And here is the heavily anticipated chapter seven. Excuse it for being so short - I haven't had much time to write. However, I think this is one of my best chapters yet so REVIEW!

A/N: I will be responding to all questions and reviews in the REVIEW AREA. So if you guys have any suggestions or questions you want personally answered, I'll do my best. Also, since I have no beta I've noticed I make a couple grammatical errors here and there; excuse them.

Disclaimer: Everyone and everything (save my plot bunny) belongs to JKR.


Draco listened, listened to the melodious breathing of the woman next to him. Though he could not tear his brooding grey eyes off his bedroom's trellised panes and detailed carvings of the ceiling, Malfoy simply listened. He was unsure as to what he hoped to achieve from her deep sighs and murmurs, but nevertheless he was stilled by her sounds.

Draco laughed crudely to himself; did he truly think he could forget Hermione's large, luminous, liquid brown eyes and pallid rosy lips with a phenomenal meaningless shag? Did he think he'd forget her delicately curved nose, or soft pink-tinted cheeks from such a hollow act? Did he truly hate her wild gossamer-like silken hair, or did he yearn to run his long slender fingers through her soft curls and inhale the scent of books and lavender? A lowly sigh escaped his lips and Gissel stirred.

Draco lowered his eyes and stared into the edon blackness of the floors. All he could see, smell, was Hermione Granger. She was a fine tangled web-work in his cavernous mind; she was exhilaration. Draco cracked his knuckles, infuriated.

She is nothing but a fucking mudblood, dirty filthy scum.

His heart beat viciously against his chest. Whatever half-pleasurable thought Draco hoped to receive from that lackluster declaration wasted to naught. He was still existent in this vivid force of the sensations known as Hermione Jean Granger. Draco felt himself tremble with trepidation.

He couldn't understand what made her so addicting to him. She wasn't exotic like Gissel or regal like his mother, yet she carried an air of confidence and beauty so unlike any woman he'd ever met. She wouldn't be a woman that shagged him for his wealth, nor someone who fucked him for her own personal hands-on experience with the proclaimed 'Slytherin Sex God'.

He ran his fingers through his white-blonde hair. He knew she would not be infatuated with the likes of a Malfoy, the poor cowardly fool that taunted her with his spiteful words all throughout her high school years. She would never bring herself to kiss the lips of a now-changed enigmatic fellow who irked her to no end. Lo, how could Hermione – that sickly beauteous Circe – ever think of him the way he fantasized of her.

All Draco could see was red. Blood dripping, lip-staining rouge. This deplorable folly was eating away at his soul, the only part of him he desired to save. These many solemn hours spent obsessing over Hermione had gotten nowhere, just to the point of Malfoy's cataleptical insanity.

He was a beast; what with his ghostly pallor of the skin and hair of web-like softness and tenuity - his mind a labyrinth, himself a mystery. He'd killed mercilessly, he'd hated purblindly and irrationally. There was nothing worth keeping except his leaden- hued heart that beat only for one magnificent creature.

Draco arose from the sweaty sheets and stood facing the wall, lost in feeble gleams of encrimsoned light dancing on the rich green of his walls. He turned and tried to savor the sight of Gissel's naked form. She was innocent, and Draco knew he shouldn't have brought her to his bed. Gissel was too much of a child, too naïve to entangle herself in the depths of his dark mind.

He quietly left the room, ignoring the whispers and sneers of his ancestor's portraits. There was only one place he wished to go – one place he wished to remain isolated in thought.

Through maze of the Malfoy Manor, Draco finally reached his father's personal library. His fingers quivered against the handle; he could already feel the dark magic and sinful sentiments pervading his soul.

To forget her.

And with that simple phrase, Draco pushed open the door. He felt nothing but the chilling shadowy air encircle him and pull him inside. This was his home, his place. This library was the only thing embodying Draco: pure perpetual darkness.

He closed his eyes again, listening. He could hear the low hum of the ancient books whispering his name in a trance-like call. He let himself leave all coherent thoughts and let the malevolent permeate his soul. It was already within him, now latent, but the dark magic around him could arouse a man so different to this emotionally troubled Malfoy.

Memories of the war deluged Draco, causing him to stumble under the psychological burden. The image of Voldemort's supercilious across-the-table deride was etched in his mind, and he felt the cool touch of Aunt Bella's wand against his trembling cheek.

His knees sunk to the floor as her face appeared. Her contorted unnaturally twisted body appeared in his mind, her then unruly hair whipping against her own body. Her piercing screams and sobs from Bellatrix's Crucio were too much for Malfoy to handle. He felt himself rising at the sounds of her lithe bones snapping. He staggered towards the wall, this time the impermeable cinder stones of his father's library.

He remembered her deathly pale face and chapped white lips; how hollow and sorry he'd felt when the tortured seventeen-year-old Hermione caught his eyes and pleaded. And what had he done? He'd turned away, shamefully turned away from the woman that now consumed his every fiber. All he felt next was the cool rush of release and blackness as the bones in his hand crunched painfully against the brick wall.


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