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It started as an experiment.
In Hermione’s fourth year, the Weasley twins had used an aging spell to try duping the barrier around the Goblet of Fire. Predictably, powerful magic couldn’t be fooled by less powerful magic, but in all perceptible ways, they really had aged. Their voices had come out reedy, their spines had stooped, their gait had stiffened, and their skin had lapsed into wrinkles. Magically, they’d still been sixteen, but physically, they’d been ancient.
Logic suggested that an anti-aging spell might effect the opposite change. Turn back the clock, as it were. Reversibly, harmlessly, but convincingly enough, one could lose a few years. Temporarily. As needed.
Hermione wasn’t ancient by any means, but once she crested the hill of forty, her body started having complaints. Apparently, spending one’s youth bouncing between existential dread and existential panic, running around like a madwoman with her two friends to save the country from a demagogue, had some consequences. If she needed to optimize a night of sleep or commit herself to hours of joint-aching labor cleaning her post-divorce flat, she… dabbled. It worked exceedingly well.
Eventually, she began dabbling in other ways, too.
Living alone did get rather lonely, after all.
She took a few shopping trips. Got some clothes that would look ridiculous on her real body. Hid them away out of shame, then got them back out and wore them around the house to get used to them.
Took the plunge and wore them for a night out.
Wore them for several nights out.
It started as an experiment, but it turned into this: Hermione at a bar for young people, surrounded by sweaty bodies and thundering music, having the fun she never had when she should have. Her smooth, spotless skin gleamed with shimmery oil, and her hair—perpetually bushy in her younger years, before she found her ideal routine—cascaded in a waterfall of ringlets down her nearly bare back. These days, her going-out clothes would scandalize anyone who actually knew her: the top was tied into place behind her neck and about her ribs, and the skirt might as well be an oversized headband circling her hips. Under that skirt was very, very little.
Never let it be said that Hermione Granger couldn’t understand an assignment. She was here for a reason. The means had to suit the ends.
Her partners, both on the dancefloor and off, came in a variety of flavors. Mostly men, but sometimes women. Some tall, some short. Some gorgeous and arrogant for it, some less attractive but utterly charming. Her first go ‘round at youth, she’d never let herself explore her options. Now, all she did was explore.
This particular bar, though, she frequented for one reason: He came here.
He looked so, so much like his father.
She didn’t dare approach him. The chances of him recognizing her were low, but months of clubbing had taught her how the social paradigm operated: Whoever did the approaching got an evaluation, an assessment of attractiveness and viability. Any searchlights were at their brightest when one was considering whether to take a suitor up on their invitation, and he was her nephew’s best friend. If anyone here could peer through the gossamer veil of the de-aging spell and identify her, it was him.
Her game necessitated anonymity. Thus, she kept her distance.
But she watched him. Constantly, she watched him.
She used to watch his father, too. She’d told herself it was a defensive, wary endeavor, a practice of waiting for him to commit his next great sin, but lies are always easy to tell in the moment. She understood that wriggling, uneasy tingle in her belly better now. She knew why she used to watch his long, aristocratic hands in Potions, and why she used to get so blazingly furious whenever he proved himself an arsehole. Under different circumstances, without all those ugly politics in the way….
Alas, there was only so much history she could undo. The father was the father, and that was that.
The son, though. The son didn’t hold those politics. These were different circumstances. The enthralling outside didn’t conceal a hateful inside, and Hermione didn’t feel like a traitor to her blood status for admiring the results of Wizarding England’s most discerning pedigree.
Oh, how she admired.
While, of course, having her own fun and traipsing off with different, less problematic partners. She came to this club to ogle him, yes, but she came to clubs at all so she could reclaim her youth and have some string-free sex. He was the distraction that entertained her until her new conquest revealed themselves, no more.
Which was why on this particular Saturday, late enough into the night that people were beginning to pair off with their chosen bedmates for the evening, she didn’t think twice about the broad, warm hands that clasped her hips from the back and pulled her against a steady chest. It had taken her some time to get used to men laying hands on her as a first introduction, but she was accustomed to it now. A dance was just a dance.
She angled her hips back, pressing more firmly against him, and kept on going.
This man was all hands. As soon as they found their rhythm together, he abandoned her clothed hips for her exposed waist, then slid his hands forward to her belly. If he pushed them upward, he could slip them under the loose hem of her top and cup her breasts.
