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Hermione held the scrap of paper with the hastily written address tightly in her shaking hand as she stood in the back garden of the Burrow, looking around her at every potted plant and wisp of grass, tears blurring her vision.
She cast a glance back toward the house. Maybe she was making a mistake. Maybe she should just go back inside and tell them she changed her mind, that she did indeed want to stay.
No. She shook her head, even though there was no one there to see her. She couldn’t do that. She couldn’t keep living in a house full of grief and sorrow. She couldn’t keep living in a house where she knew Ron wanted something more from her than she could ever give him.
It wasn’t fair to the Weasleys for her to stay. And it wasn’t fair to her either. She needed to get away — away from magic for a while, away from reminders of all the horrors that she and everyone else had been through. And she needed to figure out who she was, now that she wasn’t in school nor fighting Voldemort nor hunting down Horcruxes.
She needed to leave. And she wasn’t the only one who thought so. It’s why Ginny had given her this address.
“I know a Muggle girl, in the village,” she had told Hermione in a low voice one night after everyone else had gone to bed. “Her parents vacation to this small town on the coast. She has a friend there who knows another girl who is looking for a flatmate. It’s nothing fancy, but the rent is cheap. I can have her set it up for you if you’re interested.”
“It sounds perfect,” Hermione had said, and a few days later, Ginny had handed her the scrap of paper with the address.
“My friend says it’s all set,” she’d said. “The girl renting it is expecting you before nightfall.”
Hermione had hugged Ginny with all her strength after that.
“Thank you,” she had breathed. And then she’d had a thought. “Do you know the name of the person I’m going to be living with?”
“Ummm.” Ginny had wrinkled her nose. “Penny, I think she said.”
Penny. A perfectly respectable Muggle name.
It would be hard not being around magic. Even during her summers away from Hogwarts when she was too young to do magic outside school, she was at least able to talk to her parents about it, to tell them of what she could do.
At the thought of her parents, more tears sprung to Hermione’s eyes. It had been more than three months and she still couldn’t find her parents, still had no idea how to reverse the magic she had done, or even if she should.
But that was partly why she needed to do this, wasn’t it? She needed to get away, to get back to who she had been before magic, and figure out where to go from here.
And now it was time. Her new flatmate, Penny, was expecting her, and she could only use magic to get her to the train station in London. From there, she needed to travel like a Muggle. She needed to live life like a Muggle.
Hermione took another moment to look around her, to take in the Burrow, the place that had housed her and kept her safe for so long. She would be back, but she didn’t know when. Only time would tell. And now was the time to go.
Hermione took one last deep breath, took one last glance around her, and then spun in a circle to Apparate to the back alley of the train station where no one would see her.
Her new life was about to begin.
--
The train ride was long, slow and crowded, nothing like the train rides to Hogwarts she would normally be riding in around this time of year. No students in robes. No wands. No owls. No trolley full of chocolate frogs.
No one she knew. No friends to talk to, to confide in, to catch up with.
She pulled a book from her bag, a fiction one that Ginny’s Muggle friend had recommended to her, and tried to read, but it was hard to concentrate. Her mind kept drifting, back to all those train rides to Hogwarts, back to her last few days at the Burrow, back to the Malfoy Manor with Bellatrix Lestrange laughing horribly in her face, curses coming out of her mouth.
Hermione closed her eyes, feeling her body start to shake at the thought.
No, she couldn’t think about that. Not here. Instead, she forced herself to think of the photos she’d seen of the little village she was heading to. She envisioned a tiny cottage overlooking the ocean. She envisioned a plain and ordinary roommate who didn’t realize there was anything in this world beyond what she knew, but definitely not an entire other world of people.
It was going to be good, living a life of a Muggle. She needed it.
“You need it,” she whispered out loud to herself, once again opening her eyes and looking back down at her book. “You need to forget everything else.”
--
Six hours after stepping foot on the train, Hermione stepped back outside into the cold, frosty air. Wind whipped her hair and seemed to go right through the thin coat she had on. She pulled it tighter around her, fighting the urge to grab the wand that was tucked in the pocket of her bag and use it to summon a warming spell.
There were only a few other people still left on the train and milling around the platform. It would be so easy to find a secluded spot and Apparate to where she needed to go.
She shook her head, her ears already hurting from the cold.
“No,” she whispered to herself. “You don’t need magic.”
She shoved a hand into her pocket and pulled out the small map she had gotten from the train station earlier that day. The address Ginny had given her was less than two miles from the train station. She could manage that.
She had been through much, much worse than a cold walk, she reminded herself.
She adjusted her bag over her shoulder. She had thought about bringing more stuff, but this entire quest was about starting fresh, so she had packed only the bare essentials. Enough clothes to last her a week. A few toiletries. Some books. And a photo of her, Harry and Ron.
Anything else she needed, she could get here.
Hermione checked the map one last time, looked around her, and started to walk.
The little village was as quiet as she had expected, and even more so with everyone probably hiding indoors due to the cold weather. The other passengers who had been on the train seemed to have disappear, and even cars were far and few in between.
She pulled her hood over her head as she walked, though it didn’t do all that much to protect her. The wind coming up from the ocean was strong and icy. And in the cracks between the houses, she could see the waves soaring up and crashing down on the rocky shore, the sound getting lost in the rush of the wind in her ears.
She tried to concentrate on the view — on the ocean off to her left, on the cute old cottages, on the broken sidewalks. Even though the sky was a deep gray, threatening a storm at any moment, it really was a beautiful place.
A beautiful, normal place.
A beautiful, normal place for normal, ordinary, non-magic people.
A beautiful, normal place for her new normal, ordinary, non-magical life.
That thought was dancing through Hermione’s mind when the number 1206 on a cute pink cottage caught her eye. She shoved her fingers, numb even under the warmth of her mitten, into her pocket to pull out the paper from Ginny. She’d read it a thousand times since Ginny had given to her, but now that she was here, she needed to be sure.
1206 it read. This was it.
Hermione took a deep breath, and then stepped off the main road on to a cute little cobblestone path that led to a wooden deck.
