She was hurtling through an ambiguous mist, propelled by some unseen force. When she gazed down, Hermione realized she was on the back of a thestral, the creature's skeletal body rising and falling along with its great wingbeats. A tickle began in the back of her throat and she felt herself begin to cough uncontrollably, her entire body wracked with the action. Unable to control her fit, she lost her balance and fell from the thestral's back. She screamed, and she coughed, and she screamed some more as she plummeted through the sky, only no sound at all issued from her mouth…
With a strangely soft 'thwump', she came to rest on an oddly familiar floor. The sickeningly recognizable black-and-white-tiled drawing room of Malfoy Manor, its center sumptuously carpeted in Turkish rugs. Her stomach churned with memory.
Without warning, Bellatrix Lestrange was on top of her. "What else have you taken from my vault, Mudblood?"
"Nothing!"
"LIAR!" Bellatrix screamed, raising her silver knife threateningly. "I know you're lying!"
"I'm not!" Hermione pleaded. "Please…"
"Silence, filth. Look about you. I can SEE that you're lying!"
The drawing room shifted and became the Lestranges' vault at Gringotts, piled high with gold and treasure. Bellatrix was lifted away from her violent interrogation by a swarm of Padma's origami bats, some of them black, some of them orange. The whole lot of them disappeared through the ceiling.
The items in the vault were multiplying and expanding, threatening to drown Hermione in Lestrange family heirlooms. Meanwhile, she could see Hufflepuff's golden cup on its high shelf, just out of reach. She looked around desperately for Harry and Ron, but they were nowhere to be found. She was alone…
It was all up to her.
There was a very real sense of desperation fluttering in her ribcage as she struggled. She must get to the cup… needed only to grasp its handle… but no matter how hard she fought, it remained just beyond an arm's reach.
Suddenly, the piles of multiplying treasure became white soap-suds dotted with jasmine flowers. Hermione was in the prefect's bathroom on the fifth floor. Gasping at the abrupt change in location, she took a few moments to allow her heart to slow down. A second later, she realized she was not alone. Body obscured by clouds of soapy foam, Theodore Nott was lazily relaxing at the other side of the tub, his arms pressed up on the ledges to keep him afloat.
"Just seeing what you get up to when no one is around, Granger," he sneered, producing an enormous encyclopedia from nowhere. "Here, I brought you some light reading."
He tossed her the book and she managed to catch it before it hit the water, but because of its sheer size, the weight of it dragged her down…
She was underwater, but not in the tub any longer. Instead, she was in the Forbidden Forest, which was completely submerged as if it had sprouted up from the ocean floor. Vaguely empyrean, the forest appeared exactly as it did in life but for the rippling water swishing around the trees and bushes. Ahead, Hermione spied the unicorns in their paddock, exactly as Hagrid had left them. Except this time, Draco Malfoy was patting one on its long nose.
Spotting Hermione, he held out a hand for her to join him. To her endless surprise, she took it. He explained, "Unicorns, Granger. According to numerous texts, the horns are phallic symbols. That's why they prefer the company of virgins…"
Hermione's eyes snapped open as if she had been shaken awake, the dream swiftly trickling out of memory. There was an insistent, throbbing heat between her legs that embarrassed her, despite that no one could possibly know about it. She wondered if the persistent urge was strong enough for her to want to do something about it.
It was not an unfamiliar sensation, though it did not occur terribly often. She remembered the first time it had happened: it had been fourth year, on a weekend day after she had been kissing Viktor Krum somewhat extensively in private. This was after the Yule Ball, but before the second task of the Triwizard Tournament. After spending several hours together, Viktor had been obliged to return to the Durmstrang ship and Hermione had trudged back up to Gryffindor Tower, only to find her dormitory devoid of Lavender and Parvati. It was then she first discovered that touching yourself between your legs felt nice sometimes.
She had not indulged in some time. The war had distracted her from any such urges and despite her attraction to Ron during their brief flame, they had broken things off well before it ever got to… that point.
Thank Merlin.
Eager to get it over with, Hermione cast a Muffliato around her bed and its hangings before reaching into her pajama pants. She parted the warm folds of her most intimate place easily, her body already slick with want. It did not take her long to begin climbing to the precipice. It never did.
If there was one thing she disliked about masturbation, it was the falling apart at the end. Sure, it was exhilarating while it was happening, but it also forced her to pull apart at the seams. Control had become essential to her life and the loss of it, even for a moment, bordered on frightening.
After she settled back down, her body buzzing with satisfactory exhaustion and her fingers covered in a smug stickiness, she vaguely wondered what time it was and if she had time for a bath before breakfast. The dream was entirely forgotten.
