March 1997- Sixth Year

Hermione was stressed; to say the least. Exams were around the corner and Harry's lessons with Dumbledore were making her nervous. Not that she trusted dreams as any legitimate hint of the future, but she was having dreams about battles and lightning and everyone she loved falling from the sky. She was worried about Ron, maybe just out of habit; she was worried about Harry and Ginny because she wished they lived in a world where they could stay happy and light the way they were now; she was worried for everyone as she felt the war getting nearer, and all of this worrying was draining her.

All of those weighted clouds in her head meant that when Hermione turned the corner and found her least favorite person in the aisle of the library she desperately needed access to, she could barely manage to be surprised. After all, Advanced Arithmancy was a very quiet class, she had forgotten that he was in it and that everything that could go wrong always would. Stupid mistake.

Malfoy was standing with his side to her, focused on the books in front of him and searching for something. She didn't contain her audible "ugh" at his presence and he turned around at the sound. It alarmed Hermione to see that he had been, however briefly, scared at the realization there was someone behind him. He had flinched, and his hand had gone to the pocket, where his wand was probably tucked. Why was he scared of her?

"Granger." He growled. "What are you doing here?"

"What do you think Malfoy?" Hermione's voice was strained and hard. She pointed at the shelf he had been scanning. "It's a library." He sneered.

Hermione had seen his sneer at least once a week for five years and knew it well. Sometimes it was full of dangerous malice, but sometimes a rather weak façade for his own insecurities. He turned to face her and set a book he had pulled off the shelf onto the table beside him. "Of course. It's a Saturday night Granger, you couldn't find anything better to do? Couldn't find any nasty, sniveling little Gryffindors to take you up to the Astronomy tower?"

Hermione wished her face hadn't briefly fallen. Ron had said something cryptic about a Hufflepuff; Harry and Ginny had been curled up on the couch in the Common Room when she had left. They had barely noticed her leaving. Hermione collected herself, confident that her pity party had lasted only a single second.

But Malfoy was a snake, and he could catch the weakness in someone in less time than that. "Looks like I'm right."

Hermione stuck her chin up and out at him. "I take it you're here for the same reason then?" He scoffed, but she saw the same flash in his eyes. Hermione put her hands to her face, rubbing the growing ache in her temples as she remembered how frazzled she had been when she walked in. She needed to be able to grab multiple books from these shelves to write this essay. "Look. I have to study in this room too. Can we just, work silently without killing each other?" She looked up and glared at Malfoy, who was now standing stiffly, squinting at her.

"I don't trust you, Mudblood." She let the slur pinch at her heart without expression.

"I don't trust you either." With that she sat in the second chair at the small table and threw her bookbag to the ground.

He looked at her oddly, surprised at her decisive actions. She stood, trying to get past him, to the very shelf he had been perusing not long ago. Still in a kind of shock from the strange turn of events, Malfoy didn't move. Hermione put her hands on her hips, surprising herself at a stance she used comfortably with her friends. "Please move."

Draco had never noticed how much taller he was than her. He had definitely never smelled her. The coconut oil in her hair bounced off of the musky parchment smell in the close quarters they now shared. It was like there was cotton in his ears. He couldn't hear her nagging at him to move, and couldn't move even if he had heard. He was stuck. Her bossy stance betrayed her waist and significant hips and suddenly he could see the whole girl in front of him. Her eyes stared up at him and they were a brown he couldn't begin to understand. They were the color of the danger that shone in a bludger headed straight towards your head. Finally able to shake himself out of his trance and move aside, he let her by and sat dazedly in his chair.

Draco opened the book he had pulled from the shelf at random when she had snuck up on him. It was useless. Of course. And now he needed to get up and find the one he needed. He checked his notes. He hadn't been able to find Isopsephy & The Impossibility of Calculating What Comes Next in the section on Greek Philosophy or in the Divination stacks. It had to be in Arithmancy, even if the title promised to question the practice he enjoyed.

