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Chapter Text

The Department of Mysteries was a place of shadows and secrets, its long, vaulted corridors lined with inscrutable magical wards and whispers of knowledge too dangerous for the public eye. Despite its forbidding architecture and the hushed reverence of its Unspeakable staff, it was not immune to chaos—especially when Hermione Granger was involved.

Hermione strode down the polished obsidian hallway with purpose, the crisp rhythm of her heels striking the stone floor like a metronome of impatience. Clutched tightly in her left hand was a heavy folder stuffed with parchment; in her right, a quill that she twirled absently between her fingers. Her brow furrowed deeply as she muttered under her breath, frustration seeping into every sharp syllable.

“Classified under ‘Minor Temporal Anomalies’? Who in Merlin’s name filed this under ‘Minor’? It’s clearly—oh. Of course it was Dawlish,” she spat the name with a mixture of disbelief and scorn. Her fingers rifled through the documents again, the pages crackling under the pressure. “If he gets me vaporized by mislabeling one more dangerously enchanted object, I swear to Merlin, I’ll—”

A voice interrupted her, deep and laced with mischief, slicing through the quiet like a well-aimed hex.

“Oi, careful there,” the voice said from up ahead. “Your paperwork’s glowing a bit.”

Hermione’s head snapped up. At the far end of the corridor, near the massive iron door marked with swirling enchantments and Ministry seals, stood Marcus Flint. His presence was impossible to ignore: broad-shouldered, casually leaning against the cold stone wall with arms crossed, and a crooked grin that suggested he was either bored or plotting something—not necessarily in that order.

He wore the standard Auror security robes, but with the kind of casual flair that made it look like he might be about to challenge a rival to a Quidditch match rather than enforce magical law. His wand sat holstered at his side, but the easy confidence in his stance suggested he was ready to draw it in an instant.

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him, a spark of exasperation flashing across her face. “Why are you guarding Vault Eleven? That’s classified to Level Six and above, Marcus.”

He grinned wider, clearly enjoying the opportunity to needle her. “You’re welcome, sunshine. No one else would volunteer for this one. The thing inside’s humming like a jar of bees on Pepper-Up. Couldn’t resist.”

Hermione’s lip twitched in what was almost a smile, but quickly transformed into a scowl. “I asked for this vault. I’m here to perform an identification trace. There’s a possibility this artifact was misfiled—”

She paused, biting the end of her sentence off. What exactly did it matter who’d been careless? Someone had. And it was her job to fix it.

“I’ll handle it,” she said firmly, brushing past Marcus toward the door.

Marcus stepped forward, casting a quick, mischievous glance over his shoulder. “Need backup?”

Hermione shot him a dry look. “The last time you offered backup, you ‘accidentally’ blew out three floors of the Spell Reclassification Wing.”

“Allegedly,” Marcus replied, stepping in behind her as she activated the vault’s magical seal.

The heavy iron door hissed open with a long, mournful sigh that echoed faintly down the corridor, as if the vault itself was lamenting the disturbance. Inside, the chamber was dim and cool, shrouded in shadows that danced and twisted in the soft glow emanating from a single object resting atop a velvet pedestal. The light was subtle but alive—pulsing gently like a heartbeat, casting eerie patterns on the walls, as if the artifact itself breathed magic.

Hermione’s sharp eyes locked onto the object: a bronze circlet, delicately wrought with intricate filigree and set with three large pearlescent stones. The gems shimmered with a strange, almost sentient quality, catching the faint light and refracting it into ghostly rainbows. There was an unsettling intelligence to the stones, as if they were watching her, calculating, waiting.

Her brow furrowed deeply, the weight of her unease settling in her chest. “That’s not a time-turner,” she muttered to herself, voice low and cautious. “It’s not even similar. This—” She paused, taking a slow step closer, wand half-raised in tentative inquiry. “This is pre-Empire Mesopotamian enchantwork. Extremely old, extremely dangerous. Who in Merlin’s name—?”

Before she could finish, Marcus stepped forward, his eyes bright with a mischievous curiosity that contrasted sharply with the grave atmosphere. “Pretty,” he said, stepping closer, the casual lilt in his voice betraying a surprising reverence. “Looks like a crown. Bet it’d suit you.”

Hermione’s lips twitched in a brief, unamused smile before she rolled her eyes. “It’s not a crown,” she corrected sharply, voice tightening with authority. “It’s a conjugal binding circlet. An ancient magical marriage ritual object—used for sealing life-binding contracts. Completely outlawed, obviously. The bond it creates lasts thirty days unless renewed through mutual consent or broken by very high-level magical intervention. And it’s very nasty if improperly activated.”

Marcus squinted, brow furrowing. “Wait, so it’s like a magical handfasting? You know, like an official wizard marriage?”

Hermione shook her head, stepping closer to the pedestal, wand now fully drawn and glowing faintly with protective charms. “Not just any handfasting. This type was reserved for royal or magically potent unions. Extremely sensitive enchantments woven deep into the circlet’s very metal. It shouldn’t even be here. It belongs in a secure, highly restricted vault, not misfiled under minor temporal anomalies.”

Then, without warning, Marcus reached out his hand toward the circlet. Hermione’s breath caught. “Don’t—don’t touch—!” she shouted, but it was too late.

His finger brushed the cold bronze surface.

The world exploded.

Not with noise, but with light—blinding, golden, and unbearably hot, like being trapped inside a struck bell whose resonance vibrated through every fiber of her being. The runes carved into the vault walls flared suddenly to life, symbols of ancient magic darting and flickering like swarms of fireflies, weaving patterns too complex to comprehend in the moments they filled the chamber.

Hermione’s ears rang with a high-pitched, rushing sound that threatened to drown out everything else. Her chest felt squeezed, air rushing in and out unevenly, as though the pressure around her was shifting impossibly fast. It wasn’t just physical—her very bones seemed to ripple and realign, the world tilting wildly beneath her feet. She felt herself falling. Or floating. Or maybe suspended between the two.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the light vanished. The ringing ceased.

Everything dropped away into an unnatural silence.

Hermione slowly opened her eyes.

She was lying on the cold stone floor, robes askew, tangled in her own sleeves. The circlet was gone. The pedestal was empty, bathed in a soft, residual glow.

She turned her head and saw Marcus beside her, blinking slowly at the ceiling with an expression somewhere between confusion and mild discomfort.

“Did we… die?” Marcus’s voice was oddly calm, almost mild, as if he were commenting on the weather rather than a potentially catastrophic magical event.

Hermione slowly pushed herself up from the cold stone floor, her fingers grazing the rough surface as she tested her strength. She ran a quick mental scan for injuries—nothing broken, no sharp pains—but a heavy knot settled in her stomach. She exhaled shakily and shook her head. “No. Worse.”

Before either of them could say more, the vault door slammed open with a thunderous bang that echoed down the corridor. The sudden noise shattered the stunned silence like a lightning strike. A pair of Unspeakables, their black robes billowing behind them as they hurried inside, followed closely by Healer Thatch from the Magical Accidents Unit. Bringing up the rear, with an expression more severe than Hermione had seen in years, was Minister Shacklebolt himself.

Hermione’s eyebrows rose in disbelief. “Why is the Minister—?”

Before she could finish, Thatch cut in sharply, raising his wand with practiced authority. His face was tight with concern, eyes flickering between the two of them. “Don’t move. You’re both… glowing.”

Hermione’s gaze dropped to her left hand. There, wound delicately but unmistakably around her ring finger, was a thin band of golden magic. It pulsed softly, rhythmically, like a heartbeat made visible. The glow was gentle but impossible to ignore.

Her eyes snapped to Marcus. The exact same magical signature circled his finger, identical in shimmer and steady beat. The weight of the realization settled like ice.

“Oh no,” she whispered, breath catching in her throat.

Minister Shacklebolt stepped forward, his face unreadable, but his voice carried the weight of finality. “Miss Granger. Mr. Flint. I’m afraid the object you just activated was not only misclassified—it was uncontained. A Class Seven Binding Circlet.”

Hermione’s usually sharp mind stalled for a heartbeat, trying to process the implications. “Class Seven means…” Her voice faltered.

Marcus answered before she could. His tone was flat, dry—resigned almost. “We’re married, aren’t we?”

Thatch nodded solemnly. “Magically bound, yes. This is a conjugal binding of royal grade. The artifact’s enchantment is fully active and unbreakable through conventional magical means. There is no simple counter-curse or reversal spell that can dissolve this bond.”

Hermione’s eyes widened, disbelief flooding her features. “This is absurd! There must be some kind of counter-ritual, a reversal, a loophole—anything!”

Thatch shook his head grimly. “Only one remedy exists: you must complete the full thirty-day conjugal cycle. This requires cohabitation, a shared domestic environment, and, ideally, minimal discord. If the bond remains stable throughout the term, it will dissolve naturally at the end of thirty days.”

He paused, his expression darkening. “Premature dissolution is only possible through… well, death.”

Marcus winced audibly, his mouth twisting into a grimace. “Charming.”

Hermione’s fists clenched at her sides. The magical band still pulsed gently, a constant reminder that this was no simple bureaucratic headache. It was a binding, a magical contract forged without consent, and its consequences would ripple far beyond the Department of Mysteries.

“You’ll need to report to the Conjugal Integration Office by noon,” Healer Thatch added briskly, his tone clipped but tinged with the unmistakable weight of protocol. “They’ll arrange for shared housing and magical monitoring. Everything will be set up to ensure the binding proceeds according to Ministry guidelines.”

Hermione buried her face in her hands, shoulders shaking slightly as if trying to physically push away the mounting absurdity of the situation. “This is a nightmare,” she whispered, voice strained with disbelief and frustration.

Marcus stood, brushing dust from his robes with a casual air that contrasted sharply with Hermione’s tense posture. “Could be worse,” he said with a crooked grin, eyes gleaming with that familiar mixture of sarcasm and resilience. “At least I didn’t wake up married to Goyle.”

Hermione’s glare snapped back at him, ice-cold and sharp. “You touched the circlet,” she said, voice dangerously low and trembling with restrained anger. “This is your fault.”

Marcus raised his hands in mock surrender. “Technically, I grazed it. Your endless explanations were very distracting, you know.”

She whirled on him, the fire in her eyes blazing. “If you think for one second I’m letting this charade continue without a full legal review—”

Before she could finish, Minister Shacklebolt stepped forward, his voice calm but firm, carrying the gravitas of authority and a measure of reassurance. “Miss Granger,” he said gently, “we will fix this. But for now, the safest and most responsible course is to complete the thirty-day period as required. Quietly. The artifact is ancient and extremely sensitive; we do not fully understand the consequences if the bond is ruptured prematurely.”

Hermione’s mouth opened, then closed again, searching for words that could defy the unyielding facts before her. Finally, she spoke, a list of demands spilling out with the precision of someone desperate to regain control in an impossible situation. “I want a written statement of indemnity. I want full control of the shared quarters. And I want him kept out of the kitchen.”

Marcus’s eyes flashed with mock indignation. “Oi! That’s discrimination.”

Hermione didn’t miss a beat. “I saw what you did to the last breakroom kettle.”

“I was experimenting!” Marcus protested, grinning despite himself.

Shacklebolt sighed, the weight of the Ministry pressing down on him visibly. “The Conjugal Integration Office will handle all logistics and accommodations. I suggest you both exercise patience.”

Hermione gave him a withering look, her eyebrows arched and lips pursed in silent disagreement.

Marcus simply grinned wider, clearly amused by the escalating absurdity of their predicament.

And above them all—unseen by human eyes—the faint shimmer of the binding circlet’s magic pulsed once more, soft and content, as if the ancient artifact itself was quietly watching, satisfied that its work had begun.

Chapter Text

Hermione woke to the dull ache of disbelief pounding behind her eyes. The sterile, Ministry-issued flat was quiet except for the low hum of the magical wards monitoring their conjugal binding. Sunlight filtered weakly through drawn curtains, casting long, reluctant shadows across the sparsely furnished room. She lay still for a moment, letting the absurdity settle like a stone in her chest.

They’re married.

The words repeated themselves in her mind like an incantation gone horribly wrong. Hermione Granger, Deputy Head of the Department of Mysteries, married—not to a brilliant wizard, not even to an upstanding Ministry official—but to Marcus Flint. The same Marcus Flint who had, on more than one occasion, been the bane of her existence during her Hogwarts years. The one who had once hexed her favorite book into ashes in third year.

She sat up carefully, casting a sideways glance at the other side of the room. Marcus was sprawled across the second single bed—apparently the flat came with two—his chest rising and falling in slow, steady breaths. The first indication that he was anything but the usual swaggering, cocky ex-Quidditch player was how calm he seemed. Almost too calm.

Hermione groaned softly and swung her legs over the side of the bed, feet brushing the cool floor. The golden band of magic wrapped tight but pliable around her left ring finger, glowing faintly like a heartbeat. She flexed her hand; it pulsed gently in response, as if the circlet were alive and aware, tethering her invisibly to Marcus.

She got up, pacing the small flat, the unfamiliar weight of the conjugal bond pressing on her shoulders as heavily as the Ministry’s cold decor. The walls around her were stark and unyielding, painted a sterile gray that matched the somber mood of her predicament. Aside from the faint shimmer of the Ministry’s official seal etched into the doorframe—a reminder that they were still under watchful eyes—the space was devoid of personality or comfort.

In the corner, a small orb hovered silently, no larger than a snitch but glowing faintly with a soft blue light. Hermione knew better than to underestimate it: this magical monitoring device recorded everything, from their interactions to the subtle shifts in magical energy between them. It was the Ministry’s latest attempt at enforcing “conjugal harmony,” which, in the euphemistic language favored by bureaucrats, translated to “keep your hands off the hexes and don’t kill each other.”

Her fingers itched to pull out a stack of parchments and start reading through the legalese of the binding contract again, but instead, she drew her wand with deliberate care. Lowering her voice to a whisper, she began to chant softly, the tip of her wand glowing faintly as she tried one enchantment after another: “Obliviate charm… Nullifying hex… Contract disintegration…” Each spell flickered against an invisible barrier, fizzling out like sparks against iron.

The magical contract shimmered around her wrist with a silvery light, rippling like a shield made of pure arcane energy—impenetrable, inflexible, and utterly unyielding. It was a masterpiece of ancient, royal-grade enchantments, designed precisely to prevent any tampering, any escape. Hermione’s heart sank as she realized the futility of fighting it with conventional magic. Every loophole she had hoped to exploit was sealed tight, every trick she knew rendered useless by the depth and complexity of the binding.

