impossibility
He wanted her. But she was an impossibility.
He woke to a sweet stickiness hanging in the air.
The sheets were so comfortably soft, the bed so entirely welcoming, that he was in the process of rolling over on the mattress when his elbow bumped into something warm and smooth.
An ingrained instinct; he shot up from the bed, hand flying to the pocket where he always kept his wand.
It wasn't there.
And neither were his trousers.
His head automatically inclined towards the mattress and, with a jolt, he registered the small, feminine form slumbering peacefully under the sheets.
Oh.
He filled his lungs with sky.
Memories flooded through him, sharp and piercing.
He could hear her breath, a quick succession of gasps mingled in with the rising and falling of her chest. He could feel her hands on his skin, stroking him as though he were made of velvet. He could feel her hair, tangled in an amber wave between his fingers...
No.
It was a mistake, all a mistake. He had been wrong to delude himself into thinking that last night was justifiable. Wrong to allow her to believe that their relationship would work out. Wrong to allow her to believe that their relationship could work out. Wrong to allow himself to forget - to forget who he was even for a single night. Wrong to put her into this sort of danger...
Except that he was the connection to the danger.
He needed to leave.
He hurried to get dressed, buttoning his trousers and pulling a shirt over his head, movements quick, practiced, precise. He grabbed his wand and had just stepped into his robes when -
"Stay."
He stopped.
He froze.
Her whispered words flitted through the air. They hung there patiently, freezing him in place, waiting for his reply. They folded their legs and settled in his lap. Heavy.
He turned slowly, and there she was, laying on the mattress, hair dishevelled, eyes a light sheen of amber, a feverish flush still in her cheeks. One hand was open, palm up, stretched towards him. Beseeching.
He closed his eyes, the breath shuddering out of his lungs, the yearning filling his body, present in everything from his toes to his fingertips to the planes of his back. The yearning sat in his torso and refused to let go, refused to unclench its grip in an iron fist around his heart. It settled down and made itself welcome. It promised him that it wasn't going away, whether now or sooner or later or ever.
He wanted her. He wanted her, and not simply because of the memory of last night, of her body moving so clumsily, yet so perfectly, against his. Her fingers tracing a pathway up the middle of his spine. Her hair tangled between his hands. Her breath as it shuddered into and out of her. Her eyes as they burned into his own.
No, he didn't want her for the mere reason of feeling her skin, her body, against his. He wanted her, wanted to be the first thing she saw in the morning, wanted to be the first person she thought of the minute her mind wandered from the inconsequential burdens of her every day, wanted to be the first one she turned to when the tears were streaming down her face, wanted to be the only one she ever thought about during the day or dreamt about at night.
But it was an impossibility.
She was an impossibility.
And she was still there, still looking at him, still gazing at his face with that unreadable expression in her eyes.
"I..." he began, and the words startled him. They were uncertain. They were louder than he'd thought they would be. They hung there, in the air between them, in the very air that could be snapped in half from all the tension that was contained within it. He exhaled.
"I can't," he said, and he saw himself saying the words, as though he were watching from above. The two of them were a play, and he was the audience. The words were a whisper, insignificant in the volume they carried. Offstage, someone yelled, Louder! and he turned away.
"I can't," he repeated, closing his eyes so he didn't need to gauge her expression any longer. He thought of the ugly black mark on his arm and hated it, loathed it for what it meant. And it meant that Voldemort could swoop down on her, at any given second, if only he would raise a forefinger and touch the skull seared across his skin. It meant that Death Eaters could be upon them in less than a minute, if only he would close his eyes, unclench his fist, stroke the mark, and summon them.
It meant that he was putting her in danger.
I'm sorry, he wanted to say, but he had never said the words in his life and they didn't come to him now. They were born on his breath, and died at his lips. The corpse dropped from his mouth. It curled up, yellowing, ashamed of the weight it carried. Heavy.
He closed his eyes as he felt a familiar burning on his forearm, and wished with all his being that, for once in his life, he need not answer it. Yes, he was a wizard, but he could not simply take out his wand, wave it, and make everything better. The Muggles, as usual, had gotten it wrong.
I'm sorry. He tried again, but the words refused to come. They curled up and hid, hid in the corner of his mouth. He couldn't search for them. He couldn't call them out. Maybe he didn't want to.
He turned and locked his gaze with Hermione's.
Her eyes had never dropped from his own.
They held him there, suspended in midair. They refused to let go. They told him that, if he wished it, he could put down the front he was holding up. He could knock down the walls, the walls with bricks that scraped the heavens – the walls that had nearly been torn down the night before. He could lie back down, and stay with her. He could never let go.
He yearned for her to pull words from thin air, to say exactly the right syllables to make him stay - to have, as usual, the right answers – the right solutions – to everything - but they didn't come and he didn't know what they would have been anyway.
He yearned for her to beg, to plead for him to stay; to give him some, one, single, justifiable reason to remain with her here, among the warm sheets and twisted symphony of forever.
But he knew that she would not beg.
He knew that they would never work, and something in her expression told him that she knew it, too. They would not, could not, ever work out, no matter how hard they tried. They would always end up in the same place, at the same crossroad. They would always travel around the same circular path, each and every single time they tried. And that was the path he was standing on now.
He stayed still for a second, frozen in place, wanting to remember the image of her lying there, eyes burning, eyes yearning, to sear it into his memory. To brand it into his mind. Before the curtains closed. Before it was over. Before he ruined it all.
The Mark burned.
He drew a deep breath and, with one last look, Draco turned on his heel and Disapparated.