Caelum Ignis Ch30: "Scars"

A Dramione fan fiction

She had brought all the books Dumbledore sent over from the Restricted Section up to Draco’s bedroom. She was sitting in his lounge chair with the seventh book on the list in her lap, reading it and drinking a pot of tea Dobby brought her maybe a half-hour earlier.

She’d barely moved in almost two hours, other than to use the toilet.

She was sipping what had to be her third cup of tea when Snape once again appeared at the door. She had to stifle a comment about barging into people’s living space without knocking.

She remained silent instead, as he stared at Draco on the bed.

She watched him look over the entirety of the room, find her, frown, and then return his eyes to Draco. She went back and forth on whether she should just go back to reading and ignore him right back, but in the end, she put down the book. She set it on the low table carefully, with its spine facing away from the door and most of the room.

She stood up and stretched as she walked over to the bed.

Draco was still asleep.

As it was now sometime after five o’clock, she had administered the dittany and the essence of murtlap a second time since Snape’s last visit. She would be doing it again at twenty to seven, so in a little more than an hour. She watched Snape examine the wounds the same way he had before. He peered into Draco’s eyes, then ran a number of additional diagnostics.

It struck her that she should make an effort to learn a few diagnostic spells.

Snape barely spoke to her even after he broke the silence.

“The fourth application following a three hour gap will be at roughly ten o’clock?” he confirmed.

“Yes,” she said.

He didn’t look at her, but began collecting all of the empty bottles from the counter. He stuck them into his leather satchel without a word. Hermione watched as he unscrewed the metal lid of the tub of salve and noted how much of it she’d used. He sniffed at what he found and re-screwed the lid back on without comment.

“After that one, you can stretch it to five or six hours without any danger, I believe,” he said, placing the tub of salve back on the bureau. “But if the wounds start reddening too much, then go back down to three or four hours.”

She nodded, “Yes, sir.”

“He’s been awake?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You gave him all of the potions as I directed?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, fighting the briefest twinge of guilt imaginable.

“How long has he been under from the Dreamless Sleep?”

“Since roughly one o’clock? I had him eat first.”

Snape gave her a bare glance, then a nod. “Make sure he eats again before he gets another dose. And push him to drink water and other fluids. He’s a touch dehydrated right now. Nothing too serious, but it must be addressed when he next wakes.”

Hermione felt her throat tighten perceptibly, but only nodded.

Why in Merlin hadn’t she thought to give him water to drink while he’d been awake? He’d had potions and soup. Had he drunk the juice she’d given him? She’d been so out of it then, she honestly couldn’t remember. No wonder he was dehydrated.

How had that not even occurred to her?

She stood there, twisting her hands as anxiety formed in the pit of her stomach. Maybe she was too tired to be any good at this.

If Snape noticed her anxiety, he didn’t ask.

He also didn’t linger.

He disappeared out the door after giving Draco a last look, and that time, he didn’t say anything about when he might return, or anything about what was happening in any other part of the castle. She hadn’t thought to ask him for more salve, but she supposed he would be back in the morning, or at least some time tomorrow.

She collapsed back on the lounge chair with something like relief.

She wondered how long the Dreamless Sleep would last.

She hadn’t slept herself, not since that morning. Snape hadn’t been precise about when he’d be back, so she’d decided to wait until after he’d come and gone.

Now it was too close to the next time she needed to apply dittany, so she figured she should stay awake until then, and maybe try to sleep a little in the three hour stretch she had before it would hopefully switch to five hours at around eleven o’clock that night.

Snape said five or six, but she wasn’t about to split the difference.

Anyway, the prospect of having five, full, uninterrupted hours of sleep sounded positively heavenly.

She was starting to get restless about news outside their room.

She wished she could send an owl to Harry or even Ron.

She read the research book she’d been working on right up to the dittany application at 6:40PM, and almost the instant she finished, Dobby apparated into the room with a crack! and her dinner on yet another silver tray. He disappeared the tea and plates and everything else left behind from earlier, just like he had with the lunch dishes when he brought her tea.

Draco still had barely moved.

He hadn’t opened his eyes once since one o’clock that afternoon.

She’d put the essence of murtlap salve on his wounds anyway, hoping the pain relief would allow him to sleep longer.

