Edited 10/11/15

9. Dreaming I'm Alive

I'm breaking out
Last chance to lose control
It's holding me, morphing me
And forcing me to strive
To be endlessly cold within
And dreaming I'm alive
'cause I want it now
I want it now
Give me your heart and your soul

[Hysteria, Muse]

It had all begun so well. Hermione struggled down the steps into the cellar, a heavy bag in each hand, yawning. The left was heavier than the right; it was stuffed with books, and the right-hand bag had some board games and the like mixed in with a few more books. Draco looked up from the bed he spent most of his time on as she clattered noisily down. He sat up on the edge of the bed and looked at her with mild curiosity.

"What are those?" he asked suspiciously and Hermione rolled her eyes and struggled down the last few stairs, plonking the bags down with a sigh. She was bone-weary, having sat up half the night waiting for Ron to return; he had been out on a mission to capture or kill a confirmed Death Eater sympathiser. Ron had returned in one piece, his target eliminated, not captured. Hermione didn't think he had even tried to take the sympathiser alive, although she would never - could never - ask Ron that. The growing hardness in his eyes was starting to scare Hermione, and even after his return at one am she had lain awake another three hours, worrying.

"Such gratitude, Draco." It still felt a little strange calling him that out loud, but since she'd started, just over a week ago now, she had thought it seem odd to stop. He alternated between Granger and Hermione easily - Granger mostly when he was annoyed or distant or miserable, and Hermione when he...when he really, really wasn't.

"I'm not going to be grateful until I know what's in them, am I?" Draco had definitely seemed to be growing less miserable over the past few days; Hermione had been pleased to note. Project CHUM was proceeding more-or-less as planned. Unfortunately, less-unhappy Draco seemed to be very similar to obnoxious-git Draco sometimes, but without the venom. Thank Merlin for that, at least - he might be irritating but so far, never nasty. It had almost become a little game between them; snarking and snipping lightly at each other. Hermione smiled at him and waved at the bag at her right.

"Books," she announced, and then dramatically indicated the bag on the left. "More books, and other fun things." Draco stood and canted his head to one side.

"I assume I can thank you for the shower I was privileged to get put in down here last night?" He jerked his head over at the corner where the magically installed loo was, and Hermione saw the walled off area had increased slightly in size.

"I asked Harry to put it in, yes, but I think he was going to arrange it anyway." He probably wouldn't have thought of providing Draco with a shower, but Hermione wasn't going to tell Draco that. Not that he believed her story, one eyebrow cocking and a tiny smirk sparking briefly on his face, apparently amused by her loyalty to her best friend.

"Well... Thank you, Hermione. I ah, appreciate it." He ducked his head as he thanked her, and pity shuffled through her for a moment. She wondered if it still bothered him that much, having to be grateful to people, or whether he was getting used to it - getting over his stubborn, Malfoy pride.

"It was as much for my benefit as for yours. I must say, you smell far more pleasant today." Draco laughed sharply and then flashed her a trademark smirk.

"Smelling me now, are we Granger? Well, I can't blame you. I'm exceedingly smell-able." Hermione blushed furiously, and her sleep-deprived brain failed to come up with a sarcastic comeback.

"Come on then, see what I've got you!" she ordered faux-brightly, and with a wave of her wand, deposited both bags on his bed. He lifted out a book and read the spine aloud.

"Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie." He looked up at her. "Muggle books, Granger?" Hermione folded her arms and glared at him. Was it the lingering remnants of his bigotry that made his brows scrunch together and his lips form a sneer? Or just suspicion towards something he was unfamiliar with? Their interactions were still unsettled and uneasy despite the not inconsiderable amount of time they had spent together over the past week, and Hermione didn't like it. She liked to know where she stood with a person, and now that she had made Draco Malfoy her Project with a capital P, she would like to know what he really thought of her. She would like to be reassured that his blood purity bigotry really was a thing of the past.

