Archive of Our Own

half-life

noun.

1: the time required for half the amount of a substance (such as a drug, radioactive tracer, or pesticide) in or introduced into a living system or ecosystem to be eliminated or disintegrated by natural processes. 

2: a period of usefulness or popularity preceding decline or obsolescence.

People think war is synonymous with peril. 

Adventure. Battles. Fighting. 

The reality is boring. Endless days become meaningless stretches of time, bits of lost life inside nothing-special moments.  

Hermione has lost the better part of three years. 

The twenty-first century is nothing like she imagined. Voldemort is still at large; there are two Horcruxes left. Around they go, no end in sight, and with casualties creeping into the thousands. 

Whispers through the grapevine are that Draco Malfoy defected last night. He was captured while on the run and brought to Headquarters — a deal with the devil. Defect or die. 

Pity he didn't choose the latter. 

xXx

Two hundred and seventy-two.

That's how many tiles are in the kitchen.

Her grandparents owned a plot of land on the outskirts of Tinagel, which was bought for nearly dirt in the fifties. The property has stayed abandoned for most of Hermione's life. 

From an outsider's perspective, the acres are overgrown, and its massive farmhouse is caving in beneath the weight of age and rot. 

Behind the cloak of magic, however, the dilapidated barn and adjacent home are a spacious safehouse. Six bedrooms, filled to the brim, with sprawling landscapes and a surrounding forest.

She's rather proud of all the magic she and the Order used to get this place up and running. 

God, she loves magic. 

Too bad it came at a price. 

xXx 

The grapevine whispers grow. 

Malfoy has passed the preliminary spell tests. Veritaserum. Legilimency. He said he's wanted to defect for months. Years. He was running away. 

They all say that. 

She, Harry, and Ron are slated to stay here for another year. Harry is too precious for the resistance, and the three of them are a package deal. 

Problem is, she wants to fight. Wants to kill, and torture, and rip Voldemort's forces to shreds, one by one.

What does that say about her? 

She and Moody fight about their nonaction. 

xXx

Twenty-six people in any home is too many. Even a large one. 

Someone is always fighting, shagging, using the bathrooms, walking around. 

Hermione breaks a record tonight. 

She gets four uninterrupted hours of sleep. 

xXx

Lavender calls her a whore at breakfast. 

It isn't to her face. It's a roundabout musing, spoken loudly to Padma over the powdered eggs they eat daily. 

“Life would be easier if I just had my nose in a book all day and my legs spread like a whore all night.” 

The pointed look she gives Hermione would win Lavender a BAFTA. 

Dear God.  

True. She reads nonstop to fill the endless hours. And she's no virgin, filling another ache rather frequently, too. 

She lost it to Victor over the summer before sixth year. She slept with Harry in the tent when it was just the two of them, drunk and terrified. She frequently made love with Ron during their whirlwind two-year relationship, which is in ruins. 

And now she's shagging Adrian Pucey to feel something.

Four people at twenty-one, and Lavender acts like she's the town rake. 

She wishes Lavender would give in to Colin Creevy's advances. He isn't the kid he was at twelve, and he looks at Lavender like she's Venus reborn. 

Instead, she makes the mistake Hermione has made before. Shagging her ex-boyfriend because it's easy and feels good enough, and he's right there.  

Ron wears this loopy smile all week. 

xXx

“No.” 

Tonks sighs. “Hermione—” 

“He's not coming here.” She crosses the kitchen, busying her wand with cleaning charms. “Why can't he stay at Headquarters?”  

Headquarters is more equipped to handle a defected Death Eater. The dangerous kind — competent and skilled with nothing to lose. 

Tonks argues, “We don't have the space or manpower to watch him—” 

“And we do?” 

“We'll take Peucy and Bletchley.”

“No!” 

Tonks gives her a pitied look. “I know you and Adrian are—”

“It's not like that.”