"Um, Malfoy?" Hermione's voice was quiet and he could hear the resentment in it. He looked at her and found her staring at her shoes. "The book I need is on the top shelf. Do you mind…?"

Maybe it was because his real problem was with Potter and Weasley. Maybe he had been tired and stressed and hungry and so very, very scared for months. Maybe it was because of her stupid treacle-colored eyes or very soft looking skin, but for a strange moment, Draco forgot to hate her. "Yeah of course." He answered kindly, then quickly furrowed his brows and coughed a little. "Fucking Gryffindors think they're so great but they can't even get their own books, huh?"

She scoffed at his attempt to cover his chivalry. "Oh yes, Malfoy. I'm quite helpless without a big man to help me." The sarcasm snuck a smile onto her face without her noticing. He could see her thick lips curled into something really genuine, something she probably really needed. It made him want to smile in return, but he was smarter than that.

Hermione didn't move from where she was, though they were close enough to touch without reaching. She just looked at him, daring him to say something else she could tease him with. Like he was someone else, he thought, like he was one of her idiot tried to put as much disdain in his voice as he could muster. "Which book, Granger?" He was alarmed when she stood up on her toes, bringing her body even closer to his, to point out a large, tan, and very old looking book. Of fucking course. He pulled down the book he had spent twenty minutes searching for.

His sigh must have been loud, because she tilted her head at him. "You're working on the same essay, aren't you Malfoy?" She didn't wait for an answer. "You'll need this too then." She frowned down at the book that was now in her hands, and that was when Draco saw the wand in her right hand. Why didn't she just accio…? "We'll share." They both looked at the table, and she made the decision for them both, for the second time tonight. Hermione pulled her chair next to his and lay the book out on the table. When she pulled off her outer robe and set it on her chair, leaving her in the school uniform that covered nearly all of her skin but showed him so much more of her, he barely remembered to grumble something about mudbloods and personal space before he sat down at his chair and leaned into the book.

Hermione walked back to Gryffindor Tower on default. If she hadn't managed the trick step coming out of the library hallway and the staircase that had a temper and moved suddenly if you took the stairs too quickly at least a hundred times, she might not have made it back to the portrait of the fat lady, who coughed when Hermione blanked at the password.

Nothing had changed, she firmly told herself, clinging to the small stack of books in her arms as she walked without seeing the nearly empty common room that held only Parvati Patil and some giggling fifth year curled into each other on an overstuffed armchair. So, she had spent her Saturday evening studying in the library-there was nothing odd about that. Sure, she had shared a table with Draco Malfoy. They had shared a table and a book. They had shared some of each other's notes, because it turned out he knew what he was doing when it came to Arithmancy. And they had shared a few looks.

She tried not to think about these looks, because it made her actively anxious to remember how she would look up from writing, subconsciously rubbing the swollen spot on her finger where her quill rested, and catch him gazing at her. That was the only word for it. He had been taking her in, painting and re-painting his previous image of her in his head. Hermione knew very acutely that she was not your typical kind of thin and tall and pale kind of pretty, but she had seen men's eyes on her before. Most of the time they rested on her ass or her chest and stayed there. Occasionally their glares were focused on her hair and her dark skin, and it was hatred she saw in them, mixed with lust like vinegar and milk. Malfoy had looked at her the way Krum used to, the way Ron had a handful of times. Like there was a light inside of her that only he could see.

Sometimes, Hermione was able to whisper her thoughts. To herself. As though if she thought something at a normal volume, with the kind of attention she gave a dangerous Quidditch game or an interesting class, she would have to acknowledge that she had given it thought. Very quietly, she admitted to herself that she had looked back at him, and done her own unnoticed looking while he had been biting his lip while he read with determined focus. She quieted her loud mind, panicking about the meaning of a look. Because at least she hadn't been gazing, or anything like that. No, she had kept her glimpses at his falling bangs and sharp jaw furtive and nervous. Which isn't really any better.

