Chapter 3: Harry doesn't back away when Hermione grabs his wrist - she presses his palm against Briana's heaving chest while still working her dripping pussy, their three-way collision inevitable as his rough Auror hands fumble at waistbands and zippers in the dusty dark.
The silence wasn’t silence at all. It was a roaring void, filled with the echo of Briana’s moan and the rustle of settling parchment. Harry stood, paralyzed, the spilled file forgotten at his feet. His mind, trained for rapid tactical assessment, short-circuited. The image was seared into him: Hermione’s fierce concentration, Briana’s abandon, the intimate, wet sound in the dark. A hot, shameful bolt of arousal shot through his shock, a traitorous physical response he couldn’t suppress. He felt his cock thicken, pressing insistently against the confines of his trousers, a blatant betrayal of any propriety he thought he still possessed.
Hermione didn’t look away. Her eyes, dark and unreadable in the gloom, held his. Her hand, the one that had just been buried inside Briana, didn’t flinch. She slowly, deliberately, pulled her fingers free. The sound was obscenely loud.
Briana, pressed against the shelves, let out a shaky, defiant breath. She turned her head, her cheek against the cold scrolls, and looked at Harry. Not with shame, but with a wild, reckless challenge. “See something you like, Potter?”
The words, crude and direct, shattered the frozen moment. Harry’s face flushed. He should leave. He should turn, mutter an apology, and disappear into the labyrinth. That’s what the hero would do. The good friend.
But he wasn’t that boy anymore. The war had scraped him clean of easy morality. And the sight before him… it wasn’t just arousal. It was a raw, living truth. It was Hermione, not as a symbol of logic or loyalty, but as a force of pure, hungry will. It was a freedom so brutal and honest it stole his breath.
He took a step forward. Then another.
Hermione watched him come. A faint, almost imperceptible curve touched her lips. It wasn’t a smile. It was recognition.
When he was close enough to feel the heat radiating from their bodies, to smell the salt and sex on their skin, he stopped. His gaze dropped to Hermione’s hand, glistening faintly in the low light.
“I brought the notes on the Hawthorne wards,” he said, his voice rough. It was the stupidest, most transparent thing he could have said.
“Later,” Hermione breathed.
Her free hand moved, not to cover herself, but to him. Her fingers, strong and sure, found his belt. The leather buckle gave a sharp click as she undid it. The sound was a gunshot in the quiet. He didn’t move to help or hinder her. He just watched, mesmerized, as she tugged his trousers open, her knuckles brushing against the hard, aching line of his erection straining against his boxers.
“Fuck yes,” Briana moaned, her eyes locked on Harry’s. “Let him watch. Let him see what you do to me.”
“He’s not just watching,” Hermione stated, her tone leaving no room for argument. She shoved his trousers and boxers down over his hips in one brutal, efficient motion. His cock sprang free, thick and fully hard, the head flushed an angry red. The cold air hit it, a shocking contrast to the heat pulsing within.
Hermione wrapped her fingers around him, a firm, possessive grip that made his knees weak. She didn’t stroke him. She just held him, a claim. Her other hand was still between Briana’s legs, resting possessively on her mound.
“You want in, Harry?” Hermione asked, and it was a question with layers, a test. “Or are you just going to stand there and jerk off like a spectator?”
Briana reached out, her fingers tangling in the fabric of his Auror robes. She pulled him closer. “Get over here,” she growled, her earlier fear transmuted into a fierce, desperate hunger. “I want to feel something that doesn’t hurt.”
The last thread of his resistance snapped. He let himself be pulled into their orbit, into the heat and the smell of them. Briana’s mouth found his, hungry and unskilled, all teeth and frantic tongue. It was nothing like kissing Cho or Ginny. It was a battle for air, for sensation. Hermione released his cock only to push his hand down, guiding it between Briana’s legs, replacing her own fingers with his.
“Touch her,” Hermione ordered, her mouth at his ear. “Make her come again. She needs to forget his name.”
Harry’s fingers slipped into slick, swollen heat. Briana cried out against his mouth, her hips bucking forward, fucking herself on his hand. He mimicked what he’d seen, curling his fingers, finding a rhythm. Hermione’s hands were on him now, one pumping his cock with a steady, ruthless pressure, the other pinching and rolling a nipple through his shirt until he gasped.
It was too much. A sensory overload. The taste of Briana, the feel of her clenching around his fingers, the sight of Hermione’s focused, intense face as she worked his cock, the crushing weight of his own loneliness colliding with this brutal, shared need. He was dissolving.
“I’m not going to last,” he gritted out, hips stuttering into Hermione’s fist.
