Archive of Our Own

“Granger.”

She feels the voice on her shoulder first, before she puts together those two g-forward syllables and remembers Granger is her name. Or at least it’s what a certain type of not-quite-stranger calls her. She should turn, and she does, but she pivots slowly, because tonight is all about the impression she wants to make. It’s a first impression of sorts, though of course it is far from their first meeting. All she knows is that when she turns and sees Malfoy’s pointed face again she will remember this moment for the rest of her life.

So she turns. And she sees.

Oh.

The one who has called her by her surname is not in fact Malfoy, it is a slim wizard, smile sly and sartorially sleek, with eyes only for her. His curls are a mess, but she recognises the disarray as patently deliberate. With a pile on her head and the one ringlet that decided to behave today framing her face, she knows full well how much time and effort it takes—whether wielding wand or curling iron—to look so perfectly undone.

But the truth as it stands is that she doesn’t fully recognise the owner of those loose curls and hazel eyes until she spots his foil at his flank. The second man is incontrovertible; tall enough, dark enough, handsome enough, that his presence is duly noted around the pub in whispers shielded behind multiple hands. It doesn’t help that this is a muggle establishment, and his midnight damask robe is ostentatiously wizard. He's wearing trousers at least. Some of the older generation of magical folk forget. Or refuse, citing an incontrovertible need to feel the breeze on one's bollocks at all times.

Hermione was expecting Draco Malfoy, but she is perched on a stool blinking in surprise at Blaise Zabini, and Theodore Nott, and they are staring right back at her in kind.

“Hello Granger,” Blaise says softly, extending his hand to her. It’s canted at such an angle that it's clear he is not here on business, but she sees and raises, seizing what is proffered in her usual business-bitch grip. He calls her bluff and reels her in. His cheek presses against hers. Once. Twice.

Family summers in the South of France defrosted her stiff upper lip, and she knows Blaise’s name, accent and appearance tell a story for him. Still, continental affectation or not, the touch of his skin is far too familiar. She flushes, and hopes it’s dim enough in the inoffensive, middling pub she’s chosen that they don’t see, or they chalk it up to ire.

“What are you doing here?” she asks. Her tone is not polite, nor welcoming, but weeks of barely sleeping have stripped away what little tolerance she has for new twists to this torrid tale.

“Draco sends his regrets,” Theo says simply, as his eyes rove over her person, taking her measure everywhere. She is not interested in knowing what he thinks. The self she cultivated for this evening—well-loved cardigan, Dr Martens, and not a glamour in sight—was purely intended to be for Draco’s benefit. The message, naturally, is I don’t give a single fuck.

The moment has gone on too long, inflated slowly with unasked questions and about to burst.

“Am I to assume that you are his regrets?”

They smile in unison at her quip, and cease the act at exactly the same moment.

“We’re the best men, yes. And Draco may come to regret his decision to appoint us.” Theo’s accent is as plummy as the poshest muggle lad’s might be. Like in a parallel universe he was delivered here in a chauffeured Rolls-Royce, and he can speak at length about hedge funds. Hermione has always harboured an embarrassing weakness for clipping off words, and sentences that dive deep at the end.

“The ceremony will be nothing more than signing paperwork in front of a ministry witness who will then perform the matrimonium enchantment.” To narrow her eyes would be to show that she is rattled, and she subdues the urge to do so. “We agreed there was no need for guests.” She would not send out invitations to her humiliation. To a farce.

“You agreed,” Blaise argues. “Theo and I had a differing opinion on the matter. Now, may we join you?” There is a banquette with tasselled cushions opposite her hard backed chair, but she’s not sure she requires the company of two near-strangers who believe they know better than her.

This pub is a foxhole, but Draco is not here for the armistice they so bitterly negotiated for. Enough time passes that she is sure Blaise and Theo know she is considering rejecting them outright, but in the end it is curiosity that opens her hand and offers them a seat at her table.

Blaise sits, Theo saunters off to fetch drinks.

“Why are you here?” she asks at once. The real question is why isn’t he?

“I hear it’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding.”

“Can’t imagine how much worse this situation could get.” She lifts her glass and takes a tiny sip, more out of habit and the need to do something than from desire for wine. She doesn't drink much nowadays, because for a time she tried to pickle the guilt of walking with the living and when she couldn't she tried to drown it. If there was ever a night for a glass of wine though, this is it.

“Bordeaux?” Blaise asks.

“Sassicaia.”

“Interesting.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Draco had urgent business to attend to before tomorrow, and rather than cancel he thought perhaps you might appreciate the company of his…nearest and dearest.”

“He thought wrong then,” she says flatly. “I didn’t come here for company. I came here to lay eyes on the man I am being shackled to, and to speak to him as just two people before we are bound magically and in the eyes of this despicable law.”

“No one should be alone before their wedding.”

She’d harboured every intention to be alone on the eve of the solstice. Or that had been the plan before Draco’s letter arrived. She had intended to say goodbye to her flat, and her name, and her belief that justice would be done if she fought fiercely enough.

“What was so urgent that he stood me up?” She inwardly cringed at her own choice of words. The scornful could not be scorned.

“Ah, enchantments that must be…tamed if the Manor is to accept a new lady.”

Of course, most old houses are spelled against people like her, and now there will be a mudblood in the manor, upsetting the fine balance of alchemical bigotry etcetera.

“Liar.” Theo arrives, sets down a wine for Blaise, and a gin and tonic for himself. He drapes himself across the banquette, disregarding the arm Blaise has already slung over the back rest.

“Draco is terrified of you,” Theo continues unabashed. “He had a screaming match with his mother, and took enough calming draught to fell a Welsh Green. Why are you covering for him?”

“I’m not,” says Blaise. “But subtlety might not go amiss, Theo. I’m sure Granger has enough to rue about this evening without you adding to the tally. And he did send us, that wasn’t a lie.”

“Well then, at least I know he’s still a coward,” she says. “Better to walk down the aisle with my eyes open.”

The registration office in the black heart of the Ministry of Magic does not have an aisle, but her point stands on its own.

Blaise and Theo exchange a look. In the span of their eye contact, she sees that they can speak without words. It’s not legilimency, but intimacy. She is going to leave forthwith, but inquiring minds want to know. The last of her wine clings to her glass. She has five minutes to spare.

“And why are neither of you wallowing in self-pity after being stripped of the basic human rights wizarding England saw fit to ignore?”

“I’m not a citizen. Just an immigrant here to steal everybody’s jobs…and their women.”

She looks to Theo whose smile never seems to slip all the way away.

“Infertile.” He shrugs and tips his tumbler. “Thank you Cantankerous.”

“Must be nice,” she mutters.

“There is a certain freedom in it.”

“Fancy invoking freedom in front of Granger,” Blaise drawls.

“Maybe I am devastated to learn I will never sire an heir,” Theo says.

“The bottle of champagne you opened when you got the owl with your results would certainly suggest as much.”

“Allow me to raise my glass again, then.” He does. “To the random distribution of fate.”

Hermione raises her own. “May the universe grant me the audacity to call a travesty of justice fate.”

“To your health, Granger,” Blaise adds. “Salute.”

Glass kisses glass and the clink and the ting seem to herald a hush through the pub, like they have rung a bell and signalled the start of something.

She should ask about Draco, but she doesn’t want to ask about Draco.

So.

“How long have you been together?” Her tools are especially blunt this evening.

“What makes you think we’re together?” Blaise asks slowly.

She isn’t sure, actually, but she reasoned to herself that their reaction to this question will tell her all she needs to know. Blaise’s non-reaction is on the slippery side of silken, and Theo’s smile goes from natural phenomena to forced.

“You seem like a set. Perhaps I overstepped.” She won't apologise. They overstepped by coming here.

“Blaise wishes,” Theo says airily, and Hermione sees the parenthesis around his mouth (it is he who wishes).

“My friends are my family,” Blaise explains. “Don’t shit where you eat.”

“That’s a charming expression.” Theo’s voice is carefully breezy. Perhaps she is not the only one at the table assuming a dramatis personae.

To see just a quarter of a glimpse of what she is sure is yearning, is abruptly enough. As far as she is concerned, just for tonight no one else is entitled to complexity or sorrow. She drains her drink, stands, and shoulders her bag.

