InsaneJournal

Gift for chemical_haven: The Gingerbread House (Luna/Hermione)
Title: The Gingerbread House
Author: Mystery Cupid
Gift For: chemical_haven
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Luna/Hermione
Summary: Living within a fairytale wasn’t everything Hermione thought it would be... Hermione POV.
Warnings: Explicit femmeslash, biting, rough sex, light bondage, some slight dirty talk, dub-con. Heavily AU and not DH-compliant at all. EWE. Mentions of character deaths (not main).
Words: 1,271
Disclaimer: Don’t own these characters, not making any profit, etc.
Notes: Hope this is something along the lines of what you wanted, dear recipient! Many thanks to my beta, who wishes to remain anonymous.


When I was a little girl, I used to love to read Muggle fairytales. As a Muggle-born child they were naturally part of my early reading. All my life I’ve devoured every book I could get my hands on, of course, but in my younger years, long before Hogwarts and getting to seriously study magic, I found something in those childish fantasy stories that drew me back to them again and again. Was it the beauty of the words and images, or merely their comforting familiarity, knowing that there was always going to be a happy ever after for the virtuous heroes and heroines? I can’t say, but as a tiny child I sometimes wished that I could live within a fairytale.

Now, it’s almost as if I do live within the pages of one of those stories. Part of me likes it, but most of me wishes there was some method of finding my way back to the mundane world. The world where my friends and family lived, and loved, and took care of each other. My love and I could find a place there, a little flat in a Muggle city, perhaps, with a television set and loud music on the radio, fish and chips for tea on Fridays and friends coming to visit at all hours of the night...nobody ever visits us here, you see. All our friends, and most of our families, are either dead or missing...

And perhaps back in the mundane world, Luna’s mind could be healed. Her once sweet eccentricity seems to have taken on a darker edge out here.

Everybody had hoped the war would end with Harry destroying Lord Voldemort. He did kill the Dark Lord indeed, but tragically he himself died at the same time, and the war didn’t stop with his death. The whole wizarding world was plunged into chaos – the remaining Death Eaters kept on fighting, and seemed to gain in strength and numbers. The Aurors lost control, and so many of our loved ones have been lost. Some were killed, and some – we don’t know if they are dead or alive, or if they live, whether they are prisoners of the Death Eaters or fugitives hiding out. Are some of them trying to find us, I wonder? Or perhaps they think that we have perished too?

I am fortunate to be alive, I know. And to be with the woman I have come to love above all others. We are sound in body, at least – though Luna’s mind gives me more concern with each passing day.

The place we escaped to is near Hogwarts, in the depths of the Forbidden Forest – a sanctuary known to Luna’s family for centuries, but disused till now for many a year. It’s a small cottage, made of red-brown bricks and a white-tiled roof that looks like sugar icing. In fevered dreams I see it as the gingerbread house in the Muggle tale of Hansel and Gretel, a sinister haven for witches less benign than Luna or I. But in daylight, it’s a charming place, and we are safe here. No magical creatures or evil humans have sought to do us any harm. Fairies often flit past the windows in the mornings, and we’ve even glimpsed a unicorn or two from time to time. Luna and I have transformed this little house into not merely a safe place, but a love-nest of sorts, a honeymoon home, if you will, though we are not legally wed. We have managed to make the cottage both beautiful and habitable. The Doxy infestation that hampered us when we first moved in has been well and truly eliminated, and Luna has made pets of a nest of Puffskeins that we found. Crookshanks has even learned to tolerate the fluffy little things, although he still feigns a proud feline disdain for the Puffskeins in front of Luna and I.

We’ve even managed to get a little garden growing here. Luna brought with her some strange packets of seeds and they took root easily, producing oddly coloured but delicious fruits and vegetables that sustain us so we are never hungry. Resistant to cold and heat alike, the plants weirdly flourish in all seasons.

Odd vines with gold and purple leaves climb up trellises around the cottage walls, producing grape-like fruit with a sweet and heady taste. Of all the things that grow here, these almost-grapes seem to be Luna’s favourite food. Perhaps they possess mild narcotic properties, for she seems calmer after eating them, and I am ever more grateful for anything that calms her.

It used to be that making love with me, or me reading aloud to her, was enough to soothe her nerves, but those pleasurable activities seem to be less and less effective as the weeks and months pass. Luna seems agitated more often now, talking of Death Eaters trying to send thought energy to control our minds, perhaps using Muggle radio waves to do it. I know that such a thing is not possible, of course, but try as I might I can’t make Luna believe that. Ever susceptible to conspiracy theories, she remains convinced.

I fear for Luna’s sanity in this isolated place.

The growing darkness in my Luna is most evident when we make love. Last night she insisted on me stripping naked first and then lying down while she bound my wrists to the bedposts with two of her scarves, something she wants to do more and more often despite my unease with it. She had a smile on her face, and her eyes had taken on the dreamy quality of old as she parted my thighs and let her fingers drift through the damp curls between them.

“No Nargles down there, I hope?” she crooned, running a fingertip teasingly over my clit and making me moan aloud. “Let me make sure. We can’t have dirty creatures on my sweet clean girl’s pretty places. No fucking when there’s Nargles in the fluff, my angel, just like you can’t kiss under Nargle-infested mistletoe. Oh, look at that – pretty Hermy’s all wet. Naughty slut. Bad, bad girl to get soaking wet when I haven’t even started playing yet! Maybe I should leave you all tied up and not let you enjoy yourself at all. Just like you deserve...you’re lucky I’m too wet myself to stop!”

I almost screamed as she threw herself on me, biting my throat and breasts, roughly pushing her fingers into my wetness, fucking me so hard that I ached. It felt so good, but so wrong – I wanted to hold her, kiss her lips, stroke her hair and tell her that I loved her, that everything was going to be all right. But she wouldn’t let me. As soon as Luna had made me come with her viciously thrusting hand, she pulled out of me and tore off her knickers, straddling my face, otherwise fully clothed.

“Lick me,” she ordered, and I did my best to, swirling my tongue on her in all the ways she liked best, trying to lose myself in the salt-sweet taste of her juices. Struggling to pleasure her, to make her forget this madness and just climax in loving bliss.

I think she eventually did – I can never be sure with Luna.

It wasn’t till hours later that she finally untied me and crawled into my arms to sleep. I lay awake for ages, caressing her hair in time with her rhythmic breathing, afraid for her as always and silently praying that someday the fairytale will end and we shall be real again.