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Chapter Text

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Hermione’s POV

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It was perfection. Or at least, it should have been.

Every inch of the Weasley garden had been transformed into a vision of rustic magic, the kind of wedding Molly Weasley had probably been dreaming of since Bill was a boy. The lanterns she’d charmed into bloom—fat glass globes like swollen fireflies—hung from the gnarled apple branches overhead and dripped warm, honey-gold light onto everything below. It clung to the grass in liquid pools, caught in the crystal flutes on the tables, and turned the white tablecloths into soft alchemy. Even the air smelled festive: crushed apple leaves and damp earth underfoot, the faint wax of melted candles, and the sugary burn of champagne on warm breath.

The champagne glass in my hand was cold and slick, but it felt wrong—too heavy, as if it belonged to someone steadier, someone meant to toast and smile and belong. I lifted it to my lips anyway. The bubbles hissed on my tongue, dry and bitter. It wasn’t the glass that didn’t belong here. It was me.

Ron and I had ended things only days before. I’d walked in on him with Lavender—her hair spilled across his chest like a cheap perfume advertisement—and I hadn’t screamed, hadn’t hexed, hadn’t begged. I’d simply closed the door and walked away. There’d been nothing to save. Ron had never been the Weasley I wanted, not really. No. The Weasley I wanted was now at the center of this tableau, married to a bride who looked every inch the storybook princess.

Fleur was radiant—she always was—but tonight she shone so brightly it hurt to look at her. Her veil floated like mist every time she turned her head; her smile glinted like a blade. It was impossible to resent Bill for choosing her. In another life, I might have chosen her too.

The dress Ginny had picked for me was a pretty enough thing—soft blue satin, enchanted to shimmer under the lantern light—but it clung at my ribs, tight where I needed air. I tugged at the neckline, swallowed the last of my champagne, and tried to taste celebration instead of metal. The bubbles bit at the back of my throat and fizzed in my stomach, leaving behind a faintly sour note that matched the ache rising under my breastbone.

Around me, the wedding pulsed with sound: the harp’s bright rippling chords, the crash of forks and knives on plates, Fleur’s silvery laugh, the whisper of witches’ gowns sweeping over the grass. Laughter bloomed and died like little fireworks at every table. I told myself I was happy for them. I smiled until my face felt brittle, until my cheeks ached from pretending.

And yet, even as I forced myself to watch the dance floor, I felt it—that crawling awareness, a slow, deliberate scrape down my spine as though invisible claws had found me in the crowd. It wasn’t a glance. It was a gaze, heavy and hot, like breath at the nape of my neck. It slid into my stomach and curled there, a weighty coil of anticipation and unease. The champagne turned to ash on my tongue.

Something was watching me.

⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧

I kept glancing over my shoulder, that crawling sensation of being watched refusing to ease, until at last I found the source. Or rather—who.

Bill Weasley.

He wasn’t laughing with his brothers, wasn’t smiling at Fleur, wasn’t even pretending to bask in the glow of his own wedding. He was staring at me. Directly, unflinchingly, with the kind of focus that stripped away the crowd and the music until there was only the two of us across a sea of lantern light.

The scars Greyback had left across his face gleamed under the glow, raw silver etched into skin that caught every flicker of flame. They should have been grotesque, but under the shifting gold of the orchard lanterns, they looked more like war paint—marks of something feral lurking beneath the man.

And his eyes… Merlin, his eyes weren’t Weasley blue anymore. Once, they’d been sharp, clear, the kind of eyes that could laugh before his mouth did. Now, they were darker. Hungry. They caught the light in a way that wasn’t human, a wolf’s glimmer in a man’s skull. Every instinct in me screamed that I should look away. But I didn’t.

Instead, when he lifted his glass toward me—slow, deliberate, like the sealing of some silent pact—I found myself mirroring him. My hand shook as I raised my champagne, my lips tugging into a smile that was brittle, paper-thin, a mask that never reached my eyes.

And then he moved.

He didn’t weave through the crowd with the ease of a groom greeting his guests. He cut through them, shoulders broad and strides purposeful, ignoring the hands that reached out to touch him, the congratulations tossed like confetti in his path. He was coming to me. Only me.

When he stopped in front of me, I had to tilt my chin back just to meet his gaze. At five-foot-five, I might as well have been a doll in front of his six-foot-five frame. He was vast, shadowing, the lantern light catching the planes of his scarred cheekbones and the sharp line of his jaw.

“Evening, Hermione,” he said. His voice was rougher now, rasping with something guttural beneath the words, something not meant for polite conversation. The sound slithered down my spine, coiling low in my stomach until I shivered.

I wanted to step back. I wanted to vanish. But I stood rooted, staring up at him, breath shallow, pulse frantic. His scars, his eyes, the heat radiating from his body—it was all too much, all too alive. Gorgeous, yes, but wrong.

Because as I studied him, I realized with a bone-deep certainty: Bill Weasley wasn’t entirely human anymore. Not anymore.

⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧

I opened my mouth to reply, though I wasn’t even sure what words would come out—something polite, something to hide the trembling beneath my skin—but before I could speak, someone tugged at his arm and pulled him away into the crush of guests.

The breath I hadn’t realized I was holding left me in a harsh exhale, chest heaving, shoulders sagging as though I’d been bracing myself against a storm. I shivered beneath the canopy of the tent, but it wasn’t from cold. The night was warm, lanterns bleeding golden heat into the garden air, yet my skin burned as though fevered. My neck, where his eyes had lingered, felt scorched.

It wasn’t cold I felt. It was fire.

I glanced back toward the garden, toward the laughter and glittering bodies, toward the place he wasn’t. I should have felt relief. Instead, my pulse refused to slow. My body hummed with restless energy, as if my very blood had been stirred and could not settle. I wanted to slip away into the shadows, to flee before anyone noticed, to convince myself that Bill Weasley had not left me shaken and flushed, trembling with something that had no name.

But I knew. I knew exactly who had done this to me.

I shook my head sharply, as though I could dislodge the thought, and reached for another glass of champagne from the tray floating by. My fingers were slick against the stem, palms damp, as I lifted it and forced the rim to my lips.

It was the alcohol, I told myself. Nothing more. Just the champagne seeping into my veins, twisting sense into nonsense. Anything else—anything darker—was impossible. Unthinkable.

I tilted my head back and swallowed the glass in one go. The bubbles surged like acid, searing my throat, fizzing hot in my chest, leaving behind a metallic taste that clung to the back of my tongue. It didn’t soothe me. It scorched.

I had just set the empty flute back down and taken my first step toward the garden’s edge—toward escape—when Ginny appeared at my side. Her hand was firm, insistent, as she tugged me back toward the long, flower-wreathed table under the tent.

“The toasts are starting,” she said brightly, not noticing the wild stutter of my breath, the flush creeping up my throat. She pressed me into a chair, and before I could refuse, another glass of champagne was thrust into my hand.

The silverware chimed against glass, voices rose in cheer, and I sat there with the bubbles hissing at my lips once more, praying the alcohol would drown the heat clawing at my skin.

The toasts passed in a blur, each voice little more than background noise against the wild rhythm of my heartbeat. Arthur’s words were steady, a father’s quiet pride woven with warmth. Molly’s were tearful, trembling with emotion, her cheeks flushed as though she could barely contain her joy. The twins were as expected—mischief and laughter wrapped in crude little jokes that sent half the table roaring.

But when Ron rose, goblet in hand, I found myself staring down at the tablecloth, tracing the embroidery with my eyes just to avoid his. His voice grated in my ears, familiar and unwanted, and I willed myself not to look, not to acknowledge him. I couldn’t—not when the betrayal of Lavender still clung to me like smoke.

And yet, even with my eyes fixed away, I felt it.

The pull.