One of his hands followed that very path. As the dance went on, it climbed up to her ribs, then to the tickling line of her top, then under it. His fingertips grazed the underside of her breast—just far enough to discover she wasn’t wearing a bra.
His hips rocked against hers out of rhythm, evidencing his surprise and lust.
She grinned out at the crowd lit by roving stagelights. She loved this. Loved being objectified after a lifetime of being a brain on legs, loved getting out of her own head, loved taking risks and embarking on ventures that would horrify her loved ones. She might be Hermione Granger most of the time, but when she wasn’t, she was desirable.
The man swept her hair aside and nosed at her neck, and she got a whiff of expensive, tantalizing cologne.
“You are,” he murmured straight into her ear, “the most beautiful woman here. You realize that, right?”
Hermione Granger wouldn’t like that. She wasn’t one for flattery when it was obviously a lie, and in this club of young men and women, she fit in without standing out. That was the whole point. She certainly wasn’t the most beautiful.
This Hermione, though, took the compliment how it was intended. The man, whoever he was, wanted her. He wasn’t settling for her because she was available and attractive enough, he was choosing her. That was what he was really saying.
She reached up and threaded her hand through his hair—silky, nice to hold, just long enough to clench in a fist—and angled his head down so she could respond. She didn’t use the opportunity to look at him. Not yet. She wanted to let the anticipation build a little, first. She just wanted him to hear her.
“Don’t tell me you checked,” she teased. “Though that might explain why it took you so long to come dance with me tonight.”
It was a test. She was fairly equal opportunity when it came to sex, but of her few requirements, the foremost was wit. She wanted to have fun. She’d spent almost two decades with a partner whose ego couldn’t handle some repartée in bed, and while that sex had been pleasurable and lovely, it wasn’t what she was looking for anymore.
“Oh, believe me, I’ve checked,” the man replied, nipping at the edge of her ear. “Don’t tell me you were waiting for me.”
She’d call that passing the test. “Okay. I won’t.”
“Fuck.” One of his hands drops to her belly just under her navel, giving him leverage for his next grind forward. He was starting to get hard against her. “Serves me right for having to gather my courage. We could have been doing this weeks ago.”
Oh. The flattery wasn’t a lie. He really did find her especially beautiful, so much so that he’d had to steel himself to meet her. For weeks, evidently.
Okay, anticipation time over. She needed to lay eyes on him to figure out why he hadn’t approached her until now. Good looks weren’t one of her strictest requirements, but she’d like to know what she was working with now that this was some grand showing on his part.
She spun around in his arms and gasped.
White blond hair. Dark eyebrows. A pointed nose and chiseled jaw. Silver eyes.
Scorpius Malfoy.
Fuck. Fuck.
He had been eyeing her up for weeks? Him?
Okay, so he didn’t recognize her, then.
Wait. He didn’t recognize her. The threat of exposure was no more.
“Mia!” she said by way of introduction, having to shout now that they weren’t speaking against each other’s ears. She offered him a hand to shake. “My name is Mia!”
(Because, really, similar looks could be ignored, but the name Hermione wasn’t something people could just gloss over. Finding a good pseudonym had taken utmost priority when she’d started coming to clubs.)
“Mia?” he repeated, as if confirming something he wasn’t quite sure was right. The music was, admittedly, abominably loud for holding conversations. When she nodded, he grinned a little and accepted the handshake. “Scorpius!”
Merlin’s fucking beard, she was chatting up Scorpius Malfoy right now. The son of her childhood bully. Her nephew Albus’ best friend. That Scorpius.
And he had sought her out.
A slow, feline smile stretched across her face, and she bit her bottom lip, ever so slightly shy. “Scorpius. Nice to meet you!”
He laughed down at his shoes—was he blushing?—and met her eye. “Likewise! Can I buy you a drink?”
This night was shaping up remarkably well. “Only if I can buy you one after!”
In what Hermione considered a feat of magical ingenuity, the bar was surrounded by a transparent bubble that dampened most of the roar of the club. Not all—the music was still loud—but enough that the people could hear themselves think and bartenders could make out drink orders without relying on lip reading.
They found seats near the end of the bar, and their drinks came floating over a few seconds after Scorpius placed their order: A whiskey on the rocks for him, and a cranberry and gin for her.