Pity changes to knowing; Tonks’ look burns into her. “Sure, it's not.” 

There isn't room for love in war. Hermione says just as much. 

“We're just…  friends. I don't want Malfoy here, is all.” The worst ex-Slytherin in exchange for the two best. “Not with me, Ron, and Harry.” 

She explains how tensions will be too high. There's too much history there. 

“And I don't want a Death Eater privy to the most important Order meetings—” 

“You said he defected.” 

She and Tonks never fight. 

Tonight, they do. 

xXx

Harry calls Adrian a unicorn, a ‘good Slytherin’, and Hermione thinks he only says this because Adrian never cheated too badly at Quidditch when they were at Hogwarts. 

He's twenty-three, gorgeous, and Lavender wants to shag him — a fact that is written across her forehead every time the pair speak. 

She and Lavender have the same type in men, it seems. 

Merlin, when can they leave this house? 

Hermione manages two hours that night, giving up and reading a romance novel in the sitting room while the whole house sleeps.

xXx

The sex isn't anything to write home about. 

In fact, it's arguably the worst of her life. Harry as a virgin was better, giving and guidable. Ron knew her body well, her ex-boyfriend of two years. Victor was experienced. 

Adrian is simply… there. Until he's not, their days are numbered, and he plans to make the most of them, apparently. 

She goes along with his suggestion. Neither of them has anything better to do. 

“Fuck, that was good.” His breaths are uneven as they lie outside on a blanket. 

It's the only way to get privacy — leaving the home to find a patch of field or hidden part of the woods. 

She had faked her orgasm. Completion is hard for her in the best of circumstances. This war, its stalemate, and Adrian's mediocrity don't help matters. 

But his head between her legs is pleasant enough. He tries, so she rewards him with a good performance. 

“I'm gonna miss you, Hermione.” 

“I wish you were staying here instead of Malfoy.” 

At least that she can say with confidence. 

xXx

Their job is survival and strategy. Her talents are better used off the battlefield than on, or so Tonks and Moody insist. 

It's insulting as it is untrue. 

Still, she follows orders. She helps people move from here to Muggle assimilation. It's life or death, a crash course in Muggle Studies. 

Adrien leaves for Headquarters only a month into their strange limbo. Friends with benefits. Whatever people call it. Maybe that's why she feels nothing when he's packing up his things. 

He tries to kiss her in front of everyone as he's leaving. 

She turns her head at the last second. 

xXx

Malfoy arrives on a Tuesday. 

What a terrible gift from the universe to celebrate the week before Christmas.  

“Don't touch my things,” he tells her. 

She has to go through the trunk he's brought and screen the items. 

“I have to see if there's anything of value — anything you're hiding.” 

His smarmy smirk could make a vicar curse. “If you want to touch my undergarments, Granger, just say so.”

“I'd rather touch Venomous Tentacula.”

She confiscates a few items, one of which is a magically refilling inkwell with the initials N.B. engraved on its side. 

Something in Malfoy snaps; it means something to him. 

“Give me that, Mudblood —” 

“Don't fucking call her that!” 

Christmas comes early when Harry decks Malfoy in the stomach. 

xXx

They fight today. 

It's a stipulation of his staying here. He has to learn about Muggles and Muggle things — he isn't allowed a wand. 

He has to be able to pretend; otherwise, he won't ever leave. 

Stowed in the Muggle world are where defected Death Eaters belong. In hiding, miserable, everything stripped away that was once meaningful to them. 

The Order will never trust his loyalties enough to let Malfoy fight. 

He won't listen to her explanation of Muggle kitchen appliances. They end up in a screaming match, lashing out at each other in displaced anger. 

“Fucking Death Eater scumb.” 

She hasn't ever called someone that. 

She likes the feel of it flowing from her lips. 

xXx

Wandless and scored, Malfoy has the audacity to call Muggle things inferior. Regularly. 

Everyday. 