The cottage had a small garden, though most of the grass had long ago died from the cold and the wind and perhaps other misuse. The deck was old and weathered but looked like so many decks in pictures of Muggle houses that Hermione had seen growing up.
A memory flashed into her mind — pulling up to a big house on the sea as she sat in her parents’ car, her nose pressed to the window, her father grinning at her as he looked back toward her.
“This is going to be such a fun summer, Hermie!” he’d grinned.
Now, Hermione shook her head to clear the image. She didn’t need to be thinking of her parents at a time like this.
She continued up the cobblestone path, each step feeling like it was taking a million times longer than it should have. But she was almost to the deck, almost to the door. Almost ready to know, to meet her new roommate, to step into her new life.
No more magic. No more wizards. Just a normal Muggle girl.
She paused again, for one more quick passage of time, to make sure this was what she wanted.
She took in a breath of the cold, sea air, smelled the salt from the ocean, listened to the rumble of the waves in the distance, let her hand run over the old wooden railing of the porch.
Yes, she was ready.
She took her final steps to the door, lifted her hand and knocked.
--
She stared. The woman on the other side of the door stared back. No, this couldn’t be. No, this was impossible.
It was impossible.
“You’re not Penny,” she blurted out the same moment the woman on the other side of the door said scornfully, “What do you think you’re doing here?”
They went back to staring at each other, Hermione’s mind whirling. This could not be happening. She’d had everything planned. This was her fresh start. But now …
How could this be happening?
Pansy Parkinson was still standing in the door, still glaring at her, but Hermione could see the understanding in her eyes. She closed her own eyes, willing herself to pull it together.
She opened her eyes. Maybe it was still a mistake?
“I was looking for someone named Penny,” she said quietly, as calmly as she could manage. “She’s supposed to be a Muggle.”
Pansy’s lips turned up just a little, a wry look on her face.
“I’m supposed to be getting a flatmate,” she said. “I can’t afford this place on my own.” She glanced behind her, features darkening. “My neighbor said her name was Minnie.”
“Minnie?” Hermione repeated vacantly, and then she sighed. Ginny had said her friend was flighty and not always the best listener.
“Bloody hell,” she muttered, more to herself than to Pansy. She cast a look back the way she had come. The path to the train seemed so much longer from here, the wind so much colder. The station appeared to be empty. She had no idea when the next train was coming.
But she was still a witch, wasn’t she? She could Apparate back to the Burrow. Mrs. Weasley and Ginny and the others would understand. They would help her find some other place.
They would, right?
She ran a hand through her tangled curls, disappointment and frustration running through her. She glanced around again, trying to see if there were any faces in windows. But was it really worth the risk?
She turned back to Pansy. “Do they know you’re a witch?”
Pansy rolled her eyes. “Of course not. Do you think I’m an idiot?”
“No,” Hermione said, being completely honest. She thought Pansy was selfish and manipulative and a bit of a horrible person, but one thing she was not was an idiot.
“They think I’m a Muggle,” she said.
“Okay,” Hermione said. “Would you mind if I come in, use the loo and the Apparate back to the Weasleys from your living room? I don’t want to do magic on your front stoop.”
Pansy frowned. Hermione saw her eyes look down the street, the way of the train station, and she braced for Pansy to tell her to go there and to slam the door in her face. Instead, and to her massive surprise, Pansy stepped back and opened the door a little wider.
“You can come in,” she said. “I made tea and biscuits for my new flatmate.” She made a derisive sound under her breath. “Seems dumb to have them go to waste.”
Hermione nodded, immensely grateful as a fresh gust of wind blew up around that.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Whatever,” Pansy said, but she stepped aside, still holding the door open with her hand so Hermione could enter.
The inside of the cottage looked nothing like Hermione would have expected from a place that was occupied by Pansy Parkinson. It was clean but sparse. The main room held a shabby couch that looked like it had seen better decades maybe two decades before and a small coffee table. She could see a tiny kitchen off to the side with an old wooden table that looked like it might fall apart if one leaned on it too hard. And beyond the living room was a hall with a few doors leading off it. Hermione guessed the two bedrooms and a loo.
Pansy gestured to the couch and to the very empty space on the floor around it.
“Put your stuff there. The loo is back there.” She pointed down the hall. “I’ll be back with the tea.”
“Thank you,” Hermione said again, but Pansy had already disappeared into the kitchen, not even glancing back.
--
The tea was warm and soothing, the biscuits were exceptional, but the rest of the situation was awkward and tense. She and Pansy sat beside each other, no other chairs in the room, munching on the food.
Hermione’s mind kept going to what was going to happen when she arrived back at the Burrow, and what was going to happen after that. Maybe she was never meant to break away?
“So why are you here?” Pansy asked suddenly, breaking the silence. Hermione turned to look at her, forehead burrowed.
“I was supposed to be meeting who I thought would be my Muggle flatmate,” she said. She wanted to add, “Like I said before,” but didn’t. Pansy was doing her a favor letting her come in and eat her food she had made.
“No, I got that part, Granger,” Pansy said, but even though her words sounded like the mocking girl she had been at Hogwarts, her tone almost seemed friendly. It was almost disconcerting. “I meant, why are you here looking for a flatmate anyway?”
“Oh,” Hermione said, not sure she wanted to share this information with Pansy Parkinson of all people. But again, she reminded herself that Pansy didn’t have to let her in, and at this point, did it really matter who she told? Or even if she blasted it in the Daily Prophet?
She shrugged, picking at her biscuit as she thought of a way to explain.
“I just … needed a change,” she finally said. “A lot of … stuff happened this past year, and I just … I thought maybe getting away from magic for a while would be good for me.” She shrugged. “I’m sure it doesn’t make sense to you.”
“Why would it not make sense to me?” Pansy asked, and she almost sounded a little insulted. “I’m here pretending to be a Muggle, aren’t I?”
Hermione put down her biscuit, suddenly intensely curious. “Can I ask you why you’re here?” she said slowly. “It’s not exactly where I’d think someone like you would end up.”
