The moment they landed, she turned—fast, sharp, all fire and silk, the echo of her heels striking the cold stone floor like a slap across the silence, loud and deliberate and furious. Her skirts followed, dragging behind her like a storm trying to catch up with its lightning, shimmering with the residue of too much magic and not enough warning.
She moved like a spell recoiling from being cast, like a woman who hadn't expected to be dragged out of one world and dropped into another without consent, without warning, without even the chance to scream.
Moonlight poured through the tall, narrow windows of the corridor in fractured blades, cutting across the stone and catching on the silver glitter of her gown, on the loose curls tumbling wildly down her back, on the sharpness of her breath as her chest rose too fast, too shallow beneath the tight silver bodice that still held the heat of the ballroom.
She turned to face him with the kind of expression that didn't beg for answers—it demanded them, lips parted not in fear but in fury, her eyes gleaming with too many questions and not nearly enough patience. Her skin was flushed from the speed of it, from the heat of his grip still lingering around her wrist, from the way the floor hadn't steadied beneath her feet since the moment he'd touched her.
"What in Merlin's name—" she began, voice too breathless to carry all the fury she intended, but it didn't matter.
Because he didn't let her finish.
Because he was already on her.
The distance vanished between them with a hunger that felt predestined, inevitable, like gravity given teeth. His hands caught her waist hard, fingers digging into the silk like he wanted to leave fingerprints on her ribs, like he wanted to brand himself into the shape of her.
And then her back hit the stone wall—not cruelly, not painfully, but solidly, like he needed something to hold her against just to keep himself upright. His mouth was almost on hers—almost, not quite—hovering close enough that her breath hitched, close enough that she could taste fury and desperation in the air between them, thick and hot and unbearable.
They didn't speak. They didn't blink. Her hands were still suspended in the air between them, caught mid-gesture, useless now that his body had pressed against hers with enough heat to ignite the corridor. Every inch of her was hyperaware of him—his breath ghosting across her mouth, the way his thigh slotted between hers without apology, the way his jaw clenched like he was holding something savage back with the last thread of his self-control.
This wasn't polite tension. This wasn't lingering glances and whispered longing.
This was a powder keg.
And they were seconds away from the spark.
One second of silence passed like the moment before a dam breaks—and then he was there, all furious grace and ruinous proximity, a man possessed not by logic or control but by something darker and older and far more territorial, something that burned behind his eyes like a curse with a name. He didn't walk—he descended, like wrath wearing silk, like vengeance made flesh, each step radiating the kind of barely leashed violence that didn't need to raise its voice to be terrifying. There was no gentleness in his approach. No question in his eyes. Just fury, white-hot and molten, coiled under skin stretched too tight across muscle that looked like it could shake apart the corridor if she said the wrong word.
His hand found her wrist again—not tentative, not unsure, but claiming—fingers wrapping hard and fast like a snare, like a binding spell, like the echo of his name etched into her pulse. It wasn't pain he gave her. He would never give her pain. But it was a warning. A demand. A reminder. And she felt it in her bloodstream before she even processed the breath that had caught behind her ribs.
Then he moved—not slow, not gentle, not cautious—but like a force unleashed, all elegance stripped down to raw purpose, his body slamming forward in a controlled collision that pressed her against the stone wall with a precision too intimate to be anything but deliberate. The air around them cracked. Magic trembled at the edges. Her back hit the cold stone, her lungs tightened, and he was there—all heat and pressure and fury in the shape of a man she had never truly seen until now.
There was no kiss. No whispered threat. Just his body, too close, too hot, braced like he was holding the world in place with the line of his thigh, the flat of his palm, the unbearable proximity of his mouth. He didn't touch her throat. He didn't need to. She could feel the power thrumming off him, his breath harsh where it hit her cheek, his chest rising and falling in uneven surges like he was holding something in his mouth that tasted like need and war and her name.
His free hand dropped to her waist—low, possessive, dangerous—fingers dragging across the silk of her gown until they found the curve of her hip and stayed there, pressing down hard enough to leave the ghost of a bruise, hard enough to make her gasp. Not because it hurt, but because it didn't. Because it meant something. Because it promised something.
He leaned in, eyes blazing, jaw locked, his voice low and guttural and shaking at the edges like he was barely keeping it inside his mouth.
"You let him touch you?"
It wasn't a question. It wasn't even jealousy anymore. It was possession. Pure. Undiluted. Claimed in a tone that held more danger than the wand holstered at his thigh, more promise than any spell ever written.
"You are mine, Granger."
And she—her lips parted, chest rising, heart battering itself against her ribs—didn't argue.
He didn't look at her lips. He didn't let his gaze dip to the delicate curve of her neck or the way her breath had begun to stutter in her chest or how the silk of her gown strained softly with each inhale. He looked into her eyes—only her eyes—and what burned in his own was not a flame made for light or warmth, not something red or golden or gilded with romance. No, it was the kind of fire that scorches silently, that turns everything in its path to ash and never looks back. A fire without mercy. White-hot. Clean. Consuming. The kind of fire that doesn't ask for permission before it devours. The kind that begins in the soul and ends in ruin.
And there, in that narrow stretch of breath and silence between them, she saw it—that he wasn't looking at her like a man fighting for dignity or wounded pride. He wasn't just angry. He wasn't just jealous. He wasn't even trying to win. He was looking at her like someone who had just realized what could be taken from him. Like someone who had seen the touch of another man not as a threat, but as a theft, a desecration. And the thing being desecrated wasn't her body, not really—it was her smile. Her warmth. Her attention. Her goddamn light. And he had known—without needing to be told—that if someone else claimed those things before he did, he would never recover.
His voice, when it came, didn't echo. It didn't rise. It cut—low and rough and wrecked, a whisper dragged like a blade across the edge of control, torn from behind clenched teeth that couldn't hold it back a second longer. It was soaked in ownership. In rage. In the kind of emotion that has no name in any language but bleeds into everything you touch.
"Don't let him touch you."
Not a plea. Not a request. Not even an order, really. It was a possession spoken aloud. A mark drawn invisible across her skin in the shape of his voice. A territorial spell with no incantation. His thumb dug deeper against her hipbone, the fabric of her gown bunched beneath his palm, his fingers tightening like chains forged not from cruelty but from need—raw, hungry, unreasoning need that had no idea how to soften itself, not yet, not with her standing there like temptation wearing moonlight.
And she—calm and glowing and infuriating in her silence—didn't move. Didn't flinch. Didn't run.
She met his gaze like it was a challenge and a comfort all at once, her breath still uneven, her body still very much aware of every place he touched without touching too much. She didn't speak, because she didn't have to. Her eyes already said it: she knew. She knew what he was feeling. What it meant. What he hadn't said and maybe never would. And she stood there and let him burn in it.
His jaw clenched, hard and sharp, the muscle flickering like a threat beneath skin stretched tight by everything he didn't know how to say. His whole body trembled with heat, not from fury, not entirely, but from the unbearable weight of restraint—that he had her like this, that she was his, that the law and the ritual and the gods had all handed her to him, and still she felt so untouchable. So vast. So unspeakably, infuriatingly hers.
And it was that—not Blaise, not the ballroom, not even the memory of her laugh offered to someone else—that undid him.
Because for the first time in his life, he realized that her smile might be the one thing in this world he could never survive losing.