Slow, insistent, impossible to ignore. My gaze lifted on its own, like some invisible thread had caught beneath my chin, dragging me toward him. Toward Bill.

His eyes found mine immediately, as though he’d been waiting—no, hunting—for the moment I would look. Dark, feral, glinting beneath the lanternlight, they pierced across the crowd and held me in place. It was like being caught in the jaws of something enormous and unseen, some predator in the long grass watching with patient hunger.

The breath I had been holding stuttered loose from my lips.

I should have looked away. I should have buried myself in Ginny’s chatter, in Molly’s sniffles, in anything but him. But I couldn’t. My body betrayed me. My pupils dilated; my chest tightened. Heat licked up the column of my throat and settled heavy and molten between my thighs.

His scarred hand tightened around the delicate stem of his champagne glass until I swore I could hear the faint crack of protest. Tiny fractures webbed through the crystal, catching and scattering the light. He didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t break his stare. He only watched me, and watched me, and watched me, until the air around me grew too thick to breathe.

I shivered, sharp and violent, as though his gaze itself had teeth.

And I swore I could feel him. Not just across the table—around me. Behind me, in front of me, inside the very breath that shuddered through my lungs. His presence ghosted the back of my neck, damp and hot like the brush of lips, like the exhale of someone standing too close. It whispered into my ear, sank into my chest, coiled low in my belly until it was unbearable.

I trembled again. And this time, I knew he saw it. He had to. My body had become an open confession, shaking in the silence between toasts, heat spreading through me in a way I couldn’t hide.

Bill’s stare devoured me whole. Unblinking. Unrelenting. As if he were peeling me open without a touch, stripping me bare under the flicker of lanternlight and the eyes of a hundred oblivious guests.

And gods help me—my body responded.

My nipples ached against the satin of Ginny’s too-tight dress. My thighs pressed together beneath the table, desperate for friction. My skin burned, every inch of me alive with awareness of him, of his hunger, of the impossible tether snapping tighter and tighter with every second I refused to look away.

The fear was there—sharp, cold, logical—but beneath it, something hotter bloomed. Wrong. Shameful. But undeniable.

I wasn’t just afraid of being watched.
I was aroused.

Bill Weasley’s gaze didn’t just unnerve me. It set me on fire.

⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧

As the wedding carried on and the lanterns burned lower, my gaze betrayed me again, sliding across the tables, over the blur of faces and flicker of firelight, until it landed on her. Fleur.

She sat with her hand laced through Bill’s, their fingers linked as if the gesture had been written into the bones of their bodies long before tonight. Their hands looked like they belonged together—her pale, delicate fingers adorned with a gleaming band of gold, his scarred and broad, wrapping around hers as if to shield something precious. The sight was enough to make my chest ache.

Fleur laughed at something Molly said, the sound spilling out of her like music. It wasn’t a laugh that demanded attention, but one that captured it regardless. It carried across the tables, silvery and bright, a sound that made heads turn, that pulled people in like moths to a flame. Her laughter felt otherworldly, the kind of sound that could only belong to a woman kissed by magic itself.

Molly leaned closer, eyes alight, lips moving in a rush of words. I didn’t need to hear them to guess. Grandchildren. Futures. Bloodlines. Legacy. Words that had been pressed into my own ears, once, by Ron, words that had suffocated me long before Lavender draped herself across his lap and drove the final nail into what we had called a relationship. My throat tightened, the champagne in my glass suddenly metallic on my tongue. I flinched at the thought of it—Molly speaking softly of children, of family, of inevitabilities—and my pulse stuttered with the memory of why I had walked away.

I swallowed the last of my drink, and the bubbles scorched the back of my throat. It didn’t wash away the guilt blooming heavy in my chest. The guilt that I could not stop looking. The guilt that I was burning with want for the man whose hand was entwined so tenderly with hers. I was lusting after someone else’s groom. Someone else’s husband. Lusting after a man who had stood beneath vows mere hours ago and pledged himself to another woman.

And that woman was Fleur Delacour.

She was everything I wasn’t, everything I had tried and failed to be. I had met her before—at the Triwizard Tournament, at the Order’s meetings, at their engagement party—but tonight, her beauty felt almost blasphemous, as though she had stepped out of a legend and lowered herself into the Weasley’s orchard just to shame the rest of us.

Her wedding dress was not ostentatious, but it was unforgettable. White and black silk folded over her like a painting come alive, soft and sharp all at once, light and shadow perfectly in balance. Where I fidgeted with the edge of Ginny’s too-tight dress, feeling the satin cut at my ribs and squeeze at my waist until every breath was shallow, Fleur sat easy and serene, the gown falling off her like water poured over smooth stone. Her hair shimmered as though it had stolen moonlight, each turn of her head catching lantern glow and scattering it like liquid silver. My curls, once carefully coaxed into neat spirals, had frizzed in the night’s humidity, strands slipping loose and clinging to the sweat along my neck.

Even her perfume betrayed me. Whenever she leaned close to Molly or Bill, the faintest trace of something delicate and floral trailed after her—jasmine, perhaps, or white lilac. It was the scent of purity, of innocence preserved in glass. I smelled of champagne spilled down my wrist, of wax smoke clinging to my sleeves, of the sour tang of nerves.

Fleur was grace incarnate, light in human form, the princess every fairy tale promised. She was what the world saw and envied, what it called beautiful, what it wanted to protect and adore.

And I? I was the opposite. Shadow to her light. Bitter to her sweet. The girl with flushed cheeks, with restless hands and sharp, unpolished edges. The girl who wanted what she could never have, and wanted it with a hunger that curdled into shame.

I envied her. I despised myself for envying her.

But even as I sat there, watching her fingers twine with Bill’s, watching her smile light up his scarred face, another truth slid like poison into my veins:

I did not want to be Fleur.

I wanted to be in her place.

⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧

I had been staring out into the orchard, watching the lanterns sway in the night breeze, when it hit me—his scent.

Not sight. Not sound. Smell.

Before my eyes ever found him, before his voice broke through the hum of the crowd, the air shifted. His cologne reached me, subtle at first, then stronger, filling every inch of space around me until it felt as though I were drowning in it. Rich cedar, faint smoke, something wild threaded beneath—like the scent of pine needles crushed underfoot or leather warmed by skin. It was him, distilled into something both civilized and savage, and it crawled into my lungs with every shaky breath I took.

By the time I looked over, my body already knew.

“Hello, Ms. Granger.”

The words rumbled out of him, gruff and low, vibrating in his chest before they ever reached my ears. They weren’t loud—he didn’t need to be. His voice carried weight, enough that it curled inside my stomach and settled there, heavy, primal. My whole body shivered before I could stop it, goosebumps prickling down my arms in spite of the humid warmth under the wedding tent.

I forced a smile, delicate and practiced, the kind of expression meant to deflect attention, to keep me safe. “Hello,” I whispered back, softer than I meant, a note of something fragile edging my voice. The sound felt paper-thin compared to his gravelled greeting. I was smiling, yes—but I was also trembling. And I think he knew.

His scent thickened, wrapping around me like smoke, coiling through my hair, clinging to my skin. It invaded all of my senses until it became unbearable. I could taste it—bitter and sharp at the back of my throat, a phantom flavor of spice and heat. I could feel it on my skin, heavy as a hand pressing between my shoulder blades. I could hear it in the way my pulse thundered in my ears, as though my body had become attuned to him and only him.

It took everything inside me not to lean closer. Not to break, not to bury my face against his throat and breathe him in until my lungs burned, not to inhale that cologne directly from his skin and never let him go. My body screamed for it, for something reckless and shameful, even as my mind shouted no.

“How are you enjoying yourself?” he asked.

The question was so simple, so ordinary, it almost mocked me. Enjoying myself? At a wedding where I couldn’t breathe without choking on him? Where guilt and want had tangled into something so sharp it bordered on pain?