The Arithmancy section of the library was a moderately sized cube, one ancient table and three chairs if nobody had dragged one of them to another, more popular section. It had a strangely sized entrance that took up exactly three-quarters of what was otherwise a shelf, so that sometimes books held up by magic would fall into the doorway before they were replaced by conscientious students or, more often, Madam Pince. It was all of the things Hermione loved about the Hogwarts library.

For the next three Saturdays, that little box of books was theirs. Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger, of all people, had become unofficial study partners. During the rest of the week, the house rivalries and mutual hatred between them and their friends reigned. When Malfoy, flanked by interchangeable Slytherin cronies, faced off with Harry or Ron in classes, Hermione found it easy to act normally, shaking her head and thrusting insults as she had for five years. Her mind was perfectly in keeping with how things were meant to be. Yet her eyes had gone rogue. If he came up to them in the Great Hall to taunt or tease, she found herself staring at his graceful hands or the curves of his neck, and losing track of the argument. At last weekend's Slytherin/Hufflepuff game that the boys had insisted she attend with them for a scoring reason she didn't care to understand, she had spent an embarrassing amount of time watching him fly (smoothly, like the way he walked, or wrote…)

Hermione was proud of the job she was doing pretending none of this staring was happening, but she couldn't justify the black and white fact of four Saturdays spent together. Saturdays when their elbows had accidentally knocked together more often than necessary and his beloved slurs had ceased. She had learned that when he was frustrated and couldn't get the math right, he made a little growl and it made her laugh. She had frozen once when he had reached over her to correct a translation she had done wrong and their arms had been tangled, his breath hot and sweet when he turned around to ask if she understood and she nodded helplessly. Thinking about it all made her head hurt. Ginny had more than once expressed concern at Hermione's sudden recurring headache problem.

Draco Malfoy was better than this. He was better than some arrogant, know-it-all Mudblood. He had known that for five years, hell, he had known he was expected to aim much higher than this since he could say the word "muggle."

He hadn't been sleeping, he offered as an excuse to himself. He hadn't had a good night's rest or a satisfying meal all term. He wasn't himself. So maybe this version of him, this pathetic child who couldn't seem to manage the one thing that had ever mattered that he got right, deserved this. Perhaps this thing he couldn't stop thinking about was punishment for all the shameful tears of panic he had shed in the last months. It didn't matter. Draco was certain of two things: Hermione Granger was the worst possible person to be thinking about, and he didn't give a shit.

At first, he had simply seen her. He had watched her mind at work, up close. And he had discovered the hints of body that conservative uniforms could show. That could have been enough. Should have been enough. But he had spent the next week remembering her pitch-black eyelashes and not insignificant thighs. He found reasons to mess with Potter and the ginger asshole that looked at her too much. Just to be near her, to see her in this new way over and over again.

The second Saturday, when they pretended it wasn't completely purposeful that they had each come to the Arithmancy section at the same time despite all logic and wisdom, he had tried to undo all of his revelatory considerations of her. He had failed.

By their third meeting, which they thankfully hadn't discussed but had silently agreed upon, he wanted more than looking. He had to completely re-write parts of his notes from that night because they were utter nonsense since he had been thinking the entire time of ways to touch her. Small ways. Draco found himself suddenly obsessed with the round of her shoulder and the tendrils of baby hairs that appeared when she pulled her mass of hair off of her neck. He touched her hand, her arm, the top of her thigh, all as innocently and accidentally as he could manage. And for a few hours, he forgot about Dumbledore and his father and vanishing cabinets. She was a living, breathing reprieve. He had actually been hungry last Sunday morning. Blaise had gaped at him as he took in a full English breakfast.