She’d meant to sleep herself after that, in the space before she had to put the dittany on him again, but she ended up sitting down to work on occlumency in front of the fireplace in Draco’s room. She’d spent two hours on that, on working with the animals and finding different ways to hide them, before she fully realized what she was doing.

Draco still hadn’t opened his eyes, and now she was starting to get worried.

Was he supposed to sleep that long from one bottle of Dreamless Sleep?

Shouldn’t he have woken up by now?

It had been over eight hours.

When Dobby came back to retrieve her dirty dishes, she asked the elf to leave the portion of dinner that was supposed to be Draco’s under a silver cover and to put it under a stasis charm. She also asked him for a pitcher of water and a large glass of juice, which Dobby also put under a stasis charm and left by Draco’s dinner.

By then, it was nearly ten o’clock, and there was no point in sleeping for less than an hour, so she took a bath.

She nearly fell asleep in the tub.

She was thankful she’d set an alarm that gave her twenty minutes to get dried off and dressed and her teeth brushed and her face washed before she went back upstairs. She had just finished with everything she’d wanted to do in the bathroom when the second alarm went off, telling her it was time to apply the dittany.

She’d really expected him to be awake that time.

Something about leaving him alone, even for that short time, felt like a foolproof way to get him to wake up, but he didn’t appear to have moved at all when she walked back into the room. He didn’t wake up as she applied the dittany, or even when she smoothed on the salve.

The lines there were still red, but they looked a lot thinner now.

After going back and forth, she went downstairs and locked the door to their residency. She knew it wouldn’t keep anyone out in the event of an emergency, but maybe it would cause Snape to be the slightest bit polite. The last thing she needed was Snape walking in at two in the morning and scaring her out of her own skin.

Snape or no, she wouldn’t sleep in her own room.

She’d promised Draco.

If he woke up in pain before the five hours were up, if he needed anything, even just a glass of water, he could wake her.

She decided to leave Draco’s own door open about a foot, so Crookshanks could come and go if he wanted. She didn’t really want the cat waking her up at two in the morning, either, and she wasn’t about to pry him off of Draco’s side and deposit him outside the door.

She set all of her alarms for the next dittany session, which was at roughly three a.m., recast a few warming charms on Draco himself, since she didn’t dare put covers over him yet, dug her way carefully under his blankets and duvet on the side of the bed opposite the cat and the bureau, turned her back to him…

…and fell almost instantly into a very, very deep sleep.

---

She woke up sharply at two-fifty-eight a.m., one minute before her alarm was supposed to go off. She climbed carefully off the bed, shut off both alarms, and then looked at Draco in the light from the still-burning fire.

His eyes were still closed.

She wondered if he’d woken up at any point in those five hours.

Yawning and bleary-eyed, she walked over to the bureau, grabbed the dittany and the essence of murlap, and walked back, to find him watching her.

“Were you awake?” she asked, surprised. “Or did I just wake you up?”

He shrugged, which she took to mean she’d woken him up.

His eyes never stopped looking her over in the firelight.

She dumped the bottle of dittany and tub of murtlap on the bed beside him, and walked immediately over to the table. She poured a big glass of water, and walked it back over to him. Without asking, she slid her hand under his head and lifted it, so he could drink, but he pushed himself up on his hands, grimacing, until he was sitting up.

She considered protesting, then got out of his way.

She handed him the glass instead.

He drank the whole thing down, barely taking more than a few breaths.

She went and got the juice, which was something purple, and he drank all of that down, too. She poured him another glass of water, and he drank about half of that, before he placed what was left down on the night table next to where he sat.

“I need to go to the toilet,” he told her.

She nodded. “I’m shocked you made it this long,” she said. “Do you want to go now? Before the dittany? Or after?”

He hesitated, thinking.

“After,” he said. “I’m stiff as fuck, and the salve loosens my muscles. It won’t pull as much when I get up if I do it after.”

She nodded, walked around, and got up on the bed next to him.

It was strange, putting the dittany on him when he was sitting upright. It was also a little harder; she had to use her hands to make sure she rubbed it into the red lines on his chest. Those lines looked shockingly smaller now, so much so, she found herself frowning at them.

