonna have to change your hair. It’s too … much. But no Polyjuice or it defeats the purpose. Your friends can visit in a few weeks. Separately and in disguise, of course. But let them be recognizable. They need to look like they’re watching over their backs, but that they’re slipping up. So no parties. We all have the galleons to communicate. Just grip the coin and channel your Magic. If it burns, I’ll know it’s an emergency.”
Draco sneered, flicking out his butt onto the sand. “What else? Can I have a wank without asking you?”
He chuckled, “Actually, no. We’ll know who’s in the flat at all times.”
Harry joins them on the porch, the wind whacking his long hair all over his face.
“I hate your hair, Potter. Who knew it could be worse than in school?”
Harry gives him the two-finger salute, but takes off an elastic wrapped around his wrist to gather his hair into a high ponytail, securing it in place by tucking the ends underneath the hair tie.
Without addressing Draco, Harry started, “I can be the handler. You know Hermione and Ron have a past.”
Dawlish turned around and flipped over the collar of his trench, shielding his neck from the whipping whirls of the seaside wind. “And you two don’t?”
“It’s not safe for her here,” Harry insisted, “He’s going to be unstable if he sees her.”
“Merlin, she’s not a damsel in distress,” Draco drawls.
“I’m not saying she is, Malfoy. But I don’t want her in any unnecessary danger.”
“A little late for that in your chosen profession, innit?”
John shakes his head. “I’m counting on it. When people get agitated, they get sloppy. Hermione’s going to stay in Fraserburgh. Get him acclimated. Draco needs to be visible but inconspicuous. Like he’s been here for years. If Ron notices, all the better. A woman is a more convincing story to keep Draco in one place than you.”
“I’m right fucking here!”
John turns toward Harry, “I need you to stay on Seamus. See what you can get out of him. You’ll have access to more Veritaserum. Any clues about where Ron’s staying. Where he’s going. How he chooses his next victim. Ron’s going to be more careless without his partner. I’ll be with Blaise and Theo in Chelsea. We’ll see if that draws him out. A three-pronged approach.”
Harry glares between Dawlish and Draco, then storms back into the cottage. He watches Hermione continue to put away more of the groceries. “Little help? Just because I’m a Witch doesn’t mean—”
Instead of answering, Harry throws some Floo powder into the hearth and disappears with a loud roar. Dawlish follows him in a burst of green fire.
Draco walks inside, wordlessly taking out the cleaning supplies from the bags.
“Nice of you to finally deign to help. This is just your home, after all.”
“Merlin, shut up. Can you not be a bitch for five minutes?”
“Dick.”
“Cunt.”
They work in silence for a few minutes.
He takes out an unfamiliar cardboard box with a blonde Muggle model on the front from a grocery bag. He holds it up to his face. “What’s this then?”
She cocks her head. With a quirk of her lips, she says, “We’re dyeing your hair.”
“Like hell you are.” His nostrils flare and he runs a nervous hand through his white-blond hair.
“We gotta ‘Muggle’ you up. Make it look like you’ve been spending the last few years hobnobbing it with us. We’ll get you some flannel.”
Draco sneers.
Hermione throws a pair of rubber gloves at him and warns, “No Magic.” She, too, puts on a pair of gloves and starts to scrub the counter with a vengeance.
They spend the afternoon in companionable silence, cleaning up the decrepit cottage.
He watches her out of the corner of his eye, but she never looks over.
When the sun begins to set, she throws her gloves into the sink, “I’m done for the night,” and flings herself on the couch. A cloud of dust billows around her. “Gross,” she coughs.
He stands in front of her, yellow, gloved hands on his waist.
Hermione looks him up and down, thoroughly unimpressed.
“I know I’m supposed to be bait. Let the Weasel find me and enact his jizzy fantasies of wiping out the Sacred 28.”
She doesn’t respond.
He adds, “By staying with me—”
She snaps, “I’m not staying with you. I have my own flat in Fraserburgh.”
“They’re making you bait too.”
Hermione flies up and rummages through his jeans. He flinches and she smiles triumphantly. She finds his pack of smokes and steals one. She stuffs the pack back into his front pocket and squeezes his cock. It rapidly hardens.
Fuck, I hate her.
Before he could call her a ‘cunt’ again, she walks out onto the porch, staring at the violent, frothy waves. With her back to him and a cigarette hanging out the side of her mouth, she says something so quietly that he would have missed, if he weren’t listening for her response. “I know. I’m looking forward to it.”
Chapter 12: Ikea
Summary:
Not sponsored. Lol.
Chapter Text
Lily Rose Depp, the Weeknd, and Ramsey - Fill the Void
Draco
Hermione and Draco follow a quiet routine. She Disillusions herself to go into town, but only barely, changing her eye and hair colour but leaving her signature curls. She wants to be found.
All the initial anger and unsaid hurt, some of which have nothing to do with one another or their unseemly past, seeps out of them. They have no one else but each other.
There is something comforting about not being allowed to use magic, even if it’s a ruse. He builds Ikea furniture and fills their house with Scandinavian minimalist home decor.
‘Their.’ What a foreign concept.
Each time Hermione comes back in with the groceries, she’s surprised by some new addition Draco has made.
He tracks the slight smirk at the edge of her mouth each time.
“A new sofa. What was wrong with the last one?”, she asks, as she puts away the milk.
“Besides the fact that it was torn in no fewer than five places and a breeding ground for bedbugs? I believe the word you’re looking for is ‘thank you,’ or are you incapable?”
“It’s too big for the space,” Hermione complains.
“Nonsense. It’s called a ‘sectional.’”
She huffs, “I’m familiar.”
“Then you should know that you can move the footstool.” He makes a show out of sitting down and spreading his long limbs across the couch. “Well?”
Hermione appraises the living space, coming together nicely, judgmental hands on her hips. She quirks her head. “Shall we fuck on it?”
Draco smiles, in a flash wrangling her onto his lap, and makes quick work of her denim skirt.
She whips one leg acround his hip and straddles him, pushing herself against his trousered cock.
His short nails dig into the top of her thick thighs.
Clad in only her sensible, cotton knickers and a jumper, she makes him painfully hard. He wonders why. There’s nothing exceptional about her mode of dress. Plain even.
With both palms, he smacks her fleshy arse.
She squeals in surprise, then narrows her dark eyes at him. “Fuck off,” but there’s no bite to it.
He stares at her while he sucks on two fingers, then his hand slips underneath the front of the fabric. The cool wetness of his fingers hitting her sensitive folds makes her mouth fall open slightly.
He rubs her delicately and leans against the side of her neck, breathing in her scent—the salty ocean and her shampoo or body lotion or whatever. His fingers find the spot that makes her squirm, pulling gently at her front walls in a way he has learned.
Her moans grow more disjointed.
He urges her on, “Let me have it.”
When she breaks, she cries out into his mouth, her eyebrows knitting together as if in pain, and flutters in heavy, thick throbs around him.
“That’s it. There you go. There you are.” He continues drawing careful circles around her bundle of nerves to help her ride through her waves. He doesn’t look away, studying her round, freckled face until her breathing evens out.