What felt like several hundred games of exploding snap and watching someone eat self-consciously while you sat and watched from lack of else to do, along with conversations that had to be tread exhaustingly carefully through - minefields of past emotional trauma and negative history - could only tell you so much about a person.

"They're my books, Draco. Obviously they're going to be Muggle books. The only wizarding books I have are textbooks and one fiction book Ginny gave me for a joke that I don't think you'd be interested in." Draco pulled out Stranger in a Strange Land and examined it closely, eyes skimming over the blurb on the back.

"What's this book that you think I wouldn't want to read? How do you know -"

"It's called Dusk, and it's about a powerful handsome wizard who falls in love with a clumsy, bland Muggle girl. The very concept would make you vomit. It might be romantic, in a sort of stereotypical way, except there's no..." Hermione blushed, abruptly remembering that she was talking to Draco. He was smirking slightly and gesturing for her to continue.

"No, um...juicy bits," she finished with her face burning, and ripped the second bag open.

"Oh look, new board games!" she said, waving Ludo around wildly.

"You like the juicy bits, do you, Granger?" He didn't let it drop; pulled out another book, Rule, Britannia and putting it aside after a brief glance, continued. "What a surprise. The studious bookworm, an avid reader of romance, with all the juicy bits." Hermione frowned and sat on the end of his bed, legs crossed, dragging the games she had brought him out of the bag.

"Do you always have to be such an annoying git, Malfoy? I don't have to be down here, you know? I could be up with people I like, but instead I choose to be down here with you. Would it really be that difficult to appreciate that fact?" she snapped sharply without thinking, tiredness getting the best of her, and there was a long silence. She looked up, and saw Draco holding The Earthsea Quartet - one of Hermione's favourite childhood books - very tightly in one hand and staring at her, somehow incorporating both anxiety and resentment into his expression. She swore inwardly and apologised. "I didn't mean..." His face closed off, blanking.

"Of course you didn't," he said simply, carefully emotionless. There was a brief uncomfortable silence, Hermione filling it in by unpacking all of the Muggle board games she had gone off with an eager Mr Weasley to purchase. He had been full of excited babble about Muggle toys, and examined everything in the shop, and they had ended up buying twice as many games as Hermione had put down on the list. At least. She had brought down Scrabble, Ludo, Rummikub, The Game of Knowledge, and one Hermione thought Draco might actually enjoy; Risk. The other games had been usurped by Mr Weasley for now, who along with Ron, Fred, George and Tonks, were being taught Monopoly at this very moment by an extremely patient Harry.

"What's this one like?" Draco held up a book and Hermione smiled to herself; it was Snuff by Terry Pratchett. How fitting that he would choose that particular book.

"It's a Muggle story about a magical world. Except...that's not really what it's about. It's..." Hermione couldn't think of how to describe it and do it justice, but she thought maybe it would do Draco some good to read it, so she just shrugged. "I thought it was amazing." Draco idly turned it over and over in his hands.

"I'll have a look I suppose, but somehow I doubt I'm going to find a Muggle book amazing." He inflected the word Muggle with an impressive amount of dismissive contempt, and Hermione flinched. She hated it when Draco said the word that way, which was more often than she thought he even realised. She wished he'd stop. Hermione unfolded a bent corner on the cover of The Lord of the Rings and smoothed her thumb over the wrinkle it had made. She wished she hadn't brought him the bloody books now. She had only been trying to be nice. Project CHUM suddenly seemed like such a stupid, pointless idea, and a stupid pointless name, and she wondered why she had bothered with any of it.

"Why do you do that, Draco?" she asked quietly and he drew in a short breath.

"I'm sorry?" he tried hopefully to placate her, throwing out a meaningless apology, and Hermione shook her head, looking up at Draco.

"That's not what I asked for. I don't want you apologies. I want to know why you always do that." She looked back down at the book. "I would have thought that after everything... That you didn't think that way anymore. You told me you didn't. You told your mother so."

"I said that I didn't know what I believed, except that I didn't think Muggles and mudbl-" He cut himself off but it was too late.

