The corridor held the echo of everything they'd done and everything they hadn't said—an invisible weight suspended in the air like old smoke or a spell gone half-spoken, a kind of residual magic that clung to the stones and shadows and refused to leave with the morning.
It was the same stretch of long, quiet stone beneath their feet, burnished by time and moonlight, the same chill in the walls that hummed with restrained enchantments, the same air that tasted faintly of crushed violets, old parchment, and the dark, metallic tang of magic barely leashed. And beneath it all, threaded through every flickering torch and floorboard creak, was that same pull—that strange, ancient gravity that dragged them toward each other like magnets too close to resist, too doomed to part, drawn again and again into the same beautiful, unbearable orbit.
Her handprint was still there—bright against the pallor of his skin, a single mark of heat left behind like a curse or a blessing, depending on how one looked at it. It flared red across his sharp cheekbone, angry and unrepentant, the outline of her fingers vivid against the marble smoothness of his otherwise untouched face.
He hadn't flinched when it landed. Hadn't moved to wipe it away. And now, minutes—or was it seconds?—later, it remained the only flush of color on him, the only sign that he was more than ice and iron beneath his robes, more than the sculpted, distant rage barely contained inside his chest. It made him look alive, paradoxically—like her touch, even in fury, had branded him with something real, something no amount of control could erase.
He stood there, not moving, not speaking, his posture still rigid with the effort it took not to reach. He was breathing hard, though he would have denied it, each inhale sharp and uneven, like his ribs had forgotten how to function without her pressed up against them. And his eyes—always cold, always guarded—were locked on her now, not on her mouth, not on her body, but on her eyes. Always her eyes. The one part of her he never seemed able to outpace or ignore, the place he looked to when everything else—words, pride, logic—had already failed.
She turned.
Slowly.
Like a queen dismissing a court she no longer recognized. Like a woman who had given everything she could afford to give and was now gathering the last pieces of herself before they shattered on the floor. Her bare feet made no sound against the stone, her robe still clinging to one shoulder while slipping from the other, and for a breathless instant, she looked like something out of a vision—half-goddess, half-wound. There was no hurry in her motion. No flinching. No anger left to waste.
Just the quiet, aching decision to walk away.
And that, somehow, was worse than anything she could have said.
And then—he snapped.
His hand found her waist with an instinct that didn't ask permission, didn't stop to think. It wasn't cruel—he wasn't careless—but there was certainty in his grip, a grim, burning purpose that carved the air open around them, stripping it of hesitation, of distance, of time. He pulled her back with one motion, decisive and effortless, spinning her so swiftly that the silk of her dress whispered violently against itself, her hair fanning like moonlight caught in a gust of wind.
And then her spine met the stone.
He pressed her into it—not with violence, but with presence, with the kind of force that didn't bruise but branded. His body was close, far too close, the heat of him pouring through the layers of their clothes like steam off a storm-charged lake. Breathless inches between them. His form a wall, a cage, a threat wrapped in longing so sharp it bordered on reverent.
But he didn't kiss her.
Not yet.
Instead, he leaned in until his breath ghosted along the curve of her jaw, the faintest ripple of heat and anger and restraint brushing against the fine hairs at her temple. His mouth hovered just beneath her ear, so near it made her shiver before he spoke, his voice low—low enough to hum through her bones—and ruined in the way only suppressed desire could be.
"You wanted his hands… or mine?"
It wasn't a question. Not truly. Not something offered with the expectation of a reply. It was a dagger wrapped in velvet. A challenge dressed in silk. It slid beneath her skin with a terrible kind of beauty, sliding between ribs and breath and reason like it had always belonged there. She felt it everywhere—not just in her ears but in her throat, her knees, the electric beat of her pulse—and her body answered before her mind could.
She opened her mouth to respond—but nothing came. Not a word. Not a sound. Because then—gods, then—his hands moved.
Strong, certain, unrelenting.
He slid his hand between her tight, a single, devastating shift of his weight, and pressed up. Not to hurt. Not to dominate. But to remind her. Of where she was. Of who she was with. Of what she had asked for with every silence, every breath, every time she hadn't walked away.
Not all the way.
Not yet.
It wasn't cruel. But it was enough.
Enough to make her back arch, just slightly. Enough to make her throat tighten, her lips part. Enough to tilt her head back until it rested against the wall behind her, exposing her neck to the open air like an offering, like a question of her own.
And he still didn't move.
Didn't grind. Didn't thrust. Didn't touch her where it would count most.
He just held her there.
Pinned. Caged.