“If you’ll excuse me gentlemen, I have a date with some Radiohead and a vial of dreamless sleep.”

“OK Computer?” Theo asks, and even Blaise looks at him in surprise.

Yes. “No, Kid A.”

After that perplexing exchange, with little fanfare, she heads towards the exit, weaving a path through the lives of others. Laughter coruscates around her, and she feels more alone than she ever has in this pub, surrounded by people.

She is almost at the door when a hand closes around her forearm. Her wand is in her bag and not in easy reach, but she holds a stinging jinx on the tongue in her mind to teach the one who had presumed a lesson.

It’s Theo with flecks of oxidised intensity in his gaze.

“I think you should stay,” he says.

Maybe he has purged his prejudice, but entitlement is bred-in-the-bone.

“I don’t care what you think.”

“All the same.”

“Why?”

“Because if you’re here because you want to get to know Draco better, I know him better than he knows himself. If you’re here because you want to yell at someone, or curse someone—free shot.” He releases her and spreads his arms open. “Or maybe today has been a sort of funeral for things as they should be, and what you truly deserve, and that makes this the wake. Maybe having a good night is the ultimate fuck you to the world, the most unexpected political statement for Hermione Granger to make.”

She is insulted by the insinuation that she’s no fun. Theo doesn’t know her, but her ramrod reputation precedes her everywhere she goes.

“You think there’s any possible way this could be a good night?” Her left eyebrow flexes upwards and she isn’t helping her own cause.

“Blaise and I are good company.”

“Are you just?”

“Or bad company, if you’d prefer.”

She recognises a bid to flirt with her and lets it shimmer in the air like a bubble. She could pop it, she should pop it but she is intrigued.

“Maybe I’d prefer to be alone.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“Maybe I’d prefer that you were Draco.”

“Now that could be true, but by the end of the evening it certainly won’t be.” Butter couldn’t melt in that grinning mouth. “Come, have another drink.”

“I don’t drink. Not really.”

“It’s not about the drink.” He holds out his hand, and she doesn’t know how—it makes no sense at all—her fingers are summoned into his. For three surreal seconds she follows and feels his thumb stroke over her heartline.

Then she comes to her senses. He is unperturbed.

There is another glass of wine in front of the chair she vacated, as if Blaise knew she would return. Maybe he knows something about Theo’s powers of persuasion.

“Theo has made the dubious claim that tonight isn’t a total write-off. In fact, he has suggested between the two of you that you would show me a good time.”

Blaise brushes his index finger over his lower lip. A plain silver signet he wears on one finger winks at her.

“I would relish the opportunity to make you smile.”

“Cheesy.”

“Maybe, but your lip definitely twitched, Granger.”

“Hermione,” she corrects him. She’d come here imagining that she would have to sternly instruct Draco to call her by her first name. She didn’t think she could stand the irony of being called by her father’s surname at the same time the Malfoy name unhinged its jaw and consumed it.

“Hermione,” Theo repeats like he’s learning a spell.

“A beautiful name for a beautiful witch,” Blaise adds.

“Steady on there, Romeo,” Theo mocks.

“What? Hermione doesn’t mind, I just saw her lip twitch again.”

▻◈◅

She is walking between them, down a no name street in East London. They are walking for the sake of walking by now, and there are people out, but no one spares them a glance because it’s London and everyone has places to be and is preoccupied with not making eye contact with strangers. Cities have a way of making one feel significant and inconsequential in one fell swoop. Or at least, that is the way Hermione has always felt, even as a born Londoner. She spent a year in Tokyo, sometime in the past that feels more distant than ever. She was a small fish there, in every which way. A salmon swimming upstream in Shibuya. A sardine in the can of her apartment. It had been good for her, she thought, because for a moment she had bought the myth of her own importance.

“What are you thinking about?” Blaise asks.

“Dichotomies,” she answers truthfully. Not caring if they think she’s pretentious. She can be, sometimes. “And how if I had ever imagined having a hen do, it didn’t look like a stroll through East London with two walking silver spoon sucking Slytherins.”

“What in the fuck is a hen do?” Theo is incredulous.

She holds back a giggle. Knowing it's not time for that. Not yet. “You know about Radiohead, but not a hen do?”

Hermione checks Blaise’s comprehension and sees he is similarly confused, though less willing to cop to it.

“Erm, a bachelorette party? A boozy send off before the big day, usually featuring a tiara and phallic party favours.”

“Like a proualia?” Theo says.

There are endearing aspects to wizardkind’s adherence to ancient tradition, but it is at times exasperating to explain muggle modernity to purebloods who understand what a proualia is but can't understand the concept of Google. Or traffic lights. Or primary school.

“Not quite a proualia. Think much more tacky.”

“I want to hear more about the phallic party favours,” Blaise says.

“Much less exciting than it sounds.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

“Well, Hermione, if you wish to uphold tradition we would be only too happy to indulge you. Please instruct us in the ways of the hen.” Theo gives a short bow.

“Really?”

“Really,” Blaise says.

“Well thank you, but I have no intention of donning a white veil, dragging you to Benidorm and snorting cocaine off a toilet seat.”

“Now that sounds like a party,” Theo says.

Hermione turns to look at her unlikely shadows, walking backwards for a moment as they continue with their forward momentum. She taps a theatrical finger on her chin.

“...But I suppose tradition is tradition. Follow me.”

She leads them left and left again, until they are swallowed up by bricks and hidden from muggle eyes.

“Turn around,” she instructs them.

Once again, they exchange a verbose glance. “Shall we spread our legs and place our palms against the wall too?” Theo asked.

“Well used to assuming that position, are you?”

“Blaise maybe. He was the one who went wild after the war, owling me all hours to come and bail him out of the DMLE drunk tank.”

“One time.” Blaise sniffs imperiously. “And I wasn’t drunk, it was Felix.”

“It was twice and the second time you’d definitely taken a bath in plonk.”

“As if.”

“Are you going to turn or aren’t you?” Hermione interrupts, though she doesn’t necessarily hate observing the bickering of indeterminate intimates.

They do turn, in near perfect unison. She checks the coast is clear and brandishes her wand carefully. A clockwise turn, an inverted triangle—not quite connected at the top—and then she writes in the air, ugly vermicular cursive that glows for a moment and then floats to stick on the back of a robe, and a suit jacket.

Barbie doll pink. Glitter spangled. Recycled best men.

Bridesmaid.

“I’m done.”

Blaise sees Theo’s back first and throws his head back to laugh. His throat flows and the sound is rich enough to coat the bricks. Theo sees and joins in.

“If we’re bridesmaids,” Blaise says, “that must make you the bride.”

She had been about to smile before the reminder, for which she only had herself to blame.

“I suppose it must.” She turns around, and she covers despair with provocation when she places her hands on the wall. The bricks scrape her palms and magic spans between her shoulderblades like a warm caress.

“Do you want to see?” Theo offers.

“Go on then.”

“Speculo.” The bricks become reflective and she sees the reflection of Theo behind her, holding a circular mirror in his hands which in turn reveals the glittering silver letters on her back. Perfect calligraphy spells out Bride.

But he’s added a parenthesis.

(Fuck the patriarchy)

“What do you think?”

“It’s a little on the nose.”

“I didn’t think we were aiming for subtlety.”

“You’re right.” And in the spirit of being dreadfully unsubtle, Hermione steps forward to pluck the silk out of the breast pocket of Theo’s suit. She makes a show of draping it over her palm and turns her mind to transfiguration—stretching and bending matter through the sieve of her magic—watching it shift and bloom until it is frothy and as white as hoar frost.

With Blaise and Theo watching, she attaches her vein to her bun.

“Overkill?”

“Perfect,” Blaise purrs.

“So we look the part,” Theo says. “What’s next?”

“Well, not quite,” Hermione says. “Neither of you are showing nearly enough cleavage.”

They look at each other, and then back to her. She finds she likes being talked about without words.

“Is that right?” says Theo.

She points her wand and unbuttons two shirts—two buttons for Blaise, three for Theo. She doesn’t linger on the slices of skin and chest and scatterings of hair she has revealed, however alluring—she has made her point. Hermione Granger knows how to play, she can and will live in this moment and ignore the steady crest of the wave that will flatten her life at midday tomorrow. Let them report back to Draco that she held her head high, and conformed to no expectations—not even her own.

