Work Text:
It was supposed to be a Time Turner.
Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger, reluctant yet polite colleagues in the Department of Mysteries: Time Division, had spent hundreds, nay thousands of hours bent over workbenches, wands in hand, potions bubbling. No one alive remembered how to make a Time Turner, and they were hell bent on recreating just one. There had been many long hours away from home, resulting in the collapse of Granger’s relationship (which had been on thin ice to begin with) and Draco’s love life (which had included very little “love,” if he were honest), but when they finally finished the last bit of arithmancy, the last cautious charm work, they believed they had a completed, functional Time Turner.
It looked innocuous enough: a small hourglass, perhaps the size of the tube of serviceable lip balm that Granger kept on her person at all times (“I’m not addicted to it,” she would snap whenever it was mentioned). The hourglass was situated in a wooden casing, mahogany for its stolid magical properties, meant to steady the warp of time dilation that would surround its user. There was a long chain made of one hundred percent pure gold, which meant it was terribly bendy and brittle, but any other metals mixed in could skew the field of passivity.
It sat quite innocently on the workbench, Draco and Granger both leaning over it, scarcely daring to breathe on it lest it unleash unexpected magical abilities outward.
“Did we do it?” she breathed.
“Surely we must’ve,” he answered.
“Yes, no equations left unsolved, no components untested,” said Granger, and yet, her voice had a nervous quality to it that Draco was very unused to.
She was typically the pillar of confidence, and he the cynical naysayer. Still, they peered at the hourglass, as though it would soon offer up to them its own conclusions about whether itself was properly made or not.
“Well, there’s only one way to be sure,” said Granger suddenly, and she lifted the hourglass from the workbench, looping its chain around her neck.
“What are you- stop! Stop it!” said Draco, smacking her hand before she could turn the hourglass.
“Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no other way to find out if it works,” she said. “And I’ve used one before.”
“If it doesn’t work, you could be destroyed, down to the last atom,” said Draco.
“The odds of that are near zero,” she said dismissively, waving her hand in the air.
“Near zero,” said Draco. “Near.”
“This Time Turner is a critical magical discovery! This isn’t just something to help students take double classes!” she began, and at this, he scoffed royally, despising her for the five-hundred and eighty-second reminder that she took twice as many classes as he had in Third Year and still came out with better marks than his in every single subject. “This device can help us go back years. It navigates time and place. This is the biggest magical discovery of our age! We can really understand what happened in the war, how to make sure it never happens again!”
“Yes, and I am not letting you just go and pop in on the Dark Lord circa 1997!” he said.
“You’ve got to stop saying Dark Lord, it makes you sound like a Death Eater,” said Granger acidly.
“I am one,” he said, and she scowled at him.
The hourglass was still looped over her neck, his hand inches from hers to smack away any attempt at sending herself back in time, and then, on a wild impulse, he tucked himself into the chain with her. They stood, inches from each other, both glaring dramatically.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she snapped.
“Coming with you,” said Draco. “I’d like to pop in on Lord Voldemort circa 1997 myself.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, we can’t go to see Voldemort in 1997,” she said. “Let’s go somewhere safer.”
“Like?”
Granger bit her lip for a moment, her head tilted to one side, thinking.
“Fancy a visit to Hogwarts?” she asked, waggling her eyebrows. “End of term, 1994?”
“What happened at the end of-” Draco began, but then he grimaced, shaking his head briskly. “No, no, no. I don’t need to see that slap again. I think I can still feel it. You did permanent damage to my jawline, Granger.”
“I can’t recall what it looked like before,” said Granger primly. “Let’s go and have a look. Disillusionment ready?”
Draco grumbled something very grouchy under his breath, but they both Disillusioned themselves, and Draco could hear the soft sound of glass scraping against mahogany wood as she turned the Time Turner in her hands. He braced himself for atom-destroying doom, and the feeling that suddenly came across his body felt almost like they’d accomplished it.
His entire body felt squeezed, like he was passing through a straw that was too narrow, and then, it felt stretched. Granger let out a shriek beside him that told him this was not how it had worked when she’d used a Time Turner in Third Year, and he would have felt worried if his mindpower hadn’t been fully consumed by the sensation of being pulled apart limb from limb. But then, as quickly as it had begun, the feeling stopped, and they found themselves standing still and steady, Disillusioned, and very much not at Hogwarts.
“Where are we?” she asked quietly.
It was some kind of party, a familiar sort that Draco had been attending his entire life. The home looked vaguely familiar. Where had he seen it before? Suddenly, he felt the chain yank him about the neck, tugging him to his right.
“Ow!” he hissed. “You’ve got to tell me before you try to strangle me, Granger!”
“What’s gone wrong?” she whispered.
He looked around, and in a moment, his eyes landed on Theo Nott, looking not as he’d done in their Third year but like he did now, but this Theo was not with his wife. In fact, this Theo was snogging a red-headed witch rather frantically in a dark corner. Draco had half a mind to un-Disillusion himself and curse Theo across the room, and he was just marching in that direction, yanking Granger along by the throat behind him, when he heard her gasp.
“It’s Harry! Grown-up Harry! Malfoy, where the hell are we?” she said, and sure enough, Harry Potter was striding purposefully across the ballroom.
The ballroom. He had been here before. This was the ballroom of a French debutante his mother had tried to set him up with years ago. Delacroix, he thought.
And then, they saw it. The place to which Harry Potter was marching so forcefully. The couple that was dancing in the center of the dance floor, one in a backless green gown and the other in impeccable black finery.1 It was…
Them.
Draco could feel Granger’s recoil at the same moment as his own.
“Is this the future?” she whispered.
“It can’t be,” said Draco. “Look.”
He pointed to an older man in the corner, laughing in a circle of friends. Monsieur Delacroix.
“He’s dead,” he whispered. “Died a few years ago.”
