Hermione sat huddled on a bench in the Quidditch pitch as Draco kicked off and shot straight upward until he was a speck in the sky. He flew in figure eights and loop de loops and then zoomed down doing corkscrews and aerial somersaults and a dozen other things that were enough to make her stomach flip just watching.
She smiled to herself, pulled a book out of her bag, and started to read, glancing up every now and then to watch Draco whoop and do yet another stomach-churning maneuver.
She could not imagine how flying so fast could possibly be enjoyable, but Draco's expression was thrilled as he zipped around and around the Quidditch pitch, going faster, and faster, and faster until he was a black and platinum blur.
She turned back to her book and kept reading until she heard a crunch and looked up to find Draco had landed a few feet away from her.
He had ice crystals in his lashes and eyebrows. He could have been a character from a fantasy: tall, pale, chiseled and etched with snow.
"Right. Flying basics. The first thing you need to do is become comfortable with flying."
Hermione stiffened, and she gripped her book. "Draco, I really don't want to learn flying."
"I know. I'm still going to teach you. I have nine hours and fifteen minutes for the rest of the school year." He stepped over, plucked her book out of her hands, and stuck it into his cloak pocket.
Hermione pursed her lips sourly and crossed her arms. "Draco, brooms and I, we really don't—"
"Come on, Hermione, where's your Gryffindor spirit? Come fly with me."
"I know how to fly," Hermione said, arching her eyebrows and staring at him pointedly. "I've flown on thestrals and a dragon, I've even flown on brooms occasionally, but they—we don't get along with each other."
"That's because you distrust them. Brooms are like wands; you have to get a sense of them and let them get a sense of you. Come on."
He pulled her over. He barely raised his hand, and the Firebolt jumped into the air, into his grasp. He slung a leg over and nodded toward Hermione.
"You sit in front of me."
Hermione sighed and fidgeted. "Draco... I really don't want—"
"Hermione," he met her eyes with such intensity it made her stomach flip, "I will die before I let anything happen to you."
He said it with an entirely straight face that made her feel like he actually meant it and expected it to make a significant difference. She rolled her eyes.
"It's not a matter of doubting you, it's a matter of doubting it." She eyed the broomstick dubiously.
"It's my magic." He expression was mulish.
She sighed and resigned herself to a flying lesson, climbing on. He was so tall her toes couldn't reach the ground, and she was obliged to cross her ankles, gripping the broom tightly.
"Don't go high. If you do a corkscrew with me on board I will hex you into next week."
Draco gave a low laugh and kicked off gently. "No finals, and I jump straight to your heat; don't tempt me." She could hear him leering.
She snorted.
Draco tipped the handle upward, and they rose up higher and started moving more quickly. Hermione immediately tensed.
"Don't—" she choked, squeezing her eyes shut.
Draco leaned forward so that his chest pressed against her back and one of his hands slid firmly around her waist. "Granger, this cannot possibly be more frightening than riding a dragon."
"Dragons are alive! They won't spontaneously just drop out from under you. Maybe brooms alright for you, but I'm telling you they're very, very finicky with me."
Draco glided back down until they were only a few feet above ground, skimming along around the pitch. He was quiet while Hermione clung tenaciously to her part of the broom handle. They flew around the pitch several times before Draco spoke again.
"You—don't do well with intuitive magic, do you?"
Hermione stiffened and glared over her shoulder at him. "I'm better at most magic than you."
Draco snorted and sped up incrementally so that she squeaked. "I am aware, know-it-all. I've shared Arithmancy, Potions, and DADA with you for seven years, you're an outright menace in Potions and Arithmancy, I'm certain you're same way in Ancient Runes, Transfiguration all the rest of your classes. However, in practical exams I'm better at Charms and DADA than you are, and Potter was better at DADA than you too. He and I both have a natural affinity for flying."
Hermione gave a begrudging nod.