Following a leisurely morning meal with Harry, Ron, and Ginny, Hermione found herself with an opportunity to explore the Ravenclaw Stacks. Located in a round chamber off her new common coom, mid-morning light eked in through the panes of three small windows high on the far wall. Dust motes gently hovered in the air where the light fell, highlighting the very pure silence the place had, as if the room were weighted with velvet. Books in varying degrees of newness or dilapidation were crammed onto the shelves that lined the gentle curve of the wall, while more were made into literal stacks that were several-deep. There were no laws of physics that would have allowed many of these piles to stay up without magic, considering how precariously they leaned.
Hermione recognized the smell of the place immediately. It was a very specific fragrance - one she loved - like knowledge and magic combined. Breathing deeply, she took in the scent of the place and pressed her back to the bookshelf behind her, closing her eyes to savor her exhale.
A very familiar voice drawled, "Merlin, Granger. Nott was right, you are a total book nymphomaniac."
Eyes snapping open, Hermione's jaw dropped in horror. Before her stood Malfoy, looking extremely smug and leaning against one of the ladders used to reach the tops of the stacks. He was wearing a pair of horn-rimmed glasses.
Wait… she paused, Malfoy in glasses?
She swiftly grew warm all the way down her neck as she recalled that day in the library when she had first prompted Theodore Nott's taunting… something he had apparently shared with his friend.
Now that she and Malfoy were no longer covered in a safety blanket of darkness, Hermione regretted her confession from the previous evening. What was I thinking? We may not be on opposite sides of a war any longer, but he certainly isn't my friend…
"Nothing to say?" he jeered lightly, a rakish half-smile gracing his proud mouth. "I'm glad I made myself known then, before you continued and I was obliged to cast a scouring charm on that entire stack of books."
Her blush growing deeper, Hermione stood up straighter and tried to look down her nose at him. This was difficult due to their height difference, but she staunchly refused to give in to his goading. "Are you wearing glasses, Malfoy?"
With an irritated growl, he ripped the spectacles off his face and they quickly vanished into the pocket of his robes.
With a smirk to rival one of his own, Hermione crossed her arms and leaned back again. "Draco Malfoy wears glasses. Who knew?"
"I only wear them for reading," he informed her tersely, his mouth as thin as Professor McGonagall's, "which is what you're supposed to do in here, rather than come in to sniff the books and jill off. Theo was right, that sort of thing is weirdly arousing, but mostly just highly disturbing."
Tilting her head to the side, she cocked an eyebrow at him. "Did you just refer to me as arousing?"
"Of course not," he denied quickly, recognizing his error. "I called you disturbing."
"Hmm," Hermione hummed dubiously.
There were three beats of silence in which both of them seemed at a loss what to say. Despite last night, when they had shared a brief but companionable conversation, this time was situational happenstance. It was also unlike their forced interactions during prefect patrols, when they had a specific task at hand. It was very different from their encounters in years past. Hermione supposed she had merely been one head of the hydra that had been her, Harry, and Ron, then. She was hyper-aware that before, she had been somewhat shadowed by Harry's shine, despite her own accomplishments.
Now that she was without her two best friends - isolated, in a sense, from them - she wondered if Malfoy thought of her differently. After all, she was certainly coming to think of him in a new light. Her interactions with him had mainly been limited to whenever their paths crossed due to his rivalry with Harry, for which she had mainly been on the periphery.
"I've been here all morning, doing some research for the Alchemy project," he broke the silence, gesturing vaguely to a small, fragile-looking book in his hand.
"It's a tricky subject," Hermione allowed, pleased he had decided to revert to his civil self once more. It was an elusive side of him, but she had glimpsed it before and knew it existed. He was actually nice to talk to when he was being that person. "That's why I'm here, too. Oliver mentioned he discovered an old alchemy text in here and I wondered if there was more information."
"This one seems to have been written in the 1500s." He held up the book in his hand. "It explains alchemy as a blend of spirituality, philosophy and science."
"The textbook indicated something similar," she nodded, trying to catch a glimpse of the title. "Science states that through matter, life was created. Alchemy flips that on its head and argues that life created matter… that everything was forged from a single source, and that produced the Three Essentials-"
"Mercury, Sulfur, and Salt," he supplied for her. Tilting an eyebrow, he added, "I know."
Hermione's eyes raised to meet Draco's and in those slate-gray orbs, for the first time, she recognized an intellectual equal. Nodding to the book in his hand, she asked, "What else does it say?"
A smirk formed at the corner of his mouth and he took a half a step forward, into her personal space. "Mercury is the spirit of an entity, taking on an identical form in everything that exists. All kingdoms - animal, vegetable or mineral - contain it."
He took another half-step forward. She licked her lips somewhat nervously, determined to ignore that he was crowding her now. "Sulfur?"
The smug expression expanded. "Sulfur is the soul of the entity, which is not the same as the spirit. It is still present in many things that have no sense of self-awareness."