Turncoat, he may be, but it's clear he still believes the teachings of his old masters. 

“Muggles must be so fucking miserable. What a joke—” 

“Shut up!” 

She looks at the washing machine and dryer they're in front of. 

Sometimes, she can't help but think he's a bit right. Not about everything. She's sick just thinking it. 

Muggle things are inferior to magic. It's like pretending walking without shoes is a better mode of transportation than taking a private jet. 

“I can't wait until we win this war,” she taunts, trying to hurt him. “You'll never be allowed a wand again.” 

Either that or thrown into Azkaban. He belongs there for the atrocities he's committed. 

“Three years, nothing accomplished.” He taunts her right back. “You still think your lot will win?” 

“I know we will,” she says, more confidently than she believes. 

xXx

It's January, and they fight. 

“You agreed to come here!” 

“My other option was death—” 

“Pity you didn't pick that.” 

“Do it for me now,” he hisses. “Kill me, Granger. Use that metal wand Muggles love so much.” 

She's never wanted to more. 

He holds up his thumb and two fingers to his temple, shocking her a bit when he cocks his thumb as if pulling a trigger. 

He knows the Muggle hand gesture for a gun. 

At least he's learning something. 

xXx

In February, they fight. 

The outside perfectly symbolises what's taken up residence inside her: cold, icy, and barren. 

Hermione puts her hands on him for the first time, shoving his chest. She wants to punch a wall. She almost takes a page from Harry's book, her first clenching and unclenching. 

“What are you doing?” he asks when she pulls a book from the shelves lining the sitting room.

“Seeing if your picture is beside ‘incorrigible prick’ in the dictionary.” 

“See if yours is beside uptight Mudblood bitch —” 

She throws the dictionary at his head. 

xXx

In March, they fight. 

Not about Muggle appliances or his utter petulance.

Melissa Stewart is a pretty thing. Blonde and curvy, she's thirty-three and lost her husband to the war efforts a few months back. She's been there for two weeks and knows more about Muggle things than most witches. 

She's kind, albeit wrecked. 

They all are. 

Hermione walks in on Malfoy fucking her atop the kitchen worktop at two in the morning. 

“OH MY FUCKING —” 

She looks down to avert her eyes, but it’s too late. 

She needs to bleach her eyeballs. When Malfoy jumps back, they separate, giving her a perfect view of everything. 

Her retinas burn from what she sees. 

Hermione throws the nearest thing within reach at Malfoy's smirking face after he readjusts his trousers.  

“Go outside if you're going to do that!” 

The half-drank plastic water bottle misses him by a fraction of an inch. 

xXx

They're better when fighting. It silences her thoughts. 

Because then, she doesn't have to think about it. The look of rapture on Melissa's face, how he thrust into her with slow strokes, his nice… 

Fuck. 

It's seared into her as if someone stuck a cattle prod against her brain.

She steals a sinful glance below his waist in the moments right after dinner, and there's an unwelcome twinge between her legs when they finally speak about what she walked in on.

Hermione raises her arms in a show of drama. “She's twelve years older than you!” 

“So what? She's fit.” 

“She's a half-blood, you know. Her mum's a Muggle.” 

“And? She isn't the first non-pureblood I've been with.” 

“Oh, really?” Hermione doesn't believe him. He's a liar, after all. “Who else?” 

“Dunno. I don't ask the whores their names or for blood status paperwork before I empty inside them.”

“You're a vile human. We should have killed you when we had the chance. Made the world a better place.” 

“You still can, you know.” 

xXx

In April, they don't speak much. 

Hermione reads nonstop and skirts him like she's avoiding leprosy. Tensions build. She can't look him in the eye for too long; otherwise, something stirs behind her ribcage.

The flowers are starting to bloom outside. 

xXx

By May, they're back at it.  

Malfoy can read her mind. He knows what subject makes her the most uncomfortable, the one that turns her beet red.  