“Perfect,” she mimics Blaise’s approval of her veil. “Next, I think we need a pick-me-up.”

Now, Theo appears thoughtful. “I prefer euphoria elixir, but I’m sure I can get us some cocaine. If our path takes us past a floo, I’ve got a bloke. Though I’m definitely going to need a bump before I think it’s a good idea to do lines off a toilet seat.”

“Not cocaine,” she corrects his assumption. “Ice cream.”

“There’s a gelataria in—” Blaise begins.

“No, not gelato. I don’t want anything high quality, or something that’s won gold medals and contains rosewater. I know a place. Let’s go, this alley smells like piss.”

A hop, a skip, and a crowded sidelong delivered them to another alley, which also smells powerfully of urine with a top note of old cooking oil.

Hermione confidently leads Blaise and Theo to a place she isn’t all that confident she remembers the location of, until she finds herself in standing in the shadow of pink shop front, its striped awning torn and faded red letters spelling out its name:

All That and a Cherry on Top

She catches a hint of their reflection in the glass, and twin looks of disdain at her choice of scoopery which is clinging to a bygone era—exactly which era is unclear, but at the moment all she wants in the whole world is a generous scoop of mint chocolate chip.

A merry bell above the door announces their arrival, and Hermione strides towards the counter with her usual aplomb.

“Not every day we get a lass on her hen’s do come in here.” The fatherly shopkeeper wearing a pink polo and a West Ham cap tosses her a welcoming smile. “What can I do you for?”

“One scoop of mint chocolate chip and—”

“Vanilla,” Theo supplies.

She's taken aback. “Really?”

“What?”

“Alright, Blaise?”

Blaise is looking down his nose through the glass at the colourful tubs.

“Bubblegum?” he says, not quite able to keep the appal out of his voice.

“And one scoop of bubblegum please.”

“That’s not what I—”

“It was my favourite growing up, but mum thought the colour was poison. Go on, it’ll be a good cultural experience for you.”

Blaise reluctantly assents. Theo puts down a twenty pound note before she can reach for her purse, and tells the kindly man behind the counter to keep the change. Soon, they emerge onto the Barking streets, the sun dipping lower draping gold over old grey buildings. The solstice draws closer. She feels its magic in the air, even here in the centre of muggledom.

“There’s a park around here somewhere—er, that way.” She points.

She leads them again, and somehow they end up sitting in a strange triangle on the grass in Barking Park, watching swans gambol about between waterlilies. The golden light casts their shadows long and thin across the grass, and they lick ice creams in contemplative, companionable silence. Eye contact is fleeting and flirtatious—on their part at least, but she can’t help but notice their methodologies. Theo turns the cone and smooths the cream with the flat of his tongue until it shines. Blaise is brave enough to take small bites, meaning that every few seconds he licks his lips to clean up the bright blue excess that might draw her in if she’s not careful. The mint in her mouth and the little bursts of decidedly average but utterly perfect dark chocolate help her maintain a cool head. She's not sure it's wise to have noticed their singular and joint appeal. She's not sure she cares either, she tells herself for now, for tonight, she can look, she can touch, she can do whatever she fucking well pleases.

When she bites off the tip of her cone and sucks, she too is watched intently.

A sunny London evening guarantees local parks will be thoroughly patronised. Hermione has always loved the thrum of life on nights like this, new lovers on picnics, overly optimistic sunseekers in tiny swimming costumes, ramblers walking dogs that resemble them exactly, and chatty teens passing around a bottle of Tesco’s cheapest prosecco. She is part of it, with two unlikely fellows, but she has marked herself with a veil and some script, as notable too.

“Congrats babes!” a jogger calls on her way past.

“Funny looking bridesmaids you got there,” a lad in a tracksuit informs her. He’s not wrong on that front.

Blaise's tongue flicks out again to gather bright blue off his bottom lip, gauging her reaction to the well-wishers.

“How’s the bubblegum?” she asks to avoid anything being asked at a depth that will leave her treading water.

Blaise smile spreads slowly. “Your mamma was right—this is poison.”

“Why do you keep eating it then?”

“I like to live dangerously.”

By now, Theo is lying back in the grass. He has slipped off his shoes, and seems content to watch the drift of gauzy clouds.

This time, she notices her own lip twitch and realises with a sugary jolt that she is having a Nice Time, and it isn’t because she is ignoring the mess but for a simple, fleeting moment it has melted to nothing on her tongue.

▻◈◅

Petal pink evening slipped to nascent night, and Hermione drags the cardigan that has slipped off her shoulder upwards. Theo has found an excuse to touch Blaise again, lying on his front and tracing the velvet patterns on his robe. Blaise gives no sign that he’s noticed, but Hermione knows he has, and she also sees clearly that Blaise knows exactly why Theo touches him.

The hour post-ice cream was a strange one, where an old married couple set down a bottle of bubbles in front of her with a wink and a ‘congratulations’, and she, Blaise and Theo passed it back and forth until she had enough fizz on board to be thinking about her mouth and their mouths touching the same green glass.

She learned that Blaise was a healer like her, specialising in poisons at Heartstone Clinic in Belfast. Theo was less forward, and called himself a cliché.

“Spent the last few years trying to spend my father’s money altruistically. But turns out I have a rather selfish streak and a passion for antique chairs.”

Fully-fledged night and a significant dip in temperature invite a new realisation: she isn’t ready for this—whatever this is—to end. She doesn’t want there to be nothing but sleep remaining between her and her tomorrow.

Which begs the question:

“What’s next?” She pulls a daisy out of the grass and rips away its petals.

“I have an idea,” says Theo.

And suddenly, she does too.

“Hold that thought and wait here.”

She dashes across the grass to the public loos, now lit by cool white fluorescents. She takes the opportunity to do a quick wee, and then uses the stall to conceal her apparition. She arrives in another alley, and darts from there into a brightly lit shop that smells of artificial strawberry and rubber, and she finds what she needs with a smile they cannot see.

She is less than ten minutes in all, and when she returns she catches a look on Blaise’s face that suggests he had started to wonder if she would return. It didn’t occur to her not to, and that is a curiosity in itself.

“I come bearing gifts,” she announces. “Close your eyes.”

Theo obeys her immediately. Blaise is slower to comply, but eventually his dark lashes meet his cheeks too. Hermione reaches into her bag, and then kneels in front of them, slipping what she’d bought them over each of their heads in turn. Bright pink plastic on bright pink cord. Theo tries to peek when she adjusts the pendant to centre and brushes the warm skin over his heart. She flicks his chin gently in admonition. Now she is the one finding reasons to touch him.

She leans back on her haunches.

“Okay, you can look.”

In unison their eyes open and their chins dip. Hermione finds herself charmed by another instance of their accidental choreography. Just another example of attunement, and further illustration when their grins crack open as one and they reach for their new jewellery with mirrored hands—Theo’s right and Blaise’s left.

“A muggle penis necklace,” says Blaise, trying for solemnity. “Just what I’ve always wanted.”

“It’s a whistle, actually.”

“No shit?” Theo wastes no time at all placing a little pink dick between his lips and blowing. Holding back her smile is now physically painful, but still she only lets them see the twitch. The resulting sound is simultaneously high pitch and offkey but it delights Theo and inspires Blaise to try. She wishes she had a camera handy.

“Tradition is tradition.”

“Please don’t take this the wrong way, but muggles are really fucking weird.” Theo laughs and blows again, attempting a poor rendition of Greensleeves.

“Where’s yours?” Blaise asks over the din.

“Oh er, I didn’t get myself anything.” She’s never understood the surely Freudian urge some women have to bedeck themselves in prenuptial phalluses, but she certainly liked hanging penis whistles around Blaise and Theo’s necks.

“Now that simply won’t do.”

It’s dark enough that Blaise draws his wand, assuming impunity. What follows is a truly elegant demonstration of transfiguration that melts down an empty bottle of Cava into strings of crystalline strands of spaghetti that form and braid and curl around themselves until there is a sparkling bloody tiara sitting on the palm of Blaise’s hand. Closer inspection reveals that beneath the arch there is a large, jewel studded penis, bordered on each side by two smaller fellows.

“Now you’re just showing off,” Theo grouses.

“If I was showing off I would’ve made them diamonds, but we haven’t the time. May I?” He gestures to signal his intention to coronate her, and she bows her head with all the dignity she can muster.

