He was quiet after that until they reached the end of trees. “Topsy will go with you. She's cared for several babies. She nearly raised me for the first few years when my mother was unwell. She helped Ginny with James too.” He looked over at Hermione. “It's arranged now — her ownership will transfer to you. She's a good elf. She'll know any stories about me you could want.”
Hermione stopped walking as she realised what he was doing.
He was trying to give her what she wanted. For him, acknowledging that he would have a child meant acknowledging that he wouldn't meet it.
He was telling her stories so she could tell his daughter about what he'd been like before school, before the war.
He was making arrangements.
He stared out across the fields. “The magic on the estate will go dormant unless my father produces a new heir,” he said a moment later. “Assuming he does not, the manor will recognise and accept a descendant — if she wants to claim it. There are documents I'll have for you to take, to make a formal claim on the estate if you want it legitimised. But there's no reason you'll have to return, there are vaults in your name already and other assets I've transferred that would be easier to liquidate.”
Hermione's shoulders started to shake.
Draco looked at her. His eyes were a stormy grey and intent as he studied her face. “I brought you too far. You're tired. We'll go back.”
Hermione still didn't move. Her throat felt thick, and her legs were threatening to give out beneath her. She had a thousand things she wanted to say and felt at a loss about how to communicate any of them.
He stepped closer. “Can you walk back?”
She managed to shake her head infinitesimally.
He stepped closer, moving slowly and gauging her reaction. He slipped his left arm around her waist and lifted her up into his arms, carrying her back towards the manor.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder as she started to cry. She cried in his arms the whole way to her room.
That night her head was rested on his chest as she lay in bed and watched the clock move. Draco had one hand on her head, twisted through her hair, while his other hand traced patterns along her arm through her robes.
She sat up, and stared down at him. He looked up at her, his expression guarded. She reached out, resting her hand on his chest, then leaned over and kissed him. She closed her eyes and memorised the sensation of their lips meeting, how their noses brushed against each other, the faint stubble along his jaw under her fingers as she pressed her hand against his face.
She deepened the kiss, losing herself in the sensation of him. She could smell the sharp bite of cedarwood oil in his clothes and the oakmoss and papyrus on his skin. His palm caressed her throat, and she shivered against him, pressing herself closer and tangling her fingers in his hair.
The kisses were slow and deep and so familiar. She knew this. This heat in her abdomen, the catching sensation in her chest, and the thrum in her veins. It was the most intimate and treasured thing she'd ever known. She'd hidden it away where it couldn't be taken, buried it until she lost it within her own mind.
She wanted it back.
Her hand on his chest began sliding along it, running down his torso. His hand closed around hers and stilled it. When she tried to pull it free, he stopped kissing her.
“What are you doing?”
Hermione sat back and looked down at him, drawing a deep breath. “I want to try to have sex with you.”
She watched his eyes as she said it.
His irises darkened as his corneas bloomed, but his expression grew hard and closed. “No. That's not happening.”
Hermione looked down at her hand in his. “I don't want the last time I had sex with you be when you were—” her mouth twitched, “when it was — forced.”
Draco was silent for a moment.
“No.”
Her fingers spasmed, and she withdrew her hand from where he'd stopped it, giving a short nod. “Alright.”
She lay down and rested her head on his shoulder, pressing her face into the heat of his body that radiated through his shirt.
They said nothing for several minutes.
“Why?” he finally asked.
“I told you.”
“You always have more reasons than one.”
She was quiet and pressed herself more tightly against his side.
“I can't remember what it felt like to have sex before,” she finally said. “I know we were together, but it's so far away, like something in the distance that I can't make out the details of. When I try to remember — I just — I just remember what it was like here, when you had to every month. So I thought—” she paused and was silent for several moments.
There were so many ways it could go wrong. It wouldn't be the way it was in the past, it would be tinged and affected by everything that happened. She might panic or find that once they reached a certain point, she was unable to back out or ask him to slow down or stop. She might have a seizure.
It might destroy the fragile safehaven they found in each other, the sense of security she found in him.
It might poison the past.
She curled more tightly against him. “Never mind.”
Draco didn't say anything.
She fell asleep listening to his heartbeat.
However, after that conversation, the way he kissed her was different. His hands lingered longer. His kisses weren't just searing adoration but something else.
Something hungrier.
Something she could feel in her blood.
When he returned after being gone for two days, his touch felt like fire. His hands tangled in her hair, she drew his left hand down, along her neck to the base of her throat and then further along her body. She felt him inhale so sharply through his teeth that the air moved against her skin.
She gave a shivering moan.
“Tell me to stop,” he said, his mouth hot against her throat. “Tell me to stop.”
She tangled her fingers in his robes and pulled him closer. “Don't stop,” she said, “I don't want you to stop.”
His teeth dragged across her skin as he nipped at her throat. She pulled his hand up to the buttons of her dress and started undoing them. His fingers brushed along her bare skin, and he peppered open-mouthed kisses across her shoulders.
This was good.
This was familiar.
He used to touch her this way. She could remember this.
He kissed down her sternum until her head dropped back and she was gasping. His hands slid over her shoulders and up her spine.
Her hands followed along the curve of his jaw, and down over his shoulders, trying to touch all of him. The sense of touching him was buried in her — a dormant, physical sense of familiarity that made her heart race as it was reawakened.
She drew his mouth back to hers and kissed him more deeply.
“I love you,” she said against his lips. “I love you. I wished I'd told you a thousand times.”
She started unbuttoning his shirt and pushing it off, running her hands across his skin.
“Tell me to stop, and I'll stop,” he said against her lips.
“Don't stop.”
Her heart was pounding in her chest, and she closed her eyes and focused on the sensation. The weight, and warmth, and sensation of his skin against hers. She breathed in against his shoulder and traced her fingers over the scars on his back.
“Close your eyes.”
She felt her clothes slip off and a coiling heat spread through her.
His hand brushed along the side of her breast. It felt different. Highly sensitive, as though his touch had run electricity through her body. She didn't think it had ever felt that way before. She shivered into the contact and gave a low gasp. He dragged his thumb over her nipple, and her whole body shuddered.