In the center of the room, Harry Potter had reached the dancing Draco and Granger. They were muttering together, and then Potter flew off in a rage while Draco and Granger shared a chuckle. Draco saw that in the moments when the Other Granger was looking off after Harry, this Other Draco was looking at her with longing in his expression, and similarly, in the moments when the Other Draco was not looking at her, the Other Granger was gazing up at him with a tiny, appreciative smile. It made his stomach turn uncomfortably. Where were they? What was this?
“I don’t like this,” murmured Granger. “I don’t like this at all.”
“Nor do I,” said Draco darkly, watching what appeared to be his own hands resting on what appeared to be Hermione Granger’s waist, eyes that looked like (but certainly were not) his own eyes gazing down on her with a pining sort of expression that Draco did not think his face had ever had. “Can you get us back?”
He could hear the soft clink of the glass on the Time Turner, and then, the horrible sensation of squeezing followed by the even worse sensation of stretching. He opened his eyes, which had squeezed shut of their own accord, and he was endlessly relieved to find himself back in the lab with Granger, no strange Delacroix party, no bizarre dance taking place in the center of the room.
Draco watched Granger reappear next to him, her face ashen, and he un-Disillusioned himself as well. They extricated themselves from the chain of the Time Turner, Granger placing it back on the workbench and both of them staring at it as though it had betrayed them.
“Where did we go?” she asked, horrified.
Draco could form no coherent thoughts. Granger was rubbing her arms up and down as though reassuring herself.
“Let’s… let’s call it a day,” said Granger. “We can try it again tomorrow.”
“Try it again?” he said. “We should burn the bloody thing.”
“No!” she shrieked, and she reached out to it, curling her hands around it protectively. “I probably just set it wrong. We’ve spent two and a half years making this. You’re not destroying it after a one-off minor issue.”
“Minor issue. Minor issue, she says,” said Draco, pacing the floor and running his hands through his hair. “We just appeared in Monsieur Delacroix’s ballroom, the same Monsieur Delacroix whose funeral I attended, mind you, and in said ballroom, we were dancing with each other! Dancing, Granger! Like friends! Like…”
Like more than friends, perhaps, from the looks of it. They had not appeared intimate, so to speak, but it was certainly closer than they’d ever been in real life. He felt scandalized, violated. She was not permitted to touch him like that! Her hands placed so delicately on his shoulders, like she’d been invited to put them there! He looked at her, and her face was roiling with discomfort as well.
“Listen, let’s just assume I made a mistake in the settings, and something very bizarre happened. A one in a million error,” said Granger. “We’ve got to try it once more.”
“No, we haven’t,” snapped Draco.
“If you don’t want to help, I’ll do it alone,” said Granger.
He wanted to smash it to shards, but he knew she was right.
“We’ll try it again tomorrow,” he said. “Promise me you won’t go on some fanciful time bending quest overnight?”
“I promise,” said Granger. “Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow.”
~
Tomorrow arrived. They were staring at the Time Turner accusatorially, as though it had sent them to that ballroom on purpose, but gamely, Granger picked up the hourglass and looped it over both of their necks.
“Not Hogwarts this time, I think,” said Granger. “Someplace easier, safer. Maybe the jump was just too big, too far.”
This explanation was highly unsatisfactory, as there was no reason in the world that it should matter when and where their destination was, and yet, he nodded.
“How about three days ago? In here?” offered Granger.
“So we can warn ourselves off finishing the bloody thing?” he said.
She rolled her eyes and began to spin the hourglass, and he was once again struck by the awful sensation that he had been squelched into jam, and then stretched, and of course, when they had intended to go to Hogwarts, they’d ended up watching themselves dance in the Delacroix ballroom, and now that they’d intended to go three days prior in their own laboratory, they’d ended up at Hogwarts.
In the Headmaster’s office, where he and Granger were seated, staring at each other rather intensely. The Draco in the office was asking for the Other Granger’s help with something that he did not want to reveal, offering loads of money for her research in exchange. How much money did this Other Draco have? Draco himself was one of the wealthiest wizards in Britain, but the sums the Draco in the Time Turner was alluding to seemed out of reach even for him.
And there was another notable thing about their discussion. The Draco in the Time Turner wanted it to appear as though he and Granger were dating. On a date. Tea in Diagon Alley. This Other Draco was offering an untold number of Galleons in exchange for this Other Granger’s help, and they were going to pretend to be dating.2
Draco was completely mystified. He heard the clinking of the hourglass against the mahogany; Granger was sending them back to their time, back to the laboratory. His stomach clenched as he felt the sensation of being squeezed through a straw, and then pulled out until his bones were nearly splintering, and then, they were standing in the lab.
“Okay, well, at least we made it to Hogwarts that time,” said Granger.
“What are you talking about? We weren’t even trying to go to Hogwarts!” he roared. “Why were we in the Headmaster’s office? What research was I offering to help you with?”
“Maybe fixing the Time Turner,” offered Granger half-heartedly.
“Oh, sure, yes, makes perfect sense,” said Draco sardonically. “I’m sure I’d offer to help you with your research in exchange for you pretending to go on a date with me.”
“Maybe it’s the only way you could get a date,” she said with a scowl, her eyebrow arched menacingly at him.
“I’ll have you know I could get a great many-” he began, but he decided that it would not be wise to continue this line of discussion. “Try it again. Get it right this time.”
Granger chewed at the inside of her cheek for a moment, then adjusted the dials on the hourglass and sent them once again compressing and elongating into a new scene.
This time, he instantly knew exactly where they had arrived. They were in Malfoy Manor, in a spare bedroom in a distant wing he rarely used. His Granger was standing in the confines of the Time Turner’s chain with him, while Another Granger was standing alone in the middle of the room wearing some kind of uniform, serviceable and plain, a deep red color with flowing skirts. What was she doing at Malfoy Manor? As the clock on the wall clicked over to half seven, a table appeared in the center of the room. Other Granger took a deep breath… and bent over the table.3
He felt his Granger stiffen beside him.