She smoothed her fingers over them, and some were so much less, she could only feel slight ridges along his skin. Only the largest ones were still prominent to the touch. She made sure she got all of them, going in the same order she had been from the beginning. Then she tightened the cap on the dittany and unscrewed the cover on the salve.

He didn’t react very much to the salve that time, but she saw some of the tension loosen around his eyes. When she’d gotten it all covered, he pulled the covers off his legs, and swung them over to the side of the bed.

“Do you need me to help you down there?”

He glanced at her, thought for a few seconds, then shook his head.

“No. I don’t think so.”

He sat there for a few seconds longer, stretching his legs. Then he rose cautiously to his feet. He stood for a few seconds without moving, like he’d done while sitting at the edge of the bed. She watched, hesitant, hoping he at least fell backwards if he passed out for any reason. He took a step then, his hand on the bureau. He took another, and made it to the wall. He followed the wall towards the door.

Hermione got up from the bed and walked after him.

She couldn’t help herself.

She followed along behind, not speaking, as he made it to the door, then to the wall out on the landing. He followed that to the staircase and the bannister, then gripped that and walked a little faster down the stone stairs. She considered following him all the way down to the ground floor, then realized he probably wouldn’t thank her for that, and didn’t.

Instead, she gripped the landing bannister and stared down, waiting.

She heard the door to the washroom close.

He didn’t come out for maybe fifteen minutes.

She was starting to worry, wondering if she should go down there and knock, when the door opened, and he emerged. She bit her lip, and watched him walk to the stairs, then begin to walk back up, slowly at first, then gradually faster.

His hair was even wetter that time, and while his face was still shockingly pale, the dark circles under his eyes were a lot less prominent. She figured she should give him another one of those healing potions, anyway, and a blood replenisher, and maybe a painkiller if he wanted it.

She waited until he’d gotten to the top of the stairs and had his hand back on the wall, before she retreated back into the bedroom.

She was pulling out more potions when he walked in slowly, then sank back to the bed. He slid so that he was near the wall, then swung his legs and feet back up and under the covers. He’d just pulled them back over his legs with a grimace when she got the cork off the first potion she’d pulled out, and handed it to him.

“This is the healing one?” he asked with a grunt.

“Yes.”

He finished it off, and she took the empty bottle and handed him the blood-replenisher. He finished that one off in a few seconds, too.

“Do you want one of the painkillers?”

He thought about that for a few seconds, then exhaled in frustration.

“I guess I’d better.” He handed her the empty blood-replenisher bottle. “Fuck, those things make me loopy though. I had really strange dreams. Like long, really intense hallucinations. Some of it was really disturbing.”

She frowned. “Even with the Dreamless Sleep?”

“I don’t know when it was.” His brow furrowed in thought. “Maybe it was later, after that wore off.”

She set down the empties on one side of the bureau, then cracked the seal and handed over a bottle of painkiller to Draco.

“I can give you Dreamless Sleep again, too, if you want,” she offered.

Despite his words, he dusted the painkiller bottle off quickly, tilting his head back to suck down the last few drops.

“You’re staying?” he asked, as he handed her back the bottle.

She set it on the bureau. “Of course. I said I would.”

She lifted the Dreamless Sleep in offer to him. When he hesitated, she offered it again. “You’ve been sleeping a lot today. It might be hard for you to drift off. You should take it. If you’re still in good shape tomorrow, you shouldn’t need it again.”

He thought about that.

She could tell by the glassiness of his eyes that the painkiller was already working on him. He took the Dreamless Sleep after another few seconds of thought, and drank that one down, too. He handed her the bottle, waited for her to put it down, then patted the bed on the other side of him. She noticed that he’d already moved over to give her more room.

Crookshanks might get pissy about that.

“Come here, then,” he said. “You promised.”

She walked around to the other side of the bed and climbed in when he lifted the blankets. She watched him slide down carefully so he was lying on his back. He reached for her then and tugged on her arm.

“Closer,” he urged. “Come here.”

“You’re hurt,” she said. “I’m not getting any closer, Draco.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re obviously not fine.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m compromising. Let me compromise.”

He exhaled in frustration, but loosened his grip on her arm. He slid his hand up to her neck instead, and his fingers stroked her throat, then paused to feel her pulse.

“Are you high on painkiller potion again?” she asked him, already knowing the answer.

