Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Dedication: Holy crap, um, to les & Sara, who told me that taking character's clothes off isn't as hard as I make it out to be in my head; to Briony, for giving me the prompts, which I'll list in the final chapter-thingie; to Emily, who got all of the mistakes I made under the influence of Little Sleep; to Christine & all of the other WM girls who I cannot recall out of the previously mentioned sleeping... thing; & to Stats, for inspiring me through perverse boredom.
Notes: Post-war, pretending the epilogue does not exist. Rated M for some... lime.
NotesB: I swear, at some point, I told myself my characters would keep their clothes. That is not the case.
NotesC: One of six & a half parts (though how the last six point five scenes will be distributed hasn't been decided yet).
Some handle the loss after war easily…
"This is how we deal."
She imagines what the video camera picks up – the fuchsia of her lipstick, the smoke exhaling against the viewfinder, a dart of tongue as she licks at her lips slowly.
Maybe, when she backs up, he'll be able to see the flush of her cheeks and her hooded eyes under what must be pounds of mascara, eyeliner, and eye shadow. He'll see flashes of her, and she doesn't care if he hurts because she doesn't care. This is just for her.
"This is how we deal."
… while others crumble like great monuments in the ageless wind.
First time drunk, and she's leaving him a message.
Just to make a point, of course. Nothing less, nothing more.
For a girl retaking her seventh year at Hogwarts after the devastation of war, she figures this must be pretty normal.
In the morning, though, she'll wish that Harry and Ron had taken the camera away, that they weren't off, having dry sex with girls on the dance floor that Ron doesn't know and one that Harry loves. Ron and her were ancient history, rivaling the dinosaurs, though they were still friends. She didn't care, didn't believe…
But until then…
She silently considers the cigarette in her hand before putting it to her lips. Where'd she get it from? Who gave it to her? Ron and Harry hadn't been there then…
"It's like a secondhand kiss," she finally decides out loud as she takes a drag. Blowing out deeply, Hermione squints at the smoke coming out – does that look like a ring? Or more like a pony? When she was little, she had wanted a pony…
"I kissed someone and it wasn't you. Does that…" She swishes the glowing end in front of the camera, her feet dancing her away. "Does that bother you, Draaaaaco? Does it mean anything? I hope it doesn't. I think it doesn't. It's like Ancient Runes – what does this mean? It's not straight or forward or backwards…"
Hermione knows she is pausing a lot – it used to be because she was camera shy. But it's not because of that right now. Her mind is scattered – she wonders if that is how Ron or Pansy see the world before dismissing it in favor of another glowing bubble of thought – and nothing sticks as the passage between one moment and the next jumps tracks. It's all great temporary and fragile – that's all she needs in her life.
Nothing lasts anyway.
"We're not even a spark," she muses, tapping the cancer stick against the side the bed in one of the back rooms. "We're just one dead moment. Or are we a black hole, sucking – well, things can't suck. Physics and chemistry say that sucking is impossible – that it's all a matter of push and pull, some kind of tide - but that doesn't mean anything to you, does it?"
She doesn't stop to breathe or even give him time to answer. "I didn't think so."
Tossing what's left of the cigarette – about half, right? Half sounds about right – Hermione watches what's left glow in the dark as she leans on the table. The lights from the club seep in under the door, into the blackness, and she feels her head sway to the pounding bass. "We're already dead. Just a couple of teenagers in something like love; except, it really isn't. You can't love and I just… You're that one bad choice I had to make."
She barks laughter – at least, she thinks it's laughter, because it's that or sobs – can't hear it over the electronic thumping and the moans next door.
"I'm just using you, Malfoy, and it's killing me inside."
There's something that tells her to stop here – to shut off the camera, plug the USB drive into her laptop, cast the spell, and then drop the time turner in his hand after the last time.
The last time.
Silently, she kisses the tips of her fingers and watches as her lipstick smears on the lens before she hits the "record" button. The red goes dim and the breath flies out of her.
Stuffing the camera into her clutch, Hermione slinks out of the room and past the dance floor.
She leaves Ron and Harry there.
There's heavy breathing coming from the oculus above their heads, accompanying moans, but she cannot connect the sound to the idea that it is Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy – her and him – this and that.
