Chapter 3: Shower of Sin
The steam in the bathroom coiled thick as memories, clinging to the honeyed oak and fogging the cracked mirror. Harry stood under the scalding spray, head bowed, water sluicing over tense shoulders. Ginny’s spellbook lay splayed on the stool, a bookmark holding a page on cheering charms. The irony was a dull ache. The lavender soap, the rose petals drifting in the cooling tub—it all felt like a museum of a feeling he could no longer access.
He turned, his back to the spray, and let his head thunk against the cool tile. His eyes closed. Against the dark of his lids, the image bloomed unbidden, sharper than any memory: silver-blonde hair catching Ministry light, a smile that held a secret just for him. A storm told to be still.
His hand moved down his stomach, through the slick trail of water, and found his cock already half-hard, throbbing with a want that felt divorced from his mind. He wrapped his fingers around the shaft, a hiss escaping his lips. It wasn’t Ginny he saw. It was Gabrielle. Gabrielle kneeling on the polished atrium floor, her blue eyes locked on his as her lips, pink and full, parted. In the fantasy, there was no hesitation. She leaned forward, and her tongue, hot and wet, licked a bold stripe from his base to the tip before she took him deep into her mouth.
“Fuck,” he muttered to the empty, steamy room. His grip tightened, his hips pushing a shallow thrust into his fist. He imagined the wet, hot suction of her mouth, the way her hair would feel like silk between his fingers. He pictured himself looking down, watching his cock disappear between those perfect lips, her gaze never wavering, owning him. The fantasy was vivid, crude, and overwhelming. His strokes grew faster, rougher. The water pounded his back. He saw her pulling back, saliva glistening, before diving down again, taking him deeper, gagging softly, a sound of pure want.
“Gabrielle,” he gasped, the name a blasphemy in his wife’s bathroom. The climax ripped through him, brutal and swift. He came in hot streaks against the tile, his body shuddering, the vision of her victorious eyes the last thing in his mind as he emptied himself.
He slumped, breath ragged, the aftermath a cold flood of shame. He avoided his own eyes in the mirror as he dried off, the towel rough against his skin. The domestic quiet of the house felt accusing.
An owl tapped at the window just as he was tying his robe.
Its letter was on cream parchment, perfumed with that alpine scent.
Harry – My questions multiply. Parchment is inadequate. Meet me tonight. The Black Phoenix, Knockturn Alley. 10 o’clock. Tell no one. – G.
The club was a thrumming beast of shadow and illicit light. Magic here was darker, smokier, used for concealment and enhancement. The air tasted of firewhiskey, damp stone, and sweat. He found her at the bar, a silhouette cut from the gloom. She wore emerald green, a dress that seemed liquid, clinging to every curve before falling away. Her hair was down, a waterfall of shimmering silver.
“You came,” she said. Her voice cut through the bass-heavy drone of a modified wizard wireless, no allure needed—just sheer, palpable pleasure.
“I shouldn’t have,” he said, but he was already sliding onto the stool beside her.
“But you did.” She pushed a glass of dark liquor toward him. “Drink. It will make the noise less loud.”
He drank. It burned all the way down, warming the cold knot of guilt in his gut. They talked. Or, he talked. She listened, her head tilted, her fingers tracing the rim of her glass. She asked about the war, not as a fan, but as a strategist. “What did it feel like, the moment you knew you had to walk into the forest?” The question was so intimate, so brutal, it shattered his last defenses. He told her. He told her about the crushing loneliness, the certainty, the peace of it.
“You gave them everything,” she murmured. Her hand covered his on the bar. Her skin was fever-warm. “And what did you keep for yourself, Harry? What scrap of that peace is left?”
He had no answer. The music shifted, something with a primal, insistent rhythm.
“Dance with me,” she said. It was not a question.
“I don’t dance.”
“Tonight, you do.”
She led him to the crowded floor. And then she was in his arms, or he was in hers. The space between them vanished. Her body moved against his, a deliberate, undulating rhythm. Her arms snaked around his neck, her breasts pressed against his chest. He was hard again, painfully so, and she rolled her hips, grinding against the length of him.
“Gabrielle…” he groaned into her hair.
“Shhh,” she whispered, her lips at his ear. “Just feel it.”
Then he felt it. The allure didn’t just hum; it detonated. It wasn’t a gentle pull anymore. It was a riptide. It poured from her skin, her breath, the very air around her. The club, the music, the world—it all bleached away into a white-hot static. There was only her scent, her heat, the desperate need to be inside her. His vision swam. His morals, his marriage, his very name dissolved in the furnace of her power.
“I need you,” he heard himself say, the words ragged, animal.
“I know.” She took his hand. “Come.”
She led him through a door, down a dim corridor, into a private room. A chaise lounge, dark walls, a lock that clicked shut with finality. The second the door closed, he slammed her against it, his mouth crashing down on hers. The kiss was all teeth and fury, a battle for air. She met him with equal hunger, her hands clawing at his back, pulling his shirt from his trousers.
“Fuck, you’re desperate,” she gasped against his mouth, her voice thick with triumph. “All that noble strength, and you’re just a hard cock and a empty heart.”
He ripped the strap of her dress, the fabric giving way with a tear. Her breast spilled into his hand, heavy and perfect. He bent his head, sucking her nipple deep into his mouth, biting down. She cried out, her fingers tangling in his hair, holding him there.
“Yes. Like that. No gentle. I don’t want gentle, Harry. I want the storm.”
He spun her around, pressing her front against the door. His hands shoved the ruined dress up over her hips. She wasn’t wearing knickers. His fingers plunged into her without ceremony, finding her soaking wet, hot and tight. She pushed back against his hand, moaning.
“Now. Fuck me now. Do it.”
He fumbled with his fly, his cock springing free, thick and veined and aching. He positioned himself at her entrance, one hand fisting in her silver hair, pulling her head back. He drove into her in one brutal, claiming thrust.
The sound she made was a raw, shattered scream of pleasure. He was too big, too rough, and she was exquisitely tight. He didn’t wait, didn’t gentle. He set a punishing pace, slamming into her, the slap of skin on skin echoing in the small room. Each thrust drove her against the door. Her pleas were filthy, glorious.
“Yes! God, yes! Fucking ruin me! Harder! Use me, Harry! It’s all I’m good for, isn’t it? Filling your empty spaces!”
Her words ignited him. He fucked her with a kind of mindless rage, a years-long frustration channeled into each piston of his hips. One hand stayed tangled in her hair, the other gripped her hip so hard he knew he’d leave bruises. He looked down, watching himself disappear into her, her body yielding to him completely. The visual, the feel, the smell of sex and her perfume—it was obliterating.
She came first, her inner muscles clamping around him in violent, fluttering spasms, her body bowing as she shouted a string of obscenities in French. The feel of her climax milked him, pushed him over the edge. With a final, guttural roar, he buried himself to the hilt and came, pumping jet after jet of his release deep inside her, his vision whiting out.
He collapsed against her, both of them slick with sweat, breathing in ragged, broken unison. Slowly, the world seeped back in. The bass from the club. The chill of the air on his damp skin. The reality of what he had just done.
He pulled out, staggering back. She turned, leaning against the door, her dress ruined, her face flushed, her lips swollen. She looked utterly victorious.
He looked down at himself, at the evidence of his betrayal shining on his cock. The shame returned, colder and heavier than before, but it was now irrevocably fused with the most profound, devastating physical pleasure he had ever known.
She smiled, a slow, cat-like curl of her lips. She didn’t cover herself. She let him look.
“So,” she said softly, her breath still hitching. “Now you know what it feels like to be alive.”