Nos Jeux Noirs
Harry Potter ne m'appartient pas. Dommage…
(/End French cynicism) A one-shot angst-fic.
These nocturnal wanderings were doing him no good at all. He didn't care one jot. He'd decided long ago that he needed the space.
It was three in the morning and his angry, errant feet had taken him once more to the Owlery. Small bones crunched underneath him as he walked into the moonlit aerie. It was a dead, empty place, reflecting nothing and making his breath thunder in his ears as silver streaks slid across his raven hair.
He came to an inlet, a hole in the wall as large as chest of drawers and sat with his back against one side of it, bracing his legs against the other. She'd come soon, and he relished the thought.
She came, a delicate, pure vision in her slightly too-small robes and uniform, auburn hair haloed over her shoulders. She looked furious. He let his cigarette drop and die in the calcified carnage littering the floor.
"You're late," he said, not looking at her.
"And you're killing yourself one day at a time," she replied.
"Unlike you, I gave up caring a long time ago," he stated.
"You know I care."
"You and your precious altruism. Why do you keep on coming back?" He was angry now. She had no right…
"Do you know what they say about knowledge? The more you acquire, the more the lines blur and…"
"What has that to do with anything? You know why you're here."
She flared. "Fuck you."
"Yes, fuck me. Exactly. Consider this: you are insane."
"As are you. We're so sane that we've gone right over the edge."
"Hermione Granger, lunatic. Sounds about right." He leaned his head back against the stonework and laughed long and clear.
"So what are we going to do about it?" A challenge.
He lowered his head and stood, suddenly shaded in shadow and threat, the quicksilver beams avoiding him and shedding their luminescence elsewhere. "Nothing. I like being like this. You like it too." They were suddenly face to face.
"No, I don't."
"Liar. You know it."
"We all want what we can't have."
"I can have you, you know. Again."
She hit him, her nails scoring three bloody streaks across his cheek. He laughed, grabbed her by the lapels of her shirt and lowered his head to the base of her neck.
She struggled. "Damn…you." She was panting and he wasn't sure whether it was from desire or rage.
At last he came up, leaving her skin bruised. "I am damned" he growled.
"Aren't we all?"
"I don't care any more. We're dead as it is."
"Not yet we're not."
She kissed him, hard, teeth scraping his lips and leaving a bruised, stinging feeling as she sought to take his breath away. "We're still alive. You're still alive" she hissed at him.
"Show me. I don't believe it any more. Not after Sirius and Cedric. Show me what it is to be alive. Hold me." He'd suddenly gone into himself, looking smaller and smaller until the smug confidence that had been there was utterly gone, replaced instead by uncertainty and self-worthlessness. He doesn't deserve this.
She pushed him violently into the wall and saw him stifle his gasp as his head hit the stonework. One step, two, and then she was upon him, drawing the air from his very lungs and running her hands over his chest and hair. Stunned, he could only wrap his arms around her as she crushed herself to him, her core boiling against his leg.
To her analytical mind it was very simple. Harry, abused from the time of his earliest memories, subconsciously craved submission and manipulation almost as much as he craved love and attention. Hurt, then heal, that was how she worked. Every time they came together like this, and it had been many so far, she'd break him in some way, make him angry - not at her but at life itself. She was his trigger, his breaking point. Around others he was the same old Harry but around her… it was as if he needed her in order to feel anything at all. Sometimes he'd cry. Sometimes he'd stand there and laugh as she tried everything she could think of, and then he'd break utterly. At other times the slightest move from her would unleash a devil within him, the one that bit and scratched and tore at her skin and then fucked her oh-so-roughly on the freezing flagstones of the castle until she couldn't move. But when he sobbed his heart out on her shoulder, when she allowed him to break on her anew, that was when she would lead him off quietly by the hand. She'd lead him somewhere safe, like the Room of Requirements or a secluded shore by the lake, and there she would repair the damage that man so often does to man the most comforting way a woman could. The very act of touching calmed him and gave him strength, and often he would reciprocate gently, the beast that she sometimes glimpsed inside him forgotten and tamed.
It was like that tonight. He had sunk to the floor in a silent stupor with his arms wrapped tightly around himself. Tears were wending their slow way down his jaw, cratering the dust as they landed on the mess below. He looked broken again, so much younger than his seventeen years.
She felt the frustration rise up within as he sobbed and smashed a fist against the mortared wall in anger, his rage half-smothered by sorrow.
"I don't want to feel like this!"
"You don't have to."
"Do you have any idea what it's like not to have been held – ever?"
What? …Shit. This was new. This was uncharted territory. This was far beyond what she was used to.
She tried to calm him. "No, Harry, I don't. I'm sorry." I don't know why I said that…
"It's sheer hell, Hermione. It's like one more thing that you can't have that every one else takes for granted."
"You've got me. And I've got you."
"And that's not going to last." His voice was flat now.
What? "Why do you say that!"
"Because… heck, look at us. We walk around all day with Ron. At night we fuck each other's brains out. Sometimes I end up like this, sometimes you do. Sometimes you make me do things. Things that I'd really rather not be doing. We're not stable."
"You… you need it. You need the ridicule, don't you? Don't you?" Shitshitshit…
His voice tightened. "You mean that you needed it. You'd curse me and mock me until I'd take you and make you forget. I only did what I did because you needed the release, not me."
A horrified look had crept over her face as she was listening to him. But… but… I'm supposed to be the clever one…I'm supposed to know what he wants!
"Oh my God. I… oh, fuck. But" she took a shaky breath and let it out "… why? You responded, didn't you? Why did you put up it, why didn't you tell me! WHY?"
"You're the only girl who's ever hugged me. I can't be with anyone else. Simple as that."
"I…I…"
"Yeah. I'm hooked, on you. I can't stop it." His voice was becoming shaky and it was all coming out too fast. She'd run away. Maybe he should bolt first, get it over with.
He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. She was breathing very quickly.
"Hermione? This doesn't mean I don't need you." He was weeping again, she was sure of it.
"You…you…I need…I'm so sorry I didn't know I thought I was helping and I sort of did feel better afterwards but I never thought you didn't want it really I had no idea and I'm not going to get over this any time soon." She stood and ran for the door, scattering tiny skeletons across the gleaming floor as she did do.
She couldn't open the door, and she'd dropped her wand. She was suddenly furious. How dare he keep her in here when all she wanted to do was run from him? She turned around and looked at him slumped in the corner, her wand next to him where it had slipped out of her pocket.
"Harry? Open this door right now. I'm leaving." Her voice was needle sharp but still shaking. She wanted to get out. She had to get out, she had to… he wasn't moving.
"Harry?"
"You're not leaving", he stated, his voice cracking. "You've never walked out on me before, you can't start now."
She stalked back to him, moonlight rippling across her form. "You lied to me!" she shouted. "You pretended you liked it!"
"Silly…silly girl " he sniffed "You needed it, I gave it to you. Just like you gave me what I needed. I just didn't like that one bit. But" he sniffed again and gave a wobbly sort of laugh "I never said that you didn't make up for it."
"You're insane." Defeated, she slumped down next to him with her head in her hands. I don't pretend to understand what's going on and I can't fight it any more anyway.
"We're insane. Ha" he breathed.
"All right, we're insane"
"So what are we going to do about it?"
"Nothing. I like being like this."
"Just… no more insults? Please?"
"Fuck you."
"Mmm, you already did."
"Again?"
"Later?"
"Later. Just hold me."
She shuffled in between his legs, her back up against his chest.
"You know, I think we needed this. I'm feeling much calmer now."
"What are we going to do?"
"We'll find something. We'll talk about it later. Go to sleep."
She did.