Title: They Call Me the Wild Rose
Characters: Hermione Granger x Draco Malfoy
Word Count: 2294
A/N: This is a story I've been working on together with AnotherGirlWithAStory, please check her out! I got the idea for this fic a few years back when I listened to 'Where the Wild Roses Grow' with Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and Kylie Minouge. I strongly recommend to listen to the song while reading.
He hid behind a wall and breathed in her perfume as it found its way towards him when she walked by just two feet away. He took a step forward, raised his hand and opened his mouth, wanting to say something to her. But as he stood there, doing nothing, she turned left at the end of the hallway and disappeared out of sight.
He rammed his fist in the stone wall and shouted in anger and pain. He breathed hard and gritted his teeth.
"Hello? Is someone there? Are you hurt?" The fear was evident in her voice, as her concern. She must have thought that she was all alone at this time in this part of the castle.
He knew that she, as a goodhearted person, wanted to help anyone that might be hurt. Anyone but him. She would laugh at him if he was hurt, and maybe come up with ways to use her magic that would make him hurt even more. Or maybe not. She was after all not a bad person; that made it hard to imagine her being cruel by choice. She used to be one of those people who did not appreciate practical jokes that could end up getting people hurt. He knew this but he still did not answer her call.
She called out twice more, asking if there was someone that needed help. If there were, raise your voice so she could know where you were. He wanted to step forward, out of his hiding place, to see her. But he did not dare. His fear for how she would look at him was too great and the realization that he was so close to her made him tremble. It was easy to keep his dreams and thoughts to himself, as they happened at a safe distance away from her. But she was not far away this time; and he could feel his body disobey him. His legs wanted to go out to her, right in front of her, and his lips wanted to find out if hers was as soft as they looked. But his mind stopped him by demanding the legs not to bare his weight anymore. Her perfection stunned him and hurt him so profoundly at the same time; he wondered if this was some kind of sick joke. For what other reason would the power of this world place such perfection so close to him when he wasn't allowed to appreciate it other ways than with his eyes?
As she walked away the ache faded with her. He sat down on the floor with his back leaned against the wall doing nothing but breathing; let the air in and let the air out. It was getting harder for him to be this near but not be able to do something that would make his hunger for her go away. The only thing more painful than seeing her from a distance was not seeing her at all. Was he the only one that could see how her beauty lit up the whole room? It made him want to do something stupid and on occasion he had to close his eyes in order to stop himself from doing just that. Her smile could make him walk right into a wall, a glimpse of her made him lose his words in whatever conversation he was involved in and even forget what they were talking about to begin with.
The question that haunted him day and night was why did he feel like this? Why him? Why not someone else? Anyone. He could not escape these feelings, not even when he was asleep, they haunted him and hung over him like a weight over his shoulders. He never got away. His desires were worst in the morning when he woke up alone and wished for her to lay beside him so he could, among many things, kiss her lips. Then there were times like this, like the one that just passed, when he wanted to talk to her but could not for so many reasons.
When he no longer could hear a distant echo from her light footstep he stood up and slowly walked towards his dorm hoping this event would have made him exhausted enough so that he would fall asleep the instant he put his head on the pillow. Knowing that was not likely, he prepared himself for a night wide awake.
.:.
From the first day I saw her I knew she was the one
As she stared in my eyes and smiled
.
At dinner, he knew this had to end.
He almost cursed Pansy when she pushed pumpkin juice over his uniform in an attempt to lean in and kiss him or whisper something in his ear; leaving him soaking wet. She tried to help him with a drying spell but that only made it worse and he ended up running out of the room, determined to get out of sight of the laughing students. Pansy thought he could never make it without her, but wherever she was, trouble followed. She could make a fool out of him without even trying and he hated her for it.
In the middle of the stairs, trying a new spell on his clothes that did not work either – why did he think he was so good at spells that he never listened during class? – he ran into the person who turned his day upside down.
"You should try 'exaresco'. It will take the water away but it won't do anything about the stains, though."
He could not move. All his actions froze and he could just stare. Her hair was perfectly curved and she put a stubborn part of it behind her ear, but it just fell back to her face again. Her lips were full and moist. He did not know what to do, but since his body did nothing, neither did the brain. How was it possible for anything this beautiful to live on this earth? She was not aware of the power she had on him. Her face was so pale and her eyes so dark. How could she not see what he felt? His heart pounded so fast that he questioned if he would be able to hear anything if she spoke.
When she took a step down towards the Great Hall he almost fell down the stairs and she gave him a long glance. She asked if he was okay and all he managed to do was to shake his head. She walked closer to him and he met her half the way. He thought he was going to die. He did not know where the courage came from but something made him lessen the distance between them. He could see the struggle inside of her, her eyes wandered between his eyes and mouth. He took this as an approval and then leaned in and kissed her.