“Then don’t,” Hermione said. “But not here.” She released him abruptly, leaving him throbbing and desperate. “Against the table. Now.”
They moved like a single, disjointed organism. Briana, her trousers around her ankles, shuffled backward, pulling Harry with her until the edge of the heavy oak table dug into the backs of her thighs. Hermione followed, a general directing a messy campaign.
“Bend her over,” Hermione said to Harry, her voice low and hoarse.
Harry guided Briana down, her torso flattening against the dusty surface, scattering parchment. Her arse was pale and round in the dim light. Hermione positioned herself beside her, leaning over to capture Briana’s mouth in a deep, consuming kiss.
“Fuck her, Harry,” Hermione said, breaking the kiss. “Hard. Don’t think.”
He didn’t need telling twice. He guided the head of his cock to Briana’s entrance, which was dripping wet. He pushed in, one blunt, unforgiving thrust that buried him to the hilt. Briana screamed, the sound muffled by the wood. She was incredibly tight, a vice of clenched muscle that slowly yielded, stretching around him.
He froze, overwhelmed by the sensation, by the wrongness and the perfect rightness of it.
“Move, you bastard,” Briana sobbed, pushing back against him. “Fuck me! Make me feel it!”
He pulled out and slammed back in. Then again. A punishing rhythm born of years of pent-up frustration, of grief he could never express, of a destiny that had used his body as a tool and left it hollow. This was different. This was his. The slap of skin on skin, Briana’s choked cries, Hermione’s dark eyes watching every thrust—it was an anchor in a storm.
Hermione’s hand snaked between Briana’s body and the table, fingering her clit in rough, circular strokes that matched Harry’s pace. “That’s it,” Hermione murmured, more to Briana than to him. “Take it. It’s yours. This is yours.”
Briana’s body began to coil tighter, her inner muscles fluttering around Harry’s cock. Her cries became a continuous, broken stream. “Oh god, oh fuck, yes, right there, don’t stop—”
Harry was lost. The coiled tension in his gut was a live wire. He fucked into her with a final, desperate surge, his vision whiting out as his orgasm ripped through him, hot and endless. He spilled deep inside her with a guttural shout, his body collapsing over hers, held up only by his arms braced on the table.
As his pulses subsided, he became aware of Hermione’s relentless fingers. A few seconds later, Briana followed him over the edge, her climax a silent, full-body seizure that squeezed the last drops from him.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing. The dust settled. The cold of the archives began to seep back into their sweat-slicked skin.
Harry pulled out, a sudden wave of nausea mixing with the aftershocks of pleasure. He stumbled back, fumbling for his trousers. He couldn’t look at either of them.
Hermione was the first to move. She righted her own clothes with clinical precision, then pulled Briana’s trousers up, fastening them with a tenderness that contrasted violently with the previous minutes. She conjured a damp cloth and cleaned Briana’s thighs, then her own hands.
“The notes,” Hermione said finally, her voice flat, all business. “On the Hawthorne wards. Where are they?”
Harry blinked, the world snapping back into a focus he didn’t want. He pointed a shaky hand at the spilled parchment on the floor. “There. The counter-curse… it needs a blood relative’s willing participation to break the network. A sympathetic rupture.”
Briana turned, leaning against the table. Her face was streaked with dust and tears, but her eyes were clear. “Willing participation. He’ll never agree.”
“He doesn’t have to be willing to help,” Harry said, the Auror in him forcing its way to the surface through the fog of shame and satiation. “He just has to be present. And in pain. The magic reads the shared blood and the shared suffering, but interprets the victim’s pain as the dominant force, breaking his control.” He looked at Briana, really looked at her. “It means hurting him. Physically. While you’re connected by the curse.”
A slow, terrifying smile spread across Briana’s face. It held no joy, only a dark, promising vengeance. “Good.”
Hermione gathered the notes, her mind already racing ahead, compartmentalizing what had just happened into a box marked ‘later.’ “Then we need a plan to get into Hawthorne Manor. And we need a way to make him hurt.”
Harry finally met her gaze. The friendship was still there, but it was cracked open, something new and dangerous bleeding into the space between them. He had crossed a line with her, with both of them, that could never be uncrossed. And as the adrenaline faded, he realized with a sickening lurch that the Ministry file he’d dropped, the one now mixed with their footprints in the dust, wasn’t just about blood curses.
It was flagged with a secondary classification. A classification that meant Internal Affairs was already investigating a leak within the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. A leak feeding information to the old, wealthy families trying to maintain their grip.
Someone was watching. And they had just left their own, very personal, evidence all over the scene.