After four Saturdays of grazing hands, Draco was fairly sure he wasn't alone in this headfirst teenage hormonal tragedy of a mistake. She was doing plenty of looking, he knew, even when she thought he didn't. And while she didn't seem to be making any moves of her own, when his thigh "accidentally" knocked into hers under the small table, she hadn't moved away. Even better, and this should not have thrilled him the way it had, she had spotted a miniscule feather from the evening post on his breast pocket and had picked it off without hesitation. The very thought of her small, sweet hands on his chest was enough to distract him through an entire dull class that week. It was all getting very embarrassing. Yet when he began to spiral into agonizing over thinking about Hermione bloody Granger, he always ended up in the same place: he didn't give a shit. Because it felt good, and it was just about the only thing that did.

On the fifth Saturday, Hermione didn't know what to expect. The essay they had been working on for the first two weeks was finished. There had been a test yesterday, and it had been enough of an excuse for them to study for it a few weeks out. Today there was no Arithmancy to be done. They could read ahead, or read extra texts, but both felt like very thin excuses to be in the same cramped, warm, quiet room alone and unsupervised with a boy she was supposed to despise.

Exactly how far were they supposed to take this? She had gone back and forth all week on showing up, debating the chance that he wouldn't and she would feel foolish, or that if she didn't go, he would and she would wish she had for a reason she was not willing to think about at normal volume. She didn't remember deciding, but of course she had.

Hermione walked into the quasi-room with pretend nonchalance. She held her books the usual way, tried and failed to blow her wild hair out of her face normally, and she swore to herself that it didn't matter at all that Draco Malfoy wasn't there.

She hadn't wanted him there and she hadn't expected him there, she told herself in a strict tone exactly twice (because any more would imply that she was lying.) Leaving behind thoughts of him, she settled into rather pointlessly reviewing the notes that she had made last week. Obviously, she had come here because she needed to study, and for no other reckless reasons.

Parchment was very smooth and comfortable on her tired cheeks, so when she heard a gruff and purposefully loud cough very near her, she resisted moving. Her brain told her to quickly regain her dignity and get up, but her exhausted body was having none of it. A decent compromise was opening her eyes, and just as soon as they were open she jerked her head up and her hands came to her face to wipe the invisible remaining sleep away.

"Do you go out of your way to have depressing weekends, Granger? Or are you just this lonely now your idiot boyfriends have real girlfriends?" Malfoy smirked (or was it a smile?) at her and sat in the adjacent chair, leaving only a small table corner between them.

"They're not idiots" Hermione responded groggily.

Malfoy scoffed. "I've seen very little evidence to the contrary."

Hermione rolled her eyes, still regaining her footing in this conversation. Unable to find the right scathing reply to this, she settled. "Clearly your weekends are equally, in your own words, depressing, Malfoy. Or you wouldn't be here."

"Maybe I just prefer this to a loud common room." He shrugged his shoulders and opened a book that had been in his arms.

Hermione would later realize she hadn't thought out her reply. She blamed having just woken up. "And why's that Malfoy?

Draco looked up from pretending to find the right page in the thick tome in front of him. "Maybe it's the company." There was no other word for it. Malfoy leered at her.

"You're telling me you'd rather spend your evening with a swotty Gryffindor than your mindless friends?" Hermione could save this. She could pull this back to casual, if perhaps flirtatious, banter. He had crossed the thin, implicit line of talking about this, but she could ignore it and save both their dignities.

Draco proved her wrong with a single word. He closed the book and turned his body to fully face hers. "Yes."

She had always thought it was just a saying, but Hermione's jaw really did drop. Which Draco smirked at, raising his hand and gently closing it for her. His hands were astonishingly soft, and cold. "Why are your hands cold?" She barely managed the question. She sounded almost like a scared child. She didn't feel in control of her own body when she reached out to warm them between her own. He looked at their hands and then at her, surprised and relieved. They sat like this, Hermione's dark hands cradling Draco's pale, cold fingers, staring at each other, until Draco realized that he would never forgive himself if he didn't do more than sort-of-not-even-really hold hands with her.