“A perfect accoutrement to the message on the back of my cardy.”

“I don’t see why you can’t fuck the patriarchy while wearing a cock coronet,” Theo says.

Don’t smile. At some point it has become a competition. It doesn't make sense, even to her, to show them she is fun without baring joyful teeth, but as a distraction it is working a treat.

Not yet.

Blaise stands and brushes dry grass off his robe and Theo springs up, as if simply waiting for his cue. He bends down a little at the waist, holding a hand out for her.

“Anyway, Princess Peen—”

“No.” She immediately vetoes the nickname.

“Dreadfully sorry, Queen Peen—shall we?”

“Where are we going?”

“Do you trust me?”

She took his hand and let him take her weight. “Absolutely not.”

“Good, that would be ludicrous. But I’m still not going to spoil the surprise.”

▻◈◅

Surprise was apt.

After landing in the heart of a dark pine forest, Hermione lights her wand and stares up at massive wrought iron gates, each pillar a serpent, taking in the curling cursive legend atop the lot.

SALAZAR’S.

“Erm…wow.”

Confusion rather than dread fills her, and maybe that says something about how far she’s come, or maybe she’s lost the plot along with her sense of self-preservation.

Theo wanders off to the left, behind a scraggly bush that she identifies as a struggling flutterby. “Hang on the panel thing where I put my wand…I know it’s around here somewhere and I—ouch!”

As Theo stumbles and fumbles in the dark, Hermione looks up at Blaise.

“Can you shed any light on this situation?”

Blaise does not seem like the kind of man who relishes confusion but he admits to it, “Unfortunately not.”

“One question then…is this the part of the night where you murder me?”

In the distance, an owl screeches her intention to hunt as his eyes strike flint in the dim. “I would think you are rather difficult to murder…if the Dark Lord himself couldn’t manage it.”

Her heart stutters the way it always does when the quiet part is said too loudly. “I suppose that’s a compliment.”

“It was intended as one, and may I add that you are a very beautiful witch, Hermione.”

“That's probably inappropriate—” But she didn't hate it like she should. “And I think you might just be lulling me into a false sense of security. Ah well, if I die at least I don’t have to get married tomorrow.”

Blaise opens his mouth to speak again, but is interrupted by Theo’s triumphant whoop. “There it is!”

His exclamation is followed by a loud crackle of magic and a bright blue flash that momentarily illuminates Theo before sinking to the earth and skittering along the ground, making its way under the gates. Suddenly, between dark obelisks of trees, under a star scattered sky a bright golden dreamscape unfolds. The undulating metal skeletons of structures at first seem like unfinished buildings that don't make sense in the middle of nowhere. But then she sees the wheel and all its verdant, sparkling lights, round like an unblinking eye and she understands where she is.

“It’s…an amusement park,” Hermione deduces, nonplussed, eyes darting everywhere to take it all in.

Theo wanders back out of the scrub to join her and Blaise in front of the gates. He straightens his lapels.

“Yes, Salazar's was one of my father’s more eccentric and frivolous ideas. Never completed of course, so we won’t be going into the hall of mirrors to encounter the darkest parts of our souls, and most certainly not the tunnel of love. The less said about the randy gargoyles the better.”

“I thought you said you didn’t want anything to do with anything your father touched.” Blaise's eyes are restless too, until they find Theo's face and look for his guidance on what he is supposed to feel. Hermione’s sharp eyes catch a minor hint of irritation—perhaps he is unused to Theo keeping secrets.

“Too true,” Theo agrees. “I just don’t really know what the fuck to do with this place. We can burn it down tonight, if the bride pleases. Aperta.”

The gates open inwards and Theo leads the way into the park. Under their feet the stones of the path are shaped like scales, like they are strolling along a basilisk's back. Sinuous reptiles are coiled around lampposts, and serpentine green reigns supreme. If there is a theme at work, it is most assuredly snakes, snakes, and more snakes.

With different lighting it would be a nightmare. Its unfinished-cum-abandoned status is apparent in empty booths, defaced signage, overlapping pathways that lead nowhere, and the drape of cobwebs that point towards a thriving local population of acromantulas. But under the kiss of enchanted gold, she feels the years melt until she is six years old, holding her dad’s hand at the fairground.

“I have a sudden craving for candy floss,” Hermione says. Her other craving is to lace her fingers through someone else's, and as if he heard the thought Theo gallantly offers his arm.

She takes it, and presses close enough to learn his scent.

“There was going to be a candy floss cart up there—” Theo pointed. “It was spearmint green and supposedly allowed you to temporarily speak parseltongue. But really you’d just hiss and spit a lot for five minutes. Ah here we go—”

A crooked sign seems to be advertising an attraction, but it seems to be missing until Theo lifts a trapdoor hidden in the grass and reveals a hidden staircase. The sign starts to make sense.

The Lab

“After you.” He gestured down the stairs.

Hermione shot a look towards Blaise.

“What’s the worst thing that can happen?”

Whatever it is it's probably already happened, but right at this moment she can think of little worse than being left behind. With Theo in the lead, and Blaise at her back, they drop into the dark. With a name like The Lab, she didn’t know what else she expected. There are roiling, steaming cauldrons hovering over multicoloured flames, and floating specimens in jars—some blinking balefully from behind the glass—and yet more eerie green light.

Theo hands Blaise and Hermione a nondescript stick each, about half the length of a broom handle.

“The aim is to gather up the potion ingredients and throw them in the big cauldron in the middle. And er—avoid the pixies. Ready?”

Hermione looks around, having no idea what it is that she’s supposed to be ready for. But Theo fires a ball of white light at a silver panel on the wall and suddenly the lab comes roaring to life. A green fire leaps into existence under an enormous pewter cauldron in the centre of the room, and in their hands the smooth lengths of wood sprout into hybrid between a sledgehammer and a butterfly net.

Then pandemonium reigns. Potion ingredients float, fly and zoom through the air. Moonstone, eye of newt, and mandrake root. Meanwhile, the floor spins and softens and quakes, wrongfooting her every second step. Pixies zoom at them, pulling things out of their nets, dive bombing at their faces. Hermione screeches when one grabs a curl and pulls.

Blaise knocks it away with the sledgehammer end of his weapon.

“Oh, no! Is it okay?”

“It’s not real, Hermione,” Theo calls with affectionate exasperation. “Catch the glowing gillyweed—quadruple points!”

It's all so silly, but she does as she's told, and tosses it into the cauldron with a splash. Suddenly the room fills with a twinkling purple mist and she isn’t sure which way is up or down. What the hell is happening?

Blaise is laughing, and Theo sends another pixie to splat spectacularly against the wall. More items splash into the cauldron. Everything smells like artificial grape, and the walls seem to be crying. It’s all the chaos of an acid trip, but too real to be anything but magic. Adrenaline fizzes through her and backhands a pixie into a shelf with a whoop.

And then the tolling of a bell counts them down.

“Ten seconds!” Theo calls.

She catches a flobberworm in her net and tosses it off target. Damn. An occamy egg drops, breaks, and splatters her socks—three, two, one!

In a cymbal clash and a burst of stars, the cauldron becomes a large, plush snake.

“Oh, only a cobra?” Theo says, retrieving the toy and slinging it around Blaise’s shoulders. It wrapped around, and hissed with its fabric tongue. “Bummer.”

“That was—” She’s out of breath, looking at a reverted, unremarkable wooden pole in her hands. “Mad.”

And exceptionally fun.

“Yeah, I know. Now how do you both feel about rollercoasters?”

Before she can ask for another round in the lab, Theo has seized her hand and is pulling her up the stairs. She reaches back for Blaise, and he doesn’t hesitate to complete the chain. They emerge and head for the mouth of a faux cave. Sparkling letters burn against the night.

The Chamber of Secrets

Something like irony has her swallowing laughter again. When she was small, even with her stalwart dad at her side, she was always too scared to ride the rollercoaster, and when she looks back at Blaise she can tell she’s not the only one with reservations.

“It doesn’t look much like the real chamber,” she remarks. The car is shaped like a basilisk’s head, and she stares defiantly into eyes that cannot petrify her.

She means the remark as conversational, but it lands heavily, and she remembers why she often plays her cards close to her chest. Somehow when she tells stories she can never find the sweet midpoint between perceived braggadocio and traumatising her audience.