The spilled file lay between them, a quiet accusation. Harry bent, knees cracking, and gathered the parchment. His fingers left smudges on the official seal. “We should go,” he muttered, not looking at either woman. “This place… it’s not secure.”
Briana pushed off the table. Her movements were sharp, defensive again. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Right. The plan.” She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I need to… I have things to prepare. Potions. The ones that cause pain without killing.” She said it like a grocery list, flat and terrifying.
Hermione nodded, already restoring the alcove with a few efficient flicks of her wand. Scrolls righted themselves. Dust resettled. “We’ll meet at the safe house tomorrow at nightfall. Don’t use the Floo.”
“I know the drill,” Briana snapped, then softened. “Thank you. For… for the research.” Her gaze flicked to Harry, a complicated flash of shame, gratitude, and something else, then away. “See you tomorrow.”
She Disapparated with a faint crack, leaving only the scent of her perfume and sex in the air.
The silence she left was thicker. Harry stared at the spot where she’d vanished. “She’s going to get herself killed.”
“She was already dying,” Hermione said, her voice quiet. She levitated the last scroll back onto a shelf. “Just slowly. This way, it’s on her terms.” She turned, finally looking at him fully. The clinical mask was gone. She looked exhausted, and young, and utterly unsure. “What we just did…”
“I know.”
“It wasn’t just about the curse. Or blowing off steam.” She hugged her arms around herself. “It felt like… like finding a piece of myself I’d buried with Fred. With everyone. It was awful. And vital.”
Harry leaned against the ancient table, the wood cool through his shirt. “I could say the same.” He let out a long, shaky breath. “And it’s about her. Briana.”
Hermione’s eyes widened slightly. She gave one slow nod. “Yes.”
“It’s messed up. Completely.” He ran a hand through his hair, tugging at the roots. “She’s a victim. A client. We’re supposed to be helping her, not… feeling this.”
“Since when has our lives ever followed ‘supposed to’?” A weak, frayed smile touched Hermione’s lips. “She’s fierce. And broken. And she sees the same cracks in us. The ones no one else bothers to look for.” She paused, the words hanging. “I think I’m falling in love with her, Harry. And it’s terrifying.”
The admission sucked the air from the room. Harry felt it echo in his own chest. “Yeah,” he whispered, the truth clumsy on his tongue. “Me too. Not instead of… anything. Just… also.”
Hermione walked over, stopping an arm’s length away. “Ron’s coming over tonight. For dinner. I need to tell him.”
The domesticity of it was a stark slap. “Tell him… about the case?” Harry asked, knowing it wasn’t that.
“About us. About… her. As much as I can.” She looked at the floor. “He proposed last week. I said yes.”
The world tilted slightly. “Congratulations,” Harry said automatically. The word tasted like ash. A vision of a normal life, a happy ending, flickered and died. It was never going to be theirs.
“Don’t.” Hermione’s voice was sharp. “Just don’t. It’s a mess. I love him. I do. But it’s a different love. It’s comfortable. This… with you, with her… it’s a storm. And I’m so tired of safe harbors.”
They left the archives without another word, the weight of the unspoken hanging between them like a third presence.
The safe house was a dingy flat above a tailor shop in Cokeworth. Harry was stirring a miserable pot of tinned soup when the wards chimed.
“It’s Ron,” Hermione said from the doorway, her face pale but set.
Ron Weasley’s laughter preceded him up the stairs, a warm, familiar sound that felt like an intrusion. He burst into the room, red hair bright under the grim kitchen light, carrying a six-pack of Butterbeer. “There you are! Smells like a goblin’s armpit in here. Oh, hello Harry.”
“Ron.” Harry forced a smile.
Ron pecked Hermione on the cheek, then did a double-take. “Blimey, you look knackered. This Hawthorne case that bad?”
“You have no idea,” Hermione murmured, taking a beer. Her left hand caught the light. A simple gold band with a small, square-cut diamond sat on her finger.
Ron followed Harry’s gaze. A broad, proud grin spread across his face. “Oh! Right! Show him, ‘Mione.”
Hermione held out her hand, a performative gesture that didn’t reach her eyes. “We’re engaged.”
“That’s brilliant,” Harry said, the lie smooth from years of practice. He clapped Ron on the shoulder. “Really. Congratulations.”
“Thanks, mate!” Ron beamed, popping a bottle open. “Figured it was time, you know? After everything. Build a proper life.” He took a swig, his eyes landing on the mess of maps and notes strewn across the small table. “So, this plan of yours. Getting into Hawthorne Manor. Sounds dicey.”
“It is,” Harry said, seizing the change of subject. “We think we’ve found a flaw in the ward scheme. A blood sympathy flaw.”