It was not just a legal contract—it was a cage.

Downstairs, she could hear the faint sounds of Marcus moving about. Probably getting breakfast. Or breaking something.

She took a deep breath, steeling herself to face the day.

The first meeting at the Conjugal Integration Office was every bit as sterile and bureaucratic as Hermione had feared. The waiting room was a cavernous, windowless chamber lit by flickering enchanted sconces that cast a cold, unwelcoming glow over the pale stone walls. Rows of identical chairs lined the space, occupied by other reluctant pairs, each carrying the weight of the same magical mandate.

A sharply dressed witch emerged from behind a heavy oak door, her tight curls bouncing with each measured step. Her smile was practiced, almost too bright, as if she had long perfected the art of delivering unwelcome news with a syrupy sweetness. In her hands was a pamphlet emblazoned with the Ministry of Magic seal and the title, Your 30-Day Conjugal Binding: A Guide to Successful Cohabitation. She handed it over with a precise nod.

Hermione took the pamphlet reluctantly, flipping through the thin pages. The language inside was sickly sweet and carefully sanitized, filled with phrases like “mutual respect,” “constructive communication,” and “embracing magical harmony.” Each sentence felt like a cruel joke to Hermione, who knew all too well the tension that simmered beneath forced proximity, especially when it was enforced by ancient, unyielding magic.

Marcus, sitting beside her, leaned back in his chair with a slow, amused grin curling at the corners of his mouth. His tone was light, but there was an undeniable edge of irony. “You realize this is basically magical wedlock, right? You ever think you’d see the day?”

Hermione’s glare was sharp enough to cut through steel. “You’re treating this like a game.”

“Hey,” Marcus said with a shrug, “if we’re stuck, might as well make it interesting.” He winked, but the humor didn’t quite reach his eyes.

Later, back in their flat, the awkwardness of their situation became even more apparent. The air was thick with unspoken frustrations, and the circlet — the source of their conjugal binding — pulsed faintly on Hermione’s arm, a constant reminder that escape was impossible.

They tried to establish some semblance of order amidst the chaos.

“I want separate bedrooms,” Hermione stated firmly, arms crossed.

Marcus raised an eyebrow, clearly amused. “Separate bedrooms? How does that help with cohabitation?”

“I’m not about to be shackled to you twenty-four seven,” Hermione snapped, her voice tinged with exhaustion.

The circlet pulsed sharply, as if scolding her defiance, sending a sudden prickling discomfort radiating from her wrist. Marcus winced on his side, feeling the same sensation.

“It’s impossible to get more than twenty meters apart,” Hermione explained, rubbing her arm. “If we stray too far, the circlet glows ominously and sends these—these pulses. It’s like a leash made of magic.”

Marcus ran a hand through his hair, exhaling slowly. “Well, at least it’s a leash we’re both stuck with.”

That night, the flat was unnervingly silent except for the faint ticking of the magical wards set to monitor their conjugal bond. Hermione lay curled beneath the thin Ministry-issued blankets, the weight of the day pressing heavily on her chest. She had tucked herself in tightly, hoping the cocoon of fabric would shield her from the uncomfortable reality of sharing a space—and a life—with Marcus Flint.

Just as her eyes began to flutter closed, a sudden, sharp chill swept over her. She instinctively clutched at the duvet only to realize it was gone. The cold night air nipped at her skin, and she shivered, blinking blearily in the dim light.

Across the room, Marcus was stretched out on his bed with an infuriatingly smug grin plastered on his face. In his hands, he triumphantly waved the stolen duvet like a victorious flag.

“You’re impossible,” Hermione muttered, the corner of her mouth twitching despite herself as she pushed herself upright. She grabbed a spare blanket from the overstuffed closet, the fabric rough against her skin, and threw it over her shivering form.

Marcus chuckled softly, the sound low and unexpectedly warm in the quiet room. “Welcome to married life,” he said, voice tinged with amusement but not unkindness.

Hermione lay back down, pulling the blanket close, her thoughts swirling like a storm. The golden pulse of the conjugal circlet echoed faintly in her mind, a relentless heartbeat binding her to Marcus in ways she could neither undo nor ignore.

As sleep teased the edges of her consciousness, she wondered with a mixture of dread and reluctant curiosity—how on earth was she going to survive the next twenty-nine days?

Chapter Text

 Hermione liked order.

She liked charts and rotas and color-coded schedules. She liked alphabetized bookshelves and parchment stacks squared at perfect right angles. She liked her mornings to begin with a precisely steeped cup of Earl Grey—strong, one sugar, a whisper of lemon—followed by ten minutes of uninterrupted silent reading and, crucially, the use of her own toothbrush.

Her toothbrush, which she had meticulously charmed to match her dental sensitivities—gingivitis-prevention, enamel-strengthening, peppermint-enhanced with a faint vanilla undertone. It was the kind of toothbrush that would never fraternize with common bristles. It was personal. Intimate. Sacred.

What she decidedly did not like was waking up on Day Two of her magical marriage-by-accident to the sound of humming coming from the bathroom.

Not just any humming.

Off-key humming.

Male off-key humming.

Her eyes snapped open with the clarity of someone whose subconscious had just screamed danger. She sat upright in the bed—no, her side of the bed; Marcus had been assigned the cot across the room by mutual agreement (and Ministry stipulation)—and blinked around the flat.

It was still mostly dark, the weak morning light barely filtering through the enchanted curtains. The room smelled faintly of cedarwood and citrus—Marcus’s shampoo, she realized with a surge of resentment—and the only illumination came from the bathroom, where a sharp yellow glow spilled out from beneath the door and fell in a crooked line across the bland, government-issue carpet.

She groaned softly and rubbed her temples.

The humming continued.

Badly.

She threw back the blanket, feeling the chill of the morning nip at her bare feet, and padded toward the door. Her robes were loose, hair a lion’s mane of sleep-tangled frizz, but propriety was the least of her concerns.

The golden band of magic around her left ring finger pulsed lightly, the same way it had the day before—gentle and insistent, like a heartbeat that wasn’t hers. The circlet was always aware of him. Of them. Their distance, their mood, their so-called "harmonious energy."

Hermione’s mood was not harmonious.

She stood outside the door, lips thin with irritation, and raised one brow as she heard the unmistakable lyrics echoing from within:

“…I’m too sexy for my wand, too sexy for my robe, too sexy for this loo…”

She closed her eyes slowly, counted to five, then leaned closer to the door with the incredulity of someone hoping they'd misheard reality.

Nope.

Still serenading himself.

Dear Merlin, she thought grimly. He’s doing a morning concert.

Her hand reached for the knob.

She opened the door.

And froze.

Steam filled the bathroom, curling lazily from the shower to the mirror. The scent of expensive aftershave and warm, damp towels lingered in the air. In the middle of it all stood Marcus Flint—shirtless, freshly showered, towel slung low on his hips. His hair was still wet, dark strands clinging to his forehead, and his lean, muscled frame gleamed faintly in the mirror’s fogged reflection.

And in his hand—in his hand—was her toothbrush.

Time didn’t just slow—it buckled. Hermione felt the world tilt on its axis, like the universe itself had recoiled in horror. Her gaze locked on the brush as if it were a murder weapon—no, worse, a toothbrush violation of the highest order.

Foam dribbled lazily down Marcus Flint’s chin. He turned his head at the sound of her sharp intake of breath, blinking through the steam, completely unrepentant. “Mornin’, sunshine,” he said, his words distorted by a mouthful of minty foam and what Hermione could only assume was his staggering lack of moral compass.

Hermione’s eyes widened with something dangerously close to a hex-triggering expression. “That’s my toothbrush.”

Marcus followed her line of sight and lifted the object in question to eye level, examining it like it had only just occurred to him that it might not, in fact, belong in his mouth. “What? Oh. Huh.” He glanced down at it again with the vague interest of someone identifying a kitchen utensil. “It was in the cup. I figured it was communal.”

Hermione inhaled—deep, slow, a breath meant to summon every ounce of restraint she had learned during wartime diplomacy and years of Ministry service. “COMMUNAL?” she screeched, voice rising in a pitch that might’ve cracked a teacup in another room.

“This isn’t a pub! That’s a personally warded, gum-calibrated, soft-enchanted toothbrush with antibacterial filtration runes and selective user bonding!” Her voice hit another octave. “It is attuned to my saliva profile!”

Marcus spat casually into the sink, gave a shrug, and leaned back with the confident nonchalance of someone who had never suffered a cavity in his life. “Tastes nice,” he said, smacking his lips. “Kind of floral. What is that—lavender?”

Hermione’s left eye twitched.

“That toothbrush,” she said slowly, “was imported from Scandinavia. It uses fine bristle fibers derived from forested bowtruckle nests. Do you even understand how rare that is?”

“Y’know, you’re very intense before breakfast,” Marcus noted, utterly unfazed. “Like a dragon with a dental degree.”

“That’s it.”

Her wand was in her hand before he could blink. She brandished it like a dagger, eyes glowing with academic vengeance.

“Siccus Dentali!”

The spell burst forth in a shimmering stream of pale blue light and hit Marcus square in the chest.

He staggered back, gripping the sink, as a shimmering wave of enchantment passed over his face. His jaw stiffened. His lips twitched. Then—suddenly—his mouth locked into a grotesque, wide grin, unnaturally stretched as though he’d spent the morning chewing Doxy venom and enjoying it.

“Oi!” he yelped, voice slightly nasal and forced through clenched teeth. “Whah the hell was that?!”

Hermione gave a prim little sniff and tucked her wand back into the pocket of her robe. “Dental drying hex,” she said, voice syrupy with triumph. “With a minor nerve constriction clause for excessive oral misuse. It’ll wear off. You’ll be able to frown again in… oh, twenty minutes. Maybe thirty.”

Marcus glared at her, which—given the toothy grin currently plastered to his face—made him look like a deranged mannequin. He tried to frown. Failed. Tried again. Failed harder. His upper lip twitched like a faulty levitation charm.

“You maniac,” he muttered, rubbing at his cheeks with exaggerated slowness. “I look like I lost a bet with a Cornish Pixie.”

Hermione crossed her arms, one brow arched with academic satisfaction. “Next time, ask before violating personal oral hygiene boundaries.”

He pointed an accusing finger at her. “Yoo hex’d my breakfast yesterday. Pickle tea, remember?”

“That wasn’t breakfast, that was sabotage.”

“It was innovation!”

“You put pickling juice in the kettle, Marcus. The kettle. The entire flat smelled like brine for six hours.”

He shrugged again, clearly still amused despite the rictus grin. “Could be a thing. Gillyweed and gherkin infusion. It’s probably good for you.”

She turned on her heel. “I’m going to file a toothbrush requisition and request a containment ward to keep you from ever entering the bathroom again.”

But the room had gone very still.

A sharp, high-pitched chime rang from above, clear as glass and laced with unmistakable magical menace.

They both froze.

Hermione’s head snapped upward just in time to see the golden circlet on her left ring finger pulse once—angrily. It flared with sudden light, brighter than she’d ever seen it before. Not the soft ambient glow of yesterday’s binding. This was searing. Stern. Judging.

“Oh no,” she whispered.

Then the air crackled.

A jagged whip of magic arced between her and Marcus like a lightning bolt trying to decide which of them to smite. It lashed across the bathroom, humming with static. The smell of ozone rushed in—crisp and unnatural, the kind of sharpness that always preceded a magical backlash.

And then—without warning—the magic snapped them forward.

Their bodies jerked as if invisible cords had been yanked tight. Hermione’s right hand and Marcus’s left were dragged forward with unnatural force, crashing palm to palm with a painful smack. The sound echoed through the tile-walled room, absurdly loud for two hands colliding.

Both of them yelped.

Hermione’s wand clattered from her grasp, hitting the tile and spinning away beneath the sink. She instinctively grabbed at their joined hands with her free one, trying to pry them apart.

Nothing happened.

Golden vines of magic slithered and tightened around their fingers, weaving in and out like ethereal rope, glowing brighter each time they pulled against it. It was responsive, Hermione realized with a mix of horror and reluctant respect. The harder they struggled, the tighter it bound them. Sympathetic enforcement. Advanced spellcraft. Ancient magic at its most elegantly petty.

Marcus tried jerking his hand back. “What the hell—?”

Hermione’s teeth clenched. “Don’t move! You’ll make it worse!”

“Oh, it can get worse?” he barked, trying to shake her off anyway. “You hex me and now I’m handcuffed to you by sentient jewelry?”

“You used my toothbrush, you menace! What was I supposed to do—applaud?!”

He tugged again. “Why is it squeezing?!”

“Because we’re arguing while bonded!” Hermione snapped, trying to keep her voice level even as golden magic spiraled up their wrists like ivy. “The circlet interprets conflict as emotional instability. That triggers enforcement protocols.”

“Oh, brilliant,” Marcus muttered. “Magical marriage counseling by force. Who designed this thing, Umbridge?!”

Hermione ignored him, mentally scanning through the Ministry briefing materials she’d practically memorized on the walk back from the vault yesterday. “Okay… okay, proximity tethering is a secondary clause. It’s usually triggered by overtly hostile actions between bound parties—hexes, yelling, throwing objects—”

“I didn’t hex anyone!” he said indignantly.

“I did! You brushed your teeth with a calibrated medical device meant for my mouth! It was an emotional reaction!”

He blinked. “So now we’re being punished by… what? Magical couple’s detention?”

“Minor disciplinary entanglements may be enforced by the circlet in cases of violent magical discord,” she quoted flatly, staring at their fused hands. “Bonded parties may experience temporary proximity tethering as a corrective measure until resonance stabilizes.”

He stared at her blankly. “English, please.”

She looked up, expression dry and exhausted. “We’re stuck together.”

“For how long?!”

Hermione hesitated, doing the math in her head. “The manual said most standard enforcement bonds last—” She groaned. “Up to an hour.”

Marcus let out a guttural sound of despair and slumped back against the bathroom wall, dragging her with him. “Of course it’s an hour. Not ten minutes. Not five. A whole bloody hour.”

Hermione sighed. “It’s meant to be reflective. A chance to calm down. Recenter. Reestablish conjugal harmony.”

“Oh, I’ll give it harmony,” Marcus muttered. “Harmony right in the—”

“Do not finish that sentence.”

The circlet pulsed again—harder this time.