When her eyes open, they’re confused for a moment. She stares into his grey eyes rimmed by black, pupil blown wide. She fumbles with his belt and he helps her by raising his arse to drag down his trousers, releasing his hard shiny cock.
She opens her mouth, as if to say something.
She’s going to ruin everything.
He pulls her down on his cock. Hard.
Theo and Blaise visit after a month.
They go for a walk about the small town, ending along the shoreline.
In a few words, Hermione says she would make herself scarce.
Draco tells him what’s going on; that they’re all bait and to continue the charade of partial disguise, as if they just got sloppy.
“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” Theo mumbles as he lights up a joint.
“How was home?” he asks.
“Grey. Wet. No one wants to say anything. They’re all suspicious of us,” Theo responds.
“With good reason,” adds Blaise.
“Did you visit?”
They both nod, knowing what Draco means. They visited their parents in Azkaban.
“Mother barely recognized me. She looked … old,” Blaise mutters.
Theo says, “We had to look like we were trying to reintegrate ourselves in Wizarding society. So we were deliberately careless.”
Draco nods. “Did anyone ask you where you ran off to for the last five years?”
“All of them did. We said we were in Australia — which we were — hiding out. We gotta go back soon. Make our rounds. Keep up appearances.”
They arrive back at the cottage. It’s quiet.
Draco cracks open a bottle of Ogden’s and carries three tumblers to the sitting area.
“Very nice,” Theo smirks, looking around. His arms stretch out behind him to rest on the back of his sofa.
He lights a cigarette, and offers Blaise one. “What? It’s just a place.”
“No, your old flat was just a place. You had absolutely only the bare minimum.”
“I don’t know how long I’ll be in this forsaken town. Might as well.”
“You built all this?” Blaise takes a deep inhale.
“I hardly call this ‘building.’ I have to do something to occupy my time and hands, otherwise I’ll go mad.
Theo gestures around him. “This is a—”
“A home,” Blaise finishes.
Draco sneers.
Theo cackles, “Deny it all you want. Why the fuck do you have a chaise then?”
He shrugs one shoulder and stubs out his smoke. “I have a wide stance.”
“How many beds do you have?”
“What?”
“How many beds do you have?” Theo runs off down the hallway. “A ha! One.”
“Sod off.” Draco’s pale face reddens. “The sofa is a pull-out.”
The night wears on, and the Slytherin boys get progressively drunker. Draco stays somewhat sober and increasingly sombre.
Hermione does not come home. He pretends not to care. Pretends that he’s not watching the clock tick.
He heads to their bedroom to use the loo, and sees her galleon on the dresser. His heart jumps into his throat. His is in his jeans pocket. He grips it tightly, and her galleon glows red.
Fuck.
Draco pulls at his hair. Sweat prickles his neck and palms. He stalks out to the living room.
“I have to—” He stops in his tracks.
Hermione is back, legs criss crossed on the new rug and a Tesco cheesecake defrosting on the counter.
Tension bleeds out from his shoulders. A tentative warm ease fills him. Something he hasn’t known in years. Like coming home. It strikes him like lightning.
He blurts out, “You need to leave.”
All three of them whirl their heads to glare at him.
“But the cheesecake—” Theo whines.
“I just spewed in the loo,” he says quickly. “I’ll make it up to you tomorrow. Brunch, yeah? Granger will come too, so you lot can catch up.”
“Is that so?” Hermione raises one eyebrow.
Blaise wraps one arm around a grumbling Theo, and leads him out to the porch. Granger follows, and Draco tags behind her, a finger dragging across the soft skin of her wrist.
Her head turns, and she looks curiously at him.
“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.” Theo salutes them with a flick of his finger.
CRACK.
The air around them shakes. Blaise and Theo disappear.
Hermione flicks her cigarette out onto the beach, the stub still glowing orange, her magic carrying it far. Judging by her small smile, she seems satisfied with its distance. “What’s up with you? You ill? You need some Ipecac?”
“You didn’t bring your galleon with you.”
“I was with Harry and John, getting intel. We should talk. There’s been sightings. They found Avery—”
Draco pushes down the sick gnawing feeling of which he is only beginning to admit. Fear ... and something else. He repeats, “You didn’t have your galleon.” He crowds her into the dark blue railing that he recently repainted.
“I was perfectly safe. Surrounded by Aurors. You wouldn’t need to contact me while you were with them,” she maintains.
He says it again, “You didn’t have your galleon.” He pushes his forehead against hers, hot breath tinged with firewhiskey and mint. He doesn’t close his eyes, even as the freckled face in front of him blurs.
Hermione stares up at him, finally seeming to understand. She nods, but doesn’t speak for the rest of the night.
They spend the remainder of the night on the porch. The wind is nippy and foreshadows the oncoming winter weather, but neither of them feels it. She leans against the porch bannister, watching the stars twinkling feebly in the denim night sky. His arms rest around hers, his nose digging into her crux of her ear and neck.
If they looked to the right for a moment, they would have seen her cigarette being levitated, its embers smoking and lighting up, as if someone were taking a drag, and the hazy ripples in the surrounding air, an indication of a Disillusionment spell.
Chapter 13: Happy Ending
Summary:
Embedded art by the talented BelleMedusa.
Chapter Text
Suggested listening: Mansionair - Violet City
Draco
They have brunch at Peartree, only slightly Disillusioned. Hermione straightens her hair and wears thick-rimmed glasses. Draco is uncomfortably hard and latently hot underneath his collar, remembering how he watched her fuck Potter in this disguise. Theo's curly black hair is lightened; and Blaise wears his long dreads up, showcasing a new undercut.
The restaurant is a busy place on a Saturday, where locals dine.
Blaise is sullen and picks at his eggs. Theo—on his third cup of espresso—is talkative, discussing London. Hermione listens intently and asks the appropriate questions.
Draco focuses on the sausage rolls, but his attention is on Hermione. Something shifted last night. Perhaps if he were honest, things changed a long time ago.
“We’re returning tomorrow,” Theo says and takes a bite of his chocolate croissant. "We're going to make a big fuss, maybe hold a lavish gala to signal our re-introduction to society. Whatever it is to make the Weasel hate us."
Hermione asks, “You all have your galleons? Don’t put yourself in any risky situations. That’s not the point of this.”
“We won’t,” grunts Blaise.
Harry shows up in ripped jeans and a thick jumper, long dark hair bunched up in a bun atop his head. He looks at the two of them sitting next to one another. “I got news.”
Draco immediately drags his arm around the back of Hermione’s chair.
She glares at him, “Too much fucking testosterone.” She excuses herself for a smoke.
“Never bothered you before,” Harry mutters, as she passes.
She pauses for a second, then heads outside without looking back.
Harry rubs the back of his head. “Shite.”
He follows her outside.
Draco loses his appetite.
Theo observes, "You can see them outside."
"Yeah?"
"It means you can stop glaring. They won't fuck out there, unless they're completely uncouth. Potter should be fine, but that slag—"
Draco's grey eyes dart toward Blaise.
