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The path into the Forbidden Forest was narrow. So narrow that branches brushed Hermione's robes as she walked, snagging at her sleeves in warning before letting go. She walked without wandlight, her feet mapped the familiar path, stepping over protruding roots and fallen logs, carefully avoiding the veilweed. One accidental touch and a person could be left disoriented for hours.
She would know. She'd wandered for almost a day; not that anyone came looking.
But here, where the air pressed close and heavy with damp soil, she felt calm.
She'd long accepted the inevitability that life was fleeting; what use was it to put up a fight? It certainly hadn't made a difference to those who had, and lost. The only peace she found was here, between the trees and the monsters, far deeper than students were meant to go.
After some time, she finally made it to the clearing. Moonlight fell cleanly from above, turning the open ground pale. Wildflowers had claimed the space in uneven patches, lavender and white scattered between them.
Hermione crossed to the center and lowered herself to the ground. The earth was cool through her robes, her fingers instinctively digging into the dirt.
The noise in her head thinned just enough to make room for sensation. She inhaled the scent of grass and released a shaky breath; a puff of white escaped her mouth and her eyes followed it into the cold May sky. The tension between her shoulders eased a fraction. Some nights, it was all she managed.
She'd lost track of how long she'd been lying there when the air shifted, subtle but unmistakable. Goosebumps followed the shiver down her limbs.
Hermione opened her eyes but didn't turn. She knew that gait too well by now. She'd watched him all year, if she were honest. His plates never full, his voice barely heard, and yet his eyes found hers across rooms with the same hollow look she caught in mirrors.
Everyone kept insisting grief softened with time but a full year later, neither of them seemed to have gotten the memo. And in that shared failure, she found something she wouldn't call comfort but couldn't bring herself to deny either.
"Are you going to just stand there or are you going to join me?" she asked with a sigh.
Silence and stillness followed, so she tried again. "The ground doesn't bite, y'know…though I wouldn’t put it past it to try."
Then the steps resumed, crossing into the moonlight. His shadow stretched across the ground, then stopped a short distance away. He hadn't spoken, but after a moment he lowered himself, leaving a small but deliberate space between them. The grass shifted under his weight; flowers at his knee bent to brush his slacks.
The stars were brighter here, free of the castle's glow, scattered in arrangements she had once studied with fervor.
"You know," she said after a long silence, "I used to be able to name every one of them."
"Don't be daft. I'm sure you still can."
She glanced at him. His expression an unreadable challenge.
She followed his gaze, then with a small burst of courage, she scooched closer until their shoulders whispered together.
She lifted a finger. "Well there's Ophiuchus, and Sagittarius just there." She traced the serpent-bearer's curve, then swept south. "Libra hangs lower, those bright ones, and then there’s Scorpius, his tail stings the horizon."
She let her hand drift back to the ground, barely brushing against his.
"I told you so," he huffed.
"Yes, you ponce. I was just proving you right, which I know doesn't happen often."
The corner of his mouth lifted into a smirk she hadn't realized she missed. "Go on, then. Tell me about one."
She looked back at the stars.
Her mind drifted to the scorpion and the hunter, constellations forced to the opposite ends of the sky by divine design, never permitted to meet.
“Well...” she cleared her throat. “the story of Scorpius really starts with Orion. He was considered the greatest hunter alive, and had been told so his entire life." She paused. "He boasted he could hunt every creature on earth and the cruelest part is he probably wasn't wrong. But he'd spent so long being told that he was remarkable, he hadn’t learned it wasn’t the same as untouchable."
“So when the gods grew tired of his noise,” she continued, “the goddess Gaia sent a scorpion to kill him. The details change depending on who's telling it, but the ending is always the same. When their battle was over, they were sent into the sky on opposite ends. When one rises, the other sets. They share the same sky but never occupy it together."
"Most people consider his death deserved," he murmured.
She turned to look at him properly. "I wouldn't say so. How is it fair to be built up your whole life to do one thing, then be hated for it when the world decides it doesn't like what it made?"
She heard a slight hitch in his breath. "And…Scorpius then? How did it fare?"
“Scorpius never chose the hand it was dealt. It was created for someone else's purpose, then left carrying the consequences long after everyone else had moved on. When the story ended, it was still there, doomed to linger at the edges of the sky.”
They didn’t speak for a long while as the stars stretched overhead.
"Funny thing," Draco said quietly. "I've always liked the name Scorpius. Maybe for a son one day."
She smiled. "May the gods strike me dead, I never thought I'd be discussing baby names with Draco Malfoy."
"There's a lot of things I never thought I'd do," he said, a sad smile ghosting his lips. Younger Hermione might have pressed him. But she didn't, because she knew what he meant.
"So why are you out here, Granger?"
"Isn't it obvious?"
"Humor me."
"I never took you as someone who liked jokes—"
"Hermione." Her first name from his lips tightened the pit nestled in her stomach. The look in his eyes wasn't anger or fear. It felt like concern.
