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"You're from the fucking future, aren't you?"
…
There,she said it. So many times had she thought about questioning him, so many plans she had made to coax the information out of him, so many… attempts she had made, most of them after an exhausting fuck, lying in bed with a satiated Harry Potter, but none of them had ever proceeded to this question. Sometimes it was because she was afraid of his reaction, at other times, because of how ridiculous it sounded. But listening to him proclaim about that futuristic muggle city as his landscape had been a bone that she just had to grab, and she knew right then, that this was her best chance at finding those answers.
Doubly because Emmeline would be finding them out anyway.
"From the future…." he trailed off.
"Yes," snapped Hestia. "I know for a fact that the Unspeakables have such a thing called a Time-turner that can currently go back for as far as twelve hours. But witches and wizards in the future will hardly suffer from the same constraints as we do now. Nothing else about you makes sense. So tell me, Harry. Are you from the future?"
She saw him stand there like a statue, mentally debating on whether or not he should answer, but in the end, she hadn't quite given him any reason not to trust her. At least, she didn't think she had. Hestia was under an unbreakable vow to preserve his secrets, and with Emmeline's involvement, it was only a matter of time before she knew the truth, and by extension, so would Hestia. Attempting to evade the truth would be foolish and only prove that he didn't trust Hestia at all. In which case, she supposed, she'd downgrade him from someone she'd willingly follow, to yet another person that had disappointed her. The vow would make her keep his secrets, but it wouldn't force her to be with him.
She had walked away before. She could do that again.
But, on the other hand, he came through….
Harry exhaled. "Yes."
"..."
"...Yes?"
Hestia couldn't believe her ears.
"Yes," he confirmed again. His voice was calm but firm. "That's what you wanted to hear, wasn't it? Yes. I'm from the fucking future. Go ahead, ask."
"I knew it!" She whispered. "I fucking knew it! You were too different. Too smart. Too knowledgeable about things. You — How are you here? Why are you here? Do you not know that terrible things happen to those that—"
"Meddle with time?" He snapped, taking her by surprise. "I doubt it would. After all, where I am from, there is nothing left."
He stopped right there, offering no further elaboration. Hestia quirked her mouth slightly in annoyance at his reticence. No doubt he wasn't happy about having his deepest secret forced out like that, and had steeled himself to deal with it.
That was fine. He could get as angry as he wanted on her. She'd be willing to let him release all his frustrations in a long and continuous bout of intense hate sex. And then make-up sex afterwards.
Her fingers trembled.
Damn it. Diverting her thoughts to sex was usually enough to keep her mental shields from buckling. Too many stressful events all happening at once were taking a toll on her mental state. But she couldn't panic. Not now.
"I have so many questions…." Her breath hitched. "This… it sounds so outlandish, but I always knew you were different. And now I have proof."
He grimaced. "This — this falls under your oath. I'll consider it betrayal if you ever share this with anyone else without my permission."
"My lips are sealed, Harry," she said, feeling offended that he even thought that she would betray him. Which was quite hypocritical given how she had just betrayed Emmaline.
"It's not something I've told anyone, not even Hermione. And despite my mindscape, even Emmeline doesn't think I'm from the future. And… I'd like for things to remain as they are."
She narrowed her eyes. Emmeline didn't think he was from the future? What was she missing? Unless —
"You've set traps in there, haven't you? To trick her into believing otherwise?"
He didn't answer.
"Come on, Harry. Tell me. How are you here? Why are you here?"
He exhaled, and flicked his wand, summoning a chair as he sat down beside the bed. With a second flick, he summoned a cigarette and lit it, taking in with a tiny flame charm, and took in a long and deep whiff.
Hestia laughed. "I almost forgot about that. The first day, you were feeling the urge to smoke. I never saw you do that afterwards. Goodness, that alone should've been a sign."
"What?" he snapped. "Seeing a sixteen-year-old smoke is a sign for future time-travellers?"
She snorted. "No. But you're no normal sixteen-year-old, are you? Your relatives were supposed to be strict, and there wasn't any detail about you being an addict to anything. Except for… maybe, treacle tart."
"Bloody hell," said Harry, taking another whiff. "You people seriously need to learn the meaning of privacy. Makes me wonder if I was just oblivious back then, or if you people are just that much worse this time around."
