The Potion Trapped Me With My Star Student and My Sworn Enemy

One moment, the Headmaster’s office was a familiar cage of spinning silver instruments and Dumbledore’s lingering ghost. The next, it was a vortex of violent green light and screaming pressure. The cursed locket we’d been attempting to neutralize didn’t just resist the potion; it devoured it, spat it back, and the world fractured. There was a sickening, gut-wrenching pull behind my navel, a brutal side-along Apparition I hadn’t consented to, and then a bone-jarring impact against cold stone.

I landed on my hands and knees, the air knocked from my lungs. The sharp scent of ozone and ancient dust filled my nostrils. For a full ten seconds, the only sound was Potter’s groan somewhere to my left and Granger’s sharp, gasping breaths to my right.

Of all the infernal, damnable luck.

I pushed myself to my feet, my long-suffering robes catching on the rough-hewn floor. My wand was still in my hand, a small mercy. A quick, nonverbal spell sent a globe of cool white light to the ceiling, illuminating our prison. We were in a circular chamber, its walls seamless, constructed from a dark, unsettling stone that seemed to drink the light. There were no doors. No windows. Just the three of us, trapped.

My fury was a physical thing, a hot spike behind my ribs. To be stuck anywhere with Potter was a trial. His very existence was a monument to my failures, a constant, walking reminder of Lily. But to be trapped with both of them—Potter and his insufferable, swotty handmaiden—was a circle of hell I had never thought to contemplate.

“What happened?” Potter scrambled up, his glasses askew, his wand out and pointing at nothing. He looked like a startled foal, all gangly limbs and wide, useless eyes.

“The locket created a dimensional rift, Potter,” I sneered, my voice colder than the stone beneath my feet. “A fact you might have anticipated if you’d spent less time staring at your own reflection in the potion’s sheen and more time reading the preparatory notes.”

Before he could offer a witless retort, Granger was already moving. She ignored us both, her focus absolute. She walked the perimeter of the room, her small hands ghosting over the stone, her brow furrowed in that annoyingly familiar expression of intense concentration. Her lips moved, whispering words I couldn’t quite catch. She wasn’t panicking. She was assessing. Analyzing.

“The entire chamber is a ward,” she finally announced, her voice steady despite the situation. “Interlocking, ancient. I’ve never seen anything like it outside of a text. It’s not just keeping us in; it’s masking our magical signatures. No one will know we’re gone. They’ll just think we vanished.”

Potter looked at her, his dependence on her absolute and pathetic. He was the Chosen One, yet without her brain, he was just a boy with a scar. A bitter, undeniable thought surfaced through my rage. My own mastery of the Dark Arts was extensive, but this was something else. This was primordial, foundational magic. The kind Granger, damn her, had probably committed to memory from some obscure tome in the restricted section.

My fury did not abate, but a cold layer of pragmatism settled over it. I was trapped. Trapped with the Boy Who Lived and the girl who ensured he continued to do so. And as much as I loathed to admit it, my survival, for the moment, was entirely dependent on the encyclopedic knowledge stored inside Hermione Granger’s head.

“We search,” I commanded, my voice cutting through the heavy silence. “Every stone. Every shadow. There is a power source to this ward, and we will find it.”

Potter, for once, didn’t argue. He simply nodded, his expression grim, and began to move along the opposite curve of the wall. Granger, however, turned her attention from the seamless stone to the objects arranged in shallow alcoves that ringed the room. They were easy to miss, half-swallowed by the oppressive darkness of the chamber. I followed her gaze. There were dozens of them: a twisted silver chalice that seemed to ripple in the light, a set of bone-white chimes that remained stubbornly silent, a leather-bound book with a clasp in the shape of a serpent eating its own tail.

As I drew closer, I could feel it—a low thrum in the air, a vibration that resonated not in the ears but in the bones. It was the hum of latent magic, yes, but it was saturated with something else. Emotion. Decades, perhaps centuries, of raw, unfiltered feeling, soaked into these forgotten things. I could taste the faint echo of despair from the chalice, a whisper of maddening obsession from the book. My years of Occlumency had made me acutely sensitive to such psychic residue, and this room was thick with it.