And still—somehow—she was calm. Of course she was. She always was. She stood in the middle of chaos like she'd been born there, like the storm knew her name and passed around her out of respect. There was something almost holy in it, the way she held her stillness like armor made of moonlight and breath, like she chose not to be shaken even when everything around her was splitting at the seams. Her bare shoulders didn't tense. Her throat didn't tighten. Her pulse—he could see it, fluttering gently at the base of her neck—didn't quicken. She was the eye of the hurricane, the untouched center of a world that had no business being that quiet.
Her lashes lifted, slow and deliberate, and her eyes—gods, those wide, pale, maddening eyes—found his without hesitation, calm as a summer lake right before it froze. And her lips—soft, full, maddeningly pink—curved, not into a smirk, not into mockery, but into something that felt older than knowing. She didn't look at him like a woman cornered or chastised. She didn't look like prey. She looked at him like a priestess appraising an offering. Like a woman curious. Testing. Certain. As though she saw what he was barely beginning to realize. As though she had known all along what would break him.
"You're jealous," she said, the words soft as silk and twice as dangerous, spoken not with mockery nor malice, not as a weapon or a tease, but like she was naming something inevitable, like the moon calling the tide, like the sun noting the weight of heat in the middle of summer—unavoidable, obvious, ancient. Her voice didn't rise. She didn't press him. She didn't smile. She just said it with unbearable calm, like the truth had always been there, coiled between them, and all she'd done was reach out and brush her fingers along its spine. And he—gods, he—responded before the words even finished settling between them.
"I'm your husband."
It wasn't a defense. It wasn't even a declaration in the usual sense—it was too raw for that, too ruined, too edged in possession and scorched with something territorial and unforgiving. The way he said it didn't leave room for argument, didn't leave space for air. It filled the corridor like a vow torn from the root of his chest, scraped bloody from bone, dragged out of a man who had tried—tried—to pretend he didn't want her, only to find himself ready to raze the world when another man dared stand too close. The syllables vibrated with fury and need and something older, darker—something sacred in a way no temple would ever bless.
His hand, which had still been gripping her wrist, slid down slowly—down, over silk, down to the curve of her waist, dragging fire in its wake like a curse whispered in reverse. The pressure of his fingers wasn't harsh, wasn't cruel, but it was unyielding, like he was drawing a line in the very air around her and daring the gods to cross it. He hauled her in—not with violence, but with such deliberate, magnetic gravity that the space between them surrendered before either of them could think. Her body hit his like a second skin, like puzzle pieces meant to interlock, like the closing of a circuit that had been sparking since the moment she said his name at the altar.
The silk of her gown clung to his chest now, molded to the press of him, heat rising between them in waves, breath to breath, chest to chest, hips aligning like they had always known each other. And she—soft and strong and scenting of something he hadn't even realized he craved—tensed in his grip just for a heartbeat, like her body hadn't yet caught up to her magic. But she didn't pull away. She didn't shove him back. She didn't even speak.
Her breath stuttered. Once. Twice. Caught hard and fast in her throat like her lungs had remembered him. Her mouth parted just slightly—not enough for words, only for air, only for possibility—and her chest rose against his in one trembling, involuntary arc, a question that neither of them dared ask but both of them felt. Her gaze flicked to his, and the heat in her eyes—Merlin, the heat—wasn't innocent. Wasn't confused. It was curious. It was focused. It was aroused and startled and furious with want, and the way her lashes dipped, then lifted, said everything she wouldn't voice.
Because she saw him.
Not the mask he wore in courtrooms. Not the careful coldness he used like armor. Not the brittle silence or the too-still hands or the sharp, clipped words he threw like knives. She saw the man who had torn her out of a ballroom mid-laugh. The man who had dragged her into the dark like a storm and crushed her against a wall like the sky might split if he didn't.
And in that space—in the breath between her body and his—she knew.
She knew he didn't just want to be close.
He wanted to burn.
To consume.
To claim.
And she hadn't said no. Not yet.
Not with her eyes still locked to his. Not with her hands frozen in place, not pushing, not resisting. Not with the curve of her mouth softening by degrees, not with the subtle shift of her hips as if testing the line between touch and tremble. Not with the magic already curling between them like smoke drawn from candlelight.
Because the worst part—the most dangerous part—was that she wanted it too.
And they both knew it.
His mouth didn't go to her lips. Not at first. Not where most men would have gone, not where desire would have pulled the average fool—because this, this, was not about ease, and it certainly wasn't about kindness. This wasn't some soft, courtly thing, some chaste gesture of affection meant for public display or fragile hearts.
No—his mouth dropped to her throat instead, to the place just beneath her jaw where the pulse fluttered like a secret trying not to be caught, to the bare, glowing expanse of skin that Blaise had looked at like it was an invitation and almost, almost, touched like he thought he had the right.
Draco brushed his mouth against that space with terrifying gentleness, a touch so light it could have been a whisper, a prayer, a warning. There was no pressure in it, no demand—only claiming, subtle and searing, as if his lips were undoing every trace of someone else's gaze, every phantom memory of someone else's presence. It was reverent and raw, holy and possessive, the kind of kiss that said this is mine not with desperation but with certainty, as if the curve of her throat had always belonged to him, as if the gods themselves had carved it for this moment. It wasn't just a kiss. It was a mark. A brand. A vow pressed into the place where her skin was softest and her breath caught the easiest.
"You don't get to smile at him like that," he murmured against her skin, the words unsteady, his voice breaking in ways he couldn't control—shaking not from fear but from how deep this ran, from how much it cost him to say aloud. "You don't get to laugh with anyone else like that. I am not some name you bought, Granger." His mouth lifted barely enough to let her feel his breath skate across the place he'd just kissed, to let her feel the tremble beneath the words as they dropped, heavier now, sharper. "I am not your contract. I am not your charity."
And then, finally, his voice dropped into something colder, deeper, something that cracked the air around them.
"I am your husband."
There was no distance left to pretend with. No space left to lie. No safe place to hide in between what they were and what they'd been pretending not to become. Her chest rose against his. His hip pressed into hers. His breath was shallow, her eyes half-lidded, and the magic between them wasn't simmering anymore—it was crackling, lashing, unfurling down her spine in coiled ribbons of heat and pressure, wrapping around her ribs like a leash pulled taut, not in punishment, but in recognition. In bond. In belonging.
And still—still—she didn't flinch.
She didn't recoil.
She didn't soften into surrender.
She looked at him like she saw him. All the way through. Past the arrogance and the fury and the possessiveness. Past the mask and the bloodline and the brittle pride. Straight into the dark center of the thing he didn't name—the want. The ache. The madness of needing someone he could neither control nor escape. And she didn't look away.
And then her fingers moved.
Light and slow and steady as breath, they curled into the fabric of his coat—not with force, not to push, not to demand distance, but to anchor him there, to hold him still. As though she knew, in that precise moment, that he was a storm pressed against the edge of collapse. As though she could feel how close he was to unraveling. As though she wanted him there, shaking, undone, hers.
And her voice, when it came, was no longer light.
It had dipped, gone molten—thicker now, lower, coiled around something intimate and unspoken, something that tasted like command and sounded like prophecy, something made of silk and defiance and heat.
"Then sometimes act like it."
She said it not like a suggestion, not like a plea, but like a sword drawn and pointed directly at the softest part of him, a line of silk spun with steel, sharp with command and humming with a dare she knew he couldn't refuse. Her voice didn't rise, didn't break, didn't waver. It simply landed—perfectly placed, deliberately devastating, like she'd mapped every crack in his foundation and chose, in that suspended heartbeat, to press down on the one that would split him open. And something in him—deep, dangerous, molten—did. It surged up in a rush, ancient and ugly and holy, a growl of instinct curled so tightly in his chest that when it snapped, it didn't ask permission. It didn't wait. It claimed.