She furrowed her brows. "I imagine there's got to be a reason for you coming back and redo-ing it all over again."
He laughed. "Coming back, yes. Redo-ing it? I doubt it. As of now, things have changed so far that apart from the most significant events, I can't even be sure if my own knowledge can be trusted any longer. Besides," he paused, looking at his cigarette with a pensive stare. "I told you. There wasn't much left back there. I didn't plan on travelling back in time. It just kind of… happened, I guess."
"How do you just… happen to travel back in time?"
"Beats me," said Harry. "One moment I was fighting Voldemort, and the next moment, I was lying next to the Black lake, with an invisible elephant on my chest, and a horde of dementors hovering around me, pulling my soul out of my body. Next thing I know, I was in the Hospital Wing, with Snape looming over me. Not sure if I preferred him over the dementor, but you have what you have."
Hestia giggled. "How — how old are you exactly, Harry?"
He paused. "Twenty — twenty-eight. I was twenty-eight."
Her eyes widened in shock. "All this time, you were making me feel like shit for spreading my legs for a younger guy, when I was enticed by an older man, how scandalous…" A small burst of laughter escaped her lips. "I ought to hex you for that."
"Good to know you have your priorities straight."
"At least now I know how you're so experienced in bed. Twelve years as an Incubus… no wonder you knew what you were doing."
He laughed. "No, I was just a normal wizard in my timeline. Well, normal for me anyway. This incubus thing kind of hit me out of nowhere after I travelled back and found myself in my sixteen-year-old self. It's one of the mysteries that I'm still trying to make sense of."
"But then, the girls you go for. And Narcissa Malfoy — I thought —"
He laughed. "I didn't even know what Narcissa looked like until I saw her in the summer before sixth year, and believe me, she was far less charming, and far less dangerous than she is now. I might have interacted with Susan a little in fifth year,but that was all. Tracey, Penelope, Hannah — I knew them by face, but nothing more than that."
She frowned. As weird as that sounded, it made a surprising amount of sense. His experience in bed notwithstanding, there was little to show in his abilities as an incubus. Hestia had theorised that he was simply using his knowledge and experience to compensate for the magical change his body had undergone that night due to the dementor attack. But if he truly hadn't been an incubus before then…
"I'm assuming that's why you've been taking all these actions? Gaining your Lordships, establishing connections, poking your nose where it doesn't belong…"
He laughed. "Actually, I kind of stumbled into that. The entire stuff about the Most Ancient and Noble House of Potter. All I knew was that my father was from an old pureblood family, and that my parents left me a vault with a reasonable fortune. It was only this time around that I realised that it was my trust vault. Not that I ended up using it anyway. Why would I, when I was supposed to die at the end of my seventh year?"
The almost casual surety with which he delivered the line chilled her.
"You — dying?" Hestia couldn't make heads or tails of whatever she was listening to. "Protecting the Boy-Who-Lived is the highest priority for the Order of the Phoenix. The way you're talking, it's like you were being raised like a pig for slaughter."
He barked out a mirthless laugh. "That's not far off. I was being raised like a pig for slaughter. Maybe I still am. A pawn. A weapon. A symbol. A sacrifice. Makes no difference. But this pawn has seen the end of the board, so this time, things will be different. I'll make sure of it."
"Maybe you should start from the beginning."
He closed his eyes, and took another whiff. "Back in my original timeline, things were a little different. For one, Hermione was given access to a time-turner." He paused. "Speaking of that, how do you know about it?"
"About Time-turners?" she asked. "We have an Unspeakable in the Order."
Harry narrowed his eyes. "Who?"
"Sturgis Podmore," she said, noticing the spark of recognition in his eyes. "I assume you know him?"
"Only by name, I think. I know he was — is, I suppose, part of the Order, and that the Death Eaters imperiused him during the second war with Voldemort, but apart from that—"
But Hestia wasn't listening anymore. A second war? She already knew that the Dark Lord was alive, and sooner or later, would be back. But she had expected it to take some time. But if Harry was just twenty-eight, then that meant in twelve years —
"This… war. When did it start?"
A cruel smile formed on his lips. Somehow, Hestia knew that this was Harry punishing her for forcing him to reveal the truth.