She's so disconnected…
They're in the astronomy tower, high above the ground, his hand cool against the burning hot skin of her stomach. His fingers glide up and up and she's gasping for air. Her lungs beg to ask him why he won't let her breathe while her brain isn't living for magic words and those kind of wand flicks and satisfaction. It whispers of safety words and his wand (not the one he'd tossed in the pile of robes along with hers before he'd grabbed her by the waist) – but there is still a satisfaction as her mind screams for ecstasy.
She vaguely remembers how he'd slipped the note to her, how, somehow, no one had seen it crunch against the underwire of her bra or the way it brushed against the chain of the time turner she still wore around her neck. It hadn't startled her, exactly – they'd come to the unspoken understanding that they were nothing alike, so everything could happen just short of being like each other and neither would be surprised. He didn't look at her when her eyes instinctively found him, but he might as well have been. Each movement he made was smoother than chocolate syrup – every step sinuous, even as his arm snuck its way around Pansy Parkinson's neck.
Draco Malfoy very much exemplified his house. So much like a serpent, he was.
Something dark stirred within her – low, low, low in her stomach. It was lust, it had to be, she told herself as she forced herself to stop watching them and face Professor Slughorn. If he had taught her anything, it was that want and need hid deep within all things.
Ron, after all, had been the one who taught her jealousy when she had been young and green. She knew it well enough to recognize its bitter taste.
This was so far from bitter. If it had been anyone else, she would've said she was addicted.
As Hermione watched him out of the corner of her eyes, she couldn't help but wonder what he lusted for – what he wanted, what he needed. It wasn't something she could buy for a thousand galleons – he couldn't be bought for his blood and inheritance could earn him more than she could ever afford even if she drained the apparent mud beneath her skin drop by drop. It was only more proof for the truth often untold, that what one needed was something they could only ever be given freely.
She couldn't help but snort. Like a Malfoy would want anything that came without a price tag.
(The shadows in her head sneered. All you really want to know is if it has anything to do with you.)
After class, she excused herself to the bathroom, her fingers tangled in the golden chain around her neck, a reminder of the intricacies of time and space and how things could never be truly fixed with a simple flick of the wrist and a re-do option. Pulling the piece of parchment out of the right cup of her bra, she squinted at it in the dim lights. Her pulse pounded in her mind as brown eyes traced over the messy elegance of his words.
See you up there.
Hermione moans as his lips found the juncture between her neck and shoulder, her nails scraping harshly against the pale sensitive skin of his back. A not so small part of her wonders if she could scar him with her presence.
"Face it, Granger," he purrs against her throat, "you like losing control." At his words and the seductive movements of his lips, all she can do is shudder. No talking back, and she wonders when she lost her voice.
He never asks anything, she thinks. Her hands slide down to the elastic of his boxers like wraiths and he stills. His breath is harsh and hot against her already heated skin – she can almost smell the butterbeer he'd been drinking at dinner.
All he ever does is command and expect.
She wonders when she gave in.
Maybe she would worry about it, but it's just sex.
Just. Sex.
He tenses as her arms drop to her side. "So," she starts to say, but Draco – Malfoy – leans in and devours her in a kiss. Hermione's drowning in it, her mouth half-open as he taints her with himself.
She doesn't even know what to call him anymore.
Hermione Granger doesn't know where to stand.
There's a taste of desperation as their tongues twine and separate, touch and go, but she doesn't know who owns it. It's the third person in the kiss – the elephant in the room - and the tower seems to quiver beneath their feet. His fingers are behind her back, tangled in the clasp and lace of her bra.
An image of Dr- Malfoy pressing Parkinson up against the chill of these very stones finds her just as she had about lost herself and her eyes fly open. She finds herself looking at his eyelids, creased as they were as he continued to kiss her.
If she hadn't known better, she would have taken Draco Malfoy for a romantic.
But that's her – Hermione freaking Granger, not Draco fucking Malfoy, and they are, of course, nothing alike. He's a snake and she's the lion, trying to trample him beneath her paws. He oozes sex appeal with the kind of effort most people put toward breathing and she is lucky when she doesn't look ten, standing in her laciest underwear.
What is she doing here?
She pushes and he stumbles away, gray eyes opening wide with something she doesn't recognize on him – perhaps she just doesn't want to know.
Because, for all her Gryffindor courage and her Ravenclaw craving to satisfy her curiosity, she can't stand up to this storm.