Granger seemed to feel it too. She stopped before a large, rectangular slab of polished obsidian set into the wall like a darkened window. It was a mirror that reflected nothing, a void that seemed to pull at the light and warmth of the room. It emanated the strongest feelings of all: a cold, predatory hunger and a profound, bottomless loneliness. It was a vile object.

She took a half-step toward it, her academic curiosity overriding her caution. Her hand began to lift, her fingers ready to trace its edge.

“Granger, don’t,” Potter’s voice was sharp.

Before the words were even fully out of his mouth, he was moving. He crossed the space between them in two long strides and planted himself directly in front of her, his body a physical barrier between her and the obsidian mirror. He didn’t touch her, didn’t look at her. He just stood there, his back to her, facing the dark glass as if it were a basilisk. A shield.

A familiar, acidic bile rose in my throat. It was the same instinctive, thoughtless arrogance I had witnessed a hundred times in his father. James Potter, stepping in front of Lily, puffing out his chest in some moronic display of Gryffindor bravado. The gesture was identical—the same unthinking heroism, the same possessive claim. The irritation was so sharp, so bitter, it was almost a comfort in its familiarity. But then, as I watched Potter’s shoulders tense, as I saw Granger’s small, almost imperceptible frown from behind him, a new and unwelcome thread wove into the old bitterness. It wasn’t just Potter’s posturing that galled me. It was that he was shielding her. And a dark, ugly part of my soul, a part I had not known existed until that very moment, bristled at the sight of it.

“It’s just a Scrying Mirror, Potter. A particularly nasty one,” Granger’s voice was clipped, pulling away from him and the obsidian slab. She shot me a look, one that acknowledged my expertise in such dark objects without needing to say a word. She moved on, her focus shifting to the book with the serpent clasp. “The answer won’t be in the artifacts themselves, but in their containment.”

She pried at the clasp. It wouldn't yield. Without a word, I stepped forward, my long fingers tracing the interlocking scales of the Ouroboros. A simple sequence-release charm, one taught to first-year Slytherins to protect their diaries. I tapped the serpent's eye, its tail, then its fanged mouth. The clasp hissed open with a puff of stale, dry air.

Granger didn't thank me. She didn't need to. She simply took the book, laid it on a flat-topped stone pedestal near the center of the room, and began to turn the brittle, yellowed pages. Potter hovered uselessly behind her, a guard dog with no one to bite. I stood opposite, my arms crossed, forced into this tableau of unwilling cooperation.

For what felt like an hour, the only sound was the dry crackle of parchment. Finally, she stopped. “Here.”

I moved to her side, forced to lean in close to see the cramped, spidery script and the complex arcane diagrams that filled the page. The air suddenly felt thick, heavy with her proximity.

“It’s a Chrono-stasis Ward, keyed to emotional resonance,” she murmured, her finger tracing a line of text. Her nail was bitten short, a small imperfection that was jarringly human. “It feeds on ambient feeling to sustain itself. The only way to break it is to overload it. It requires a three-stage counter-spell. A potion, a runic array, and a direct magical infusion.” She looked up, her brown eyes meeting mine over the book. They were serious, devoid of her usual classroom eagerness. Here, she was not a student, but a peer. “It will take hours. At least twelve.”

Twelve hours. Trapped in this emotionally charged pressure cooker with these two. A fresh wave of despair washed over me.

“The potion is the first step. The ingredients are… esoteric.” Her finger moved to a list on the right-hand page, and I leaned closer, my gaze following hers. We were shoulder to shoulder, our heads bent over the ancient text. I could feel the heat radiating from her body, a stark contrast to the chill of the dungeon. The space between us was nonexistent.

As she shifted her weight to point out a particularly difficult passage on sympathetic alchemy, the worn wool of her sleeve slid against the back of my hand.