He pulled his hands away from hers, which dropped to her own lap, making a little dent in her skirt. Finding sitting terribly awkward, he stood and looked down at her, waiting for her to follow. It took her a long moment, but she followed his lead and then they were just standing there, Malfoy almost a head taller, his features no different than they had been in his years of hatred, Hermione's hair just as wild as always, her usual frazzled determination just as present as it was in class every day. They were close, not touching by a mere inch, squished between their chairs and the table ledge, the air between them serving as an almost tangible reminder that they knew each other, despised each other, and desperately wanted each other.

He had been so confident. He had thought ahead to his opening salvo, and that had gone fine. But now, Draco was stuck. This didn't feel…right. What was his plan? Had he had one? He was going to kiss her…right? Fuck. Yes. Kissing her. Please, yes, he wanted to be kissing her. God, she's shorter than he realized. He couldn't, like, pull her to her toes, could he? That felt strange. Like THAT is what's strange, come on. But now he was just staring at her. They could have been about to duel. It would've been far less surprising. "Granger" he muttered, his early confidence gone.

"Yes?" Her voice was quiet, higher and more feminine than usual.

"I don't know why…" He was shaking his head.

"Me neither." She mirrored him.

"But you want…"

"Yes."

"We can't tell any…"

"Definitely not."

Long pauses are good at settling a situation; letting any individuals whose brains have been totally taken over by emotions and aching, eager bodies catch up.

"I still despise you." Draco bit back the smile in his lie.

Hermione's laugh was brief, tiny, and almost innocent. "Obviously."

Her little grin made Draco sigh, his eyes growing heavy with the effort of taking her in without touching her. And now there was no reason to keep that the status quo. The air around them felt clear and clean and he could be anyone here. He wanted her tea-colored eyes on his, so he gently lifted her chin, garnering a gasp. He let himself give her a glimpse of a smile that hardly anyone ever got to see, and saw her eyes soften at him in response. When he leaned in to kiss her, she pulled back a little, but he knew it was just to make him reach further for her, and he did. He found her lips with his and pushed and pulled at her, pressing weeks of want in between their tongues. It was engulfing. Their mouths were hot together, and he thought their lips may actually be bruised tomorrow.

Hermione wasn't sure when Malfoy had pushed her against the tall, uneven wall of books, but she was happy to have something solid behind her, something that wouldn't let her fall into the canyon that was him. Having always been a brain person, she was unused to paying this much attention to her body. But now she knew what hips felt like because his were ramming into hers; she knew what her waist was for because it was a soft handle for him. She had never paid much attention to her thighs but here they were glued together, trying to create the friction and pressure the new place between them ached for. God, his mouth was just going everywhere.

It took Hermione three times as long as it should have for her brain to get from "shouldn't make sounds" to "silencing charm" to "wand" to actually performing the spell that would let her moan as he sucked and bit at her neck. Never having liked her fairly significant chest, which her roommates had expressed envy over, now she realized that if he put his hands or maybe even mouth there she would reconsider her opinion.

Draco couldn't get enough. He was mildly concerned that he never would. And she kept not stopping him. She didn't stop him leaving fairly obvious marks on her neck, or slowly slip his hands up her shirt to find everything he wanted underneath. Hermione bloody Granger kept encouraging him. She found the hem of his shirt too, and was leaving thin scratches down his back, urging him towards her. Her hands cradled his cheeks and hips and ass, all in effort to pull him into her more. Her tongue found his sensitive neck and when she had rubbed her wet lips against his left ear he had groaned and bitten her jaw.

Hermione had just let Malfoy tuck his thumbs under the band of her skirt to push against her hip bones as he destroyed her mouth with his own, when Madam Pince shouted that the Library would be closing in five minutes. Draco pulled away, and the sudden loss of his weight and heat and mouth was like diving into cold water and Hermione had to lean hard against the bookshelf behind her to keep her balance. Looking up, she found his hooded eyes looking her up and down with exhaustion and lust. "Fuck, Granger."

She bit her lip, knowing she was blushing. She was starting to feel the bruises and hickies. Her lips were sore and swollen. She couldn't help herself. "Still hate me, Malfoy?"