“Might be more fun?” Theo says finally.

What was a rollercoaster next to the real chamber? To Gringotts? To walking down the aisle tomorrow?

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

“It’s perfectly safe. Probably. Blaise?”

For the first time tonight Blaise looks properly ruffled. There’s a hollow at his jaw where he might be clenching his teeth.

“If you kill me Theo, I will return as a ghost to make your life a living hell.”

“Yeah, yeah, I've heard it all before. Hop in, will you?”

They sit in the basilisk’s head, and Theo fires another jet of light at a panel—bang! There is no build up—their heads and bodies are thrown back by the lash of momentum. They climb too fast, fall even faster, loop-de-loop-de-loop.

“Oh fuck!” Blaise exclaims from behind her. “No, it’s going around again isn’t—fuck!”

Hermione screams as they plummet, and hit a corkscrew. Theo takes her hand and holds it up to the sky.

“Woo!”

One more rotation and they come to a too-abrupt stop back where they started.

Hermione turns around to look at Blaise. “You okay?”

“Never better, especially once I get the fuck off this thing.” In seconds he is on the platform, brushing off his robes with utmost dignity.

Theo raises his brows in challenge, and reaches up to straighten her veil.

“Again?”

“Again.”

And again.

And again.

Hermione might go all night now that she’s discovered that she doesn’t hate rollercoasters—she fucking loves them. The problem is if she keeps holding back the laughter she is going to erupt in hives, and she knows it’s soon, it’s soon…but not yet.

Blaise has found himself a bench and gone horizontal, his head pillowed on a cuddly cobra. He is smoking an elegant spliff, blowing ghostly rings towards the stars.

“Ferris wheel?” Theo offers, but he waves them off, perhaps still green about the edges from his time in the Chamber.

So it is just Theo and her who sit on the polished wooden seat, pressed thigh to thigh. Warm white light meets yet another silver square, and revivified magic flows through the ride, vibrating through her bones.

The slow ascent takes them closer to the milky way. Wherever they are, it is far enough away from the stain of cities and towns. They are kin with the tops of trees, before they peak and glide down again, past Blaise and his bench. Mischief touches Theo’s face, like the kiss of emerald green light all around. It is poorly thought out, she muses to herself, for it is the exact shade of avada kedavra. Nevertheless, he wears it well.

His wand twitches, and the wheel shudders to an unsettling halt right when they reach its apex.

The seat swings.

“Shit!” she exclaims.

“Are you alright?” Blaise shouts upwards.

“Fine! The enchantment sticks sometimes, I’ll sort it—”

Theo is lying, and he knows she knows it.

“What are you thinking about?” he whispers.

“The killing curse,” she admits.

“Yikes. That’s an indictment of my company if ever there was one. Though for a moment I could’ve sworn you were enjoying yourself.”

“Despite my better judgement. Why are you lying to Blaise? You made the ride stop.” She is forced to remind herself she no longer fears heights. The breakneck speed of the rollercoaster hadn’t given her enough time to contemplate the drop.

“Stealing a moment with the bride.”

“To do what?”

“Hmm, what might two attractive people do at the pinnacle of a ferris wheel?”

He is extremely, obscenely close. Best man. Bridesmaid. Virtual stranger. Is he a good friend? She doesn’t know.

Uninterested in every alternative, she allows his lips to brush hers. She opens, and tastes his novelty. If she were interested in asking herself why at this juncture, she is ready, as usual, with her own answer. Because she sodding-well can.

His hand is on her neck, but she shackles his wrist and slides it pointedly to her breast. She doesn't want him to remember his manners. There's a stumble in his breath and she licks his surprise like another helping of mint chocolate chip. He squeezes selfishly like men so often do before he remembers her tit is attached to her and finds finesse, not to mention her nipple. She’s always been sensitive, and he’s gentle until he’s not, and she likes it until she loves it. When her fingers move down with the intention of investigating what the kiss is doing to him, and to dig for hidden agendas, she finds the cool length of a hollow plastic penis and almost cracks. If he tastes her tiny grin, he does not say. All too soon, he draws away but his nose is pressed into her cheek and his sugared plum voice is all she can hear.

“I think it's time to head back down to earth.”

▻◈◅

Having come this far, when she is presented with two options, the choice between home and hotel suite is an easy one to make. Yes, she knows what it means, or rather, what meaning it implies on her behalf. She isn’t sure whether Blaise contacted The Bardmoor, a boutique wizarding hotel in London, or simply has a standing reservation, but she doesn’t care, and she knows what it looks like to be veiled and accompanying them up a mirrored lift, and down handsomely wallpapered corridors. They are still feathered like hens. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care.

It feels so fucking good not to care.

This path had been laid down for her the second Draco sent his regrets, whether they or she knew it or not, but her thoughts which could have been of revenge, or prevenge, are now simply of the promises Theo’s fingers made for him in the sky, and a curiosity about what the skin at Blaise’s neck might taste like.

Inside the suite, everything is jewel-toned and satin sumptuous. Chic. There is a plush velvet chair at the foot of the bed, and Theo sheds his suit jacket, rolls up his sleeves—she won’t stare at the ashes of the Mark that mar him—and takes up the seat, with both knees propped improperly up. Blaise arranges himself against the pillows on the bed, legs casually crossed. There’s crescent moons on his socks, she notices, an adorable note to an impossibly sexual wizard. She stands, fiddling absently with her handbag, looking for her place in the tableau.

“What's with the look?” asks Blaise.

“Oh nothing. It's just you both seem perpetually ready for a spontaneous photoshoot.”

Blaise traces a finger over his own amusement. “It's exhausting being this aesthetic.”

“Ah yes, all that's missing is a bit of red lippie.”

“Blast, I left mine in my other suit jacket,” Theo says.

“Lucky I brought mine then.”

A coquettish idea forms, she draws a well-used tube of Ruby Woo out of her bag like a dare. A slow twist reveals an erection of red, and Theo's eyes light up again.

Scant hours in his company and she knows this much: Theo knows how to play. Take the offer. Yes, and?

“Phew.”

“I can help you put it on if you like.”

He licks the lip in question. “I would like.”

She takes the invite, sheds her own knitted skin, and toes off already unlaced boots. There’s not much left but a black t-shirt, overworn jeans, and of course the bridal lace atop her head. The way she walks towards him is for the benefit of her audience and she stops in front of the chair. Slowly slow, slower still, she drops her knee between his thighs. He jerks when her patella grazes past his crotch, but she needs to lower herself to whatever level he is on.

From the bed, Blaise’s gaze is tattooing her skin.

“Ah.” Hermione demonstrates how she wants Theo to hold his lips. He is a quick study, or maybe he was already watching her mouth closely. Either way, she takes his chin in hand and smears slutty red staring bottom centre. The shuddery breath he can’t hold is humid on her fingers. His lips are not quite symmetrical she notices, although one would need to be this close to know it. There’s a tiny scar. She wonders how it happened.

She takes it slow, makes it perfect. Uses her pinky to wipe the corners and define the curve of his Cupid’s bow. The air is thick between them. He’s barely blinked, but his breath is giving away his ardour.

At unnecessary length, she leans back to admire her work. Red lipstick has power she’s always thought, she feels that when she wears it, and it turns her head when a woman wields a scarlet scowl. A new bloom of appreciation unfurls in her womb when she sees Theo in a white shirt and a bold red lip.

She can’t help herself.

“Usually I like to blot with a tissue but…”

She presses a tissue-thin kiss to his lips and takes some colour for herself. Then she straightens and pretends nothing is amiss.

Theo sends a pout over his shoulder. “How do I look?” he asks Blaise.

“Like a cheap whore.”

Theo tosses his curls. “And yet you still couldn't afford me.”

“I think Blaise might be jealous,” she says.

“Simply out of my mind with it,” he replies calmly.

“That won’t do.”

Without a doubt, she wants to touch him too. His mouth is beautiful, and applying lipstick is only gilding a lily, but the pretext is perfect and she approaches. The difference is, he doesn’t wait like Theo did—when she is close enough he catches her hip and before she knows what’s happening she is astride his thighs, swiping bright colour over the pillow of his lower lip, sculpting around the upper.