There was a moment in which nothing else happened, and Draco half expected her to go ahead and spin the hourglass to return back to their time, but then, the door to the bedroom creaked open and Other Draco walked in. This Other Draco had a stoic expression on his face, a darkness to him that was frightening, a fear that solidified as he watched himself cross the room and lift the skirts of the woman bent over the table.
They were both transfixed, horror-struck, unable to move as they watched the scene unfold in front of them, this Dark Draco casting a lubrication spell and then sliding himself inside of Other Granger. Draco felt a nausea roiling in his stomach, watching himself fuck a Granger who was screwing her eyes shut miserably, her fingers gripping the table, a lone tear falling from her eye. The Dark Draco had his eyes closed as well, emotionless, but holding onto Granger’s hips, pumping himself into her, and after a while, he thrust forcefully once more into her. His face did not even register any pleasure as he reached orgasm. He pulled himself from the Granger who was bent over the table and left the room. She eventually stood, adjusting her skirts and trying not to cry.
The shock of the moment passed, and Draco heard the scraping of the glass of the Time Turner, and after a moment of squeezing and stretching, Draco found himself back in their laboratory. They un-Disillusioned themselves, and he saw that Granger had tears in her eyes.
“What the fuck, Malfoy?” she exploded, pulling herself out of the looped chain of the Time Turner and backing away from him.
“What?”
“Is this some kind of sick fantasy you’re trying to live out? Are you getting off on this? What did you do to the Time Turner?” she hissed.
“What are you talking about? I didn’t do anything!” he said defensively.
“You just raped me!” she cried hysterically, tears falling in two lines down her cheeks.
“That wasn’t me!” he roared. “I’ve never done that to you, nor would I ever want to!”
Granger was wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. He did not know how to respond, did not know how to apologize for something that he had not done, something that had elicited nothing but abject revulsion in him.
“Granger, we’ve got to figure out where this wretched thing is taking us, or else destroy it before we see something like… something like that again,” said Draco.
In truth, the image of the Dark Draco had unnerved him. Was he seeing some vision of himself the way he secretly wanted to be? Or worse, the way Granger truly thought of him? Her fears, his own? What explained the dance they’d seen the day before, with Granger’s backless green dress, or the meeting in the Headmistress’s office, plotting a date-that-wasn’t-a-date?
Granger, for herself, went right to the thing that she always went to when confronted with a problem: research. She plopped down into a tall stool at one of their workbenches and began combing through their arithmancy equations, muttering something about non-Euclidean parabolas. He was too frozen in shock and horror to join her.
“I’m going home,” said Draco. “I can’t… this is…”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Malfoy,” said Granger tightly.
“No Time Turner when you’re on your own,” he said.
She nodded a vague agreement, and he immediately Apparated to Malfoy Manor.
The wards slid apart to let him into the Manor, a house elf appearing instantly at his side to take his robes.
“A vodka, please,” he said.
“Sir, it’s eleven in the morning,” said the elf.
“Add orange juice to it, then,” snapped Draco.
The house elf disappeared. Draco climbed the staircase, his footsteps taking him without thinking to the bedroom, the one he’d seen with Granger in the Time Turner. The one where he’d…
He could not think of it. Draco pushed the door of the bedroom open, walking into it and gazing around as though he half expected to find Granger in a red uniform standing in the middle of the room. There was no table here. No clock on the wall reading half seven. The scene he’d watched was not real. It had not happened. It would not happen.
His house elf appeared, screwdriver in hand, and Draco conjured a lounge chair that appeared just as he was falling through the air to land in it. He sipped his drink, feeling properly broody, staring foully at the door to the bedroom as though daring some Dark Draco version of himself to walk through it.
~
The next day, Draco arrived at the laboratory to find Granger looking confident. This was a welcome change, as usually, Granger’s confidence meant that a breakthrough was at hand.
“I think I’ve got it figured out,” she said. “I’ve dipped the gold in bromine. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. It should stabilize the time field and make sure we pass only through time, and not through… well, whatever we’ve been passing through.”
She was holding the chain, gesturing at him to come closer to her, which he did with some reluctance, still very unnerved at the scene they’d watched the day before. But dauntlessly, he allowed her to loop the chain over their heads.
“We’re going to go to Hogwarts again,” said Granger. “Third year. The slap heard round the world.”
He rolled his eyes at her, watching her set the tiny dials on the side of the hourglass. They Disillusioned themselves, and then, she twirled the Time Turner on its axis.
It was not Hogwarts.
They appeared in a cozy flat, and once again, he saw himself and Granger in the room. Though he felt he should not have been surprised by this on the fourth try, he was still shocked that they’d somehow once again stumbled into a scene that had never happened between the two of them. In this moment, the Other Draco and the Other Granger were seated on a sofa, and they were both staring at a black box that Draco knew vaguely was called a television. A scene of something was playing on the box. There was a chalkboard on the wall, and it inexplicably had a very large number 1 written on it.4
The Other Draco had placed his hand around Other Granger’s thigh, and Draco noted that it spanned the width of her leg rather nicely, thumb on one side, fingers splayed across the other, and then, he shook himself, startling Granger next to him. A ridiculous line of thinking.
The Other Granger was muttering something about it tickling, and the pair of them shared a conversation about how comfortable they felt: apparently, a level 2, for some unknown reason. Draco spotted wedding rings on both of their fingers, though he thought, surely, they were not married to one another. Whose fantasy was this? He turned to glare at Granger, but given the Disillusionment charm, he was not sure if he was fixing his angry stare at her or just at the wall of this flat.
After the Other Granger left the room, he watched himself stand from the sofa and walk over to the chalkboard, erasing the number 1 and writing in a number 2. The Other Him then stood and powered off the black television. In what sort of alternate reality did Draco Malfoy know how to operate a Muggle television?! Then, it hit him. He understood.
Draco felt the squeezing, stretching sensation of returning to the laboratory, and as soon as they were both un-Disillusioned, Draco raced to the workbench, rifling through the parchments he had on the table until he found some of their earliest calculations. Granger was still standing in the middle of the room, a dazed and bewildered expression on her face.