"Lord Voldemort, in my time, regained a body at the end of my fourth year. He played a game of shadows, with Malfoy and Fudge trying to discredit me, and Dumbledore and weaken the DMLE, while Voldemort made his plans and freed his Inner Circle from Azkaban. The skirmishes began in my sixth year, and it was over in my seventh."
Hestia blinked. "That doesn't make any sense at all! You said you were fighting Voldemort at twenty-eight. That's eight years after the end of the war."
Cold, callous laughter rang in the room. "I said the war ended. I never said we won."
She clenched the bedsheet tightly, and looked at Harry, who was observing her like a hawk. If not for her Occlumency, she'd have been shivering in shock and fear. Imagine her surprise when he stood up, and walked up to her, and pulled her towards him. Hestia put her arms across his waist and just sat there, little shivers quaking through her body every now and then.
Meanwhile Harry just stood there, like a rock, her bastion against the tumultuous future.
It made her wonder. Exactly what kind of relationship did they share back then? Did he know her well? Was that why he had agreed to trust her and give her the secretary job, despite knowing that she was an Order member? Was that why he was so casual around Tonks? Because he knew and interacted with them in a different future?
Bugger. All this time, the Order had been treating him like a sensitive labrat, keeping track of him, studying him, and at times, interacting with him, when the truth was he was the one doing the same to them. He had information about them, about their future selves. He knew who would do what, knew if there were any traitors in their closely-knitted group. He knew what fate would befall them.
The puppet was the real puppeteer all along.
"Better?"
She nodded. "You — you were telling me about Hermione?"
"Yes," he said, calmly observing her. "She was given a Time-turner from the Department of Mysteries. She told me it was to help her take multiple classes at the same time. Yes, that's rich, I know. Playing with time just to take extra classes. I'm not sure if she was lying or telling the truth, or if that's what she thought she was doing while the Unspeakables were running some experiment on her, but anyway, back then, Hermione wasn't slashed by Lupin, so she wasn't turned into a werewolf. Moving along, Sirius and I were surrounded by dementors near the Black lake. I — we were dying. And then, someone with a stag patronus forced those dementors to leave, saving both of our lives."
"Someone with a stag patronus?"
He chuckled. "When I woke up, I was in the Hospital Wing, and I — we told Dumbledore about how Sirius was innocent, and he told Hermione to use the Time-turner. That's how I knew what it was. We went back in time, saved Buckbeak—"
"Buckbeak?"
"Err, the hippogriff that — whatever, we saved it, and took it into the Forbidden forest with us, and waited for everything to happen just like it did the previous time. I thought at first that it was my dad that had saved my life — his animagus form was a stag, you know. But as I waited and waited and watched the dementors hovering around me and Sirius, I realised that I hadn't seen my father. I had —"
"Seen yourself," Hestia murmured, looking at him in awe. "You cast that patronus."
He smiled. "Yes. It was a stag, just like my father. Me and Hermione, we flew on Buckbeak's back, we freed Sirius from Flitwick's tower where he was kept, and set him free."
He finally met her eyes.
"That's… surreal," said Hestia, picturing the image. She had, of course, heard of the trial of a hippogriff that had supposedly attacked the junior Malfoy. His blasted father had gotten the Ministry to sanction its killing, describing it as a violent creature. McNair had been the one to carry out the deed.
Then it clicked.
"Your patronus," she whispered. "It's Buckbeak, isn't it?"
He chagrined. "Yes. It probably is. I failed it, just like I failed Sirius, and Hermione. I don't know why things were different this time around, but it's already started off worse than before. And without me doing a thing."
Weird. "Tell me what happened after."
He exhaled and let out a chuckle. "After. Like every other year, Dumbledore sent me to live with the wretched Dursleys, which is weird, because my parents had left properties in my name. This one, for instance. This year, Dumbledore told me that the Dursleys had left Privet Drive, and gone abroad. That certainly didn't happen the last time around. I'm not sure if it was because of my time travel or not, but I'm not going to complain about it."
He caressed her hair. It felt strangely intimate and at the same time, made her wary of what he was making her feel. Sex between them was a physical thing, two people satiating their physical needs. There was no emotion in it.