"I think the two are related. You approach magic logically. Flying is intuitive. You call the broom and it comes. You intend for it to fly and it does. Defense magic is similarly intuitive. When you try to summon a broom, what are you thinking about?"
Hermione shrugged and rubbed her thumb against the smooth wood of the broom handle. "The charmwork, obviously. I think about how there are certain spells used in the craftsmanship that my magic is supposed to integrate with and invoke. When I'm calling it, I'm reaching out with my magic and fundamentally trying to make the broom become an extension of myself magically. That's why multiple people can fly around in teams without worrying that their magic will key into the wrong broom at some point, because the second law of—"
"That's why brooms are finicky with you," Draco said with a groan. "You can't approach reactive charm work like that. Magic reads intent, when you over-analyze the why of the enchantments, it breaks the charm work down into the distinct behaviors and that makes it stop working cohesively. You have to treat it as a whole rather than in parts."
"But I don't know how to do that," Hermione said, drawing her chin down with a sharp jerk. "I know that with certain magical branches it's ideal to approach things intuitively, but I don't know how to only understand things as a whole. It's easier to isolate and define each individual element and then, from there, piece it together to understand how it works as a whole. If I don't do it that way, I don't understand as well, and I don't trust things that I don't understand."
Draco muttered something unintelligible under his breath.
"What?" Hermione said, looking quickly over her shoulder.
Draco sighed. "Oh—I was just realizing that if you changed a few words, you could be talking about our relationship right now."
"What?" Hermione bristled. "No! That's not true at all."
Draco made a scoffing sound. "It's almost exactly the same."
"It isn't."
"Really?" His tone was dry. "So you do want to approach our relationship as a whole? You don't try to break it down into individual elements of our biology, ourselves as individuals, our feelings, our aspirations for the future, and so on and then attribute everything about us to only one or two of those elements? No, that doesn't sound like you at all." His words were drenched in sarcasm. "You want everything to be neatly catalogued and divided so that you can calculate which parts are essential and decide from there whether what we have is really—" he gave a short sigh under his breath, "—legitimate or just a biological imperative you should dismiss and ignore."
Hermione stared down at her hands. "No. That's not how it is."
"How is it then? Because everytime I'm with you, there's a part of me that feels like you're taking mental notes so you can deconstruct everything on scroll later. Is that inaccurate?"
Hermione started to open her mouth and then closed it and there was a long silence.
She drew a shivery breath. "I don't know how to do it any differently. That's—that's how I—am. I just want to be—"
Draco landed back near the bench where they'd started. "Responsible. I know."
Hermione scrambled off the broom and turned to look at him. There was an aching sensation spreading across her chest. "It's just that—sometimes I think it's all real, but then I'll have these moments when I look at it from a different angle and I'm afraid I've gotten it all wrong."
Draco straightened and stared down at her. "I know. You did nearly break up with me a few hours ago because you thought I was getting into a relationship with someone else." He looked away. "I get it. You need to feel sure. It's fine. I'm not going anywhere."
He did not actually sound like it was fine at all. He slung the broom over his shoulder and turned toward the castle, holding a hand out toward her.
Hermione swallowed hard and wrapped her arms around herself. "I'm afraid if I get it wrong, I'm going to ruin your life," she said in a thick voice. "The way all the books talk about soulbonding—" her voice wavered. "What if it's all biology and none of its real and we're stuck together? If you change your mind then, I won't—there won't be anything I can do to fix it anymore."
Draco froze and turned back to stare at her for several seconds, his ice-etched eyebrows raised.
"Hermione," he said in a patient tone, "you may be the only person unaware"—he cocked his head slightly—"I've actually already ruined my life."
The snow was falling heavily and he gestured around himself with a lazy wave of his hand. "It's fairly unanimous. I may have avoided Azkaban, but I'm intended to spend the rest of my life being an example of how the wrong choices can ruin a person's entire life."