The contact was nothing. A whisper of fabric against skin. But a jolt, sharp and electric, shot up my arm. It was not magical. It was something far more primal, something my body registered before my mind could erect a single defense. With the touch came her scent, not just the dust of the grimoire, but something underneath. Vanilla. Faint, warm, and sweet. And the smell of old parchment, a scent I’d always associated with the library, with solitude, with peace. On her, it was… intoxicating.

I recoiled as if I’d touched a red-hot poker. I physically jerked back, putting a full pace of stone between us. My heart hammered against my ribs, a wild, panicked beat. My hand tingled, burned.

Granger looked up, startled, her brow furrowing in confusion. Potter’s head snapped in my direction, his hand instantly going to the wand in his pocket.

My reaction was absurd. Utterly, ridiculously disproportionate. It was the sleeve of a robe. A scent. Nothing. Yet my body had betrayed me with a violence that left me breathless. I stared at my own hand as if it belonged to a stranger, clenching it into a fist to stop the phantom sensation of that soft wool, that impossible warmth. It was the room, I told myself. The oppressive magic, the emotional residue. It had to be. Because the alternative—that the simple, accidental touch of Hermione Granger could unravel me so completely—was a truth far more terrifying than any ward.

“We begin at once,” I snapped, my voice harsher than intended, a pathetic attempt to regain control of the situation and myself. I gestured toward a low stone table that would serve as our brewing station. “The grimoire lists the ingredients. Find them.”

The command broke the spell of my bizarre overreaction. Granger, ever the pragmatist, seemed to dismiss my behavior as a symptom of the confinement. She gave a curt nod and began directing Potter through the alcoves, identifying the required jars of powders and dried herbs. They worked with an efficiency born of years of shared crisis, a silent communication that grated on my nerves.

I took the heaviest mortar and pestle for myself, the solid weight of the stone a small comfort in my hands. The first ingredient was powdered moonstone, which had to be ground to a consistency finer than dust. I set to work, the rhythmic scrape and crunch of the pestle against stone filling the silence. It was mindless, mechanical work, and I let it occupy the forefront of my mind, pushing the memory of her touch, her scent, into a locked corner.

Across the table, Granger was meticulously weighing dried belladonna on a small, tarnished silver scale. Potter was chopping Flobberworm mucus into precise segments. For a few minutes, there was only the sound of our work—my grinding, her soft counting under her breath, the wet slap of Potter’s knife. It was almost peaceful. A fragile, temporary truce forged by necessity.

And then it happened.

It wasn't a loud noise. It was a single, pure note that sliced through the air, high and piercingly clear. It came from the bone-white chimes hanging in one of the alcoves. They hadn't moved. There was no breeze. But they rang out as if struck by an invisible hand.

I froze, the pestle still in my hand. The air grew thick, heavy with a sudden charge. And then the whispers started.

They weren't just in my ears; they were inside my head, a cacophony of my own personal hell. Faint at first, then clearer, overlapping, undeniable.

“Not Harry, please not Harry!” Lily’s scream, thin and terrified, the way it had echoed in my mind for seventeen years.

“You ask too much, Dumbledore.” My own voice, desperate and young.

“For the greater good, Severus. It is the only way.” The Headmaster’s calm, manipulative tone, wrapping my soul in chains of his own design.

“Kill me…”

A shard of ice drove itself through my chest. The pestle fell from my numb fingers, clattering against the stone table with a sharp crack. I couldn't breathe. These were not memories. The artifact was pulling them from me, tearing them from the deepest, most guarded vaults of my mind and spewing them into the air. My Occlumency shields, my life’s work, felt like paper against this invasive, emotional magic. I braced myself, waiting for Potter’s shout of triumph, for Granger’s gasp of horror as my ultimate betrayals were laid bare.