When she tries to fix an error, he ups the ante and for the briefest second sucks on the tip of her pinky. Shock makes her withdraw, but the contract has already sent a zap to her clit. She stares at the ring of red around her littlest finger, and imagines everything else he could suck and stain.

“I’m done,” she whispers. “How does he look, Theo?”

As if he’d been waiting for an invitation, Theo climbs from the chair and leaps lightly onto the bed, arranging his body loosely around them. Not touching. Not yet.

“Like he’s wearing faux fur and waiting for the arrival of a naval ship at the docks.”

Blaise's eyes roll north. “You’ve thought a lot about this.”

“Oh yes. You’d be wearing fishnets. Six inch heels. The lot.”

Hermione bites down on her tongue to stop the giggle this time, but the image Theo has painted tickles her: six inch heels would put Blaise at nearly seven feet tall.

“I’d certainly pay to see that,” she says.

Blaise raises a brow. “Would you now?”

“Two sickles at least.”

She is still in his lap. Theo has reached out a daring finger to draw attention to the strip of soft skin between her jeans and her t-shirt. She’s been self-conscious in the past, recently in fact, imagining Malfoy’s eyes scrutinising all the ways she defies the conventions she’s invented for him, while telling herself she doesn’t give a flying fuck.

And yet she’s forgotten any time in her life when she didn’t feel sexy. All her fucks have flown out a well-draped window, for real this time.

Seems like it’s her move.

“Have either of you ever heard of a bridezilla?”

“Is that some sort of lizard?” Theo asks, one finger on her flesh has become two, three, and then his whole hand has slipped, halfway under hem. Back, forth. Gooseflesh rises under his touch, and Blaise, realises he is out of step and mirrors the contact on her left hand curves. His signet is a cool counterpoint to his flesh.

“No, it is a bride who throws her weight around.” She shifts a little in Blaise’s lap to remind herself exactly where she has thrown her weight. “She makes demands and expects others to do as she says. What she wants, she gets.”

“So what does this bride want?”

Fingers on her ribs.

“Erm—”

Synchronised red smiles distract her again.

“I want to see you kiss.”

This disturbs the water and she watches the ripples as Theo freezes and Blaise frowns. She waits. She is a prodigious reader—and she’s not wrong about this. Five, four—they look—three, two—

“‘What she wants she gets’,” Blaise softly says. He doesn’t release her hip, but he has a hand to spare and puts it to good use cupping the side of Theo’s neck. She’s close enough that she sees the little telltale flutter of his pulse.

“I want too,” Theo declares. Hermione’s heart squeezes for him, and Blaise’s reply is lipstick sticky, and laden with desire she can now see is mutual. She shifts again until she is sitting on Blaise’s clothed cock—she’s already seen the bulge beneath his placket, but to feel the truth of it against her feels like vindication. Yes, this is sexy—so fucking sexy—the room, the sound of their kiss, and her wish acting as their command.

It’s messy. Blaise makes a deep noise, and she can’t help when she answers with a soft little spectating whimper. It’s like she can feel it too. Theo breaks away to look at her, and she can see all the places the kiss has bled over the borders of his lips.

“That was…” Was there a word that could capture it? “It was…”

Theo presses in closer, to Blaise, to her.

“Aw, she’s lost for words.”

Only because words won’t do, and there’s a feeling inside her that isn’t just the monstrous lust let loose within her. It’s too big. Too warm. Too soft.

She grins with all her teeth.

“Oh, she’s smiling. Blaise.”

“Fucking gorgeous.”

Before she knows what is happening, she is hauled downwards, and Blaise is kissing her mouth—kissing her open—oh fuck, he’s a good kisser, firm even while in possession of those soft lips and cocksure like she likes. She will bulldoze over lesser men. Then Theo is at her neck, and Blaise is too, tongues at work like she’s perched on top of a waffle cone and about to be devoured. She’s still straddling Blaise, grinding across swell and seam, but somehow Theo’s thigh is in the mix, and her hands are tangled in curls, and testing the texture of the fade at the back of Blaise’s skull.

Too much, too much, it tickles—but not in the kind of way that means she needs to apply the brakes, or reverse all together. Too much in that way that inflates golden bubbles that need an outlet. And there is only one way to release all that pressure.

She forms the giggle and lets it free. It must inspire something in Blaise because next second he is dragging her t-shirt over her head.

“I told you she wasn’t wearing a bra,” Theo whispers, but obviously she hears him. Maybe she should be scandalised, but any and all objectification was mutual. Has she not been sneaking glances at the bright whistles dangling between pectorals all evening?

Her nipples respond to the air and the audience. Blaise has an agenda, and puts her on her back directly between them. Breath escapes her with a minute oof.

“This doesn’t have to go any further.”

“I disagree.” She has gone husky. “And what the bride wants, the bride gets.”

“And what, pray tell, does the bride want?” Theo asks, while tracing a finger down her sternum. There’s a red streak up his cheek.

“Hmm. First I need to know—have you ever fucked each other?”

They exchange a superheated glance, and it’s answer enough, but still she elaborates,

“Because you know…I’ve been picturing it and I’m curious by nature. I wonder if what’s in my head matches reality?”

“It’s been…a long time,” Theo answers.

“Because you don’t shit where you eat?” She rolls her head to look at Blaise.

“Because these things are a matter of timing.” His voice is deep. Soft. Close. “What about you? Have you ever invited two people into your bed?”

“Not for a long time.” But sometimes late at night she still imagines she can taste Padma on her lips.

“Why not?”

“Because these things are a matter of timing.”

The moment stretches, and she can taste its sweetness, see honey dripping down dark floral wallpaper.

“How many hen’s nights do you think end with the bride fucking her bridesmaids?” she says, toying with the pink penis strung around Blaise’s neck.

“Not nearly enough.” Theo suggests. “We can set a trend.”

“That’s what you want?” Blaise draws a line along the underside of each of her breasts.

“Only—only if the bridesmaids fuck each other too. You may find this difficult to believe, but I don’t actually like being the centre of attention.” It’s a truth she spills all over the bed.

“Fortunately for you, I love nothing more than the centre of attention—” Theo lowers his head to her breast, and uses her skin as his confessional. “Except perhaps getting fucked.”

An irrepressible smile tugs at her lips when he starts to suck, and she arches into his mouth. There's an imbalance immediately—she has two nipples, and Blaise has an unoccupied mouth. A hand on his neck is all it takes to bring him down to her level. He bites where Theo sucks, before somehow they switch, and dance, like they planned the seal of lips and the tease of teeth.

She manages to unbutton herself, and they help her with the rest until they are waylaid by the meeting of slim jeans and ankles. There is a flurry where they all lose contact in order to strip themselves bare. When they come back together, it's a clash, a muddle, kisses batted back and forth—more lip imprints on her tits.

“You're so fit,” Blaise whispers into her skin.

“Say it in Italian,” Theo instructs him. They are both descending, plastic cocks hanging, flesh cocks standing. She hasn't been able to get a true eyeful yet, distracted as she is by their tongues on her soft belly, and twenty fingers dimpling the intimacy of her flared hips.

Blaise looks up, his cheek resting on her thigh, an idle touch stirring up the curls on her mound.

“Bella.”

Just one word, but the filthy truth is in his gaze. The latent exhibitionist in her responds, and she pulls the virginal veil over her face for the next course.

“I want to taste her,” Theo says.

Blaise is a good host, unwilling to leave a guest hungry. He gently nudges her leg wider, and her knee up. There's room then, for Theo to crawl between her legs. To grin, to bend, to roll spit onto his posh pink tongue.

She cries out at first contact, “Yeah, oh—yes.”

“Delicious,” he hums, spreading her further open, bowing before her with hips high enough to be suggestive if not instructive.

Blaise has a wand between his fingers, and through the haze of pleasure that is overtaking her senses, she thinks it might be Theo's. It's just another glimpse of their intimacy—she knows few wizards that share wands willingly. Ron once compared it to “someone grabbing your cock out of the blue and giving it a waggle”.

“Charms,” Blaise whispers, and she nods before throwing her head back again. Theo is sucking on her clit, and a once curious finger is now a bold statement against her g-spot.

Theo bends his back and sighs into her slit when Blaise traces a wand down his spine with designs of his own in mind. Seconds later the little firework of a contraception charm makes her aware of the exact locale of her ovaries, but he's not done, a quarter flourish and—oh—she feels a warm intrusion flood and drip through her arse.