“Yes,” he said absently.

“It’s three in the morning,” she informed him. “I’m going to sleep. As soon as that potion kicks in, you’re going to be asleep, too.”

He slid his hand to the back of her neck, and massaged the muscle there.

“Draco,” she sighed. “You should relax.”

“I am relaxed. This is relaxing.”

There was another silence while he rubbed and stroked her skin.

She couldn’t help closing her eyes, and letting out a sigh. She couldn’t help noticing how it was lessening the worst of the tension she’d been carrying around for the past twenty-four plus hours. She decided to stop fighting him.

He’d be asleep in a few moments anyway.

She kept her back to him where she snuggled into his covers. She felt him looking at her in the firelight. A ripple of emotion left him as he stared at her back; she felt it somehow through his magic and it cut her breath. He tamped it down pretty quick, but the intensity she felt in that pulse made her throat tighten, anyway.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You don’t have to keep saying that,” she murmured.

“What if I want to?”

“You would’ve done the same for me,” she said. “I think you would have, anyway.”

“I would,” he agreed. “But a lot of people would have done it for you. Do you think anyone else would have taken care of me like this?”

She hesitated, and considered bringing up Nott, Blaise, or even Pansy, then didn’t. She didn’t know any of them except Nott well enough to argue the point, and she wasn’t positive Nott would be particularly good in a crisis, even if he meant well.

“Hermione, I––”

“Don’t,” she blurted. She bit her tongue, then closed her eyes. “I mean… I’m not saying I know what you were going to say. I don’t. I’m not even saying I don’t want to hear it. But that potion makes you say things you might not want to say to me, so I think you should wait. Whatever it is, don’t say it to me right now. Tell me later.”

There was a silence.

“What if I want to say it now?”

She reached back and gripped his hand in hers. “You almost died, Draco. I haven’t slept very well or very much. I’ve been awake and wound up and worried and there’s a bunch we need to talk about from those books Dumbledore gave us––”

“What does that have to do with––”

“You know what. You know exactly what. I’m going to react funny if you say anything intense or crazy to me right now.”

There was another silence.

“Funny how?” he asked.

She exhaled in exasperation. “Close your eyes, Draco. You’re going to be asleep in a few minutes anyway from the potion––”

“Please just move closer to me. Just a little.”

She sighed, then scootched backwards, so that her back and her bum lightly touched his side. He slid over another inch so that he pressed firmly against her. His long fingers wrapped more tightly around her hand where she held him. When she let go, thinking she was keeping his arm at a funny angle, he wrapped the same hand and arm under her neck, so that she was resting her face against his skin. She considered arguing his arm could lose circulation if they slept that way, then didn’t. It didn’t occur to her then, at three in the morning, that he’d had open cuts on that arm less than twenty-four hours earlier.

Truthfully, she wanted him there.

His skin was warm and soft and it reassured her more than she wanted to admit.

He leaned into her, and she felt him slowly relax.

She adjusted her head on his bicep, gripped his forearm tightly in her hand, and sighed.

They must have fallen asleep like that.

---

She woke up before the next alarm.

She’d turned around at some point in the early morning. When she opened her eyes, her head rested on his shoulder. She jerked in panic for the same reason once she was awake enough to know where she was, and to remember why she shouldn’t be lying on him like this.

She lifted her head cautiously once the initial shock was past.

He hadn’t moved at all in the seconds after she woke up. He wasn’t breathing hard, or seemingly in pain, so maybe it was all right. She stared down at his face and bare upper body in the early morning sunlight. That light streamed through his one window by the reading chair at a perpendicular angle to the bed, and because of that, unlike in her room, the rising sun brightened his entire bedroom.

She noticed that now because she could see him.

Both of them were bathed in that early light.

He lay on his back, his arm completely wrapped around her now. His face was turned towards hers, his eyes closed. His other arm lay in a loose circle around Crookshanks, who must have snuck back into the room at some point in the last few hours. She guessed that it was maybe six o’clock? She knew the full five hours hadn’t yet gone by since she’d put on the last application of dittany.

Her internal alarm told her six o’clock was probably right.

Was it Sunday? It was Sunday, wasn’t it?

His chest was bare, rising and falling in slow, even breaths, and looking down at it, she stared for a few seconds before the rest of it came crashing down on her. She stiffened as it hit her what she was looking at.

