Chapter 3: The Dreaming Harvest
Hermione’s flat smelled of confession. The sharp, clean bite of crushed lavender from her calming draught attempts, the earthy rot of mandrake root she’d been annotating, and beneath it all, that faint, persistent sweetness—like peaches left too long in the sun. It clung to her hair, her robes, the creases of her palms. No amount of scrubbing at the Ministry sinks had removed it.
She didn’t remember the Apparition home. One moment she was swaying in the atrium under Neville’s heartbroken stare, the next she was collapsing against her own door, fumbling the lock with trembling hands. She’d shrugged off her robes, letting them pool on the floor like a shed skin. Her body was a foreign country, a landscape of unpredictable fault lines. A low, constant hum lived in her marrow now.
Sleep was a trap, and she fell into it headlong.
It began as sensation alone. The rough catch of expensive linen against her inner thighs. The shocking cool of a stone wall at her back, solid through a barrier of what felt like… silk. Crimson silk. It whispered against her shoulders as he pressed her into it.
“There,” Draco’s voice murmured, not in her ear, but directly into the fabric of her mind. It was intimate, approving. “See how you fit?”
His hands were on her, not groping, but charting. A slow, deliberate survey. The span of his palm over her ribcage, his thumb stroking the frantic beat just beneath. The dip of her waist, the flare of her hip. He took his time, as if memorizing her geography by touch. Her skin burned under the cool, dry pressure.
“All this brilliant architecture,” he whispered. His lips were at her temple, his breath stirring the hair there. “And it wants to come undone. It’s begging for it.”
His mouth found hers, not with romance, but with profound, unsettling ownership. It was a kiss that felt like being drunk from. His tongue traced the seam of her lips, and when she gasped, he took the opportunity to deepen it, tasting her with a low, satisfied sound. The world dissolved into heat and pressure and the slick, desperate slide of tongue against tongue.
One hand cradled the back of her head, fingers tangling in her messy hair, holding her steady. The other continued its journey, sliding down over the curve of her stomach, lower, until his fingertips brushed the aching heat between her legs.
She cried out into his mouth, a broken, needy sound that bore no resemblance to her own voice.
“Shh,” he soothed, biting her lower lip gently. “I know. I’ve always known.” His fingers dipped beneath the edge of her knickers, finding her slick and unbearably sensitive. He stroked her, once, twice, a slow, torturous rhythm that had her hips bucking off the wall. “Listen to you. So wet. So responsive. Is this what all that control was hiding?”
She couldn’t speak. She could only feel. The coil of pleasure, tight and urgent, building with every pass of his clever fingers. He watched her face, his grey eyes metallic and intent, missing nothing—the flutter of her eyelids, the part of her lips, the helpless roll of her hips.
“Come on, Granger,” he urged, his voice a dark caress. His thumb pressed a perfect, aching circle. “Let me see it. Let me watch you fall apart.”
The climax tore through her, violent and obliterating. It was a silent scream, a white-hot fracture behind her eyes, her body bowing against his as waves of sensation ripped her from the inside out. She shattered into a thousand brilliant, shimmering pieces.
Hermione woke with a gasp that was almost a sob, her back arching off her own solitary mattress. The sheets were tangled around her legs, damp with sweat. The phantom feeling of silk and stone was gone, replaced by cheap cotton. The dark of her flat was empty, silent except for the ragged saw of her own breath.
The ache between her legs was not a phantom. It was a deep, throbbing, physical reality. She was soaked, her knickers clinging, the aftermath of the dream a tangible, humiliating truth on her skin.
She lay there, trembling, staring at the water-stained ceiling. Shame arrived first, hot and acrid. Then a fury so intense it felt like it would crack her teeth. He’d done this. He’d poisoned her, violated her mind, turned her own body into a stranger.
But beneath the shame and the fury, the hum persisted. The craving. The memory of that shattering release was brighter, more visceral than any moral outrage. Her skin felt too tight. Every nerve ending was exposed, singing a desperate, lonely song.
“No,” she whispered to the empty room. Her voice was raw.
Her own hand moved of its own volition, sliding down the flat plane of her stomach, under the waistband of her knickers. Her touch was hesitant at first, then searching. She was still so sensitive. A shock of pleasure jagged through her at the first brush of her own fingers.
She bit her lip, eyes squeezing shut. This was pathetic. This was surrendering.
But the image flooded back, unbidden: his silver gaze pinned on hers, watching, waiting, praising her ruin. The coil tightened again, low in her belly. A soft, pleading noise escaped her. Her fingers moved, mimicking the rhythm from the dream. It wasn’t the same—her own touch was familiar, a known currency—but the fantasy gave it a forbidden edge.
She imagined him here, in her shabby flat. Standing at the foot of the bed, watching her with that cold, hungry smile. His voice, whispering from the shadows. That’s it. Just for me.
Her breath came in short, sharp gasps. Her hips lifted from the mattress, seeking pressure, friction, release. The climax built faster this time, a wave gathering force. She didn’t fight it. She rode it, chasing the ghost of the feeling he’d given her in the dream, letting it crash over her with a muted cry, her body convulsing in the lonely dark.
Afterward, she felt hollow. Used. The hum had faded to a dull echo. She extracted her hand, wiped it on the sheet, and curled onto her side, drawing her knees to her chest. The sweetness in the air tasted like decay.
Across the city, in a penthouse apartment where the windows were charmed to show the night sky without the city’s light pollution, Draco Malfoy sat in a wingback chair, bathed in the cool glow of a single crystal ball.
The image within was intimate, obscene, beautiful. Hermione Granger, curled in her post-coital despair. He had watched the entire performance—the frantic, dreaming movements, the waking disorientation, the subsequent, furious self-pleasure. The scrying spell woven into the moonflower tincture she’d absorbed weeks ago was a masterpiece of subtle magic.
He lifted a crystal glass of firewhisky to his lips, the amber liquid catching the light. His expression was one of profound, quiet satisfaction. A botanist observing the first bloom of a rare and volatile specimen.
On the mahogany desk before him, next to the crystal ball, lay her original, tampered harvesting list. His finger traced the final entry, the one that had precipitated tonight’s delicious unraveling.
He took a slow sip, his eyes never leaving her slumped form in the glass. The predatory curve of his smile was a private thing in the dark.
“Soon,” he whispered to the image, the word a promise and a threat. The crystal ball’s light pulsed once, softly, in reply.