Ron listened, his Auror training kicking in, nodding along. But his eyes kept drifting to Hermione, who was staring into her unopened Butterbeer as if it contained the secrets of the universe.
“You okay, ‘Mione?” Ron asked, his cheer dampening. “You’re quiet.”
“I’m fine,” she said, too quickly. “Just… the case. It’s getting to me. The things families do to each other.” She looked up, her gaze finding Harry’s for a brief, charged moment before returning to Ron. “It makes you question everything. What you owe people. What you want for yourself.”
Ron’s smile faded, replaced by a confused, slightly hurt patience. “Right. Well. You always take things to heart. That’s why you’re brilliant.” He said it like a mantra, something he’d learned to say. “Look, I won’t stay. Just wanted to see you. Bring the good news.”
He kissed her again, this time on the mouth. It was brief, possessive. Harry looked away.
After Ron left, the flat felt emptier than before. The echo of his happiness lingered like a ghost.
Hermione spun the ring around her finger. “He didn’t even notice.”
“Notice what?”
“That I’m different. That something’s shifted. He just sees ‘Hermione, stressed about work.’” She pulled the ring off and set it on the table with a soft click. It stared up at them, a golden, judgmental eye. “I have to tell him before we go to Hawthorne Manor tomorrow. I can’t go in there with this on.”
Harry said nothing. There was nothing to say. The soup boiled over behind him, hissing on the stove. He didn’t move to stop it. They both just watched the little ring, the promise of a simple future, lying abandoned on the scratched wood, while the past and the future burned around them.
The soup kept burning. A acrid, salty smell joined the musk of sex and old parchment still clinging to their clothes. Harry finally turned and killed the flame. The sudden silence was heavier.
“We shouldn’t have done that in the archives,” he said, not facing her. “That file… the Internal Affairs seal.”
Hermione picked up the ring again, weighing it in her palm. “I know.” Her voice was detached, analytical. “It was a security breach of monumental stupidity. Emotion compromising operational integrity.” She slipped the ring back on. “I’ll tell him tomorrow. After. If there’s an after to tell about.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Why not? It’s the calculation. Hawthorne’s manor is a fortress. The probability of success is less than forty percent, even with the ritual. The probability of capture or lethal intervention is significantly higher.” She recited it like a weather report. Then she looked at him, her composure cracking at the edges. “I felt more alive with her, with you, in that filthy corner than I have in two years. That’s the real security breach, Harry. Not the file.”
He crossed to the window, peering through a grimy slit in the blinds at the rain-slicked street below. A figure in a dark cloak stood under a lamp-post, not moving. “We might not have until tomorrow.”
Hermione was beside him in an instant, her breath cool on his neck. “How long?”
“Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. Not an Auror. Too still.”
“Surveillance. Internal Affairs, or someone Hawthorne’s paid.” She pulled the blinds shut. “We need to move the meeting. Now. And we need Briana.”
She drew her wand, conjuring a sleek, obsidian raven that materialized from a wisp of dark smoke. It landed on her wrist, silent. “Locatio Briana Sallow. Periculum. Cokeworth sewer junction, off Lauriston Road. Now.” The bird dissolved into shadow, seeping through the floorboards.
“The sewers? Really?”
“She’s paranoid. With excellent reason.” Hermione was already shoving maps and notes into a charmed satchel. “They’ll sweep this place in minutes. We can’t be here.”
They Disapparated from the dank bathroom, the crack swallowed by the groan of old pipes.
The junction was a cathedral of Victorian brick and stench. Three feet of sluggish, foul water flowed down the center channel. The air was warm and thick, clinging to the lungs. Briana was waiting, perched on a dry service ledge, her wand lit.
“You’re early,” she hissed. “And you brought company.” She nodded to the darkness behind them.
Harry spun, wand out. But it was just a rat, plopping into the water.
“We’re blown,” Harry said, lowering his wand. “My flat’s being watched. Maybe yours too.”
Briana’s laugh was a short, sharp thing. “My family’s had people watching me since I was fourteen. Nothing new.” She eyed them. Hermione was shivering, though it wasn’t cold. “You two look like hell.”
“We need to do it tonight,” Hermione stated. Her tone brooked no argument. “The ritual. Now. Before they reposition, before Hawthorne gets word someone’s poking at his wards.”
“It’s not prepared!” Briana shot back, standing. “The pain potion needs six more hours to stew! And you need to be inside the ward boundary, at the familial altar. It’s in his fucking study!”
“We have a way in,” Harry said quietly. He hadn’t planned to say it. The idea had only crystallized in the sewer’s gloom. “You said the wards key on family blood. On intention. What if you weren’t trying to break in? What if you were coming home, repentant, seeking forgiveness?”