The lines she’d been treating with dittany and essence of murtlap for less than two days weren’t just a lighter red than they had been. They were gone.

Wait. Not gone entirely.

Faint, silver lines had taken their place.

They were as smooth and soft as his regular skin.

She caressed each one, trying to feel them, but the ridges were gone on even the worst of the cuts he’d had across his chest. The scars looked like they’d been there a year, maybe more like a few years. They were barely scars at all, more like faint memory lines left over from the dark magic.

She felt over his abdomen, his sides, his shoulders, the place where a line had curled up his neck to his jaw and face.

There was nothing but another tiny silver line. She could barely see the one on his neck at all. She peered at his jaw and couldn’t see it there, either. She couldn’t feel anything with her fingers, not even a slight depression.

That… that wasn’t possible, was it?

Snape made it sound like they would be able to minimize the scarring over roughly a week of dittany application, not heal him entirely in two days.

His magic felt dense over her skin and in her lungs, pulsing with heat, more intense than it had that first morning they’d woken up together, when she’d seen his magic for the first time. She felt it more now than she ever had, in any of the mornings since. She could see it more clearly, too, a green and gold mist that swam over her skin, tangible enough that it felt like being submerged in a hot bath that felt like him, smelled like him, even tasted like him somehow. It probably should have disturbed her. Why didn’t it disturb her more?

Instead, she felt a profound relief from feeling so much of him.

He felt completely healed in that somehow. She could feel he was all right.

He was maybe even close to one hundred percent again.

She didn’t feel the precise moment when he woke up.

His fingers gripped her hair, then tugged on it from behind.

When she looked over at his face, his eyes were still closed.

“Go back to sleep,” she told him.

He opened his eyes to look up at her. She saw that flame-like movement in his irises, right before he wrapped his arms around her from both sides. She bit her lip as she met his gaze. A shiver of reaction went through her, something about the way he was looking at her right then.

“This is the opposite of going back to sleep,” she told him.

Before she could say anything more, or even think of something more to say, he rolled over with her. He did it so fast, she barely had time to suck in a breath before he was lying on top of her. He sank his weight, one arm wrapped cross-wise around her back, his fingers gripping her hair, the other arm tight around her waist.

“I have absolutely no intention of going back to sleep,” he said.

She opened her mouth to answer that, but he’d already bent his head.

He started with her neck. His lips and tongue explored the length of it slowly; she felt him pause wherever her breath hitched. He let out a low groan when she tilted her chin back to grant him more access. His teeth closed lightly on the muscle there, right before he went back to sucking on her skin. She gasped, unable to help it, and he used his legs to spread hers so he could lie between them. He kissed her mouth, then, licking along her lips until she opened and kissed him back. He groaned again when she bit his lip and sucked his tongue.

She felt it when his magic seemed to wrap more tightly around her.

Within seconds, she could barely breathe.

She felt light-headed, too warm, as loopy as he’d claimed to be on the drugs.

He propped himself up on his hands long enough to sit up, then to tug her shirt up over her head. His hands slid under her long enough to unhook her bra, then he was taking that off her, too. She didn’t protest, didn’t argue with him in any way, and he didn’t wait, but started opening buttons on the light trousers she still wore. He yanked those down her, along with her knickers, and she felt her skin flush hot.

She was lying naked under him almost before she realized what he was doing.

She still didn’t want to argue with him about it.

He stared down at her, taking in her whole body unapologetically in the early morning light that splashed across the room and his mattress and over both of them.

Crooks growled a few disgruntled noises then left the bed and stalked over to the fireplace. He hopped up on the chair there and curled up into a ball to go back to sleep.

When she looked back at Draco, he was removing his pants.

She flushed hot, her hands firm on his chest as if bracing herself.

She didn’t tell him to stop, though, and she didn’t really want to tell him to stop doing any of what he was doing. She stared down at him instead, as he removed the last of his clothes. She’d felt him, of course. She’d had some idea of his size, just from the last few days of them snogging and him lying on her and pressing it against her when he was hard.

It was still different to see it. He was completely hard now, thick and long, and slightly darker than his regular skin now that it was engorged with blood. She wouldn’t have used the word “pretty,” just because it sounded strange to her mind for some reason, but it was the word that rose first. A smooth vein pulsed as pre-cum made the softer-looking head shine wetly.