And completely, ruthlessly aware of her.
One hand hovered at the base of her throat—not pressing, not threatening, but waiting, feeling the flutter of her pulse, the rise and fall of her breath. The other hand ghosted at her cunt, knuckles brushing against silk and heat, so softly it felt like a hallucination. His fingers traced the edge of her knickers with maddening delicacy, and still, he didn't make contact where she burned for it. It was restraint. It was torture. It was worship in the form of denial.
The corridor felt too small. The air too thick.
His magic hung between them like a stormcloud caught in a snare—crackling, humming, alive. It coiled through the space like a second body, wrapping around her wrists, her waist, her throat. Not binding. Not burning. Asking.
Waiting.
His voice, when it returned, was lower now. Rougher. Stripped of everything but the need to know.
"Tell me no," he said. "Tell me you don't want this. Tell me to stop… and I will."
And he meant it.
She could feel it in the tension of his limbs, in the leash he held taut inside himself. He would stop. He would fall back, burn it down, walk away—if she asked.
But she couldn't.
Because her voice had abandoned her, caught somewhere between her parted lips and the wave of sensation curling down her spine. Her body was no longer hers to command—every nerve tuned to the places he hadn't touched yet. Her legs were trembling. Her grip on the tea cup from earlier had long since vanished. Her fingers now gripped his sleeve like it was the only thing tethering her to the world.
She couldn't speak.
Because she didn't want him to stop.
And he knew it.
Her hips arched forward, slow at first, almost involuntary, a motion born from instinct more than choice, her body moving toward his like it had been waiting—aching—for him to close that last unbearable inch. The corridor held its breath. And so did she. Her fingers, those quiet, slender things that so often plucked herbs with reverence or traced runes in soft earth, were no longer gentle.
Her hands gripped the front of his shirt with a desperation that belied her stillness, clutching at the wool and silk like they were the only material things left tethering her to this plane of existence.
Her hands—trembling, hungry, alive—curled into the fabric so tightly her knuckles went white, bunching it in two small fists that pressed hard against his chest, not to push him away, but to anchor herself there, as if the feel of him—warm, unyielding, real—was the only thing keeping her from being swept away by the storm her own breath had summoned. Her fingers twisted, wrung, curled again, as though afraid he might vanish if she let go.
And then—his name.
Whispered.
Moaned.
Broken open like confession, like prayer, like prophecy.
"Draco…"
That was all he needed.
He didn't kiss her.
He didn't have to.
He consumed her—without lips, without tongue, without any of the softness people associated with affection. What passed between them now wasn't courtship, wasn't teasing, wasn't anything polite or delicate. It was hunger sharpened into purpose. His body became language, fluent in hers, saying everything his mouth refused to admit.
His fingers—broad, precise, relentless—slid up the inside of her cunt, fingers parting silk with reverence and cruelty entwined, slow like worship, firm like a claim. Each inch he ascended was deliberate, unhurried, like he was reacquainting himself with sacred ground, the pads of his fingers brushing along the curve of her leg with an intimacy that bordered on reverence. He mapped. As if every tremble beneath his hand wrote a truth he had always known: that this body, this heat, this need was his to know, and his alone.
He moved with no softness. No apology.
Only that quiet, terrifying intention—the kind that didn't need permission, because it already knew what belonged to it. The kind of touch that didn't ask if she would fall apart, but simply when. His fingers were certain, precise, unbearably slow—not rough, never rough, but purposeful in a way that unraveled her more completely than violence ever could.
This—this—was where she broke.
Not in Blaise's hands.
Not in flirtation or fantasy. Not in laughter or longing or the polite affection of someone who wanted pieces of her.
But here.
With him.
She gasped when he found her—his hand beneath her knickers now, warm and devastatingly sure, cupping her like he was cradling something fragile and furious. His fingers moved in soft, devastating strokes—slow at first, then more focused, a rhythm coaxed from her body like music he already knew by heart. He didn't fumble. Didn't rush. He just learned her in real time, like he'd been waiting for this knowledge, this closeness, his whole life.
The heel of his palm pressed in slow, precise circles against that aching point, each movement drawn with the kind of focus that made her feel studied—known. He wasn't rushing. He didn't need to. Every motion was deliberate, every stroke designed to pull her apart by degrees. That rhythmic pressure sent shivers up her spine, but it was the flicks of his fingers—light, coaxing, perfectly timed—that made her body arch instinctively into his hand, like he was pulling pleasure from her in layers, one breathless gasp at a time.