“It’s… dear Merlin, Granger, we’re not navigating time,” he said. “We’re navigating… we’re going through the…”
As it sunk in, he placed a hand on his forehead dramatically and sank into a chair, nearly losing his balance as it rolled backward. He huffed out an overwhelmed breath.
“What are we navigating?” she said, finally looking at him.
“Granger, look at this,” he said, holding out the parchment. “Look at the third line. Look what we did.”
Granger took the parchment and began scanning it, her eyes flitting left to right rapidly, her brow furrowed. He saw the moment that she spotted what they’d done.
“Malfoy,” she breathed. “We’re navigating the Multiverse.”
~
The next few days were a flurry of attempts to undo their multiversal traveling machine. Granger adjusted some of the arithmancy, prodding the new equations into the Time Turner with her wand, and then, they looped the chain over their necks to find themselves standing in the middle of the desert, watching Other Granger traipse along a sand dune with Other Draco walking behind5. Their multiverse selves came across a spelled wall, and they watched themselves panic, trying to get back to one another, eventually pushing their way through the shimmering spell to reunite. Sand in their mouths, Draco and Granger (the originals) squeezed and stretched back to the laboratory.
Draco made a valiant attempt at adjusting the formulas next, only to find themselves in the middle of an apocalypse of epic proportions, with literal undead monsters roaming around the Other Draco and Other Granger.6 They did not stay in that reality for long, and upon return, Granger fixed him with an angry stare as though it were his fault that she’d just witnessed an alternate reality in which she and Draco were trauma bonding over zombies.
“But the real question is: why are we always together?” said Granger. “Why do we always arrive in a reality in which, in whatever cursed way it happens, you and I have ended up together somehow?”
Draco had wondered about this as well. Surely, they should have seen a multiverse in which he maintained a harem of supermodels by now.
“Maybe it’s because we go in together? Both of us wearing the chain?” offered Draco. “What if we go through one at a time?”
“Hm,” said Granger. “That’s a good idea.”
Granger, as a rule, never voluntarily told him that his ideas were good. The situation was dire indeed.
After some sniping back and forth, Draco insisted that he be the first to use the Multiverse-Turner alone. After setting the dials on the mahogany casing, he spun the hourglass and shut his eyes, feeling as usual like he’d been squashed into jelly and then pulled like mozzarella cheese, and when he arrived at his destination, he saw that it was most definitely not Malfoy Manor. It was a hotel room. One that he’d never seen before. And he saw himself, fully naked and completely erect, with his face between Hermione Granger’s legs.
He could not help it. His cock twitched.
“Fuck, are you good at everything?” said the Granger on the bed, her voice breathy and seductive in a way he’d never heard before.7
Draco should have spun the Time Turner, returned to the laboratory, and reported to Granger that unfortunately, no, even without her, he’d still been transported to a moment in which she and Draco were very much together, but he found himself mesmerized by the sight before him. This Other Granger was letting out moans and whimpers, her breasts heaving, her back arched off the bed, her hand fisted in his hair. She was writhing, and Draco’s gaze was fixed on her face, enraptured, coming apart, as she orgasmed.
His cock was half-hard, and he fought the urge to reach down and stroke it. This was better than any pornography he could possibly imagine.
“Merlin, that was quick,” said Other Draco with a smirk, making his way back up her body to kiss her again. “Been a while since you had an orgasm?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” said the Other Granger, threading her hands in his hair. “Now put that thing inside me before I change my mind.”
Draco almost chuckled aloud.
The Other Draco climbed on top, one hand next to her head, holding his body weight, and he could hear his own self grunt as he sheathed himself completely inside of her. Was that really what he sounded like during sex? He watched himself appraisingly, noting that this Other Draco had the same six-pack abs and rippling pectorals that he did. As the scene unfolded, Draco felt very much like a voyeur, but he could not bring himself to stop watching. The Other Draco picked up speed, and Granger’s whimpers and whines were musical in his ears. Was that really what she sounded like during sex?
He had not realized it was something he wanted to know about her.
“Fuck,” hissed the Other Draco, as he slammed into Granger’s body.
Draco almost fell over, bumping into a desk in the corner and steadying himself. The Other Draco glanced into the corner to see what the noise was, and Draco flipped the hourglass immediately, returning to the laboratory.
“Well?” asked Granger immediately
Draco did not yet un-Disillusion himself. It would not do to return to the lab with a raging hardon bulging out of his trousers. He tried taking a few deep breaths, but his mind was still filled with the image of Granger, naked and writhing under a version of himself, and his erection would not go away.
“I can hear that you’re back,” said Granger, and her voice took on a worried tone. “Are you alright? Are you hurt? I can cast a Revelio.”
“No!” he said suddenly. “No, I’m fine.”
He pulled out his wand and muttered a charm that would dispel the significant amount of blood that was pooled between his legs. He sighed and un-Disillusioned himself.
“Still us,” said Draco. “It was still us.”
Draco pulled the Time Turner off his neck and handed it to her. She adjusted the dials and spun the hourglass, shimmering out of sight and then, in a moment, reappearing. Her cheeks were flushed, a slight discomposure to her. Wordlessly, she pulled the chain off her neck, shaking her head briskly.
“Still us,” she said, and he could detect a note of huskiness in her voice, and he did not know if he liked it or not.
She plopped down onto the stool at the workbench again, looking through the parchments and scratching out arithmancy equations. Draco bent over her back to look at the parchments over her shoulder, one of his hands resting on the workbench to steady himself. It was a position he’d stood in before, but for some reason, it seemed much closer, and had she always smelled this good?
Draco pushed himself away from her, the workbench rocking slightly as he did so, backing away three steps as though she’d become a zombie herself. Granger turned in her seat, glaring at him. He ran a frustrated hand through his hair.
“Granger, we’ve got to just admit it. We’ve failed. We didn’t make a Time Turner,” said Draco. “We should destroy it.”