My throat closed around any answer I might have given. Words would betray me. They’d come out broken, quivering, cracked wide open. So I did the only thing I could.

I nodded. Silent. Obedient. Too afraid to let sound leave my mouth, too afraid he would hear the desperation hiding beneath it.

His laugh slid into me like velvet over steel, low and perfect, reverberating in my ears until it rattled through my bones. It wasn’t lighthearted—not the laugh of a man at his own wedding feast—it was darker, richer, threaded with something primal that made my thighs press together under the table.

He leaned closer, close enough that the space between us dissolved, and his scent drowned me. It wasn’t just cologne anymore—it was him. Salt and cedar, smoke and skin, threaded with something feral I had no name for. It coated my tongue with every shallow breath, clung to the back of my throat until I nearly moaned from the weight of it. My lungs burned as though breathing him in was its own kind of intoxication.

“Bill,” I whispered, my voice cracking under the weight of it all—fear, yes, but heavier than that, the raw ache of want.“What are you doing?”

His lips tilted, the ghost of a smirk, and his breath brushed the shell of my ear. “Telling you a secret.”

Then he laughed again, a quiet rumble that shivered down my spine, and turned his head as though nothing had happened. As though I wasn’t unraveling beside him, aching, trembling, too aware of every nerve in my body sparking to life at his nearness. He looked back out at the orchard, serene, scarred, devastating. My body begged me to stay, but survival screamed louder, and when the music dipped and the night began to bleed into silence, I stood.

I left the tent.

The cool night air struck me like a blessing, sharp and clean against overheated skin. My arms prickled instantly, my legs bare beneath the hem of Ginny’s too-tight dress, the breeze raising goosebumps that did nothing to cool the fever inside me. Lanterns swayed overhead, their light softer here, shadows curling along the grass as if the orchard itself had secrets to keep.

I walked quickly, heels crunching on gravel, the music fading behind me with every step. My chest still rose and fell too fast, and my throat ached with dryness, raw with the ghost of his scent still clinging there. I wanted water, anything to clear my senses, to burn the fog from my mind. I wanted to scrub him from my skin, from my memory, from my veins.

I wanted to forget this night. Forget the way his voice wrapped around me, the way his scars caught the light, the way his scent had filled me until I was choking on it. Forget the want, the shame, the lust clawing at me from the inside out.

But every step I took into the garden only made it worse. The orchard was too quiet, too empty, too filled with the pounding of my own blood in my ears. I pushed forward anyway, shoulders tense, pretending the night would swallow this ache if only I could outrun it.

I lasted until the wind shifted.

Until that scent—his scent—brushed over me again like a hand curling around my throat. Stronger now, heavier, undeniable. Smoke and pine, leather and wolf. It wrapped me in chains, coiling through the air until I knew—without turning, without looking—that he was here.

Somewhere in the dark between lanterns, he was watching.

And this time, I didn’t tell myself to run. I didn’t even lie to myself that I could.

Because whatever happened next… it wouldn’t just be him. It would be me too.

⋆｡˚☽༓☾˚｡⋆   ✩₊˚.⋆☾𓃦☽⋆⁺₊✧   ⋆｡˚☽༓☾˚｡⋆

═══════════════☾ ִֶָ☾.☽═══════════════

Bill’s POV

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It was perfection. Or at least, it should have been.

Every inch of the Burrow’s garden had been transformed into the rustic, enchanted wedding Molly had dreamed of for decades. Lanterns hung fat and golden from the old apple trees, swollen like captured fireflies. Their honeyed glow dripped over the tables, spilling into the grass in molten pools of light. It caught in crystal flutes, turned the white tablecloths soft and buttery, washed over faces until even the ordinary looked charmed. The air was thick with celebration—crushed apple leaves and damp earth, wax from a hundred candles, champagne bubbles burning faintly sweet on people’s tongues.

It should have felt like home. It didn’t.

The glass in my hand was slick and cold, condensation sliding over my palm. It felt wrong—too fragile, too dainty—like something meant for a man steadier than me, a man who belonged. I lifted it to my lips anyway. The bubbles hissed on my tongue, dry and bitter. It wasn’t the champagne that was out of place. It was me.

This was supposed to be the night I bound myself to a future. Vows. Normalcy. A wife radiant and pure. But beneath the silk of my cuffs, my scars itched. Greyback’s bite had woken something that refused to sleep again. Something that had stared at Fleur’s perfect face, her perfect hands, her perfect smile, and felt nothing but a hollow ache.

Because the one I wanted wasn’t at my side. She was in the crowd. Watching me.

Hermione.

Fleur shimmered like a princess—she always had. Tonight she was so bright it hurt my eyes, veil trailing like mist, her smile glinting like polished steel. She was everything Molly wanted for me, everything I’d been told to want. But she wasn’t who my body, my blood, my magic ached for.

My gaze kept sliding past Fleur’s silver laugh, past the harps and plates and lanternlight, until it found her. Hermione stood across the orchard in that soft blue dress Ginny had picked—blue that clung too tight at the ribs, made her look like she couldn’t quite breathe. Her curls were already escaping, little strands catching the lantern light. She was trying to look happy. Trying to drink. Trying to belong. But her pulse was there, fluttering at her throat, visible even across the tables.

She smelled of champagne and wax smoke and something else—something warm and alive that reached me even here.

Around me, the wedding pulsed: the harp’s rippling chords, the crash of cutlery, Fleur’s airy giggle, the rustle of dresses on grass. But all of it blurred at the edges. My focus tunneled, narrowed, sharpened.

I felt her before I saw her watching me. A prickle, a heat at the back of my neck, my scars burning as though claws raked invisible paths along my spine. My grip on the glass tightened until a hairline crack whispered through the stem.

It wasn’t a glance. It was a connection. Heavy, hot, sinking low in my gut. Her eyes caught mine—hesitant, guilty, hungry—and I felt it coil tighter.

The champagne turned to ash in my mouth.

Something was happening.
Something inevitable.

And it wasn’t Fleur’s hand in mine. It was her.

⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧

She kept glancing over her shoulder, like some part of her already knew I was there. Already felt me. She didn’t see me at first, not really, but she felt it—the weight of my gaze, the scrape of my attention crawling down her spine. And when she finally found me across the sea of lanternlight, the whole world fell away. It was only her and me.

I wasn’t laughing with my brothers. I wasn’t smiling at Fleur. I wasn’t even pretending to be the groom basking in his own celebration. I was watching her. Directly. Unflinchingly. And I wasn’t ashamed of it. Why should I be? She was mine the second my eyes found her.

The scars Greyback left across my face caught the glow of the orchard lanterns, silver carved deep into skin that refused to heal. They should have made me monstrous. But tonight, I wore them like war paint. Proof of what lived inside me now. The wolf. The hunger.

And my eyes… they weren’t Weasley blue anymore. They hadn’t been since the bite. They were darker now, deeper. Hungry. A wolf’s glimmer had replaced the warmth, catching in the light like fire caught in bone. She should have looked away. Every instinct in her screamed to look away. But she didn’t. She couldn’t.

When I lifted my glass—slow, deliberate, my eyes never leaving hers—it wasn’t a toast. It was a promise. A claim. A silent pact between us that no one else in that room would ever understand. Her hand trembled when she lifted her own glass in return, her lips twitching into a smile that betrayed her. Brittle. Fragile. But hers, given to me.

And then I moved.

I didn’t weave through the crowd like a man. I cut through it. People tried to stop me—hands clapped my shoulders, voices called congratulations like scraps tossed to a beast—but I ignored them. I didn’t even hear them. My strides were purposeful, predatory, because I wasn’t moving toward the guests. I was moving toward her. Only her.