But now…
"Harry?"
"Hmm?"
"What was I to you? Did you… you know, know me personally?"
"Strangers," he said, his bluntness taking her by surprise. "We were strangers."
"... Strangers?" As much as she wanted to deny it, it hurt.
"Yes, you too were part of the Advance Guard that came to get me from the Dursleys to Sirius's place. After Sirius's death in my fifth year, the Order of the Phoenix started using his house as Headquarters. I think I might have exchanged a word or two with you back then, but that was all there was."
"Strangers…" she repeated, looking down. If he hadn't taken charge of things back then, it meant she was still a member of the Order, working for Albus Dumbledore, while fighting a war against a resurrected Dark Lord. Yes, she had known Harry for three months, but the idea of them being strangers now felt…
Wrong.
"Hestia, please, look at me," he said and she did. He had a sad smile on his lips. "Remember what I told you earlier? About how I was going to change the world completely, even if it means throwing it in another war? I was being serious. The last time, we were fighting a losing war. This time, the other side will share that fate."
She swallowed. "Tell me more."
"The first thing you need to know is that Voldemort returned to power at the end of my fourth year. After the Quidditch World Cup, Hogwarts is going to host the Triwizard tournament, inviting Durmstrang and Beauxbatons."
She froze. She had heard of the Triwizard Tournament, but only because Barty Crouch had her working on it while she was on his payroll. The process to reignite the lost tradition had been underway since the start of November, 1994. But it was kept under confidentiality oaths, and there was no way Harry would have known about it unless…
He smirked. "What? You just realised that I am not fibbing?"
Hestia flushed.
"Three Champions were selected. Victor Krum from Durmstrang, Fleur Delacour from Beauxbatons, and Cedric Diggory, from Hogwarts. And there was a fourth Champion." He paused. "Me."
"You?"
"Someone whose name I'm not going to say, put my name in the tournament through unknown means, as part of a plot by Voldemort to get me to participate. Why? I never found out. Somehow, me, a brat with very little magical education and declared a cheater, a liar and an overall pariah, was made to compete in it. I faced the Tasks, survived my way through it, and ended up winning it. Some of it was luck, and some of it… let's just say I had a treacherous kind of help and leave it at that."
"Oh I look forward to hearing about them," she said sarcastically.
"Yeah," he said with a small chuckle. "I know you will."
"What about the Ball?" She asked, curious. At his shocked expression, she smirked. "I know about the tournament details. I was Crouch's secretary and helped draft it."
"I took Parvati Patil to the Ball." He paused, and looked a little embarrassed. "I might have treated her poorly—"
Hestia narrowed her eyes.
"Not like that!" he raised his hands in surrender. "I knew bollocks about dancing, and was mooning over Cho Chang like a little idiot, who was dancing with Diggory, the Hogwarts Champion."
"Diggory…" Hestia murmured, "Amos Diggory's son?"
"Same."
She frowned. While otherwise a decent person, Amos was a little too pretentious for his own good. And ever since his brother got killed by Fenrir Greyback in the last war, he had developed a stigma against the species. Half the restrictions the Department of Magical Creatures put up on Chiara and her kind were put up by Amos after he took the Boss job.
"So, after the tournament?"
"I was portkeyed away to a cemetery, where Peter Pettigrew was waiting with Voldemort, who was possessing a baby. In case you're wondering, that's exactly what's happening now. Only this time, Lucius Malfoy is part of the core group attending to his needs. The last time, Lucius wasn't even involved until He was resurrected and called through to him using the Dark Mark. I was there," he said. "Voldemort was not happy with him for not coming to his aid."
"What changed this time around?"
He shrugged. "Can't say. Most of the things are the same, but some things are really strange. Lucius Malfoy being this active so early on, the Dursleys leaving for abroad, Kreacher dead—"
"Kreacher…." she murmured. "I've heard that name before."
"It's the Black family elf. He was supposed to be alive. But he isn't. And that complicates matters."