But no accusation came. The whispers were personal, tailored to each of us. I forced my eyes open, my gaze darting across the table. Potter had dropped his knife. He was clutching his head, his knuckles white, his eyes screwed shut in a familiar picture of agony. He flinched, a violent jerk of his entire body, as if recoiling from a physical blow. A ghost of Voldemort’s rage, no doubt. Or perhaps the memory of his parents’ deaths, a horror we now shared.

My eyes found Granger. She stood rigid, her hands flat on the table as if to steady herself. Her face was pale, her expression stricken. Her own whispers were assailing her, a unique torment I couldn’t begin to guess at. Failure? The fear of not being good enough, smart enough? As I watched, a violent tremor ran through her hand. It started in her fingertips and traveled up her arm, a visible manifestation of her terror. She pressed her lips into a thin, white line, fighting it, but she couldn't stop the shaking.

In that moment, the suffocating animosity that defined our existence evaporated. The titles—Professor, Boy-Who-Lived, Insufferable-Know-It-All—were stripped away by the raw, intimate violence of the magic. All that was left was the three of us, exposed and trembling in a prison of our own anxieties. A shared, silent scream that echoed in the stone chamber, binding us together in a way that words never could.

The whispers receded as suddenly as they had begun, leaving a ringing silence in their wake. The air, scrubbed clean of the psychic assault, felt thin and cold. The fragile connection between us shattered, and the familiar walls of animosity slammed back into place.

Potter was the first to recover, his fear transmuting instantly into its baser, more familiar form: rage. He straightened up, shoving his glasses back up his nose, and his green eyes, still wild with remembered terror, fixed on me.

“This is your fault,” he spat, his voice shaking. “Somehow. You’re probably enjoying this, watching us squirm.”

The accusation was so predictable, so utterly Potter, that a sneer formed on my lips without conscious thought. The raw vulnerability of a moment ago was gone, buried under seventeen years of practiced contempt.

“Do not flatter yourself, Potter,” I said, my voice a low, dangerous drawl. “Watching you squirm is a tedious and daily affair. I have no need for magical artifacts to facilitate it. Your own incompetence is far more effective.”

“You bastard,” he breathed, taking a step forward. His hand twitched toward his wand. “You’ve wanted me dead since the day I arrived at Hogwarts. Maybe this is your chance.”

“If I wanted you dead,” I hissed, my own anger rising to meet his, a familiar, almost comforting burn, “you would have been dead a decade ago.”

“Enough!”

The word was a whip crack. It wasn’t shouted, but it cut through our vitriol with the clean precision of a silver knife. We both turned. Granger stood between us, her spine rigid, her face set like stone. The tremor in her hand was gone, replaced by a furious, focused energy. Her gaze was locked on Potter.

“He is right,” she said, her voice devoid of any warmth. “This is a waste of time we do not have. And your accusations are baseless and idiotic.”

Potter stared at her, his mouth falling open. I was equally stunned, my retort dying in my throat.

“Hermione, he’s—”

“He is a Potions Master,” she interrupted, taking a step closer to Potter, forcing him to meet her glare. “He is one of the most accomplished Legilimens in the world and has more knowledge of the Dark Arts than anyone else in this castle. Whether you like him or not is utterly irrelevant. Without his expertise, we will die in this room. Do you understand? Every second you waste on this pointless bickering is a second you are killing us all. So stop it.”

Her logic was brutal, irrefutable. She hadn't defended my character. She had defended my function, my necessity. She had assessed the situation and seen me not as the hated professor, but as the key to their survival. The vindication was a sharp, unexpected pleasure. To be seen, for once, for my skill rather than my perceived sins. By her.

I was still reeling from the shock of it when she reached out and placed her hand on Potter’s forearm. It was a gesture meant to soothe, to ground him. His shoulders lost some of their tension, his gaze dropping from mine to look at her. But my eyes were fixed on her fingers, the pale skin against the dark fabric of his sleeve.

