Chapter Text
Fog hung low between the trees, twisting in slow ribbons around the black roots. The forest pressed in on every side, the air heavy with the kind of silence that felt deliberate. Hermione stood just beyond the flicker of the silencing wards, their faint shimmer running like water along the treeline.
She had been early. On purpose.
Her wand rested against her palm, fingers tracing the carved grooves in its handle. The tether was already there, humming in her chest like an echo of a sound she hadn’t heard yet. Not loud, not urgent, just constant. Enough to make her certain he was close before she could see him.
A muted crack of displaced air. The shimmer of wards reacting. And then he was there.
Draco stepped out of the fog as if it had been holding him for her. His Apparition was quiet, seamless, his boots finding the damp earth without a sound. His coat was dark, the collar turned up against the cold, the edges touched faintly with frost. He carried himself like the air belonged to him, yet something in the set of his shoulders spoke of weight.
Their eyes met in a moment that was both practiced and strange.
“Granger,” he said.
She nodded once. “Malfoy.”
For a heartbeat, neither moved. She took in the sharp line of his jaw, the pale cut of his cheekbones, the shadows pooled under his eyes. His hair was a little longer than she remembered, the ends curling slightly where the damp caught them. Something about him was less polished than before. Not unkempt, but worn.
He reached into his coat and drew out a folded scrap of parchment. “From Theo.”
She took it carefully, avoiding the brush of his hand, though the tether betrayed her. The moment her fingers closed on the parchment, a flicker of him slid through: fatigue, threaded with a darker undercurrent she couldn’t name.
She tucked it into her satchel and drew out a small black device, square as a deck of cards. “For you.”
One brow lifted. “I see.”
“It’s a pager. Hybrid enchantment. If you keep it on you, I can signal you, and you can signal me.”
The tether shifted, faintly warmer now. Connection. The magic seemed to approve of the idea more than she did.
He turned it over in his hand. “Convenient.”
“I thought so,” she said, though her voice caught slightly on the words. She was staring at his hands now. The way his fingers moved over the smooth black surface, pale skin over precise tendons.
When she looked back up, he was watching her.
“You’ve been… somewhere,” she said before she could stop herself.
His mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “You could say that.”
The tether picked up something under the words. An image that wasn’t clear enough to be real, more a sensation: cold stone, a sound like metal striking metal, the weight of blue eyes in a dark room.
“You don’t look like you slept,” she said.
“That would be accurate.”
The faintest ghost of sardonic humor there, but behind it, exhaustion. And something else. She felt it more than saw it, the tether sliding fragments of it across the gap between them: restraint, sharpened to the point of injury.
Her fingers tightened around the strap of her satchel. “If you wanted to talk about it-”
“I don’t.” His voice was quiet, flat, and yet the tether hummed with a pulse that didn’t feel like dismissal.
She almost pressed further. Almost. But the fog thickened between them, and the moment shifted. She grasped for something else.
“I think I’m being drained,” she said finally.
His reaction was instant. The tether snapped tight, sharp as glass.
“Since when?”
“Subtle at first,” she admitted. “A delay in spells. Magic that feels… brittle. Like it could fracture if I pushed too hard.”
He didn’t answer. Through the tether she felt the drop of his stomach, the sick certainty of someone hearing proof of what they already feared.
The silence stretched until the fog seemed to press closer.
The tether flared, sudden heat low in her spine, and she froze.
Draco’s head tilted slightly. “You felt that.”
“It’s just the bond,” she said quickly, stepping back. “It’s reacting.”
His voice dropped lower. “To what?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t trust her voice.
He stepped closer then, just enough to erase half the distance between them. The tether pulsed again, steady, slow, a rhythm she felt in her teeth.
“What have you been doing when it happens?” he asked.
“I’ve been trying to track it, but it’s unpredictable. It doesn’t always feel the same. Sometimes it’s heat, sometimes pressure. Sometimes…” She broke off, unwilling to finish the sentence.
Sometimes it feels like you.
He studied her, and she could feel him through the tether, as if he were walking the perimeter of her mind.
“I’ll document mine,” he said. “When I can.”
“You should.” She kept her voice clinical, though her heartbeat was not. “We’ll need to meet more frequently.”
The tether shifted again, warmer now, edged with anticipation. It wasn’t her emotion, she told herself. Not entirely.
“You’re certain you want that?” His words were quiet, but she felt the real question under them. Not about research at all.
“Yes,” she said, though it came out softer than she intended.