A Malfoy, drinking Muggle whiskey. Wonders never ceased.
“So, weeks, huh?” She swirled her straw in her drink. “Am I really so intimidating? Little old me?”
“Am I?” He held her eye through his first sip of whiskey. “Unless I wasn’t supposed to notice you watching me. We can dispense with that charade, can’t we?”
Hermione Granger would be mortified right now.
This Hermione would be, too, if only he hadn’t laid his interest on quite so thick. He was pointing out reciprocity, not unrequited yearning.
“How dare you!” she huffed, mock exasperated. “I was going to play so coy, just so you know. It was going to be darling. You’ve ruined it, you monster.”
He licked along the edges of his teeth, his eyes shining with mirth. “Something tells me you’re not usually keen on being darling.”
That much was true for both versions of Hermione. Hermione Granger would never covet infantilization, and this one didn’t like implying that she was a passive, sloe-eyed waif who would lay back and accept the fucking done to her.
“Oh yeah? Well, sounds like you’ve become something of an expert lately.” She curled her tongue around the straw, mostly for show, and sipped at her drink. Cran and gin was the one age-appropriate concession she allowed herself: No sugary garbage, no experimental cocktails with cute names. She wanted liquor she trusted and a mixer that helped stave off unwanted complications downstairs. A nice, sensible beverage for the sensible woman under the mask. “What do you think I’m keen on?”
His gaze dripped down her front, taking in her purple top, her embarrassment of a miniskirt, her strappy heels (which would kill her real feet). The trip upward took even longer. When he met her eyes again, his pupils had dilated.
“You want to be appreciated,” he decreed, “in the fullest sense of the term. No one should make you less than you are. You’re a woman to be worshipped. No one quite scratches the itch, though, do they? No one gets it right. So you package yourself in palatable parcels and accept what’s given to you. You make yourself darling. It’s not actually your speed.”
The straw fell out of her mouth.
“Excuse you?” she spluttered. “That’s not—you—where do you get off, saying something like that?! You don’t know me!”
“It wouldn’t be offensive if it weren’t true.” He licked a drop of whiskey off the lip of his glass, taking his time to make it sensual. “And I’m not going to apologize for stating facts as I see them.”
There was the Malfoy in him. She’d caught glimpses of it before, but only from afar, and only in passing. It was right in front of her now. This was definitely Draco Malfoy’s son.
“Which part bothers you?” He took another sip, his eyes challenging (just like his father’s) and his expression obnoxiously polite. “The part where you deserve to be worshipped? Or the part where you break yourself into morsels small enough for the idiots in this establishment to enjoy?”
“That one,” she hissed. She hadn’t actually had a good reason until he’d offered one to her, but he’d hit the nail on the ruddy head. “I don’t think in terms of better and worse people. I don’t hold myself above, and I don’t look down my nose at partners who….”
“Partners who… what?” He raised a single eyebrow. “Finish the sentence for me, darling. If you did look down your nose, what, exactly, would you find so condemnable?”
Dammit. Dammit.
She’d boxed herself in. And he’d caught it.
He really fucking was a Malfoy.
“What makes you so much better?” She cocked her head, at once the perfect picture of the hothead who used to go toe-to-toe with Slytherin bigots at Hogwarts. “You talk like you’re different from them. I fail to see why.”
He had the gall to chuckle.
“I’d rather show you than tell you.” He cupped the back of her knee and brushed his fingers along the sensitive skin there. “I should put my money where my mouth is, and… if you’re willing, put my mouth other places. What do you think?”
Her outrage took a sharp left turn, and she suddenly registered the prickling sensitivity of her skin, the frisson of energy dancing up and down her spine, the fluttering of her pulse.
Malfoy derision, sans the prejudice. Malfoy arrogance canted in her favor.
Worship.
She always did take extreme measures to prove a point. Reporters imprisoned in glass jars. Tattletales disfigured with evidence of their sins. Professors coaxed into centaur territory and left to rot there.
She could have a Malfoy on his knees tonight.
“Your place,” she said, setting down her half-finished drink on the bar and rising to her feet. “Not mine. Don’t even think about procrastinating with some ridiculous offer of coffee first.”
“I wouldn’t dare.” He rose smoothly and offered her a hand, smirking in triumph. “Mia.”