This is slightly different than my regular work, as it's obviously F/F. It's not very explicit though.
Originally intended for the 'Lyrics to life' contest, but it wasn't finished yet, and I kind of switched fandoms from Twilight to HP for this one!
Based on Ani Difranco's amazing song 'She Says', of which I most definitely stole some key sentences. I'm very sorry.
I hope you'll enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, nor do I own Ani Difranco or any of her songs! And yes, for the lyrics, I'm a filthy plagiarist. (Is that a word?)
I feel restless and I'm pacing around the dimly lit motel room when a knock comes to the door.
It's only a second in which my heart speeds, anticipation and dread filling me at the same time. A volatile paradox that has me rest my forehead against the door for a moment, frozen, unable to answer it.
A second knock startles me, and peeking through the little peephole, I confirm my fears.
Ginevra.
I take a step back, hoping against hope she'll leave, that she'll think I've already left, but I should've known better.
"Pans?" Her calm voice so soft her words could've been missed if I wasn't so acutely aware of everything about her. Have been for a long while.
But she can't be what I need her to be. She can't make me happy if staying with her means I'll condemn her to a life on the run. Not when it means she won't ever see those she loves again.
She can't be here. Not when my resolve hasn't been as strong as it should be for some time now. Not when there is a chance she could make me change my mind.
I was never selfless. Just see what she brought me to.
"Pans? Please let me in," she says, and the sound of her hair brushing the door soothes my heartache, giving me a short reprieve.
My hands are shaking as I open the door and look at her, pleading her to let me go.
She looks at me with those bright brown eyes that seem almost golden in the glow of the dim lighting that comes from the room behind me. Her hair burning like a fiery halo around her head.
She's all that's light in my world, where there's darkness everywhere else I turn.
When she reaches out her hand I can feel her resignation in the tremor that resonate through her fingers as she touches the skin at my temple. Her hands are damp, and cold. It's only then that I realise the rain painting the world darker with every splash, every drop. I could almost pretend the sky was crying for me.
But the sky doesn't care. The world doesn't care. The only one that cares a damn about me, is the woman standing in front of me, silently pleading for me to let her in.
My stomach twists when her red lips part and she takes a deep shuddering breath and gently twists her fingers around the hair at the nape of my neck.
"Just forget what you have to do," she says. "Pretend there is nothing outside this room."
And maybe I've turned mad, but there's honestly nothing I could say against that. I nod almost imperceptibly, but she knows me like no one else does.
She walked into my world six months ago, like a hurricane, turning it upside down.
If only I'd known her like this earlier. Before.
Before I let my father and friends poison my mind. Before I became the perfect Pure-blooded Slytherin I was groomed to be. Before I took the dreaded tattoo that would be forever etched on my skin, marking me for the Death Eater I was.
She came in like a storm of Magical proportions, but she'd come too late.
Or maybe she came too soon. Before I could shield my heart from the pain and guilt that tears through me as her fingers continue to caress my cheek, neck and shoulder. Before I could built up my resistance and ready myself to live the way I had since the Final Battle.
But no, she had to come and change me. To make me irrecognizable to even myself. Or maybe she just pulled to the surface what was there, underneath, the entire time.
I shake when she finally leans in and presses her lips against mine. As cold as her fingers, and as damp.
I pull her against me and close the door.
She mesmerizes me with the emotions that show on her face. I've always been able to close myself off, to keep my feelings locked up and shielded by haughty, indifferent, expressions.
Not her. She couldn't keep what she was feeling from me if her life depended on it. And how I wish she tried. How I wish she tried not to love me, for it made me want to be a woman worthy of her love. She's like the sun, showing me there will be a dawn, showing me there is something left to live for, but at the same time her light shines brightest upon the vilest parts of my soul.
Her bravery emphasizes my cowardice, the softness of her heart clashes with my rough edges, and more importantly, she was on the right side of the War, and I wasn't.
When we're together like this, I'm unable to hide. I'm thankful she closes her eyes, as it's my only reprieve, the only thing keeping her from seeing who I really am.