"Get your shite together, Draco. She's an Auror and a Mudblood. Don't be childish. Romeo and Juliet only works in kids' stories," Blaise drawls.
"What the fuck do you know?" He never wanted a smoke more.
"I know people don't change. You're not exactly known for taking stands. What's your mum gonna say when she gets released?"
Draco throws down some money and leaves the table without another word. Behind him, he hears Theo exclaim, "What the fuck was that?"
Harry's light eyes roam over Draco, as he walks toward them. Something dark and indecipherable clouds his face. His chin tilts toward the restaurant, at Theo and Blaise. “I’ll let them know.”
Draco waits until Harry is gone before speaking. He tries his best to keep the anger out of his voice. “What did he want?”
Hermione sighs, “They think they have a lead. That’s what I was trying to tell you last night. Avery—he was found at the back of Ollivander’s last night. Poor Wizard found him. Playing cards laid around the body. Throat sliced with Sectumsempra. Bled out slowly.”
He pulls out the pack of smokes that he knows she keeps in her back pocket, and lights one, one hand covering the tip of the lighter. “What does that mean?” The question is muffled.
“The Aurors think it best to concentrate most of the Wixen power in London instead of here. Harry’s here to retrieve them. Put the trace on Theo and Blaise. The team will follow them.”
He takes a long drag. Simmering bile rises up through him. “So that's it then?”
“What?”
“Playing house is over, because they found better use out of making my friends bait? ‘Cause who the fuck cares about us? Expendable Slytherins.”
“Mal–” She reaches out to touch him.
He shrugs her off, stepping away. “Then what? You go back to fucking Potter because it’s easy and convenient? I get your slaggy, sloppy seconds whenever you deign to check up?”
“Don’t be disgusting.” Her expression is closed and her lips pull tight.
Draco maintains his distance from her. “It’s true, isn’t it? You hate yourself so fucking much for what you did to the Weasel. You blame yourself for what’s happening. You think you're responsible for all of this. When all you really were was a stupid, confused 20-year old slag after the war. Stop being a fucking martyr. You even lower yourself to fuck a Death Eater on the regular, because you think that’s what you're worth. You never stop to think these arseholes deserve what’s coming to them? Maybe the Weasel's right. We deserve to die. All of us. I deserve it. You know what? You were a shitty girlfriend. That's it. Nothing exceptional. Not everything is about you.”
Hermione’s gaze waver slightly, then dart around the small street to see if anyone is listening. No one pays them any mind. She opens her mouth but nothing comes out, trying to find her words.
He shoves his hands into his trousers, and flicks his cigarette away before heading in the opposite direction.
“I’m staying with you,” she calls out. “They thought—I convinced Harry it was prudent to keep the house as a decoy, so we’re not too obvious that we’re onto them. H—he knows. We’re done.”
Malfoy's shoulders stiffen. He stalks back toward her.
“Malfoy—”
“Shut up,” he grits out.
“Plus, Ron really hates you.” She tries to bring some levity to the situation.
“I said shut up.” He captures her jaw in his hands, and kisses her fiercely, curling his fingers possessively behind her neck
[Image: Draco watches Hermione smoke in bed.]
By Bellemedusa
They wake up from their afternoon nap, entangled in each other, the soothing sounds of susurrus and the quiet, clicking sounds of wind fluttering against the shutters having awoken them.
The snap of cold winter air runs through the house.
Their house.
“It’s cold,” she complains, gooseflesh dappling her skin.
He grabs his wand from the side table, but she tuts at him. He swears lowly, then stomps naked across the room to turn on the space heater. It glows in the low light of the room.
Draco crawls back underneath the covers.
“Hm,” Hermione mumbles sleepily and slips her fingers underneath his shirt to steal his warmth. They walk down to the coarse, dark blond hairs below his belly button, then playfully pokes at his testicles. “I need a fucking sunny day.”
His cock twitches slightly in response.
He indulges in the creamy scent of her skin and presses a kiss to her temple. Turning over her words in his head, his voice is small and tentative, almost childlike. “We could, y’know.”
“What?” She pulls on her bra and winces at the stickiness between her thighs as she shuffles on her underpants. She grabs a cigarette from her trousers and lies back down on the bed.
Draco sits up and pulls on a wrinkled t-shirt, resting his arms on his raised knees. He watches her rub her stomach absentmindedly, tracing a thick, purple scar on her skin. “What's that?"
"Fifth-Year. Dolohov in the Department of Mysteries. I haven't told you that story yet, have I?" She smiles up at the ceiling.
"We have time. After this … find a sunny day.”
She chuckles, letting smoke seep out of the corner of her mouth. “Where would we go?”
“Anywhere. Wherever you want.”
Her head turns to look out onto the ocean, grey and frothy. A few moments pass before she speaks, “Anywhere? What about, back to Adelaide?”
“Whatever you want, Granger.”
He sees a different smile that he rarely sees, something he clocks when he finishes a piece of furniture. Unhindered and wild, her slightly buck teeth showing through and biting her lower lip.
Her gaze softens, staring up at him underneath her thick lashes, and nods.
After another round of fucking, this time, slow and deliberate. Draco keeps his eyes on her when she breaks apart in his arms and on his cock, tracking the wrinkle between her brows and the way she huffs out small breaths against his mouth. He holds her hips tight over him, controlling her twitches and jerks.
Hermione only comes harder the second time. She squeezes him over and over until his eyes roll back. She drops kisses across his face. A tenderness he has never felt before. Tiny flicks of her tongue along his jaw make him pulse into her, long and heavy.
He allows him to feel the words he wouldn’t say.
Draco leaves to bid goodbye to Theo and Blaise. A late holiday pint at a nearby pub. He glamours his hair a slightly darker shade of blond and lengthens it, then pulls a wool toque over his head. He considers himself in the mirror. “I look like a much more handsome version of Potter.”
He flings open the front door. The bite of the winter air makes him tuck his chin inside his collar.
She smirks and pulls him into a kiss. “Don’t get murdered. None of you.”
He smiles despite himself, tossing his galleon in the air before stuffing it in his jean pocket. “I’ll try my best.”
Hermione
Hermione feels a comforting sense of wellbeing that she hasn’t in so many years, perhaps since Hogwarts. She knows it’s temporary.
If this were under different circumstances, this could be it. She could be good. She could be worthy of a happy ending. They could be happy, or have some semblance of it. Find their sunny days. But there was so much she needed to atone for.
But if this were different circumstances, she would have never seen him again. This had to be enough.
She opens the already-ajar liquor cabinet and pours herself a finger of Ogden’s and takes herself to the porch.
She takes a slow sip, as she watches the dark luminescence of the waves rush onto the sand.
A lit cigarette floats toward her, its embers burning bright in the night.
She takes it between her fingers and inhales. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
Her head grows heavy. The sight in front of her whirls. A familiar sense of numbness crosses her lips and tongue. She turns her body to see a tall misty shape of a man, slightly hidden in the shadows.
Her throat tightens, as she looks down at her empty tumbler and thinks of the open cabinet and the clicking sounds from earlier.