“Someone like me?” Pansy repeated, an eyebrow raising.
Hermione felt herself flushing, waiting for the ugly comments to come from Pansy’s lips.
“Rich,” she finally said. “Someone rich.”
“My parents were rich,” Pansy said. “Not me.”
Hermione studied her. Pansy’s face had hardened but Hermione had caught the way she had described them — were not are.
“Okay,” she said simply. “So why are you here?”
Pansy looked away from Hermione, over at the doorway into her tiny kitchen. “Maybe I needed to get away, too.”
She didn’t provide any more information, and Hermione didn’t want to ask. All of this was too awkward to start with.
She found herself starting to climb to her feet. Pansy narrowed her eyes at her.
“I don’t want to impose on you any longer,” Hermione said. “I’ll just go. Leave you alone.”
“No,” Pansy said.
“No?”
“What if you don’t go?”
“Why wouldn’t I go?” Hermione said, a slight feeling of dread forming in the pit of her stomach. Was this a trap? But that was impossible, wasn’t it? Would Ginny have set her up?
Ginny didn’t know this was Pansy, Hermione reminded herself.
Pansy scowled and looked away from Hermione, but when she spoke, her words came out rushed.
“Look,” she said. “I don’t have enough Muggle money to afford this place, and I can’t go back home. You came here looking for a flatmate and ready to pay. So why don’t you just stay? For a month or whatever. Until you find another place and I find another flatmate.”
Hermione opened her mouth to protest, but Pansy cut her off.
“You really want to go back to the Burrow?” she said. “Back to the Wizarding World and everyone knowing who you are?”
Hermione felt her shoulders slump. “No,” she said.
“Then stay.”
Hermione shook her head. “Are you seriously asking me to be your flatmate? Pansy Parkinson and Hermione Granger? We hate each other.”
“We’re not kids anymore.”
“Three months ago you wanted to sacrifice one of my best friends to Voldemort.”
Something flickered over Pansy’s face. She looked almost pained.
“Look,” she said. “We don’t have to become best friends. We don’t even have to interact. We don’t have to like each other. But you don’t want to go back, and neither do I, so maybe right now, for this one moment, we are the best option each other has.”
She finished, her eyes focused on Hermione’s. Hermione grit her teeth, wanting to tell Pansy she was wrong, that she had many best options that did not include her, but she didn’t. She couldn’t.
She didn’t want to lie. Not because it was a lie or because it was Pansy, but deep inside, she knew Pansy was right.
She didn’t want to go back.
“Fine,” she managed, her teeth still gritted. “I’ll stay.”
“Great,” Pansy said. She pointed down the hall. “Your room’s on the left. Enjoy.”
--
It was less awkward than Hermione thought it would be. It wasn’t wonderful or the best time she had ever had, but the tension that she would have expected from living with someone who had essentially been her main rival was almost non-existent.
Pansy was never rude to her. She didn’t make snarky comments. She didn’t insult her hair or her clothes or anything else about her. Hermione kept waiting for her too, kept spending the first few weeks feeling like she was walking on eggshells, waiting to do something that would inevitably set Pansy off, but nothing happened.
Instead, they almost settled into a sort of routine. They took turns buying the groceries and cooking food — the Muggle way. Even around each other. They had both gone into this with the intention to live as Muggles and they both, without speaking to each other about it, seemed to decide that’s what they wanted to do.
So they ate together, they shared a bathroom, sometimes they even shared the couch. Most of the time Hermione read a book while Pansy made faces at the Muggle television shows.
It was comfortable. Almost nice. Which made it weird, but weird in a way that Hermione was okay with, and eventually she realized that at some point she had stopped worrying about something going wrong.
“Do you feel up to doing something tonight?” Pansy asked.
It was another Friday night, and the two of them were in their usual spots on the couch, dinner already eaten and the dishes washed and stacked in the bin to dry.
Hermione glanced out the window, into the dark gray world, and then back at Pansy.
“You want to go out?”
“There’s that pub downtown. I was thinking maybe we should try it out.”
Hermione knew exactly where she meant. There was only one pub in the very small downtown of the very tiny little town they were now living in. She hadn’t really had any desire to go there, but she had come to this place with the intention to live like a Muggle, to try and find out who she was without magic. Could she really say she was doing that by staying inside all the time? She’d barely even gone for walks. At most, she had gone to the grocery store and to the clothing store to get a few more pieces of Muggle clothes.
She found herself nodding before she had finished even deciding she wanted to go.
“That’s sounds good,” she said. Beside her, Pansy’s face broke into a smile — a real smile. Not the smirky one she used to wear at Hogwarts but a genuine smile. It looked nice on her. Really nice.
Hermione shook her head and forced herself to stand up.
“I don’t really have anything appropriate for a night out, but I’ll go get ready.”
Pansy was standing up too. “I have something you can borrow,” she said. “It’ll look gorgeous on you.”
Hermione followed Pansy down the hall to her room. She hadn’t been inside it before, but she cast her eyes around. Pansy’s room had a full-size bed, the same as her own room, but Pansy’s comforter was a pale green. She had a matching chair in the corner and a little table beside the bed that was full of her things — a glass of water, a pair of sunglasses, her wand.
Opposite her bed lay her two suitcases still full of things she hadn’t yet unpacked. Pansy headed over to them now, bending down and tossing things aside until she stood back up, a sleek black halter top in her hands.
“This will really set off your curves,” she said, handing it over. “Just couple it with a pair of jeans.”
Hermione took the shirt from Pansy. For the briefest moment, their fingers touched as the cloth slid from one to the other. Hermione stepped back quickly, her heart pounding fast at the unexpected encounter.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll be ready soon.”
Pansy nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Me too.”
--
The Northender Pub, the only pub in probably fifty miles of their tiny little town, was not what one would call happening, but it was more crowded than Hermione expected. About twenty or so people were gathered in the place — an old, weathered bar that felt almost charming. A huge fireplace with a roaring fire set off one end of the pub, and little wooden tables and bar stools filled the rest of the place.