He gave a short laugh and it condensed like a cloud of smoke around him. "Why do you think they sent me back to school with the grade requirements they did and those long term of probation restrictions? To illustrate that, regardless of what excellent NEWTs I manage to earn, it won't make up for all my bad choices. If they could have found a legal loophole to render my family destitute, rest assured they would have done it. The fact my father will be released at the exact same point that my probation finally expires was also intentional. Aside from the exemptions that McGonagall can grant while I'm a student, the Ministry has locked a toothed collar around my neck, so that they can drag me out whenever they please and illustrate of how fucking ruined my life is."
He sighed and stared at the ground with a bitter expression on his face. "I can make jokes about shagging you as a career, but that's because there's really nothing else to do but joke about my plans for the future. My mother hired an excellent lawyer to defend me, and the last thing he did before I returned to school was explain in exhaustive detail how ruined my life is, and how much more I have the capacity to ruin it if I happen to make any further mistakes. Getting to protect you here and make you happy is more a contribution to the world than anyone expected of me at this point. Don't worry about my life, worry about yours."
He tilted his head back and stared up at the sky.
Hermione hugged herself and shivered. The warming charms were wearing off. She shuffled her feet and hunched her shoulders. "Well that's not how I see you and that's not how I see us. I want this to be a real relationship that we both chose. I need to be able to believe that about it. I know I'm overthinking aspects of it. I just—I don't know how to stop. I don't want to make the wrong choice because I'm emotional, but—I just keep getting more emotional about it all. I don't know how to trust what I want right now. I've always been able to trust my mind, and now I feel like I can't."
Draco studied her. His silver eyes made her breath catch and her heart skip a beat.
Alpha, Alpha, please.
"What do you want?"
She tore her eyes away from his eyes. "What?"
"Forget overthinking or making the wrong choice. What's the choice you want that you don't trust?"
"The one I want?" she said. Her chest felt tight as though she could barely breathe.
Alpha, please.
"Yes." He bit out the word and it made his teeth flash. "If you could have whatever you wanted, right now, nevermind anyone else's feelings. What is the thing you actually want the most?"
Hermione swallowed and pressed her wrists together. "I don't think I should say."
Draco growled in frustration, and Hermione felt it in her spine.
"You're not going to hurt my feelings," he said. "Just tell me what you want so I know what I'm trying to give you."
Hermione's knees threatened to give out as his Alpha tone rolled through her like a tidal wave. His eyes widened and his hand shot out.
"Fuck, Granger, I didn't mean—"
"I want you to bite me," she said with a gasp. "I want you to bite me so much I can barely think straight half the time, because all I can I think of is how I want to be yours and have you be mine and not worry about whether it's the best choice because it's the one I want."
Draco's eyes had darkened and there was lean, ravenous shift in his expression.
Hermione was panting and she looked away. "I know we've only been dating a month, and my heat is making the biological imperative worse right now, but—no matter how much I reason with myself—I want you to bite me. I want to soulbond with you. I love you. Thinking all this might just be a biological imperative between us makes me feel like my heart is breaking."
Hermione was shivering, and she bit her lip, rubbing her wrists together harder as she tried to compose herself. She blinked, and Draco reappeared directly in front of her; Ginny's broom left in the snow.
"Fuck—maybe you shouldn't have told me that," he said a moment before his lips crashed into hers.
His mouth was burning hot, and she moaned against him. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he pulled her legs up around his hips. She kissed him fiercely.
She was so tired of worrying. She wanted him. She didn't want to spend any more time trying to think of reasons why she couldn't have him forever.
"I love you," she said against his lips. "Please, please, be mine. I love you."
"I already am," he said, tangling a hand in her hair as he kissed her again. "I love you too."
They kissed until her fingertips were aching with cold. She was shivering in his arms even as she kept kissing him, and kissing him, and telling him she loved him, over and over again.
He drew his head back. "You're freezing cold. We need to go in. I told you you'd get cold out here."