The crystal crashes to the floor.
Hermione wakes up in the dark. She struggles against the ropes bound around her wrists. She’s blind. She should be frightened, but she feels a strange feeling of familiarity that doesn’t increase her heartbeat.
She was always going to be here.
Spots dot her vision.
A floating bright lamp to the right of her makes her squint.
Her eyes adjust from pure darkness to light, and she tilts her head away. The clicks of loafers make her tilt her head around.
She is not surprised by whom she sees.
A naive sense of hope fills her chest. She hopes it's someone else. Anyone else. Seamus.
But it's him.
Ron, a little older, skin a bit more windtorn, and a well-kept beard. Dark red hair slicked back. Anguish and something else colours his large, blue eyes. “Hello, ‘Mione.”
Chapter 14: Lullaby
Summary:
Female rage.
CW: Graphic violence.
Chapter Text
The White Stripes - Blue Orchid
Hermione
The darkness is supposed to be terrifying. But it isn’t; it’s comforting in the sense that she always expected this.
When the blindfold is ripped off and the recessed ceiling lights speckle her vision, that’s when it’s disorienting. Her stomach lurches from remnants of their Apparition.
Hermione faces Ron—so much of him is the same—tall, lanky and those clear, blue eyes she remembers well except … except his windburned skin that he hides underneath a russet beard and his full lips curled into a cold sneer.
The room is nondescript but strangely familiar. Large and empty, filled with Ikea furniture. The floor is grey and concrete, a chill radiating up from her bare feet. The floor-to-ceiling windows let the street lights in, leaving long tracks of cold light across the spacious room.
She hears the click of a door unlocking.
Ron’s eyes roam over her before he heads toward the door, and the click of his boots echo across the walls.
Her fingers grasp tightly around the smooth wood of the chair seat, knuckles white.
She cranes her neck but a dusty, three-panel room divider blocks her vision. The rope he uses to bind her wrists dig into her skin. But she can feel the smooth vinewood in her back pocket. She rocks back and forth against the seat, trying to knock it out.
From across the room, Ron tuts, “Ah ah. Wingardium leviosa.” Her wand flies into his hands. He throws the vinewood across the room, as he stalks toward her and slaps her. Hard. “You taught me that spell, remember?”
She spits out blood.
He smiles, standing without a word, walking back across the sitting area to the door. There’s a slight murmuring.
Hermione yells, “W-where am I?”
He cocks an eyebrow. ““You don’t remember? I guess it has been several months.”
“Toronto,” a familiar twang calls out.
Hermione’s eyes fly over Ron’s shoulder to the room divider. A short, wide frame illuminates behind the white screens. There is a shuffle. A heavy splat.
When Ron returns, he squats in front of her. He gathers her curls and sweeps it to one side of her shoulder. “I missed this.” The curve of his mouth slips into an icy half-smile. His pupils are dilated, a shark looking over his prey.
Without warning, he wraps her hair around his fist and twists her neck up painfully to stare at her. Their faces are centimetres apart, and she can smell the smoke on his breath.
Hermione yelps. She’s never been scared of Ron before. “You can just kill me,”
A low chuckle rumbles across her cheek. “Do you think you deserve that?”
Hermione struggles to speak through the sharp pain.“You probably think so.”
Ron pulls harder against her hair. “No, I want you to watch.”
Tears sting her eyes.
He gestures to the room divider. “Seamus found her first. She kept the place as is. Still pining over that manky wanker.”
Hermione’s pants are heavy. “P-Pansy,” she finally manages to say, “What did you do?”
Ron clicks his tongue. “Just had some fun with her. Y’know for everything she did back in Hogwarts. She had no useful information, but we carved her up real good. I want to see Malfoy’s face when he sees you and her strung up.”
“Is she—?” Hermione hides the quiver in her lip and squeezes her eyes shut. This is like a nightmare. She tries to remember her Auror training, hiding her fear behind her Occlumency. She was never good at wandless magic, but she has to—
Ron lets go of her hair and leans forward, hands crawling up her thighs. He kisses her forehead tenderly. “Not quite. But believe me, she’s begged for it. While he was off shagging you, he left his little girlfriend all alone. You know he left his flat and money to her? Because that’s all you ever were. Harry. Malfoy. A side slag.” He scoffs. “Merlin, what happened to you? The great Hermione Granger.”
Hermione swallows thickly, as she lifts her gaze to see Ron watching her closely. She is terrified, but she forces a bored expression, “I dated you.”
Ron swings a fist across her face.
The world flips in brutal pain. Red dots scatter across her eyes.
When her vision finally stabilises, she sees a smirking Seamus Finnigan.
Hermione has always been able to disconnect from the case. Even with Ron, she doesn’t know what she feels. She’s never even seen him violent until now. With her. It’s like her heart is struggling to catch up with her mind.
But when Seamus walks in, reality strikes her face like a bludger. Like something out of a nightmare, his jerky movements are clumsy and sluggish. He’s carrying a body toward her. Pansy’s. Drops her on the floor. New and old blood blots her filthy, torn robe, seeping out of seen and unseen wounds.
A new scar bisects Seamus’ right brow. His hair is darker, but he wears the familiar smirk and twang she recognises from their school days. “Hiya Granger. Fancy seeing you here.” He sees her scan his face and he rubs his forehead. “This? She’s a fighter.” Seamus laughs, somewhat maniacally.
Ron stands up and circles behind her.
Out of her peripheral vision, she sees his forearms grip the back of the chair, caging her in.
Hermione hawks bloody spit at Seamus and struggles hard against the ropes. But they pull tighter in response. Ron, now standing to the side, sneers at her, showing her he was responsible.
Seamus steps closer, pushing Pansy’s bruised face into hers. Her eyes are swollen. “Wake up, pretty Pansy,” he singsongs.
Her blood-encrusted eyes slowly blink open.
He pulls a filthy stained rag out of her mouth, and her jaw unhinge unnaturally. Dislocated or broken. No sound comes out beyond unintelligible whines, vocal chords long collapsed and throat singed from screaming.
Hermione realizes in horror that Pansy’s tongue has been cut out. “What did you do?”, she whispers.
“Finally got your attention, eh?” Ron smiles.
“She didn’t deserve this.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. They all deserve this. We sacrificed so much. Where was the gratitude? They still cling to these stupid, outdated ideas. And the ones who helped? The Sacred 28? None of them got punished. Ran away. Hid behind money. Nothing has changed, ‘Mione. And you—I did everything for you. For your fucking cause. Harry. Fred. George. Where was my thanks? The second things get hard, I find you shagging me best friend.” His jaw ticks at the memory of finding her ruined pants in Harry’s bedroom, stiffening before he blinks away the dull pain.
“Seamus, tie her up.”
He twirls an unfamiliar wand between his fingers. One of his victim’s.
“Seamus, don’t do this,” Hermione pleads, “You have me. Let her go. You don’t have to do—”
Ron slaps her again. “Don’t speak to him.”