Hermione flinched. “It heard you.”

He looked up toward the ceiling. “What, does it record now, too?!”

“It is Ministry-regulated,” she said grimly.

A long silence followed, broken only by the faint, occasional sizzling of magical tension still hanging in the air. The steam in the bathroom was beginning to cool, leaving a chill behind. Hermione shifted her weight awkwardly; they were still standing too close for her comfort, shoulder to shoulder, hips nearly brushing.

They both stared at their conjoined hands—interlocked by a foreign, glowing force neither of them could control—and then finally, Marcus gave a snort of something halfway between amusement and disbelief.

“Well,” he said dryly, “I hope you didn’t have plans for today.”

Hermione glared at him, her curls now frizzed and damp with magical humidity. “I did.”

“What were they?”

She looked at their glowing hands. “Not this.”

“Same.”

The next sixty minutes were a slow-motion disaster.

Brushing their teeth was a catastrophe in motion.

The bathroom, already cramped by wizarding flat standards, became a comedic battlefield the moment they attempted to share the sink. Hermione—who normally brushed in clockwise circles, exactly 47 strokes per quadrant—was jostled off her rhythm by Marcus’s sprawling, shoulder-heavy stance and his infuriating habit of spitting mid-hum.

“Can you not do that?” she snapped, ducking as he nearly elbowed her squarely in the eye while reaching for the flannel. “Do your arms even understand spatial awareness?”

“I’m brushing my teeth, not performing an incantation,” Marcus grumbled, mouth foamy. “You’re the one hovering like an owl with a clipboard.”

“I am trying to survive this morning without losing an eyeball,” she hissed.

The circlet on both their fingers gave an irritated flicker of golden light, a subtle warning that the artifact was still watching—and, apparently, had opinions about personal space violations and domestic discord.

“Maybe we should alternate mornings,” Hermione muttered under her breath, clenching her jaw as Marcus knocked over her wand holder with his elbow. Again.

He spat into the sink, smirked at her in the mirror. “And miss all this quality time?”

Hermione seriously contemplated whether the circlet would allow a controlled, legally-justified Bat-Bogey Hex.

Getting dressed was even worse.

Because of the proximity tether enforced by the circlet—still active from the toothbrush incident—they couldn’t stray more than two feet apart. This turned basic dressing rituals into a full-body choreography that would’ve impressed a Cirque du Soleil choreographer.

Hermione tried to conjure a privacy screen between them. The magic rebounded with a mild bzzt of denial, as if the circlet itself disapproved of modesty barriers. So she turned her back and muttered every privacy charm she could remember while maneuvering into a jumper with the grace of a giraffe trying on socks.

Marcus, to his credit, didn’t gawk. But he did chuckle lowly when she got tangled in a sleeve. “Should I call the Auror Office for a rescue mission?”

“Shut up and hand me my robe,” she snapped, one arm pinned awkwardly above her head.

Socks were a two-person operation. Shoes took twenty minutes. And when they both tried to go to opposite ends of the flat—Hermione reaching for the tea kettle, Marcus going for the biscuit tin—the tether snapped them back together like poorly synchronized puppets. They collided with a whumph, knocking over a lamp and then tripping over an ottoman that somehow launched a chair sideways.

They lay groaning in a tangle of limbs and upholstery.

“Are you dead?” Marcus mumbled, face smushed against the carpet.

“Not yet,” Hermione replied, dazed, “but if I were, I’m fairly certain the tether would still find a way to yank my corpse back.”

When they finally managed to collapse onto the sofa—side by side, winded and slightly bruised—Hermione dropped her head back against the cushion with an exhausted sigh.

The Ministry-issue flat was bland and sparsely furnished, decorated in shades of beige and bureaucratic indifference. The magical orb in the corner—their ever-present observer—glowed softly in standby mode. A subtle hum filled the room as though the very walls were holding their breath.

“This is,” she muttered, not opening her eyes, “the worst marriage in wizarding history.”

Marcus exhaled beside her, stretching one long leg out in front of him. “Y’know… it’s kind of romantic. In a cursed-object-soul-bond-unholy-matrimony sort of way.”

She gave a flat groan. “If I had a sickle for every time someone told me that... I could fund a countercurse team, a new toothbrush, and my own bloody flat.”

There was a quiet pause.

Then, at the stroke of the hour, the circlet pulsed once more—this time softly, almost apologetically—and the golden light that bound their hands unraveled in a gentle shimmer. Their palms, which had been fused for exactly 63 minutes and 14 seconds, fell apart like leaves separating from a vine.

Hermione yanked her hand back as if it had been scorched, cradling her wrist and massaging the faint magical warmth still lingering under her skin. “Never again,” she muttered. “No more toothbrush incidents.”

“Noted,” Marcus said, already grabbing a chocolate digestive from the tea tray with maddening nonchalance.

Hermione fixed him with a dagger-like glare. “And stay out of my side of the bathroom.”

“I thought we were sharing everything now, love,” he drawled, biting into the biscuit with a smirk.

Her eyes narrowed into slits. “Flint… if you so much as breathe near my shampoo, I swear to Circe—”

The circlet pulsed once. Not angrily this time. Just a soft, warning flicker. Like a parent tapping its foot.

They both froze. Looked at their hands. Looked at the circlet.

Silence.

Mutual, grudging silence.

Hermione leaned back with a weary sigh, drawing a blanket around her shoulders. “It’s going to be a long twenty-eight days.”

Marcus offered her the rest of the biscuit.

She took it.

But she didn’t thank him.

Chapter Text

The morning began with the unmistakable sound of an explosion.

Not a massive one—nothing earth-shattering or wall-shattering, thankfully—but it had that particular pop-whump resonance that spoke of something being quite thoroughly and unintentionally destroyed. The kind of explosion that, while unlikely to make the evening Prophet, was more than enough to send a jolt of adrenaline through anyone still half-asleep.

Hermione shot upright in bed, heart already thudding in her chest. Her hair, wild from sleep, formed a chaotic halo around her head as she instinctively grabbed her wand from the nightstand with practiced precision. For one disoriented moment, she scanned the room—looking for signs of dueling magic, hostile entities, or the sudden appearance of a cursed artefact come to life—but there were no visible threats, no smoke billowing through her doorway. Just the unmistakable scent slowly filtering into the room: scorched metal, a hint of ozone, a waft of charred eggs, and—was that cinnamon?

She didn’t wait to investigate further. With a dramatic sweep of her robes and wand at the ready, she leapt from bed and stormed barefoot across the flat’s hall into the kitchen.

What she found made her stop dead in the doorway.

Marcus Flint stood in the middle of the smoke-filled kitchen as though he'd wandered onto the scene by accident. Shirtless and barefoot, he had a faded tea towel tossed over one shoulder in a sad attempt at domesticity. In one hand, he clutched a scorched spatula that looked like it had been through a duel with a fire crab. In the other, he held what appeared to be a slightly blackened frying pan containing what might have once been eggs, now congealed into something that resembled a tragic abstract painting.

Directly in front of him was the kettle—or rather, what remained of the kettle. It was now a lumpy, twisted piece of enchanted metal, still releasing tendrils of steam and smelling vaguely of burning rubber. It had been warped so severely by the blast that it resembled a collapsed duck, one that had fallen from a great height and landed very, very poorly.

“Good morning, sunshine,” Marcus said, as if he hadn’t just committed a culinary war crime. His expression was maddeningly casual, like someone announcing the arrival of the morning post rather than the aftermath of a magical kitchen disaster.

Hermione stared, aghast, at the carnage. The once-neat little galley kitchen was now a battlefield. The curtains near the window were visibly singed, curling at the edges with heat damage. Her favorite mug—the one with the Ravenclaw crest she’d won at a Hogwarts trivia night—lay shattered in three perfect pieces on the tile floor. Something unidentifiable, possibly egg-adjacent, dripped from the ceiling in slow, viscous plops onto the countertop, where it had begun pooling with grim determination.

She turned back to Marcus with narrowed eyes, her wand still at the ready.

“What,” she asked, voice low and laced with fury, “did you do?”

Marcus gave a half-hearted shrug and glanced at the destroyed kettle like it had personally offended him. “I was making breakfast,” he said, as though that explained everything.

“Making—? You exploded the kettle, Marcus!” she all but shouted, stepping forward and waving a hand at the damage.

He scowled and jabbed the spatula toward the offending object. “It was whistling at me.”

Hermione blinked. “Yes. Because it’s a kettle. It’s supposed to whistle!”

“Well,” he said, crossing his arms defensively over his bare chest, “that’s a stupid design for something that can also boil over and explode. It's a terrible combination, really. Magic and whistling don’t mix.”

Hermione inhaled sharply, willing herself to count to five—but the absurdity was too much. She turned in a slow circle, taking in the chaos: the splattered ceiling, the blackened stovetop, the singed curtain hem.

“Do you even know how to cook anything without setting it on fire?” she demanded, voice rising with every syllable.

Marcus looked unbothered, if not slightly smug. “I do,” he said evenly, lifting his chin. “Toast.”

“You mean burning bread and hoping for the best?”

He grinned. “It’s called artisan charring. Look it up. Very fashionable in Soho.”

Hermione closed her eyes. “Merlin save me,” she muttered, before sweeping her wand through the air in a series of sharp, efficient movements. The worst of the smoke cleared with a magical rush, and the frying pan let out a last, pitiful wheeze before cleaning itself mid-air. She took a moment to steady her breathing, then turned to him with the cold poise of someone who had absolutely had enough.

“Right. That’s it,” she said, voice tight. “Kitchen privileges: revoked. You’re banned. Permanently. Out.”

Marcus raised a thick brow. “You can’t ban me from the kitchen. I live here now, remember? Magical honeymoon and all that.”

Hermione turned to face him fully, wand still raised like a judge delivering a final sentence. “I can and I will. This flat is Ministry-provided. I am the only one here with a full set of NEWTs in domestic spellwork, culinary charms, and structural enchantment integrity. And since I’m the only one who seems capable of not destroying a kettle with breakfast, I’m taking control. Effective immediately.”

He huffed, like a Hippogriff who’d just been told he couldn’t trample through a flowerbed. “You’re just mad I was trying to do something nice.”

“You incinerated a kettle.”

Marcus pointed at her. “For you!”

Hermione didn’t flinch. She simply raised her wand a bit higher and pointed to the kitchen door. “Out.”

With all the grace of a teenager caught breaking curfew, Marcus stomped—stomped, like a sulking twelve-year-old—out of the room, muttering something about “culinary oppression” and “kitchen fascism” under his breath.

Hermione, teeth clenched, turned back to face the mess.

Hermione spent the rest of the morning cleaning the kitchen with the focused intensity of someone clawing her way back to sanity through sheer willpower and surface disinfectant. Her wand moved in brisk, efficient strokes, casting restorative charms like surgical strikes. Shattered porcelain reassembled with whispered incantations, singed curtain edges crisped neatly back into clean lines, and the smell of burnt egg and ego was finally eradicated with a trio of overlapping air-purification spells. When she finally turned her attention to the spice rack—her spice rack, the one she’d lovingly organized with a system so intuitive and rational it would make even Professor McGonagall weep—she worked with near-religious precision.

Each jar was levitated into place in alphabetic order, labels forward, lids uniformly tightened. She categorized by ingredient type, not just name—roots before leaves, bark and pods in their own section, culinary from apothecary. She finished with a polishing charm that left the glass gleaming like display cases in a Potions Master’s lab.

It was calm. It was orderly. It was right.

So when she returned later that afternoon from her debriefing with the Ministry’s Conjugal Integration Office—a painful thirty-minute check-in that consisted mainly of “Are you still alive?” and “Have you hexed him yet?”—she was in a decent mood. Her notes were filed. Her robes were pressed. She’d even managed to acquire a new kettle, though she’d had to special-request one with reinforced shielding and anti-Flint enchantments.

She stepped through the flat’s front door and paused.

Immediately, something felt off.

There was no sound. No humming. No crashing. No audible signs of Marcus doing something catastrophic. That alone was suspicious. But it was more than that. There was a faint… wrongness in the air, like magic misaligned at the subtlest level.

Her fingers tensed around the handles of her satchel.

Slowly, she stepped toward the kitchen.

As soon as she crossed the threshold, she stopped cold.

Her breath caught in her throat.

Every spice jar—every single one—had been moved.

At first glance, the rack looked immaculate. Elegant, even. The jars were evenly spaced, their labels gleaming, their lids meticulously aligned. But then the horror struck her in full.

They were arranged by color.

A perfect, glittering rainbow stretched across the spice rack: paprika and chili flakes beside rose-tinted Himalayan salt, lined up with warm, glowing symmetry. Golden turmeric flowed into orange saffron and lemon balm. Green herbs—basil, oregano, thyme—were crammed into a spectrum that made no botanical sense. Even the browns and greys—cumin, coriander, cinnamon—had been forced into an unnatural aesthetic sequence that treated flavor like a secondary concern.

Hermione approached slowly, as one might a scene of terrible violence. Her eye twitched. Her satchel slid from her shoulder and hit the floor unnoticed.

This was wrong. It was beautiful, yes—visually pleasing in a way that would make a painter weep—but it was utter, unrepentant chaos beneath the surface. Cloves should not be anywhere near turmeric. Nutmeg was fraternizing with rosemary like some sort of treasonous flavor collaboration. There was no order. No logic. Just the tyranny of visual harmony.

Behind her, a voice broke the silence.

“Pretty, isn’t it?”

Hermione turned slowly.

Marcus was leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, looking far too smug for a man who had set a kettle on fire less than twelve hours earlier. He was clearly waiting for her reaction, eyes glinting with mischief, like a Niffler who had just discovered a vault full of cursed treasure.

“What,” she asked, in a tone so quiet and dangerous it could’ve made a Death Eater back away, “did you do?”

He shrugged with all the innocence of a cat beside a broken vase. “Just a little domestic artistry. You said I’m banned from cooking, so I figured I’d contribute in other ways.” He sauntered into the kitchen and gestured at the spice rack with an exaggerated flourish. “Color-coded. Efficient. Aesthetic. Harmonious. You’re welcome.”

Hermione took another step forward. Her hand twitched at her side, tempted toward her wand. “You… reorganized my spice rack.”

He grinned, clearly delighted by her barely contained fury. “By shade. Look at that gradient—red to violet, with perfect transitional tones. Took me an hour and a half to get the greens right. Did you know sage has this really smug little olive tint to it? Very proud herb.”