When I stopped before her, she tilted her chin back, small and breakable, staring up into me like a bird cornered by a hawk. She was five-foot-five, a slip of a thing, and I was towering over her, shadowing her completely at six-foot-five. The lanternlight caught my scars, carved my jaw into something sharper, harder. I could smell her from here—champagne, candlewax, sweat, nerves. Sweetness underneath.

“Evening, Hermione,” I said. My voice wasn’t the smooth charm it once had been. It rasped, roughened, weighted with something guttural beneath. The wolf lived in it now. My words weren’t polite conversation anymore—they were a growl in disguise. Her shiver told me she heard it. Her shiver told me she felt it.

She wanted to step back. I saw it in her eyes. But she didn’t. She stood rooted, trembling in the heat pouring off me. Breath shallow, pulse frantic.

I could see it all—the rapid flutter at her throat, the rise and fall of her chest, the way her body betrayed her even as her face tried to hold steady. She stared up at me like I was both salvation and ruin. And she was right.

Because I wasn’t entirely human anymore. Not anymore.

⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧

Someone tugged at my arm, pulling me back into the crowd. I didn’t want to go, didn’t want to break the moment, but I let it happen, my eyes dragging from hers only at the last possible second. I saw the way she exhaled as though I’d been pressing down on her chest. Saw the way her shoulders sagged, her lips parted. She thought she was free. She wasn’t.

I lingered at the edge of the crowd, half-listening to the cheer of voices around me, but my eyes kept finding her again. My scent was still on her. My gaze still coiled around her like chains. Her hand shook when she reached for another glass of champagne. I watched her tip it back too quickly, desperate to blame the bubbles for what was happening to her body. As though alcohol could explain the fever flushing her throat red, the trembling in her hands, the way her thighs pressed together under the table.

It wasn’t champagne. It was me.

She drank again. The bubbles seared her throat; I could see it in the way her eyes blinked hard against the burn. She thought she could drown me out. She couldn’t.

Ginny sat her down, oblivious, thrust another glass into her hand. Hermione took it, her fingers slick against the stem, her knuckles white. She prayed the alcohol would smother what was happening inside her. But I saw the way her pupils dilated when I caught her gaze again across the table.

The toasts began. Arthur, Molly, the twins, even Ron. Voices I should have cared about, but they blurred, muffled, nothing but static. Because every time her eyes flickered up, I was there. Watching.

When she finally gave in and looked fully at me, it was like prey caught in the long grass. My hunger sharpened. My grip on my glass tightened until I felt it crack under my palm, tiny fractures spiderwebbing through the crystal. I didn’t notice. I didn’t care. I only saw her.

She shivered. I felt it. Even across the table, I felt it ripple through her, sharp and violent, like a jolt of lightning striking the base of my spine. She was wrapped in me now. My gaze on her skin was as good as my teeth in her flesh.

I could feel her everywhere—behind her, before her, circling her like a predator closing the last ring around its quarry. She felt me too. My breath at her neck. My whisper in her ear. My heat crawling into her chest, coiling in her belly.

She trembled again. Her body was an open confession, no matter how her face tried to lie.

She was mine already. She didn’t know it yet, but she was.

I devoured her with my stare, stripping her bare across the candlelit table, and when her lips parted on a shaky breath, I smelled the truth.

Fear.
Yes.

But beneath it—sweet and shameful—lust.

Her nipples pressing against the satin. Her thighs clenching together, desperate. Her pulse racing because she knew.

She knew Bill Weasley didn’t just unsettle her. He lit her on fire.

And I knew I wouldn’t stop until I burned her to ash.

⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧

As the wedding dragged deeper into the night and the lanterns burned lower, my gaze betrayed me again. It slid away from where it should have stayed—on my bride, on my family, on the carefully constructed dream Molly had built into every flickering candle—and instead drifted across the tables, through the blur of faces and the clinking of glasses, until it landed on her.

Hermione.

Fleur’s hand was still in mine. Small. Delicate. Pale as porcelain. She wove her slender fingers through my scarred ones, the gold of her wedding band glinting faintly each time she moved. To the crowd, it looked right. It looked inevitable. Her perfect hand anchored in my ruined one, as though I were guarding something fragile, shielding it. That’s what everyone else saw: a groom who had survived his scars, softened by love. The kind of man who deserved Fleur Delacour.

But that wasn’t what I felt.

Her touch didn’t settle me. It suffocated me. Her fingers were too delicate, too cool, her perfume too cloying—white lilac, maybe jasmine. Innocent, pure, bottled like something you’d find on a shelf. She smelled like a garden after rain, untouchable, pristine. The scent clung in my nose and turned sour, because it wasn’t what I wanted. Not tonight. Not anymore.

Fleur laughed at something Molly said, her voice lilting and bright, silvery as a bell carried on the wind. Her laughter pulled people in like moths to flame—she didn’t demand attention, she simply captured it. The lanterns seemed to shine brighter when she laughed. She was radiant, the princess in every fairy tale, the angel every mother would want for her son.

And I sat there, her groom, the man she had chosen, staring at another woman.

My scars itched under the heat of the lanterns, glowing silver across my face like war paint. My wolf shifted beneath my skin, restless, pacing. It wanted out. It didn’t want perfection wrapped in silk. It didn’t want the scent of innocence. It wanted fire. It wanted fight. It wanted Hermione.

I swallowed the last of my drink. The champagne bit my throat, sharp and bitter, but it didn’t drown the guilt coiling thick in my chest. It didn’t burn away the ache of what I craved.

Because every time I tried to listen to Fleur’s laughter, every time I forced myself to meet her shining eyes, my gaze slid away, dragged back to Hermione like iron to a magnet.

She wasn’t dressed like a princess. She wasn’t glowing like spun moonlight. She sat stiffly in a blue dress that Ginny had chosen, too tight at the ribs, the satin biting into her frame. Her curls had frizzed in the humidity, strands clinging to the sweat at her neck. Her champagne flute trembled in her hand each time she lifted it to her lips, and I watched the way her throat moved as she swallowed. Watched the way her pulse fluttered too quickly, beating hard under her skin.

She didn’t shimmer. She burned.

Even across the tables, I could smell her—underneath the champagne and candle smoke, the sour tang of nerves clinging to her skin. It made my scars throb, made the wolf inside me bare its teeth. Where Fleur’s perfume was bottled purity, Hermione’s scent was alive. Hot. Mortal. Blood and heat and the faintest sweetness I couldn’t name but wanted to taste on my tongue.

She shifted in her seat, restless, her thighs pressing together beneath the table, her lips parting as though her body betrayed what her mind refused to say.

I envied Fleur—not for her beauty, not for her perfection, but for the fact that she could touch Hermione openly, draw her into conversation, lean close without anyone whispering. Fleur could have her friendship, her trust, her nearness. And I couldn’t. Not yet.

But the wolf inside me didn’t care for civility. It didn’t care for guilt. It wanted what it wanted. And every time Hermione lifted her eyes to mine, shame coloring her cheeks, lips tightening against words she wouldn’t speak, I knew she felt it too.

The pull. The inevitability.

Fleur’s hand was still twined with mine, her smile still bright, her gown still perfect. She was light, grace, the ideal my family had prayed for. But I was no longer the man they thought I was.

Because I didn’t want to be with Fleur.

I wanted Hermione beneath my hand where Fleur’s fingers rested. I wanted to dig my scars into her hips, to bend her beneath me until her pulse thundered against my mouth. I wanted her to smell of me—cedar, smoke, wolf.

And as I sat there, my bride radiant at my side, my family glowing with pride, another truth sank through my chest like poison:

I didn’t want to be the man who married Fleur Delacour.

I wanted to be the beast who claimed Hermione Granger.

⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧

I had been staring out into the orchard, watching the lanterns sway in the night breeze, when it hit me—her scent.

