Chapter 17: The Dark Mirror
The game, however, was far from over. The Lethifold was a false lead, a swirling mass of shadow and old coats in a Deptford warehouse that dissipated under Harry’s Patronus. By the time Hermione returned home, the city was deep into the silent, hollow hours past three.
Her flat still smelled faintly of chemical lavender. Exhaustion was a weight in her bones, but a sharper, hotter current ran beneath it. She didn’t light a lamp. She stood in the centre of the room, the dim glow from the streetlamps below painting her in monochrome. She looked across the alley.
His living area was dark, but a sliver of light outlined a door—his bedroom, perhaps. She waited. Her breath felt loud in the quiet. She reached for the clasps of her Ministry robes.
The heavy wool parted with a sigh, slipping from her shoulders to pool at her feet on the polished floor. The cool night air kissed her skin. She wore nothing underneath. She turned her body, a pale curve in the darkness, presenting her profile to the window.
She saw his silhouette materialize in his own window, a dark shape against the distant light. Then his lamp flared, warm and sudden, illuminating him. He was bare-chested, his trousers slung low on his hips. His expression was not smiling anymore; it was pure, hungering focus.
Hermione let him look. She dragged her own hands up her sides, feeling the gooseflesh rise in their wake. She cupped the weight of her breasts, her thumbs brushing over her nipples until they hardened into tight peaks. A shiver, unrelated to the cold, traced her spine. She watched him watching, his gaze a physical touch.
Her hand slid down, over the flat plane of her stomach, through the dark curls between her legs. She let her head fall back. She was already wet, the evidence slick on her inner thighs. She parted her folds with two fingers, exposing herself to his view across the divide.
Draco didn’t move for a long moment. Then, his eyes locked on hers, he mirrored her. His hand went to the fastening of his trousers. He pushed them down just enough to free his cock, already fully erect and thick in his fist. He wrapped his fingers around the shaft, giving it one slow, deliberate stroke.
Hermione moaned, the sound swallowed by the room. She began to touch herself in earnest, circling her clit with a demanding pressure, then dipping her fingers inside, fucking herself with them. She was putting on a show, but the pleasure was devastatingly real, amplified by his rapt attention. Her breaths came in short, visible puffs in the cool air.
He matched her rhythm, his fist moving faster now, a brutal, efficient pumping. The muscles in his forearm corded with tension. His other hand braced against the window frame, knuckles white. She could see the pre-come beading at his tip, glistening in the light.
“Fuck,” he mouthed, soundlessly. His lips formed the word with a vicious clarity.
She increased her pace, her hips rocking against her own hand. The heat was coiling, tightening low in her belly. She was close, so close, just from this—from the obscenity of the distance and the intimacy of the display. She locked her gaze on his, on the storm-grey eyes burning with need.
She stopped moving her fingers, leaving them buried inside herself. With her other hand, she pointed at him, then dragged her fingertip slowly down the glass towards the floor. Her mouth shaped the command. Come.
A muscle in his jaw jumped. His strokes became frantic, punishing. His head tilted back, tendons standing out in his neck. She watched, mesmerized, as his body went rigid and his release shot out, stripes of white landing on the dark glass of his own window. His mouth opened in a silent shout, his entire frame shuddering with the force of it.
Hermione’s own climax ripped through her then, sudden and violent. She bit her lip to stifle the cry, her body buckling as the waves crashed over her. She rode it out, trembling, her forehead pressed to the cool pane.
When she looked up, he was still leaning against the window, spent, breathing heavily. A lazy, triumphant smile touched her lips. She slowly withdrew her glistening fingers, brought them to her mouth, and tasted herself, never breaking eye contact.
His eyes darkened, promising retribution.
She turned then, leaving her robes in a heap, and walked naked through the archway to her bedroom. She didn’t look back. She left him there in the light, marked and wanting, the unfinished business between them now a palpable, aching thing in the night. Sleep, when it came, was deep and dreamless, her body humming with satisfaction and a new, relentless hunger for morning.