“Oh God.”

“Just in case,” Blaise purrs.

There was no just in case about it, she considers it a promise made.

“The bride wants—wants—oh fuck. I want you to fuck Theo—if Theo wants—”

“Yes,” Theo confirms readily.

Her shaky laugh lifts the veil from her face before it falls back down, and her heart pounds harder as Blaise anchors himself on Theo's hip. His other hand disappears, but the probing nature of his touch is clear when Theo gasps and groans.

“Does it feel good?” she asks.

“Yeah—yes. Keep going, I need more.”

“You heard him, Blaise.”

Blaise looks from her veiled face, to the cock he's taken in hand, and slowly pushes inside Theo.

Whatever it feels like, he takes it out on her cunt. As Blaise starts to find a languid rhythm, Theo finds a complimentary tempo, slick and slippery until everything inside her curls and coils and…

“Oh shit, I'm going to—I’m—”

It's just a scream that signals her climax in the end. A wet, wringing feeling of letting it all go onto expensive linens and an expensive boy with a cock in his arse. Her fiancé's best friend.

His face shines with clear cum and smeared scarlet. The necklace bounces absurdly and his mouth hangs and he gasps as Blaise reaches the hilt, again and again. She gets no sense that there's betrayal in this bed. Tomorrow afternoon if she touches another man she will be cursed and charged a humiliating fine for removal. She will make the most of the privilege of being a slut.

“Do you need a second?”

“No.” A clock is tick tick ticking.

“Blaise.”

No more needs to be said. Theo melts forward and covers her like caramel. She reaches down and guides his cockhead into the throb of her waiting cunt, and delights in that first stretch, feeling her body invite him, blood, bone, womb.

“How does she feel?” She catches Blaise’s question.

“Oh Circe she's so wet—” To him. To her: “You feel so good. I knew you would.”

Theo may be the one inside her, but it is Blaise's new momentum and the power of his thrusts that drive them now. His arms cage Theo, and he holds her waist too hard. She hopes for wanton fingermark bruises to wear to her wedding.

Theo is sweaty and shaking, nearly delirious as he is fucked and he fucks. With nowhere else to go, he grinds over her clit and she is cresting again—loud and undignified in her whining approval of absolutely every decision she made that led to this bed.

“Can I come inside the bride?” Theo is shaking, holding back, clinging to coherence.

“Yes—yes, I want to feel it. Oh wait, oh fuck—” She's laughing again, overtaken by an orgasm that does a loop-de-loop and rips and tears across her nerves. Maybe it is simply the last one renewed, because she never truly came down from the ceiling, and there shall be no mercy or rest for the wicked. Blaise has started to swear under his breath in English and Italian, in a language that belongs only to overwrought lovers.

Theo burrows into her neck, and sighs as his release floods hot through her cunt. She strokes his hair and they twitch and jerk in time, and listen to the smack of hips on cheeks, waiting for their chain reaction to topple Blaise’s domino too.

“Come for us,” she murmurs, like a siren waiting on the rocks.

With a long, hoarse groan that becomes a shout, Blaise finds his way to where they are, stuffing himself into bliss, into Theo.

“I love that feeling,” Theo sighs. “When I can feel every inch of you inside me, coming like that.”

Whenever they last joined like this—a long time ago—it must’ve been memorable.

Through the veil she sees something vulnerable left behind in Blaise’s eyes. It makes her lean up and press a gentle kiss on his lovely lips over Theo’s shoulder. The gossamer fabric lies between, but the sentiment lands as it should.

For indeterminate, liquid minutes they stay in that sticky pile of breath and cum. The reprieve her body gave her brain was never destined to last, and the thoughts begin to trickle in. She realises by degrees that this moment raises hypotheses yet it doesn’t have a future, and while she went in with eyes open, she dearly wishes to close them again. She wonders what they’re thinking, all the while knowing that they are speaking without words again across the plane of a fine pillow.

Eventually, nature calls and she extracts herself to the cool, tiled embrace of the bathroom. Wand and water clean her up, and she looks at the lone woman in the mirror. She thinks she knows who she is, but she wonders what she will be in the weeks and months to come. She abdicates, and leaves her crown by the sink. The only veil left to her is made of her own curls.

When she finds the courage to re-enter the room, Blaise is still stark naked, pouring wine from a decanter, and Theo is wearing Blaise’s robe, smoking a cigarette by the window. They have removed the necklaces, and she smiles to think they'd worn them the entire time they fucked her. One hangs on a tasselled lampshade, and another lies forgotten on the floor.

She takes a step.

Honestly, she doesn’t quite know how it happens, and what starts it. Maybe it’s the eyes turned towards her, or the smug smile that seems to only add up to a whole when considering each half on each set of lipsticky lips. Maybe the fact that she’s still absolutely naked and they do not hide their lust. Maybe it’s the stirring of Blaise’s cock between his legs.

It’s freedom to slowly drop to her knees. To look up as Blaise sips from his wine and tilts his head to dare her to do what she’d already decided to probably before she even left the bathroom. She has no idea of the time, and frankly she has no interest in being able to name the number of unattached hours she has left.

She has an interest in the veins wrapping around Blaise’s cock, and how they will feel under her tongue.

Hot. Alive.

He hisses.

Theo’s feet shift. She can’t see all of him, but he’s square on to her depravity. She’d bet her Order of Merlin that he’s watching.

She pulls off with a pop and beckons him with one finger. She’s a bold witch, usually, but she’s bordering on brazen because it will be a long time before sex is a thing fully chosen. If—no, when she fucks Malfoy—she will always know it is a thing that someone mandated for her.

No one is telling her to suck Blaise down deep. No one made a law decreeing she must take Theo in hand when he’s close enough, and stroke from root to tip. She will not be arrested if she neglects to encourage them closer, to lick and kiss from slit to slit.

Determination clicks in her jaw, and for a second she makes them fit.

“Holy shit, this witch.” Blaise looks to be lost in a dream world. She weaves it further when she sucks harder.

“Oh fuck,” Theo grits out, taking a fist full of curls as his anchor.

They are jointly and hurriedly overwhelmed beside that window. Blaise attempts to set down his wine, and misses the side table entirely. The stain spreads, burgundy on cream, and no one has a shit to spare. Drool pools and spills too, and she takes deep gasping breaths between, noticing their complimentary cocks—Blaise’s thicker, Theo’s longer, curving up and left respectively. If there was more time, she would learn how to make the most of their bodies, down to their knees and toes. There's no time, so she mourns for such fleeting delights with a muffled moan.

She swallows when Blaise comes hard, and she needs a breath so has no choice but to let Theo paint her tits.

They find their way back, to form a fuckdrunk heap and drape themselves with very fine, stained sheets. She declines a cigarette, but the wine is smooth, especially when sipped off Blaise’s tongue.

“I’m sold on the concept of a hen do,” Theo summarises at length, wiggling his toes out from under the sheet.

She doesn’t speak, she just smiles, and picks out patterns in the pressed ceiling.

She sleeps.

She wakes.

She sighs in relief because it’s still night and it wasn’t a dream, though she is sure one day it will feel like one. When she rolls her head from left to right, she is greeted by feline eyes glittering in the dark.

“Oh. What time is it?” she whispers so as not to wake Theo.

“Do you really want to know?” Blaise replies.

“No.”

The spell is not broken, and she has not yet drunk her fill. Under the sheets, she finds him hard.

“Shh.” She presses one finger to her lips in challenge, and seals the deal with a kiss. By mutual, unspoken agreement, she mounts his hips and takes his length inside her.

Slowly, silently she rolls and tolls and bites her lips when she finds the spot and uses his bones for her pleasure. His fingers spread her, and delve between her cheeks until his ring finger is making circles around her hole. Still wet just in case.

“Chekov’s arseplay…” she chuckles.

“Excuse me?” He seems incredulous, but it quickly turns into the muted version of his own decadent laugh.

“Is that what you want?” She pushes back and his finger slips in, up to the first knuckle. “Ah.”

“I’m not the bride.”

“Maybe the bride wants to please you.”