She stared at him, mouth slightly agape. “It’s incorrect. It’s all wrong. How am I supposed to find anything? Cinnamon is next to thyme. That’s culinary anarchy.”

Marcus widened his eyes in mock horror. “You mean to tell me you don’t navigate by color? Hermione. Have you been living in a world of alphabetical oppression this entire time?”

She inhaled sharply. “This is not a joke.”

“I think it’s rather avant-garde,” he said. “A touch of aesthetic rebellion. The Ministry should give me a bonus for raising the design standards of this flat.”

Hermione’s hands clenched into fists. The circlet on her finger—glowing faintly ever since she entered the room—gave a soft pulse of warning. She exhaled through her nose like a dragon suppressing a fireball.

“Put. It. Back.”

Marcus raised a brow, folding his arms again. “Make me.”

Her wand was in her hand before she even registered the movement. “Gladly.”

The circlet flashed again—firmer this time, with a subtle crackle of magic, as if to say: Don’t test me. Hermione scowled, resisting the urge to hex him into next week. She closed her eyes. Counted to ten. Opened them again.

“I’ll do it myself,” she ground out through clenched teeth. “But if you touch anything else in this flat, so help me, I will enchant every pair of your socks to scream show tunes in the middle of the night.”

Marcus blinked. Then his eyes lit up with unholy interest. “Do I get to choose the genre? Because I’ve always had a soft spot for Les Misérables. Bit of a Javert guy, really.”

She turned on her heel before she said something that would activate the artifact’s disciplinary magic.

Behind her, Marcus called after her, cheerful as ever. “You’re welcome, by the way! That spice rack has never looked so fabulous!”

Hermione muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like “imprisonment with cause.”

Later that evening, the flat had settled into an unnatural hush—one of those rare lulls that arrived not from harmony, but exhaustion. The smoke from the morning’s “breakfast attempt” had finally dissipated, and the flat had returned to some semblance of livability. A peace treaty, unspoken and fragile, hovered in the air like a silencing charm that hadn’t quite worn off.

Hermione sat curled on the end of the sofa nearest the fireplace, legs tucked beneath her, a worn copy of Hogwarts: A History resting on her lap but mostly forgotten. She cradled a mug of hot tea between both hands, its warmth grounding her after a day of magical sabotage, bureaucratic indignity, and spice-based insubordination. The scent of chamomile and a hint of lemon balm—her preferred blend—wafted upward in soothing curls. The kitchen, now blessedly restored to her alphabetical vision, glowed faintly in the background, spotless and calm as if nothing had ever happened.

Across the room, Marcus Flint occupied the opposite armchair like a lounging Kneazle, long limbs draped lazily, one ankle hooked over his knee. He flipped idly through the latest issue of Quidditch Quarterly, the pages rustling occasionally as he stopped to study an article or a particularly dramatic photograph of a mid-air Bludger collision. His hair was still slightly damp from a post-disaster shower, and the collar of his too-soft t-shirt was rumpled, giving him a dangerously casual air that irritated Hermione more than she cared to admit.

The magical monitoring orb—hovering discreetly in the upper corner like a silent, judgmental chaperone—pulsed with a steady, soft golden light. Contentment, or at least the Ministry’s version of it. After a day filled with disciplinary tethering, low-level magical warnings, and one unauthorized use of a cinnamon jar for “decorative contrast,” it seemed even the artifact had decided to grant them a moment’s reprieve.

The circlet on Hermione’s finger gave a faint, almost imperceptible hum—an echo of quiet approval from the bond. She could feel Marcus nearby, a subtle awareness always tugging at the edge of her magic, like a radio tuned just slightly off frequency. It was not painful. Just... present. Persistent.

She took another slow sip of tea, her eyes fixed somewhere in the middle distance, and muttered into the rim of her mug, “Twenty-seven days.”

From the other side of the room, Marcus didn’t even look up. “But who’s counting?”

Hermione resisted the sudden, irrational urge to hurl the nearest throw pillow directly at his head.

Instead, she inhaled deeply, let the tension dissolve—barely—and focused on the warmth in her hands. The mug was solid. Reliable. Unlike certain former Slytherin Beaters with no regard for kettle safety or spice taxonomy.

Outside, the enchanted window showed a dusky stretch of sky enchanted to mimic the London horizon, soft violet streaking into star-scattered indigo. Inside, the flat felt deceptively calm. A bubble of artificial peace.

This was domestic life under magical duress: quiet, grudgingly cooperative, laced with the low hum of barely restrained annoyance. And yet, somehow, tolerable. Barely.

Hermione tilted her head back against the cushion and closed her eyes for a moment, letting the silence settle. She didn’t trust it, of course. Not really. But she’d take it.

Circe help her—tomorrow hadn’t even started yet.

And something told her Marcus Flint wasn’t done being irritating.

Not by a long shot.

Chapter Text

It started, as many catastrophes in Hermione’s life did, with an owl.

A loud, entitled tapping at the window jolted her awake, followed by the unmistakable sound of talons scraping glass in that particularly insistent rhythm that screamed urgent or tabloid. She blinked blearily at the glowing digits of the bedside clock. Seven-fifteen. The only thing worse than Rita Skeeter was Rita Skeeter before tea.

She padded across the room, hair tousled and wand half-clutched in one hand, and unlatched the window, bracing for impact.

The owl—sleek, smug, and clearly overfed on scandal—fluttered in and dropped a thick rolled-up scroll with a crimson wax seal stamped with the emblem of the Daily Prophet. It shimmered faintly with the telltale enchantment of a Quick-Quotes Quill. Hermione didn’t even need to unroll it. She knew that gaudy purple parchment as well as one knew the sting of a cursed necklace or a Hexed Honeydukes treat.

With a long, weary sigh, she broke the seal and carefully unfurled the scroll.

There, front and center on the Society page, beneath a sharp photograph of her glaring daggers at Marcus Flint—whose expression was an infuriating mix of smug amusement and sheer obliviousness—was the headline in lurid, swirling letters:

“Hermione’s Bad Boy Bond: War Hero Weds Reformed Slytherin!”
Rita Skeeter Exclusive: From Broomsticks to Betrothal—What You Don’t Know About the Ministry’s Magical Matrimony Mess!

The article was, predictably, utter garbage.

Skeeter speculated on everything from the “true passion behind Hermione Granger’s sudden secret wedding” to Marcus Flint’s “dangerous allure and Quidditch-toned physique.” There were references to “love potions gone right,” a sidebar titled "Ten Signs Your Soul Bond is Actually a Love Match," and—horrifyingly—a full-color inset of a mockup wedding portrait, complete with Marcus in dress robes and Hermione in a pastel monstrosity of a gown that made her look like a confused meringue.

Marcus stumbled out of his room, hair tousled and eyes barely open, just in time to witness Hermione’s sudden outburst. She crumpled the scroll with such force her knuckles went white, then hurled the offending parchment across the room. It hit the wall with a wet, magical sigh as the Quick-Quotes Quill enchantment stubbornly tried to smooth it back into its original, dreadful form.

“Morning,” Marcus said, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly and stifling a yawn. “Looks like Rita’s decided to start early today.”

Hermione whirled around, eyes blazing with a mixture of fury and disbelief. “Did you pose for this abomination?!” she demanded, voice sharp enough to cut through steel.

Marcus gave the paper a lazy glance, now half-unfolded and stuck to the wall like a bad piece of modern art. “Oh, that? Nah. Pretty sure that picture’s from a Quidditch charity auction two years ago. I heard someone used a charm to swap your face with Pansy Parkinson’s. Not sure who thought that was funny.”

Hermione’s expression twisted from frustration to near combustion. She looked like she might spontaneously combust right then and there, steam practically rising off her in little magical puffs.

The circlet on her finger pulsed a low, warning hum, a subtle but unmistakable reminder that their magical bond was watching—and judging—their every move.

She forced herself to inhale deeply, slow and steady. Counted to ten, fifteen, twenty if she had to. Conjugal Harmony. Ministry guidelines. Magical decorum. All phrases that suddenly felt like cruel jokes.

“I’m calling my solicitor,” she muttered fiercely, the edge in her voice sharper than any spell. Without waiting for a response, she turned on her heel and strode into the kitchen, each step echoing with the resolve of someone who had stared down Death Eaters and Dark Lords—and was now forced to wage war against the Ministry’s tabloid nonsense.

By mid-afternoon, the news had spread through the wizarding world with the rapidity and chaos of Doxyfire igniting a dry broom closet. Hermione’s enchanted mailbox was overwhelmed, glowing red-hot with incoming messages.

No fewer than five Howlers had arrived—each more exhausting than the last. Two came from her former professors, their voices dripping with shocked concern. One bellowed, “Miss Granger, I am shocked and concerned that you would enter into such a binding without full magical counsel!” The other wailed about “recklessness unbecoming of a Ministry official and scholar.”

Her mother’s text was softer but no less probing: “Is this Marcus boy feeding you properly? Remember to eat, Hermione! And don’t let him put you off your studies.”

And then there was the most ridiculous of all, a shrill, high-pitched scream of “WHY NOT ME?!” in a voice disturbingly close to Cormac McLaggen’s, filled with jealousy and outrage.

Through it all, Marcus remained unfazed, lounging cross-legged on the flat’s floor. He was nonchalantly tossing kernels of popcorn into his mouth, every so often offering one to Hermione with a mischievous grin. The absurdity of the situation didn’t escape him.

Just as another owl landed with a soft thud, dropping off the latest issue of Witch Weekly, Hermione glanced at the cover headline, eyes narrowing: “Granger’s Gamble: Has the Brightest Witch Finally Lost Her Mind?”

The article promised juicy details, wild speculation, and more than a few scandalous theories about the nature of their “magical matrimony.”

At that very moment—Hermione seething in her armchair, Marcus grinning like a rogue, and the monitoring orb blinking in what could only be described as stunned disbelief—the door buzzed sharply.

Hermione rose, moving towards it with a mix of curiosity and dread. When she opened the door, there stood Ginny Weasley, radiant and fierce, holding a chilled bottle of Elven rosé in one hand and wearing a wicked, encouraging smile.

“Thought you could use reinforcements,” Ginny said breezily as she swept into the flat, shrugging off her cloak with a flourish. “And alcohol. Definitely alcohol.”

Trailing behind her was Blaise Zabini, impeccably dressed in designer boots and an amused smirk plastered across his face. “And commentary,” he added smoothly, stepping inside with that signature sardonic grace. “This spectacle? I had to see it for myself.”

Hermione groaned deeply, slumping against the doorframe. “Why are you here?” she asked, equal parts exasperated and resigned.

“Because,” Ginny declared with theatrical flair, “you are currently the most fascinating disaster in all of magical Britain. You’ve managed to replace the Minister’s infamous accidental pants-vanishing charm as front-page headline news.”

Blaise nodded, adding in a tone that was part teasing, part wager, “And there’s a betting pool circulating at the Ministry. Twenty galleons on a meltdown by Day Ten.”

Marcus snorted from the sofa, tossing a popcorn kernel into the air and catching it with ease. “Ten? Amateur hour. I’m putting my money on Day Seven. Tops.”

Hermione shot all three of them a glare sharp enough to slice through enchanted steel. She grabbed the bottle of rosé Ginny had produced and uncorked it with a quick flick of her wand. The soft pop echoed in the flat like a small victory.

“You’re monsters,” she muttered, pouring four glasses.

“We’re your monsters,” Ginny replied, summoning the glasses into their hands with a bright smile. “Now sit. Spill everything.”

For the next hour, Hermione surrendered to the rare comfort of company and conversation, the wine glass cradled carefully in her hand, feet curled beneath her on the plush living room rug. The weight of the day’s madness seemed lighter as she recounted the saga from the beginning—the merciless clasp of the conjugal circlet, the agonizing forced proximity that had them bound hand-to-hand like unwilling dance partners, the infamous toothbrush incident that ended with magical vines locking their palms together, the kitchen fiasco featuring the incinerated kettle, and finally, the subtle but soul-crushing rebellion of her meticulously ordered spice rack transformed into a chaotic spectrum of color.

Marcus, never one to resist a dramatic flair, peppered her story with sarcastic flourishes. “I maintain the kettle attacked me,” he declared with mock indignation, balancing a kernel of popcorn between thumb and forefinger as if preparing for battle. Blaise Zabini, perched comfortably on the edge of the sofa, scribbled furiously in a sleek, expensive leather-bound journal emblazoned on the cover with “Dramatic Irony.” His pen danced as if he were chronicling the rise and inevitable fall of a tragic hero.

The room filled with laughter—sharp, genuine, and rare. Ginny wiped tears from her eyes, the sound of her giggles blending with Marcus’s snorts and Hermione’s reluctant chuckles. Despite herself, Hermione found the corners of her mouth lifting, the rigid tension of the day softening just enough for warmth to creep in.

“You know,” Ginny said thoughtfully, swirling the remaining wine in her glass before setting it down with deliberate care, “it’s awful, yes—but there’s something weirdly poetic about it all.”

Hermione arched a skeptical brow. “Explain.”

Ginny’s smile deepened, eyes sparkling. “You’re forced to live and breathe with a former enemy, bound by a magical artifact designed to promote harmony. Meanwhile, the press speculates shamelessly about your love life, and your friends have set up a betting pool on when you’ll lose your mind. It’s practically Shakespearean.”

Blaise leaned back, folding his arms with a smirk. “Tragic or comedic?”

“Depends on whether the flat explodes before week two,” Ginny replied, her grin mischievous.

Hermione sighed, tipping back the last dregs of her wine. “I’m living in a farce.”

From across the room, Marcus raised his glass with theatrical flair. “To the farce.”

Glasses clinked softly, the sound echoing in the quiet space. Hermione scowled but joined in, the smallest spark of camaraderie flickering beneath the irritation.

As evening settled like a velvet curtain outside, the guests eventually gathered their things. Blaise muttered, “I’m increasing my bet after today’s stellar performance,” and Ginny promised to return with reinforcements—and maybe more wine.

When the door finally clicked shut behind them, Hermione lingered by the window, staring out at the enchanted skyline of the Ministry flat. The city’s magical glow softened into a blanket of stars, the world beyond seeming momentarily peaceful.

Marcus appeared beside her without a sound, holding two steaming cups of tea. He handed her one silently, the gesture unspoken but understood.