A feeling, sharp and ugly, twisted in my gut. It was a hot, possessive pang that had no right to exist. She was calming him. Her touch, which I had recoiled from, was now being given freely to Potter. The logic of the situation—that she was merely de-escalating her volatile friend—did nothing to quell the irrational spike of jealousy. I stood there, mute and paralyzed, watching her hand on his arm, the silent tableau a more potent torment than any whisper the room could conjure.

Her words hung in the air long after Potter had sullenly retreated to his task, chastened into silence. He worked with a grim set to his jaw, refusing to look at either of us. Granger, having spent her fury, returned to the grimoire, her shoulders still rigid with indignation. The truce held, fragile and sharp-edged.

For hours, the only sounds were the methodical chop of a knife, the soft bubble of the potion, and the rustle of ancient parchment. The first stage of the counter-charm was a delicate, slow process. It required constant attention, a steady hand to stir, a precise eye to monitor the changing colours. The responsibility fell to me, as Granger had decreed. She and Potter prepared the ingredients for the subsequent stages, a mountain of herbs, powders, and viscous liquids that covered the stone table.

The work was draining. The initial adrenaline of our confinement had long since worn off, leaving behind a bone-deep exhaustion. I saw it in the slump of Potter’s shoulders as he sat on a low stool, methodically crushing dried scarab beetles. I saw it in the way Granger’s movements became less precise, her focus beginning to fray at the edges.

Finally, she straightened up, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. “That’s everything for the second phase,” she announced, her voice thick with weariness. “The potion needs to simmer for another hour before we can add them.”

She surveyed the room, her gaze landing on a single, high-backed armchair in a shadowy alcove. It was upholstered in faded, wine-coloured velvet, looking slightly less hostile than the cold stone surrounding it. Without another word, she walked over to it and sank down, pulling her knees up to her chest. She intended only to rest her eyes, I assumed. But the emotional and physical toll of the day was too great. Within minutes, her breathing deepened, her head lolling to the side against the worn velvet.

Potter glanced over, his expression unreadable, before returning his attention to the mortar in his lap. He was pointedly ignoring her, ignoring me. The room fell into a deeper quiet, broken only by the soft, rhythmic burble of the cauldron.

I should have been watching the potion. It was a critical stage; a momentary lapse in temperature could ruin hours of work. But my eyes were not on the shimmering liquid. They were fixed on her.

In sleep, the fierce intelligence and perpetual anxiety were erased from her face. She looked younger, softer. Defenseless. A thick, brown curl had escaped the tight knot of her hair and fallen across her cheek, resting near the corner of her mouth. Her lips were parted slightly, full and dark in the dim light.

My gaze traveled lower, down the long, elegant column of her throat. I could see it, even from across the room. The faint, steady flutter of her pulse just beneath the skin. A rhythmic, living beat that seemed to pull at something deep inside my chest. I imagined pressing my fingers there, feeling the warmth of her blood, the steady thrum of her life against my fingertips. I imagined replacing my fingers with my mouth, tasting the salt of her skin.

The thought was a physical jolt. A completely alien impulse, so powerful it made the air thicken in my lungs. My hand, the one not holding the stirring rod, lifted slightly from my side. I wanted to cross the room. I wanted to kneel before her chair and gently, so gently, brush that stray curl from her face. I wanted to feel the silk of her hair against my rough skin.

My knuckles cracked as I forced my hand into a fist, my nails digging into my palm. The pain was sharp, a welcome anchor in the sudden, violent current of desire. I was a fool. A depraved, old fool, staring at a sleeping girl who was my student. A girl who had just defended my utility, not my person. The disgust that rolled through me was familiar, a bitter companion. But it was no match for the raw, undeniable wanting that had taken root in the ruins of this forgotten chamber. I turned back to the cauldron, my jaw clenched so tight it ached, the potion’s heat a pale imitation of the fire she had ignited in my blood.

The hour passed in a haze of forced concentration. The potion shimmered, shifting from a dull pewter to a deep, vibrant violet. The change was abrupt, the colour so intense it seemed to drink the light from the room. The sudden shift was enough to stir Granger from her sleep. She blinked, her eyes unfocused for a moment before clarity sharpened her features. She pushed herself out of the chair, her gaze immediately locking on the cauldron.