A group of teenagers sat together by the fireplace, chattering loudly, while a few guys sat at a table closer to the window and a couple, probably married, ate together at a separate table.
Pansy and Hermione headed straight to the bar, taking a seat in front of the barkeep, a cute guy who looked to be in his late twenties.
“What will you have?” he asked, his eyes drifting down to Hermione’s chest and then back up to her face.
She felt herself flush and was glad the lighting in here was low.
“Whatever’s on tap,” Pansy answered for both of them. “Local if you have something.”
“You got it,” the barkeep said, his eyes dropping back to Hermione’s chest before he turned away and grabbed two pint glasses from a cabinet under the sink.
Pansy grinned at her once he had wondered off to get their beers.
“Someone has a fan,” she said.
“Someone is sniffing up the wrong tree,” Hermione muttered.
Pansy laughed slightly, and the sound made Hermione’s eyes widen. She tried to remember if she’d ever heard Pansy laugh before — a real laugh, not one where she was mocking people. She liked the sound of her real laugh.
“How about you?” Hermione said, wondering if she was treading into territory she shouldn’t be going. Pansy had asked her to come get out of the house with her, not interrogate her on personal matters. Personal matters which neither one of them had talked about since Hermione moved in, yet here she was. “Anyone special in your life?”
Pansy arched an eyebrow, but she was saved from answering by the barkeep sliding the beers across the bar top to them.
“Enjoy, ladies,” he said, winking at Hermione, and Pansy laughed again.
Hermione reached out for her beer, sniffing it. She realized Pansy was holding her glass alight, waiting for her, and she tilted her own glass toward Pansy, clicking them together.
“To getting out of the house finally,” Pansy said.
“To the oddest flatmates ever,” Hermione said.
“Here, here,” Pansy said, as they both took a drink.
The beer was good and went down easily, and Hermione decided to not bring up her question again. It was intrusive, and there was no need to ruin what could be a decent evening. Or worse, ruin what was turning out to be a decent living situation. It wasn’t what she was wanted, but she was making it work, and she wasn’t ready to end it yet, a thought that both surprised her but also didn’t.
She figured Pansy had either forgotten she’d asked or was also ignoring it until she spoke.
“He dumped me,” Pansy said out of nowhere. Her voice was low, practically a whisper in the loud ambiance of the bar, but Hermione heard her, the words hitting her sharply, like Pansy had pointed a spell in her direction. “Draco,” she clarified, though Hermione didn’t need the clarification.
“I’m sorry,” Hermione said immediately, because that is what you say when someone confesses something like this, even if she thought the two of them made an awful pair.
“I’m not,” Pansy said.
“You’re not?” Hermione put her beer down, not expecting that.
Pansy’s lips tilted up in something akin to a smile. “I did so many things for him that I never should have done,” she said. “Said so many things I didn’t mean. Made myself believe I did mean them. I thought I was so cool. I was just a dumb little girl.”
Hermione didn’t know what to say to that, but Pansy seemed to be done talking. She, too, took a sip of her beer.
She turned to Hermione after a few swallows. “What about you and Weasley? I thought you two were the real deal.”
“I thought that for a little bit,” Hermione said. Before she realized that Ron wasn’t the Weasley she was really interested in. “But I don’t think I’m really into boys all that much.”
She hadn’t meant to say that. She hadn’t said it to anyone. She’d barely even said it to herself. But there it was, spilling from her mouth and out in the world.
“Huh,” Pansy said, but the way she said it wasn’t mean or snarky or anything how Hermione would have expected Pansy to react. In fact, it almost felt kind of nice. Kind. “That’s interesting.”
“Not that it really matters right now.” Why was she still talking? But the words kept coming from Hermione’s mouth. “I’m very much single.”
Pansy laughed. “Yeah,” she said. “Same here.”
“Does anyone know you’re here?” Again, the words pouring out of Hermione’s mouth, things just a couple hours ago she wouldn’t have dared to have ever say out loud, but sitting here beside Pansy, in the loud and warm pub, safely confessing their secrets over a Muggle alcoholic beverage, she couldn’t seem to be able to help herself.
Pansy shook her head. “No,” she said. “But I didn’t want anyone to know.”
“Not even …” Hermione closed her mouth, second-guessing herself with this one.
“Even my parents?” Pansy filled in for her, her eyebrows raising, and Hermione shrugged.
“I shouldn’t have asked,” she said, setting her beer down. Maybe she needed to stop sipping it and start thinking more.
“I doubt they care where I am,” Pansy said. She didn’t say more, but she did signal for the barkeep to come their way. “Fill us up,” she told him with a smile, and he gave them that same cocky smile before walking away.
“I’m sorry,” Hermione said, when he’d walked away. “About your parents.”
“Don’t be,” Pansy said, and her hand on the bar inched closer to Hermione’s. Hermione stared at it as Pansy added. “I’m not”
--
It was past midnight as they stumbled along the streets to their house. It was cold out. Freezing really. The wind blew sharp and hard from the ocean through the trees, almost directly into their bodies, quickly bringing the world back into focus after a night of warm alcohol and pleasant conversation.
Hermione and Pansy clung to each other as they walked, trying anything to brace against the cold. Their heads bent against the wind, pressed together, and their bodies were even closer.
It felt like forever before they finally stumbled up the steps of the front porch, their numb fingers trying desperately to open the door.
“This is when I miss magic,” Hermione moaned, but then she heard a click and the give of the door, and the knob twisted in her hand, and the two of them stumbled through, hurriedly closing it behind them.
The cottage was gloriously warm, and they stood there, their backs against the door, still feeling the chill of the outside.
They were still so close together. Almost too close. Hermione turned her head and there was Pansy, her face so close to hers their noses were almost touching.
They stared at each other. Hermione could feel it down to the marrow in her bones. She could feel it in the blood rushing through her body. She felt warm, too warm, as they stood there, arousal souring through her.
Her brain struggled to think, to remind her body of who this was, of what this girl had done to her all through Hogwarts, but her body didn’t care, and neither did the part of her who had spent the past few weeks with Pansy Parkinson, pretending they were just normal Muggle girls rooming together in a small town.
