Disclaimer: All characters are of age. By continuing to read further, you confirm you are 18+. Femslash.

Author's Note I: This is in response to a *hic* challenge prompt from the ever phenomenal Another Girl Grasping. Challenge parameters: Something short, something hot, something raw. This strangeness resulted; I rather think it more dark than hot. Still, there is some amount of smutty. Think this my raw writing in its unadulterated state (though, being my forever self, minor editing of course ensued...but nothing akin to my usual). As always, not the biggest fan of me in the raw, but what make of it you?

The night was cliché with its darks. Harry Potter, the boy who lived wide-awake this night, lay soundlessly in his bed. Insomnia was a recurring enemy this year. Ginger disgust, scared apathy, and curled quiet had returned to Hogwarts for their final year. Hermione had decided her path, and the boys (ever lost without their brain) followed her home. Only Harry had found her changed, found the witch a dark night. Her moods were strange, stilted; her smiles mannered and wooden doors. War had made them all orphans in ways. Hermione the worst of all…losing her parenting optimism.

Floorboards creaked and under sheets he froze. Only one person ever ventured here, into corpses of the night. She didn't know that he knew. Sometimes she simply stared at him, hard with indecision before turning away. Other times she found the window and shared his stars. Tonight her period of wait lived no more. He heard the fabric rustle. Heard a last hesitation. But then she was gone. His invisibility cloak with her.

The forest was damp. Dew garnered its troops in battle. Invisibility did nothing to stop her heart or her thrashing mind. The stars reigned down and she poured their light inside. And hoped to ease the black.

(When all this was said and done, Harry would have to reprimand his sister witch. For he was twenty steps behind in sneak, and she was never the wiser.)

The Black found her instead and ripped invisibility to the ground; it cracked on the edge of destruction and sounded apparition into the dimmed night. Her back slammed into the nearest tree and found bark its rough cutter.

"How dull…little muddy plays danger in the open." Reds whispered upon Hermione's brow, hands gripped hips and they dug for steals.

Harry didn't need the wild curls; he didn't need the cold beauty that manifested tar. He only needed that Belled voice. And he knew. Knew that Hermione was the more…the something less than they all suspected. Her gasp shot into the air and told. He was the hated fly on the wall, stuck and stunned.

"Bella…" Hermione muttered and buried her soul, her hands, in the abyss.

Harry didn't question how the dead was alive; he questioned motives. A hand was too graceful and too pale…it answered too much. From the depths of a hidden floor, Hermione moaned as fingers slid past. They slithered underneath draw-sting pajamas.

"Slick…oh muddy, I've missed you." Bella was hoarse, wanton and wasted nothing.

Harry was the wide-eyed as he knew those slender and out-of-view digits slipped inside the tight. He knew it from the irreplicable howl of completion. Against the tree they moved as a well-oiled machine. Too far away, he couldn't hear the debaucheries that whispered into honeyed eyes. Couldn't see the trembles that feasted apple red lips.

Hermione was pudding. The heavens watched their fucking with winked approval or disdain, but her cares were only for the hand inside and the mouth upon. This woman before her. This Bella. Liquid eyes panted their smirks against her neck; eyelashes that butterflied sins. And then she was pantless. No time for squawking now, because Bellatrix the bold lifted strong legs and wore them as a waist wrap. Hermione's core fired wet, rubbed rough against that perfect corset. A hand pinned one of hers to the tree; they intertwined and dug pleasure into the bark. And then they danced.

Eyes, soulless as the Black Lake bore into glazed honey and whispered the secret, "I didn't think you'd come tonight…" Bella bit her lover's lip in anguished nip.

Hermione tangled her heart amongst the wild mane, and trembled her answer upon rubies, " B-bella…a-always. I always c-come for y-you, don't I?"

Harry's anger confused at the tearful cackle that was furious and found lips…searing relief.

"Oh you do, muddy-mine…come for me, now."

And she did, a clamping caterwaul that was danger and bliss for perfect seconds. The starlight crossed the lovers in terrible reality. Bellatrix buried herself in the trembles, savoring this forbidden touch…this wicked wallow. Strong arms lowered. Legs cried, but unwrapped. Hermione tried not to grapple at black skirts, tried not to cling. But she did.

Harry tried not to exchange his anger for sorrow.

Bella was the hung head, the proud chin…the hidden life finding shadows once again.

"…and return to you I will always…"

"No! Please, not again, don't leave us…" Hermione was the animal, loosing her dearest.

A sorrowful hand painted longing lips, traced curving hips. A last kiss. It ate tears.

"I can't stay…I'm not supposed to be real, muddy." Bellatrix offered her hand, and shivered as eager lips licked shimmering moonlight away. Their moonlight. Hermione's moonlight.

"I'll return when reality is no longer real…as always." A temple kiss.

And then nothing. She pushed away, cold. Hermione collapsed to the forest floor, tears eating her eyes to sockets.

A whisper on the wind, "…Hermione…"

Her head snapped up as fathomless eyes disappeared in wounded whirls. For a second, just one, they had been real.

Author's Note II: Reviews make reality.