Her black dress is simple but stylish and falls off her slender hips like a waterfall. She lifts her delicate feet one by one to step out of it, and is left standing in front of me in her panties, stockings and heels. I love the contrast of black fabric against her pale freckled skin, and I can't think of a single reason to keep myself from running my hands down her sides and thighs.
When I trail tiny kisses over the line of her jaw down her neck she sighs and whimpers, and when I take a step back towards the bed, her whimpers turn into an almost broken sound.
It takes me but a second to pull my own dress over my head and release the clasp that holds my hair together. I reach out and tangle my fingers through hers, softly tugging her along until the back of my knees hit the edge of the bed, and then we're falling.
Falling through air, through the softness of rich cotton and a goose feather duvet. Falling while time stands still between the four walls of this room.
Because tomorrow everything will be different.
Tomorrow it all has to end.
Her pants are heavy and pleading, her skin heated and her heart is beating the same wild rhythm as mine while we move. Like a dance of desperation. One that only ends when we tire, or morning comes.
It's all fingers and tongue and softly spoken words, but most of all it's emotion I'm not ready to voice. Not now, and maybe not ever.
It isn't until 3 am, when we're both sated and content, and those strong stubborn brown eyes are slowly losing the fight against sleep across my pillow, that I feel panic rise up in my bones. I don't know how I'll be able to do this.
Still, I tell myself 'a year'. Draco only got one year, and I never even did anything.
I never lead a group of Death Eaters into Hogwarts, or used any Unforgivables. I didn't kill, torture or maim anyone. If I'm being honest, my biggest crime was 'being scared'.
But I'm still scared. I'm scared out of my mind. I'm not the sort of person that just survives prison unscathed. Even if the Dementors were banned from Azkaban, it is a dreadful place, and certainly not a place for me. Was it? Wasn't that why I ran in the first place?
I should've kept running, should've stopped myself from sending that Owl, but I hadn't been able to. There was just something about the redheaded woman that confronted me in the middle of the Great Hall. The one that had stepped in front of Potter when I'd been so irrationally frightened by the threat of death, that I'd have offered him up for slaughter myself.
When I'd heard she'd lost one of her brothers, I'd felt an overwhelming need to send my condolences.
And that'd been the beginning of the end.
I spend four hours just staring at her angelically sleeping face, wishing I could stop time. Wishing my Magic was strong enough to make us disappear into a tiny pocket of space. Wishing I could keep her close.
When dawn breaks through the blinds and hesitantly lights the room, I carefully get out of bed.
Maybe it'll be easier if I manage to leave before she wakes. No goodbyes. But when I slide my arms through my jacket and look around for my underwear, I can feel her eyes on me.
She's sitting up on the bed and looks up at me from behind the curtain of her flaming hair, but she averts her eyes after a second.
"I'm sorry," she says. "I didn't mean to stare."
"I really have to go now," I reply after an awkward silence that we both dread to fill.
This is it. This is where we part.
She looks up at me again, and I can see tears threatening to well over, dampening and curling those long lashes together. It wrenches in my gut, but we both know we can't go on like this, not if we want to have a chance.
I never promised her anything. I never felt like I could, because I knew she'd promise me the same, and I couldn't hold her to that when she was out here, and I was in there. I hope she knows it's not because I don't want her. She's my everything. She's my Savior as much as she is my ruin.
I can't give her 'now'. I can't give her 'here'. But-
"Oh baby, maybe someday," I say, straddling her legs over the duvet with my naked thighs. "Oh baby, maybe somehow."
I kiss her, deeply, and I feel tears filling my own eyes as I pull away.
I close them before I turn around and pick up my clothes and silently get dressed.
I don't look at her when I gather my remaining possessions, I don't look at her when I pull out my Wand, and I don't look at her when I Disapparate.
The Aurors are on me in a second, a little too rough for my liking, but then again, they have a reason for disliking me. I'll survive.
Three days I spend being interrogated, prodded and verbally abused.
My trial is short.
Two years. Two bloody years! And for what? For taking a Mark? For being a messed up teenager? I nearly panic again. I can't do two years in Azkaban!
Then I see that flaming halo surrounding a pair of bright golden eyes, and everything's alright.
What's two years in the life of a Witch?
I'll be fine.