“It’s ready,” she said, her voice still rough with sleep. She moved to the table, picking up the grimoire and flipping to the final page of the counter-charm. Her brow furrowed as she read, her lips moving silently. Potter stood up, his wariness returning full-force.

“What is it?” he asked, his voice tight.

Granger looked up, her expression grim. “The final component isn’t an ingredient. It’s an infusion. Of raw magical power.” She looked between us, her gaze lingering on me for a fraction of a second too long. “The book says the casters must channel their energy in unison. Directly into the potion’s matrix.”

A cold dread, entirely separate from our current predicament, settled in my stomach. “Elaborate, Miss Granger.”

“We have to form a circle,” she said, her voice flat, as if stating a simple, unchangeable fact. “Around the cauldron. We have to link hands.”

Silence. Potter looked as though she had suggested he flay himself. My own revulsion was a physical thing, a sour taste at the back of my throat. The thought of willingly making physical contact with him was abhorrent.

“There is no other way?” I asked, my voice dangerously low.

She shook her head, her jaw set. “The ward was created by three wizards. It can only be undone by three. The magic must be combined, balanced. It has to be us.”

Her logic was, as always, a steel trap. There was no escape. Potter let out a frustrated breath but moved into position, his face a mask of bitter resignation. Granger stood opposite him, leaving the final space for me. Completing the damned triangle.

I moved with deliberate slowness, the scrape of my boots on the stone floor unnaturally loud. I stopped before her, the cauldron bubbling between us. She held out her right hand to Potter, who took it with a visible flinch. Then, she turned and offered her left hand to me.

Her fingers were long and slender, her knuckles pale. I stared at her open palm, at the lifeline etched into her skin. For a long, silent moment, I did nothing. Then, I raised my own hand.

The moment my fingers closed around hers, the world fractured.

It wasn't a spark. It was a deluge. A torrent of pure sensation that bypassed my skin and flooded directly into my mind, my blood, my very core. Her hand was small and warm in my own, but what I felt was colossal. I felt her. Her mind was a vast, intricate construct of pure intellect—a library of towering shelves filled with perfectly ordered knowledge, illuminated by a fierce, burning curiosity. I felt the sharp edges of her anxiety, the deep well of her exhaustion, and beneath it all, a bedrock of stubborn, unyielding determination. It was overwhelming, an invasion of the most intimate kind.

And through her, a conduit between us, came Potter.

His magic was nothing like hers. It was a storm. A chaotic, untamed tempest of raw power, wild and volatile and utterly without discipline. It was the crackle of lightning, the roar of a tidal wave, the unrestrained force of life itself. It slammed into me, channeled through the delicate bones of her hand, and the collision of his raw energy with her structured brilliance was blinding. The two forces, logic and chaos, met inside of me. My breath caught in my throat, trapped there by the shock of it. My own magic, so long held in check, surged to meet theirs, and the world narrowed to a single, searing point: her hand, locked in mine.

The combined power crested, a wave threatening to drown me. The violet potion in the cauldron didn’t just bubble; it erupted. A column of pure, violent light shot toward the ceiling, striking the keystone of the domed chamber. A deafening crack, like the world splitting in two, echoed off the stone. Dust rained down as a visible fracture snaked across the ancient masonry, the ward shattering under the force of our combined will. The oppressive weight that had held us prisoner, the very magic of the room, dissolved into nothing.

We were free.

As the blinding light from the cauldron faded, another began to grow. On a pedestal against the far wall sat an ornate crystal, fist-sized and intricately carved, that I had dismissed as mere decoration. Now it pulsed with a soft, internal luminescence, absorbing the residual energy from our spell. With a final, soft chime, it released a vapor. A fine, shimmering mist poured from the crystal, catching the dim light and glittering as it spread. It moved slowly, filling the chamber, smelling sharply of ozone after a storm, and underneath that, the heavy, sweet perfume of night-blooming jasmine.