And he acted like it.
He moved before his mind could catch up to his body, before reason could lace its fingers through the frenzy and drag him back into control. His hands found her like they'd never left her—rough and reverent all at once, curling around her waist with a grip so firm it made the silk of her gown bunch beneath his fingers, pulling her into the orbit of his body like gravity had finally found its center. His mouth crashed into hers like a curse he'd been dying to cast, like a sin too long resisted and now consumed whole. There was nothing careful in the way he kissed her. There was no poetry. No pretense. No patience.
It was wild.
It was violent in its need.
Lips parting with the bite of urgency, mouths meeting like they were never meant to speak again, only burn, only devour. He kissed her like he could taste every second she had smiled at someone else, like he needed to replace every breath she'd wasted on a man who wasn't him. It was not the kind of kiss people spoke about in soft candlelight or wove into lullabies. It was the kind sung about in war ballads. The kind that broke treaties and built empires. The kind that didn't ask if—only when.
And she—oh gods, she—answered.
She met him blow for blow, heat for heat, her fingers knotting into the fabric of his coat like they were bracing against a storm and finding it worth it. She gave as much as she took, dragging him closer with a desperation that didn't scream save me but try me. Her body arched into him, her spine finding the wall again, the chill of stone behind her flaring in contrast to the fire he pressed against her front. Her mouth opened beneath his without hesitation, without fear, just fierce, furious invitation, and she let him in. Let him take. Let him burn.
And the kiss—gods, the kiss—was not a kiss.
It was an unraveling.
Of tension, of pride, of months of brittle restraint and barely swallowed want. It was the rupture of denial, the flood that followed the quake. His hand slid to the back of her neck, cradling, claiming, not gently, but with the kind of reverence a man gives a blade he knows will cut him. His other palm gripped her hip, dragging her flush against him until every inch of fabric between them felt like punishment. He was hard—so hard he could barely think—and she was there, heat and softness and resistance curling into submission like they were born for this exact ruin.
And still—it wasn't enough.
He kissed her like he could crawl inside her mouth and make a home there. Like he wanted to disappear between her lips and be remade in the fire of her want. It was teeth. It was tongue. It was breath and bruises and the pull of something sacred. And when he finally—finally—ripped his mouth from hers, gasping like a man pulled from ash, his eyes found hers and froze.
Because she was looking at him like he was the storm she had summoned.
Like she was glad she had.
And she whispered his name—not in fear, not in apology—but like an invocation.
Like she knew the god she'd awakened.
And had no plans to put him back to sleep.
His breath came in ragged, uneven heaves, chest rising with every shuddering inhale like the kiss had carved through his lungs. His hands, still shaking, were curled around the curve of her hips like they had no idea how to let go—fingers flexing, memorizing the shape of her through silk and skin and magic. He didn't know if he was holding her together or if she was holding him. Maybe both. Maybe neither. Maybe it didn't matter anymore.
She was quiet beneath him.
Not silent—still.
Unmoving in the way that spoke of choice, of intention, of deep, resounding awareness. Her eyes, when they opened, glowed with soft understanding, like moonlight caught in water, reflecting not innocence but clarity. Too many truths lived there. Truths he hadn't earned. Truths he didn't know how to hold.
Her lips—kiss-bitten and flushed, parted just enough to reveal the rhythm of her breath—were the color of storm-touched rose petals, soft and fierce at once. Her chest moved with steady grace, slow inhales and exhales that contrasted sharply with his own ragged gasps. She looked calm. Serene. Whole.
While he stood there, undone. Shaking. Branded by the taste of her. Ruined by the feel.
And he knew—without question—that he would never kiss anyone else again.
She said nothing as she slipped from his grasp—no breathless apology, no tremble of uncertainty, no whispered promise wrapped in grief or guilt or softness. No final glance over her shoulder, no glance at all. Just silence. Thick and heavy, humming like a ward that had just sealed, like a spell that had already cast its consequences and would not be undone. The kind of silence that says I know what I did. The kind that doesn't need forgiveness because it already owns the aftermath. It filled the corridor in her wake, wrapped around him like a second skin, echoing louder than any parting words ever could, reverberating down to the marrow of his bones.
She moved with that impossible elegance she wore like blood—liquid, languid, maddeningly sure, every step unhurried and deliberate, as though time bowed to her and not the other way around. As though she hadn't just kissed him like she'd been born for it, like she remembered the shape of his mouth from another life and had returned just to reclaim it. As though she hadn't reached into the deepest part of him—the buried, wild, burning part—and simply taken it, without cruelty, without effort, without even blinking. Her fingers had barely closed around his coat, but he had felt owned, consumed by the soft violence of a kiss that had stolen his breath, rearranged his insides, and left him standing in its aftermath like a man struck by lightning but too proud to collapse.
And still, she didn't flinch. Didn't retreat. Didn't falter like some fragile thing overwhelmed by what they'd shared. No. She walked away like a goddess descending the altar after performing a sacred rite, untouchable and unbothered, leaving holy ruin in her wake. Barefoot, as always. Composed, as ever. Her gown whispered behind her like a trail of stardust and crushed secrets, the hem gathered loosely in one hand with the kind of grace that made his fists clench just watching her go. She looked like a dream walking away from the man who'd dared to try and keep it.
And her magic—gods, her magic—clung to the corridor like incense, slow-burning and stubborn, stitched into the shadows of the walls and the fibers of his clothes, still flickering across his skin like ghostlight. It hummed in the air, threaded through every breath he took, like the last note of a song that wouldn't end. It was in the seams of his coat. In the hollow of his throat. Beneath his ribs, where her hands had once rested. And it smelled like her—like storm-drenched rose petals and sun-warmed parchment, like crushed mint and moon tea and something impossibly gentle threaded with steel. Like mercy. Like memory. Like her.
And still—still—he let her go.
Not because he wanted to.
Not because the madness had passed.
But because he had to. Because if he moved again, if he reached out one more time, if he pulled her back with the kind of desperation currently scraping at the inside of his chest like claws made of fire and regret, he didn't trust what he might do. Not in anger. Not in spite. But in something far worse. Something raw and uncontainable and real. That awful, terrifying thing they never taught boys like him how to carry: tenderness. Worship. Hunger without cruelty.
Because she had kissed him like she knew the monster and the man—and wanted both.
And he didn't know how to survive that kind of grace.
Because he had touched her in rage. And she had touched him in mercy. And now his hands ached from it—from her—with a pain that was part memory, part punishment, part holy ache.
So he stood there.
Frozen. Silent. Burning.
A statue carved in longing and pride and fear, rooted to the stone beneath his feet, unable to chase, unwilling to retreat, and so full of wanting that it turned his magic volatile beneath his skin, thrumming against his pulse like it was trying to claw its way out and chase her down for him. His eyes stayed fixed to the end of the hall. To the last place she had been. And gods, he could still taste her—on his mouth, on the air, in the back of his throat like a spell that had gone unfinished.
She reached her door.
And then—of course she did—she turned.