The kiss was more than he could handle at one point and he broke the kiss, leaving her with questions and a small hunger for more. The struggle he saw in her eyes had grown and he did not know if it was something good. Just when his brain started allowing him to think for himself again and let him say something to her, she smiled a half smile and ran into the Great Hall. And then he woke up.
.:.
She was more beautiful than any woman I'd seen
I said, 'Do you know where the wild roses grow
So sweet and scarlet and free?'
.
There were so many things he wanted to do to her, but nothing could happen in the real world. She would never want him, not even if he had not done all those horrible things to her and her friends since the age of eleven. He had evil in his blood and nothing could change that. He was not alone in that sense and all his friends had accepted their destinies. Wishing that they could have been given the opportunity to end up differently changed nothing. Not even wizards could change the past.
He started to lose hope; maybe his feelings would never change. For years, he had had these emotions and they never disappeared, they only grew stronger as his ability to hold them back grew weaker. If he got to relive the moment when she punched him in the face; he would this time not have been able to afterwards run away from her the way that he did the first time. A part of him thought that moment would not have happened at all; after all, how could it if he did not have the courage or the ability to talk to her? All his friends had noticed a change in him and wondered what happened to him. He did not give them an answer; he was not sure himself what had happened. She had always been like a diamond among pearls, he knew that, but somewhere that realization developed and now he saw her more as a shiny diamond among hardened rocks.
He could feel the lack of sleep getting to him. His emotions and desires were getting the best of him and more often than not he found himself screaming in frustration until his throat became soar. He spent most nights crawled up in his bed muttering declarations of love mixed with hateful words directed at her. She was ruining his life. She was the fixed point from which all good things came from. She was a demon haunting him and laughing as he could do nothing else but watch her perfection from the sidelines. She was the reason that his heart was beating. She was the reason why his heart one day would give up. She needed to go.
The final push which forced him over the edge came one morning at breakfast. His entire body became tense as his ears, finely tuned for the bell-like sound, picked up her laughter. He glanced her way and saw her lean back as she laughed at something the redhead had told her. He clenched his fists until the knuckles turned white and gritted his teeth. There was only one thing for him to do, he thought in the hazy midst of rage and jealousy. He would go crazy if he did not. Wherever she was that day he followed. Not that he needed to. He knew since long ago where she spent her days and knew that she would eventually be by the lake, alone, reading a book.
And there she was. Soaking up the sunlight as the flicker of a smile crossed her face and then turned into a frown. Something must have upset her. He glanced at the book and then at her face contorted in sadness. He hated everything that upset her. As soon as he came out of the darkness she turned around. He did not know what ached more. The fact that he was so close to her and could see her in all her glory. Or the fact that she snarled at him. Looked at him with a mocking expression as she waited for him to make his move. But when he did her expression changed. She stood, her lips moved but he could not hear what she said, and then the anger crumbled from her face and was replaced with fear. He did not understand why she would fear him. He was only going to help her. He was going to release her. Make her beauty infinite and keep it to himself the only way he could. Did she not understand that?
His fingers found their way around her perfectly formed neck and the pressure made parts of her skin turn white. He felt the pulse against his fingers, pounding quicker as it tried to force the blood and the oxygen around her body; pounding away under his fingers to make her stay alive. The warmth radiated from her skin and shallowly warmed his ice cold hands. His gaze was fierce and unreadable, the mouth muttered words she could not hear, though she knew them to be soft and gentle.
Her dark eyes were wide open and the rosy red lips parted as they were gasping for air. The narrow little hands tore and ripped his arms, but he did not let go. This beauty before him had turned his life around and he could no longer live like this. Wherever she was, his entire body stopped working, he could not move, and he could not think. He could barely breath.
Her eyes flickered, the long lashes gently touched her pale skin, and her lips had gone blue. The scratching stopped and yet he refused to release the firm grip he had around her throat. When the last breath left her mouth in the sound of a hushed gasp of relief he for the first time draw a real breath and felt the oxygen fill his lungs. He had always known that he could not have her. There were so many reasons, more than he could possibly count. But he could not bear to watch her beauty from afar and the thought of her belonging to someone else tortured his already haunted mind. This way her beauty would always belong to him in some way. He kissed her forehead, the first and last kiss he would ever give her, and closed her eyes as he could not stand the emptiness.
A sad smile flickered across his face. "Goodbye my love."
.:.
As I kissed her goodbye, I said, "all beauty must die"
And lent down and planted a rose between her teeth
.