His fingers slid lower, slick with her arousal, parting her with a reverent ease that made her tremble. He stroked through her folds, then back up, circling that swollen bud of nerves with the barest graze of his touch. She whimpered, and gods, he noticed. Every twitch, every shudder, every soft inhale—he read them like language, adjusted to them like instinct.
He pressed two fingers inside slowly, not to fill, not yet—but to feel. The stretch was just enough to make her hips jerk, her thighs clench, but he didn't push further. Not until she was already pulsing around the intrusion, already breathless from his palm still rolling firm and steady against her clit.
Then, and only then, he curled his fingers—not abruptly, but with the kind of grace that felt earned—and found the spot inside her that made her whole body seize with heat.
He didn't thrust. Not yet. He rocked. Deep, slow drags of his fingers against that sweet, aching place while his palm coaxed her higher, higher—until she was clinging to him, gasping his name like a secret too hot to keep.
And all the while, she couldn't think.
Couldn't breathe.
Her legs trembled, her hips moving against his hand in slow, instinctive rolls that had nothing to do with control and everything to do with need. Her hands gripped his shirt harder now, anchoring herself to the steady weight of him as the tension inside her built with frightening speed, climbing and climbing, like a tide she could no longer resist.
She buried her face in the curve of his neck, teeth grazing fabric, body tensing and trembling and drowning.
She was unraveling under him, every breath caught somewhere between a gasp and a plea, her body arched into his touch like it was the only truth she knew. Draco's fingers moved with devastating precision, coaxing her closer and closer with each steady, curling stroke. His thumb circled her clit with that maddening rhythm he knew drove her wild—firm, deliberate, patient, like he wanted her to fall apart slowly.
Her thighs trembled. Her hands gripped his shoulders like she needed to hold onto something, anything, or risk floating away entirely.
"Look at me," he murmured, voice low, rough with want and something deeper—devotion. "Don't hide from this. I want to see you come for me."
She blinked up at him, eyes glassy, lips parted, a moan slipping free as he pressed deeper, rubbed firmer—right there—and everything inside her tightened like a coil ready to snap.
"That's it," he breathed, his forehead brushing against hers.
Her body bucked against his hand, chasing it, begging for release without words, and he felt it—the way her walls fluttered around his fingers, the way her breath hitched in her throat.
"Let go," he whispered, kissing her cheek, her jaw, her neck. "I've got you, doll. Just let it take you."
She cried out as the wave crested, shattered, consumed her. Her entire body trembled with the force of it, her mouth finding his shoulder, muffling the sob of release as pleasure tore through her in waves. He held her through it, fingers slowing but never leaving, grounding her, murmuring soft praise against her skin.
"Good girl… just like that. So beautiful when you come for me. So perfect."
He kissed her temple, still stroking gently as the tremors faded, his other hand brushing hair from her flushed face, his expression one of awe and utter possession.
"You're mine," he said, voice barely more than a breath. "Every piece of you."
She folded into him like prayer, every limb heavy, her body shaking against his as her release rolled through her in waves—sharp, soft, merciless.
And he never stopped holding her.
Just pressed his forehead to hers and let her fall apart where she was safest.
Her knees gave. Her body shook. Her forehead found his shoulder as if gravity had finally done what pride could not—pulled her down, in, close. Her hands slid up further, still clutching his shirt, fingers curling near his collar now, nails grazing his skin through the shirt like even in her unraveling, she wanted to leave something behind.
She bit him.
Not in anger.
Not in shame.
But in need—sharp teeth pressing through fabric, through flesh, through thought—because she needed something to hold on to. Anything. Because he had taken her apart without ever kissing her.
And still… he didn't.
He didn't press his mouth to hers. Didn't seal it with lips or tongue or even breath.
He held her.
Let her tremble. Let her breathe. Let her fall apart in his arms like something precious being dismantled and not discarded. Like she was being rebuilt in the aftermath of her own silence.
And when her eyes opened—glassy, wide, completely wrecked—he didn't smile.
He leaned in, slow and close, his forehead pressing to hers, so that their breath mingled, so that their magic—raw and aching—could tangle again in the space where nothing else could live.
And then, so quietly it could have been mistaken for prayer, he said,
"You don't get to pretend anymore."
She slid to the floor like a spell dissolving midair—slow and boneless, unraveling as if her body had finally remembered its limits after being held too tightly in the fist of something vast and consuming.