Not her whole body, just her head, just enough to find him again across the long stretch of hallway that had suddenly become a chasm. Her hair slid over her shoulder like moonlight poured from a vessel, her eyes finding his without hesitation, without accusation. Her expression wasn't coy, wasn't teasing, wasn't mocking—it was soft. Devastatingly so. Wide and open and impossibly clear, like glass reflecting his own chaos back at him in perfect stillness.
"You're more tender than you pretend," she murmured, her voice barely a wisp in the space between them, softer than breath, softer than silk brushing bare skin—but it struck through him with the precision of a blade honed not for battle, but for ritual, for sacrifice. It slid past bone, past armor, past the scaffolding of pride he'd spent years building around his heart, and settled into the quietest part of him—the part he thought she'd never find. The part he didn't think he had left.
She didn't stay to see what it did to him.
She turned before he could speak. Before he could defend, deny, deflect. Before the fire in his chest had any hope of being smothered by the weight of his walls.
She stepped inside.
The rustle of her gown followed her like trailing starlight, and the door clicked shut behind her with a quiet finality that should have meant nothing—should have been the soft punctuation to a mundane moment—but instead echoed with the weight of things unspoken. It wasn't loud. It wasn't angry. But it was final. A click like a ward sealing. Like a line drawn. Like a breath exhaled that didn't plan on returning.
He didn't move.
Couldn't.
Because that click—gentle, careful, kind—had landed with the gravity of a closing tomb. Not of something lost, exactly. But something just out of reach. A beginning that had tasted too much like an ending. A promise half-written in heat and breath and the imprint of her body against his, only to be shelved like a spell too dangerous to cast.
And he—Draco Malfoy, heir to a legacy scorched by guilt and gilded in expectation, husband by blood contract and silent consent, a man born of dragons and bound by ink and duty—stood in that now-empty corridor with his fists twitching at his sides, breathing like the walls were closing in on him and trying to take the air with them.
The shadows stretched around him like witnesses, silent and unmoved, but the corridor—her corridor—still hummed with the echo of her presence, with the aftershock of her words.
The magic in the air hadn't settled. It curled around the corners, eddying near the floor like smoke refusing to clear, and the silence pressed against his chest with a weight he couldn't push off. His fingers curled once, twice—aching for the memory of her waist beneath them, aching for the shape of her spine beneath his palm, aching for the press of her breath against his mouth. And his jaw—so tightly clenched it sent pain shooting through his temples—shook slightly with the effort of restraint. Because he could still taste her. Still feel the memory of her hands, of her breath, of her voice saying things too gentle for a man like him to deserve.
And then—after far too long, after not long enough—he closed his eyes.
Not for comfort.
Not to surrender.
But because it was the only way not to chase after her. Because looking at the door would have meant reaching for it. Reaching for her. Reaching for something he wasn't sure he had the right to hold.
And gods, it was killing him.
Because she'd seen straight through him. And hadn't run. Hadn't cowered. Hadn't tried to fix him or save him or destroy him.
She had simply seen.
And then walked away.
And that—that—was what undid him.
Not her kiss or her body.
But her knowing.
Because if he looked at that door for even one moment longer, if he let his gaze linger on the space where she had vanished—just stood there and stared like a fool, like a man who still believed in second chances or quiet returns or the impossible grace of being chosen twice—he would shatter in a way no spell could bind back together. He would break, not with violence, not with fury, but with longing—slow and silent and unspeakably human. Because if it opened again, if she stepped back through it and called him something real, something unarmored—not Malfoy, not husband, but something only meant for him—he wouldn't survive it. Not as the man he was pretending to be.
And so he didn't look.
And for the first time in longer than he could remember, he didn't lie. Not to himself. Not to the echoing corridor. Not to the house still pulsing with her magic.
He didn't pretend that he didn't want her, didn't pretend that this ache inside him was about pride or fury or power. He didn't wrap it in ice or smooth it into silence. He didn't smother it with logic or lace it with cruelty just to make it easier to carry. He stood there, breath snagging in his throat, ribs trembling beneath the weight of a truth too sharp to name, and he let it bloom—raw and unguarded and hungry.
He had touched her like a man who didn't know how to ask. Had backed her into stone and kissed her like penance, like battle, like a question spat through clenched teeth because he didn't know how else to say please. He had gripped her with desperation instead of grace, with rage instead of reverence, had poured months of restraint into a single, brutal kiss meant to punish and plead in the same breath.
And she—
She had met him there.
Not with fear. Not with retreat. But with something devastatingly close to mercy.
She had kissed him back like forgiveness. Like softness wasn't weakness. Like wanting wasn't something to be ashamed of. She had kissed him not because she was forced to, not because the contract demanded it, but because she chose him in that moment—in his mess, in his madness, in his fire—and it had undone him more thoroughly than any hex ever could.
She had touched him with steadiness where he had offered only chaos. Had held his gaze where others flinched. Had tasted his fury and not turned away.
And he didn't deserve that. Didn't deserve her.
Not her stillness, not her gentleness, not the quiet conviction in her spine or the way she smiled like the world was still worth hoping for. Not the impossible grace of a woman who looked at a dragon and said, Yes. That one.
But he wanted.
Gods, he wanted.
More of her voice, anchoring him in the dark. More of her presence in the places silence had made into prisons. More of her maddening patience, her reckless generosity, her terrifying belief that he might be more than the sum of his ruin. More of her gaze—steady, unflinching—tracing over his scars and seeing not proof of failure, but evidence of survival.
He wanted more of her.
And more of himself, in the mirror she held up without judgment.
He didn't know when it had started—couldn't name the moment her absence became unbearable, when her footsteps down the hall became the rhythm his pulse mirrored. It hadn't come like fire. It hadn't struck like lightning. It hadn't announced itself with grandeur or force. It had come slowly, quietly, like mist finding its way through a crack in stone. It had slipped beneath the doors he swore he'd sealed, curled into the hollow spaces between his bones, seeped into the breath between words he hadn't yet learned how to speak aloud.
And by the time he noticed it—really noticed it—it was already everywhere.
In the way he watched her hands more than her mouth when she spoke. In the way his magic settled in the air when she entered a room, as if it knew it had nothing to defend against. In the way her name tasted less like obligation and more like invocation.
By the time he realized he'd fallen, it wasn't a question of how it happened.
It was simply a truth. And it was too late.
It was already too late, and he knew it with the kind of bone-deep certainty that didn't come with ceremony or confession—it came with surrender. Because he was in love with her. Not in the safe, well-mannered way that was written about in books and whispered about in drawing rooms over tea. Not in the way his mother had once described to him in polished phrases carved out of propriety and expectations. And certainly not in the clumsy, drunken proclamations he'd heard in smoky clubs and ballrooms, from men who fell into affection like it was a velvet trap they could afford to stumble through.
No, this wasn't sweet. This wasn't soft. This wasn't some delicate thing cupped gently in his palms like it might break if he looked too hard at it. This love—his love for her—was something altogether darker. It was feral. Untamed. Claimed. It didn't creep through his chest like warmth; it tore through it like hunger. It wasn't gentle. It was brutal. It gnawed at the inside of his ribs like it had teeth. It howled against his bones when she walked away. It tightened around his spine like a vice every time someone else looked at her too long. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't clean.
It was possessive. It was consuming. It was his.
It had taken root in him without permission, without warning, growing through every jagged scar and hollow space, wrapping around every unspoken want he'd buried so deep he forgot it had a name. And now—now it sat in the center of him like a second heart, thudding wildly anytime she breathed too close, laughed too brightly, looked at him like she saw him. It didn't ask for attention. It demanded it.