She was shaking in his arms. "My warming charms wore off. It's fine. W-we sh-should go in."
Draco let her down and pulled his cloak off and draped it around her. Then he added his scarf, hat, and gloves and started pulling off his robes.
"This—this is enough, Draco," she said, stopping him and rebuttoning his robes with stiff fingers. "This is more than enough to get to the castle."
He scowled. "Let's hurry before you freeze to death."
"I'm not going to freeze," she said through chattering teeth. "I'm just cold."
He summoned the broom from the ground and wrapped an arm around her as he towed her quickly through the snow and into the castle.
When they turned down an unexpected hallway, she stopped short. "Where are we going?"
"Prefect's bath," Draco said, pulling her along. "I had planned to do this after your heat, during the holidays, but you're turning blue, so I'm doing it now."
Hermione's eyes widened. "We—can't go into the prefects bath together! That's against the rules."
Draco stopped short and stared at her with an expression of disdain. "Granger, practically everything we do when we aren't doing homework is against the rules."
That was a valid point.
"But it's so—" she grasped for the right word, "cliched."
Draco blinked.
"In all the romance novels set in Hogwarts, the couple always sneaks into the prefect's bath at some point," Hermione said, turning red as she admitted knowing such a thing.
Draco got a shark-like grin on his face. "Do they now? And you know this because—?"
"I've read a few," Hermione mumbled, avoiding his eyes. "When I needed a break from school and Harry and Ron, I'd steal one of Parvati and Lavender's romance novels. They—they always somehow include the prefect's bath."
"Really." His eyes were glittering with amusement as he resumed steering her down the hallway to the statue of Boris the Bewildered.
"Sea cucumber," Draco said and shook his head as the door clicked open, "I'm going to assume Longbottom is responsible for that choice."
"How do you know the password?" Hermione eyed him suspiciously.
"Pansy is getting a excellent grade on her next Potions essay," he said in an airy voice. Then he grimaced. "You'd think that twelve years of friendship would count for something, but apparently not as much as an E in Potions." Draco pulled her into the bathroom, then set to casting several barrier spells and a bedazzlement hex on the door. "There now. So—what do these couples do once they're in the prefect's bath."
Hermione stood shivering in two cloaks, two scarves, and two hats, however her face was still able to feel unbearably warm. "Bathe—there's usually—bathing," she choked out.
"Really? That was the part I was unclear about," Draco said with a salacious grin as he pulled his robes and jumper off and then twisted on several of the taps.
The bath filled rapidly with water and bubbles while Draco kicked off his boots and started removing his trousers. Hermione stood, watching him strip with glazed appreciation.
He'd already been well over six feet at the start of the school year, but she suspected he'd shot up an additional three or four inches in the last two weeks. His shoulders were broad and his waist tapered, defined with sinuous, rippling muscles that should have been entirely illegal.
Sometimes, when she stared at him, she had trouble believing he could be real. Maybe she had been poisoned and was currently in St Mungo's, vividly hallucinating an eighth year affair with an impossibly attractive Draco Malfoy.
He stopped stripping and stared at her. She swallowed thickly; she wanted to lick her way across his entire torso.
His mouth quirked. "You're supposed to take your clothes off too."
Hermione blushed and unclasped his cloak with clumsily cold fingers, then she pushed off her own cloak and began peeling off the multiple layers of jumpers she had piled on. Draco stepped over and helped her pull several over her head.
"How did you still get cold?" he said as she started to remove the undershirts she'd piled on.
"Because the biology is stupid," she said through chattering teeth as she quickly kicked her jeans and knickers off. "It's typical with men and women anyway, because girls tend to have a warmer core temperature and a lower metabolism. It's just more so with Omegas, because we're—sensitive. Oh god, I'm so cold."
She bolted into the bath and gasped with relief as she sank into water up to her neck. She gave a deep moan of relief. "Uuugh. This is perfect."