Hermione felt herself leaning in, her lungs no longer working, her eyes wide. If Pansy didn’t want this …
But Pansy was leaning in, too, and then their lips were kissing. Not just a gentle peck, but pressed together hard, intense, almost bordering on rough.
Hermione had never kissed a woman before, though she had thought of it many times. Snogging Pansy, right there in the sitting room of their little cottage near the edge of the sea, she never wanted to stop.
She didn’t remember consciously choosing to move, to put one foot in front of the other, or to do anything other than keep her lips and her tongue moving around Pansy’s mouth, tasting her, touching her, but somehow they made it from the living room back to Pansy’s bedroom, and then they were on the bed together, fingers scrabbling to unhook buttons and pull down zippers and toss pieces of cloth to the side. And then she was lying on Pansy’s bed, in only her brassiere and her knickers, and Pansy was perched over her hips, in a bright green bra and a pair of jeans with the button open and the zipper pulled down, and Hermione had never wanted anything more.
She moaned, her body already hot with desire, her lips sticky with the taste of Pansy’s. On the tip of her tongue, she could taste the tang of Pansy’s lipstick.
Pansy looked down at her, their eyes boring into each other.
“If we do this,” Pansy said, and Hermione’s heart leapt at the use of the word if. “It doesn’t have to be anything more than what it is.”
“Just one night,” Hermione answered. “Blowing off steam.”
“Getting a good fuck.”
A good fuck. The words echoed in Hermione’s mind. She nodded.
“It doesn’t have to mean anything.” She coughed, shaking her head. “It won’t mean anything,” she clarified.
Pansy smiled, and her eyes moved from Hermione’s, dropping down to her chest, heaving in her bra and then down to her lace knickers with the little hearts on them.
“Then let’s get started,” Pansy said.
She leaned down once again, taking Hermione’s lips in hers, but this kiss was short-lived. Pansy pulled back, placing her hands on Hermione’s ribcage and then sliding up, her cool fingers slipping under Hermione’s bra, kneading her flesh.
Hermione groaned, Pansy’s fingers feeling like such a sharp contrast to the searing heat of her own flesh.
Her thumbs rubbed over Hermione’s nipples, and Hermione groaned again, trying to buck her hips, wanting Pansy to turn around, to touch her where the heat was really gathering. She already knew she was dripping, and all she wanted was Pansy’s fingers inside her, fucking her in all the right places.
Pansy dropped her head, her mouth right beside Hermione’s ear.
“Be patient,” she said. “I’ll get there.”
That felt like an impossible ask, but then Pansy’s fingers were moving, reaching behind Hermione to unclasp her bra, freeing her breasts from the material, and then Pansy was taking one into her mouth, sucking on her nipple as the fingers of her hand pinched the nipple of the other breast.
Hermione lifted her own hands, clutching at Pansy before finding the clasp of Pansy’s bra, unhooking it.
Pansy’s mouth came off Hermione’s breast with a pop as she sat back, letting her bra drop down her arms.
Hermione stared.
Pansy’s breasts were perfect. Pale and gorgeous. Hermione reached out, sliding her fingers over the taut skin, and Pansy bent back down, taking Hermione’s other breast into her mouth, lavishing all the attention on it that she could.
Hermione concentrated on Pansy, on touching those perfect breasts, on sliding her fingers over the cute little nipples, but the feelings coming from her own chest were going straight to her core, making her whimper with desire as Pansy sucked and kissed and nipped and tweaked.
And then Pansy broke away from Hermione’s touch, suddenly moving out of Hermione’s grasp, her lips trailing down Hermione’s belly.
Hermione moaned, her fingers latching into Pansy’s dark hair, tightening around the strands.
Pansy hovered over Hermione’s lace knickers. Hermione could feel her warm breath against her, and she shuddered. And then Pansy leaned closer, her lips just touching the cloth, gentle little kisses on her knickers, moving from the hem and dropping until she was kissing the cloth over Hermione’s clit and then down further, and Hermione’s fingers gripped harder on to Pansy’s hair, barely even aware of what exactly she was doing.
“You’re so wet for me,” Pansy murmured into Hermione’s knickers, the sound vibrating through Hermione’s whole body.
Pansy lifted a finger, stroking Hermione along the path where her lips had just tread, but pressing harder, causing Hermione to moan, her body already shaking slightly.
“I want to taste you,” Pansy said. Her fingers paused on their journey. “Can I taste you?”
“Merlin, yes,” Hermione said immediately, the words coming out almost like a mangled cry. Her body felt on fire, desire coursing through her, and all she wanted was to shove Pansy’s head between her legs.
But Pansy wasn’t moving. She was staring at Hermione.
“I think there is something this needs,” she said.
“Wha …?” Hermione couldn’t even get the words out before Pansy had disappeared from the bed, leaving Hermione lying there, flushed, aroused, her legs spread wide, her knickers practically soaked.
She felt empty, aching, her body unsatisfied.
And then Pansy reappeared. She held up her right hand.
Her wand.
Hermione blinked at her, for a moment lost in the arousal seeping through her body, the heat and the tension of the moment.
“Only if you’re okay with it,” Pansy said, and again Hermione blinked, until Pansy’s words seeped through the cloud of desire surrounding her and she nodded, ready for whatever Pansy wanted to give her.
“Just this once,” Pansy said quickly, but Hermione didn’t care if she said she wanted to run down the street waving her wand. She just needed Pansy, and this moment, in whatever way Pansy wanted to give it to her.
“Yes,” she managed to say, her throat feeling dry, the words feeling stuck in her throat, but mercifully, Pansy smiled and lifted her wand higher before pointed it directly between Hermione’s legs.
Hermione heard Pansy murmur some words, and then she screamed. A bolt of pleasure had suddenly raced through her body, and she knew Pansy had turned her wand into a magical dildo.
Sure enough, a moment later, Hermione felt Pansy’s wand slide between her legs and begin to move, easing in and out of her, growing and ebbing in size to fill the space, and Hermione groaned as the wand worked her body, sliding inside of her to touch places she didn’t even know needed touching.