He's outside with her, spoiling the back garden and its flowers with his presence. 

“So, who has the bigger cock, Potter or Weasley?” 

Don't take the bait, don't take the bait, don't take the —

“Go offer to wank them off and find out for yourself.”  

“I'm leaning toward Weasley,” he says casually, looking up at the sky. “He's such a large oaf, you'd hope he has the cock to match.”

“Stop it—”

“But his whole persona just screams small dick, so I think Potter probably bests him in that area, too. Just like everything else in life.” 

“Both are bigger than you.” 

It's a lie. 

Ron's is longer, yes, but not particularly girthy. Harry's is perfectly average. 

But she wants to dig the knife in and twist it. 

“Good,” he says. “Most women don't enjoy their cervix being bruised —” 

“Like you even know what a cervix is.” 

“Want me to show you? To touch yours —” 

“I'd sooner fuck a tree branch.” 

Malfoy's was thick — coated with slick, perfect, pink, and the image of it is so stuck in her psyche that she'll go senile before she forgets. 

“Adrien is small. I remember from the locker room—” 

“Why are you so obsessed with the male appendage? Something you'd like to tell me?” 

“If I were gay, I'd certainly choose a better cock to suck than Adrien fucking Pucey's… Did you even do that, Granger? Or was he always the one on his knees?” 

There are no secrets in this god-forsaken place. 

xXx

The nerve she hits is raw and exposed. 

The subject has veered from Hoovers to, well… sucking something else. 

“Do you call Melissa mummy? Pretend to breastfeed from her teet while you two shag —”

“Would that turn you on, Granger?” He smirks. “Your jealousy is showing.”

“Your Oedipus complex is showing.” 

“My… what?” 

Hermione doesn't explain, jumping into something else she's heard through the grapevine.

She's been itching to bring this up. 

“Where is Mummy anyway?”   

Malfoy's glare could curl paint. “Shut up.”

Hermione snaps her fingers. “Oh.. that's right…” 

“Shut up!” 

“Last I heard, she was getting run through like a train after daddy and co. made so many enemies defecting... Forced to pay the family debts with her pristine, pureblood pus—” 

“SHUT UP!” 

She can be vicious when she wants to be. 

They match a bit in that way.

xXx

“Where are the sleeping draughts?” 

Malfoy interrupts her as she sits on the sofa, reading. 

“Potions cupboard, third shelf — on the left,” she says, looking back at her novel. “It should be labelled.”  

She returns to reading, watching briefly as he emerges from the kitchen. 

“Bottoms up, Granger.” 

“Goodnight,” she mutters. 

He tips the clear-coloured sleeping draught to his lips, walking in the direction of the stairs.

He freezes right before getting to the bottom step. 

“What's wrong?” 

Malfoy forces himself to swallow. He looks at the glass vial with something that could arguably be described as horror meets humour. 

“Is this a fucking joke, Granger?” 

“What?” 

“That wasn't a sleeping draught.” 

Of course, it is. She brewed some and replenished the cupboard herself just yesterday. They go through that stuff quicker than loaves of bread. 

“I just brewed it—” 

“It tasted like vinegar,” he says. 

Oh. 

Oh.

Someone is playing a prank, then. They switched out the translucent, tasteless sleeping draughts with white vinegar. 

The other option is unthinkable.

There's only one potion with such a distinctive taste. It's protective and made to be recognisable if slipped into a drink or drunk by accident. 

Such as right now. 

She sees the glass vial in his hand. It isn't the same one she used for the sleeping draughts. It’s cylinder-shaped and tiny. Unlabelled. 

She finds a way to blame him. 

"You just go around drinking unlabelled elixirs? That's how people die!”

"If only I'd be so lucky."

Hermione sinks back onto the sofa, silently agreeing. 

Maybe it's another potion she's unfamiliar with. She prays it causes boils or turns him blue. 

No such luck.