"Why are you out here?" he repeated.
In for a knut, in for a galleon, she supposed.
"At first…I think it was to challenge myself. To challenge life. To watch the forest take me and see what it felt like not to fight back. But then I found this place and started to... feel again. Looking up and seeing something bigger than whatever's inside my head."
She pressed her fingers deeper into the earth. "The war, the grief. Sometimes I think everyone else learned how to keep going and I just... stayed where it happened."
Hermione swallowed.
"Being out here helps, though. The dirt under my nails. The wind. The stars. For a little while, I feel like everyone else does."
"Everyone else?"
"Normal. Healed." She averted her eyes, trying to hide the tears that threatened to spillover, “Real.”
Then she felt the tip of his finger under her chin, redirecting her gaze to him. "Are you not real?"
"Not always." She whispered. "Not lately."
He had been watching her all night, but only now did he see the stars in her eyes.
Not a figure of speech. They were actually there. Two small mirrors of the sky above, the constellations she’d named caught in miniature in the dark brown of her irises. He'd seen her face a thousand times but never close enough to map the freckles on her cheeks.
He couldn’t put into words what the pull felt like. As if the center of gravity had shifted from the earth to her. A current hummed beneath his skin, all of it converging where his finger rested beneath her chin.
He watched her gaze drop to his mouth before finding his eyes again, and slowly, she leaned closer. He should have moved, but he couldn’t. Instead, he stayed perfectly still, noting the small furrow between her brows, the soft curve of her eyelids as they began to shut. Her lips so close…
Until he pulled back, just an inch. “Hermi—”
She silenced him with a pleading look and a small shake of her head. Not out loud, her eyes said.
He took her wrist, pulled her hand from the dirt, and closed the remaining distance himself. He pressed his mouth to hers with a gentle force that he hoped answered everything she hadn't let him say. His hands moved into her hair, caressing the curls he'd always wanted to touch. The kiss softened, deepened. Neither of them seemed willing to be the first to pull away.
She rolled him to his back, half-straddling his hips, keeping her balance on her grounded leg. Their eyes met; he took in her flushed cheeks, the quickness of her breath.
The pause exposed her hesitancy.
"Granger, I will take anything you're willing to give."
She smiled, leaning down to kiss him gently before pushing the robes from his shoulders.
They helped each other with each layer. Her robe next, then his tie. She fumbled the buttons of his shirt, letting out a small laugh, but still managing to get them undone. She spread her hands against his bare chest, and he went still, just for a moment, feeling the weight of her palms against his heartbeat. He ran his hands up her side, feeling the soft fabric of her shirt, before mimicking her movements.
They took a while to explore, soft grinding giving way to louder moans. When he felt their movements crescendo, she pulled back.
He prayed to the stars that this wasn't over, that he wouldn't have to return to the castle carrying only the memory. They'd spent all night talking about stories that insisted some people were destined to remain apart. He wasn't sure he could survive discovering they were right.
But instead of stopping, her eyes trailed down his body, landing at the hardness beneath her core. Her gaze darted back to his, another silent question.
He nodded, almost too eagerly.
She let out a shaky breath, reached down to open his trousers. He held his breath until he finally felt her small hand close around him. Her eyes went wide, a small swallow in her throat, before she reached beneath her skirt, moving her knickers aside.
One last flicker of her honey eyes, then she sank down to take him in fully. His whole body arched in response.
"F-fuck, Granger," he groaned.
She moved above him slowly, palms braced against his chest, hair loose around her face. She was ethereal.
For a moment, Draco understood why people looked to the stars and invented myths. Some things felt too extraordinary to only live one lifetime.
He traced the line of her throat as she tilted her head back, her brows drew together when her pleasure deepened, and the small sounds she made etched into his bones. He moved with her, anchoring her hips, leaving small half-moons scored into her skin.
The wildflowers trembled at the clearing's edges. The wind moved cold through the dark, but all he felt was her moving faster, moaning louder, gripping tighter. Her nails pressed into his chest when she came, her mouth open and silent. He held her shuddering body, his name—his first name—finally falling from her lips. He pulled her down so they were chest to chest and let himself follow, his face buried in her hair.
Draco brushed damp strands from her forehead, pressed a lingering kiss to her lips before easing her to his side. They lay together, still gasping, before he heard the tinkling of her laughter.
"Oh my gods, I can't believe we just did that."
He couldn't help the grin crossing his face. But then reality crashed in, cold and sudden, and his smile faltered. The fingers tracing the dip of her waist stuttered to a stop.
She felt it, of course, then lifted her head and scrunched her brows together.
"What is it?" she whispered.
"I just... was this... uh-" The words tangled on his tongue.
"Draco?"
"Real... Hermione, was this real?"
She pressed her lips to his chest, right over his thundering heart, and when she spoke, her voice vibrated through him.
"Yes, Draco. Very real."