“That’s it,” Hermione heard Pansy whisper, and then Pansy’s hands were on Hermione’s legs, moving up her thighs, spreading her wider, letting the wand slip even deeper inside her.
Hermione’s breath caught in her throat, her body on fire, feeling herself drawn towards the peak of pleasure but not quite there.
“More,” she managed to rasp, her hands curling into the sheets of the bed, her back arching, trying to get the wand to do what she needed, but she needed more than a wand, and then she felt it. Pansy’s fingers, sliding over her heated flesh, rubbing against her clit, and that was all it took.
Hermione screamed, her body shuddering uncontrollably as her pleasure peaked, crescendoed, sending her shattering around the wand and Pansy’s fingers.
But Pansy’s fingers didn’t leave their spot against her, and she felt them working her as waves of pleasure continued to wrack her body, leaving her writhing and breathless, until finally Pansy slid both the wand and her fingers back out of Hermione’s body and then scooted up beside her, watching her, a big grin on her face.
“A little bit of magic,” she said with a chuckle, and Hermione was hit with the urge to kiss her, to wrap her fists in that dark hair and pull their bodies together, but somehow that felt too intimate for the moment, even with what had just happened.
Instead she smiled. “My turn now.”
Pansy laughed. “I can’t wait.”
--
Hermione couldn’t sleep that night. Her body was exhausted, pleasantly sated, but her mind was running around at top speed.
What she had just done? What had they just done? A one-night stand with Pansy Parkinson? A one-night stand with her flatmate? A flatmate who she lived with and to see every day and who she had been developing a good relationship with, or so she had thought, up until now.
But there was more to it than that, and the awareness of that was what was really keeping her awake. She couldn’t stop reliving it — Pansy’s wand and her fingers between her legs, and then later, her mouth. She remembered how it felt, having Pansy’s tongue pressed against her, almost dancing softly against her until it became rougher, faster. Hermione had never had orgasms like that before. She almost felt like she had left her body, pleasure the only thing she had been chasing.
And then when it was her turn. She hadn’t told Pansy she’d not had much practice at this. She’d had sex, of course, and she had masturbated like a good witch who needs to try her hand at her skills, but she had never been with someone like Pansy.
But when Pansy had come around her fingers, when her cry had echoed around Hermione’s head while her muscles clenched around Hermione’s hand, her arousal drenching Hermione and the sheets below them, it had almost felt like another kind of magic. She couldn’t believe she was the one who had caused Pansy to make those noises, and she wanted her to make them again.
But they’d said just once.
They were flatmates. Not even friends. Bloody hell, they had been practically enemies just a few months before. Just because she was different now. Or because Hermione knew her better. Besides what did Hermione think was going to happen? They’d just go on fucking each other until one of them decided to return to their real lives and they would pretend none of this ever happened?
Hermione’s eyes widened as the thought passed through her mind. It wasn’t exactly the worst idea. But would Pansy think so? Maybe she needed to ask.
--
Pansy stumbled out of her room just a bit past nine in the morning. Her dark hair was mussed, her skin showing sides of the edges of blankets. She hadn’t bothered to put her nightclothes back on and instead was just wearing a small shirt that barely covered her breasts and a pair of green knickers. Hermione found her cheeks growing warm as she looked at her and had to turn away, pretending to fiddle with the teapot.
“Tea?” she asked over her shoulder. She knew Pansy always drank a glass of earl gray in the mornings.
“That’d be delightful,” Pansy said. Hermione could almost feel her eyes on her, watching her every move. She felt her face grow even warmer.
“You’re up early,” Pansy said.
Hermione turned. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“Really?” Pansy said. “I slept like the dead.”
“I was just up … thinking,” Hermione started.
“About?”
“About what happened?”
“About how it shouldn’t have happened?” Pansy quirked a brow as Hermione faltered at her words. She heard the whistle of the teapot and turned to fill a mug for Pansy.
“I … ermmmm … I thought …. I …” She handed Pansy the mug, trying desperately to form words. She felt like she was back in Hogwarts on her first day of her first year, trying to figure out how to fit in.
“I had a nice time,” Pansy said, breaking through Hermione’s stutterings.
She looked up at her. “You did?”
“Did you not?”
“No, I really did.”
“Okay,” Pansy said. “Then I don’t think we need to regret anything. We had fun. We relieved some stress.”
“I don’t regret it,” Hermione said quickly.
“Good,” Pansy said. She slid out of her chair and made her way to the toaster, grabbing a pack of bread.
“I rather thought it would be nice to do it again.”
There. The words had escaped.
Pansy turned.
“What?”
“You heard me,” Hermione said, not knowing where she suddenly got the gumption, but she knew by the look on Pansy’s face that she had heard. And she also knew that she was interested.
“You want to do this again?”
“Sure,” Hermione said. “Why not? We’re flatmates. It was fun.”
“How many times do you want to do it again?”
Hermione blinked. “What?”
Pansy moved closer.
“How often?”
“Are we … erm ... making rules?”
Pansy stopped next to Hermione. They were practically touching. She reached out, slid a hand under the nightdress Hermione was wearing and then moved her hand down until she was cupping between Hermione’s legs.
Hermione groaned, the sound loud and needy and desperate.
“You want to go again right now?” Pansy asked, like her fingers were groping Hermione’s body already. Her index finger twirled around Hermione’s clit, and Hermione whimpered.
“Fuck me,” she managed to whisper, just before one of Pansy’s fingers slid inside her, and Hermione’s knees buckled, sure this was going to be the death of her.
--
It became their thing. No more nights where Hermione read her books and Pansy sat by the fire. Instead, they fucked. In Pansy’s room, in Hermione’s. In the kitchen, on the couch, in the bathroom.
Sometimes they did something first. Went to the pub in their town. Braved the snow for a walk. Took a warm thermos of hot chocolate down to the ocean and shivered as the wind blasted them in the face and the cold spray landed on their faces. They’d hurry home after that, laughing and shaking, and find warmth under an old blanket as they brought each other to pleasure more times than Hermione could keep track of.
