Chapter Text
“I want to marry you.”
His words stopped her the moment she reached for the doorknob. She thought foolishly that she would be able to sneak out of the dark bedroom without waking him. It was easier that way. How many times had she already been able to make her escape as he slept? Far too many to count. What they did in the darkness when no one else was looking was nobody’s business. Bringing it all into the light created more complications and complexities than either one of them were prepared to handle.
“No, you don’t, but thank you.”
She turned him down with a genuine smile. The first time he had the courage to speak the words he had been thinking for a long time out loud, it wasn’t the first time she was aware he was fantasizing about more than she could offer. Men could be such silly, romantic fools, especially in a chaotic, uncertain world. Women had to be more practical.
“Go back to sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”
He didn’t beg her to stay even though she knew he desired nothing more than to wake up with the sun shining in his face and his arms wrapped around her body. It was a nice fantasy, one they had to be careful not to indulge. What happened in the dark of night in that bedroom wasn’t reality. One misstep outside those walls would mean a painful death for them both.
The door clicked shut behind her. Minutes later she dusted the ashes from her clothing as she stepped out of the fireplace in her empty flat. Morning would come far too soon for her liking. She needed at least a few hours of sleep to get through the next day.
Early in the morning, Hermione was one of the first people to step inside the Ministry of Magic. She usually was. It was easier that way. So was being one of the last to leave each evening. Less opportunity for her to be stared and pointed at by the others doomed to work in the massive underground building. She also chose to bring her lunch from home every day to eat it alone at her desk tucked away in the cramped office on Level Six. Any chance to avoid others in her society was seized upon with no second thought.
She was considered an oddity, a relic of a world that no longer existed. Some thought it was wrong that she was free to move about with few restrictions. They thought she belonged in exile in the Muggle world of her parents or locked up in a damp cell in Azkaban to feed the insatiable dementors. A few would’ve preferred she suffered an avada to the chest to spare them the indignity of having to actually be in her presence. What if they caught something? Attitudes about Muggle-Borns were changing but, unfortunately, not in the right direction.
Given the opportunity to make all of the same choices in her life over again, she knew she would make some changes. Not all. Just a small fraction. If fate was indeed a real phenomenon, she didn’t see how much of anything she did could make a difference. Maybe there was no universe, no timeline where Harry was successful at defeating the Dark Lord. Too much pressure had been put on his teenage shoulders. It was no wonder it all ended in his public, painful death. How could it not?
Fighting for what was right wasn’t the easiest choice to make. Hadn’t she heard her old Headmaster say something like that before? It was difficult to remember the past. Too much had happened, too many changes made to keep it all straight. Even on the rare chance she dared to pull out her old photo album she kept hidden beneath her floorboards, it didn’t feel like that had been her life. The pictures of her laughing with her school friends belonged to some other girl who looked like her. And the ones that didn’t move at all? Relics of a girl long dead and forgotten.
Some chose to keep fighting when there was no hope. Nearly all of them were dead. Just like their Chosen One. Whispers still persisted that a few survivors hadn’t given up yet. She didn’t understand the point unless one had a death wish. All of the fight in her died with Harry. Absolutely nothing in the years since encouraged her to start again. Concessions were made to allow her to remain alive and out of prison that she didn’t take for granted. One wrong move and the life she built from the smoking wreckage, simple it might be, would be destroyed. She didn’t want to imagine what would come next.
Harry would call her weak, a coward, if he knew how she acted in the moments after his body hit the stone floor of the Great Hall. If he saw what she did, he would hate her. No more than she hated herself. That wasn’t possible. It ate away at her insides, made her sick, unable to sleep. The guilt may have been the eventual death of her if an unexpected ally hadn’t physically slapped her across the face and then offered some unsolicited advice.
“Staying alive is your best revenge. Don’t let any of these arseholes think they’ve broken you. They haven’t. You’re better than all of them put together.”