Not sight. Not sound. Smell.

Before my eyes ever found her, before her voice drifted over the din of the crowd, the air shifted. Her perfume—champagne and candle smoke, nerves and heat—reached me first. Subtle at the edges, then stronger, filling every inch of space around me until it felt as though I were breathing her into my lungs. Warm skin, sweat, a heartbeat beating faster than it should. It crawled into me like a promise.

By the time I looked over, my body already knew.

“Hello, Hermione.”

My own voice rumbled out of me, low and gruff, vibrating in my chest before it reached her. I didn’t need to raise it; the weight in it carried on its own. It curled in the air like smoke and found her, heavy and primal. I watched the goosebumps rise along her bare arms even in the warm night. Her lips trembled as she forced a smile back at me.

I smelled her again. Thicker now. Wrapping around me like smoke, coiling through the humid garden air, clinging to my scarred hands. I could taste her—champagne bitter at the back of my throat, phantom sweetness underneath, the coppery edge of want. I could feel her pulse in the space between us, a drumbeat calling me forward. I could hear it in the rush of my own blood, as though my body had become attuned to her and only her.

It took everything in me not to lean closer and take. Not to bury my face against her throat, drag my teeth along the soft place beneath her jaw, inhale her until she was inside me. The wolf screamed for it—reckless, shameful. The man whispered wait.

“How are you enjoying yourself?” I asked, voice steady though my palms ached with restraint.

The question was nothing but a test. A spark thrown on dry tinder. Enjoying herself? At a wedding where she couldn’t breathe without choking on me? Where she sat stiff and small while my hunger dragged claws over her skin?

Her throat worked around silence. Her lips pressed together as she nodded. No words. Only obedience. Only that brittle smile.

My laugh slipped out of me, low and perfect, velvet over steel. It wasn’t the laugh of a groom. It was darker, thicker, threaded with the thing that had been growing inside me since Greyback’s bite. The sound made her thighs press together under the table. I saw it. I smelled it.

I leaned closer, and the space between us dissolved. It wasn’t cologne anymore—it was me. Salt and cedar, smoke and skin, threaded with the feral heat of the wolf under my flesh. It coated my tongue with every shallow breath, clung to the back of my throat until my lungs burned. She breathed me in like intoxication.

“Bill,” she whispered, her voice cracking under the weight of it—fear, yes, but heavier than that, the raw ache of want. “What are you doing?”

My lips tilted, the ghost of a smirk. I bent my head, let my breath graze the shell of her ear. “Telling you a secret.”

Then I laughed again, a quiet rumble that shivered down her spine. Turned my head back toward the orchard as though nothing had happened, though every nerve in me was sparking with the effort it took to not drag her out into the dark. My body begged me to stay, to move, to claim. But the man still knew enough to let her go.

When the music dipped and the night began to bleed into silence, she rose and slipped away.

I stayed seated for a moment, feeling her absence like a hand dragged off my skin. The cool night air hit me when I finally followed, sharp and clean against my overheated body. My scars prickled, my blood humming too fast, the wolf prowling just beneath.

The lanterns swayed overhead, their light softer now, shadows curling along the grass as if the orchard itself was hiding us.

I walked slowly, the music fading behind me, her scent leading me like a thread. My chest rose and fell too fast. My throat ached with dryness, raw with her ghost still clinging there. I wanted water, anything to clear her from my senses, to burn the fog from my mind. I wanted to scrub her from my skin. I wanted to rip the hunger out of my veins.

I wanted to forget this night. Forget the way her voice cracked under mine, the way her pulse jumped when I leaned close, the way her scent had filled me until I was choking on it. Forget the want, the shame, the lust clawing up through my ribs.

But every step I took into the orchard only made it worse. It was too quiet. Too empty. Only my heartbeat in my ears and her scent thick on the breeze.

The wind shifted.

And that scent—hers—rolled over me again like a hand curling around my throat. Stronger now, heavier, undeniable. Sweat and nerves, champagne and heat, threaded now with my wolf’s own musk. It wrapped me in chains, coiling through the air until I knew—without seeing, without speaking—that she was close.

Somewhere in the dark between lanterns, she was waiting.

And this time, I didn’t tell myself to stay back. I didn’t even lie to myself that I could.

Because whatever happened next… it wouldn’t just be her surrender.

It would be mine too.

Chapter Text

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Hermione’s POV

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The orchard was quiet—too quiet. The kind of silence that didn’t soothe but pressed against the ears, heavy and expectant, like something holding its breath. Even the faint music drifting from the tent sounded far away now, muffled by the trees as if the world had folded in on itself.

My head swam, my pulse hammering behind my temples. It had to be the champagne. It had to be the hormones, the tension, the exhaustion of a long day. That’s what I told myself, anyway. Every look, every brush of fingers, every low whisper I’d received from Bill—it was nothing. Absolutely nothing. A fluke. A drunken mistake. Because the man with the bright, once-innocent eyes and the long hair that smelled faintly of cider and spice was married. Married to a woman who wasn’t me. Married to Fleur, glowing and perfect back under the lanterns.

And yet… my skin still tingled where his breath had grazed it.

I kept walking, my heels sinking into the damp grass, the soft hiss of fabric brushing my thighs sounding far too loud in the hush of the orchard. The lanterns strung between the trees cast a broken trail of gold before me, little pools of light on the ground like islands in the dark. I moved from one to the next, deeper and deeper into the garden, trying to make sense of everything, trying to wrestle the day into something that made sense. But every step only tangled the knot tighter.

A twig cracked somewhere behind me.

I spun, heart thudding high in my throat, my eyes searching the shadows between the trees. Nothing. Only branches swaying gently in the breeze, lanterns swaying with them, throwing their light into strange shifting shapes. But the feeling crawled back up my spine anyway—the sensation of being watched, of eyes in the dark, of something heavy and unseen closing in.

I knew he was there. I couldn’t see him, couldn’t prove it, but I knew. Everything about him felt unreal now, as though the man I’d known at Order meetings had been replaced by something else entirely—same body, same scars, but with something lurking beneath his skin. Something patient and wild.

I kept walking, faster now, until the hum of the wedding faded to a murmur, until the laughter and clinking glasses were just a memory, until I reached a part of the garden far enough away that it felt like another world. The trees here were older, their branches thicker, the lanterns fewer. Shadows pooled deep under the boughs, and the grass grew long enough to brush the hem of my dress.

I finally stopped. My hands trembled as I reached down, slipping off my heels, the cool blades of grass tickling my bare feet. I straightened and dragged in a long, shaking breath, the night air sharp and clean against my overheated skin. For a moment, I thought I’d outrun it—his eyes, his scent, my own shame.

Then the breeze shifted.

And it hit me.

Smoke. Pine. Leather warmed by skin. The scent rolled over me like a wave, heavier now, no longer a ghost but a presence. It slid down my throat, thick and dark, until my stomach tightened and my pulse tripped into a sprint. It was his scent. And it was close. Very close.

⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧

I turned.

And there he was.

Bill stood in the half-light between two swaying lanterns, his broad frame swallowing the shadows around him. He was still in his wedding suit—charcoal fabric stretched tight across his shoulders, the shirt at his throat unbuttoned just enough to expose a line of scarred skin. But his hair was down now, wild and loose, copper waves spilling over his collar as though he’d ripped it free himself. In the shifting glow, the scars Greyback had left across his face gleamed silver, catching every flicker of flame like ancient runes carved into flesh.

His eyes found me instantly. Not the warm Weasley blue I remembered. Darker now. Bottomless. Animal. The eyes of a predator crouched low in the grass, ready to spring. They locked on me and didn’t waver, didn’t blink, and every nerve in my body screamed that I had already been caught.