She accepted the cup, fingers brushing briefly against his. They stood side by side, sharing the quiet, a fragile truce between two souls tethered unwillingly by cursed gold and mutual exasperation.

“Still think you’ll make it to Day Ten?” she asked without turning to face him.

Marcus smirked, his eyes glinting with mischief and challenge. “Oh, I plan to. Just not sure you will.”

Hermione rolled her eyes but allowed a faint smile. The tea was warm in her hands. The flat, at least for tonight, was quiet. And the circlet on her finger pulsed softly—a subtle reminder that, if not pleased, it was at least temporarily appeased.

Twenty-six days left.

But who was counting?

Chapter Text

The morning dawned a dreary slate of grey, the kind of sky that pressed down on the world with a damp chill, seeping through cracks and into bones. The soft patter of drizzle against the windows mirrored Hermione’s mood—a mixture of weariness and reluctant anticipation. She had clung to the faint hope that Day Five might bring some measure of calm to their cursed cohabitation, perhaps even a quiet hour or two free from magical mishaps or public spectacle. But, as usual, the Ministry had a different plan.

At precisely eight o’clock, an owl arrived at the window with the kind of sharp, insistent tapping that brooked no delay. Hermione barely stirred before reaching out and unhooking the letter it carried, its parchment heavy and embossed with the unmistakable seal of the Department of Magical Marriages—a bureaucratic beast known for its endless paperwork and obligatory decrees. The script was unmistakable: curling, spidery, almost serpentine handwriting that twisted across the page, each letter dripping with ominous formality.

Professor Sybill Trelawney, it declared, summoning a mix of dread and exasperation in Hermione’s chest.

Across the room, Marcus lounged in an armchair, a half-read book slipping from his fingers as he caught sight of the letter. His scowl deepened as he unfolded it, voice dripping with sarcastic disdain. “Fantastic. We’re going to get paired up with the Ministry’s resident seer? This’ll be a treat.”

Hermione barely managed to restrain her own groan, the sound caught somewhere between disbelief and weary resignation. She’d dealt with Trelawney before—briefly, traumatically—and the woman’s reputation for cryptic, often vague prophecies was legendary. Her penchant for theatrics, complete with swirling robes, ominous incense clouds, and a constant fog of patchouli that seemed determined to follow her everywhere, was a challenge in itself.

An hour later, the two of them found themselves awkwardly seated across from Trelawney in a cramped, dimly lit room tucked deep within the Ministry’s Counseling Wing. The walls were draped in faded tapestries, their celestial motifs—twinkling stars, crescent moons, and swirling constellations—faded with age but still hinting at their once mystical purpose. The air hung heavy with thick incense smoke, curling in lazy spirals around the hanging lanterns, giving the space a dreamlike haze that made Hermione’s nose itch and gave her a slight headache.

Into this otherworldly chamber swept Professor Sybill Trelawney herself. Draped in flowing robes of lavender and silver that shimmered subtly in the low light, she looked every bit the enigmatic seer. Her eyes, dark-rimmed with heavy kohl, flickered beneath wild, tangled curls that framed her face like a tempest. She swayed with theatrical grace as she entered, cradling an ornate crystal ball that seemed to pulse faintly with an ethereal glow, casting ghostly reflections on the worn wooden floor.

“My dear children,” Professor Trelawney began, her voice thick with a kind of reverent solemnity that filled the cramped room like a heavy fog, “the stars have aligned for you. Your union is no mere coincidence, but destiny writ large across the very fabric of the heavens.”

Hermione exchanged a weary glance with Marcus, who was already reclining in his chair, an amused smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth—as if this theatrical proclamation was nothing more than a scene from some ridiculous play they’d been unwillingly cast in.

With a dramatic flourish, Trelawney swept her hand over the low wooden table that sat between them. From seemingly nowhere, she produced a handful of delicate rose petals and scattered them across the surface with a sigh of mystical satisfaction. “The alignment of Mars and Venus at the precise moment of your bonding,” she intoned, eyes glazing over in a visionary trance, “heralds a powerful—and tumultuous—connection. A union forged not merely in law or circumstance, but in the fires of fate itself.”

Hermione’s stomach tightened uncomfortably, the weight of the cosmic poetry doing little to soothe her mounting anxiety. She clenched her fists beneath the table, nails digging into her palms as she fought the urge to snap. Trelawney’s eyes rolled back dramatically, as though she were glimpsing some celestial spectacle invisible to the rest of them—a display of swirling nebulae and star-crossed lovers.

“And yet,” the professor whispered, leaning forward as if imparting a sacred secret, “you must nurture this cosmic bond with great care. For where there is great love, there are also great trials… but also great growth.”

Hermione’s breath hitched, a sarcastic retort on the tip of her tongue. Instead, she chose restraint. “Professor,” she said carefully, “with all due respect, I’m not sure how any of this celestial nonsense is particularly helpful when we’re quite literally chained together by magical artifacts and bickering nonstop.”

Trelawney gasped, clutching at her heart as if Hermione had just blasphemed against the stars themselves. “Oh, but my dear,” she insisted, voice trembling with conviction, “it is precisely because the cosmos have decreed your union that these challenges arise! The universe tests those it chooses, for only through hardship can true harmony be forged.”

From his chair, Marcus chuckled softly, the sound a low rumble of amusement. “Sounds like a celestial version of bureaucracy to me,” he muttered, earning a sharp look from Hermione.

The session spiraled on in this rhythm—Trelawney waxing lyrical about astral energies, karmic lessons, and the invisible threads that tied their fates together, while Hermione tried—often in vain—to steer the conversation toward more practical concerns. Questions about how to manage living arrangements, dealing with the circlet’s unpredictable magic, and how to handle the daily conflicts that seemed to multiply exponentially under the weight of the bond.

Meanwhile, Marcus took every opportunity to inject dry humor and pointed remarks. “I’m particularly fond of the incense,” he mused at one point, waving a hand through the swirling smoke. “It’s rather like being trapped in a forest on fire, but with a hint of lavender. Very soothing.” His smirk deepened as the ambient music—a high-pitched, wailing melody that Hermione was convinced was somewhere between a banshee’s lament and a particularly mournful owl—filled the room.

Trelawney, unfazed, merely nodded sagely. “Ah, the music channels the vibrations of the celestial spheres. It is meant to open your hearts and minds to the truths written in the stars.”

Hermione pinched the bridge of her nose, suppressing a groan. Marcus leaned back again, folding his arms with a conspiratorial grin. “Well, I’m definitely feeling enlightened,” he drawled.

As the hour ticked by, Hermione found herself caught between disbelief and reluctant amusement. The session, meant to bring them closer, mostly served to highlight the absurdity of their situation—two fiercely independent souls tethered by cosmic decree and magical chains, forced to sit through a mystical therapy session that felt more like a surreal performance.

After what felt like an eternity of Trelawney’s celestial pontificating—hours spent trapped beneath layers of incense smoke and her endless, winding prophecies—Hermione’s composure finally cracked. Her face had gone pale, eyes glassy and unfocused, as if the weight of a thousand nebulous stars had pressed down on her chest. Suddenly, she stood abruptly, the wooden chair scraping loudly against the floor.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice fragile and thin as she backed away from the ornate table covered in rose petals and tarot cards. “I… I need a moment.” Her legs felt unsteady, her breaths shallow, as if the room itself had constricted around her.

Marcus rose immediately, his amused expression never faltering. He followed her with a casual stride, his eyes twinkling with mischief but also, perhaps, a hint of concern. Hermione barely made it to the nearest chamber pot tucked in the corner before she doubled over and retched violently, the sharp, acrid scent of incense mixing with the oppressive atmosphere to overwhelm her senses. The bizarre combination of Trelawney’s vague prophecies, the thick haze of patchouli, and the absurdity of being forced into this session had pushed her beyond her limits.

From behind her, Marcus couldn’t help himself. A wide, cheeky grin spread across his face as he quipped, loud enough for her to hear, “Well, I guess she really did see that coming.”

Hermione shot him a glare so sharp it could have cut through steel, her cheeks burning with a mixture of embarrassment and irritation. Without a word, she rinsed her mouth and took several steadying breaths before finally composing herself and returning to the room.

Meanwhile, Trelawney sat serenely, almost beatifically smiling, as if Hermione’s moment of weakness was all part of some grand cosmic ritual. Her eyes gleamed with mysterious satisfaction.

“See?” she said softly, her voice lilting with mystical certainty. “Your spirits are intertwined beyond reason or logic. The universe has spoken.”

Hermione lowered herself back into her chair, exhaling slowly as she tried to steady her nerves. The weight of Trelawney’s words hung heavy in the air, but the earnestness with which they were delivered made it impossible to dismiss entirely. Marcus settled beside her, still wearing that infuriating grin, and draped his arm casually over the back of her chair, as if claiming a small victory in this ongoing battle of wills.

“Right,” Hermione muttered dryly, a trace of humor creeping into her voice despite everything. “Magical marriage counseling: five stars. Would not recommend.”

Marcus raised his eyebrows, clearly amused by her sarcasm. “Hey, I think it’s the start of something beautiful.”

Hermione rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth twitched upward in reluctant acknowledgment. The circlet on her finger pulsed faintly—a subtle, almost soothing vibration, less angry and more resigned than usual. For now, that was enough.

Twenty-five days left.

Chapter Text

Hermione prided herself on her organization. Her wardrobe was precisely arranged by season, then by color, then by occasion. Her spellwork for laundering was, in her own words, “an efficient masterpiece of domestic charm integration.” So when she stepped into the laundry nook on Day Six, mug of tea in hand and a hopeful glimmer that maybe—just maybe—the chaos had ebbed for the morning, she was not prepared for what awaited her.

The scene was, in a word, tragic.

A mound of freshly laundered clothes sat in a wrinkled, steaming heap on the floor, clearly the result of a laundry spell gone rogue—or performed with the finesse of a concussed troll. Wisps of steam curled into the air from the mouth of the ancient, Ministry-issued magical washer, which sat humming with the ominous satisfaction of a device that knew it had caused irreparable damage.

The scent in the air was deceptively clean—eucalyptus and something vaguely floral—but underneath it lingered the unmistakable aroma of disaster. Like burnt toast in a tidy kitchen. Or ozone after a misfired hex.

And there, suspended from Marcus Flint’s outstretched hand with the resigned helplessness of a man who knew he had gravely erred but hoped not to die for it, was Hermione Granger’s favorite jumper.

Or rather, what had once been her favorite jumper.

Now it resembled something one might knit for a Kneazle. A very fashion-forward, ridiculously pampered Kneazle. The luxurious soft-wool garment had shrunk to half its original size, the sleeves curled like frightened ferns, the once-loose hem now tightly cinched as though the jumper itself was trying to retreat in shame.

“I think something went wrong,” Marcus said finally, frowning as he turned the offending garment around in his hands. He looked at the misshapen thing with a peculiar mix of confusion and reverence, like it might yet explain itself if he stared hard enough. “I just… tossed everything in, said the spell, and left it. You know, like normal people do.”

Hermione froze. She hadn’t even made it past her first sip of tea. The cup trembled slightly in her hands as her eyes locked on the jumper.

The jumper.

Her jumper.

“That,” she said slowly, her voice climbing in pitch and intensity with every syllable, “was hand-knit by Andromeda Tonks.”

Marcus blinked. “Is that… bad?”

“It had self-repairing cuffs. It repelled stains. It never lost its shape. It was enchanted for perfect thermal regulation in cold offices. That jumper—” Her voice cracked slightly. “—was perfect.”

Marcus, wisely, said nothing for a beat. Then, in what he surely thought was a helpful tone, held it up again and added, “Technically still wearable. If you were, you know, a house-elf. Or a cat.”

Hermione’s left eye twitched.

The circlet on her finger, which had been quiet for the better part of the morning, suddenly sparked to life with a sharp snap. A pulse of golden heat surged through her hand, then leapt like lightning across the short space between them.

Marcus yelped, the jumper flying from his hands as he recoiled. But there was no time to react. The room lit up with a blinding golden flare. Threads of magic spun in the air like silk caught in a windstorm, shimmering with heat and purpose. Hermione’s teacup shattered on the floor. The air thickened, buzzed, turned.

And then—

CRACK.

The laundry room snapped sideways. Or maybe it was reality that did.

Hermione staggered back against the wall, blinking rapidly against the sudden brightness. Her skin tingled, the circlet now burning faintly on her finger. Across from her, Marcus was frozen mid-crouch, eyes wide.

Hermione blinked, dazed.

Her tea had vanished—simply blinked out of her hand with a soft pop, as though the universe had decided hot beverages were incompatible with magical wardrobe crises.

Across the room, Marcus Flint made a strangled sound somewhere between a gargle and a bark. He staggered back a step, arms held awkwardly away from his body like they didn’t belong to him.

Hermione followed his line of sight and looked down.

“Oh, for Merlin’s sake.”

She was wearing his clothes.

Hermione Jean Granger, former war heroine and current reluctant soul-bound participant in a Ministry disaster, was presently engulfed in one of Marcus Flint’s massive, faded Cannons t-shirts. The cotton had clearly survived a decade of washes and one or two Quidditch brawls—it was soft enough to qualify as delicate but smelled faintly of broom oil, oakwood soap, and something absurdly warm. The sleeves hung nearly to her knees, the collar drooped off one shoulder, and the hem brushed dangerously close to mid-thigh.

The pajama pants—dark plaid, drawstring, and unquestionably Flint’s—were faring no better. She’d had to tie them three times with wandlight magic to keep them from puddling at her feet. Even so, she could feel the waistband threatening rebellion with every breath.

Across from her, Marcus stood frozen in absolute horror.

He was wearing Hermione’s clothes.

Or, more accurately, they were attempting to contain him like underfed fabric restraints.

Her cropped black jumper—soft, tailored, charmed to hug her curves in an aesthetically pleasing yet work-appropriate manner—was pulled taut across his broad chest and upper arms like an angry woolen sausage casing. The sleeves had only made it halfway down his forearms, leaving the rest of his limbs awkwardly exposed like a cursed doll.

And the leggings—Merlin help them—the leggings were clinging to his legs with the sort of panicked loyalty normally reserved for life rafts in a storm. The stretch enchantment had kicked into overdrive, threads visibly shimmering as they struggled to accommodate the absurd dimensions of Marcus Flint’s Quidditch-season thighs.

The circlet on Hermione’s finger pulsed again, faintly golden and smug, like a toddler who’d just discovered finger painting.