Because he liked her. Gods. He liked her.
He liked the way she walked into rooms barefoot and unapologetic, like the world was hers to explore and bend to her strange logic. He liked the way she never shrank, never performed, never bothered to adjust herself to fit anyone else's comfort. He liked her magic—subtle and humming and old, stitched into everything she touched like moonlight soaked into skin. He liked her mind—brilliant and maddening and sharp, too fast for him to catch but not too fast to follow. He liked her voice when it dipped low and steady in arguments. He liked her sighs. He liked the way her silence could say more than other people's novels. He liked her. He liked all of her.
He liked her so much it made him ache.
She was everything.
Everything .
Beautiful in that dangerous way that made it hard to look at her for too long, like staring into a star you weren't meant to understand. Funny in the way storms sometimes were—unpredictable, a flash of joy in the middle of tension that left him wrecked and breathless and wanting more. Clever, gods, so clever—the kind of clever that cut. The kind that could dismantle a person without drawing blood. The kind that had seen him—truly seen him—and hadn't looked away.
She was untouchable in all the ways that mattered, unknowable in the corners of her mind he hadn't yet explored, and still—somehow, inexplicably, maddeningly—she was his.
His wife by magic. His match by contract. His undoing by every other measure.
And that—that—was what tore him apart.
That she wore his name with that quiet, thoughtless grace of someone who didn't realize how precious the thing she was holding truly was. That she took his name and didn't let it weigh her down. That she kissed him like he wasn't something to be afraid of. That she let him touch her with all the hunger and confusion and rage in him, and answered not with fear or resistance—but with something achingly tender.
She took everything he was and didn't run. She stayed.
And he hadn't known how to survive that kind of mercy. Still didn't. Might never.
Because he was in love with her .
And he couldn't go back.
It had been a year—an entire, relentless, aching year since the parchment sealed and the wards flared and the world shifted on its axis with her name stitched to his in law and blood and fate—and still, he couldn't quite tell when it had started.
He couldn't pinpoint the exact moment when thoughts of her had stopped being occasional and begun bleeding into everything else, when her voice became the quiet hum at the back of his consciousness even in rooms she wasn't in.
He didn't know when her laughter started following him, ghostlike and golden, through every hallway of the manor, or when the soft sound of her slippers in the corridor began to mean more to him than his own heartbeat.
He couldn't remember the first time he looked at her sleeping—really looked, not just in passing, not just as a husband sharing a roof with a stranger—and felt something beneath his ribs ache with the violence of wanting. Not just lust. Not even just love. Longing. The kind of longing that rewrites the shape of a man.
Somewhere between shared meals and separate bedrooms, between clipped conversations and long silences by the fire, between the unexpected laughter during breakfast and the quiet evenings spent passing books back and forth without needing to speak—somewhere in the quiet of cohabitation and the chaos of unspoken truths, it had happened.
He had begun waiting for her.
Not just to arrive. But to stay.
He found himself watching the door before she entered, ears straining for the rhythm of her walk, for the brush of her fingers on the frame as she passed, for the gentle swish of her robe as it whispered across the floor. He started keeping tea warm long past when he told himself he would stop. Started counting the cups she drank. Started noticing her habits, cataloguing her sighs, learning her moods like weather patterns.
And gods help him, now the very idea—the possibility—of anyone else reaching for her, of anyone else being granted the intimacy he hadn't yet earned, of another man leaning in too close, laughing at her jokes, brushing fingers against hers, tasting what he had waited a year to even hold properly—
It made something terrible unfurl in his chest.
Something ancient.
Something savage.
He wanted to protect her, yes—would burn the world to ash for her safety, would rip through bone and oath and title to keep her untouched by harm—but it wasn't just that. No, it was deeper. It was darker. It was something clawing from beneath his skin, something that hissed mine not with softness but with bloodlust. He didn't just want her safe. He wanted her his. Wanted to be the name on her tongue when she whispered into the dark. The mouth she kissed when no one was watching. The arms she fell asleep inside because she chose to. The only one allowed to trace the delicate arch of her spine, to memorize the sound she made when touched in reverence or ruin. He wanted her bare. Honest. Claimed.
He wanted to be the one she trusted. The one she believed in. The one who touched her—and lived.
And he didn't know when it had happened—whether it was the first time she brewed his tea with exactly three leaves, or the night she left a light on for him without comment, or the moment she stitched his name into a book of pressed flowers and then never mentioned it again—but it had. Somewhere along the way, somewhere between silence and softness, she had become not just his wife on parchment.
But the axis around which his whole being now revolved.
And he would never—could never—be the same again.
***
The morning crept in like it always did, gentle and deceitful, as if the night before hadn't unmade the world in quiet, breathless increments; sunlight spilled through the tall panes of the conservatory's enchanted glass, fractured into gold and lace, sketching trembling patterns across the marble floor as if light itself couldn't decide whether to kiss or cut. Above the violet mouths of enchanted orchids and the thick curling leaves of spellbound flora that pulsed with quiet life, the air shimmered with motes of dust and old pollen, drifting like suspended constellations above the green, glowing hush of the room. A warm, whispering breeze moved through the space with the reverent hush of a cathedral, rustling through the stalks of sleeping mandrakes and breathing across the velvet cushions like an apology too late to matter.
Hermione lay curled on a chaise that had once belonged to someone important and now belonged only to this moment—her knees drawn up beneath her dressing gown, her bare feet tucked close, one hand resting loosely beneath her cheek as the other draped across her waist in that unconscious way people held wounds they couldn't name. The soft fabric of her robe hung off one shoulder, whispering against her skin like the echo of touch, and her hair, unbrushed and faintly tangled from restless hours, caught in the breeze like strands of smoke, trailing behind her in slow, sighing waves. She hadn't truly slept—not in any way that brought rest, not in any way that stole her from memory or heat or ache—but she'd drifted through something that felt like it, eyes closed and body still, wrapped not in dreams but in the aftershocks of what had passed between them.
The skin at her throat still tingled where his mouth had landed—where breath had stuttered against pulse, where his voice had broken open something inside her with a truth so sharp it might as well have been carved into bone; her hips still bore the ghost of his grip, the echo of hands that had held her like lifelines, like answers, like he didn't know where else to put all that furious, trembling need; her lips ached in the way bruised petals do—soft and sore and stained with something impossible to name, and her spine, goddess, her spine still remembered the wall, the stone, the way he'd pressed her into solidity as if trying to ground himself with the shape of her. Her body still hummed, still waited, still knew he hadn't come to her afterward, and she hadn't gone to him.
There had been no knock at her door. No soft footfalls across the corridor. No whispered apology or request or reaching hand beneath the half-spelled hush of midnight.
And still she hadn't moved.
Because it hadn't been rejection. Not really. Not yet. It was space. It was silence. It was whatever this strange, twisted ache between them had always been—too loud for peace, too soft for regret, suspended between unfinished sentences and the memory of his mouth claiming hers like a vow wrapped in ruin. And now the light poured in like it always did. Now the morning pretended, beautifully, that nothing had happened. That she wasn't unraveling inch by inch in the one place in the world where everything else bloomed.
The air between them hadn't dissipated, not really, not in the way air was meant to clear after something volatile passed through it—it remained suspended, thick and clinging, a haze made not of smoke but of breathless memory, of bruised restraint and unspoken things that had bloomed like fire between stone walls and pressed bodies; and though Hermione sat curled in the heart of her conservatory, barefoot and quiet, wrapped in the hush of morning like a secret too tender to touch, she could still feel it in the space behind her breastbone, in the shallow rise and fall of her chest, in the way her thoughts drifted like fog over water without ever fully settling on what, exactly, had passed between them in the corridor outside her room.