He growled in response, coming back towards her with his hard body and fierce lips.

She held out a hand to stop him, but couldn't help a giggle. "We have to leave." He easily pushed past her hand and left a hard, fast kiss on her lips. She wished she didn't give in to it immediately. When he left her again, she sighed and collected herself. Watching him try to tuck his shirt back into his trousers, watching him clumsily hook his outer robe back on, she noticed his neck and laughed. "You should stop somewhere and cast a few glamour charms, Malfoy."

He looked up and nodded at her. "You're one to talk." She rushed a hand up to her neck and he grinned like a child that had just gotten away with something. Looking like a sloppy version of himself, book bag over his shoulder, Draco walked back to Hermione, who hadn't moved from her spot on the wall. He leaned over her, and she could smell her breath on his. She couldn't help it when her body and lips moved eagerly towards him, but he didn't take her offering. His smirk had a new flavor to it- like it held a secret coded message just for her. "I'm going to be a dick in Potions." Hermione looked confused, and his snarky grin grew. "To you. I'm going to be an asshole to you, and I want to you know that this is what I mean by it." Then his lips were on hers again, hard and deep, his teeth biting her lower lip. She opened her eyes to see him walking out of their warm cubicle and it took her another minute to step away from the wall, and another to grab her books and wrap her scarf around her entire neck until she could find a girl's bathroom on the way to the Common Room.

Malfoy was a total dick in Potions class on Tuesday. In fact, he was mean enough that Ron moved to comfort her. When Ron's hand touched her shoulder, and rubbed a light circle, Hermione had to hold back a laugh at Malfoy's scowl. But that afternoon, there was a tiny scrawl in her evening Prophet. "Prefect's Bathroom, 9PM" and Hermione had to come up with a very quick excuse for the blushing grin that Harry saw sweep across her face.

On Friday, Draco decided to be an asshole to Harry and Ron. She hadn't even been there. They had come up to the Common Room to find her and Ginny chatting and they told her about his empty threats at dinner. When Hermione had pushed for them to tell her what he had said, remembering to feign anger, Ron had told her. "'Remind her she's a filthy little know-it-all.' He'd said. Not his best, is it?" Ron had laughed. Hermione had blushed, and prayed her friends thought it was out of sensitivity. That Saturday in a magically expanded broom closet, when Draco murmured the same words against her lips as he unbuttoned her blouse, she had bitten hard on his bottom lip, making him moan.

They spent the Spring this way. Hermione grinned for no reason at all, and rubbed absently at covered bites because it made her remember the previous day's hours in closets, library cubbies, bathrooms, and a few select very hidden places on the grounds. Draco plotted ways to send coded messages to her through bullying her stupid friends, to touch her inappropriately under desks at Prefect meetings, to sneak very dirty notes into her mail.

Eventually, they slept together, in a version of the Room of Requirement that was little more than a large couch. Hermione had moaned that she couldn't stand it anymore and tore off her panties, leaving Draco speechless. It had been painful and fast and awkward. The next day he had included with her morning Prophet an unexpectedly sweet note, and after a few more tries they considered themselves rather good at it. The first time Draco went down on her, Hermione wanted to apologize to Parvati for all the times she had been annoyed at the fifth-year that often spent the night in her silencing-charmed bed. She got it now. On his birthday, Hermione got rug burns on her knees and he grinned for three days afterwards. There was a rumor he had been cursed.

On June 29th Hermione Granger had been laying on Draco Malfoy's sweat-damp chest, the hot blush of her body still cooling off. His hands were in her hair, and she could feel through her cheek that his heartbeat was still erratic, even though they had collapsed into each other's arms nearly five minutes ago. "Granger." Hermione answered with a kiss to the center of his chest before she decided to continue and began trailing kisses around his nipples and up towards his neck, flipping herself over onto her stomach and looking up at his solemn face.

