A/N: This is the first chapter in a Dramione drabble series I'm working on. I don't know how long it'll be yet, and the word count varies for each one. As always, please read and review!

dirty blue

"where hearts are fire, sparks are thrown

it is all that glitters

this terrible weakness"

-whistling girl, wovenhand

(prompt: none pairings: draco/hermione, harry/hermione words: 586 rating: pg)

cool, dry air whips her face, sending her hair into a dark frenzy of tendrils and wispy curls. he's late again, she thinks bitterly as she takes a quick drag from the cigarette resting between her fingernails. but he's always late, and she's always bitter.

she has thirty other things she needs to do right now, and at least a hundred more reasons why doing this, whatever this is, is a terrible idea. she allows her mind to travel each like the path in the park by her house, the one where harry swings cassandra on the swing set sometimes. the one where her daughter had her first birthday party, and everyone came, even luna— luna who never remembers dates. she languidly recalls the doubts, the fears, the gnawing guilt that each encounter brings. it's comforting, to an unnerving degree, and almost therapeutic. the thought is ironic, certainly, but she can't help herself from thinking it. because in spite of every bad decision, every single reason to put her cigarette out on his perfect nose and stomp away, she knows she won't leave.

so what else is there to do, but to stay? to take another huffing breath and watch as the smoke whorls dissipate into the inky sky? to click her heels against the cement of the roof? to fiddle with the buttons on her phone?

nothing, she breathes. nothing to do but wait.

and she does. she waits until she becomes well acquainted with the glittering layer of ice that coats her bones and stops her blood in its tracks. she waits until she sees a flash of silver and crinkly dark gray, followed by swishing brown.

and there he is. he's smiling at her, his teeth that really aren't all that white sparkling in the lights of the city skyline. the hollows of his cheeks take on the hue of seaweed in the murky glow of the streetlights, the icky, briny kind. the slimy, treacherous, weed-like kind. and yet, the sight of him makes her heart fizz in her chest and her breath puff in great whooshes, making little waves of gray in the air between them.

but his fingers trace along the vein in her neck, as though it holds something precious, and she finds herself leaning into his touch, wincing as he moves his hand further away as she moves closer. she should back away, before it's too late and he wins, but she isn't up for a power struggle tonight. she just wants the warmth of his skin on hers, the heat of his easy grin that she knows is reserved almost solely for her.

she wants to be something to someone, something wild and free and entirely necessary. she doesn't want to be his friend, his girlfriend, his fiancé, his wife; she wants to be the one who confounds and terrifies and fascinates, the one he will swear he doesn't need. she wants to be enigmatic and strong and the only person who will ever see him cry. she wants to be draco's secret, his weakness.

hermione feels her purse drop and splash on the rain-soaked roof. she senses her numb toes shuffling toward his as his hands slither around her waist. her eyes are already closed when his lips collide hotly against hers, her doubts fading like cigarette smoke into the dirty blue night.