“No!” said Granger. “We’ve got to keep trying! I can fix this!”
And so, more calculations, more adjustments, more spells and charms, and more Multiverses. Sometimes she was a Hogwarts professor, sometimes he was. The same son popped up from time to time, a blonde boy called Scorpius. His father. His mother. Her parents. A threesome with Theodore Nott that had her spinning the hourglass almost before they’d even arrived.
“Maybe we should have someone else try it,” she whispered, wiping her brow.
“Who?” he spat.
He could only imagine one of his junior colleagues in the lab spinning the hourglass to find themselves looking in on a Draco Malfoy with his hands on Granger’s face, in a public toilet, her mouth wrapped around his erection, hotly telling her that he’d always fantasized about shutting her up with his cock, asking her if she could take a little more, making her tap out against his thighs.8
He and Granger had not been able to look each other in the eyes after that multiverse.
“It would have to be someone we trust implicitly,” said Granger.
“Mm-hmm,” hummed Draco.
“How about Harry?”
Draco initially scoffed, hating the idea of bringing Potter into this multiversal disaster they’d accidentally created, but then, he paused, tilting his head to one side.
“No one else would be daft enough to do it,” said Draco thoughtfully.
That was how it came to be that Harry Potter was standing in their lab, looking around at the many cauldrons and workbenches and arithmancy equations jotted down on the chalkboards.
“So, I’m going to a different universe?” asked Potter.
“Yes,” said Granger.
“I’m going to see you and Malfoy together?” he asked.
“Possibly,” she said quickly. “Harry, this is of critical importance: you must not be seen. No matter what is happening when you get there, you must not interfere. There is no telling what multiversal incursions you could create if you interact with a different universe.”
“Understood,” said Potter.
“Even if your Other Self is sitting at tea with the Dark Lord helping my Aunt Bellatrix torture a room full of Weasleys, you must not interfere,” said Draco.
“I got it,” said Potter, and Granger looped the Time Turner over his neck, adjusting the dials.
Granger was wringing her hands nervously. She nodded at him resolutely, and he watched Potter Disillusion himself, heard the clinking of the hourglass, and less than thirty seconds later, saw Potter reappear, his face ashen.
“What the fuck, Malfoy?!” shouted Potter, plunging his hand into his robes and yanking out his wand.
“Harry! Harry, stop!” cried Granger, trying to get in front of Potter.
Draco had pulled his wand just in time to throw up a Protego.
“Sold like chattel!” shouted Potter, and there were tears on his face as he threw a Stupefy in Draco’s direction, which bounced off his shield. “Owned! What the fuck is wrong with you!”9
“Harry, it wasn’t him!” pleaded Granger.
“Like hell it wasn’t!” said Potter heatedly.
Granger hit Potter with an Expelliarmus, and his wand flew through the air. He fixed her with an angry glare, crossing his arms in front of his chest.
“We tried to explain!” said Granger. “It’s another universe! It’s a different Malfoy!”
Potter did not answer.
“Here, let’s go together. Let me show you another universe,” said Granger, and she tucked herself into the chain with Potter.
Draco had not expected to feel a surge of jealousy as she stood close to Potter, but his mind was calling forth the feeling of standing next to her in the looped chain of the Time Turner, the warmth of her body next to him, the sensation of her arms, her hips, her breasts accidentally brushing against him as the squeezing, stretching sensations washed over them. Potter and Granger Disillusioned and disappeared, reappearing a moment later.
Potter once again had tears on his face, but this time, it was different. Potter was staring at him wide-eyed, almost awestruck. Granger, too, had an expression on her face that unnerved him: overcome with emotion, dumbstruck.
“Malfoy, you loved her,” said Potter.
“What?” he spat.
“Merlin’s Beard,” said Potter.
“I didn’t love her, Potter. It wasn’t me,” drawled Draco, annoyed.
But Potter’s awestruck expression did not abate. Granger had turned toward the workbench, hiding her face with curtains of long, curly hair. Draco was distinctly uncomfortable: even though whatever they had witnessed was not actually him, it still felt somehow that his privacy had been violated, that they’d seen something very personal about him that he did not want to be revealed.
More days bent over workbenches, more charm work, more equations and calculations, more multiverses. He and Granger watched as Another Draco was tested for something called the Dragon Level Exam, some sort of dueling test that this Other Draco had been preparing for.10 He winced, half wanting to join in the fight with him, as the Other Draco’s wand was flung from his hand, but the Other Draco used some sort of wrestling move that Draco had never seen before. He heard Granger’s whispered “oh my” next to him.
More nudging new calculations into the Time Turner, zipping off to a new alternate reality, and returning to un-Disillusion themselves and share a frustrated, confused look, going back to the literal drawing board to work out new arithmancy.
“It’s that we’ve wound the space and time together!” insisted Draco. “They’ve got to be separated. There’s no way to make a Time Turner that can do what you want it to do!”
“There is! I can make this work! I can fix this!” said Granger, and with a new vigor, she began erasing chalkboards wholesale. “I’m starting over!”
“Granger, this structure can’t hold against the magical quantum energy!” said Draco, seeing her newest calculation manifest in front of him. “If it collapses, we’re dead!”
“Only if it kills us,” she said dismissively.
“That is not reassuring,” he said.
Draco half expected to be shredded down to the last atom on their next trip through the Time Turner, but instead, he felt the familiar, horrific squeezing stretching sensation, and he noted with some irritation that he found the sensation comforting given the alternative. He and Granger did not arrive at their planned destination (Hogwarts, 1994, she really wanted to see that slap again) but at Malfoy Manor. They were in the library, very much like the library he knew, but with subtle differences here and there that told him it was not the library at home. The library was moving and shifting, as it did when the mood struck it, guiding the Other Draco and Other Granger through it.11
The pair was talking about all of the titles he had in his library, titles that were all familiar to him, and as Other Granger leaned over a text, he saw himself lean over behind her, his nose near her hair, and he madly wondered if she smelled the same in this universe as she did in his own. A moment later, the Other Granger and Other Draco were looking at each other.