“I don’t have a choice,” Seamus says, lifting Pansy’s limp body and tying her to a rickety chair across from Hermione, only turning to speak over his shoulder.
“Yes, you do. Please, Seamus. Remember when we used to—”
Keep him talking. Remind him of who he was.
Ron raises his wand to her temple. “Shut the fuck up. I know what you’re doing.”
Seamus’s voice wobbles, “I have to do this; you don’t understand. What they did to George, a war hero, my–my—they laughed when—just because he liked me, he let me—”
Hermione pleads, “I know you are trying to make it right, but you don’t have to–Let Pansy go.”
“No,” Seamus shakes his head. Almost frantic in a way she had seen very few times before. “This is the only way to make things right. To try to make up for all the hurt they caused. They need to know. They need to pay. Incarcerous.” Ropes fly out of his wand and fasten across Pansy’s body.
Hermione’s mind quickly put the pieces together. She took in a sharp inhale. Burning gulps of air spike down her throat. Realization dawned: Seamus and George’s furtive, sidelong glances at one another; one time they jumped apart as she walked into the kitchen at the Burrow. “It’s not your fault what happened—”
“Yes it was! I pushed him away, because I was ashamed. Because I was still afraid of what they might think. And he let me treat him like shite, because he couldn’t do anything else! He had no one else.” His shout bounced across the walls.
Hermione’s heart cracks.
Ron’s eyes lit up, triumph and fury burning bright, “See? They dole out pain like it’s their fucking job. That’s what they do. Bored, privileged witches and wizards thinking they have a right to pass judgment when they were just born fucking lucky.” He twists the end of his wand into his finger. “We made them feel every bit of pain they deserved. Justice.”
Hermione’s stomach rolls as she sees Pansy making unintelligible sounds. Every murder scene flashes through her mind. Each broken bone and deep slashes into their bodies. Tortured and beaten. Limbs taken. Bullets in kneecaps. Ron and Seamus made sure they all suffered. She realises that the worst part about this is, Ron believes every word.
She shakes her head. “What of your crimes? This is your idea of justice? Look at her. Beating upon a helpless witch? You’re monsters.”
“It’s not so simple, innit? People who should have gotten freedom and love, are fucked over or die. People, who should be punished, get away. No repercussions.” Ron looks at Pansy pointedly and huffs out a humourless laugh. “Just balancing the scales.”
“We thought there would be some irony doing them in by Muggle means,” Seamus giggles.
Hermione catches Pansy’s vacant stare; her one good eye blinks at her.
“I want to hurt them the way they hurt me–us.” Seamus’ voice trails off with a shuddering breath. It was a type of pain Hermione was intimately familiar with. The never ending replay of ways she wanted to damage the world for making her choose. An impossible decision. Why her? Why her parents? Inflict wounds egregious enough to match her disgusting insides. The kind of raw wounds that would never quite close and could only match with hurting everyone around her. How dare the world continue on as if she didn't lose everything?
She could see the warring strife in Seamus’ eyes, but the cost of vengeance has taken its toll.
Ron runs his fingers gently along the arch of her cheekbones, When she flinches, he grips her hair again. “Shh … What you did—Morality isn't determined by the law. You know this. Some things, even if they’re not illegal—they're worse than others. I don’t believe in a world where someone can take something from you and just be free." He gestures to Pansy. “I wanted to do the same to you. But then, what’s worse than that? Knowing you did this. You caused this. All their blood is on your hands.”
Hermione feels bile and warmth swell in her chest with equal measure. Her eyes sweeps over Ron and she sees the boy who was her first love and best friend—so furled up in his righteous anger—that there was barely anything left. She turns her head toward the other man. There was still some humanity in him. “Seamus, please, I know how you feel. When I couldn’t lift the spell and return my parents’ memories, I was so angry and—”
Seamus massages his forehead, pacing in front of Pansy. “S-stop talking. I’m not interested i-in—”
Ron growls, “I said, don’t talk to him. But you were never good about following rules, were you? Except when it suited you.”
She laughs bitterly, “Yeah, I was a shitty girlfriend,” hearing Malfoy's voice, as the words leave her mouth.
A part of her is pleased at the twitch in Ron’s eye. To see him still affected.
Keep talking; keep the attention on you. Away from Pansy.
“But you, you’re just a cockup with a victim complex, blaming women for your actions.”
“Still crying for Mummy’s attention—”
“Fucking pathetic.”
Ron pulls her face against his, eyes wild and wand digging into her temple. “Silencio. Enough! What I want you to do is watch. Watch what you made me do.”
He nods at Seamus, who raises his wand at Pansy.
Green sparks glow at the tip of his wand.
“Av—”
Understanding sweeps through Pansy’s gut. She raises her chin to Seamus. “Fuck you,” she garbles.
“No, no! NO! NO!” Hermione screams, but her voice is silenced; she rocks violently against her bonds. She feels the ground shake underneath Seamus’ magic and her heart pounds through her chest. There is no time to second guess herself. She grips the arms of the chair, fingers pulsing underneath the building pressure, where she concentrates her magic. There is resistance at first, but then—it bursts through. Singular. Stronger and more powerful than Seamus'.
Her voice rings through the room, loud and true. She screams so loud that Seamus jumps. She lunges against her constraints. “Finite. Evanesco.”
She’s free.
Ron shouts things at Seamus that she can’t understand. The sounds around her are muffled.
It takes her a second before she realises he is atop of her, slamming her body into the floor over and over again. Her limbs twist in unnatural positions, as the weight of his knees bore down onto her thighs. With her cheek squished against his palm, she sees her wand in a stark corner. Using every bit of strength she has, she slips one leg free and knees him as hard as she can behind his balls.
A satisfying squish.
He rolls over and howls in pain.
Ron is distracted by Seamus' screams.
White threads of magic spool around her wrists. A burst of sparks zip through her fingertips.
Her wand flies through the air. In a quick succession of spells, “Expelliarmus! Oppugno! Expulso!” A stream of power and adrenaline rush through her, as her fingers curl around her vinewood and the words leave her lips.
Ron’s wand soars into Hermione's hands. She sends Ron across the loft, flying backwards into a concrete column. His body cracks and slithers to the floor.
Yellow birds shoot out of her wand like fat bullets and tear into Seamus’ flesh and eyes. Dropping his wand, he falls to the floor, kicking and screaming.
“Confringo!”, she yells.
A blinding jet of red light cracks a nearby cabinet. The heavy wood and glass buries Seamus’ blind and flailing body with a sickening squelch.
Hermione runs to Pansy. Hot, sharp pain shoots through her ribs and each breath is like a knife in her lungs. Her body falls atop Pansy’s, locking herself around her, before summoning the strength of her magic.
Pansy screams in pain, but blood gurgles the sound.
She hears a roaring Ron get to his feet, huffing loudly and ambling toward her. He shuffles, but she doesn't have time to turn around. She grabs her galleon from her pocket, signalling the location to Harry.
Ron digs through his trousers, producing a small 9mm revolver. All rage and hysteria, he fires blindly.
BANG.
BANG.
BANG.
Her magic leaks out of her. Cold and viscuous.