He paused, his eyes focussed, thinking about things. "Things are different… but then again, so am I. I have incubus powers, and I'm channelling Voldemort's skills in Necromancy through this scar —"
Hestia blinked. The scar. "Wait. Does that mean —"
"Yes," he said, his eyes growing darker. "I know what this scar is. I know why I have it. I know what it does. It is my greatest weapon, my greatest misfortune, my greatest enemy, and my greatest ally. The last time, it was a curse that only made things worse for me. And by the time I realised what it was, and what it was capable of, it was too late."
Her stomach did a nasty flip.
"For the entirety of my fifth year, the Ministry under Fudge loudly and repeatedly claimed that Voldemort hadn't returned, choosing to vilify me and Dumbledore and anyone who sided with us. Sirius was still a fugitive, and a perfect scapegoat. When Voldemort broke his Inner Circle out of Azkaban, the moron blamed it on Sirius."
"And the Order?
He threw his head back and laughed. "In my knowledge, the Order did two things — watching me suffer at the Dursleys, and watching as the Death Eaters killed innocent people and making moves towards Britain's domination. Oh, and meet at Grimmauld Place to discuss what they've seen and heard. "
His anger, his disdain — it was a tangible thing. Hestia winced, and pulled away from him.
"... sorry," he said. "I just don't have any good experiences with the Order doing anything substantial. Dumbledore spent the entire fifth year playing peekaboo with me, and the sixth year, teaching me useless shit about Voldemort's past instead of teaching me how to fight him. The only thing they seemed to focus on was watching me and making sure I was playing my part as the perfect little pawn."
Hestia clenched her teeth. She didn't know exactly why he held such disdain for the Order, or why the Order was so useless against the Dark Lord, but she'd be damned if she didn't find out.
"Dumbledore was killed in sixth year, by Draco Malfoy and a group of Death Eaters he had smuggled into school. The old bastard knew all year that Draco was ordered to kill him, but he didn't act. He thought — he thought —" Harry looked like he wanted to rip something apart, so great was his frustration, "he thought he could save that little cowardly ferret. As always, Dumbledore has no issues giving endless chances to people that hurt others, but never thinks about good people that fight the good fight, suffer because of those bastards."
He gave her a knowing stare. She knew he wasn't talking only about Sirius Black. He was talking about her.
Hestia had enough. She didn't want to hear the truths that he was throwing at her face. And yet, she couldn't stop now. Harry had lived through all that. He had suffered through all that, and was trying to make things different. He and he alone knew how terrible things would become. No wonder he was bent on such extremist policies. She had been a little surprised at the level of vitriol in his voice when he had addressed Dumbledore, but now it made complete sense.
"Take the high road if you want to, Professor. Choose to walk away from this opportunity to delve into Voldemort's mind and help me control this power. Call it your principles, call it doing the right thing, as you're so fond of. But after all that, when the people lie dead, people that could have been saved if we acted on this information… every one of those lives will be on your head."
He wasn't just being empathetic. He was being literal.
"After Dumbledore's death, Voldemort attacked the Ministry. Amelia Bones had already been killed earlier in my sixth year, and Scrimgeour was leading the Ministry. In just a single day, Voldemort killed Scrimgeour, installed a pawn on the High Chair, and took over Britain. The Order of the Phoenix was finished, and anyone that thought otherwise was kidding themselves. The Ministry had fallen. Amelia Bones, Scrimgeour. McGonagall, Flitwick — all of them were dead. He scorched the entirety of Diagon Alley, took over Gringotts, and installed a Death Eater as Headmaster of Hogwarts."
"And you?"
He barked out a laugh. There was no humour in it. "I was on the run. With Ron and Hermione, trying to find clues to a power Dumbledore didn't care to explain; trying to find ways to weaken the Dark Lord by exterminating things we didn't know what or where they were, or how to even kill them; hiding in the forests, listening to the Wireless at how people we knew were hunted and slaughtered like cattle; fighting a war that Dumbledore never cared to teach me how to fight in the first place. Hestia you… you have no idea just how much I despise Albus Dumbledore for what he did."
"And… me?" She asked, feeling deathly cold. "What happened to me?"
His lips twisted into a cruel smile. "You were killed alongside Emmeline, in a Death Eater attack in my sixth year. Dumbledore knew of the attack, but he thought it was more important to maintain his spy's position than save either of you."
That broke the camel's back.