Kiss her, you idiot, thought Draco, shocking himself at the thought.
The hourglass clinked, and they were squeezed and stretched back to their reality. Granger looked just as abashed as he felt.
“Is that what the library at Malfoy Manor looks like?” she whispered.
“Sort of,” said Draco in a breathy voice he almost did not recognize as his own. It sounded like the Other Draco’s, the one in the library bent over Other Granger’s neck, looking at ancient and rare books with her.
She yanked the Time Turner off their necks and raced to the workbenches to adjust more calculations. Draco felt the sudden loss of her presence beside him. He had seen himself close to Granger in dozens of ways now, angry fighting, gentle flirting, rough lovemaking, soft lovemaking (why was there so much lovemaking?). And yet, in his own reality, the only time they were close was when they were standing in the chain of the Time Turner, watching themselves live countless lives together.
“So, are there infinite multiverses? An unlimited number of Grangers and Malfoys who’ve ended up together somehow?” asked Draco.
“No, not infinite,” said Granger, and she was scratching furiously with her quill on the parchment, running through calculation after calculation.
They had worked together for years. He’d seen her bent over arithmancy equations more times than he could count, but he had never before stopped to appreciate her competence. She was tenacious. Draco saw that she was staring at the calculations before her with the same sort of intensity he’d seen in her eyes in that last universe they’d visited, when she’d been looking at him in the library. He wanted to reach down, to tuck his fingers under her chin, to lift her face so that she was looking at him. He’d seen himself do it so many times. He could do it now.
“25,000,” she said, jolting him from the mad impulse.
“Hm?”
“There are approximately 25,000 realities,” said Granger, staring at her parchment. “25,674 to be exact. Judging by my calculations. I could be wrong.”
She did not sound like she thought she was wrong.
25,000 universes. 25,000 love stories. Soft ones, sexy ones, dark ones, hilarious ones. They were seeing them all. And it left him wondering, despite himself, how did these Other Dracos end up with her? And, even more worryingly, would he? Would he end up with her? Did he want to?
“Could I see the library?” asked Granger suddenly.
“The library? At Malfoy Manor?” he replied.
“Yes. Could I see it?” she said, and then suddenly, she seemed to realize that she was asking him and not some Other Draco who was romantic and tender and very obviously in love with her, and she furrowed her brow, putting on an air of professionalism. “Perhaps there’s a book in it that can help us figure out how we got this so wrong.”
“Perhaps,” said Draco, though he did not think so.
“I can come tonight,” said Hermione.
“Very well,” he said.
“Seven o’clock?” she asked, and he nodded.
~
It was 7:06 when she arrived, not that he was paying attention to the clock. Not that he was pacing relentlessly in front of the doorway. His mother had tried to ask him what on earth the problem was, but he’d whirled on her in such an agitated state that she’d disappeared into her bedroom. He’d need to apologise to her later. The heavy knocker clunked against the door at 7:06, and though he was standing right before it, he waited a long moment, as though he were walking over from the opposite side of the house, before opening it.
“Granger,” he said in greeting.
“Malfoy,” she said, nodding.
Granger had not been to Malfoy Manor since their seventh year. There was no reason for her to come; they did not travel in the same social circles, they were not friends. The last time she had been at Malfoy Manor, his mad aunt had tortured her almost to death on the floor of the drawing room. Since then, he’d had the room gutted and turned into a billiards room. He was particularly fond of snooker.
“Your home is lovely,” said Granger politely.
Draco snorted a laugh.
“Thanks,” he said drily. “You should have seen it circa 1997.”
She bit back a snappish retort, though her lips were very nearly quirking into a smile.
Draco led her through the house, their shoes echoing as they clicked across the marble floors. She made “ooh” noises as they passed the windows that overlooked the gardens, where his mother kept dozens of rare roses. Then, they arrived at the library. It had double doors nearly twelve feet high, dark stained mahogany wood that reminded him very much of their Multiversal Time Turner. He turned the door handle and pushed, revealing the library.
Granger gasped.
The room was massive, though the endless tall shelves masked just how big the library at the Manor actually was. It could stretch on for almost a quarter of a mile, if it was in a mood. The ceilings were twenty feet tall, and there was an enchantment on them that would point a beam of golden light on them as they walked, illuminating their path.
“This is amazing,” she whispered reverently.
“Thank you,” he said.
He followed her at a slow pace, watching as she stared at the books kept behind glass cases.
“It’s almost like the library in the multiverse,” she said, staring at an ancient text. “Just small differences here and there.”
He murmured an agreement, following her as she began to wind up and down the rows of shelves. She absently pulled her lip balm from her pocket, dragging it across her lips and rubbing them together in a motion that sent a spine of pleasure right down to his…
Fucking hell.
“Hermione,” said Draco, and she whipped around.
“Why are you calling me Hermione?” she said skeptically.
“Just… just feeling how it feels to say it,” said Draco. “I’ve heard myself say it a lot lately.”
She gave him a look out of the side of her eyes.
“And how does it feel?” she asked.
“Hermione,” he said again, letting his tongue and lips wrap around the syllables. “To be honest, it’s a bit of a mouthful, Granger.”
She smiled then, a little smile that quirked off to one side of her lips, her eyes dancing with humor.
“Draco,” she said, and his heart swooped in his chest at this. “Draco.”
She said his name a few times, experimentally, in different voices and intonations, each of which lit his soul aflame in a new and unexpected way. He wanted to reach out and put his hands over her mouth, to make her stop, he could not take it anymore.
“You’re much more of a Malfoy than a Draco, really,” she said, wrinkling her nose slightly, and he couldn’t help it. He laughed.
“I’ll tell my mother,” said Draco. “She’ll be so pleased.”
Granger made a little humming noise and continued wandering the stacks of the library, letting her fingers brush the spines of the books as she went.