Once more. Just one more, she begs.
With her last ounce of magic, she Disapparates with a loud crack.
If she could do this—this one good thing—
Her surroundings spin in a sickening whirl. Round and round. Pressure from all sides suck her inward into a concentrated point. She can’t breathe. Iron bands squeeze her body, pushing her eyes into the back of her skull. Swirls of blue to black to red. Red to yellow to grey. Blood surges in her ears.
When Hermione wakes up, she’s splinched and bleeding everywhere.
Malfoy, Harry, and John are hovering above her in a panic.
She makes it back to the cottage.
Chapter 15: House of Cards
Chapter Text
Pagoda - Sadartha
Hermione
Both her and Ron's wands are missing from her grasp. Her magical core is drained. She struggles to open her eyes, and every movement brings a painful draft across her skin. Her body shakes and recoils against itself. She takes a jagged breath, and looks to the grey sky.
Only it wasn’t. Slats of warm wood she knows and is familiar with.
She's at the cottage.
“No, no—” Malfoy pleads, shifting closer above her, his shoulders hunched as if in prayer.
John and Draco are pouring Essence of Dittany over both Pansy and Hermione's splinched bodies. Deep cuts and missing chunks of flesh missing from their stomach and thighs.
Draco's stoic, handsome face that Hermione has come to know so well in the dark, shifts into focus: first his white-blond hair, slate grey eyes, tight dark brows, high cheekbones, perfectly straight and strong nose except for that little scar. His usual cold mask is gone; what's left is a scared, young wizard.
She reaches up to thumb across the imperfection that somehow makes him even more beautiful. She has never told him before.
“You’re beautiful,” she whispers, her thumb dragging limply down his jaw, leaving a trailing streak of blood.
She watches his pale eyes soften.
“Take Pansy to St. Mungo’s,” Hermione garbles over him, blood gurgling her speech, “NOW.”
They levitate her too.
She shakes her head. “Put me down. I can’t handle— another—” Air leaves her lungs like a popped balloon.
Harry’s jaw ticks, his wand hand freezing and drawing back as if she had struck him. “No,” he growls.
No time, she indicates with her hand. “It’s too late.”
“What d’ya mean?” Malfoy’s expression flickers from surprise to anger to a kind of hysteria, and her heart sinks further. “Take Granger!”
John looks between them. The small witch in front of him doesn’t have much time, but with a quick sweeping assessment, Hermione doesn’t have any time at all. He doesn’t know what to do. "She won't survive an Apparition."
Hermione's gaze hardens at Dawlish. She wheezes, “R–remember what you told me in training, John?”
“Cut your losses,” they say simultaneously.
Malfoy's eyes dart back and forth between them. “What–what the fuck—what are you doing?”
John gives a curt nod and pulls on Harry’s robe, “We need to go.” He floats Hermione to the coach.
Blood spills steadily onto the leather. Malfoy runs to her clenching body, wand shaking above her. He closes off every wound he can find with Dittany, but it's not enough. They only had three bottles. The smell of pennies and her musky scent fill his nostrils.
John looks at him with a pitying glance. “We’ll be back soon but we have to—This witch is in bad shape. We’ll bring back a Healer,” he promises.
Harry hesitates, still standing over Hermione.
Her eyes suddenly jerk open. She grips the arm of the sofa, her body jerking up of their own accord. She stares into those green eyes she’s known forever and blinks. “Harry, I'm s-sor—”
Harry shakes his head, blunt nails digging into the back of her hands.
“Take her. NOW.” Hermione yells in a strained voice.
"Potter!", John commands.
Harry keeps her gaze on Hermione, but a loud clap echoes through the cottage.
A lightning crack of magic blinds Draco for a moment.
They're gone.
“What—” Draco curses at them, but tears cloud his view.
A strong pressure fills Hermione's chest. She realises it’s his palm on one of the bullet wounds.
“We’ll be okay. We’re okay,” Draco assures her. There is a tremble in his voice. He repeats, “They’re getting a Healer. They’re getting a Healer,” he repeats to both Hermione and himself.
Her limbs feel heavy. She can only quirk a small smile, blood dribbling down the sides of her dry, cracked mouth. It's getting hard to breathe. She's sleepy. If she could just rest her eyes—
“Granger, hey, hey, keep your eyes open. Look at me. You just called me ‘handsome.’ You gotta call me a prat to even things out.”
She coughs-laughs, sputtering out more blood. “Beautiful,” she trails off.
“Just keep breathing …”
She leans forward, weakly trying to reach for him.
“Keep breathing for me. We’re almost there. Tomorrow, I’ll get the plane tickets. Just us. We'll go back. Just like we talked about. Finally in Adelaide, we'll open a book store. Away from that speccy git. Don’t you want that? Just hold on. They’ll be back in a second.”
She smiles, but her eyes are fluttering. Drifting. Drifting. A comforting weight sits atop her eyelids.
His hands are slippery with her blood, placing pressure on her wounds, but there’s too many. He doesn’t know where to look. When he tries to take off her jacket, the blood clings to her skin and she screams in pain. He mutters any and all Healing spells he knows, but he doesn’t know any for Muggle bullets.
He places her sweaty palm against his cheek, but it droops. Her skin is cold. “NO,” he hisses, “We just got started. Don’t—” He shook his head, eyes brimming. “Don’t go.”
Hermione’s lower lip quivers.
She sees the empty expressions of her parents’ faces flashes behind her eyes. Harry’s thousand yard stare when she coldly told him it was over. Ron’s wild blue eyes. The trail of pain and disappointment she leaves behind only accumulates with Malfoy.
He pushes a tangled lock of hair behind her ear. A gentle kiss to her forehead. So gentle. Like the one he gave her that night when they talked about leaving.
It was all just empty promises. Post-coital nonsense. She didn't let herself hope. She realises then how much she wants this with him. A sharp sob breaks from her chest.
“Just hold on. A little while longer. Please. They’ll come back with a Healer who can help.”
She nods.
Just a while longer. Please.
But her lids are so heavy. And she’s so tired. Her limbs scream in protest at every little movement, even if it’s Malfoy maneuvering them.
"If you die, I won't forgive you," he says gruffly.
She laughs, and it hurts.
“What am I going to do without you?” He buries his face in her heaving chest, "Don't leave me."
Some things were meant to end. They were so close. But she never deserved it. She was never supposed to have a happy ending.
“I was happy,” she whispers into his forehead.
No amount of desire or wishing would atone for her sins.
He snaps, “Shut up. She the fuck up. That wasn’t happiness. Let me show you. What I can be. Better. J-just stay. Please. I can be better.”
Hermione shakes. “I always knew.”
“Don’t leave me,” his voice, small and petulant now. He begs, "Please."
“I don’t want to.” Her fingers slip through his hair.
“You’re not. Keep breathing with me. Please. I'll do anything.” She feels his hand on her chest.
“You deserve so much more,” she says, voice getting breathier. She’s bleeding out.
He pushes onto her stomach, trying to apply pressure to another wound. Sloshing sounds punch through the room, and he rips away her shirt to see dark fluid pooling around his palm.