He was very close. Close enough for her to notice the azure tinge to his irises again. Close enough to notice that a piece of his platinum hair had come untucked from behind his ear, but only just. Her breathing hitched and she fought to control herself, her logical brain screaming for her to move despite that her feet had suddenly become leaden.
She did not have to ask him to finish. The dust motes were fluttering gently in the light behind him and the smirk fell from his face fluidly, like a sugar cube dissolving in hot tea. Draco's gaze shifted to her lips and his voice was quiet when he continued, "Salt is the body of the entity, providing the matrix wherein the Mercury and Sulfur can act. It's passive, influenced by subconscious force as well as the conditions affecting the various states of matter."
He doesn't smell like cigarettes, her brain noted fuzzily as she felt his breath on her cheek.
Pressed up against a bookshelf, her eyes flicked down to his lips, which were getting closer, then back up to his eyes.
"Tell me not to," he murmured, almost pleadingly. The heat from his breath was already on her mouth.
But with the confusing tumult of conflicting emotions howling in her head, Hermione was unable to say anything at all.
When there was no refusal forthcoming, Draco closed the remaining space between them. Their lips brushed and for a brief moment, they lingered in an unexpectedly chaste kiss.
All hell broke loose as a fire ignited between them. Resting her hands on his chest, she noted the lean feel of his body beneath his casual weekend shirt. His hands clenched around her shoulders, bunching the fabric of her cardigan. Warm and savory, the kiss had surprisingly little tongue considering its overall insatiable nature. His lips were softer than Hermione would have expected, pillowing against hers as they feasted on one another.
The moment his fingers attempted to thread through her hair, quickly becoming tangled in her unruly mass of curls, the spell was broken. The aftermath left them both wearing identical shocked expressions that slowly dawned into equally identical looks of panic.
"Oh no, oh no, oh no," Hermione breathed sporadically. "What have we done? Why did we do that? Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no…"
Draco looked nauseated as he eyed her nervously. His expression was much more open and vulnerable than she was used to seeing on him, and she thought he looked as if he wished for nothing more than to be as far away from her as humanly possible.
Running a shaking hand through his nearly flawless hair, he backed away from her a few steps. "I'll just-"
He was gone before she even registered the door to the Stacks opening and shutting.
"Breathe, Hermione," she attempted to remember, sinking against the bookshelf and sliding to the floor. She could tell a panic attack was coming, but was powerless to stop it. "Just breathe…"
The door to the Stacks opened again and someone was at her side in another moment. "Hermione?" the male voice queried worriedly. "Hermione? What happened?"
"Just breathe," she repeated firmly, squeezing her eyes shut and folding into herself on the floor. "Breathe in, breathe out… breathe in, breathe out…"
When she finally was able to collect herself and open her eyes again, she noticed Oliver squatting across from her and looking extremely concerned. There was a prominent wrinkle in his forehead as he frowned at her.
"Sorry," she muttered sheepishly, still breathing shallowly.
"What happened?"
"A panic attack," she explained quietly, embarrassment seeping in. "I get them sometimes, ever since the war…"
Oliver's dark expression relaxed somewhat, morphing mainly into concern. "I saw Malfoy leaving and I wondered if he had accosted you."
"Oh, him? I barely noticed he was here," she lied.
"You still seem shaken. Let me take you to Madam Pomfrey."
"Oh, that's not necessary…"
"I insist."
Gentleman that he was, he escorted her all the way to the Hospital Wing, even sympathizing appropriately when she was given some Draught of Peace (the hellebore syrup in it gave it the sticky consistency of honey but without any of the sweetness). Afterward, he walked her back up to Ravenclaw Tower so she could rest, insisting she needed some time to herself following her ordeal.
Ordeal is an excellent description for what just happened, she silently agreed.
It was lucky the dormitory was empty, Hermione realized, because that afternoon, Draco Malfoy became the second boy she had ever cried over.
The first had been Ron. Oblivious, mulish Ron. First, he had made her cry after the Yule Ball; second, when he had taken up with Lavender Brown. There had been many more times following those, when the stresses of war had leaked into the bloom of their dubious relationship.
This time, it felt different from crying over Ron.
This time, it hurt more than Hermione could have imagined crying over a boy could, and was all the more frustrating because she was not even sure why it hurt. Truly, it had been a spectacular kiss… but it was also Malfoy. All she knew was that Draco had asked her to refuse him, and then kissed her anyway when she could not form a resistance. Afterward, he had seemed just as panic-stricken as she felt.
Sniffling quietly into her pillow, she bemoaned, How can I possibly face him for our Monday patrol?
She resented tomorrow for being unavoidable.
Author's Note : I have mixed feelings about this chapter, mostly because I hope I pulled it off okay. I will maybe seem like I am rushing things, but I promise there's a method to my madness. Or something like that.
I did not use a beta on this chapter, so any mistakes are my own.
As always, thank you so much to everyone who took the time to review. I love and appreciate you all.