“That is…” She swallowed. “…A really lovely cock.”

He smiled.

She started to reach for him, but he pulled her hand away.

“Not yet,” he told her. He kissed her fingers. “And fuck, you are gorgeous all over, Hermione. More beautiful than I ever imagined. And I imagined a lot.”

He kissed her mouth next, and stretched his body back over hers.

Feeling nothing but his skin against hers made her suck in a shocked breath.

Her fingers tightened in his white-blond hair, and she kissed him back, breathing harder as his hands started to explore her for real. He gripped and stroked her skin, following his hands with his eyes as he touched her all over, kissing her neck and arms and working his way down to her collarbone and breasts and belly. He went back to her breasts and massaged them with his palms, pulled and massaged her nipples, slid both hands down to her waist and squeezed, massaged her hips and then her thighs, gripping her calves and her feet and spreading his hands up her legs. His hands were huge, bigger than she’d fully realized.

He let out another expressive groan, and her whole body flushed.

His fingers slid into her cunt without warning, and her back arched.

“Fuck.” He groaned heavier, denser. “Fuck. You’re so wet, Hermione.”

He slid back up her and kissed her mouth, and she arched against him.

“I want to,” he told her against her mouth. “Hermione, I really, really want to.”

Her skin flushed hotter. She didn’t have to ask him what he meant. She felt him break out in a sweat as he kissed her mouth deeper, using his tongue until she couldn’t breathe. It struck her that he was way too good at kissing. Indecently good. It made her wonder again just how much kissing he’d been doing the past few years.

She fought the question out of her mind when it brought a shocking stab of pain to her chest. Godric, what was wrong with her?

“Tell me,” he coaxed.

She closed her eyes. She fought to control her reactions to this.

Her hands were exploring him back now. Her fingers traced muscle and bones, slid over his abdomen, over his jaw and face. She couldn’t lie to herself. She didn’t want to lie to him. He had to know, anyway. He had to know she’d been thinking about this. She’d already more or less decided she wanted him to be her first. She couldn’t imagine it being anyone else at this point.

He closed his eyes, and she felt his jaw push his cheek out as he clenched it.

“Yes,” she said. She practically whispered it.

It wasn’t just some ritual to lose her virginity.

She’d honestly never cared about the “when” of that very much.

It felt desperate almost, how much she wanted this with him, however. Maybe that should have worried her, made her pause, at least, but she couldn’t seem to make herself care, not enough to fight the intense pull she felt around wanting to do this with him. Some deeper part of her knew it was him pulling on her, at least in part, but something in her pulled right back, asking him for the same thing without either of them voicing any of it.

He took his fingers out of her and she whimpered.

Maybe she should have been embarrassed at how turned on she was already.

She saw his eyes close at the sound, felt his jaw clench more.

He yanked on her hips to pull her under him.

He was holding his cock then, positioning it against her while he rubbed her clit with the thumb of his other hand. She could feel both of them teetering out of control. She felt drunk, completely uncaring about any form of rationality around what they were doing. That desperate feeling worsened when he carefully began to push himself into her.

He started cautiously, more so than she could stand.

He entered with just the head at first, and paused.

“This is going to hurt you, isn’t it?” he gasped.

“Maybe, yes.” She fought to breathe, tried to care about that. “Yes. I mean, traditionally it does, doesn’t it?”

“Traditionally?” He smirked at her a little, but that harder look never left his eyes. His thumb stroked her clit and she moaned, and his face softened. “How much?” he asked more seriously. “How much will it hurt you? I shouldn’t… lose control, should I?”

“It’s okay. I don’t mind. I don’t mind. I want to do this…” She stared down at his cock, at the vein along one side. “I think it might have hurt, anyway. You’re big. You’re really big…”

“I’ve heard that…” he said, gruff.

She flinched, then scowled.

He saw the difference at once.

“Honey. No. I didn’t mean…” He let out a low groan, gasping as he slid into her a little deeper. “Fuck… Hermione. You have no idea how good this feels. If I pass out––”

“You’re not going to pass out.” She gripped his shoulders. “Don’t talk about other people you’ve been with right now. I don’t want to know other people’s opinion on your dick size, Draco…”

He let out a strained laugh. “Fair enough.”