"What's wrong?" Her words were slightly slurred from exertion and ecstasy.

He kept his hands in her hair and he sighed loudly. "Can you promise to do something without knowing what the circumstances would be?"

Hermione made a face and he huffed, remembering who he was talking to. "Of course you can't."

"I can try! I can try. I promise." Hermione smiled and it made him relax. Draco nearly asked himself when her smile had begun to instantly calm him, but he assumed it would be earlier than he'd like to admit to himself, so he carried on.

"How about this…" He began. Hermione was frowning, her eyebrows furrowed together in concern and attentiveness. "If something happens…if I have to do something…bad. Do you think…maybe you would forgive me. Someday." It wasn't a question, because he didn't really expect an answer. At least not an honest one. How could she possibly know what he was asking of her. He shouldn't be asking at all, because there was no way she could. Draco supposed he just needed to know that someone might.

Hermione was quiet. They didn't talk about this. Draco had become, ironically, her safe space where she didn't think about wars and Horcruxes and half-blood princes. She knew very well that he had a glamour on his left arm. She had chosen, perhaps foolishly, not to think about it. They had told each other, silently, that this was separate from that. Now he was asking her to ignore that, and she didn't know if she could.

She kissed his cool chest again, looking up at him, a kind promise in her eyes that she knew he could read. "Draco." She had only used his name a few times before. In her head, it translated to I care for you, and in the few times when he had called her by her name, she had heard the same translation in his voice. "Did you take the Mark?" It was almost inaudible. She moved to hold him down, terrified he would jump up out of anger and run from her.

He looked down at her, instead, and moved his hands away from her hair, placing them on her naked, glistening back. In an almost measured movement, his face fell grim, and he swallowed. It was enough. She nodded. "Do you believe…?"

"No. Not anymore." He was firm, before she could even get a question out. He grabbed her face, looked at her hard again and repeated himself. "No. It's my family…"

Hermione pushed herself up onto her arms and moved up his body, falling to him and pressing her lips softly onto his, like a head hits a pillow. He thought she might answer him, but she kissed him instead. She was being strangely gentle, and he ignored the tears falling into their matched mouths. Very softly, she spoke against his skin, "We don't know what might happen. We can't predict the future. We don't know what we will do until we're in the situation, and then we just try to do what's right."

Hermione didn't say she would forgive him, and he was grateful. Instead, she kissed and kissed and kissed him with soft pressure, moving from his lips to his neck and his chest and his nipples and his beautiful, strong arms, and even his glamoured left forearm, once, with as little hesitation as she could manage. She took two of his fingers into her mouth and he moaned. She felt herself get wet and hot and wanting and she ground herself against his thigh so he could feel it too. She guided his hands to her thighs and hips and chest, and she hovered over his mouth until he had kissed and sucked each of her dark nipples to her satisfaction. When she felt him ready for her, she slid onto him with intentional slowness that made him snarl her name. When she rode him, she tossed her head back and held his hands to her chest. Her moans were breathier than usual, and he wasn't sure when she stopped crying. She nearly made herself come, rubbing her clit and sliding up and back onto him slowly, but as soon as her muscles tightened around him he groaned and grabbed her hips so hard he would leave bruises and moved her to his speed, fast and deep. She smiled at the change and moaned more loudly and solidly than before. Keeping her fingers on her clit and closing her eyes, she let him watch her and they came together. When she slid off of him, she found herself once again laying aside him, her head on his chest.

Two days later, Dumbledore was dead and Malfoy was missing, and Hermione took the longest shower of her life, weeping and scrubbing until she was raw, trying to get all of him out. His last bruise, on her hip, and his last hicky, just beneath her right jaw, were still there at Dumbledore's funeral and she hated that. For the first week of summer break, she didn't get out of bed if she didn't have to. Thank god there's a war to fight, she hated herself for thinking, or I might never get up again. In the second week, she got up and began to do exactly that...

A/N: Eek! I think this will be about three chapters, but you tell me what you think!