There’s too many shadows to pick out the complex details of how he takes this, but she guesses that he is enthusiastic when prodigious fingers massage her open, and apply delicious pressure everywhere she didn’t know she needed it. She loses patience before he does and rises up, tilts, notches and slowly, shaking, stretching, sits back down on his cock.

There and then she decides that she will never let Draco fuck her this way. It’s an odd intimacy to hoard, perhaps, and the moment may be filth-soaked but it feels fundamental. She likes defying her own expectations, and she likes how full she feels with Blaise deep in her arse, with two long fingers and a signet buried in her cunt.

▻◈◅

She sleeps again, and wakes once more.

It’s barely dawn, but an undeniably new day crawls through the curtains. In spite of the warm room and warmer bodies, there are cold claws digging into her chest.

Theo is awake too. Everything has shifted and he’s diagonal, with his head on the somnolent rise and fall of Blaise’s chest. She’s curled up within the oblique angle their bodies have formed.

“Hi,” he greets her softly.

“Hi.”

“You alright?”

“Want me to lie?”

“Dumb question.”

“You alright?”

“Never better.”

“Is that a lie?”

“Half of one,” he concedes. “I had a very good time last night.”

“Me too. I know it felt like that in part because of what was coming but…” She trailed off, not knowing how to finish her thought and do justice to the bittersweet aftertaste in her mouth.

“As I recall, the aim was simply a good night.”

“And a good night was had.”

Silence falls. She wonders if she should or could sleep again.

But, “Tell me about Draco,” she finds herself saying. “Be honest. You know I'll find out anyway.”

Theo takes his time formulating his response. She wishes she could read his mind to parse the building blocks that construct the following sentence.

“Draco has always wanted to do the right thing, but he looks outwardly to try to figure out what that is. The tragedy is that he’s funny, loyal, and passionate, and too bloody smart. He has all that he needs and more to be a great wizard in the ways that truly matter."

“But?”

“But, he can’t learn to trust himself as fast as you deserve, and he’ll never be kind or forgiving until he forgives himself. I’m sorry, I don’t think that’s what you wanted to hear.”

“No,” she admits. “I think it would be easier if you told me he was cunt.”

Theo huffs a laugh. “He's that too, you’ll be relieved to know. But tell me something—” He shifts and props himself up on one elbow. “Why didn’t you just leave?”

Plenty did, risking arrest should they ever return.

“Because I didn’t want them to win.”

“And a ring on your finger isn’t their victory?”

“I can fight as Mrs. Malfoy. I can’t fight if I’m not on the battlefield.”

Theo lets out a thoughtful noise. “Walking away isn’t running, and regrouping isn’t giving up.”

“You’re saying I should leave England forever? Leave my home behind? Never see my parents, or my friends?” Her voice is louder but Blaise slumbers on.

“Not forever, only until the law runs its course and dies its inevitable death.”

“It won’t die if I don’t kill it.”

A pause.

“Let me get this straight…you imagine that if you don’t fix this, no one will, and we’re fucked.”

She doesn’t want to admit it because she knows it’s worthy of ridicule, but yes. Exactly that.

“Oh Hermione.” He reaches out a hand and she takes it without questioning the need to do so. “Why is it always on your shoulders?”

▻◈◅

After that, she sleeps again. And wakes again. There’ll be no more snoozing from here on out, she’s pushing it to the last moment as it is. She needs to go home to feed Crookshanks and figure out what’s the most inappropriate thing she can wear to her own wedding. Maybe full length black, avec funereal veil. Maybe the joggers she wears when she cleans the loo. She won’t bother with a shower, so as a base layer she is wearing the scents of the best men.

It’s a start, anyway.

Blaise is next to her, drinking coffee and reading the Prophet.

CONGRATS NEWLYWEDS

Without a shred of irony. She wants to be sick.

“Where’s Theo?” she asks.

“He’ll be back shortly.”

It’s evasive. Did Theo flee? No, she doesn’t have time. Theo doesn’t have to stick around for marmalade and smalltalk.

“I’d better—where’s my wand?”

“In your bag by the door. There’s coffee on the side. No need to hurry, we’ve got time.” He turns a casual page.

Something prickles down her spine. Blaise is cool, calm and collected; she gets the sense this is his baseline but instinct says it’s forced. But coffee will help, it usually does. Hopefully it will drown the infestation of butterflies in her stomach.

Self consciousness seeps in, and she draws the sheet up over her chest.

After three sips of coffee, and two sips of an existential crisis Theo saunters through the door. He is fully dressed and bright eyed, but he skims over her to consider Blaise and then dip his chin, just once, a meaningful nod to end an unspoken conversation.

“What was that about?” she demands loudly.

Neither replies and she sits up, tits be damned. Something is afoot. “Someone say something.”

“Are you going to tell her?” says Theo. “Or shall I?”

Blaise sighs and folds the newspaper.

“Draco’s gone.”

Blood roars in her ears.

“Gone.”

“Without a trace.”

“Where?”

Silence.

“Where?” she repeats, looking between them. “I know you know.”

“He left England this morning.”

She’s up, out of bed, pulling on her scattered clothes in a harried hurry. To her horror tears of rage have filled her eyes. When she finally finds her t-shirt and drags it down over her torso, she whirls, knowing suddenly with a crushing certainty what has happened.

“You planned this!” she asks and accuses.

“The only aim was to distract you,” Theo explains.

“Not to deceive you,” Blaise finishes.

“So you fucked me to distract me so my husband-to-be could leave me at the altar?” If her wand was in her hand, she has it in her to make something hurt.

“Fucking you was entirely selfish.” Blaise is placating but his eyes are not. “But setting that aside—Draco has done you a favour. He leaves England, you have a reprieve as the innocent, jilted party.”

She flinches at the use of the word. Jilted. “Until they drag him back.”

“They won't find him.” Theo seems certain.

“So they match me again.”

“You know until they've exhausted all avenues they cannot put you back into the pool. So you keep fighting. Or you fucking marry someone more convenient. Marry me.”

She nearly falls over in shock. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. Or marry Theo. They cannot require anything of my wife, or of Theo's.”

Theo shrugs, but seems amenable to matrimony. The suite spins. What in the fuck is happening?

“Was this Draco's idea too?”

“No,” Theo says. “Draco is too ashamed to face you properly, but I am not lying when I say he made this decision and asked for our help in an effort to spare you.”

“I don't need rescuing,” she spits.

“No,” Theo agrees. “You are a singular witch. But perhaps you will accept the gift of time and spin gold with it.”

“We may be Draco's best men, but last night you appointed us as bridesmaids too. I regard this as a solemn and equivalent duty.”

She paces a minute. Glares out the window. Tries not to look at Theo sprawled once more in the chair with his arms locked atop his head. Knocks back coffee like it’s liquor and ponders the merits of getting shitfaced, sod every resolution she’s made to ease off the bottle. All the while she is acutely aware and does not care that she is being watched by Blaise with a finger on his lip, though she nearly leaps out of her skin when she treads on something and it crunches underfoot.

She lifts her toes, and sees the hot pink shards of a phallus that has whistled its last note. It’s so utterly absurd that she laughs again into the shield of her hands, hard and long until she’s howling and weeping with grief she doesn’t fully understand.

She hears the shifts and knows they are coming, but still it is a surprise when she is pressed between two hearts and held tight.

“Let me order you room service. Anything you like,” Blaise offers.

“What the bride wants, the bride gets,” Theo says.

She finds composure somewhere in the ether, and comes out from behind her hands.

“I’m not a bride,” she snaps.

“Not on their terms, but always in my heart,” Theo grins down at her.

She wants to rage and smash and trash the hotel room, she wants to hex them a new one, but the steady tha-thump of two hearts calm her against her will. They stand like that for strange minutes while the sun streams through the window, and its enough that she truly sees them then—loyal to the bone, ruthless in the marrow.

She extracts her body, and composes herself through the act of taming her hair into a ponytail.

“Would you both like to have brunch with me?” she says slowly once she is brushed off and standing tall. “I find myself with some free time on my hands.”

“It would be our pleasure,” says Blaise, though it is clear he half-expected the hex and a slammed door.

All Theo responds with is a Cheshire grin.

The shit will soon hit the fan and splatter all over the front page of tomorrow’s Prophet, of that she is certain, but until then perhaps the best response to a problem without a ready solution is to have a fucking good day in the bad company of her unlikely bridesmaids.