Her teeth are stained red. Blood drips down to her chin. “The galleon. Take it.” Hermione coughs, a clot comes out, and she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, “Ugh, so sexy.”
Draco barely looks up and smiles tenderly.
“The galleon is connected to Harry’s. It’ll corroborate the coordinates. It's-it's your place. That's where Ron and Seamus kept Pansy. He’ll make sure Dawlish honours your deal. Get you and your mom out. Your friends too—”
He doesn’t answer her.
“Draco—”
No response.
“Draco—” A little louder now.
“What, Granger? I’m a little busy here!” he snarls. He sends a Diffindo spell along his jacket sleeve and uses the ripped fabric from his shirt to create a makeshift bandage.
“Listen to me. I don't have a-any more time. Give Harry my galleon. He’ll make sure you and your friends—” She lifts her clasped fist toward him. Hermione grabs his shirt, forcing him to look at her. “Draco!” Her body wracks with another gurgling cough. Her lung is punctured. She is drowning in her own blood. “Can you do something for me?”
He mumbles, as he wraps a tight band around her thigh. “Yeah, anything. But y–you’re gonna be fine.”
“T-take me back to Adelaide.” She continues to talk, “Plant a willow tree, if-if you want. Then that’s it, okay? Don’t visit me. Don’t ever come back.”
Draco’s voice shook, “What?! Fuck, no! You’re gonna be fine. Potter’s coming. We’re gonna—You and me, Granger. Until the end.”
Her hand cups his jaw. "You said, 'anything.'"
He pushes his face into her palm and kisses her wrist.
Hermione looks up to see a black, shimmering hole in the ceiling widening; it calls to her, pulsing wider and wider. The hole curves into a playful smile like a Cheshire Cat from her favourite childhood story. It’s bright and dark all at the same time, swallowing her being whole. She’s being lifted up and weighed down simultaneously.
There’s no more time.
She lets out a low sigh. She thinks of her family. Their first vacation in the Forest of Dean. Their looks of pride as they wave to her from Platform 9 3/4. Their looks of unfamiliarity when she returned to them.
She thinks of Ron, and how she wishes she was there for him more. She remembers the hollowness in his blue eyes.
She thinks of Harry and wishes that she did things differently. Better. Said something more eloquent than sorry.
She feels silky coldness draping over her. She’s tired. So tired.
Dying feels like magic simmering underneath her skin, running from her body like a river. But she forces her last sliver of magic to move back into herself—up through her arms and settling atop her chest and behind her throat. It feels unnatural, like a heavy spool of mud. It's fighting her; it wants to go; it wants to seep out of her.
A warm tear that isn’t her own trails down her cheek.
She struggles to speak, so she pushes the shallow well of magic up through her throat, forcing air out. “I’m afraid we’ll have to put our travel plans on the backburner.”
He grips onto her collar. “Don’t you fucking dare—I love you, Hermione. You can’t leave me.”
Her dark eyes brim with emotion. “I love you, Draco. Even though you are a—coughs—prat.”
He tries to laugh against her throat, but it comes out whiny. “I am. I am. I’m your prat. Stay. Hold on. They’re coming back. I want you to call me that every day. Remind me what I am.”
“I’m a bad girlfriend, remember?” She shrugs weakly, “I don’t know how to love something without hurting them. S-sorry.”
Draco shudders upon hearing her—his words.
Hermione braces herself. Her neck is wet. The weight is overwhelming now. Iron crushing her chest, so her magic flattens and spills out into her fingertips.
Her fingers clench and pull at his strands. It stings, but in that moment, it’s the best feeling in the world. The electricity seizes and zips through her body, sending rhythmic beats of hazy magic through him.
His cheek feels each weak beat fluttering inside her chest.
Ba dum.
Ba dum.
Until—
Until he can’t hear anything at all.
His hair doesn't hurt anymore.
Her last breath tastes of copper and salt.
Malfoy’s tears.
Draco
He doesn’t know how long he lays there, face pressed into her body and jaw. He crawls over her, trying to will his magic into her body. Pleading with her to live. A slow inhale before he finally stands.
Her limp hand drops to her side, revealing her galleon.
His hand intertwines with hers, covering it.
Draco traces the outline of the still-warm coin, desperate for any remnant of Hermione.
Eyes blurry with rage, he grasps his wand with a shaking hand, as fresh tears fall anew. His other hand wraps his fist around the coin. Prying it loose from Hermione’s fingers, he, too, closes his eyes.
CRACK.
Everything goes black.
The pushing feeling of Apparition always nauseates him. Iron bands tightening across his chest does not mute any of his pain. His eyes are sucked to the back of his head. When he settles, he looks at the glowing galleon in his hand, then his surroundings. It's a familiar, large, cold room with dusty, broken furniture knocked over, smelling of burnt magic and death.
It’s his Toronto loft.
Ron freezes. He’s kneeling against a fallen cabinet, moving heavy objects away from a prone, bleeding body. "Malfoy.”
“Weasley.”
No further words are exchanged.
Draco raises his wand. A stream of sparks coil around Ron, sending him backwards, silver bonds pressing him into the wall.
“Judging by the state of you, I got her good.” Ron smiles coldly, his eyes roaming over Draco’s blood-soaked clothes.
Seamus moans from the floor, hollowed out eyes and viscous, black liquid dripping ominously from the holes in head.
Draco barely glances over and flicks his wand, “Avada Kedavra.”
Seamus’ body stiffens and his skin goes grey. A howling rush of shimmering magic circles around them, then dissipates.
“You’re not going to go quite as fast,” he says.
Ron shrugs. “I’ve been dead a long time.”
Draco slashes his wand. Ribbons of fabric fall off Ron's body, ripping off his flannel coat and trousers, sending his concealed revolver flying across the room.
“Want a better look?” Ron teases, “Always thought you were a bit light—”
The ground rumbles, and another loud CRACK strikes through the loft.
John and Harry arrive, wands out and aiming at both of them.
Harry clutches his flashing galleon, eyes darting back and forth. “Malfoy, step aside.”
John rushes to Seamus’ body. “Gone.”
“I did Finnigan in,” Draco confesses without emotion, his eyes unblinking at Ron’s smirking face.
John scrapples for his Auror badge to call for backup.
“I said, step aside!” Harry yells, as he raises his wand.
“No,” Draco states.
Harry changes tactics. “I know how you feel. Hermione was my best friend and I couldn’t h—You can’t bring her back.”
Draco shakes his head, “Don’t talk about her like she’s gone. Her body isn’t even cold yet.” Sharp tears well behind his lashes. “You don’t know—”
“Ron’s done. He’s going to Azkaban. Our team is coming to collect them,” he soothes.
“Azkaban’s too good for him,” Draco growls.
CRACK.
CRACK.
CRACK.
A flurry of dark robes and swirls of colour sweep through the loft.
One after another, Aurors pop in, shaking the building and surrounding them. Well-trained and wands at the ready, closing in the perimeter.
“If you do what you’re planning to do, you’re going with him,” Harry warns.