Whether she wanted to admit it or not at the time, he had a point. Giving up and dying would have put her suffering to an end, but at a price she really wasn’t ready to pay. There was a lot of life yet to live. Maybe it was possible that she could get to the point when her existence became more than just mere survival.
Sitting at her desk staring at the stack of parchment that needed to be reviewed made thinking about an escape from the drudgery she had come to expect nearly impossible. When her dreams at night weren’t full of nightmares about the past, she had different sorts of nightmares about drowning in a sea of red correction ink or being crushed by a pile of requisition forms.
As a young student at Hogwarts still learning about the wizarding world and its various facets, Hermione used to believe that working at the Ministry would be her dream career. How better could she hope to help improve the world she had become a part of than by getting to work with all of the officials in charge of making and enforcing the laws? She could bring her crusade for the betterment of house-elves to those with actual power to do something. There were at least a dozen different long-term projects she used to fantasize about while she sat over the books in the Hogwarts library reminding herself why she was working so hard to prepare for her exams. Would it be possible for her to become Minister for Magic one day?
Childhood dreams rarely came to fruition for anyone. By the time a young child grows up to see the true ugliness of the world as an adult, their desires and plans have usually changed at least a dozen times. The Ministry was a far less attractive prospect after she witnessed what it turned into during the last year of the war. Corruption oozed out of every dark corner. No one had clean hands. Or so it seemed.
The position was only offered to her after her gracious benefactor, the only one keeping her alive, decided she was too bored sitting around her flat all day without anything else to do. Perhaps he thought idle hands would bring nothing but trouble. For years, she had been watched at all times. He was convinced that she would forget the promises she made or the oaths she swore if she was left alone to think for too long. Once her initial purpose was no longer necessary, he wanted her somewhere else to keep the taint of her influence off of the one he truly cared about.
She was shoved into an office not much bigger than a broom cupboard in the Broom Regulatory Control office. It was every bit as glamorous as it sounded. Every day she reviewed a seemingly never-ending stack of accident reports. If she started to see the same model over and over, she had to fill out another form to send the concern higher up the chain. It was tedious, boring beyond all description. Only the reports where the witnesses had been able to somehow obtain a video of the accident itself had any interest at all. She was never more grateful for Muggles with their increasingly more complex mobiles that they rarely looked up from. The really funny ones were passed along from official to official.
A knock on the doorframe of her open door tore her out of her thoughts. Already at work for over an hour before anyone else, Hermione’s mind had begun its daily wandering. She looked up to see the Head of the BRC standing in front of her desk. If he recognized that she hadn’t been entirely focused on her work when he entered, he was kind enough to not say so.
“I’m looking for the Twycross accident report from last week. Do you still have it?”
Hermione was sure she had seen it just a few minutes earlier. Digging through the stack, it didn’t take her long to find what he needed. As she handed it across the desk for him to take, he offered her a shy smile.
“If half of what that report says is true, you should go personally down the corridor to tell Wilkie that he’s better off with Apparition. Leave the brooms to the experts.”
Rodolphus Lestrange had a lovely laugh. That had been one of the more surprising traits of the man she had come to learn since she was ordered to work in his office. She hadn’t spent any time with him before her first day at the Ministry. Considering her personal history with his late wife, she expected him to be very different. He was nice enough, left her alone a lot. Not much for speaking, he still was surprisingly kind, very unlike the other Death Eaters she had come to know far better than she wished.
“He’s trying to claim that as he tried the student’s racing broom while he was at Hogwarts for an Apparition lesson that the accident happened while he was working. He wants the Ministry to pay for his hospital bill.”
“Good luck with that. I don’t imagine our Minister will like that.”
Her boss grimaced. No one wanted to get on the wrong side of the Minister for Magic. It was unwise and often the very last task completed by a person before they were shipped off to Azkaban. Indeed it was best to make no waves at all at the Ministry. Too much attention could be deadly.
“That’s why I’m going to have a chat with Wilkie. Once he sees this, he will reconsider.”
“I hope you’re successful. But if not, he’s thin enough he might be able to slip through the bars of his prison cell.”
