He watched her from his dark corner where he could not be seen. Hidden in the curved shadows, the desire raging in his eyes was hidden from the world...but not from her. No, to her his emotions were written across his iron mask like a broadcast.
So he watched her from this distance, and pretended that the distance divided them. But it didn't. Because he, Draco Malfoy, was so damn wrapped up in her no distance could ever divide them.
He couldn't remember their first kiss, not really. He'd fallen on top of her near the lake on the run from Fred and George Weasley back in second year; the one time since the Chamber had opened that he'd stepped out without Crabbe and Goyle at his back and the twins had pounced on him. Tangled in a mess of now muddy robes, flying parchment, sweet-smelling brown curls and furious, scratching nails at the bottom of the lake edge, a slope hidden by a strand of trees, he'd done the only thing he could think of to shut her up.
From the first blurred, strange moment that he pressed his mouth to hers, he forgot everything. His name, his house, his father's sneering face and the brand being shoved in his face at every given opportunity, the same words repeated; this is your destiny! There was only this body beneath him, fighting him, then going still with shock and yanking away. They stared at each other; wide brown eyes, the flames of rage put out by shock and the icy touch of his lips, meeting cold grey orbs full of confusion and helpless want.
Then the moment, the one clear memory he would have of these foggy minutes; the way, then, that her pert pink tongue had darted out to moisten her lips as she dragged her plump bottom lip through her teeth. He knew she could taste him there, on her sweet bottom lip as her sharp white teeth caressed it hard. Then he was kissing her again, a blazing inferno exploding in his chest that he was really too young to understand. It should have been the awkward, mostly slimy embraces he'd snuck with Slytherin girls. He should have looked back on it in utter horror.
But he didn't.
Because she kissed him back. Soft, hesitating contact of lips, moving across one another chastely until he flicked out his tongue to taste her plump bottom lip and she gasped, letting him pull in into his mouth, making her shudder.
"Hermione-" he gasped unthinkingly, without meaning to, breaking the spell, shattering it like a mirror on stone. They looked at each other and cursed in unison, rolling and tumbling to their feet. Somewhere in the distance he heard Fred (or George) shout out to their friend Lee. She looked over her shoulder towards the sound, and then whirled to face him again. Her tangled hair was splayed around her face as she spun, her eyes glowing in the dim grey light of the corpse. Uselessly, his mouth opened and closed soundlessly, and then he turned and headed out of the corpse, stumbling into the sunlight and striding back towards the castle, head spinning sickeningly.
Neither of them realised that at the moment he turned away and disappeared, they were both thinking exactly the same thing;
What in the name of Merlin's saggy arse just happened?
It should have been so, so simple. He'd meant it to be the last time; surely, feeling her give in to his kiss, their hearts thudding fast both from this tidal wave of desire and from the overwhelming fear of being caught.
"If you breathe a word..." she trailed of, threat in the hand under her robes on her wand, in the new blazing embers in her honey brown eyes. He'd been distracted by the rapid rise and fall of her pert body between him and the rough wall behind her, by the delicious red swelling of her lips and had looked up sharply at her words. Of course, she would remember first who they were and what it was that they were doing and the implications of those two factors together.
He'd be disinherited probably. Never mind that, he'd never be able to stand up to the boys and girls whose families were twenty generations of pure bloods and in that automatically detested Muggle-borns, Blood Traitors and anyone else who didn't fit into the cookie cutter mould of a Pure Blood wizard family.
Hermione...she'd never be able to look Harry or Ron in the face again. They'd hate her guts for this betrayal. Especially Ron. Her reputation would, without a doubt, soar to new heights as the girl who'd seduced Draco Malfoy, while Draco's would plummet as the Pure Blood who kissed a Muggle-born Mudblood Gryffindor, but she was in no way ready to sacrifice that for her friends.
It hadn't been enough just to kiss her. He wanted to possess her, make her shatter so he could put the pieces back together in a new way; he wanted to break the perfect Gryffindor Princess just to see how she would.
So why wasn't it that simple? Why did it have to be so hard to watch her laughing and talking and arguing her way through their classes, her hand stuck straight in the air as she fought to prove herself to Snape, Flitwick, whoever it happened to be. Why wasn't it something he could brush off when word came she had been petrified by the basilisk? Why had he tossed and turned and had nightmares about the moment she had turned to cold grey stone?
And what in Merlin's name possessed him to sneak out of his bed in the middle of the night and sit by her bedside in the infirmary, just staring at her? It happened too fast; the focus of his thoughts had started out lustful, red hot fantasies about nude skin and warm sweat on satin sheets. Now he saw her laugh, the way her eyes changed their shade of brown when she was mad or excited or deep in thought.
He'd almost, shyly, come to the decision to say something when, if, she awoke he would tell her. On his second venture into the infirmary, he'd actually kissed her; a strange, instinctive, vulnerable gesture of a prince trying to awaken his princess. It was her fault he'd hated her again; she didn't have to sprint down the middle of the dining room like her life depended on reaching him, didn't have to throw her arms around his neck like he was her only life ring in a stormy ocean.
Potter!
She didn't look at him once. So he'd tried desperately to hate her. He'd lost his virginity on the break, in his own mind a vicious stab at Hermione Mudblood Granger. The venture had not been as successful as he'd wanted it to be, however. The sex had been great; the seeds of guilt that he couldn't shake were not. They weren't together, he owed her nothing, so why did he feel like he'd swallowed a Quaffle? To add insult to injury, the frizzy haired bitch didn't even know what she was doing to him!
He didn't know she cried when she saw him on the train, the Slytherin girl that Pansy glared and snarled at hanging on his arm. He didn't know she had to block it out, block him out, or the pain would kill her.
So she retreated behind an indifferent mask and an ever present book. He slunk to hide behind his new found sexuality and his icy demeanour.