She didn't want to name it, not yet, didn't want to drag it into the open where it might lose its shape under the weight of scrutiny—because once something had a name, it became real, and real things could crack, could break, could disappoint—and so she let it remain suspended between memory and heartbeat, something half-imagined and wholly undeniable, refusing to give it words until the ache in her ribs demanded it.
Instead, she let the leaves speak, let the flowers open around her in slow reverence to her presence, the enchanted plants bending subtly toward her with the kind of devotion only magic knew how to offer; and there, in the soft cathedral of greens and golds, she curled into the wide chaise beneath the glowing mandrake boughs and lifted her teacup to her lips without really tasting it, the porcelain faintly too warm against her fingers and the liquid within having cooled beyond comfort—unsweetened, untouched, unoffered by the hands that usually hovered near, waiting for her smallest need. No elves had entered. No one had come. It was just her and the garden, and the slow, aching drag of silence where his voice should have been.
Her fingers moved absently along the rim of the cup, circling it like she was trying to find the shape of a thought she hadn't dared hold still—something between the warmth of his mouth on hers, the fierce clutch of his hand at her waist, the look in his eyes that had shattered something cold and old between them, and then, too soon, the cold absence of him afterward, the long, echoing silence in the corridor where she had expected footsteps, a knock, something. Anything.
Her gaze drifted, not unfocused but untethered, caught between memory and hesitation, her mind folding over itself in quiet spirals, and it was in that space—between breath and thought, between heat and ache—that the hearth behind her flared a sudden, unnatural green, the flame licking at the edges of the stone like it had been summoned by the sharp intake of her breath alone.
It was the sudden, silken ripple of displaced magic—a sound not loud but undeniably present, like a secret slipping between cracks in a dream—that stirred her from the quiet tangle of her thoughts, not jarring her so much as shifting the world around her with a gentle insistence, as though the very room had inhaled sharply in preparation for trouble. The hearth flared with color in her periphery, a bloom of green so rich and unnatural it seemed painted in flame, tongues of it licking upward in slow, luxurious arcs that didn't just illuminate the conservatory but claimed it, drenching the flowers in flickering emerald until the shadows beneath the leaves looked deeper than they had a moment ago.
From the heart of the fire, without ceremony or hesitation, stepped Blaise—uninvited, unbothered, and entirely too pleased with himself, exuding the kind of shameless, infuriating charm that no one had ever successfully called him out on because he wore it too well, like cologne and inherited privilege.
His entrance was all languid grace and subtle mischief, robes tailored to dangerous precision and artfully disheveled just enough to suggest he'd either spent the night somewhere improper or wanted people to think he had. His hair—black as ink and charmingly tousled—fell into his eyes in a way that had to be deliberate, and the smirk on his mouth was slow, sinful, and already half-way to a flirtation he hadn't spoken yet.
"Morning, goddess," he said smoothly, dragging the greeting across the space like silk across bare skin, low and lazy and threaded with the kind of familiar, unmistakably intentional warmth that made the word itself feel like a hand sliding across the curve of a thigh. He flicked a bit of soot from his sleeve with the bored grace of a man who had never once been expected to earn anything, his fingers long and unhurried, like the fireplace was lucky to have kissed him at all.
His gaze wandered the room next—not in politeness but predation—cataloguing the plants, the filtered gold light through the stained-glass dome, the half-drunk tea still cradled in her hand. And then it landed. On her.
Not glanced. Not flicked.
Landed.
Like a dropped anchor. Like a wager made without a coin tossed. His eyes dragged down the line of her legs, across the parted hem of her dressing gown and the curve of one bare knee where it met the velvet cushion, up the silk-wrapped length of her torso where her robe clung too closely in places heat still lived, and finally to the pale stretch of her collarbone where the bruising echo of last night still glowed faintly beneath her skin. He paused there. And lingered.
"You look…" he murmured, voice dipped in amusement, in smoke and sin, his gaze narrowing slightly as he leaned one shoulder against the frame of the hearth, angling his body like an invitation he expected her to open. "Unmade," he offered finally, lips tilting in a smirk that was all teeth and delight. "Not in the tragic, windswept way. In the… deliciously post-apocalyptic way. Like someone lit a match and then kissed you through the smoke."
She didn't answer immediately.
She didn't even blink.
But she didn't look away, either.
And that—that was enough to keep Blaise exactly where he wanted to be. Suspended in the space between offense and invitation, mischief and myth, temptation and the thrill of being hunted right back.
She didn't flinch, didn't shift, didn't soften—not even a fraction. She merely tilted her head with slow precision, the movement graceful enough to seem unconcerned but calculated enough to say otherwise, the delicate line of her neck catching in the morning sun like polished marble, pale and luminous and entirely untouchable. Her eyes remained steady, unreadable, not clouded by irritation or sharpened by suspicion but poised in that uniquely infuriating stillness she wore like armor, calm and impenetrable, the gaze of someone who had learned a long time ago that silence could say far more than any word ever could.
She didn't blink. Didn't breathe too fast. Didn't offer anything as base as a smile. She simply observed him, cool and dispassionate, like an ancient deity watching a curious traveler wander into sacred ground with no idea he'd stepped across a line meant for other creatures entirely. She looked at Blaise the way one might observe the flicker of a flame in a drafty room—vaguely interested, not at all impressed, and quietly confident that, should she so choose, she could extinguish it with a single breath and not miss the heat.
But Blaise, as ever, remained unfazed. He stepped closer with the same predator-smooth stride he always used when charm was his currency and the stakes weren't quite life or death, his weight shifting just enough to close the gap between boldness and breach. He was already holding something—an object she hadn't noticed at first, likely by design—a sleek silver thermos that shimmered faintly in the light, steam rising from its spout in ghost-thin ribbons that carried a scent she recognized immediately: rare, aged tea, spiced with something sharp and citrus-bright beneath layers of floral smoke.
The thermos was enchanted, of course, etched with intricate dark vinework that moved when looked at directly, magical script curling over its surface like coiled promises, elegant in a way that made it clear it had not come from any apothecary on High Street.
He offered it to her with one hand, the angle of his wrist carefully casual, as if this were a peace treaty and not a ploy, his smirk curling just a touch deeper as he tilted his head to match hers, mirroring her posture like it was a game only he had remembered they were playing. "I brought tea," he said at last, the words low and threaded with deliberate levity, like they weren't supposed to matter and absolutely did. "The good kind. Ministry reserve, top shelf, with a few helpful charms stirred in—clarity, focus, that vague sense of superiority we both know tastes best when sipped from something expensive. And who knows—might even help you forget you tied your soul to a man who looks like he only stops brooding long enough to hex mirrors."
His tone was warm, almost idle, but his gaze—his gaze was something else entirely. It lingered. Watching her mouth. Her fingers. Her pulse. Not in a way that pushed, but in a way that waited. Like he was listening for something beneath her silence. Like he wasn't just offering tea.
But an opening. A question.
A dare.