There was no ceremony to it, no dramatics, no sob to punctuate the collapse. Just gravity and breath and the quiet ache of being touched too deeply. Her back met the stone wall with a soft sound, her knees folding beneath her like petals curling under the weight of rain. The fabric of her dress pooled around her thighs, rumpled and loose, the silk catching the light in a sheen that made her look both ruined and radiant all at once. She didn't sob. She didn't tremble. She didn't lift her chin to find his eyes.
She didn't even look at him.
Her fingers moved of their own accord, gripping the edge of her knee like she needed to hold on to something, anything, like the sensation of pressure in her knuckles might keep her anchored to the now.
Her grip tightened until her knuckles turned the color of old bone, clenched so tightly it looked like pain—until suddenly, they loosened. As if she'd forgotten why she'd held on at all. Her hands fell open in her lap like petals wilting at dusk, and her shoulders rose and fell with a rhythm that was uneven, fractured—like her lungs were relearning how to pull air. She drew one sharp breath, then another, each one cutting through the stillness like a blade before her body went still again, all movement sinking into silence.
And he—Draco Malfoy, heir to a legacy he could no longer wear, dragon in a cage of his own making—stood above her like a statue just beginning to crack. His fists were still clenched at his sides, so tightly the veins in his forearms stood out beneath the fabric, his nails carving half-moons into the flesh of his palms.
His breath came hard and sharp through his nose, like every inhale cost him something, like he didn't trust himself with the shape of his own mouth.
He hadn't moved—hadn't even shifted—but every line of his body was braced, locked, vibrating with the effort it took not to go to her. His spine was straight, too straight, as if posture alone could hold back the flood. His jaw was clenched so tightly it looked like a threat, his cheeks still flushed, not from arousal now, but from the shame of wanting more, and from the restraint it took to not reach for her again.
His pulse was visible—at the base of his throat, beneath his collar, thudding like a second heartbeat trying to escape.
And his eyes were ere locked on her like they were cursed, like looking at her was agony and not looking at her would be worse. Storm-lit, furious, burning from the inside out, grey flickering toward gold in the shadows as if the magic inside him still hadn't settled, still hadn't calmed. As if it never would.
He looked at her like she was the only thing in the world that made sense.
And she didn't look back.
Neither of them spoke.
Not a word crossed the space between them. There were no apologies offered, no explanations demanded. No hands reached, no names breathed, no attempt to unravel what had just been bound so violently between their bodies. Because there was nothing to say. Nothing that wouldn't break what had just held them together.
Because what had passed between them wasn't something that could be spoken.
It had been felt—torn out of them like a storm swallowed in silence, devouring every defense, every barrier, every carefully built wall until all that remained was this. This wreckage. This unbearable, holy stillness.
The silence wasn't empty.
It was saturated.
It pulsed between them, thick and alive, filled with the ghosts of things they hadn't named—things they were too afraid to touch. It pressed down on them like a spell that hadn't finished casting, full of tension and terror and truth, and they both stood in it, breathing it, holding it, until the moment passed—or didn't.
And still, the only sound was the breath they couldn't quite catch.
She moved first.
Her palm flattened against the wall behind her, fingers splayed, as if she needed the stone to steady her, to remind her where the earth was, what gravity still meant. She pushed up on trembling legs—legs that had once danced barefoot beneath starlight without fear but now trembled under the weight of everything unspoken, everything felt. Her movements were not fluid. Not elegant. Just real.
Every inch of her seemed to fight against motion, reluctant to leave the place where she'd just been cracked open and remade. Her body still hummed with the aftershocks of his hands, his voice, the rough worship that had scorched through her like fire wrapped in silk. And though she held herself upright, it was with a careful kind of defiance, like standing was an act of rebellion against whatever had just unraveled between them.
The dress clung to her unevenly, one shoulder bared where the fabric had slipped loose and never been reclaimed, revealing the flushed skin of her collarbone, the faint, lingering mark of his hand like a phantom print—neither bruise nor kiss, just a memory still fresh on her skin. The imprint of his restraint was etched into the line of her throat, invisible but there, pulsing with the echo of where his palm had rested, where his thumb had hovered, not to possess, but to know.
Her hair was wild—tangled and sweat-kissed, strands sticking to the curve of her jaw, the nape of her neck, haloing her face with a kind of chaotic beauty that made her look less like a woman and more like a force—unpredictable, elemental, unmade. Her cheeks were flushed, not from shame but from something far more dangerous, something intimate and uncontrollable. Her lips were parted, still damp, still trembling slightly, as if his breath had left something behind and she hadn't yet found the strength to close around it.
And yet—her face.
Gods, her face.