He smiled at her again before he left the office. There were only a few moments throughout each of her days where she had decent human interaction. It was easy to forget how much something as simple as gossip could be enjoyable when one was left to their own devices much of the time.
Of course it was mostly her decision that she spent most of her time alone. There were no restrictions with who she could socialize with. As long as they weren’t locked up in prison or in the middle of active rebellion, she was free to be friends with whomever she desired. The problem was that thanks to her precarious and odd place in their new society, few wanted anything to do with her. At least in public.
No one bothered her for another hour or two. She was glad to have the chance to ignore her own problems and read about others. It worked for about three reports. The events of the previous night played over and over in her head. She would go mad if she couldn’t distract her thoughts. Why did he have to spoil such an enjoyable night with a statement she knew he didn’t really mean? He couldn’t mean it. What he was asking of her… it was too much. He had to know that.
Another knock on her doorframe surprised her right before lunch. It was rare to have more than one interruption in a single day. Looking up from the report she had been trying and failing to read for over half an hour, Hermione had to stop herself from exhaling a groan of frustration. What was he doing there? After a quick glance at the calendar hanging on the wall next to her desk, she closed her eyes and sighed. How could she have forgotten what day it was?
“You have a real talent for making me feel welcome.”
If there was one person that she didn’t care whether or not they ever felt welcome in her office, it was Antonin Dolohov. Every time she saw him, she knew that she was about to be either in pain or annoyed. Usually he managed to do both at the same time. The wizard was a man of many impressive talents. Most of them she wanted absolutely nothing to do with.
“Back again so soon?”
She tried and failed to hide that she was frustrated to see him. Not offended in the slightest, Antonin crossed the threshold without asking for an invitation. He placed his leather valise on the top of her desk.
“You know you’ve been looking forward to seeing me since the last time you saw me.”
Some days she was in the mood to banter back and forth with the wizard. It could be amusing. Despite her less than elevated status within their society post-war, he never once made her feel like she was beneath him. Maybe it would be a simple polite gesture to someone else, but Hermione knew full well the significance where he was concerned. Most of his colleagues would impale her decapitated head on a stick if they thought they could get away with it.
“I wouldn’t say that was true.”
Knowing what was coming next without being told, she stood up from her desk chair. The outer robes she wore over her dress to both mark her as a Ministry official and to keep her from freezing to death in the drafty corridors were swiftly removed and placed on the back of her chair. She unbuttoned the tiny green button at her wrist to allow her to push up the sleeve of her left arm. The routine was much easier when she remembered to wear looser sleeves. Any time she had to remove her jumper for him to get access to the necessary veins made the experience more uncomfortable. The man, usually stoic and quiet when he was in the midst of large groups, could be someone else entirely when they were alone. Sometimes she liked it.
With the appropriate vein exposed, Hermione sat back down in her chair and laid her arm on top of the desk. Antonin had a surprisingly gentle touch with a needle. Hardly feeling the prick, she looked away when the blood started moving through the tube into one of the many glass vials he had lined up. No matter how many times the act was repeated, she continued to feel queasy at the sight of her own blood leaving her body.
“And do you visit all of your patients outside of the hospital? Surely this is beneath your talents. Shouldn’t a trainee be here in your place?”
Antonin smiled that devilish handsome grin that once upon a time set her stomach fluttering. It really was a shame he was granted such good looks. Monsters should be hideous.
“I would never entrust this task to any of the idiots working underneath me. Your blood is far too precious.”
She knew he was only half-joking. Antonin was the sort of person who didn’t trust underlings to perform any task better or even just as well as he did. Considering the significance of what he was doing, there was nothing that would keep him from being the one holding the vials. If it gave him the opportunity to be alone with her for a few minutes, he considered that a bonus.
“They can’t all be idiots.”
“Yes, they can. Trust me. They are. None of them know anything. Standards at Hogwarts have dropped considerably. I’m surprised when any of the new ones can brew a simple Pepper-Up potion. It’s appalling.”