For a long moment, neither moved. The fog curled between them, the air damp and cold against her skin. She thought about the last time she’d been this close to him. The tension of his body beside hers, the way his eyes caught in dim light.
The tether thrummed, the soundless vibration running through her like a hand sliding along the inside of her ribs.
“Do you ever wonder,” he said slowly, “if it’s not the bond that’s reacting?”
Her mouth went dry. “What else would it be?”
His gaze held hers for a heartbeat too long, then he looked away, exhaling as though the answer was too expensive to name.
She didn’t step closer, but she didn’t move back either.
*****
Her question still hung in the cold air. What else would it be?
The tether vibrated with her anxiety, a fine-wire tension coiling under his ribs. He kept his gaze on the fog curling at their feet, not because he didn’t have an answer, but because giving it voice would make it solid. And solid would most likely have her hexing him.
When he looked up, he made the mistake of really looking.
The fog had kissed her hair into tight curls, damp at the ends, stray strands catching the dim light. Her cheeks were flushed from the cold, and her eyes, sharp and unyielding, seemed to hold more gold than brown in this light. The lines of her face had grown finer since the war, strength carved into them rather than worn away.
He felt the want low in his chest, like a muscle memory he couldn’t stretch out. Theo and Blaise knew it, Pansy too. Had for years. They had their own quiet ways of making space for it, never speaking the thing outright, but never denying its presence either. That made it no easier to stand here and not reach for her.
The tether didn’t help. It mirrored every beat of attraction, sharpening it until he couldn’t tell whether it was his or hers.
She stood steady, waiting for him to speak. Waiting to measure him. That was the part that undid him. The way she never dropped her guard, yet still gave him her attention in full.
He thought of telling her that the drain she felt was real, that the Codex had whispered enough to make him certain it would take more than her magic. But telling her would plant fear, and fear made people leave. If she left again, he wasn’t sure he could make her come back.
“Document everything,” she said at last, her voice steadier than the pulse of magic between them. “We’ll compare notes next time.”
Next time.
He let the words sit in the fog for a heartbeat before answering. “Next time.”
The mist shifted between them. He stepped back first.
“Be careful,” she said.
Her voice lodged under his skin. He didn’t trust himself to speak, so he turned and Disapparated before the tether betrayed him.
The air in the estate’s corridors was colder than the forest. Torches sputtered in the sconces, their light swallowed by the high, shadowed walls. Draco moved quickly toward his rooms, the smell of damp stone familiar enough to fade into the background. Until a voice drew him up short.
“Draco.”
Astoria Greengrass emerged from the curve of the hall, her gown trailing like a spill of silk. She smiled in the way she’d been taught, precise and coy. Her hand caught his sleeve before he could sidestep her.
“You’ve been scarce,” she said, stepping closer. Too close. Her perfume was sweet, cloying, wrapping itself around his throat.
“I’ve been occupied,” he replied evenly.
“You never make time for me anymore,” she pouted, tilting her head. “We’re meant to be discussing our families’… future.”
He let her believe it. That was the point. Bellatrix encouraged the match, and keeping Astoria expectant was safer than letting her suspect the truth. But every moment in her orbit left him feeling hollow.
Her fingers trailed down his arm. “Perhaps tomorrow you might join me for dinner-”
“Perhaps,” he said, cutting her off with a polite curve of his mouth that cost him nothing.
He eased his arm free. The contact had left a faint nausea twisting in his gut, a physical rejection that was becoming harder to mask.
“I’ll find you,” she called after him, her voice lingering long after he turned the corner.
The door closed behind him with a quiet click. He didn’t light the lamps. The darkness suited him. He shed his coat and boots in silence, the sound of fabric and leather on stone the only noise in the room.
Sliding beneath the blankets, he lay on his back, staring at the faint, fractured outline of the ceiling. The memory of Hermione in the fog unfolded easily: the color in her cheeks, the way her gaze held steady even when the tether flared.
The drain was real. He had felt it through the tether, thinner than before, her magic stretched taut like overdrawn bowstring. The Codex fragment on his desk had only confirmed his suspicion. The Vitari was always bled for more than power.
He thought of warning her. But fear was a severing tool. She’d cut herself free before he could make her understand that the bond was not just a danger. That it was also the only thing tying them together.
For him, every moment near her was a gift and a curse. She didn’t know he still dreamed of her most nights, dreams tangled so deeply with memory he sometimes woke uncertain which was which.