Her expression didn't tremble. Didn't falter. Didn't give anything away. It wasn't blank or numb or glazed with softness. It was... sealed. As if every thought, every emotion, had been packed tight behind a door that she had closed with exquisite care—not to slam it shut, not to scream, but to lock it quietly, so that nothing could leak out. Not until she was alone. Not until the walls couldn't see her.
She simply walked past him.
Each step a measured refusal to collapse again. Her bare feet whispered against the cold stone floor, the sound so soft it barely existed, and yet it was deafening to him. Her dress, loose and shifting around her calves, swung with each step like it belonged to someone who hadn't just trembled in his arms. Her hands remained at her sides, open but shaking ever so slightly—so slightly he might have missed it, had he not memorized the way she moved in stillness.
Her scent moved with her, trailing behind like an incantation—tea and stormlight and crushed flowers, the perfume of memory and magic and her, and when she passed the spot where their bodies had collided, tangled, claimed, changed, she didn't hesitate.
Not for a second.
She walked through it like a ghost through the site of her own death.
And Draco, still standing in the shadows with his chest heaving and his hands burning and his jaw clenched so tight it ached—let her go.
Not because he wanted to.
Because he had to.
Because touching her again now, even to steady her, would mean surrendering everything he was still pretending not to feel.
She had meant to slap him.
And gods, she had meant it—not in the childish, dramatic way people lash out for show, but in the desperate, breathless, furious way only someone who cares too much can strike. She had raised her hand like a spell, like a weapon, like the last thing she had control over, and aimed it not at his body but at the shadow of the man she feared he was becoming.
She had wanted to hurt him—not with pain, but with truth. To crack through the gleaming rage and pull the real Draco back out from beneath whatever snarl had twisted across his face.
To wake him.
To remind him.
That he was not a beast.
Not a dragon in a tower. Not a monster in fine robes. Not a man built only of heat and hunger and ruin.
She had seen that flicker in his eyes when Blaise dared to look at her, to speak to her like she was something easily touched. She had seen the feral edge rise in Draco like a tide breaking past the sandbags, and she had raised her hand not to punish him for wanting her, but to call him back.
To say: this is not who you are. I will not let this be what you become.
Now, with her legs still trembling beneath the soft fall of her dress, her knees weak with the residue of sensation, her bare feet chilled by the unforgiving coolness of the stone where her back had been pressed only moments ago—held, claimed, undone—now, with her chest aching in that peculiar way heartbreak and desire sometimes feel indistinguishable, with her heart thudding against the inside of her ribs like a moth slamming against glass, frantic to escape but unwilling to abandon the warmth of the flame it had fallen in love with—now… with her thighs still slick with the ghost of his hand, her breath stuttering at the memory of his mouth so close to her ear, his voice curling through her like dark magic spoken in a sacred place, his touch writing new truths against her skin she hadn't consented to crave—
She wasn't so sure anymore.
Not about the slap—that flash of fury she'd summoned like a blade, sharp and certain in the moment, meant to draw a line, to remind him of who he was and who she would not allow him to become.
Not about the lesson—that righteous need to be heard, to be seen, to make him understand that possession and devotion were not the same, that love could not be taken like territory.
Not about the roles they thought they were playing, or who had emerged from that corridor victorious, or who had surrendered what.
Because something had shifted. Irrevocably.
And the truth—gods, the truth—slid hot and unwelcome down her throat, burned in her lungs, settled like a weight in the pit of her stomach she didn't know how to carry. The truth was this: whatever power she had thought she reclaimed when her palm met his cheek—whatever victory she had told herself she'd earned in that sharp, punishing moment—had already slipped from her fingers by the time his mouth dipped to her ear and breathed out words that neither of them would ever be able to take back.
You chose me.
And worse—she had.
Somewhere deep in the quiet quake of her own surrender, in the breathless way her body had arched into his, in the helpless roll of her hips, in the way her fingers had not just held him but clutched him, like his name was the only one her mouth remembered how to shape—she had made a decision she hadn't meant to make.
Because his hands hadn't just taken her apart. They had answered something in her. Something primal. Something sacred. Something true.
She hadn't merely been claimed.
She had claimed him back.
Not with her body. Not with that soft gasp against his throat or the trembling silence afterward.
But in the way she didn't run.
In the way she let herself fall.
In the way she had opened—not just her legs, but her self.
And she knew, in that dizzying, dangerous stillness, that something between them had crossed a line they wouldn't be able to walk back from.
Not now. Not ever.
***
The house was too quiet.