“I had no idea. Maybe you should share your concerns with the Dark Lord the next time you see him. Or would you like me to pass along your complaints when he summons me again?”
He never liked when she would make flippant remarks about the wizard who controlled all of their lives. Based on how his dark brown eyes looked up from the task at hand to glare for half a second, he still didn’t care for it. There were some topics that would always remain delicate.
“You aren’t an idiot. You would likely even find my current research fascinating. I can send you my latest report.”
Hermione shook her head. There was a time when she might have been anxious to see what the brilliant man had been working on. She was not as curious as she used to be. Living was a little bit easier that way.
“Last one.”
Once the final vial was full and sealed with its stopper, he gently tugged on the needle to remove it from her vein. Tiny droplets oozed out of the miniscule wound. He pressed gauze firmly but not painfully for a few moments then cast a healing spell. What little pain remained was gone. The clink of the vials knocking into each other as he put them inside his valise was an encouragement that he would be on his way and out of her office soon.
Until he sat on the edge of her desk close enough for the outside of his leg to brush against her arm. He was in no hurry to rush back to the hospital. She nearly groaned.
“How are you feeling?”
“Antonin, this isn’t necessary. Nothing has changed.”
He gently pressed her neck in several places with two fingers.
“You say that, but…”
His fingers slid from her neck to her right clavicle that was exposed by her scoop neck collar. Too late she wished she had worn a bulky turtleneck. The wizard had trouble keeping his hands to himself. Any exposed skin attracted him like a magnet.
“Antonin…”
Her whisper had a plea in it that he chose to ignore. Singularly focused when he wished, he may not have even heard. His fingers gently traced the invisible line his spell once made a lifetime earlier. It tingled, then began to throb. The further his touch went across her chest, the stronger the feeling grew. Concerned about what would happen next, she slapped his hand away only making him laugh again.
“You’re wasted here in this office. Say the word and I’ll get you reassigned. You can be a more active participant in my research.”
The offer made her roll her eyes. That was never going to happen if she could avoid it. Too much time alone with the wizard and there was no way to tell what might happen.
“You know, I’m actually starting to miss the days when you were actively trying to kill me.”
Once more ignoring what she said, he touched her skin again.
“Close your door. We haven’t activated it in too long.”
That time she didn’t even try to suppress her frustrated groan.
“Not in my office.”
“My office then? Tell Roddy you have an appointment at St. Mungo’s. I’ll clear my afternoon.”
It annoyed her that there was a part of her that wanted to agree. One of them had to resist the temptation.
“No.”
“You could be the Healer if you wanted. I’ll be the stubborn patient who won’t take his potion.”
There was no way he could miss the dramatic roll of her eyes after she pushed his hand away again. He was not deterred.
“I’d even let you wear my Healer’s robes as long as there was nothing on underneath.”
“Not going to happen.”
“Then I’ll come to your flat tonight.”
The man was tenacious. She could almost respect it.
“Not tonight.”
Antonin sighed, annoyed that he knew she wasn’t going to give in.
“Your protector wouldn’t like it, would he?”
Hermione had no desire to continue their conversation. It was an old argument that never got resolved. Understanding he should quit for the present, he stood up from her desk.
“You need to move. There are better places. If you need money…”
“You know the rules. I’m stuck there.”
“There are loopholes to the rules.”
“None of which I am willing to exploit right now.”
Somehow she knew that would not be the last time they had the same exchange. She had lost count of the number of times she had already heard his suggestions. Far too many.
“All right. I’ll leave you to your boring reports, but all it takes is an owl and I’ll drop whatever I’m doing.”
He coupled his promise with a wink. Grabbing his valise in one hand, he slid his spare hand across her breast. Though she pushed the hand away immediately, she couldn’t fight back her smile. As annoying as he could be, sometimes she enjoyed him.
“One more inappropriate touch like that, Healer Dolohov, and I will be forced to report you to your Head Healer.”