“WHAT THE HELL,” Marcus thundered, yanking at the hem of the jumper with both hands, which only succeeded in making the neckline dip further. “I look like I lost a bet!”

Hermione stared at him.

Then she did the only reasonable thing left: she burst into laughter.

Not polite, restrained laughter.

Not her usual dry chuckle at some badly-phrased bureaucratic memo.

But full-body, tears-down-her-face, can’t-breathe, slightly hysterical laughter—the kind that only came from a complete emotional breakdown being temporarily rerouted through comedy.

“Oh no,” she wheezed between gasps. “No, no, this is… this is better than a bet. This is karma. Chic karma.”

She doubled over, clutching at the oversized t-shirt like it might hold her together, her voice cracking from the sheer absurdity of the moment.

“You look fabulous, darling. Très avant-garde. Quidditch runway realness. All you need is a statement necklace and maybe some stilettos.”

Marcus glared at her, expression murderous and deeply uncomfortable.

“I hate this,” he growled, tugging once more at the jumper with such force that one shoulder seam audibly popped.

“Oh don’t,” she giggled, “you’ll ruin the weave. That jumper is vintage enchanted wool—it’ll retaliate.”

Marcus looked down at himself, visibly horrified by the fabric’s increasing snugness. “Why would anyone willingly wear something this tight? I can’t even feel my bloody ribs.”

Hermione, still grinning, waved a hand in mock seriousness. “It’s called fashion, Flint. Look it up sometime.”

“Your leggings are trying to amputate me.”

“They’re charmed for comfort!” she said, beaming. “Well, my comfort. Not yours. Clearly.”

“Clearly.” He glared down at his legs like he could intimidate the fabric into letting go.

There was a long, shared pause.

Then—unbidden—his eyes flicked up and landed on her. Not her face—at least, not immediately. His gaze lingered for a second too long on the way his oversized t-shirt fell over her frame, loose and slouchy, one shoulder exposed, her hair slightly mussed from the magical surge. The corners of his mouth twitched—first in confusion, then into something very near a smirk.

“Y’know,” he drawled, slowly crossing his arms (or trying to—the sleeves didn’t cooperate), “you don’t look half-bad in my clothes.”

Hermione blinked. “Excuse me?”

He shrugged, feigning casual indifference despite the jumper riding up with the movement. “Just saying. Suits you. Could be a whole vibe. ‘Disheveled but deadly.’” His smirk widened. “It’s very now.”

Hermione’s ears turned pink.

“I will hex you into next week.”

“You’d have to catch me first,” he quipped, then paused and grimaced. “Scratch that. These leggings are chafing in ways I don’t even have words for.”

“I told you they weren’t designed for barbarian anatomy,” she said primly, regaining her composure as she reached for her wand. “Now stand still so I can undo this mess.”

“You undo it,” Marcus said, arms flailing as he tried to peel the jumper off, “and I swear I’ll buy you two replacements for the one I shrank.”

“Three,” she countered, eyes narrowing.

“Two and a scarf,” he bargained.

“Deal.”

With a muttered spell and a flick of her wand, a ribbon of soft golden light spun from the circlet, spiraling between them with a gentle hum. Clothes shimmered. Reality rippled.

The circlet pulsed again, brighter this time. They both jumped as their sleeves sparkled faintly and the fabric shimmered with golden light.

“Oh no,” Hermione muttered. “I think it’s keeping us like this.”

Marcus looked vaguely delighted. “Brilliant.”

She turned, aghast. “Why are you happy about this?!”

“Because,” he said smugly, leaning casually against the wall and ignoring the sound of stitches straining, “this is the first time you’ve laughed in six days. Properly laughed. Like, terrifying-bookworm-comes-unglued laughter.”

Hermione blinked, her irritation fizzling into something less sharp. Her fingers curled into the hem of his t-shirt, and for a moment, she allowed herself to just… exist.

Soft cotton. The faint scent of something smoky and warm. The absurdity of their situation hanging in the air like a forgotten joke.

It wasn’t ideal. It wasn’t even manageable. But, gods help her, it was oddly… human.

And Marcus—infuriating, oversized, predictably smug Marcus—was looking at her with that stupid glint in his eye again. Not mocking. Not malicious. Just… amused. And maybe something else.

“You’re still in my trousers,” he said lightly.

“You’re still in mine.”

They stared at each other.

Then Hermione huffed and turned on her heel. “If this spell lasts more than twenty-four hours, I’m calling the Department of Magical Artifacts.”

“And I’m burning that jumper. The leggings are cursed.”

“They should’ve cursed you out of existence.”

The circlet pulsed again.

And for the rest of the day, despite the discomfort, despite the lingering scent of eucalyptus and the vague humiliation of wearing each other’s clothing, neither of them complained.

Marcus even ordered dinner.

Hermione didn’t hex him when he served it.

Progress.

Only twenty-four days left.

And strangely, she didn’t feel like counting.

Chapter Text

By the time evening rolled around on Day Seven, the flat was oddly quiet.

Not the tense, pre-hex sort of silence they’d grown accustomed to over the past week—but a softer, heavier hush. The kind that settled in after too many arguments, too much magic, and not enough sleep.

The laundry incident had left a magical burn mark on the floor. The Ministry hadn’t sent anyone to check in. Hermione assumed they’d finally realized that over-intervening in soul-bond cases often did more harm than good. Or maybe they were just afraid. She wouldn't blame them.

The sun had dipped below the London skyline, casting long golden streaks across the tiled floor of their cramped Ministry-assigned kitchen. The kind of light that made everything look a little warmer, a little more forgiving, even if it wasn’t.

Hermione leaned on the counter, stirring a pan of garlic-infused pasta with weary precision. Her hair was tied up in a lopsided knot; her sleeves pushed to the elbows. Every movement was automatic—chop, stir, taste, salt—her mind far away, mostly circling the same Ministry memos that had been rotting her inbox since last Tuesday.

Across the room, Marcus Flint slouched at the table with his chin in his hand, watching her with an expression that wasn’t quite disdainful for once. Not eager, either. Just… tired. Level. Human.

Dinner had been his idea.

Well. His grunted suggestion after Hermione had snapped, “If you want to survive the rest of this soul bond, maybe stop breathing so loudly.”

To which he’d replied, without malice, “You hungry or just homicidal?”

Somehow, they’d ended up here—Hermione cooking, Marcus staying out of the way, and no one shouting or casting petty jinxes.

A minor miracle, really.

She set the plates down with a sigh and collapsed into the seat opposite him. The only sound for a moment was the clink of cutlery and the low hum of the refrigerator charm in the corner.

Hermione twirled a forkful of noodles, her appetite dulled by exhaustion.

“You ever feel like… everything’s on fire, and you're just supposed to smile through it because technically it's a ‘controlled burn’?” she asked, without looking up.

Marcus blinked. “That Ministry thing again?”

She nodded.

He didn’t scoff. Didn’t shrug it off like he usually did when she mentioned work.

Instead, he leaned back slightly and said, “Tell me.”

She glanced at him warily, fork halfway to her mouth. “Tell you?”

“Yeah.” He nodded at her plate. “Eat. Talk. I’ll listen.”

Hermione blinked at him, suspicious. “You don’t listen. You glower. And occasionally grunt.”

“I can multitask.”

To her surprise, she found herself... starting.

He jabbed a fork into his food. “You look like someone hexed your kneazle.”

Hermione didn’t laugh. She didn’t even glare. Just sighed, her fork twirling half-heartedly through her pasta.

“I spent six hours today trying to convince a committee of pure-blood patriarchal fossils that temporal magic legislation should include ethical reviews.” She stabbed a tomato like it had personally offended her. “Because apparently ‘don’t time-loop the same day for private profit’ is a controversial opinion.”

Marcus blinked. “Temporal... wait, is this Department of Mysteries stuff?”

“I’m the Deputy Head, Marcus. Everything is Department of Mysteries stuff.”

“…That explains a lot.”

“You think?”

She was wound tight. The kind of tight that came from operating at a high intellectual burn rate for too long without pause. Her job—equal parts law, ethics, and magical theory—was not one that allowed for errors. Not when mishandled memory strands, cursed artifacts, and dimensional bleed-over could dismantle a reality or two.

“I’ve got research staff who think ‘unspeakable’ means ‘show up late and gossip about breakroom biscuits.’ I have three artifact intake forms missing entire sections of metaphysical analysis. One of them described a cursed compass as ‘vaguely shouty.’ Vaguely shouty, Marcus.”

He didn’t interrupt.

“I’ve got a temporary seal on the seventh sub-chamber because it started whispering again. Which means I have to go down there next week, with three layers of null wards and a binding rune, and—oh—guess what? The Prophet sent a photographer to wait outside the Ministry lobby again.”

“Trying to get a shot of the soulbond ring?”

“No. Trying to get a photo of me looking fat in my robes.”

At that, Marcus actually chuckled.

Hermione looked up, startled.

He held up a hand, palm out like he was warding off a hex. “Sorry. Just... you’ve got this wild look in your eye like you’re about to personally duel every idiot in your department.”

Hermione didn’t even hesitate. “I am.”

Marcus let out a low whistle, sinking deeper into his chair. “Honestly?” he said, casual but not mocking, “I wouldn’t bet against you.”

She blinked once.

Then again.

That wasn’t the reply she’d been expecting. Sarcasm, probably. A smug remark about Unspeakables and their secretive obsession with dangerous magical trinkets. Maybe even some thinly veiled jab about her being overworked and overbearing. But this—this quiet acknowledgment—threw her.

“I was expecting a sarcastic comment,” she said slowly, almost cautiously, like she was still trying to fit his tone into the shape of a joke.

“Yeah, well.” He gave a loose shrug, rolling his shoulders as he nudged his now-empty plate aside. “You’re Deputy Head of the most classified department in the Ministry. You’re allowed to be terrifying.”

That earned the tiniest tug at the corner of her mouth. Not quite a smile—but the echo of one. It came and went like a ghost, but it was real. She wrapped both hands around her water glass, fingers tight around the cool surface, and finally took a long sip. Her throat was sore from talking too much. Venting. Rage-breathing.

And then Marcus said, casually but deliberately, “They don’t deserve you.”

She stopped mid-sip. Lowered the glass. Looked up, slowly.

“…What?”

“The Ministry,” he said, his voice low but sure, his eyes holding hers without hesitation. “They don’t deserve someone who cares that much.”

Hermione stared at him.

No one had ever said that to her before. Not like that. Not without an agenda or some trace of pity. Not with that kind of simple, clean honesty. She was used to being admired for her intellect. Respected for her precision. Feared, sometimes, for her control. But this—this was something gentler. Less about her abilities and more about her intention.

Her mouth opened on reflex, but the words didn’t come. She closed it again, pressing her lips together as if unsure what shape the right reply should take.

And maybe it was the way he said it—no frills, no performance—or maybe it was just the look in his eyes: unguarded, almost warm. Whatever it was, something in the air shifted. Small. Subtle. Like the hush before a snowfall, when the wind stills and the world forgets how to breathe.

“You really listened,” she said finally, almost incredulous.

Marcus gave her a slow shrug. A modest roll of his shoulders. “Don’t act so shocked. I’m not completely useless.”

“I didn’t say you were useless.”

“You didn’t have to,” he replied, smirking faintly. “It’s in your ‘I’m-being-very-patient-right-now’ voice.”

Hermione huffed out a quiet laugh before she could stop it. “You’re impossible.”

“I try.”

The smirk lingered for a moment, but then his expression shifted—just slightly. Less playful, more sincere.

“Truth is,” he said, eyes not quite on her now, “I’ve never really worked with someone who... gives a damn. Not like you do.”

Hermione’s breath caught. Just a little.

“That’s… unexpectedly flattering,” she said, her tone cautious, like she didn’t quite trust the compliment yet.

“Don’t get used to it,” he murmured.

“I won’t,” she replied, softer this time. But not cold.

The air between them settled again. Not tense now—just quiet. There was something in the stillness that didn’t feel strained. Not strained at all. For the first time in what felt like weeks, Hermione allowed herself to lean back in her chair. Her plate was half-finished, the pasta cooled slightly, the garlic and basil still lingering on her tongue. Across the table, Marcus was eating more slowly than usual, fork moving through his food without his usual flair for theatrics.

They ate in near silence. No verbal sparring. No wild curses from the circlet. No accidental explosions or magical interventions.

Just two people. At a table. Surviving.

Then—before she could overthink it—Hermione said, “What about you?”

Marcus looked up from his plate. His brow creased slightly, like he wasn’t sure if he’d misheard her.

“What about me?”

She gestured loosely with her fork, the motion small but deliberate. “If the Ministry hadn’t... paired us. If this whole magic-bond debacle hadn’t happened. What would you be doing?”

For a moment, he didn’t answer. He leaned back in his chair, arms folding across his broad chest, head tipping toward the ceiling like maybe the answer was hiding in the crack between the plaster and the wooden beam.

Hermione waited. She didn’t press him, didn’t prod. She just let the silence stretch between them, the way you do when you sense something delicate is about to be said.

“Don’t laugh,” Marcus said finally, his voice lower, more cautious than she’d ever heard it.

Hermione raised a brow. “I’m not a monster, Flint.”

A half-smile ghosted across his lips—but it didn’t reach his eyes. Not yet.

“…I was going to open a flying school.”

Hermione stilled. She blinked once. Then again.

“You?”

“Yeah.” He exhaled, not dramatically, just the slow kind of breath that carried years of thought. “Out near Devon. Near the cliffs. Windy as hell, but good space. Clear skies. Decent proximity to a few Muggle towns, but hidden enough for magic. I had a spot picked out. A field that’d make a great training pitch.”

He paused, his thumb tracing the rim of his plate absently.

“A couple of kids from my old House found me a few years back—Slytherins, obviously. Wanted help prepping for tryouts. I said no, at first. Didn’t think I was the right person for it.” He huffed softly, then looked over at her. “Turns out I liked teaching them. They weren’t bad. They just needed someone who didn’t sneer when they fell off a broom.”

Hermione watched him closely. There was no performative air about him now—no sarcastic inflection or swagger. Just... honesty.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Word got around. I started planning. Made lists. Drills. Thought I’d apply for a small business grant through the Magical Youth Outreach Fund. Not for the star fliers—those kids always get attention. For the other ones. The ones who flinch during lift-off or can’t afford their own Cleansweep.”

Hermione opened her mouth, closed it, and finally said, “Didn’t think you had a soft spot for underdogs.”