Not the natural hush that settles over a house at rest, not the soft domestic lull of lived-in spaces filled with the comfortable echoes of routine, but something else entirely—the kind of silence that waits. That presses. That hangs thick in the air like fog over forgotten ground, heavy with what hasn't been said and what probably never will be.
It clung to the old stones like breathless anticipation, threading itself through the cracks in the woodwork, curling through the tapestries like invisible vines, draping over every room like a veil too thin to be seen but too dense to be ignored. It wasn't peaceful. It wasn't still. It was watchful, humming low and cold like the echo of a spell unfinished, lingering in the corners where the magic still pulsed faintly beneath the surface—quiet and unresolved.
It was the silence that comes after something breaks.
The kind that follows detonation.
The kind that settles only after two people have set something sacred on fire and now, all that remains is the smoke—the flicker of heat still rising from the ashes—and the unbearable truth that neither of them knows how to put it out.
They didn't speak the next day, not because rage still scorched the edges of their words—though there had been fire between them, heat and friction and the kind of desperate contact that left bruises on silence—but because something far more dangerous had settled in the hollow space where their voices used to meet. It wasn't fear, either, though trembling had followed in the wake of that orgasm, in the slow parting of breath from satisfaction, in the way her hands had lingered at his chest as if unsure whether to pull him closer or push him away.
No, the silence that blanketed them now was quieter, stranger, achingly soft in its refusal to look too closely. It was a shared, silent pact not to prod the wound that had opened so suddenly between them, not because they didn't feel it, but because they did—because they knew that giving it a name would make it real, would give shape and weight to the fragile, tender ache that still pulsed beneath their skin.
So instead, they moved around each other like ghosts stitched to the same ruined tapestry, two spirits haunting the same space but tethered to different griefs, never quite touching, never quite leaving. She walked barefoot, as she always did, her steps barely audible on the gleaming stone, her dress trailing behind her like seafoam clinging to the tide, soft and unbothered by the storm she carried inside. Her hair was unbound, still damp in places, curling down her back in tangled spirals that stuck to the slope of her neck like ivy clinging to stone, and her eyes—gods, her eyes—never met anything in the room.
They fixed ahead, always a breath past the moment, as if she were following a thread only she could see, a line through a labyrinth he could not enter, her presence ethereal and unreachable in the way that only someone deeply rooted to herself could be. And he, each time she passed him in the corridor, stood still—not out of indifference, not out of dignity, but because something in him refused to shatter in motion. His shoulders locked, his spine held stiff as iron, and his hands curled into fists at his sides, as though touch might break whatever fragile detente had fallen between them, as though moving might betray the raw desperation gnawing at the cage of his ribs.
She didn't look at him, not once, not even by mistake. She walked past like he was furniture, like she hadn't kissed him like a vow, like her body hadn't melted beneath his hands, like he hadn't mapped her heartbeat with his mouth. And he—gods, he watched her with the quiet, wrecked reverence of a man who knew he had already lost something he hadn't yet been brave enough to claim.
He watched her like she wasn't real. Like her presence had become something mythic, something fragile and otherworldly, some vision that would vanish if he dared breathe too loudly. His eyes tracked the sway of her dress, the whisper of her silhouette as she drifted through rooms filled with half-light and unspoken things, the soft stretch of her limbs as she reached for books she didn't read, tea she didn't drink, windows she didn't open.
He watched the curve of her back as she turned away from him. The pale line of her ankle as it disappeared around a corner. The way her fingers skimmed the wall as she passed, like she was letting the house remember her in her silence.
And he followed—not with footsteps echoing behind her in the hall, not with questions or demands or declarations that might unravel the silence they were both clinging to—but with that relentless, consuming attention that had no safe place to go, no language to shape itself into. He followed her with his eyes, from the dimmer corners of corridors, from the far end of the library shelves, from behind half-closed doors and over the rims of tea cups gone cold in his hands.
He never entered the rooms she occupied, never breached the invisible boundary she'd drawn with her absence, but he watched her with the reverent ache of a man tethered to a ghost who still breathed. His magic stirred at the edges of hers even when she didn't look at him, even when she passed like wind and time, untouched and unreachable. He haunted her presence without meaning to, his awareness always tipping toward her like a compass that could no longer find north, while she—graceful, infuriating, devastating in her composure—haunted him just by existing in the same space.