He poured it into a fresh cup with the kind of unnecessary flourish that implied habit more than care, the scent of the tea—sharp, dark, spiced with something a little too medicinal—curling up between them like a question neither had voiced. He handed it to her without waiting for her acceptance, the delicate porcelain warm between her fingers before she even looked down. Then he settled beside her on the chaise—too close—the cushions sighing beneath the weight of him as if even the furniture was aware of how little distance existed now between his body and hers. His knee brushed hers, not overtly, not insistently, but enough to register, enough to claim space he hadn't been offered.
She didn't flinch. Didn't draw back or realign herself or break the stillness that had wrapped around her like a second skin. But she didn't soften either. Her body remained languid, loose in posture but not in spirit, her spine curled slightly as if she had draped herself there with no intention of rising. She was present but unreachable, like a ghost made of silver threads and half-said thoughts, like moonlight caught behind thick fog—visible, luminous, and utterly untouchable. She accepted the tea, held it gently in both hands, but she did not sip. And she most certainly did not accept the comfort that came with the gesture.
"Are you alright?" he asked, the question gentle in tone but too precise to be casual, too weighted to be dismissed, delivered with that maddening softness only Blaise could weaponize—carefully, almost reverently, like he was placing it at her feet rather than throwing it in her face. It wasn't the kind of question meant to be answered easily. It was a key disguised as kindness, a door cracked open by the sheer implication of concern, and he stood behind it, patient and silent, waiting to see if she'd step through.
No urgency, no demand—but there was something underneath it. Something older. Something male. Something that watched for weakness not to exploit it, but to catalogue it, to wrap it in velvet and pretend it wasn't still sharp enough to cut.
His voice had dropped—lower, smoother, a note gentler than before, the kind of sound used when tending to delicate things too precious or too dangerous to touch directly. Not mockery. Not manipulation. But intention, absolutely. A deliberate shift, a softening of tone that said: I see something, and I'm not pretending I don't. The question settled into the space between them like ash, not loud, but impossible to brush away.
And then his eyes shifted—not from her, but within her, trailing not just over the contours of her face but following the slow bloom of heat up her neck, the way the light caught on the side of her jaw, the delicate place just beneath her ear where a single fingerprint of color had bloomed. Not the blue-black bruise of harm, but the flush of pressure and passion and something dangerously close to worship. The mark was faint, but it spoke volumes. He saw it. And the moment he did, something behind his expression altered, darkened—not anger, not jealousy, but something colder and cleaner. Precision. Focus. Possession without entitlement. Concern without the performance.
"He didn't hurt you, did he?" The question landed like a charm uttered through a closed door—not loud, but undeniably there, his voice low and leveled but backed by a weight she hadn't expected. Not protective in the heroic sense. But territorial. Careful. Calculating. Not because he wanted to interfere—but because he needed to understand.
She didn't answer.
Not right away.
Because how could she? How did one articulate the particular kind of ruin that didn't leave bruises? That Draco hadn't broken her skin, hadn't raised his voice or even reached for his wand—but that somehow, he'd still shattered something. That her body had been fine. More than fine. But her mind—her heart—had been left humming with a frequency she didn't recognize. She wasn't hurt. But she wasn't whole either.
Because it hadn't been violence. No. It had been something far more dangerous.
It had been his hands, urgent and reverent, gripping her hips like she was something he'd starved for. It had been the tremble in his mouth just before he kissed her, the tension in his voice when he'd said you're mine like it was both a warning and a plea. It had been the wall at her back, cold and real, and his body—hot and furious and shaking with restraint—pressing into hers like he was trying to brand the moment into her spine. It had been the desperation in her own fingers, curled into the fabric of his coat, not pulling him away but holding him there, keeping him close, begging him silently not to let go.
She could still feel the imprint of him in her ribs, in her breath, in the way her body had answered him—not with fear, but with terrifying clarity. She'd wanted it. Wanted him. Not in some soft, candlelit fantasy. But like a reckoning. Like gravity.
Draco hadn't hurt her.
He had undone her.
Unmade her in ways that didn't bruise but left her aching all the same—torn between the illusion of control she'd built and the staggering truth of what desire looked like when it had claws. And she didn't know how to say that. Not to Blaise. Not to anyone.
So she looked away.
And said nothing.
Blaise shifted beside her, the mood in him souring almost imperceptibly, his smile—if it had ever been real—disappearing beneath the tightening set of his mouth. Something about her quiet sharpened the lines of his face, turned the softness of his concern into suspicion.
"Hermione," Blaise said again, firmer now, the syllables of her name shaped by something sharper than concern, something that was beginning to edge toward frustration or fear. He leaned in slightly, not close enough to touch her, but just near enough to make the shift in his tone unmistakable—a voice no longer wrapped in silks, no longer pretending not to pry. "If he did something—if he crossed a line—"
But he didn't finish.
Because the moment those words left his mouth, something shifted.
Not loudly. Not with a crash or a crack. But with the kind of quiet that made everything else stop breathing.
The temperature dropped—not by degrees, but by magic, sudden and clean and unnatural, the warmth of morning leached from the conservatory in a heartbeat as if the sun itself had withdrawn in caution. The golden glow that had kissed the glass, the vines, the curve of her bare ankle, dimmed at the edges like a candle shrinking back from a storm. The magical flora, which had moments ago swayed with lazy contentment, froze in place. Their petals closed, their leaves stilled. Even the air grew heavy, like the room was holding its breath.
She didn't flinch. She didn't speak.
She only turned her head.
Slowly. Deliberately. Not startled—but summoned, like a compass needle responding to the true North of its design. Her eyes, wide and calm and unreadable, drifted past Blaise's shoulder to the archway framed by pale climbing ivy and morning-lit glass.
And there—silent, unmoving, coiled in tension so thick it radiated from his skin like smoke—stood Draco.
No sound had preceded him. No flare of green fire or crack of apparition. No footfall. No warning.
Raw. Cold. Cataclysmic.
He hadn't come into the room so much as arrived in it—like an ancient spell waking after centuries of sleep, like a storm called down without intent but with absolute inevitability. The fabric of his robes whispered around his boots with each controlled breath he took, but otherwise, he did not move. His eyes—cut from glass, carved from bone-deep hunger and shadow—locked on hers and didn't waver.
And the rest of the world fell away.
He was dressed in black, not the polished, aristocratic kind he wore to galas or courtrooms, but something darker, looser, more primal—robes that hung off his frame like remnants of a storm, sleeves shoved to the elbows as though fabric alone couldn't contain him. His hair was still damp, strands curling at his temples, not from vanity but necessity, as if he'd scrubbed himself raw in the shower in some desperate, futile attempt to wash away the memory of her sighs, her mouth, her name on his tongue. His boots were muddy—fresh dirt from the edge of the manor garden still clinging to the soles, tracking proof of restless pacing across tile and warded stone. The open collar of his shirt exposed the slow, steady rise and fall of his chest, the sharp line of his collarbone, the shadow of a bruise blooming down the side of his neck—either from the night before or from the silence that followed it.
But his eyes—gods, his eyes.
They didn't seek her.
They found Blaise.
And locked there.
Icy and bright and fathomless, not wild but contained in the way a predator is contained right before it sinks its teeth into something soft. They narrowed slightly, imperceptibly, as they swept over the tableau before him—Blaise, too close by half, seated where only he should sit, fingers dangerously near her knee, the delicate porcelain cup in her hands that bore no trace of his magic. His gaze drifted lower—to the soft mark just under her jaw, not yet faded, not quite hidden—and something in his jaw clicked hard enough to echo. A muscle twitched beneath his cheek like the warning coil of a wandless curse. He didn't blink. He didn't breathe. He didn't speak.