"HE DID WHAT?" Hestia snarled, standing hup. Her entire body was shaking, her eyes filled with shock and tears of rage rushing down her cheeks. "He— he —"
"You wanted the fucking truth, right? You wanted the truth so bad? Well, here's it! You're nothing but pawns. You, Emmeline, Tonks — everyone. Just another pawn to sacrifice for the Greater Good. Amelia Bones was burned alive in her mansion. Tonks was captured by Death Eaters and tortured for over a month before they dropped her naked, defiled, dead body in the middle of Diagon Alley! Kingsley Shacklebolt, Remus Lupin, the Weasley twins — the list goes on and on. Muggleborns and halfbloods were hunted down by Snatchers and sentenced to Azkaban by the Muggle born Registration Commision. Even at Hogwarts, muggleborn students were captured and restrained in the dungeons, while the Death eater scions used them to their fill, like they were nothing but flesh puppets to be used for their entertainment and then discarded and killed like useless lumps of flesh—"
"Enough! Please! Stop!" Hestia cried.
"WHY?" he snarled. "Because the truth isn't funny anymore? I haven't even gotten started. You want to know how it ends? The dementors, the giants, the werewolves, they all joined Voldemort and he attacked France and the rest of Europe. I watched Beauxbatons get razed down to the ground. When the ICW tried to counter him, that insane maniac summoned DEMONS!"
"De— demons? You-Know-Who summoned —"
"Demons," Harry snarled. "No one knew what he did or how he did. Even the knowledge on how to summon them was thought to have been lost, yet somehow that madman did it. And not just one, but hundreds. They were impervious to everything except the darkest of magics, the same that Dumbledore forbids people to learn, because we're the GOOD GUYS! And all I could do was endlessly run from place to place, on this stupid quest that the old bastard left me with, hoping beyond hope that it would help me destroy Voldemort. For eight years I ran around. Without knowledge, without funds, without skills, with nothing save a wand and the impossible suicidal quest he left me. I lost Ron, I lost Hermione, I lost everyone I knew. I —"
He was clenching his hands so tight that his fingers were drawing blood.
"But Harry, what you're saying is — I mean, that can't —"
"Can't what?" Harry snarled. "Can't be right? Why, because he's the great Albus Dumbledore? For all his big talk of doing the right thing, all Albus Dumbledore does is treat you all as his pawns on his chessboard. Sirius was innocent and he got put into Azkaban because he couldn't be bothered to find the truth. You say he's got the Order to observe and protect me, so why did I have to find out the hard way that my name means something? Why wasn't I told about my family, my parent's legacies, or that there's a fucking prophecy that says I'm destined to be the one to face Voldemort? Every single year, he's made me go through shit, instead of actually teaching me, because he fucking wanted me to walk to my death, but was too cowardly to do it himself!"
"No—"
"YES!" Harry yelled, grabbing her shoulders and shaking her. "I know all about the link connecting me with Voldemort. I know what it contains! I know what I need to do to make sure that he dies in the end. And do you know what that is? For Voldemort to be killed, I HAVE TO DIE!"
"Stop! No more!"
Harry stopped shouting and looked back at their eyes met, Hestia pushed herself up to him and embraced him tightly and possessively, hiding her face in his neck, her body trembling at the images he was painting.
"I hate him," confessed Harry. "Dumbledore, Voldemort… I hate them both. Voldemort is a psychopath, a rabid dog that needs to be put down. But Dumbledore, he's a sorcerer. He's one of the most powerful wizards out there, and he — he just sits on his High Throne. He had twenty years to do something to get rid of my scar, but he did nothing. He had an entire decade to punish Voldemort's followers, but he let them regain power. He —"
Hestia hugged him tighter. She didn't want to hear anymore about them. He shut up right that instant.
"I won't let it happen again, Hestia," he promised her softly. "I will tear down Dumbledore's inaction. I will do what needs to be done. Be this nation's reckoning. I will tear down Lucius Malfoy and those that stand with him. I will butcher them like the rabid dogs they are. I will tear down the Wizengamot, destroy every single bigot that sits there, and create a new world. I don't know if I can kill Voldemort, but I'll be damned if I let his Death Eaters survive before his resurrection comes to pass."
Hestia just sobbed.
He held her chin and made her look into his eyes. The sparkling green in his eyes never looked more menacing and alluring.