And the worst part—the part that gnawed at him in the long, sleepless hours that followed—was how effortlessly she seemed to ignore it all. Because she moved through the manor like nothing had shifted, like her bones weren't still singing from his touch, like her thighs didn't remember the way his name had sounded when it left her mouth against her will. She walked like she hadn't arched into his hand the night before, like her voice hadn't cracked in the dark when she gasped his name, like her lips hadn't parted for him in helpless, breathless surrender.
She carried herself like it hadn't happened at all—as if the hallway and the wall and the heat between them had belonged to some other version of her, some dream-shaped girl made of stormlight and longing. And he watched her in the aftermath of that storm with the silent, unbearable weight of someone who had been undone by it, someone who had not just touched her but tasted something unspoken in her silence, something sacred in her surrender, and now stood in the ruins of it pretending not to bleed. Because for her, it had become a dream, a moment unspoken and possibly unremembered. But for him, it had been the axis shift. The end of all his restraint. The moment the world tilted on its hinge and left him watching her with a hunger he no longer knew how to survive.
Every time she entered a room, something inside him faltered—not with the kind of gasp that drew attention or the dramatic stillness of a man caught in a memory, but in that quiet, unbearable way the body betrays itself when it encounters something it wants but cannot hold, his breath catching in the cage of his chest not with violence, but with the soft ache of knowing he no longer controlled what unraveled him, the stutter of his lungs too subtle for anyone to notice, too loud for him to ignore, and though he told himself to stop, to breathe through it, to look away, he never did, because she moved like silence sculpted into a girl, walked like she didn't feel the pulse she left in her wake, and she kept walking as if she hadn't taken something from him that night—something he didn't know how to ask for back.
She wandered the south greenhouse in the hour before dusk, weaving her way through tall blooms and trembling vines as though nothing inside her was unraveling, humming some tuneless, breathy melody under her breath while her fingers plucked violets and feverfew and tucked them into a small ribbon-tied bundle that looked more like a prayer than a bouquet, and her bare arms were dusted with soil, streaked across her skin like ancient sigils, her hair pulled half-back and coming undone in soft tendrils around her cheeks, and her robe, damp at the hem, whispered against the stone tiles as she moved, trailing behind her like starlight snagged on thornbushes, and to anyone else, she would've looked exactly like herself—serene, dreamy, unbothered, as if her world had not shifted on its axis.
But her hands shook when she reached for the silver spoon on the tea tray, not dramatically, not enough to be called trembling, just enough that the polished curve of the spoon tapped twice against the porcelain edge of the cup when she stirred in honey, just enough that she froze mid-stir, her shoulders tightening with the stillness of someone caught off guard by her own betrayal, before, after a beat, she finished the motion with careful slowness, as if determined to complete it exactly as she had meant to all along, as if her body hadn't just reminded her of the one thing she was trying so hard not to remember.
He saw it from across the room where he stood hunched over a tower of ancient magical contracts that had long since lost their purpose, pretending to read clauses that blurred and bled into one another like waterlogged ink, pretending that the rigid lines of inheritance law and bloodline oaths would save him from the ghost of her voice still echoing in his bones, and his eyes caught the tremor, tracked the moment her body betrayed her and then corrected itself, watched the soft but deliberate lift of her chin, the small straighten of her spine, the way she pulled her mask back on like it had never slipped, her smile re-fastened not for him but for herself, as if to say: I'm still whole, I'm still here, I'm still mine.
And he said nothing, did nothing, didn't even try to pretend anymore, just let himself sink deeper into the cracked leather binding of legal volumes too ancient to be useful and too dry to distract, pretending that if he underlined enough language about magical inheritance and clause loopholes, he might somehow anchor himself to a reality where the night before hadn't happened—or worse, where it had happened exactly as it had and left him ruined in the aftermath.
His hand moved across parchment with mechanical precision, carving meaningless emphasis beneath titles he wasn't processing, dragging his quill like a scalpel across lines that didn't bleed, as if ink and law and doctrine could somehow explain what it meant to have salvation within reach and not know what to do with it, to touch something holy and flinch, to have her body open beneath his hands like a spell answered and still retreat into silence like a coward cloaked in etiquette.
Every page he turned felt heavier than the last, paper dragging like skin against his fingertips, and every fresh sheet he laid bare did nothing to erase the echo of her moan in the corridor, or the way her spine had arched when his fingers curled, or the whisper of his name breathed into his mouth like a secret she hadn't meant to give away.
He kept flipping pages, kept underlining clauses, but he didn't absorb a single syllable, didn't retain a single statute, because every time his hand moved, all he could feel was the ghost of her waist fitting perfectly beneath his palm, the tremble in her thighs when he pressed too close, the heat of her breath as it stuttered against the shell of his ear like a prayer. And the house, once merely stone and spell and silence, now felt transformed—no longer a residence but a witness, a structure with breath held tight in its beams, with floors too quiet and doors too obedient, as if even the bones of the manor knew not to speak.