“Malfoy?” she said, pausing and turning back to face him, inspecting his face in a way that made him feel far too scrutinized. “I have a confession.”
“Go on, then,” he said.
“I used the Time Turner last night,” she said. “Without you.”
“That was… unwise,” said Draco. “What if something had happened to you? No one there to rescue you.”
Granger scoffed.
“As if you’d be the rescuing sort,” she said with an eye roll.
They ambled down the row, Granger glancing at the books as she moved along them, though without any real interest. Her mind was preoccupied.
“So, how many did you visit?” he asked quietly.
Granger turned away from him again, wandering down the row of the library, touching the books as she wound her way along. He was following, his hands shoved in his pockets, watching her body in a way he’d never done before, seeing how her hips swayed as she moved, how her hair bounced slightly with each step, the curve of her bum.
“Perhaps a hundred,” she answered with a deliberate sort of nonchalance.
“A hundred,” said Draco. “You must be exhausted.”
“Not as exhausted as some of the Hermiones I saw,” she said, looking back over her shoulder at him with an expression of pure mischief.
His stomach fell down to somewhere around his knees.
“I’ll wager the Dracos were doing a fair bit of work in some of those universes as well,” said Draco, trying to sound cool and collected but likely failing miserably, and though she had stopped walking, he had continued forward until he was standing behind her.
Just one more inch forward and they would be touching. Just one half a step, one quarter of a step, even, and her curves would be pressed against him, her backside nestled on his crotch, where there was already concentrated a treacherous amount of bloodflow as he thought of the hundreds of versions of Draco and Granger that were naked and sweating at any given moment.
“I would have never pictured you as the chivalrous, generous type, but some of the Malfoys I saw were very… giving,” said Granger.
“I’m quite giving,” he said, his mouth leaning toward her ear. “I’ve been giving about 90% of my time to you for the last two and a half years.”
“Hmm,” she said. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
“What does it make you wonder?” he asked.
Granger turned. He could feel the warmth radiating off her body in the cool air of the library, and once she’d turned to face him, she lifted her chin to meet his eyes.
“We’ve spent sixty hours a week together for two and a half years, and we’ve never…” she began, and he wanted to force her to say it. What have we never done? But he waited, and she went on. “Malfoy, I watched us as professors at Hogwarts, having sex in the office that used to be Snape’s. I’ve watched you lift me onto a desk in the Auror department at the Ministry. I’ve seen you use Legilimency on me to find out that I fantasize about fucking you.”
He did not know if she meant the Other Granger fantasized about him, or that she did, and at any rate, his Legilimency was not good enough to find out. Other Draco must have taken Snape up on his offer to teach him, and Real Draco was feeling quite sore at the fact that he hadn’t seen this as a potential upside of the practice.
And now, if Granger glanced down at his trousers, she was going to see that there was a sizeable bulge in them.
“And yet, we’ve never done it. We’ve never kissed. We’ve never even flirted,” she said. “Why?”
“I didn’t… I didn’t…” he said, flustered. “Granger, do you want me to flirt with you?”
Her eyelashes fluttered as she looked at the ground. His hands ached to reach out and pull her against him.
“I don’t know. I didn’t think I did,” she said softly. “But what do all of those Hermiones and Malfoys know that we don’t?”
Just one more inch. One tiny step forward. It wouldn’t even have to be a step, it could be a lean, a tilt, a scoot. One tiny shuffle ahead and their bodies would be pressed against one another. His hand wanted to cup her chin, to tug her face upward to face him, to tell her that for two and a half years, he had rejected two dozen women who’d made advances, overtures. He’d rejected them because he’d been too busy.
Too busy with her.
Sixty hours a week for two and a half years. He knew the sound she made when she’d solved a complicated problem. He knew the music she played while she worked. He knew how she took her coffee. He knew… Merlin be damned, he knew just about everything about her. Everything except…
What did Other Draco know that he didn’t? The taste of her lips against his, the sound of her hot breath against his ear, the feel of her from the inside…
The feel of her arms around him. The laughter of a shared inside joke. The calm quiet of an evening spent at home. Other Draco knew them all.
He realized with a slow and dawning horror that somehow, after sixty hours a week for two and a half years, he had grown to like Hermione Granger very much, and upon seeing himself with her in so many alternate universes, seeing himself live 25,674 love stories, it did make him wonder, after all. He wondered if he would still see her every day after they solved the puzzle of the Time Turner. He wondered if he would miss her swotty mouth and her horrible music (because truly, who listens to ruddy jazz?).
Most of all, he wondered if her mouth tasted as delicious as it looked.
And then, in the middle of the row in the library of Malfoy Manor, Draco Malfoy lifted his hands, placing one palm on either side of her face, leaned his head down, and kissed her.
She gasped a little into his mouth, and then, she let out a small whimper that he’d heard before, in a multiversal adventure, but the sound of this whimper against his own lips, vibrating softly in a throat that was inches from his own, was transcendent. Their bodies pressed together, tongues exploring, lips pressing softly to one another’s and then, slowly, reluctantly, pulling apart.
“I’m a rotten Legilimens,” he said softly. “You’re going to have to tell me what you want.”
“I want…” she said, and her hands wrapped around the back of his neck. “I want you… in your bedroom… please tell me you have Slytherin sheets…”
“Saw that in a multiverse, hm?” asked Draco with a smirk, his hands descending to her waist, pulling her even closer against him and kissing her lips lightly. “You’re in luck, Granger. My bedroom is absolutely dripping in forest green and silver.”
She giggled then, an actual giggle like he’d never heard from her before. A very non-research scientist giggle accompanied by a very becoming blush on her cheeks.
“How far is the bedroom?” she asked.
“I can Apparate us there in about half a second,” said Draco, and when she nodded, he tightened his grip on her waist and concentrated, feeling a tug just behind his navel and arriving, still wrapped around her, stumbling only slightly.
A panicked house elf dusting a shelf took one look at the pair and disappeared with a crack.
“Does it match the multiverse version?” he asked, watching her eyes skim the décor.