She cracked an eye open and found Draco staring down at her as though he were committing the sight to memory.
"Coming?" she asked.
He stepped in and then jerked his foot back out with a hiss. "The water is scalding. I think I'll just watch."
"No, it's not. It's perfect. Come in." She lowered her eyes. "I'll make it worth your while."
Draco stared at her for several seconds and slowly lowered himself into the water, looking as though he were being boiled alive.
He gave another low hiss. "How are you able to enjoy this?"
Hermione moved through the water toward him. "It feels amazing. Like I'm warming all the way through."
His expression was sulky as he seated himself on one of the benches in the bath. "I feel like I'm being cooked. I think this is going to be like having sex in the shower, sexier when I imagine it."
Hermione snickered. "That was pretty funny. I'm not sure which of us drowned more." Her voice dropped to a purr as she slid a leg across his lap to straddle him. "I think bath sex could be better."
His eyes glittered. "I'm skeptical, but I remain open to persuasion."
Hermione grinned and leaned forward until her breasts were pressed against his chest. "You feel well on your way to persuaded," she said, slipping a hand underwater to caress his cock.
"That—has very little to do with this bath, and a great deal to do with the fact you're sitting on me naked and strategically covered in bubbles."
"Well, I wouldn't be naked with bubbles without the bath." She pumped her hand slowly down his cock, lightly tracing her fingers over the head until he jerked in her hand.
"Fine. Fine. Valid point. You win. I can't think clearly when I'm being simultaneously seduced and cooked," he said with a groan as she dragged her tongue lightly over the base of his throat.
She squirmed closer until his cock was nestled between her legs and ground herself against him as she lowered her head and kissed him. Then she nuzzled him for a moment.
"Draco Malfoy, I love you. I'm in love with you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. That's probably going to really annoy loads of people, but I don't care."
His hands closed around her hips and he pressed his forehead against hers.
"I love you." His voice had dropped low and it vibrated through her so that she gasped. "The rest of the world can go to hell."
She gave a low laugh. "It better not. If it did, Harry would most definitely feel responsible for trying to save it, and I'd have to go with him, and then you'd have to come too."
He groaned. "Fuck. You're right. Nevermind, the rest of the world cannot go to hell. It's strictly banned from it."
He kissed her again. His hands slid through the water along her body. He gently touched her stomach and ran his fingers along her thighs. Slow, long strokes. She gave a breathy gasp and kissed him as she pressed her body closer to his.
He cradled the back of her head with one hand, drawing her head back and dropping teasing kisses down her neck until there was a painful coil of want in her lower abdomen. His tongue darted out and flicked against the base of her throat, and she trembled.
His other hand rose up in the water to cup her breast. His fingertips stroked along the sensitive undersides and up towards her areolas until her nipples were aching to be touched. She gripped his shoulders and ran her thumbs against his glands.
"Alpha, please." It came out as a low whimper.
He caught her nipple between his thumb and forefinger and tugged at it sharply. She gave a ragged gasp as the sensation laced straight through her. Her clit was throbbing. She shifted her hips and ground against his cock.
Draco made a low groan in the back of his throat, and his hand in her hair moved down into the water to catch and guide her hips as she moved against him.
He sat up so that he was looking down at her. His eyes were dark and more ravenous than she'd seen them in a long time. She could feel his eyes on her skin.
"You're a good girl, aren't you?"
Her brain blurred and tingled at the words.
He was pleased with her. Maybe—maybe he would bite her. She was trying to be so good.
"Yes, Alpha."
His thumb at her hip was drawing light circles over the bone and he pulled her more firmly against his cock.
He turned her face upwards, holding her chin and running his thumb along her lips. "Tell me, what you want."
The words rolled through her. She looked into his eyes, her blood thrumming in her veins. She wasn't sure if she was feeling his desire or hers. Her mind was in too much of a golden haze to tell.