“I’m already there.”
“How touching,” Ron laughs, “Was it worth it for a run through cunt?”
SNICK.
Draco’s wand swipes across Ron’s throat. It pierces like a needle. Deep and true.
His smile stays on his face.
The hot slide of his bright blood flushes down his neck.
A jet of white sparks leave his hawthorn wood. Draco makes a jagged, stabbing motion into Ron's abdomen. Wet, sticky liquid spurts across his face, ripping up Ron's stomach up to his bruised and scarred chest. His magic sends Ron’s pockets full of playing cards flying, cascading through the air like heavy sheets of rainfall.
It happens so quickly.
Ron’s insides spew out in an artless ejection. Glutinous and tacky. A sickening squelching sound as his intestines hit the floor with a wet thump.
On instinct, the Aurors expel magic in a concentrated attack. Blinding bursts of red light form a reinforcing circle around him; magic shoots out of every end of their wands, hitting Draco from the sides, front, and back. Hole after hole tears through his flesh and blasts through his body until he drops to the floor on his knees.
Draco’s magic dissipates and Ron’s silver bonds loosen. Draco slides down to the floor with him, facing each other.
Ron seems to be still laughing, but no sound comes out. A haunting smile is glued to his face.
The Aurors rush around them, some contacting the DMLE and Shacklebolt; others rushing to Ron’s aid. But it is too late.
Harry runs to Draco’s side. He tries to keep him upright.
Draco’s eyes flutter upward at the ceiling. “Put me down. I don’t want my last sight to be of you.” His voice is strained and barely discernible, pockets of life leaving him by the second.
Harry lets out an indecipherable sound and places him gently on the ground.
He feels his magic leak out of him. Thrumming lighter and lighter in his veins. But as he watches the blood pool around his knees and twitching fingers, he feels heavier and heavier.
This must be what Granger felt.
Harry uses his palms to cover Draco’s face. A kindness, he thinks.
Suddenly, his hand is torn off, and he is met with stormy grey eyes.
“A-Australia,” Draco sputters out with his last ounce of strength.
“Australia?” Harry’s brows furrow in confusion.
“Yeah, take her back to Australia.”
The sight in front of him shifts from the thick tortoise rims of Harry’s glasses to a swirl of unfamiliar bodies and muted sounds. Blood pounds in his ears, flowing and flaring up and out of his body.
The world spins heavy, then light, and finally dark.
Chapter 16: Epilogue - Dirge
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Air - Alone in Kyoto
An undetermined amount of time later.
They stand underneath a large willow. They’re in a newly built tiny park across the way from a two-storey, mixed use plaza. It holds several modest flats above a diner, a book shop, and a dental practice.
The day is cool and grey, windy and spittling specks of rain.
Blaise and a near-catatonic Theo clasp their hands together. Blaise needs to call Theo three times before he responds. Theo squints at his partner with red-rimmed eyes like he doesn’t recognize him before letting Blaise lead him away. Blaise signals to the others that they’ll be in the restaurant.
Harry stands underneath the drooping branches, leaning into the feathery touches the damp leaves draw across his forearms. He wipes his face and drags his long wet hair back into a short ponytail, unsure if it's tears or rain.
He doesn’t know how long he stands there, but he starts when a pair of warm lips drag across his shoulders.
He looks over his shoulder to see Pansy dressed in a black turtleneck and skirt, her eyes large and concerned. There's still a deep scar across her cheek. She quirks her head to the side.
Harry nods, intertwining his hand with hers to kiss the back of her hand, and she pulls him toward the diner.
He resists for a moment and crouches down. Using the edge of his sleeve, he rubs off any dirt and detritus.
He takes one more look at the bronze plaque underneath the tree before following Pansy.
They’ll never come back here.
This garden is dedicated to the memories of
Hermione Jean Granger
September 19, 1979 - December 25, 2004and
Draco Lucius Malfoy
June 5, 1980 - December 25, 2004May they find peace together in the next life that they couldn’t find in this one.
Pages Navigation
Account Deleted on Chapter 1 Thu 25 Aug 2022 05:30PM UTC
Comment Actions
JessicaLovejoyAO3 on Chapter 1 Mon 29 Aug 2022 01:14AM UTC
Last Edited Mon 29 Aug 2022 01:14AM UTC
Comment Actions
Account Deleted on Chapter 1 Mon 26 Sep 2022 06:25PM UTC
Comment Actions
KristyLime on Chapter 1 Sun 30 Apr 2023 06:12PM UTC
Comment Actions
Dfkdfc_27 on Chapter 1 Tue 18 Jul 2023 07:33PM UTC
Comment Actions
JessicaLovejoyAO3 on Chapter 1 Wed 19 Jul 2023 12:50PM UTC
Comment Actions
JohnPaulGeorgeandRingo on Chapter 1 Fri 12 Jan 2024 07:28PM UTC
Comment Actions
JessicaLovejoyAO3 on Chapter 1 Sun 21 Jan 2024 03:01PM UTC
Comment Actions
IceGirl2772 on Chapter 1 Sat 20 Jan 2024 04:43AM UTC
Comment Actions
JessicaLovejoyAO3 on Chapter 1 Sun 21 Jan 2024 03:02PM UTC
Comment Actions
MorsXmordrE on Chapter 1 Sat 20 Jan 2024 11:04PM UTC
Comment Actions
JessicaLovejoyAO3 on Chapter 1 Sun 21 Jan 2024 03:05PM UTC
Comment Actions
selenolatry on Chapter 1 Sun 04 Feb 2024 04:04PM UTC
Comment Actions
Wallflower671 on Chapter 1 Sat 11 May 2024 01:58AM UTC
Comment Actions
KristyLime on Chapter 2 Sun 07 May 2023 09:02PM UTC
Comment Actions
MorsXmordrE on Chapter 2 Sun 21 Jan 2024 01:22AM UTC
Comment Actions
IceGirl2772 on Chapter 2 Fri 26 Jan 2024 12:42PM UTC
Comment Actions
selenolatry on Chapter 2 Sun 04 Feb 2024 04:22PM UTC
Last Edited Sun 04 Feb 2024 04:25PM UTC
Comment Actions
stargirls on Chapter 2 Fri 30 May 2025 04:25AM UTC
Comment Actions
Account Deleted on Chapter 3 Tue 30 Aug 2022 02:01PM UTC
Comment Actions
KristyLime on Chapter 3 Sun 07 May 2023 09:16PM UTC
Comment Actions
MorsXmordrE on Chapter 3 Tue 23 Jan 2024 04:29AM UTC
Comment Actions
JessicaLovejoyAO3 on Chapter 3 Wed 24 Jan 2024 04:25AM UTC
Comment Actions
selenolatry on Chapter 3 Sun 04 Feb 2024 04:46PM UTC
Comment Actions
IceGirl2772 on Chapter 3 Tue 27 Feb 2024 05:43AM UTC
Comment Actions
Account Deleted on Chapter 4 Wed 07 Sep 2022 12:06AM UTC
Comment Actions
Pages Navigation