Left Alone at Night
Prologue
She sat on the cold wood of the bench, palms pressed against her thighs, staring without seeing at the scuffed paint on the wall.
She felt like a raw nerve, like one huge, glassy eye, welling up with a force of emotion she had never known she possessed. Thought had failed her, quite thankfully, and the entirety of her being was concentrated on taking deep, soothing breaths.
Ten seconds in, ten seconds out.
An uncontrollable tremble shook each of her inhalations, and the sound of her own vulnerability sent another gush of that feeling through her body. That gut-wrenching love, so potent it was painful. She felt like a slippery pool of a woman— like she could dissolve into the air and enrich it with life like the sun itself—
And that— she clamped her heart down hard on the thought— terrified her.
Fiercely, she forced her mind to stop, to just STOP. You are caught up in the moment, she told herself once again, you are caught up in the moment, thinking more of it than you need to. She was being ridiculous! This was not love. Love didn't just happen like that— you didn't just suddenly take a closer look at someone you'd had the misfortune to know for ten years and realize that lurking dormant between you was something… otherworldly. It—
She sighed with frustration— would her mind not be still for more than two seconds?
Easing out of her stiff pose, she flexed her hands, achy from gripping her broomstick in the chilly spring air all evening. Her eyes were still on the wall, and she blinked. The red paint really was badly chipped, and she wondered idly if anyone ever bothered to actually clean up in here. A few loose socks had found their sad homes along the baseboards and crammed under lockers, and wet trails all along the floor marked the girls' crowded path from showers to mirrors to the curtained changing area.
She supposed she should shower. And maybe clean. The rest of the team had long since gone— leaving their pensive captain where she sat, pretending to sort through a stack of sloppily drawn game-plays until they had all left and she had been free to stare at the wall and hide from her feelings with abandon.
Hiding from her feelings.
She hadn't consciously thought it before, but that was exactly what she was doing. She sat up straighter.
When had she EVER hid from her feelings before?
Standing, she ripped her gloves off and yanked at the collar of her cape until the golden fastening came loose.
That was it. She was done with whatever this was— this brewing torture that had taken over her life these past few weeks. This… ridiculous, rebellious, teenage angst that she must have never gotten out of her system at Hogwarts. What with the war going on and all.
How could she be so dramatic? So silly, so filled with conviction? How could she have actually convinced herself that her heart was feeling this cascade of new emotions… for him?
No. No, no no. She scoffed out loud, and it echoed twice in the empty changing chamber. Whatever this was, it couldn't be real, it wasn't her heart feeling something that was really there— it just wasn't possible, when she thought about it.
She struggled out of her boots, overbalancing slightly, and cast a drying spell on the thick leather. Her boots, socks, and the hem of her robes were all damp with walking through the grass of the pitch, which still held dew from this morning's rain.
No. She would figure this out, logically and rationally for once in her life. She turned and snatched her towel viciously from the bench. She'd—
He was standing in the doorway.
She hadn't noticed until she'd turned and she felt her mind instantly cease, her heart letting loose another wave of battering emotion that erased her bravado entirely.
She made a small, strange sound, like backwards gasp, as her lungs reminded her to start breathing again. She laughed humorlessly, feeling more exposed, more defeated than she had ever felt in her life, and clutched the fluffy bundle of her towel to her chest like a little girl holding a teddy bear.
"Brilliant," she said bitterly, though her voice like the rest of her, had gone tiny and soft around the edges, "taken to just watching me now, have you?"
He looked like she did. Terrified, broken, and desperately contained in a way that made her begin to tremble anew. But he kept his back straight, breathing slowly and deliberately.
He nodded. His eyes were glassy, jaw slightly slack, looking at her with an expression of unbridled longing that she would have never in a million years thought she would ever see on his face. Usually so guarded. So unfeeling.
"Yeah," he said quietly at length, his voice impossibly sweet. He nodded again, something fragile breaking open in his eyes, "I have."
They stood in silence for a few moments, held staring by a current of energy that seemed to turn the air around them solid, so that neither of them could move.
But then he broke it, taking a graceful step towards her, never breaking eye-contact; at once asking for permission and stating clearly that there was no stopping him.
"Don't," she said, but it came out painfully feeble. She felt like she might cry but she didn't know why. She tried again, "Just— stop…"
He was a foot from her, shaking his head.
"I can't."
It was muffled by the feel of his hand, big and heated, gentle on the side of her face and insistent at the back of her head. He overwhelmed her completely, warm lips against hers, broad frame encircling her, so she felt small and perfect in a way she never had before. His mouth gently coaxed hers open, and she gave in, sliding into bliss and bringing her hands up to grip the burning skin of his neck. She stroked the hair at the nape, where the first thick ridge of his spine protruded, and he shivered.
She made a small feminine sound and felt a deep answering rumble in his chest, vibrating against her own. They broke apart, breathing heavily from the force of the current between them. He pressed his forehead against hers, pulling her close with a hand on the middle of her back, and placed his other hand over her heart to help soothe her breathing.
"But I—," she heard herself moan, her last attempt to override her own heart, and the feeblest of all. She had never in her life been more helpless. "We —"
"No, Ginny," he said with the firm but patient force of masculinity, somehow quieting in her the need to be the strong one, "I can't stop. I am not going to."
Ginny was aware of only the sound of her own ragged breathing for a few moments as her mind crumbled, and her heart dissolved into painful sweetness. His eyes were inches from hers, watching her steadily, backlit with emotion. She felt herself nodding achingly slow, with no real notion of what she was agreeing too. But a deeper part of them both seemed to feel it, and as another wave seized them, Ginny relinquished the fight as he pulled her to him by the waist, his mouth hot— the only real thing in the world.
He brushed the side of her face softly with his knuckles as he kissed her, stroking her ear with his thumb, and Ginny felt the cool metal of his family ring trace a line down her jaw that seemed to burn icy hot in her consciousness.
The silver ring, set with an emerald and inscribed with the Malfoy family motto. Sanctimonia Vincet Semper.
Purity always conquers.
She shivered, even as her chest burned with love.
How had it come to this?