“He won’t believe you. I’m the consummate professional with all of my other patients. You are the only one I can’t control myself around. Owl me. Tonight.”
A wealth of promise existed in his eyes when he met hers again. Moments later he was exiting the office, taking some of the air in the room with him. She leaned back in her chair to try to slow her heart rate back down.
“Is everything all right?”
The sudden appearance of Rodolphus back in her office startled Hermione enough that she jumped. Seeing the clear worry on his face, she offered him a warm smile. That simple gesture seemed to help.
“Just the usual, I’m afraid. Nothing to worry about.”
He stepped closer to her desk. Any hope that her heart rate would slow back down were dashed the moment he pressed his palm against her cheek.
“Are you sure you’re all right? You’re pale.”
She covered his hand with her own and pushed slightly into his touch. It meant a lot to her to see him worried. On days she thought there was no one who would care if something happened to her, she was glad to be reminded that wasn’t true. Rodolphus didn’t seem pacified so she smiled again.
“I’m always pale. That’s not real sunlight coming in from that window.”
The corner of his lips curled up in a half smile at her attempt at her joke, but she knew it wasn’t enough. He had always been a worrier. She turned her head just enough that she could kiss the inside of his hand.
“I’m all right.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to go home for the rest of the day? I could ask Dinah to…”
“Absolutely not. She dislikes me enough already. Don’t you dare order her to do my work.”
Drawing any sort of attention to herself was a nightmare for Hermione. Too many negative experiences in the past taught her that life was much easier, even bearable, when she was able to remain in the shadows. If there were too many eyes on her, nothing but trouble would follow. She even tried to avoid her coworkers in the same office. Most of them appreciated her efforts to stay apart from everyone else. They were not her friends nor would they ever be.
“If you change your mind and want to go home for the rest of the day, I’ll understand.”
Looking towards the door to make sure there was no one nearby peeking in, Rodolphus leaned down to brush his lips against hers. Over far sooner than she wished, Hermione knew he was the one wizard she would be willing to crawl on top of the desk for. Her hands practically itched with the desire to pull up her skirt and let him do whatever he wished. She could even stay as quiet as a mouse to keep her coworkers from hearing what debauched deeds they were up to on the other side of the closed door.
“Now you look flushed. Really, Hermione, I must insist that you go home to rest.”
Part of her longed to torture her boss with a graphic explanation as to why her cheeks were suddenly bright red. Wouldn’t he like to know her fantasy of how they could kill some time? He would never consent to behaving so recklessly. Energetic and enthusiastic behind the closed doors at his home and that one time she would never forget upstairs at the Three Broomsticks, he was not the sort to take risks. Once upon a time in another lifetime before he was locked up in Azkaban with his insane wife, he learned taking risks didn’t always end with the rewards they promised.
“I’m fine. Just need to put my robes back on. It’s too bloody cold in this office.”
After she stood up long enough to put her discarded robes on, he seemed somewhat pacified. She still wanted him. That hadn’t changed from her first day in his office when he offered her a shy smile as he showed her to her new desk. Something about him drew her to him like a moth to the proverbial flame. Likely that would lead to her own destruction too.
Rodolphus was different from all of the others that wanted nothing more than to paw their blood-stained hands all over her or murder her painfully. Sometimes both. When she stepped inside his office for the first time and he was actually kind to her for seemingly no other reason than he wanted to be, she fantasized about laying herself naked on top of his desk to be devoured like a tasty snack far more often than she should have.
It was a shame it took over five years before she was able to catch him under a sprig of enchanted mistletoe. One delightful encounter inside the cupboard underneath Corban Yaxley’s stairs while the rest of the holiday party continued without them later and neither of them looked back. It was unfortunate that they had the spiked eggnog to blame for his uncharacteristic risk. All encounters in the future from then on took place in carefully controlled private locations like his family home or rented holiday cottages.