"It was a lust potion," he says as if discussing the flavours of afternoon tea. As if she doesn't know. ”You made me drink —” 

“I didn't make you drink anything! I told you the sleeping draughts were labelled! And you picked the one that wasn't. This is your fault—” 

“Say it again.” He grabs at his groin and tugs at the tight fabric of his trousers. “Yell at me like that.” 

She looks at him, disgusted. “No.” 

“You're such a filthy fucking, Mudblood, you know that? I can smell your ready cunt from here; reading those love stories that get you wet —” 

“Fuck off, Malfoy! How dare you —” 

“Say it again.” 

“No!” 

The trouble with lust potions is that they aren't like Amortentia. They don't simply affect the drinker, they change their chemistry. Change the pheromones on their skin, the smell of their sweat, the taste of their saliva, to where they're like a Veela in mating season. Salacious and irresistible. 

If she stays around him, she'll be taken by it. Saying no to a person high on liquid lust is nearly impossible. She'd bed Voldemort himself if the dose was high enough. 

They're highly illegal. One of the most illicit potions to exist. 

But legality matters little in their world as of late.

How was a vial of that lying around unattended?

She's never sampled the brew or known anyone who has, but she's read plenty. It's Muggle ecstasy meets a fertility potion, leaving the drinker incapacitated without sexual gratification. 

"I…" 

She falters, her heartbeat like a battering ram in her chest.

“The half-life is only two hours,” Hermione says, remembering what she's read about the potion. “Take a cold shower, have yourself a good wank, and sleep it off." 

The air inside the sitting room shifts when he catches her sidelong glance.

"Or you could help me.” 

The ground feels unsteady. Certainly, she's dreaming: his stare, this dilemma, the liquid heat in her veins now pooling between her legs. 

She's done for. The potion is already affecting her as he sits down on the sofa. He's close. Closer. 

"Are you about to proposition me, Malfoy?" 

"No." He's reckless, touching her face, leaning in with a hushed whisper. "I'm about to kiss you."

She blames the late hour and this rare moment of privacy for why she kisses back. 

The taste on his lips is heaven, courtesy of the potion. It's spearmint and freedom and sex, intoxicating as he pulls her on top of him, forcing her to straddle his lap.

She grips the sofa and breaks their kiss. "Malfoy—”

"I know," he says, a hardness prodding her inner thigh.  “It's okay.” 

It's just the potion affecting her by association. It makes his saliva taste addictive; his scent sparks something primal.

They're no better than animals. Overtaken by need, by an antiquated desire. Fereal. Trying to satisfy this deep hunger. 

He doesn't ask. He's pompous and presumptuous; she hates herself for how well it turns her on. 

He hooks a finger around her pyjama shorts, pushing aside the loose fabric and the gusset of her knickers.

"I want to feel you." He traces her slit with his thumb, massaging her as he unbuttons his trousers. "All of you—”

They shouldn't be doing this. Anyone could walk downstairs and see. 

"Malfoy —"

"I won't go in," he promises, his zipper halfway down. "Not unless you want me to." 

She does. She wants it like a second piece of cake that makes you sick, too sweet and tempting and right there.

“Fuck, Granger. You have the prettiest pussy —”

"We shouldn't," she says.

It sounds childish and meaningless as he lifts himself from his pants. His length springs forward, touching her, one step away from what feels inevitable. 

"Please, Hermione…”

He's never called her that. While it shouldn't make a difference, it does, protest dying in the back of her throat. 

The shattered glass from her resolve cuts deep as his cock rests between her swollen lips. Her hips roll on instinct, their bodies grinding along one another, mimicking what they both want.

Soon her shirt is pulled below both breasts, and he's playing with her, sucking and licking and groaning against her hard nipples. She wants to tease him again about his Oedipus complex, but it's nice. 

Fuck, it feels so nice. 