“Bill,” I whispered, his name dragging itself out of my throat like a prayer I shouldn’t be saying. My chest heaved, my pulse slamming against my ribs so hard it felt audible. Thump. Thump. Thump. The sound filled my ears until I was certain he could hear it too.

He stepped closer. One slow stride. Then another. The earth seemed to tilt under his weight.

“Hermione,” he growled back.

The word was rough, guttural, torn from deep in his chest. It wasn’t a greeting—it was a claim. My body betrayed me with a small, helpless whimper. I stumbled back, heart hammering, until my spine slammed against the rough bark of an apple tree. The impact sent a jolt through me, grounding me in reality, yet trapping me all the same. There was nowhere else to go.

“Why?” I whispered, breath catching on the word. I thought I knew. Merlin, I knew. But some desperate, breaking part of me needed to hear it out loud, needed the knife twisted.

“You already know,” he snarled, his voice lower now, rumbling like thunder before a storm.

The sound shivered through me, bone-deep, sinking claws into my stomach. His scent hit me then—sharp smoke, pine needles crushed beneath boots, leather warmed by skin, threaded with something feral. It coiled around me, thick and suffocating, until I swore I was drunk on it. I was dizzy, high, lost in the haze of him, every breath filling me with more of the wolf that lived inside him.

He moved in closer, until his shadow devoured mine, until the bark pressed harder against my back. His hands rose, wide and scarred, caging me against the apple tree. Not touching me—yet—but near enough that I could feel the heat radiating from his skin. His scent clung to my hair, to my dress, to my lungs, as though he were branding me with it.

I tilted my face up, my small frame dwarfed by the towering man above me. He was vast. His chest filled my vision, his presence eclipsed the orchard lanterns, his breath washed hot against my skin. I forgot how to breathe. Every inhale came too fast, too shallow, stolen between the suffocating waves of his cologne and musk.

His fingers moved at last, slow and deliberate. Rough pads brushed my jaw, tracing along the delicate line of bone with a gentleness that only made the danger worse. They dragged lower, down the soft column of my throat, following the frantic jump of my pulse. Each inch of contact lit up my nerves, a trail of sparks running into places I didn’t want to name.

I parted my lips to say something—anything. Maybe to beg, maybe to plead, maybe to curse him—but the words never came.

Because in the next heartbeat, his hand shifted. His fingers curled suddenly into my hair, fisting it tight, and with a harsh yank he wrenched my head back against the tree.

I gasped, a broken sound lodged between pain and something darker. My scalp burned, tears stung at the corners of my eyes, but beneath the sharpness was a hot, coiling throb that made my thighs clench against each other.

A whimper spilled from me, raw and trembling. Not entirely from fear. Not entirely from pain.

Something shameful, traitorous, laced through it too. Pleasure.

And his eyes devoured every bit of it.

The kiss wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t tentative, or soft, or anything resembling the fairytale romance that should have belonged to a wedding night. It was brutal. Rough. Animalistic.

Bill’s mouth crashed against mine with a force that rattled through my bones. His lips were hot, unyielding, and then his tongue was there—thrusting past my parted lips, filling me, claiming the space with a heat that stole the air from my lungs. It wasn’t a kiss. It was an invasion. His tongue moved with a hunger that tasted of smoke and champagne, of something feral and unrestrained, and every desperate stroke told me exactly what he was: a predator devouring its prey.

Our teeth collided in the chaos, sharp clinks that sent jolts down my jaw. The fight for dominance was clumsy, violent—my teeth dragging over his, his tongue pushing harder, hungrier. I knew I was losing, but somewhere deep down I realized I had no intention of winning. I surrendered without meaning to. My lips parted wider, my mouth opening for him, begging him to take more.

A moan tore itself from me, low and guttural, vibrating against his tongue. He answered with a sound of his own—darker, rougher—a growl disguised as a moan that reverberated through my chest and made my skin shiver.

My hands, trembling, pressed against his chest. At first, instinct screamed push him away, escape, run—but the instant I felt the heat of his body under my palms, the solid muscle shifting with restrained violence, my resolve shattered. Instead of shoving him back, I dragged him closer, fisting the fabric of his shirt and pulling until the hard lines of his body crushed against mine. Desperation roared through me. I wanted everything, anything—whatever Bill Weasley would give, I would take.

His lips tore at mine, his teeth grazing, scraping, until finally they clamped down on my bottom lip. He bit, sharp and merciless, and pain blossomed hot and shocking. A copper tang spilled over my tongue, metallic and raw.

I gasped against his mouth, but before I could recoil, he pulled back just enough to look at me. His eyes—dark, glimmering with the wolf’s hunger—dropped to the wound he’d left behind. For a beat, he lingered there, breathing heavy, lips slick with mine. Then he bent down, and his tongue flicked out.

Slow. Possessive. Claiming.

He licked the blood from my lip like it belonged to him.

The sight should have sickened me. The taste of my own blood on his tongue should have been horrifying. If it had been anyone else, I would have recoiled in disgust, turned away, run.

But it was him.

And on his mouth, under his teeth, every part of it was fire. Every part of it was hot, heavy, and perfect.

⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧

I couldn't believe how one kiss shattered the boundary between my frantic, secret longing and the savage, forbidden violence of Bill’s hunger. He pressed his mouth to mine with a force that buckled my knees, the metallic tang of blood sharp on my tongue where his fangs had broken the skin. I felt my own pulse in my mouth, racing, as he pushed me backwards until my spine slammed against the ancient oak. The bark was unforgiving, each ridge of it digging into my flesh through the thin, sweat-soaked cotton of my dress. I gasped, but he only grinned, lips wet with my taste, and yanked my wrists above my head, pinning them one-handed against the splintered trunk.

I had never seen his eyes like this. They glowed with a hunger that was barely human, a blue so clear it burned, and he drank in every twitch of my resistance as if it were a rare wine. My own body betrayed me, heat pooling between my thighs even as my mind skittered with reasons why I should say ‘no.’ But my throat was raw and tight and the word would not come, not even as he spun me roughly, pressing my breasts flat against the tree. The swell of them spilled over the neckline of my dress, pebbled nipples searing into the ridged wood as he bent me forward, his chest hot and hard at my back.

He leaned in, his teeth grazing the curve of my neck, and whispered, “You were always mine, you know.” His voice was a low growl, vibrating through my bones. I shivered, every nerve ending igniting as his hands seized my hips, fingers spreading me open, thumbs digging into the soft flesh just above my pelvis. My skirt rode up as he wrenched the hem upward, exposing my knickers—already sodden, already clinging damply to my skin. He shredded them in one practiced motion, the silk tearing with a sound that made me gasp. The summer air was shockingly cold on my bare sex, but his hands followed, burning against me, stroking me roughly until I was gasping, every thought blank except for the desperate need of him.

I should have hated him. I should have hated myself more for wanting this, for arching my hips back to meet his insistent touch, for the way I whimpered when he pressed me harder into the tree. He smelled like wild grass and blood and salt, and when he bit down on my shoulder—hard enough to draw beads of red—my vision went white at the edges. My hands scrabbled for purchase, finding nothing but rough bark and splinters. My knees threatened to buckle, but Bill’s arm was already coiled around my waist, keeping me upright, keeping me open and exposed for him.

He spat on his hand and stroked himself, the sound lewd and obscene in the silence of the wood, then lined up at my entrance. For a suspended moment he held me there, tip poised, breath hot on the shell of my ear. Then, with a single, brutal thrust, he filled me, the intrusion so sudden and complete it stole the air from my lungs. I choked on a sob, equal parts pain and relief, as my body adjusted to the thick, relentless invasion. Bill fucked me with a ferocity that bordered on animal, his hips pistoning forward again and again, each time driving my breasts harder into the bark, each time grinding my clit against the unyielding wood until all I could do was moan and sob and beg for more.