"Will you help me, Hestia?" he whispered. "Will you help me destroy Wizarding Britain and rebuild it?"
She didn't answer. Instead she did something she had thought was impossible for her.
Her face moved, and before she knew it, her lips were grazing his, more of a caress than a kiss. She slid softly across his, as if teasing, exploring the outline of his lips.
Hestia was no stranger to kissing, but much like sex and all carnal depravities that she was fond of, it was just part of physical pleasure. At times, it was a distraction, at times, part of charming or teasing someone, and on others, making herself feel so good that she forgot the miseries of her own life. With Harry, she had been able to add pleasure to that list as well — real pleasure, as well as the satisfaction of being fucked by someone that she believed and trusted in. Her master.
But now?
It wasn't about pleasure. It wasn't about satisfaction. It wasn't a distraction or pointless depravity either.
It was about completion.
Even Harry was unprepared about how slow and patient she was being. She, the raunchy, horny wildcat, was kissing him softly, if a little firmly this time. Her mouth worked against his, his ever-present scruff a scratchy contrast to the softness of his lips. She felt Harry return it, and put her hands over his neck, pulling him closer.
The kiss grew passionate by the second. Harry's hands rested on her shoulders, and she moaned, as her lips parted, engulfing his. Her tongue darted out, flicking playfully across his, and Hestia shivered, gasping as she felt his hands — not on her breasts, but on her back, pulling her closer to him, as their tongues waged war against each other.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she yelled at herself for doing what she was. This — this emotion she was feeling, it was something she went out of her way to avoid. It was what she felt when she thought about Tonks. It was something she hated with a passion, hated it so much that she'd rather by gangraped and fucked like a whore, than feel it again.
Stop this! She told herself. Stop him! Stop —
Her legs went up to his waist. His hand grabbed her hip.
The kiss grew in intensity. The emotional turmoil in her was growing, her heart swelling at the feelings Harry had awakened within her, the fears, the insecurities, the impossible frustrations and the horrible truths that he had to endure and had thrown at her face; the knowledge of what had become of her and those she cared about, and how the man in her arms had to bear that impossible weight, and was only trying to do his best and —
MORGANA! And I lied to this person? I made him think that I —
The realisation struck her like a bolt of lightning. She shoved Harry hard in the chest, causing him to not just stagger back, but almost lose balance and fall backwards.
"What's the matter? What did I do?" He asked, genuinely confused.
"You — I can't do this! I can't — I shouldn't have kissed you like that," she bawled. "I — I don't deserve to kiss you like that. Not after what I've done. Not after —"
Harry stood up, and held her shaking arms. Hestia cried, attempting to be strong but failing dismally. He tried to embrace her, but she pushed him back, her eyes glaring like daggers as tears ran down her face.
"No — just stay away from me! You've no idea what I've done! No idea what kind of a monster I am! You — you're carrying such a load all this time and I—"
"You what, Hestia?"
There was a current of sternness in his voice, but his concern still showed. Hestia hated it, hated him for what he was, and how he was making her feel. And most of all, she hated herself for being the twisted bitch she was, the monster that had taken advantage of her own mentor, her best friend, and Harry, who had just revealed his deepest, darkest secret to her. She— she couldn't do this. The feelings rushing through her were choking her, and no amount of Occlumency was holding them back. She — she needed to atone for her sins. She needed to be punished. She —
"What did you do, Hestia?" He asked, again.
"I — I —"
"You what?"
"I — I'm the reason why Emmeline was fucking you, Harry. Not — not her pride, and not because of your power. It's because I — I —" She tried very hard to say it, but fear of the truth, fear of the humiliation, the judgement, and the look of betrayal in his eyes when he realised what kind of person she truly was underneath — no, she couldn't say it.
But she had to. Even if he hated her forever for this. It was what she deserved.
"Hestia," he repeated, his voice felt like iron. "What did you do?"
"I — I was afraid Emmeline would know that you were from the future. I was afraid she was going to tell Dumbledore. So, I — I put Emmeline under an Imperius curse."
The surprise in his eyes told her everything she wanted to know. Without waiting for his response, Hestia rushed out of her room, leaving a shell shocked Harry Potter behind.