Marcus didn’t smile, but the tension in his jaw eased slightly. “I was one. People forget that.”

That landed heavier than she expected. She thought back—past the sneers and elbows on the Quidditch pitch, past the growling arrogance he’d carried like a shield. She realized, for the first time, that she didn’t know much about Marcus Flint before he’d been branded as a schoolyard villain.

No one ever asked who he was off the pitch.

She didn’t laugh. She didn’t tease. She just nodded, slow and thoughtful.

“Well,” she said, setting her fork down gently, “I think you’d be good at it.”

Marcus looked up at her. Met her eyes for a long moment.

There was no flare of magic, no sudden romantic swell. Just a quiet, steady look—one of acknowledgment. Of being seen.

The circlet on Hermione’s finger gave a soft pulse—no heat, no searing light. Just warm. Calm. Almost... approving.

She noticed it, but didn’t comment. For the first time in days, the weight of the bond didn’t feel like a chain. It felt... quieter. Less like a shackle and more like something that had been waiting for them to stop shouting long enough to notice it was still there.

Marcus nudged her glass toward her with two fingers. “You should finish your water. You look like you haven’t blinked in a half-hour.”

Hermione arched a brow. “You should learn how to do the dishes. Properly.”

He smirked. “I’m decent at Scourgify.”

“Marcus,” she said with patient gravity, “you used it on a cast-iron skillet.”

“Okay, well—look—how was I supposed to know cast iron was fussy?”

“Because the manual says never use magic on enchanted cookware unless you want it to grow legs and insult your lineage.”

“That explains the muttering.”

She rolled her eyes, but the exasperation lacked any real bite.

They didn’t shake hands. Didn’t declare a truce out loud. But something in the room settled, like dust after a storm. No tension humming beneath their words. No raised voices or flaring tempers. Just the faint clatter of silverware and the soft rustling of wind outside the window.

That night, he cleared the plates without being asked. She offered to dry them, but he waved her off, muttering something about “at least not making it worse.” He took his time with it, humming under his breath as he worked. Nothing magical. Just mundane effort. And she watched him, strangely soothed by the normalcy.

No sparks. No magical disasters. No divine punishment from the circlet.

Just two people, existing in the same space.

When they turned off the lights and went their separate ways down the hall, Hermione paused at her door, fingers grazing the edge of the wood.

Twenty-three days to go. And maybe, just maybe, a truce.

Chapter Text

It began, as most magical disasters tended to, with a hum.

Not a loud one—just a soft, almost imperceptible thrum, like the sound of distant thunder or the breath of something ancient stirring in its sleep. It reverberated through the flat with eerie insistence, touching the walls, the floorboards, and the very air with a faint vibration. Hermione paused mid-sentence in her book, frowning. At first, she assumed it was the heating charm—again. Marcus had a unique and frustrating ability to interfere with enchantments simply by being in the same room. Magical wards bent around him the way wind bent around a stone tower: stubbornly, but inevitably.

Then the lights flickered. Once. Twice. And then every enchanted bulb, every softly glowing orb embedded in the sconces, every flickering, floating wall torch that gave the flat its warm golden ambiance—went out in synchronized, soundless surrender.

The silence that followed was absolute. No clinking pipes. No ambient magical hum. Just stillness.

“...Did you just break the entire flat?” Marcus’s voice drifted in from the hallway, deep, unimpressed, and faintly accusatory.

Hermione raised her wand with a practiced flick and murmured, "Lumos." A soft cone of light spread outward, illuminating the nearest bookshelf and the edge of her favorite chair. She stood, trying not to roll her eyes. “No, I didn’t break the flat,” she said, already defensive. “I was reading. In a chair. Silently. Unlike some people.”

“I was literally brushing my teeth,” Marcus called back, appearing in the glow like a disgruntled ghost. His hair was damp from the bathroom steam, and his T-shirt was rumpled, clearly yanked on in haste. “It’s not exactly volatile spellwork.”

“Well,” Hermione snapped, stalking toward the corridor with her light bouncing erratically across the darkened walls, “the circlet reacts to emotional spikes, proximity fluctuations, ambient spell tension, and certain unstable frequencies of magical infrastructure.”

“Or,” Marcus offered, crossing his arms as her light reached him, “maybe the Ministry just didn’t pay their magical utilities bill.”

Hermione stopped in front of him and gave him a withering look. “Do you even understand how the Domestic Binding Circlet interfaces with arcane infrastructure protocols?”

“Do you understand how not to sound like a walking spellbook at half-past nine when the heat’s just died and my toothbrush is stuck to the counter?”

They glared at each other. The circlet pulsed in warning—sharp, hot, and unpleasant, like a static shock under the skin. Hermione immediately took a cautious step back, muttering something unflattering under her breath about ancient artifact temperaments and idiotic Ministry shortcuts.

“Great,” she said tightly. “It’s reacting again. And if the bond gets irritated while the magical matrix of the flat is destabilized—”

“Do we spontaneously combust?” Marcus interrupted.

“Possibly.”

“…Neat.”

She didn’t dignify that with a reply. Instead, she spun on her heel and marched toward the tiny linen closet nestled between the loo and the utility cupboard. With an air of decisive exasperation, she yanked it open. Towels, spare pillowcases, two lopsided sleeping bags, and a badly folded emergency duvet all tumbled out in a disheveled avalanche.

Marcus leaned in, watching warily. “What are you doing?”

“Building a neutral zone,” she said, dragging a stack of throw blankets free with the kind of aggressive competence that could only come from someone who routinely organized archive shelves by wand-origin subcategory.

He blinked. “Is that, like, a metaphysical containment thing, or—?”

Hermione threw a quilt at his chest. “A blanket fort, Flint. I am building a blanket fort. Because until we determine what’s causing the artifact to spike again, we are officially prohibited from sharing proximity for longer than three consecutive minutes. That means no couch, no shared floor space, no arguing across hallways, no sharing doorways, and—”

“No glaring?” he added, grinning as he tossed the quilt over one shoulder.

“No hexing each other from opposite ends of the room,” she finished crisply.

Marcus raised an eyebrow, lifting one of the blanket corners and giving it a skeptical glance. “This is oddly specific for something you just made up.”

“I didn’t make it up,” Hermione said, balancing a stack of pillows in one arm while trying to levitate a chair with her free hand. “It’s in the bonding protocol addendum. Section Six. Page Twenty-Two.”

“You memorized the addendum?”

“I edited the addendum,” she snapped.

There was a beat of silence. Then, without comment, Marcus took the floating chair from her wand and dragged it into the living room.

“…Okay, Granger,” he said, crouching to wedge the chair under one end of a heavy woolen blanket. “I’ll give you this—your brand of crazy is committed.”

To Marcus’s credit—and Hermione was mentally noting that phrase more often than she would’ve liked—he helped.

Not efficiently, not gracefully, and certainly not without his usual blend of dramatic sighs and sarcastic muttering, but help he did. He only paused twice to bemoan the loss of his dignity, once while attempting to anchor a duvet over two mismatched dining chairs using an ancient Slytherin house scarf, and again when he tripped over a pile of extra pillows Hermione insisted they’d need “for strategic insulation.” Despite the grumbling, he followed her instructions, held up corners when asked, and didn’t once complain when the scarf tied itself in a knot around his wrist and refused to let go. For a man who looked like he’d been carved out of a fallen Quidditch goalpost, he was surprisingly gentle with her hand-woven charmed blankets and even fluffed a pillow or two without being told.

The final structure looked, to put it charitably, absurd.

The chairs leaned at odd angles. One wall sloped dramatically where the blanket hadn’t been secured properly. And the middle of the ceiling sagged like a tired soufflé under the weight of a poorly balanced sofa throw. But it had four walls—technically. And it had a roof, one that Hermione had enchanted with a luminous celestial illusion years ago during a particularly bleak winter. Now, it shimmered faintly with a soft wash of stars and swirling galaxies above their heads, casting the interior in a dreamy twilight glow. The ground was buried under an avalanche of old patchwork quilts, tasseled pillows, and at least three cushions that still smelled vaguely of cinnamon and laundry soap. It was, in all honesty, warm and ridiculous and a little magical in its own right.

They climbed in with the graceless effort of two fully grown adults whose knees cracked when they knelt and who’d both survived enough magical catastrophes to know that blanket forts were rarely up to Department safety standards. Marcus bumped his head twice—once on a low-hanging quilt edge, and once on a conjured fairy light that darted out of his way too late. Hermione tried not to laugh. Mostly succeeded. Crawling on hands and knees, she settled into a corner and waved her wand, dimming the light to a soft, flickering amber that made the space feel smaller and more intimate.

“I swear to Merlin,” she muttered, adjusting her pillow fortress with careful precision, “if the circlet blasts us through the wall while we’re under this thing, I’m haunting your personnel file.”

Marcus let out a long exhale and flopped onto his side like a man who had just discovered the meaning of life in a pile of flannel. “Worth it,” he said, stretching out like a smug cat. “This is cozy. I’m staying here forever. You can tell the Ministry I’ve defected.”

Hermione snorted, tucking her knees under the oversized jumper she’d changed into. “You’d last five minutes in here without snacks.”

“There are biscuits in the bottom left blanket corner,” he said, pointing lazily without lifting his head. “I came prepared.”

For a moment, the silence stretched between them—not uncomfortable, not tense, just unfamiliar. The kind of silence that existed when two people had stopped being enemies but hadn’t quite figured out what came next. They weren’t fighting anymore. But they weren’t friends, either. Not really. They were something else entirely—something temporary and undefined, wrapped in the quiet middle of a blanket fort during a magical blackout.

The power remained off. Wand interference lingered in the air like static, unpredictable and low-burning. Outside, rain had begun to fall—soft and steady, tapping gently against the windowpanes. The flat had taken on a stillness, broken only by the occasional creak of settling walls or the distant grumble of magic rebelling against the circlet’s binding.

Hermione lay back slowly, watching the faux stars swirl overhead. “It’s strange,” she said quietly, more to herself than to him. “I haven’t done something this… silly in years.”

Marcus shifted beside her, folding one arm behind his head. “That doesn’t surprise me.”

She turned to glance at him, raising a brow. “Excuse me?”

He shrugged, unapologetic. “You’re the definition of responsibility. I bet you haven’t taken a spontaneous nap since Hogwarts.”

Hermione considered that. “That is both insulting and alarmingly accurate.”

“Exactly. You’re overdue for a proper regression into blanket-based diplomacy.”

She laughed—a real laugh, unguarded and sudden—and Marcus looked pleased with himself, like a man who’d just discovered a rare spell in a secondhand bookshop. They fell into an easy rhythm after that. She told him about her first disastrous attempt to brew Felix Felicis during sixth year—he countered with a story about how his broom caught fire during a Slytherin practice and he rode it three laps before anyone noticed. They argued about who was worse at Divination. They made fun of their respective housemates. And, eventually, inevitably, they drifted into Hogwarts gossip.

Eventually, as the rain softened its rhythm against the windows and the hush of the blackout stretched on, Hermione murmured into the dim hush, “Did you know Pansy Parkinson tried to hex her own hair blonde in fourth year?”

Marcus shifted beside her, his breath caught somewhere between amusement and disbelief. “What?”

“She was convinced Draco would notice her more if she looked like Daphne Greengrass,” Hermione continued, the edges of her voice curling into a smile. “But instead of platinum locks, she ended up with this—this straw-colored mop that made her look like a startled ferret. Honestly, it stuck straight out. Three days. She had to wear a hat in every class.”

That did it. Marcus let out a startled bark of laughter, sudden and unguarded, like he’d been holding it in all night and it had finally clawed its way out. “No—no, wait—I remember that!” he gasped, shoulders shaking as he tried to sit upright and immediately failed, landing back in the blanket pile. “Didn’t she hex herself bald at one point?”

“Nearly,” Hermione said, already laughing too hard to correct him. “McGonagall confiscated her wand and gave her this pamphlet about ‘magical identity anxiety.’ She looked so affronted, like the concept of emotional nuance was personally insulting.”

Marcus wheezed, his whole body vibrating with laughter now. “Gods, Hogwarts was a bloody disaster factory.”

Hermione snorted and rolled onto her side to face him, her curls half-obscuring her pillow. “Tell me about it. Remember the Slytherin who brought a Niffler to Divination?”

He blinked, then groaned in delighted horror. “Yes! And it tried to eat Trelawney’s bangles mid-lesson. She declared it a harbinger of death and collapsed onto the tea table.”

They both dissolved into helpless laughter then—open and full-bodied, tumbling through the mismatched pillows and spilling out into the starlit fabric above them. It wasn’t careful or polite. It wasn’t guarded. It was pure. Warm. Unexpected. The kind of laughter that stripped back years of posturing and politics and departmental titles and left just two people lying under a homemade fort made of duvets and stardust, laughing until their stomachs ached.

It didn’t feel like a truce.

It didn’t feel like strategy.

It felt like the first moment of honesty either of them had allowed themselves in weeks—maybe longer.

And then, somewhere in the haze of exhaustion and rain and stars, things went quiet.

Not awkward, not tense—just quiet in the way that only came after shared laughter, like the silence itself had grown lighter. At some point, Hermione’s head found its way to a pillow that edged against Marcus’s arm. At some point, the space between them stopped feeling like something to be monitored. His sleeve brushed against her shoulder. She didn’t move. Neither did he.

And the circlet, for once, stayed still.

No sparks. No flares. No golden zaps of magical indignation. Just a faint, slow pulse at her finger, like the heartbeat of something ancient and tired settling down to rest.

Hermione exhaled slowly, her fingers curled loosely around the hem of the blanket. The soft wash of starlight above them shimmered across her cheek, turning her curls to amber in the low light. Her limbs were warm. Heavy. Her thoughts pleasantly dulled. She hadn’t let herself feel this—unguarded—in what felt like years. Maybe since the war. Maybe even before that.

Then Marcus spoke, voice low and drowsy. “You’re not as scary as you pretend to be, you know.”

She didn’t open her eyes. But the corner of her mouth tugged upward. Just a little.

“You’re not as awful as you pretend to be,” she whispered back, and her voice surprised her with its softness.

Marcus made a small sound—could’ve been a laugh, could’ve just been breath—but he didn’t reply. And she didn’t push.

She didn’t remember falling asleep. Not exactly.