Briana stared at him as if he’d sprouted a second head. “He’d kill me on the doorstep.”
“Not if you had a prize. A traitor. Two traitors, actually.” He gestured between himself and Hermione. “You capture us. You bring us to him, bound, as a gift. An Auror and a Ministry lawyer, snooping into his affairs. You tell him you’ve seen the error of your ways. That you want back in. The wards read your blood and your intention—to please him, to return. They’ll part.”
The silence was broken only by the drip of water. Hermione’s eyes were wide, calculating, seeing the brutal logic.
“That’s insane,” Briana whispered. But a frightening light was growing in her eyes. “He’d want a public display. A punishment. To make an example.”
“We’d be ready,” Harry said.
“And after?” Briana’s voice cracked. “When he lowers his guard for the ritual, and we turn on him? You think he’ll just stand there?”
“No,” Hermione said, her voice cutting through. “He’ll be distracted. By inflicting pain. By his own triumph.” She stepped closer to Briana on the ledge. The space was intimate, cramped. “You need to sell it. You need to hate us. You need to mean it.”
Briana’s gaze flicked between them. To Harry, who had fucked her with a kind of desperate fury. To Hermione, whose fingers had brought her to a climax that felt like being unmade. “I do hate you,” she breathed, but it held no heat. “You’re just another set of people using my pain for a cause.”
“Then use ours,” Harry said.
The three of them stood there in the subterranean half-light, breathing in the rot. The plan was a house of cards, a desperate gamble built on mutually assured destruction. It required a performance of profound betrayal. And it required them to be captured, to be at Hawthorne’s mercy.
Briana suddenly reached out and grabbed a fistful of Hermione’s robes, pulling her close. “If we’re doing this tonight, I’m not doing it with this fucking ache.” She kissed her, hard. It wasn’t like the kiss in the archives. This was a claim, a punctuation. She bit Hermione’s lower lip, drawing a tiny gasp.
She turned to Harry, her eyes blazing. “You too. I need to not feel like a victim for five fucking minutes. I need to feel in control.” It was a demand, stark and raw.
There was no seduction, no slow burn. It was a collision.
Briana shoved Harry backward against the wet brick. The mortar scraped his shoulders through his shirt. She dropped to her knees in the filthy damp, her hands yanking his trousers open. She took his cock into her mouth without ceremony, enveloping him in wet, frantic heat. Her technique was rough, desperate, all suction and frantic movement of her tongue against the sensitive underside. She gagged once, deeply, and didn’t pull back.
“Christ, Briana,” Harry gasped, his head thudding against the brick. The wrongness of the place, the imminent danger, the sheer vulgar need of it, sent a brutal surge of blood to his groin.
Hermione watched, her back against the opposite wall. She was touching herself over her knickers, her movements small and frantic, her eyes fixed on Briana’s head bobbing in the shadows. “Make her choke on it,” Hermione said, her voice low and rough. “She wants to forget how to breathe.”
Briana pulled off with a wet pop, gasping. Spit trailed from her lips. “I want her to watch me fuck you,” she panted, standing. “Properly. I want you inside me while she touches herself. I want this disgusting place to smell like us.”
She turned, bending over the iron railing that lined the ledge, presenting herself. She tugged her own trousers down. “Do it. Now.”
Harry moved. He positioned himself behind her, one hand on the sharp curve of her hip, the other guiding himself. He pushed into her. She was still loose and slick from earlier, and he slid in to the root with one deep, solid stroke. She cried out, a sound that echoed down the tunnel.
He set a hard, driving pace immediately. There was no tenderness, no exploration. It was fucking, pure and simple. The slap of skin, the creak of the iron railing, their ragged syncopated breaths—it was a brutal rhythm against the endless drone of the sewer.
Hermione came closer. She had her knickers pushed to the side, and she was rubbing her clit in fast, tight circles, her other hand pinching her own nipple through her blouse. “Does she feel good, Harry?” she murmured, her eyes glazed. “Does her cunt feel different than mine?”
“Fuck, Hermione,” he grunted, pistoning into Briana, who was meeting every thrust with a backward slam of her hips.
“Tell me.”
“Tighter. Hotter. So fucking wet.” The words were torn from him, filthy and true.
“Come in her,” Hermione commanded, her own breathing becoming ragged. “Fill her up. Mark her as ours for tonight.”
Briana was sobbing, her fingers white-knuckled on the railing. “Yes, yes, do it, you bastard, claim it, it’s yours—”
Hermione’s orgasm hit her silently, a violent shudder that racked her whole body. She bit her own wrist to stifle a cry.