They're both standing there in similar states of undress. His boxers are half on his hips and he had been almost done with unclasping her bra. She reaches back, can't helping but notice the way Draco's breathing speeds up at the motion.
Fixing the catch, she leans down and snags her red and gold jumper, pulling it on.
"What is it?"
His words break up the quiet their heavy panting has created, but she still refuses to look at him. Knowing him and his propensity for maximizing the use of every moment and stardust to his advantage, the light falling through the open windows lights up his silver blond hair in a way that could probably only make him angelic.
She knows, though, that he is truly as dark as sin.
Still mute, Hermione walks over to one of the loose support beams for a telescope. Her jeans dangle over the end with a series of bobby pins hanging out of a pocket. He must have put a lot of power into that throw, she thinks absentmindedly, examining the way Draco had torn the zipper in his anxious rush to get them off of her.
The thought doesn't bother her as much as it used to, and that, perhaps, disturbs her more than just about everything else.
As she pulls her pants up, she can't help but sneak a peek at him.
She had been right.
Moonlight becomes him.
He isn't dressing, looking at her in a way that can almost be described as lost, something she more often than not associated with Ron and puppies on street corners.
Unlike her ex-boyfriend, though, he hides well underneath a dominant demanding façade. The luminescence settles on stiffened lips as he asks stonily, "What happened?"
Realizing she is still staring, Hermione hastily turns her attention to finding her wand, entangled in Draco's robes. Somehow, the black cloth had completely wrapped it up in a mess of stick and fabric, and all she can do is curse it under her breath.
Then he is there, his hand over hers. It infects her with something, like touching lightning. Her wild thoughts are barely identifiable as every muscle in her body seizes up.
"I have to go," she whispers. It's all Hermione can do to look up at him, into the gray eyes she'd seen in states of frantic rush, boredom, and intoxication, but no matter his faults and her own, she owes them both this much. Shrugging into her robe, she waves her wand silently at her broken zipper before she takes the time turner off her neck - rips the gold chain apart, really, and shoves it into his hands. If it had still been working, maybe she'd worry he'd watch the message and turn it thrice, returning here to make her stay.
But it's broken.
He doesn't stop her.
As she runs down the stairs, tears hidden in the corner of her eyes, she realizes that she can no longer go back.
Standing in front of the Fat Lady, Hermione feels stern, judging eyes upon her as she asked for the password.
She gives her, "Severus Septus," before she'd let the portrait door swings open. Her feet stumble inside and she hisses as her ankle crashes into the edge of the gilded framework. She dismisses it and continues into the Gryffindor common room. Just one more bruise to add to the other ones she'd gained tonight.
"'Mione?"
The jump hadn't been intentional as a sleepy voice and shadows move in the dim light of one of the reading lamps. Her best friends ease into view. Ron's hair is tousled in that way it gets when he falls asleep halfway through his potions homework, some ink smudged just above his eye, while Harry looks alert, his wand giving more light to the otherwise deserted room.
Without saying anything, she walks over to them and drapes her arms over their shoulders. Eyes closed, she tries to steady herself and breathe normally. Must've run too fast, she tells herself. Relaxing is easy, so comforting and normal as this had always been. The exhausted young woman leaned her head on Harry's shoulder.
"Hermione… have you been drinking?" His voice is hesitant as her eyes shoot open. Part of her smells like butterbeer, she realizes as she slumps even further, like his dinner or his dessert.
"I didn't drink anything," Hermione mutters, only to glower as they exchange significant looks, like she was a trial to them. They are a trial to her, one swallowing poisoned wine and misplaced love potions while the other is supposed to save the world. They should be thanking their lucky stars that they have made it to their eighteenth and nineteenth birthdays.
"Hermione…" Harry starts before she swings her head to give him a look, pinning him in place, but Ron has never known when to leave well enough alone.
"Why are you carrying your shirt?"
Looking down at her left hand, Hermione opens it slowly. The joints are slightly cramped up from grasping the emerald green shirt so tightly in her mad rush from the tower. She hadn't realized she'd brought it with her, so muddled her thoughts had been at the time.
So disarrayed with…
With…
His hands –
His touch –
His kisses –
His smirk –
His moan –
Him.
And to think, all of this was just sex to him.
Not for the first time, Hermione Jean Granger crumples over a boy and they have to catch her.
She wishes for it to be the last time.