He turned on his side, one arm under his head, eyes closed against the dark.
That was when the tether shifted.
No longer the faint, steady hum it had been since he left her. It pulsed hot, sudden and deep, as if her magic had reached across the gap with intent.
Draco’s breath caught, the sudden surge curling low in his stomach before flooding further down, hard and insistent. It wasn’t all his, he knew that instantly. Her magic carried it to him like heat through a copper line, threaded with an edge of hunger so sharp it hollowed the air in his lungs.
He rolled onto his back, closing his eyes, trying to breathe through it. His pulse thudded in his ears. The blanket was suddenly too heavy, too warm, the air too thin.
Then the flashes came.
Skin, soft and golden, scattered with freckles. The kind you didn’t see unless you were close enough to count them. Brown curls spread like spilled ink against a pillow he didn’t recognize. Bare shoulders curving into the shadows.
The image sharpened. Her fingers stroking across her own skin, slow and searching, tracing the slope of her breasts and stomach before sliding lower. The cool air had peaked her nipples, the faint shift of muscle beneath her skin a rhythm he felt in his own chest. Her hand found the soft apex of her thighs, circles smoothing into firmer pressure, her lips parting on a breath that trembled before breaking.
“Draco.”
It was his name, torn from her throat on a moan.
For one moment, guilt slid in. It felt like intrusion, stepping uninvited into a room he had no right to enter. He almost pulled away. Almost.
But the tether didn’t let him. It wrapped around the hesitation and burned it away, replacing it with the weight of her desire.
He gave in.
His hand moved to his cock without conscious thought, fingers curling tight around the heat of himself, the friction sending a jolt through his spine. The vision wavered but didn’t break. Her knees bending slightly, thighs falling further apart as her fingers worked faster, the muscles in her stomach tightening in small, exquisite tremors.
She was lost in it, unaware of him. That made something ugly and selfish stir in him. She didn’t know he was here, didn’t know he was taking this for himself, and part of him liked it that way. Liked the secrecy. Liked having a piece of her no one else could touch.
The visions dimmed as the sensations took precedence. Her own pleasure folding inward, leaving only the feeling of it in his body. He stroked himself in time with it, keeping his breathing quiet, though his chest rose and fell too quickly.
Her magic spiked hard and bright through the tether. Her back arched in the bed he didn’t recognize, curls spilling wild, her fingers moving with urgent precision. The sound she made then, raw and breaking, pushed him past the edge.
She came with a shudder, a tight collapse of heat and release that flooded through the tether like liquid fire.
He spilled over his chest and stomach almost in the same breath, the orgasm pulling the air out of him in a silent, teeth-gritted exhale.
For a moment, the only sound in the room was his breathing.
He let his head fall back against the pillow, the tether softening again into its usual hum. The air cooled quickly on his skin. He murmured a cleaning charm, the faint rush of magic scrubbing away the evidence until there was only the faint thrum of his heartbeat and the echo of her name in his mind.
He stayed still, chest rising and falling too quickly, waiting for the last sharp edges of the tether’s heat to fade. It didn’t vanish completely. Instead, it thinned to something softer, a quiet thread humming low in his chest.
And then it struck him.
She had moaned his name.
Not his surname spat out in anger. His given name. And it hadn’t been a curse.
Not as a slip of the tongue in a dream, not as some blurred half-thought. But with intent, with hunger. She’d reached for him in the middle of her own pleasure, even if she didn’t know he was there.
The shock came late, cutting through the haze like cold steel. It settled in his chest with a weight that was equal parts exhilaration and warning.
She hadn’t meant it for him. Not truly. She’d been alone, safe in the dark, certain her thoughts were her own. And he had been there anyway, taking what wasn’t offered. The right thing would have been to pull away the moment he realized. But he hadn’t. He hadn’t wanted to.
And now he couldn’t decide which was worse. Knowing she might never think of him like that again, or knowing that if she did, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself.
Her presence was still there, muted now, like the warmth left in sheets after someone has left the bed. No visions this time, just the faint, slowed pulse of her magic, steady and unguarded.
He shifted beneath the blankets, the cool linen dragging over clean skin, and let his body sink into the mattress. The ceiling was only a faint outline above him, blurred by darkness and the pull of fatigue.
Her name moved through his mind unspoken, steady as a heartbeat. The tether seemed to answer, faint but certain, as if acknowledging the thought before settling into silence.
He closed his eyes, holding onto that last trace of her, the echo of her voice, as sleep finally took him.