She watched him exit her office with evident disappointment on her face. Was she too rash to always turn down Antonin’s offer to get her moved to his research team at St. Mungo’s? The work would be far more interesting than what she was doing at the Ministry without question. But, she would have to constantly defend herself against the only-sometimes wanted touches from her new supervisor. It was bound to get tiresome quickly.
Somehow she was eventually able to push aside the worst of her thoughts to focus back on the stack of reports that never seemed to get smaller. Each day stuck at the Ministry could feel just like the last. It was tempting to complain, but she knew better. There was always something worse that could be found. Regardless of the unusual place she was granted in their post-war world, she was subject to a number of rules and restrictions that no one else was. Too much whinging and she could find herself back inside a locked bedroom with nothing to do but sleep and read the same books over and over. Even reading could lose its appeal after too long. The limited freedoms she had were why she couldn’t afford to take them for granted.
No one remained seated at their desks when she finally shut off the light in her office. She saw no one, not even a member of the Department of Magical Maintenance, her entire walk across the Level to an empty lift. Only a couple of officials were huddled together in the Atrium deep inside their own private conversation. If they noticed her heading towards the exit, they made no sign.
When she stood outside in what air the city could offer, Hermione took a deep breath. It was cool. Soon she would need to pull her heavy cloak out of her wardrobe. She never looked forward to the colder months in her drafty flat. Though it was hard to think of it as her home, at least it was private. Her previous residence might have been luxurious, but the price to stay there was too high. Better to have a rat-infested hole in Knockturn Alley. At least those rats could be repelled with simple charms. The rats in her old place had their own wands and knew how to cast effective shields.
Thinking about her destination, Hermione turned on the pavement. Her feet landed on uneven cobblestones moments later. For most in their society, they would feel frightened to step into Knockturn Alley at any point in the day, let alone long after the sun went down and the dark shadows grew larger. Not for her. It was her favorite time of day to walk through the narrow Alley. A lifetime ago she would have made attractive prey for the worst denizens of the Alley. No longer. Because of who she was, no one would dare touch her. Like so many did at the Ministry, they chose instead to ignore her when she walked past.
The rundown building she was magnanimously granted a flat wasn’t far from the entrance. She really only had to walk past two shops and turn one corner to see the front door. It didn’t surprise her to see her neighbor from the flat next door seated on top of a stack of overturned butterbeer crates. Most of his face was hidden by the shadows. She could see the light from his pipe before she smelled the sweet scent of the tobacco he preferred.
“Smoking will kill you.”
He lowered the pipe and leaned forward enough for her to see his amused smirk in the light of a nearby lamppost. It was hardly the first time she had said as much.
“That may be true, but I will still outlive your grandchildren’s grandchildren.”
"You're stubborn enough. I'd believe it."
She sat next to him on her own crate. Some days that moment when she first arrived back at the building was her favorite part of the day. When he wasn’t sitting outside, she was disappointed.
“Nothing to do with how stubborn I am. If that mattered, you would outlive the Earth itself.”
The familiar tease never failed to make her smile. Maybe he had a point.
“Then why have you lived so long?”
He shrugged.
“Same reason you aren’t dead.” Realizing too late what he said and how uncomfortable she suddenly was, he cleared his throat. “Maybe not exactly like you, but I dabbled in the old magicks too in my younger years.”
Werewolves usually didn’t live to an old age. Between the actual affliction itself and the ignorance surrounding it, many lost their lives to violence just a few years after they were bitten. Newer werewolves were better off thanks to the Wolfsbane potion. Of course Fenrir Greyback refused to swallow any potion that affected his transformation each Full Moon.
“Almost makes you wonder why we even bothered.”
Not usually one to indulge in any feeling close to melancholy around anyone else, Fenrir had always been a special case. Hopping down from her stack, she pressed a swift kiss to his cheek. When she saw the sudden flare of his nostrils, she rolled her eyes.
“Goodnight. I’m going to bed. I have more boring reports to review in the morning.”