One moment, she was watching the illusion of a comet streak across their conjured ceiling, and the next, her thoughts blurred into dreams shaped like Quidditch stands and potion fumes and the faint memory of soft, genuine laughter. Her hand, she thought distantly, was still close to his. Maybe even touching.

But in the quiet hush of their ridiculous blanket fort, buried beneath mismatched pillows and the hum of fading tension, something shifted.

Not romance. Not yet.

Not friendship either—not the kind defined by lunch dates or letters or years of school history.

But something else. A breath of possibility. A tentative alignment. A strange and unfamiliar stillness, wrapped in starlight and stolen peace.

Outside, the flat remained dark. Rain danced steadily across the glass, and the magical infrastructure groaned somewhere in the walls. But inside their little universe of quilts and quiet, a new rhythm settled between them. Not as enemies. Not quite as allies. Just two people, tangled up in something strange and new, who—for one night—had nothing to fight.

Twenty-two days to go.

Chapter Text

07:03 A.M.

Hermione Granger believed in schedules. Morning rituals. Structured flow. Order. There was comfort in precision—the reliable tick of time, the purposeful choreography of her day-to-day life. She had charts for her charts, lists annotated with sub-lists, and a wand-stabilized grooming mirror that rotated exactly 34 degrees clockwise at 7:05 a.m., allowing her to apply her serum with maximum light angle efficiency. Her routine wasn’t just habit—it was the quiet architecture of her sanity, the scaffolding that held her upright after a lifetime of wars, trauma, and magically bonded Ministry housing assignments with him.

So when she padded into the narrow corridor of the shared flat—hair braided the night before for minimal frizz, robe belted, toothbrush in one hand and serum dropper in the other—and found the bathroom door locked, she didn’t panic.

At first.

She paused. One heartbeat. Then another.

Then, music.

Not ambient spell-enhanced chimes. Not the crisp strings of a Bach adaptation. No. This was a full-throated, unfiltered bellow, echoing from behind the bathroom door like a wounded Hippogriff attempting karaoke.

Hermione froze.

“You’re as smooth as dragonfire whiskey…”

She stared at the door. The toothpaste cap dangled from her fingers like a tiny white flag of disbelief.

“…You’re as sweet as honeybrew…”

No. No, no, no. She had survived a Death Eater infiltration in the Department of Mysteries, she had faced off with three werewolves and a cursed prophecy in Romania last year—this was not going to break her.

The hallway echoed with the next overly emotional lyric. Hermione took a steadying breath, set the toothpaste neatly on the hallway shelf, and knocked. Not hard. Not aggressive. Just firm. Civil. The knock of someone offering a gentle reminder of The Rules.

“Flint.”

“When I say I need my space, girl, it’s not because I’m through—”

Her eye twitched. She knocked again, louder. “Marcus.”

“It’s just that I’ve got Quidditch trauma and I’m emotionally constipated—”

She slammed her palm flat against the door. “FLINT.”

The singing halted mid-note with an audible splash and a mumbled curse. Somewhere inside, the water continued to run. A few seconds later, the door creaked open just wide enough for a draft of steam to rush out—thick, hot, and scented with something aggressively citrus.

Then his head appeared. Wet, dripping, half-lathered with shampoo. A single strand of hair curled over his temple. Marcus Flint, infamous Slytherin bruiser turned low-level Ministry liaison, blinked at her with zero guilt and absolutely no shame.

“What?” he asked, as if he were the one being inconvenienced.

Hermione stared. It was too early for this. Too early for damp pectorals and smirking idiocy.

“It’s 7:03,” she said tightly, the words clipped like scalpel cuts. “My mirror rotates at 7:05. I have thirteen and a half minutes scheduled for personal grooming before I begin reviewing the Department’s arithmantic projections. This window is non-negotiable. I posted a schedule. You’ve seen the schedule.”

Marcus blinked again, eyes slightly fogged with sleep—or steam. “There’s a schedule?”

She inhaled through her nose. Count to four. Release at seven. Do not murder your flatmate through a locked door. “There is a laminated schedule,” she said, slowly and with all the restraint of a saint. “Laminated. Above the toilet. With color-coded brackets.”

“Ohhh,” he said, squinting like the memory was clicking into place. “I thought that was, like, one of your inspirational quotes.”

Hermione’s nostrils flared. “‘Shared rituals are key to shared survival’ is not a quote, it is a behavioral directive. One you are currently violating.”

Marcus grinned. It was lopsided and maddeningly relaxed. “Well, Deputy Head of ‘Nagging with Nuance,’ I’ve got shampoo in my eyes, exactly two inches of hot water left, and one more verse trapped in my soul.” His smirk widened as he began to retreat back inside, unbothered. “Tell your schedule to find peace in the moment.”

SLAM.

Hermione stood there in the hallway, clenching her wand and trying very, very hard not to hex the hinges off the bathroom door.

Inside, the singing resumed.

“You say you want a partner, but you act like my parole officer—”

This was war.

And she was going to win it with charts, logic, and possibly a shampoo hex that made his hair frizz into a sentient tumbleweed.

Because Hermione Granger believed in order. And Marcus Flint?

Was bloody chaos.

07:28 a.m.

Revenge, Hermione thought, was a dish best served with wandless sabotage. Preferably before breakfast.

She moved through the hallway like a tactician reviewing battle lines—her slippers whispering across the floorboards, her dressing gown belted with quiet finality. This wasn’t petty. This was justice. A preemptive strike in a war Marcus Flint had started with his appalling disregard for the laminated bathroom rota and that off-key concert in the shower.

She’d barely slept. Her mirror had missed its angle rotation window. Her serum had oxidized slightly from the delay. These were not trivial inconveniences—they were strategic violations of harmony.

So, with the quiet efficiency of a seasoned veteran of both magical warfare and roommate politics, she slipped into the bathroom moments after Marcus had left his shampoo on the counter. She didn’t need her wand for this. Ginny had once gone through a six-week phase of trying every hair potion in the Apothecary Weekly's Top 10. One of those experiments—Curl & Conquer Volume Tonic, Extra Strength—had been so potent it had nearly turned Neville’s kneazle into a tribble.

Hermione carefully decanted the tonic into Marcus’s shampoo bottle, recapped it, and gave it one innocent shake. The trap was set. No hexes. No magical traces. Just a little chemical encouragement. She cleaned up, smoothed her hair, and returned to her tea with a smugness she rarely allowed herself to feel.

Twenty minutes later, the bathroom door creaked open.

Hermione looked up from the paper.

And there he was.

Marcus Flint—hulking, shirtless, and unmistakably horrified—stood in the doorway, dripping onto the rug. But it wasn’t his state of undress that made Hermione blink. It was the hair.

His usually flat, barely-managed mane of dark hair had tripled in size. It floated around his head in an unruly, halo-like mass, a mix between untamed beach waves and something that had lost a fight with a lightning bolt. Individual curls bounced when he moved, resisting gravity, styling logic, and—judging by his expression—his will to live.

He glared at her. “You did something to my shampoo.”

Hermione raised her teacup to hide her smile. “Oh?” she said with mock concern, eyes glinting. “I thought you liked dramatic volume. It really brings out your jawline.”

His brows drew together like storm clouds forming. “This,” he said, jabbing a finger at his own head, “is a declaration of war.”

She didn’t flinch. Just took a sip and turned a page in her paper. “So is ignoring laminated scheduling agreements, Marcus. Actions,” she added, “have consequences.”

09:00 a.m.

Marcus struck back with the precision of someone who knew exactly how to cause chaos in quiet, domestic ways.

He didn’t rage. He didn’t shout. He didn’t even touch his wand—he simply waited, oh-so-patiently, until Hermione reached for her toothbrush.

She stood at the sink, methodical as ever, checking the bristles for wear, adjusting the water to the exact temperature (neither scalding nor tepid), and brushing in careful clockwise circles, as per the St. Mungo's dental guidelines.

The first taste was mint. Sharp, refreshing. She nodded slightly in approval.

The second taste—clove. Sharp and oddly spicy.

Hermione paused.

The third flavor hit hard. Garlic. Not subtle garlic either—raw, offensive, burn-your-eyes garlic. She recoiled, eyes watering.

She spat quickly into the sink, coughing once, but it wasn’t over.

Because the final, most heinous offense arrived like a betrayal.

Anchovy.

Anchovy mint. Toothpaste from the bowels of culinary sin. Her gag was immediate and visceral.

In the kitchen, Marcus leaned against the counter, tea in hand like a champagne glass, grinning like a smug gargoyle who had just won the House Cup in Petty Interpersonal Combat.

“Anchovy mint,” he said with evident pride. “It’s a new blend. Bit of bite. Refreshing, isn’t it?”

Hermione didn’t speak.

Not because she couldn’t. Because she was plotting. With the deliberation of someone calculating orbital mechanics.

She calmly, elegantly, lifted her wand, tapped her own throat, and cast a Silencing Charm to finish brushing without another incident. Then, without breaking eye contact, she wiped her mouth, straightened her spine, and retrieved a small pad of enchanted parchment from the drawer.

She wrote three words in perfect, looping script and affixed it gently to the mirror with a tap of her wand.

Actions have consequences.

Then she left the bathroom, her silence louder than any threat he’d ever heard.

Marcus looked at the note.

Then he looked at the mirror.

Then he looked at the hallway she’d disappeared down.

And, for the first time that morning, his victorious grin slipped.

Because Hermione Granger was a Gryffindor, yes.

But she was also the girl who once hexed a boy’s front teeth into walrus tusks for calling her a Mudblood—and that was in third year.

10:42 a.m.

The next time Marcus Flint went in for a shave, he didn’t expect retribution. Not immediately. He assumed Hermione would need at least a day to concoct something suitably overengineered and dramatic—like swapping his wardrobe with miniature elf-knitted versions, or embedding Latin insults into his tea leaves.

But he had underestimated her. Again.

Because as soon as he cast a simple Aqua Lamefacio to conjure his shaving foam, the nozzle let out a sputtering pop—and a puff of fluorescent green mousse erupted across his cheek like magical whipped cream.

It smelled like birthday cake.

Not just vaguely sweet—no, it was overwhelmingly saccharine. Like a haunted bakery. Like the inside of a Honeydukes dumpster. His nose wrinkled on instinct.

Then he looked in the mirror.

“Bloody hell—” he muttered, staring in horror.

His nose. The tip of his nose was glowing chartreuse. Bright, sickly, and pulsing with a gentle magical sheen, like some kind of enchanted snot beacon. The foam had dyed him. It was the kind of green that made leprechauns look understated.

From the hallway came the familiar rustle of parchment, the shuffle of slippers, and Hermione’s voice, calm and utterly unbothered:
“Don’t worry,” she said sweetly, flipping through a Ministry folder as if she had not just committed visual warfare, “your hair distracts from your face anyway.”

There was a long pause.

Marcus stared at his reflection. At the terrifying volume of curls that still hadn’t fully settled from the earlier sabotage. At the unnaturally festive glow of his nose. He slowly wiped a blob of the enchanted foam from his chin.

Then he turned toward the door and said, flatly, “I look like a cursed leprechaun.”

Hermione didn’t look up. “You do. A particularly judgmental one, if I’m honest.”

He narrowed his eyes.

She arched an eyebrow.

And then—despite himself—he smiled. It was reluctant. It was begrudging. But it was real.

And Hermione caught it, just for a second, before he disappeared back into the bathroom to rinse off the frosting-scented humiliation.

12:00 p.m.

He should have known that she wouldn’t stop at foam.

At precisely midday, Marcus made the fatal error of adjusting the angle of the enchanted mirror. It had been tilted slightly—just enough to catch the sunlight in a way that made him feel vaguely judged. He wasn’t vain, but he was six foot four and didn’t enjoy being forced to crouch like a troll just to shave his jawline.

He tapped the corner of the mirror. It hummed. Reoriented itself.

And then it attacked.

The surface shimmered. Warped. A magical ripple tore across the glass like a pebble skimming a pond—and then, with a cheerful pop, his own Hogwarts first-year portrait burst across the mirror in high definition.

It was a thing of terrible beauty.

Marcus-at-eleven stared back with horrified eyes, two front teeth slightly overlapping, ears just a little too big for his head, hair so greasy and over-slicked it could’ve been mistaken for wet paint. His uniform was rumpled. His mouth hung open like he was midway through a sneeze or about to cry.

“Granger!” he bellowed, the sound reverberating down the hallway like a war horn.

From her room came the clipped, maddeningly calm reply:
“Page twenty-six of the bonding protocol. No mirror hexes that cause actual injury. Nothing about embarrassment.”

He made a strangled sound. Something between a laugh and a groan.

Five minutes later, he emerged, holding the mirror at arm’s length as though it might bite him.

“I’m not even mad,” he announced, setting it gently on the kitchen table with the reverence one might show a magical bomb. “I looked like a terrified turnip.”

Hermione didn’t miss a beat. “A very loud one.”

He snorted and poured himself a glass of pumpkin juice like a man accepting his fate.

2:30 p.m.

The flat had grown quiet.

The kind of quiet that made Hermione suspicious. She’d returned from a meeting with Magical Maintenance to find the kitchen untouched, no additional glitter traps on her slippers, and the hallway free of tripwire jinxes. She eyed the silence warily.

But when she stepped into the bathroom to check the damage from earlier skirmishes, she paused.

There, beside the sink—neatly arranged between her hairbrush and the still-sparkling mirror—was her serum.

Not just any serum. Her favorite. The expensive one. Imported from an apothecary in the Alps and sold only during lunar alignments that happened twice a year. She’d run out a week ago and hadn’t dared hope to replace it until the next quarter moon.

But there it was.

Refilled. The bottle gently cleaned. A new crystal stopper fitted precisely into the neck of the vial.

Beneath it lay a small, folded square of parchment—unassuming, slightly creased, and unmistakably scrawled in sharp, slanted handwriting that couldn’t belong to anyone else.

She opened it with careful fingers.

Figured you’d run out. And I may be a bastard, but I’m not a monster. Everyone deserves good skin.
—MF

Hermione stared at it for a long moment, the warmth of the bathroom fogging the corners of her vision, though she couldn’t quite blame the air.

No pranks followed.

No follow-up traps. No retaliatory enchantments.

Just her serum. Thoughtfully replaced. Quietly restored.

And a note—blunt, unpolished, honest. From a man who still sang off-key in the shower and hexed toothbrushes, but who noticed when her things were missing.

It wasn’t an apology.

But it wasn’t nothing.

And somehow, it felt more disarming than any prank he’d played all day.