It was fun. It was amazing. It was everything.
It couldn’t last.
It had been almost three months, and that was the constant thought in Hermione’s head. It couldn’t last.
It was what she was thinking now, sitting at the kitchen table, chewing mindlessly on a tart she and Pansy had made the evening before. Pansy had gone into town, to interview for a job. They’d both come on this adventure, it turned out, with Muggle money in their pockets, but not enough to last forever. They needed jobs — or to return home. They needed to get on with their lives.
It was what had brought Hermione here in the first place, though, wasn’t it? A getaway from her life for a few months? She wasn’t even sure how her friends were or what they were doing. They had promised to give her space, to not contact her unless it were an emergency, and they had kept their word.
But now what? Time was ticking, and she needed to make a decision.
She was still sitting at the kitchen table, still holding part of a tart in her hand, staring blankly ahead of her, when the front door opened and Pansy appeared.
“What’s going on?”
Hermione blinked as the sound of Pansy’s voice penetrated her thoughts, and she started as she realized where she was.
“What time is it?” she asked, trying to acclimate herself.
“Just past two.” Pansy was looking at her strangely. “Are you feeling well?”
Hermione shook her head, about to say she was fine, but then she paused. If anyone would understand, wasn’t it Pansy?
“I don’t know,” she finally admitted. “This … coming here … it wasn’t what I thought it would be.”
Pansy pulled out the chair across from her and slid into it, grabbing one of the uneaten tarts and beginning to pull little pieces off, popping them into her mouth.
Hermione watched her, watched her eyes as she stared back at Hermione, watched her mouth as she chewed, her fingers as she played with her food. Though of her fingers as they would trace down Hermione’s body in the dark of night or the bright of day. How they would slip inside her and pull out the most erotic noises, like she was reaching inside Hermione to her deepest self.
She shook her head again to clear her thoughts.
“What did you think it would be like then?” Pansy said. “A Muggle flatmate …?”
“Yeah,” Hermione said. “A Muggle flatmate. A mate, I hoped. But surface level, you know? Someone who didn’t know all the parts of me.”
“The magical parts,” Pansy said.
“Yes,” Hermione said. “But the other parts too.”
“Tell me.”
Hermione frowned. “You know what parts.”
“Maybe I do.” Pansy shrugged. “But you should still say them out loud.”
Hermione looked at her. She didn’t want to say them out loud. Wasn’t that the real reason she had come here? To never have to say them? So no one around her would know and look at her with pity in their eyes because they also knew?
She turned her wrist over and stretched it across the table for Pansy to see. The once angry red scar was gone but the mark was still there.
Pansy lifted a finger, touched it gently, like it was something fragile.
Maybe it was.
“Bellatrix left it when she cursed me,” Hermione whispered. She wasn’t sure Pansy could even hear her, but she had resumed staring at Hermione’s face. “Before … before I came here, I relived it every night. Every time I closed my eyes. Her shrieks. The pain. The fear. The helplessness. I couldn’t make it go away.”
“So you came here,” Pansy said.
“I ran here,” Hermione corrected. “I needed to get away. I thought if I went back … if I went back to the Muggle world and had nothing to do with magic … I thought maybe she couldn’t touch me here.”
“Did it work?”
“I haven’t had a nightmare in sixteen days,” Hermione said. “And before that, it was ten.”
“Is that good?” Pansy said.
Hermione pulled her arm back so she was now staring down at her scar.
“I thought it was,” she said. “But am I really ready to leave magic behind forever? Do I really want to live like a Muggle because I’m scared of some bad dreams and the way people might look at me if they knew?”
“Only you can answer that,” Pansy said.
Hermione looked away from her scar, met Pansy’s eyes. “But there are other things now I would be leaving,” she said. “And I don’t know if I can.”
Pansy met her eyes. They stared at each other, but neither saying anything. Hermione wasn’t sure what she wanted her to say. That they could go back together. That they could stay here forever. That maybe it was best they left it like this, just a small interlude in their lives.
“Maybe you don’t have to decide today,” Pansy said, and Hermione’s heart suck. Whatever she was hoping for her to say, that wasn’t it.
“But I need to decide soon,” Hermione said. “If I stay, I need to get a job.”
“Maybe decide tomorrow,” Pansy said.
“How is tomorrow better than today?” Her voice came out sharper than she meant it to. She could feel the frustration building. Frustration that Pansy wasn’t saying what she wanted her to say.
But then Pansy had scooted her chair over next to Hermione and now she was leaning in, her forehead resting against Hermione’s as she trailed a finger over her lips.
Hermione felt her body sag. How could she be frustrated when Pansy was touching her?
“Whatever you decide,” Pansy said, and her voice was like a whisper over Hermione’s skin. “I just want one more night of this.”
There it was. The burst of arousal in Hermione’s gut. The same burst between her legs.
She let Pansy take her right there, peeling off her clothes and laying her down on the kitchen floor, fucking her with her tongue and her fingers until Hermione could barely remember her own name, let alone her problems.
But somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew this couldn’t last. And she knew if she thought about it, that the pain of the knowledge might be one step too far.
--
A soft shake of her arm woke Hermione early the next morning. She blinked sleepily at the sunlight pouring in the living room window and tried to remember where she was and what had happened.
She rubbed her eyes, letting her mind awaken a little more, finally realizing she must have fallen asleep on the couch the night before after she and Pansy had made their way there from the kitchen. She was still naked under one of their warm blankets, and her body had the familiar pleasant ache it always seemed to have lately.
Pansy rubbed her arm again, and Hermione lowered her hands from her face, having almost forgotten she was there. She was almost too close, her face right next to Hermione’s.
“Come on,” she said. “Get dressed.”
“Get dressed?” Hermione echoed.
“Dressed,” Pansy repeated. “There’s something I want you to see.”
She tugged on Hermione’s arm, not hard but enough for Hermione to know she was serious. She managed to get herself to her feet, the blanket dropping to the floor, pooling by her feet.