He hung over her, his eyes glassy.

“Fuck, Hermione. I don’t give a good Godric about anyone else. I really, really fucking don’t. I never did, and I definitely don’t now.”

She bit her lip, still struggling with that insane, irrational jealousy.

She fought with words, but he stopped again, gasping.

She couldn’t talk about this now. She couldn’t even think about this now.

“Go in more,” she whimpered then, unable to help it. “More. Please, Draco… more…”

He groaned and tried to accommodate her.

He slid in another inch and she felt her muscles clench around him.

He choked out a sound. “Merlin. Granger…”

He pulled out slightly, then pushed into her with slightly more force, still only going about halfway in, and she cried out, shocked by a sharp, sudden pain. He stopped at once.

He gripped her hips, staring down at her. He fought to breathe.

“Alright?” he asked, taut.

His eyes looked drugged.

“Yes.” She bit her lip, then met his gaze. “Yes. It’s okay. Keep going.”

When he pushed in that time, he glided in easier, wetter.

He also went deeper.

He let out a heavy groan. It vibrated her hands on his chest.

He pulled out of her almost all the way, then––

––He thrust all the way to the hilt, making her cry out for real.

She saw guilt flicker over his expression, but it didn’t last.

Want lived there, blackening his eyes, blowing out his pupils.

He let out a pained groan. Strange sounds left his throat as he leaned his weight, going into her as deep as he could. Both of them were sweating now, panting. She gripped his arms where he propped himself up; she used his weight and solidity for leverage when he thrust into her a third time, experimenting with the angle.

It still hurt, but it was different now.

Having him stretch her on the inside was unlike anything she’d ever felt, and so different than what she’d expected her mind went blank. It felt shockingly intimate, so much so it was difficult to hold his gaze. His face was close to hers, his eyes searching hers.

“Merlin…” he gasped. “Merlin… fuck… Hermione…”

He closed his eyes briefly, and she felt him fight to control himself.

He eased into her again, more deliberate that time, slower.

She could feel him trying different angles still.

She wrapped her legs around his hips, and he let out a weak sound.

“Salazar. You’re going to kill me…”

His upper body fell to his elbow, and he put the fingers of his other hand into his mouth and coated them with his own saliva before he slid that hand and arm down between them. He slicked them lightly over her clit and she groaned, writhing up against him.

His breath caught before he closed his eyes.

He went back to stroking and exploring, using his fingers and then the edge of his thumb, raising himself up enough to reach her better. His expression grew pained as he stroked and swirled her clit until she felt like he was holding her off more than trying to get her to come. She felt his magic all over that, as well, on his fingers, even on his tongue as he licked and sucked on her nipples. She whimpered, her arm around his neck.

He rocked into her harder as she got wetter, murmuring nonsense in her ear, coaxing her, telling her things… fuck, what was he telling her?

“Salazar, Granger… I’ve wanted you for so long… gods, come on my cock, beautiful, fucking gorgeous Hermione…” He groaned hoarsely when her cunt clenched around him. “Love. Love, I swear to Merlin, this feels so insanely good… please… please, fuck, I want this to be good for you… I’ll do anything… anything… I’ll never touch anyone else again…”

She writhed and tried to hold back even as she lost control. She rolled her hips up against his fingers and thumb, intensely aware of his cock throbbing inside her. It felt bigger now than when they’d started. She gripped his neck and shoulder as she writhed harder against his pelvic bone and thumb, and it felt like she was fucking him more than the reverse. God, she wanted him to move. She wanted him to thrust into her again, harder.

His fingers clenched in her hair and she stilled.

He pulled almost all the way out of her.

Then he angled into her almost brutally.

He never stopped stroking her clit, or murmuring to her.

He did it again. And again.

He did it until she couldn’t think, could scarcely breathe.

He did it relentlessly, and his magic seemed to be suffocating her now.

Something about the combination drove her completely over the edge.

Later, she was pretty sure she’d screamed his name.

Her vision whited out as she bucked and came violently against him.

She’d never had an orgasm like that.

She hadn’t known an orgasm like that was possible.

Her whole body spasmed as her thighs gripped his waist.