She had to pull extra hard on the front door. It always stuck when there was any chance for rain. Once inside she didn’t bother to suppress a sigh. The rundown building looked even worse inside than it did outside. If her gracious benefactor knew about the status of the building, he would swiftly condemn it and find somewhere more suitable that she would despise. There was a reason she never met him in her own flat. She had grown used to the relative freedom.
The flat on the second floor certainly was nothing to boast about. She kept it clean almost to the point of madness. If she could control little else in her life, she could control whether or not she lived in filth. Fenrir helped her with the repairs when she was in over her head. It was nice to have him just down the corridor. What would Harry think if he knew of her friendship with the werewolf?
Usually she tried to push away any stray thoughts about the past. Dwelling on what she could not change helped no one. It was over and done. How many more times in her life would she have to keep repeating that to herself?
After such a long day and not getting much sleep the night before, Hermione wanted nothing more than a hot shower then immediately to bed. She didn’t linger long under the spray. Once the last trace of soap was rinsed from her skin, she turned the taps off. As she pulled a clean nightie over her head, she heard a loud knock on her flat’s door. The urge to ignore the uninvited visitor was strong. Could she not have any time to herself without being bothered? She took a deep breath before unlocking the door. There was no need to check who she would find on the other side. She already knew he wasn’t going to leave her alone that night.
“Your iron is too low.”
Fenrir pushed a smoking teacup in her hand. Despite knowing the taste would be foul, she drank it all down in one practiced gulp. Satisfied it was empty, he banished it back to the kitchen sink of his own flat. His nostrils flared again.
“I hate when you do that.”
He tried to fight back a smile. Not caring that she was already annoyed, he pressed two fingers on the pulse point of her neck and stared at the watch he wore on his other wrist. She knew better than to push him away when he was determined. The man was more stubborn than any Gryffindor she had ever met. Even if she might have claimed the attention was unnecessary, secretly, she enjoyed it. Was it so wrong to be pleased that someone cared?
“It’s not my fault your idiot Healer can’t be arsed to check your blood even when he takes so much of it.”
He dropped his hand off her neck with pursed lips. His distaste for Antonin Dolohov was legendary. It grew with each blood draw. One would think it was his blood the other wizard required.
“He didn’t take more of it than usual. I counted the vials.”
“You weren’t sufficiently recovered from last time. It was all I could smell when you sat next to me.”
Recognizing that the werewolf was well on his way to anger he might be forced to channel into some dangerous or violent act he couldn’t come back from, she knew she had to do what was in her power to calm him back down. The last thing she wanted was for Fenrir to feel like he had to track Antonin down to punish him for what he did. She couldn’t be sure which of the two would emerge victorious from that fight. Maybe neither would. A simple touch of her hand on his forearm helped.
“What exactly does low iron smell like?”
His soft chuckle further broke some of the tension. Amused by the question, he took a deep breath then sniffed her neck right below her ear. The tickle of his breath on her skin made her smile too. A light kiss to the same spot before he stood back up to his full height sent a shiver up her spine. Rarely did he let himself be physically affectionate. Knowing he needed it, she didn’t even tease him.
“A bit like candy floss.”
She had to laugh. Whether he was telling her the truth or not, she had no way of knowing. Her sense of smell certainly wasn’t so sensitive.
“I’m glad to know it doesn’t smell like rotten eggs or wet dog.”
“No, but when you need more magnesium all I smell is burning hair. I don’t like that one.”
Hopeful that they were going to end their corridor conversation on a better note and she could finally get some sleep, she didn’t miss how serious and even a little sad he got. He often did when they discussed her blood.
“You know how we can make it all stop, right? How we can get them to leave your blood inside your veins where it belongs?”
She nodded as she offered him another sad smile. He might not always say it out loud, but the promise hung there in the air.
“Say the word, Hermione, and this all stops. One bite and it’s over.”
“I don’t think it will ever be over, but thank you.”
Not another word was spoken as he watched her disappear back into her flat. The potion was already moving through her entire body. Soon she wouldn’t be able to keep her eyes open.