"You. Just you. You're—mine. I want you to always be mine. I want—to always be yours. Your Omega. So you'll take care of me. I want you to bite me. I want you to fuck me and bite me," she said, pressing her jaw against hand and parting her lips.
His eyes grew darker still.
Heat was flooding through her body. He slid his thumb slowly into her mouth and she sucked on it, twirling the tip of her tongue against it the same way she did along his cock. He pumped it in and out of her mouth.
He was huge and powerful and burning for her. A perfect Alpha. The most perfect Alpha. Her Alpha. Hers.
"You're mine," he growled. " If I bite you, you'll always be mine. My Omega. Every inch of you. No one else will ever touch you. You're mine. Every heat you'll be under me. It will be my seed inside you. My knot. My children."
She moaned around him thumb. Her cunt was throbbing, and her hands slipped through the water to caress his cock. She drew her mouth away from his hand.
"Fuck me, Alpha. Please."
He shifted her up and until the head of his cock was pressed against her sex, and she slowly lowered herself. She was positive his cock had grown during his growth spurt because he was difficult to accommodate again, especially in the water where her natural lubricant was washed away.
She felt her inner walls fluttering as she stretched around him. He cupped her breasts in his hands and peppered the tops of them with kisses, dragging his thumbs across her nipples. The sensation rippled through her. She gave a low moan and tangled her fingers in his hair as she shifted up and then sank down again.
Alpha, Alpha, please.
Draco's hips met hers, and he arched her back and wrapped his burning mouth around her nipple, swirling his tongue slowly around the aching tip.
She pulled his mouth to hers, kissing him hungrily until her lungs were burning.
Alpha, please.
She drew back and stared into his eyes until she felt as though she were falling into him.
Bite me.
He tangled a hand in her hair and pulled her head back until she was looking up at the ceiling as his tongue dragged across her glands and up her throat.
Fuck me.
She gave a ragged moan, and his hips snapped against hers.
Claim me.
Her mind was chanting endlessly and she rolled her hips against his in tempo with it. She tangled her fingers in his hair and held his mouth against her throat, her inner walls tensing and squeezing his cock.
"Please..." she keened. "Please, Alpha—"
He growled against her throat, and her skin prickled across her body. Her eyes rolled back, and she closed them.
"Mine. Mine. Mine." He punctuated each "mine" with a thrust.
"Yes. Yes."
His hand on her hip slithered up her spine and closed around the base of her neck, arching her against him as the water rippled and splashed around them.
Bite me. Please, bite me.
Her fingers gripped his wrists, running along the scent glands on them. He dragged his teeth across her glands and it was like fire through her nerves. She shuddered and sobbed through her teeth.
"Bite me. Bite me." She mouthed the words because if she didn't mouth them she was going to start screaming them.
"Mine. You're perfect. I love you. I'll always take care of you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'll never let anyone hurt you again. You're such a good girl. Mine—I love you. I love you. I love you."
Hermione felt her body clench around him as she orgasmed. Her fingers were gripping his wrists so hard she thought her bones might crack.
She felt him drag his teeth against her throat, and her climax peaked into blinding silver.
She was free-falling through it as though someone had set off a firework inside her brain. Brighter, and brighter, and then everything went black.
When she regained consciousness, she was gasping as though she'd fallen underwater.
She dazedly brought a hand up to her face and found it dry. She dropped her head against Draco's shoulder and panted.
Her heart was pounding violently in her chest. Draco's chest was heaving and his arms were wrapped tightly around her shoulders.
"That was—really, really intense," she finally managed to say. "I think bath sex is definitely better than shower sex. I had no idea it could be that intense."
Draco was silent. His fingers twitched slightly.
Hermione closed her eyes and tried to catch her breath. She felt delightfully warm, and her entire body was trembling and boneless.
She nuzzled his chest and the base of her neck twinged slightly.
As she reached up to touch the spot, Draco spoke.
"I—bit you."