She gasped out sounds, unable to deal with how good it felt. Even after the most mind-alteringly intense part of it peaked, even with the dull pain lingering in the background, she clung to him hard enough to bruise his skin. She wrapped her arm tightly around his neck, her legs trembling where they still gripped his waist. She felt herself spasming around him, seemingly on and on as she went boneless under him.

He made his strokes less punishing through it, groaning her name.

As the spasms began to slow, however, he threw his weight into her again, fucking and grinding her into the mattress. He started to come after only a few strokes like that, and she felt that so intensely, too, she let out a whimpering kind of cry.

“Fuck,” he groaned. “Hermione… fuck…”

His strokes grew even rougher, more out of control.

She had no idea how long that went on, either.

She felt it gradually roll back as he slowed.

He sank his weight into her once he’d finished for real, his hands holding her hips, his sweaty face pressed to hers.

For a long-feeling few minutes, both of them just fought to breathe.

She felt him trembling and her fingers stroked his back.

He wrapped his arms around her and slid his upper body sideways to lie next to her. He looked at her face, but didn’t pull his cock out of her.

“I think I found a new favorite thing,” he mumbled by her ear.

She laughed. He kissed her face, rubbing his jaw over her cheek and smiling, and she laughed again.

---

They must have fallen back asleep.

She didn’t remember falling asleep. She didn’t remember making that decision.

She knew a few things when she woke up.

One, someone was pounding on the bedroom door.

Two, both of them were completely naked, and tangled in the blankets and sheets. She woke up lying on her back, her breasts pointed at the ceiling. Draco’s left arm wrapped under and around her naked body, its hand wrapped around her hip. The hand attached to his right arm was wrapped around one of her breasts under the sheet that barely covered them. At least one of her legs was completely out, maybe to escape the furnace emitted by his skin.

Three, that door had been open before, so Crooks could reach his food and water, and his magical litter box area, if he needed to.

And really, if she were being particular, there were also numbers four and five, with four being that she’d locked the door downstairs, hoping someone might take the hint and send some kind of notice they’d be coming upstairs instead of simply busting in on them without warning. And five being, there really weren’t a lot of options on who might be out there, and every possibility was more mortifying than the next.

She pushed at Draco’s shoulder to get him off her and to wake him up.

He grunted when she writhed out from under him, then let out a grumble of sleepy protest. She didn’t answer it, but began casting around the stone floor for her clothes. She found her trousers first, luckily with her knickers still tangled up inside them. She managed to find her bra after she’d gotten those back on, and then the pink, long-sleeved T-shirt she’d put on after her bath the night before. The whole room smelled like sex, but she tried to convince herself she was imagining it. It couldn’t still smell like sex, could it?

No, she was being paranoid. Godric, she hoped she was being paranoid.

By the time she’d gotten that far, Draco had his own pants and trousers on.

He left his shirt off, which she supposed made sense.

“Do you intend to open this door?” a familiar voice asked coldly through the wood. “Or do I have to bombarda it to get inside?”

“One minute!” she called out, glancing at the clock.

It was nine fifty-two in the morning… nearly ten o’clock!

Godric. How had they slept so late?

Had Dobby come by, too?

She glanced at the table and realized the tray sitting there was new. It also appeared to be under a stasis charm, if the frozen curls of steam were any indiction.

Dobby had definitely been there.

Hopefully he’d come by after they’d fallen asleep, and hopefully when they were mostly covered by blankets or sheets, or preferably both.

She looked at Draco on the bed.

He was sitting up, his arms resting loosely on his knees. He looked resigned, mulish, and already annoyed. His bare feet poked out from under his trouser cuffs, looking shockingly white. Looking at his chest, it hit her again just how absent it was of any but the barest hint of what Harry had done to him. Those faint, silvery lines were only visible from a distance for the very worst of the wounds he’d had there before.

He’d pulled up the sheet and blanket to cover most of the bed, maybe to lessen the smell she’d noticed when she first yanked herself out from under the covers.

Godric, she hoped she’d been imagining that.

She backed away slowly from the door, worried now the smell came from her.

“You ready?” he asked, his eyebrow cocked.

She hesitated a moment, then nodded.

Was she ready for this?

No, of course not. She absolutely wasn’t.

But she didn’t really see that they had any choice.