The portraits that usually shifted and muttered remained frozen, their eyes turned away as though the shame was shared; the windows stayed sealed and still, not even the wind daring to rattle the panes. And the wards—gods, the wards, which once buzzed warmly beneath his skin and shimmered faintly when he passed—now refused to acknowledge him at all, offering no glow, no pulse, no touch, while she walked past and they bloomed for her, humming softly, betraying their loyalties without hesitation. He couldn't blame them.
Even the magic in the walls seemed to know what he'd done—what he hadn't done—and the weight of that knowing was heavier than any guilt, because this wasn't guilt. It was recognition.
Recognition of the truth that she hadn't pushed him away. That he hadn't pulled her in. That neither of them had said no. That what happened had lived in the space between breath and choice, in the trembling edge between need and restraint, and that it had not been wrong. Only dangerous.
And now it lived in the air between them—this unspoken, burning thing—simmering like an unfinished spell waiting for the last syllable, a slow bleed of tension that crept through the corridors and curled into corners where shadows stretched longer than they used to. They passed each other like echoes, like a mirror refusing to reflect, her bare feet ghosting across the floor while his bootsteps halted too early, too far, his spine rigid with restraint he no longer understood. Step. Turn. Glance. Pretend not to look. Pretend not to care. Pretend that last night hadn't rewritten the rules of their entire world.
They never touched. Never spoke. Never even dared the intimacy of a name, not hers, not his, because names would give the thing shape, and shape would make it real, and neither of them was ready to stand in the full weight of that truth. But it was there. Between every heartbeat. Between every doorway. In the pause before every breath.
And he watched her move through the silence like it didn't hurt her, while he remained at the edge of every room, pathetic and hollow, a man haunted not by rejection but by the devastating possibility that she might want him back.
***
He had made it to his room on instinct alone, the hallways nothing but a blur of flickering candlelight and the echo of his own footsteps, and by the time the heavy door slammed shut behind him, it wasn't with decision but with defeat—as though the act itself had stripped him of whatever fragile armor he'd been wearing since she'd turned away. He collapsed onto the bed not like someone seeking rest, but like a man finally allowing gravity to punish him, his body folding in on itself as if the weight of the last twenty-four hours had snapped his spine in half; and there he lay for what felt like hours—motionless, breath shallow, chest tight—staring up at the carved ceiling with eyes that didn't blink and thoughts that wouldn't stop, his heart thundering in his ribs like it was trying to shatter bone just to get out, the sound so loud it felt like it had seeped into the very stone around him, into the walls and the floor and the air, so loud it became the only thing he could hear anymore.
What the fuck had he done? The question didn't strike like lightning—it crawled, insidious, relentless, looping over and over again in his skull with the sick rhythm of obsession, not tinged with guilt exactly—no, it wasn't regret that curled in his gut like rot—but with a far more nauseating dread, the kind that made his skin feel too tight for his bones, the kind that tasted like iron and desperation.
Because he hadn't just crossed a line—he'd obliterated it, trampled over it, and kept going, driven by something wild and feral that had snapped loose the moment she whispered his name like that.
And now? Now there was no walking it back. No unwinding the coil. No pretending the moment hadn't happened. She would hate him for it. Maybe not today, maybe not aloud, but eventually, and absolutely. She would hate him, and he'd deserve it, and it didn't fucking matter—because he still wanted her anyway.
But gods, she had felt so good. Her thighs trembling around his wrist, her breath stuttering against his mouth, the sound of her voice when she came—he could still feel her on his fingers. He wanted to do it again. Every day. Every hour. Forever.
She was his wife. His. She belonged to him in a way that didn't require contracts or Ministry stamps—and how the fuck could Blaise, Blaise , think for even a second that he had a chance?
He should kill him. Or hex him into the next century. Or lock Hermione in this room so no one ever got to see her like that again—not smiling, not vulnerable, not soft and blooming the way she had for him, and only him.
His name was written on her ring. His magic was tangled in hers. His hands had been inside her. He had kissed her like a starving man and she had gasped his name like it meant salvation.
She was his. No one else's. And he didn't know how to live with how badly he wanted her—not just her body, but her breath, her thoughts, her loyalty.
But gods help him—if she left, if she turned away now, if she chose Blaise or anyone else , he wouldn't survive it.