“Yes,” she mused. “Only in that one, you had a mirror on the ceiling.”
Draco frowned slightly, looking upward and nodding thoughtfully.
“That’s brilliant,” he said. “I could just-”
But as he waved his wand to enchant the ceiling, Granger laughed again and batted his wand hand away.
“Stop, stop, you miscreant!” she said.
Her hand on his arm. His hand on her waist. They were in his bedroom. Not some Other Draco and Other Granger. Them. They. The real ones. He could feel her pulse alive in her skin, her brown eyes gazing up at him with a sparkling amusement. He could have this, what Other Draco had. He furrowed his brow. There were Dark ones. There were even evil ones. Who was he? Was there any of Them in him?
But his pondering was interrupted when she threaded her hands in his hair and pulled his head down to her, their lips meeting again, the warmth of her tongue in his mouth. He groaned and let his hands skim down to her thighs, just underneath her bum, and lifted.
She shrieked into his mouth, wrapping her arms tightly over his shoulders and squeezing her thighs around him so tight he half wondered if she’d activated the Time Turner on accident, but once he’d deposited her properly on the bed, her grip relaxed, and he was able to look down at her. She was radiant. This Granger, his Granger was even more beautiful than all the others.
How had he never noticed?
Their kissing grew more heated, and Draco found his hips pressing themselves into hers quite of their own accord, creating a delectable pressure against his growing erection. The whine in her throat told him that she, too, had a mounting need, and it sent a thrill that energized him from head to foot… to aching cock. Now, their movements grew more urgent, fingers flying across buttons and zippers, tugging shirts above heads. From the look on her face, this was not the first time Granger had laid eyes on his cock, she did not seem surprised by its length or girth or its slight curve. He did feel a momentary disappointment that he had not even been there when she first saw it. How unfortunate.
And though this was not the first time he’d seen her perfect, swotty mouth wrapped around his shaft, the feel of it was truly exquisite. Truly beyond description. Draco let his head fall backward as he gurgled something in his throat. Her hand joined her mouth, and for a moment, he thought he was going to come already, not even thirty seconds into their tryst, so he thought of arithmancy, solving equations in his head to distract his eager orgasm.
But Draco simply had to know if she tasted like he’d imagined. Visions of the Other Draco with his mouth pressed firmly on her center, his hips holding her against his tongue, danced in his mind, and he took hold of her curly mass of hair and pulled her mouth off of him, slipping a hand under her arms and pinning her onto her back in a move that would surely have made the Other Draco in the Dragon Level test proud.
He kissed her mouth first, and then kissed a trail down her jawline, pressing his tongue for a moment on the space between her breasts, and then descending lower, lower, until he saw the vision that was her pussy. This he had not seen up close, not in any of the multiversal adventures they’d had, and it was perfect. Petals curled like a flower around a glistening, dripping center, and at the apex, a hidden bud that his tongue longed to caress. He licked a line from the bottom, tasting the tangy sweetness of her, to her swollen clit, and at this, she shuddered violently, letting out a gasp that made his cock harden even more.
Draco let his lips wrap around her clit, his tongue flicking over it, and her thighs clamped down on his ears, her hand gripping into his hair. She was moaning, pleading, whining. Musical, exactly as it had been in the multiverse, but this time, he was the one doing this to her. He was the one making her back arch, her fists grip the sheets, her body quake and tremble as she climbed to the plateau and cried out as she crashed down it.
“Please, please, oh, stop,” she whispered. “No more.”
Reluctantly, he complied, kissing his way back up her soft belly, stopping for a moment at her full breasts, kissing her collar bone, the crook of her neck, making her giggle and squirm away. Then, he was on top of her, looking into her brown eyes and waiting for her permission.
“Go on, then,” she said, her hands on either side of his face, her legs wrapped around his hips, a slight grin on her face.
Draco reached down between them to guide his erection into her. She was swollen, engorged, a snug fit, but her wetness eased the way for him, and in a moment, he was fully sheathed inside of her, letting out a guttural, feral moan. He was balls fucking deep in Hermione Granger.
She was pulling his face to her, kissing him passionately on the mouth, trying to devour him, rocking her hips against him insistently. She was intoxicating, his head was spinning as he began to thrust slowly in and out of her, feeling already a mounting tightness in his abdomen, a primitive craving to take her faster, harder. And yet, at the same time, a deluge of emotions was roiling in his mind, a craving for more of this, more of her. He could not do this only once. This must be his forever.
The word shocked him as it passed through his mind, so he shook his head slightly, focusing on the task at hand. The woman who was digging her fingernails into his back, pulling him towards her. He was approaching his orgasm, his mind going deliciously blank as it saw nothing but the climax that was about to overtake him, and sure enough, in a moment, Draco was groaning deep in his throat, thrusting into her forcefully, sending spurt after spurt of his come into her body. He slid into her twice more, his face buried in the crook of her neck, his lips on the racing pulse at her throat.
“Fuck,” he whispered.
“Indeed,” she said.
He rolled off her, and she made a movement so automatic that she must have watched it a dozen times in the multiverse: wrapping around him, settling into the place between his arm and chest, tucking her hair under her shoulder so that it didn’t tickle his face. His hands found the naked skin of her ribs, holding her against him. He had just fucked Hermione Granger.
Finally.
“Granger?”
“Hm?” she said, her eyes closed, her hand resting lightly upon his chest.
“You don’t happen to own a backless green dress, do you? Because I think I rather liked the way you looked in one.”
She laughed, a delightful, bubbling peal of laughter.
“25,674 love stories,” she said.
Draco smiled.
“Let’s make it 25,675.”
~
THE END
~
Credits to the following inspirations:
1 - Draco Malfoy & the Mortifying Ordeal of Being in Love
6 - Love in the Time of the Zombie Apocalypse
11 - A Cosmology of Blacks, Malfoys, and Assorted Individuals
If one of these is yours, and you'd like me to take out the reference to it, please let me know and of course, I will!