The moment the mist touched my skin, every taut nerve in my body went slack. The exhaustion, the bitterness, the decades of rigid control I held over myself—it all just evaporated. A wave of pure, unadulterated euphoria washed through me, warm and heady. The air felt lighter, easier to breathe. Beside me, I heard Potter let out a short, incredulous laugh. A sound of genuine, unburdened relief. It was so foreign I almost didn't recognize it.

“We did it,” he breathed, his voice filled with a dizzy awe. He turned to Granger, his face alight with a joy I had never seen on him. He still held her right hand, just as I still held her left. Before she could form a reply, before I could process the sudden shift in the atmosphere, he pulled her toward him. His other hand went to the back of her head, his fingers tangling in her messy hair, and he kissed her.

It wasn’t a tentative press of lips. It was deep and consuming, a kiss born of adrenaline and sudden, overwhelming relief. I watched, frozen, my fingers still entwined with hers. I felt the shock of it travel up her arm, a faint tremor through our connection. I saw her body yield, her head tilting to meet the pressure of his mouth. For a second, her eyes were closed, lost in the moment.

Then, they opened.

They weren’t looking at the ceiling, or at the wall behind me. They were looking directly at me, over Potter’s shoulder. Her brown eyes, wide and luminous in the misty air, held a dizzying cocktail of emotions. There was the shock of the kiss, the dazed, languid effect of the mist swirling around us. But there was something else, too. Something that made my own breath stop in my chest. A flicker of burgeoning curiosity. A question. An invitation. The world narrowed to the space between her eyes and mine, and in that silent, charged look, everything changed.

Potter felt it. The shift in the invisible current that flowed between us. He pulled back from her, slowly, his movements sluggish from the mist. His lips separated from hers with a soft, wet sound that was obscenely loud in the new silence. His gaze, usually sharp with animosity, was unfocused, clouded with a spell-induced haze. He looked from her face to mine, his eyes tracing the connection between us. He saw my hand still locked with hers. He saw the way she stared at me, her body angled toward him but her attention captured entirely by me.

He didn’t shout. He didn’t curse me. He simply watched, his expression one of deep, narcotic confusion, his hand still resting in her hair. He was a spectator to a scene he was meant to be a part of.

And his stillness was my undoing.

A lifetime of bitter restraint, of iron-clad control built on a foundation of grief and duty, shattered. It didn’t crack; it disintegrated, turning to dust in the face of the intoxicating jasmine and the impossible reality of her gaze. The part of me that had watched her sleep, that had fought the urge to touch her, was now the only part of me left. All reason was gone, burned away by a want so profound it was a physical agony.

I let go of her hand. The sudden absence of her warmth was a shock, but it was necessary. I took a single step forward, closing the distance until I could feel the heat radiating from her body. Potter remained a statue, his eyes wide. Granger didn’t move, didn’t even seem to breathe. She just waited.

My own hand lifted, cutting through the shimmering air. It trembled, a fine tremor that exposed the depth of my unravelling. I didn’t stop until my palm was pressed against the side of her face, my fingers curling around the delicate line of her jaw. Her skin was softer than I had imagined, and so warm. She made a small sound in the back of her throat and leaned into my touch, a fractional movement that sent a bolt of pure fire through my veins. My thumb stroked across her skin, tracing the sharp angle of her jaw before sweeping down to brush against the corner of her mouth. She shuddered, a tremor that I felt through my entire body. Her lips parted on a sharp, silent intake of breath.

The name I had always used for her—Granger—felt like a foreign word, a tool of distance I no longer needed. It was a lie. The only truth was this. The feel of her skin under my hand. The sight of her, caught between me and the boy who lived.

A sound formed in my chest, a name I had never once spoken aloud. It came out as a low growl, a rough, guttural sound that was barely a word at all.

“Hermione.”