He wrapped his hand around my throat, thumb pressing just enough to make my vision blur, and growled, “Say it.” I knew what he wanted, the words I had sworn I would never give him. But my body was already betraying me, slick and open and greedy for him, and when he leaned in and bit me again, deep enough this time to leave twin crescents of blood, I shattered. The orgasm ripped through me, violent and endless, and I screamed his name into the dark, my hands clawing at the tree until my palms were raw. The shame was molten in my belly, burning away what little resistance I had left as the waves of pleasure made my whole body tremble.

Bill’s pace became ragged, desperate; I could feel his cock swelling inside me, and I clenched greedily around him, needing to feel him lose control. He bent me even lower, his hand still tight on my throat, and pumped into me until he came with a shudder that rattled my bones. His teeth were bared, his face twisted in a snarl, and for a heartbeat he looked more wolf than man. He collapsed against my back, sweat and blood and spit running down our skin, and for a long moment neither of us could speak.

When he finally pulled out, I whimpered at the loss, immediately cold and empty without him. My legs gave out and I slumped to the forest floor, dress bunched at my waist, thighs sticky with come and blood. Bill knelt behind me, gathering me in his arms, his hands tender now as he brushed the hair from my face and kissed the new wounds blooming on my skin. I wanted to hate him, I told myself again, but as he pulled me close and rocked me gently, I felt only the hollowed-out relief of someone who had finally been ruined exactly as I’d always needed to be.

My breath came in ragged bursts, each one a sob or a laugh or something between the two. My whole body quaked, spent and trembling, and the only thing that kept me from flying apart was the pressure of Bill’s arms, still tight around me, anchoring me to the ground as the world slowly spun itself right again.

⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧

When Bill and I finally came down from our sexual high, our eyes locked across the moonlit darkness. My once-pristine cotton knickers lay in tatters around my ankles, the elastic waistband completely severed where his fingers had desperately torn them away. I examined the constellation of half-moon indentations across my palms where my nails had dug in, and the raised red welts on my forearms where bark had scraped skin raw. A small, satisfied smile tugged at the corner of my mouth, my bottom lip still swollen from his bites. That fleeting euphoria—the endorphin rush that had momentarily erased all consequences—evaporated like morning dew. Cold reality flooded in, shame coiling like a serpent in the pit of my stomach, squeezing until I could barely breathe. "This is only the beginning, Hermione," Bill whispered, his voice husky and dangerous against my ear, hot breath sending involuntary shivers down my spine. "I am not done with you yet. The bond will get hungrier and hungrier. We will need this." He pulled away, adjusting his unbuttoned shirt, and walked backward three steps before turning, leaving me slumped against the gnarled trunk of an ancient apple tree, surrounded by fallen fruit crushed beneath our bodies, their juices staining the earth crimson in the orchard that had witnessed our surrender.

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Bill’s POV

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The orchard was quiet — far too quiet. The kind of silence that didn’t soothe but thickened, pressing against my ears like a living thing. Even the faint music drifting from the tent behind me had turned thin, muffled by the trees, as though the world had folded in on itself and left only this place: shadows, breath, and her.

My head swam. My pulse hammered behind my temples. I told myself it was the champagne. I told myself it was exhaustion, tension, the weight of a day built on vows I didn’t mean. That’s what I tried to believe. Because every glance I’d stolen across the tables, every brush of fingers when I passed her, every low whisper I’d let slip by her ear — none of it should have happened. I was married. To Fleur. Fleur glowing and perfect under the lanterns. Fleur with her lilac scent and silvery laugh.

And yet… my skin still burned where Hermione’s eyes had caught mine.

I kept walking, the soles of my shoes sinking into the damp grass. The soft hiss of her dress brushing her thighs ahead of me sounded far too loud in the hush of the orchard. The lanterns strung between the trees cast a broken trail of gold before us, little pools of light on the ground like stepping stones into the dark. She moved from one to the next, deeper and deeper into the garden. And I followed — not touching her, not yet — but tracking. Trying to wrestle the day into sense even as my wolf unspooled the knot tighter and tighter.

A twig cracked under my heel.

She spun, heart thudding so hard I could hear it, eyes scanning the shadows between the trees. She didn’t see me. Only the branches swaying in the breeze, lanterns flickering, shapes shifting. But the sensation crawled up her spine anyway — she could feel me. The way prey feels a predator before it leaps. The way a heartbeat knows when the claws are already out.

I was there. She couldn’t see me. Couldn’t prove it. But she knew. Because I wasn’t the man she’d known at Order meetings anymore — not fully. Same body, same scars, but something else living under my skin now. Patient. Wild. Waiting.

I stalked her further into the orchard, my pace slow, silent. The hum of the wedding faded to a murmur, the laughter and clinking glasses becoming nothing but a memory. The trees grew older here, branches thicker, lanterns fewer. Shadows pooled like ink beneath the boughs. Grass brushed her hem and mine alike, whispering with each step.

She stopped at last. I watched from the darkness as she bent, slipping off her heels, trembling hands revealing the faint shake in her wrists. The cool blades of grass tickled her bare feet. She straightened, dragging in a long, shuddering breath. The night air was sharp and clean against my overheated skin. For a heartbeat, she thought she’d outrun me — my eyes, my scent, the shame threading through her veins.

Then the breeze shifted.

And it hit her.

Smoke. Pine. Leather warmed by skin.

My scent.

I let it roll over her like a wave, heavier now, no longer a ghost but a presence. It slid down her throat, thick and dark, and I watched the way her stomach tightened, the way her pulse tripped into a sprint. She didn’t have to look. She knew.

I was close.

Very close.

⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧

I stood in the half-light of the orchard, framed by two lanterns swaying in the night breeze, my broad shoulders swallowing the shifting glow. My wedding suit was still clinging to me—charcoal fabric stretched tight, the collar unfastened just enough to expose the scarred line at my throat. I let my hair fall loose over my collar, wild copper waves catching the lamplight like fire. Every rune-bright scar Greyback had carved across my face gleamed silver, an unspoken warning in the flickering flame.
And there she was—Hermione—her form trembling where she’d turned to face me. I watched her chest rise in shallow breaths, eyes wide and drowning in question. My name hung between us, a prayer or a plea—I wasn’t sure which.
One step, then another, and the earth seemed to bow under my weight. She stumbled backward until her spine slammed against the rough bark of an apple tree, her small frame pinned and vulnerable. I could smell her then: the faint musk of sweat, the ghost of soap in her hair, and something sweeter, a lilt of fear tangled with something darker. I inhaled it all, felt it coil in my gut.
“Hermione,” I growled, the word torn from my chest like a claim. My voice rumbled low, thrumming against her ribs in time with my own racing pulse.
Her breath hitched. She tried to shrink away, but there was nowhere to go. I raised my hands—scarred, wide—until my palms hovered just above her shoulders, the heat radiating off me a silent demand. I watched her eyes flicker to my fingertips, the question in them clear: Why?
I leaned in close enough that she could feel each labored exhale. Pine needles, smoke, leather warmed by my skin—they all mingled around us like a storm gathering in a midnight sky. My voice was darker than I meant it to be. “You already know.”
She whimpered, a small sound that matched the tremor I felt in my own chest. For a moment the world held its breath. Then I let mine out in a growl and closed the distance. My fingers brushed her jaw, rough pads mapping the delicate line of her bone. I traced down the curve of her throat, fingertips dancing over the frantic drumming of her pulse. Every nerve in me ignited at the pressure under my touch.
When I felt her begin to panic, I let my grip tighten—curling into her hair, yanking her head back until her neck arched beneath me. Pain flickered behind her eyes, tears glimmered on her lashes, and I saw something else there too. Shame, desire, betrayal all tangled together in that single look.
I couldn’t stop myself. My mouth crashed against hers with the force of a winter gale. My lips were unrelenting, my tongue thrusting past her parted lips, staking a claim with every hungry stroke. She tasted of smoke and champagne, her salt mingling with the copper tang of my own scar. I drove deeper, invading her space like a wolf claiming territory.
Her teeth clashed against mine—sharp metal sparks glittering on impact. I fought for dominance, but her surrender was immediate; her lips curved apart, welcoming me in. A low moan ripped from her, an echo of my own primal growl vibrating through my chest.
Her hands came up to my chest, trembling, but when she pressed into me I felt my resolve shatter. I tightened my arms, pulling her flush against me so that every hard contour of my body pressed into her softness. Her desperation ignited something feral in me.
I bit at her bottom lip—cruel, sharp—and tasted blood. She gasped, a gasp that turned into a ragged sound somewhere between pain and pleasure. I paused, breathing heavy, and watched my fingers tremble against her hair. Then I bent to her wound and licked the crimson bead from her lip, slow and possessive, marking her with the heat of my tongue.
Her eyes fluttered closed. The world narrowed to the taste of her on my mouth, the weight of her body against mine, the fierce, unspoken truth between us. And for a moment I knew nothing but that she belonged to me entirely—scarred, trembling, and utterly consumed by the predator in me.

⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧

I couldn't believe how one kiss shattered the boundary between her frantic, secret longing and my savage, forbidden hunger. I pressed my mouth to hers with a force that buckled her knees, the metallic tang of her blood sharp on my tongue where my fangs had broken the skin. I could feel her pulse racing in her mouth, and I pushed her backwards until her spine slammed against the ancient oak. The bark was unforgiving, and I could see every ridge of it digging into her flesh through the thin, sweat-soaked cotton of her dress. She gasped, but I only grinned, my lips wet with her taste, and yanked her wrists above her head, pinning them one-handed against the splintered trunk.

I had never seen her eyes like this. They were wide with a mix of fear and desire, and I drank in every twitch of her resistance as if it were a rare wine. Her body betrayed her, and I could smell the heat pooling between her thighs even as her mind skittered with reasons why she should say ‘no.’ But her throat was raw and tight, and the word would not come, not even as I spun her roughly, pressing her breasts flat against the tree. The swell of them spilled over the neckline of her dress, and I could feel her pebbled nipples searing into the ridged wood as I bent her forward, my chest hot and hard at her back.

I leaned in, my teeth grazing the curve of her neck, and whispered, “You were always mine, you know.” My voice was a low growl, vibrating through her bones. She shivered, every nerve ending igniting as my hands seized her hips, fingers spreading her open, thumbs digging into the soft flesh just above her pelvis. Her skirt rode up as I wrenched the hem upward, exposing her knickers—already sodden, already clinging damply to her skin. I shredded them in one practiced motion, the silk tearing with a sound that made her gasp. The summer air was shockingly cold on her bare sex, but my hands followed, burning against her, stroking her roughly until she was gasping, every thought blank except for the desperate need of me.

She should have hated me. She should have hated herself more for wanting this, for arching her hips back to meet my insistent touch, for the way she whimpered when I pressed her harder into the tree. She smelled like wildflowers and sweat and desire, and when I bit down on her shoulder—hard enough to draw beads of red—her vision went white at the edges. Her hands scrabbled for purchase, finding nothing but rough bark and splinters. Her knees threatened to buckle, but my arm was already coiled around her waist, keeping her upright, keeping her open and exposed for me.

I spat on my hand and stroked myself, the sound lewd and obscene in the silence of the wood, then lined up at her entrance. For a suspended moment, I held her there, tip poised, breath hot on the shell of her ear. Then, with a single, brutal thrust, I filled her, the intrusion so sudden and complete it stole the air from her lungs. She choked on a sob, equal parts pain and relief, as her body adjusted to the thick, relentless invasion. I fucked her with a ferocity that bordered on animal, my hips pistoning forward again and again, each time driving her breasts harder into the bark, each time grinding her clit against the unyielding wood until all she could do was moan and sob and beg for more.

I wrapped my hand around her throat, thumb pressing just enough to make her vision blur, and growled, “Say it.” I knew what I wanted, the words she had sworn she would never give me. But her body was already betraying her, slick and open and greedy for me, and when I leaned in and bit her again, deep enough this time to leave twin crescents of blood, she shattered. The orgasm ripped through her, violent and endless, and she screamed my name into the dark, her hands clawing at the tree until her palms were raw. The shame was molten in her belly, burning away what little resistance she had left as the waves of pleasure made her whole body tremble.

My pace became ragged, desperate; I could feel my cock swelling inside her, and she clenched greedily around me, needing to feel me lose control. I bent her even lower, my hand still tight on her throat, and pumped into her until I came with a shudder that rattled her bones. My teeth were bared, my face twisted in a snarl, and for a heartbeat, I looked more wolf than man. I collapsed against her back, sweat and blood and spit running down our skin, and for a long moment, neither of us could speak.

When I finally pulled out, she whimpered at the loss, immediately cold and empty without me. Her legs gave out and she slumped to the forest floor, dress bunched at her waist, thighs sticky with come and blood. I knelt behind her, gathering her in my arms, my hands tender now as I brushed the hair from her face and kissed the new wounds blooming on her skin. She wanted to hate me, I could see it in her eyes, but as I pulled her close and rocked her gently, I felt only the hollowed-out relief of someone who had finally been ruined exactly as she’d always needed to be.

Her breath came in ragged bursts, each one a sob or a laugh or something between the two. Her whole body quaked, spent and trembling, and the only thing that kept her from flying apart was the pressure of my arms, still tight around her, anchoring her to the ground as the world slowly spun itself right again.

⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧ ⛧°. ⋆༺☾𖤓༻⋆. °⛧

When Hermione and I finally descended from our carnal summit, our gazes met across the silver-dappled darkness. Her cotton undergarments—once white as fresh snow—now hung in ruins around her delicate ankles, the elastic band completely rent where my desperate fingers had torn them in my frenzy to possess her. I noticed her examining her palms, where tiny crescent indentations marked where her nails had bitten into flesh during her passion. My chest tightened at the sight of angry red welts across her forearms where the rough bark had abraded her soft skin. Something primal stirred within me—satisfaction, possession, hunger—when I saw the small smile playing at the corner of her mouth, her bottom lip still visibly swollen from where my teeth had claimed her. I watched as her expression shifted, the fleeting euphoria that had coursed through us both—that magnificent rush of endorphins that had temporarily obliterated all sense of consequence—dissipating like morning mist over the Scottish highlands. Cold reality was settling in; I could see it in her eyes, the way her shoulders tensed, the subtle change in her breathing. Shame was taking hold of her, and something in me—the wolf part, the cursed part—relished it. "This is only the beginning, Hermione," I whispered, deliberately keeping my voice low and dangerous against the shell of her ear, feeling her involuntary shiver against my chest as my hot breath caressed her skin. The wolf in me howled with triumph at her response. "I am not done with you yet. The bond will get hungrier and hungrier. We will need this." I reluctantly pulled away from her warmth, my fingers working mechanically to adjust my unbuttoned shirt, the fabric cool against my overheated skin. I forced myself to walk backward three steps, maintaining eye contact until the last possible moment before turning away. The image of her burned into my retinas: Hermione Granger, brightest witch of her age, slumped against the gnarled trunk of an ancient apple tree that had stood sentinel in this orchard for centuries. All around her, fallen apples lay crushed beneath where our bodies had writhed, their sweet juices staining the earth a dark crimson in the moonlight. The orchard had witnessed our surrender, and now it would keep our secret. As I walked away, my enhanced senses could still detect her scent, her rapid heartbeat, the shallow cadence of her breathing. The curse that flowed through my veins sang with satisfaction, but the man in me wondered with growing dread what we had begun.