He didn't have to.
Because the room already knew.
Magic pulsed off of him in waves—silent, seething, thick with the ache of restraint barely holding, warping the air like heat rising off dragon fire. The sunlight recoiled from him. The glass panes of the conservatory clouded slightly. The vines above Hermione's head stilled mid-sway as if the house itself was waiting for someone to make the first move. Even the breeze that had stirred through the open windows earlier seemed to pause, caught between inhale and catastrophe.
Blaise, to his credit—or his foolishness—did not flinch.
He tensed, yes. Shoulders straightened, posture sharpened. But he did not shift. Did not retreat. Instead, he smiled—slow and lazy and lethal. The kind of smirk that tasted of challenge and wine and far too many years of knowing exactly which buttons to push. His eyes didn't leave Draco's, but they softened slightly as he lifted his cup toward Hermione with mock ceremony, brushing the rim against hers.
A toast without words.
A provocation measured in inches, not spells.
And Hermione—center of the storm, axis of both men's orbits—simply exhaled, quiet and calm as ever, her fingers tightening just slightly around the cup's handle as she raised it once more to her lips. The tea, still warm, kissed her mouth with the barest taste of tension and citrus. She didn't speak. She didn't move. But her eyes, dark and unreadable, flicked from one man to the other and held.
She knew.
This wasn't going to end quietly.
Draco's voice sliced through the thick, humid air of the conservatory like a blade honed on ice—razor-sharp, unmistakable, and so cold it felt as if it had stolen the heat from the room itself.
"Get. Out."
The words didn't rise in volume. He didn't yell. He didn't need to. His tone was low and controlled, but carried with it the weight of something lethal—something forged in months of silent tension and slow-burning jealousy that had now, finally, reached ignition. That voice wasn't made to scare; it was made to kill. The syllables snapped through the air like incantations, carved from pure, ancient fury, and it chilled the enchantments threaded through the walls. Every living thing in the room—plant, vine, blossom—seemed to recoil, shrinking away from the sound like it had felt the edges of a curse cut too close to its stem. Even the glass above them fogged slightly, as though the temperature had dropped in reverence or fear.
The conservatory—usually so full of quiet breath and soft rustling life—fell utterly silent. Not the comfortable silence of shared space, but a silence that waited. That tensed. That held its breath like the second before a spell makes contact.
Blaise raised his eyebrows slowly, too slowly, as if the situation amused him more than it concerned him. The ghost of a smirk curled at the corner of his mouth—lazy, dismissive, like he still believed this was a performance, a bit of theatre meant to entertain, not something real with teeth and consequence. He looked at Draco the way one might look at a thundercloud on the horizon: worth watching, not worth worrying about.
Like he didn't see the danger.
Like he should have.
He leaned back further on the velvet chaise, one arm stretching along the back of it with infuriating ease, his knee still brushing Hermione's, still too close, still trespassing. And then, with the audacity of someone who had never once feared retribution, he lifted the porcelain teacup again and took a sip—slow, deliberate, as if tasting the calm before the storm.
"Well," Blaise drawled, voice silky with feigned indifference, "I suppose it's a bit early for threats, even for you, Malfoy. But if this is how you want to—"
He didn't finish the sentence.
Because Draco moved.
No wand. No words. No hesitation. Just motion—pure, unfiltered, and explosive, like something ancient had been cut loose from behind his ribs and could no longer be held. The transformation from stillness to violence was so sudden, so absolute, it was like watching lightning strike from a clear sky.
One moment, he was by the door—rigid, crackling, all breath and tension coiled like a drawn bow.
The next, he was across the room, closing the distance in a blur of dark robes and fire-laced fury, teeth bared, his eyes glowing with something near-feral, something that had nothing to do with etiquette or restraint and everything to do with claim. He didn't roar. He didn't curse. He just launched, propelled by the kind of rage that didn't want to destroy, but punish.
The growl that tore out of his chest didn't belong to a man. Not a politician. Not a noble heir. It was older than that—raw and terrible, the sound of instinct and blood-right, of dragons awakening beneath human skin.
Blaise rose to meet him, to defend, but he was a beat too slow.
Draco's hand had already twisted into the front of his robes, yanking him forward with a force that knocked the teacup from his hand. Porcelain shattered on the floor. Liquid splashed onto her slippers. No one noticed. No one cared.
His other arm pulled back, fist clenched, muscle taut with devastating intent—ready to break bone, dignity, silence.
Magic radiated off him in waves, visible now, the kind that distorted the air and raised the hairs on skin, the kind that made doors tremble and oxygen thin. It was gold-touched and burning, spitting sparks along the cuffs of his sleeves, and in his eyes, it was wildfire. Unholy. Unrelenting.
The air snapped with tension. The room crackled.
And then she moved.
Fast. Faster than logic allowed. Faster than anyone barefoot in a silk dressing robe had any right to move.
She stepped between them like a force of nature all her own—not a buffer, not a victim, but a barrier, made of soft skin and sleep-warm breath and absolute, terrifying calm. Her hands rose, small and steady, and flattened against Draco's chest, fingers splaying wide over the fabric as if pressing directly into the heart of his wrath.
And he froze.
Not because he was restrained.
But because she had touched him.
And that was enough.
"Enough," she said, and her voice was quiet, barely louder than a breath—but it carried the gravity of an ancient charm. There was no fear in it. No pleading. Just that singular kind of stillness that came before spellwork took hold. It was the voice of moonlight parting storm clouds. The voice of a girl who had once walked barefoot through fire and come out smiling.
Draco didn't lower his fist.
Didn't speak.
Didn't blink.
He stood there, chest heaving beneath her palms, shoulders tight with restraint that trembled on the edge of violence. His eyes weren't on Blaise anymore—they were locked on her, wild and molten, pupils blown wide, not from magic now, but something far more human. Possession. Panic. Want.
His gaze flicked to the bruise at her throat—the mark he had left. Then to the fall of her robe, the one he'd watched slip from her shoulder hours earlier. And then to the soft, bare curve of her collarbone, now far too near Blaise's reach.
Still, she didn't flinch. She looked him straight in the eyes.
And then—she slapped him.
The sound cracked across the conservatory like a spell cast without a wand. Not cruel. Not dramatic. Just sharp. Surgical. Like a tether being severed. Like something sacred demanding recognition.
His head turned with the impact—slow, mechanical—and when he looked back at her, his eyes had changed.
No longer fire. No longer gold. Just grey. Cold and real. Present.
"You are not an animal," she said, and her voice was trembling now—not with fear, but with fury, with ache, with something righteous that she had barely kept leashed. "You don't get to act like one. Not here. Not with me."
The room held its breath.
Even the vines on the ceiling stopped moving.
Draco blinked once. Then again. And something inside him—something enormous and terrible—shifted. Not dissolved. Not vanished. But turned inward. Focused. Contained. His eyes dropped slowly to her lips. Then her throat. Then her hands, still pressed to his chest like she had the power to stop him.
And she did.
He stepped forward.
Not aggressively. Not apologetically.
Just… into her.
Into her space. Into her breath. Into the only part of the world that still made sense.
His voice, when it came, was almost too quiet to hear. Gravel-worn. Wrecked. Honest.
"No," he said. "I'm not an animal."
A pause. A breath. The space between everything they had been and everything they might become.
"I'm your husband."
And the way he said it didn't sound like obligation.
It didn't sound like a title.
It sounded like a warning.
Like a vow. Like a claim.