She's heard of girls being able to come from nipple stimulation, and this comes damn close. Especially when he tells her what she already knows, whispered to the skin of her breast as she straddles him. Humping his bare cock, grinding themselves together.

"I want you.”

Her body reacts accordingly, silently agreeing in the form of a deep ache right where they meet. 

It's the potion. 

Nothing more. 

"Hermione…"

His expression is pained, head slung back on the couch, blond hair tousled. He stills her hips and lines them up, their bodies like runners at a start gate. 

"I want to feel you." He groans, both hands gripping her arse. "Let me stretch you— just for a second.” 

She forces her shorts and knickers back into a modest position, moving his hand away.

Sanity regained, even if only for a second. She has to put an end to this. 

“We can't —” 

“I won't stop, Granger.”

Can't or won't? 

“Excuse me?” 

“You heard me,” he hisses, his eyes dark. “Don't make me pin you down to the sofa and take what I fucking want —” 

“You wouldn't.” 

“You have no idea what that potion will make me do. What this feels like.” 

“I'll scream.” 

“Good. You're so wet, I'd be ten thrusts in before anyone even wakes up —” 

“You're sick.” 

“So are you. Because you like that image, don't you? You want to be thrown around. Used like a whore. Overpowered —” 

“No!” 

She moves back, but he grabs her and forces her body to stay where it is on top of him. 

The potion is in her bloodstream; she's sure of it. The want. The heat. 

Her skin is on fire. 

She doesn't tell him to fuck off like she should. She doesn't run or scream or hex him like she can.

Instead, she lets him rip down her sleep shorts and her knickers; she lifts her hips and helps take them off. She's naked below the waist and doesn't even know how they got here, so drunk off lust, it's unfathomable. 

She's back on his lap, one leg on either side, facing him. Kissing him. Spreading her legs the slightest bit wider. 

Say no. 

Stop this. 

His pheromones leave her dizzy, breathless. She smells his skin, and it's a shot of dopamine to her brain, blood pooling, the throb of it in her sex. Begging her brain to stand down. 

She's like a Sphinx in heat; she has to fuck something. If not him, her own fingers. She'll go upstairs. Use Ron like she has before. 

But it won't be like this…

He forces them back into perfect alignment. She straddles his lap, and he's spreading her with the head of his cock. 

“That's it. Good girl… Give in… Let yourself have what you want.” 

He plays at her entrance, almost pressing in. She panics, feeling the start of a stretch. 

“Malfoy!”

He holds her to him, whispering to that sensitive spot below her ear. “It's just the tip; it doesn't even count —”

“You're fucking vile.”

But good god — does he feel incredible. 

She stops moving, her nails digging into the back of the sofa.  

She maintains a single thread of control. There's still time to back out. They can't come back from this. 

Say no.  

But what if he runs after her? He's stronger. He could do it easily: tug her down, press an arm across her body, one clamped over her mouth — force himself on her. 

He's right about what a lust potion could make someone do. He's probably done worse. 

He wouldn't even have to force it; she's never been this wet in her life. 

“Please, please,” He groans in agony, pained, pleading. “I need you. I'm so fucking hard, it hurts.” 

“Whose fault is that?” 

She hates him. She wants to throttle him.

She's going to fuck him.

Because this is glorious pressure, parting her wetness with a promise of what comes next. Every nerve ending in her body wants him all the way in. 

“I'd give my life to feel you around me. I'll be a good boy; I'll hero-worship Potter and learn about toasters and telephones. I'll lick your cunt anytime you want. Anything for you; it's yours. Please.” 

He's unfairly handsome. If there's a witch who can resist that plea with his cock teasing their entrance, they deserve a medal for self-restraint.

Just the potion. 

She'll be sane again come morning. 

Her two-word whisper is all he needs. 

“Do it.” 

A heartbeat later, he's inside her. 

He thrusts into her from below, causing her to sink to the hilt. Deep as can go. Caving is like landing a broomstick — like rocky relief atop stable ground. 