Pansy grinned, her eyes raking over Hermione’s body, but she didn’t try to touch her. Instead, she just repeated, “Go. Get dressed. I love the view like this, but our neighbors probably won’t.”
Hermione felt herself flushing but she stepped over Pansy, who was kneeling on the ground, letting her have one last look before she disappeared into her own room. She wasn’t sure what Pansy wanted, but her flatmate — her flatmate? Was that all Pansy really was? Hermione shook her head before she could get lost in that thought — was dressed in warm trousers and a hoodie, so she pulled similar items from her drawers, getting herself ready before making her way back down the hall.
Pansy was by the door, pulling on Muggle mittens and a scarf and a hat. She already was wearing her winter jacket.
Hermione did the same and then followed Pansy out the door. She braced herself for a gust of wind, a blast of cool air, but what hit her face instead was the rays of the sun. She tilted her head, looking up at blue skies above her, the gray and the fog gone for the moment.
She turned around to see the ocean, sparkling blue down the cliff behind their house.
“I thought we could go walk along the beach,” Pansy said, watching Hermione look around her. “You can’t leave here without doing that at least once.”
Hermione turned her eyes away from the ocean.
“Okay,” she said, and then was surprised again when Pansy held out a mitten-covered hand to her. She took it, wrapping her own hand around Pansy’s, and then they turned and headed down the streets that would leave them to the beach.
Their hands gripped each other as they walked, their shoulders bumping into each other. It felt nice, Hermione realized, but more than that, it felt normal. Like they were just two women in love with each other and they wanted the whole world to know.
The Muggle world and Hermione realized, with a gasp that almost took her breathe away, the magical world.
Pansy glanced at her, and Hermione saw worry across her face.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Hermione nodded. “I just realized something is all.”
“Okay,” Pansy said. She paused, like maybe she was going to ask Hermione to share, but she didn’t, and Hermione wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed.
“I got the job,” Pansy said suddenly as they walked. They were almost to where the rocky shore met the gravel road that wound behind their house and all the other houses on their street.
Hermione felt her heart lurch inside of her.
“That’s great,” she found herself saying.
“Yeah,” Pansy said. “It is.”
“So you’re staying then.” Hermione tried to keep her voice casual. There was no reason for it not to be. She knew Pansy was looking. She knew this had always been the most likely outcome.
And she realized she knew what her own decision was too. She didn’t know when she had made it, or even if she ever consciously had, but she knew what she needed to go.
She kept her hand in Pansy’s, but she turned her head, looking out at the sea, where the waves were tumbling over each other. It was beautiful here. It was a place that maybe, back when she was a child, she would have come with her mother too and imagined she could stay. It was a place that maybe could have been her life, if her life hadn’t gone the way it had.
But this wasn’t her life anymore. No matter how beautiful it was.
Tears blurred her vision as they walked, their feet now leaving the gravel and moving over the rough sand toward the water’s edge.
She wanted to stay. She wanted this to be her life. But she couldn’t hide forever. She had to face her fears. She had to go back.
They stopped along the water’s edge, watching the water rush toward them but not close enough to get their shoes wet. It felt like her relationship with Pansy. Right there. All she had to do was take one more step, make one different decision. But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. Because she didn’t belong to the water. She didn’t belong here.
She turned her head to look at Pansy and found her staring at Hermione, her eyes wide and intense, her face soft, gentle. A look Hermione had gotten to see so much more of during her time here.
She licked her lips and tasted something salty. She didn’t realize she had started crying, but the tears were dripping down her face. Pansy reached out her other hand, the one not in Hermione’s grip, and dragged her cotton mitten down Hermione’s cheek.
“I can’t stay here,” Hermione whispered, and her voice broke on the last work, a choked sob echoing out of her body. She wanted to stay. She wished she could stay.
She felt more tears pour down her cheeks, the sound of her cries muffled by the roar of the ocean.
“I told them no,” Pansy said.
It took a moment for her words to reach Hermione. She blinked, trying to understand.
“You told them no?”
“The job,” Pansy said. “I told them no.”
“But why would you do that? I thought you wanted to work there.”
“I did.”
Hermione wiped her eyes with her free hand, still not understanding. Maybe her tears were affecting her mind.
“I don’t understand then,” she said.
Pansy squeezed her hand. “I want to go back with you,” she said. “I don’t want to stay here and work here when you aren’t. I want to go where you go.” She paused, her voice dropping slightly. “If you’re okay with that?”
Hermione stared at her, the words coming too fast for her brain to catch up.
“You want to go back with me?”
“I do.”
“Back to the magical world?”
“Yes.”
“Where people would know we’re together?”
Pansy laughed. “Yes. But only if it’s okay with you.”
“If it’s okay with me?”
“Is it okay with you?”
Hermione realized she was crying again, but this time the tears were different. She nodded, and kept nodding, a grin making its way across her face.
“Yes!” she said. “Yes! That’s okay with me!”
And then she closed the distance between them, pressing her lips to Pansy’s, pressing her body to Pansy’s, giving her the taste of her, the touch of her, her body, her soul, her heart, right there on the coast of England, and Pansy gave the same right back to her.
--
They stood in the living room of their little cottage, surrounded by the suitcases and a few other odds and ends they’d brought with them or had collected during their stay. It had been six months — six months of a new life, six months of being away — and it had been some of the best months of Hermione’s life.
But what was even better was knowing that more best months were yet to come. She had sent a message to Ginny to tell her she was coming back but that she was getting a flat in the city. She hadn’t told her, or anyone, about Pansy yet, but she wasn’t worried. She knew in her heart it was going to be okay.
She looked around the cottage one last time, at the couch where they had cuddled and the kitchen table where they had eaten and the rug on the floor in front of the fireplace where they had made love so many times.
So many memories, but it was time to go make new memories someplace else.
She felt a shift beside her and saw Pansy holding out her hand. She placed her own in Pansy’s, felt the warmth of their skin press together.
“Ready?” Pansy asked her.
“More than ready,” Hermione said.
Pansy squeezed her hand, and then in unison, they both spun around, Apparating away from their Muggle lives and into a future together.