It's just intoxication. Why he feels different, and huge and incredible. 

She rocks her hips, gripping the back of the sofa as pleasure fills her like a drink. 

Fuck, he hits her spot so well. 

Malfoy looks bathed in nirvana. She can only imagine the relief. The heaven of sexual satisfaction while high on a lust potion. Sex will never feel the same after this. This is why they're so dangerous. So highly discouraged. 

She wants to drink one herself.

“You're so good at this, Granger.” His chest is flushed, and his breathing shallows. He doesn't hide his enjoyment. “Such a good little Mudblood who likes her cunt stretched—”

His hand covers her mouth to muffle her moans. She forgets a silencing charm in their haste, too busy chasing pleasure like it might disappear. Like it's water slipping out of her hands. 

She needs more. Harder. Faster. He's so good at this —

"You deserve a bed," he whispers, kissing down her collarbone to her breasts. "You deserve the world.”

The echo of war is drowned out by the sounds of them shagging, that rundown safehouse bearing witness to the collapse of an empire as she grinds herself on the base of his cock, taking pleasure greedily. Building to something bigger. Blissful. 

It isn't sweet. This isn't love. 

A feral streak washes over her. His body is her masturbatory tool, uncaring about what he wants or feels or even if he finishes. 

Fuck him and his pleasure; this is for her. 

“Oh my fucking — ” Hermione's head goes back, her body overtaken by the sensation. 

She needs this. Craves this. 

He lets her be selfish — hands on her hips, helping them grind back and forth, encouraging it. 

"Take it… just like that. Good girl… Does that make you feel good? Rubbing your clit on me—” 

“Yes.” 

Good doesn't do the feeling justice. 

It's dangerous, blissful numbness, unlocking something she hasn't freed in forever.

She lets this version of herself run wild, increasing speed and pressure until her body goes rigid, then relaxes. She clenches his cock in tight waves, riding the sensation, enjoying what may be the best climax of her life. 

She's never come this hard before. Never from only sex.  

He fucks her through her orgasm, whispering his own strings of curses, telling her how she feels perfect, that he's waited so long to see her come undone.

He finishes inside her, his spend dripping down her thighs when they're done. 

She's too busy talking herself down from a skyscraper's ledge to cast the necessary cleaning charm. 

Post-sex clarity is an icepick through her brain. 

"That can't happen again," she says, panicked. 

All he does is smirk. His hands have a Midas touch as he traces her waist and hips and arse like she's something precious. 

“No?”

"I'm serious... I did you a favour, Malfoy. That potion will wear off soon—"

"It was water." 

Her face falls. What did he just say? 

"The potion," he repeats, explaining. "It was—"

"I heard you the first time," she snaps. 

Reality comes in crashing waves, much less enjoyable than the ones from her orgasm. 

He tricked her.

She tries moving away, but he holds her to him, not letting her leave his lap. 

"You're a fucking liar," she seethes, trying to fight him off. To get away. 

He's stronger. 

"So are you." His voice doesn't waver. His arms succeed in pulling her body closer. "Lying to yourself, pretending you don't feel it —"

"All I feel for you is hate.”

Right then, it's true. He's a liar, a cheat, an ex-Death Eater who deserves this pathetic half-life they're stuck within. 

"Tell me you didn't like that." His hand reaches between her legs, touching her still-wet core, playing with the come dripping out. He uses his fingers to press it back inside. "That you didn't love it."

"I didn't. I… fuck.” 

He uses their combined essence, drawing circles around the swell of her still-tender clit as merciless proof. 

"Are you going to run upstairs? Tell Weasley and Potter you just came from a five-minute fuck in the sitting room—" 

"Go to hell.”

He releases her. 

They're already in hell. But she'd sooner swallow poison than let anyone find out, telling him so while gathering her pyjama shorts and knickers.

"This never happened,” she says. 

"It'll happen again."