"Mudblood! Just say the damned word, Draco - you obviously still believe it!" Hermione threw Lord of the Rings down and scrambled off his bed, anger suddenly sweeping through her. That word, that fucking word. She had heard it from his lips so many times before, but it had never stung the way it did now. Draco clenched his jaw.

"I don't think Muggle-borns and Muggles deserve to be tortured and killed. I didn't say anything about liking them," he finished coolly and his controlled demeanour just irritated Hermione even further.

"You don't get to say Muggle-born and think mudblood, Draco," she hissed at him. "It's one or the other. You can't just hide your bigotry behind polite facades and make pretend you're a good person just because you aren't killing people!" He stared at her with a stony face.

"It's how I was raised, Granger. It's not a choice I made. It's what I was taught to believe from the moment I was born. It was beaten into my head every minute of every bloody day. I think not wanting to kill Muggle-borns and Muggles is a good first step." He glared at her. "I'm working on the rest, I really am. But for fuck's sake, Granger, cut me some slack."

"Why the hell should I, Malfoy?"

"I told you, I'm trying. But I don't have to bloody like Muggle-borns and Muggles - it's not fucking illegal to dislike people!"

"Oh fuck you, Malfoy! You horrible, ungrateful...horrible person!"

"What the fuck is your problem, Granger?" They were both yelling, and he was on his feet now, glaring down at her.

"I'm a Muggle-born, you arrogant, thoughtless wanker, or hadn't you remembered that?" From the sudden startled look on his aristocratic features, no, he hadn't. He had actually bloody forgotten. Somewhere between the Manor and now, he had stopped seeing her as mudblood and started seeing her as a person. He had forgotten. Well lucky him. Hermione fumed, furious and hurt beyond all reason. She couldn't forget. Couldn't ever forget. Her fingers began to scratch unconsciously at her left forearm, every muscle in her body starting to tremble like a wire drawn taut and plucked. Draco worried at his lip, expression turned sincerely contrite now.

"It's not the same with you anymore, Granger. You're...I don't dislike you. At all. It's not the same." The words were reluctantly said and Hermione knew they were true because of that - and because of the genuine remorse written on his face. But he was wrong. He was fucking wrong.

"It is the same. I'm a mudblood, the same as any other," she retorted fiercely, eyes tearing up, and Draco shook his head.

"No you're not." There was puzzlement on his face as he stared at her, at the tears streaming down her anger-reddened cheeks. He didn't understand why she was so angry, so upset. He wasn't ever going to understand.

"I am!" Hermione shouted at him, tears warping her vision. She hated him right now. Hated him. Draco Malfoy might not be a Death Eater anymore, but that didn't mean he was a nice, thoughtful compassionate person. And that realisation; so obvious and yet she had somehow missed it - stupid, how stupid of her - made her stomach wrench.

Muggles and Muggle-borns were still a lesser class to him, and Hermione didn't give a fuck how he'd been raised, it was a choice. It was. Or she would still despise him. Would never have given him a chance and felt sorry for him and been nice to him. But she had chosen to give him a chance. But when it came down to it, Draco still thought he was better than Muggle-borns just because of his blood. Except, apparently Hermione wasn't lesser in his eyes anymore, because he thought she was different. But she wasn't different; he had just fooled himself into believing she was because she had been nice to him. Tears bathed her cheeks and her chest burnt. Draco's hand touched her wrist gingerly and she jerked her arm away. He sighed.

"Hermione. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I shouldn't think words like mudblood. I know that." Draco's voice broke through her internal rantings and she stared at him wide-eyed as he said: "It was just a bloody book, Hermione." Just a bloody book. Just a bloody book. She unzipped her jersey in silence and shrugged it to the floor.

"What are you...?" Hermione ignored Draco's unfinished query, fingers fumbling with the buttons on her shirt. "Hermione?" His hand tried to stay hers, to stop her from pulling her shirt open, and she pushed it away. "Hermione, for Merlin's sake, what the hell are you doing?"

"Shut up, Malfoy," Hermione ground out and backed out of his reach, tearing quick and frantic at her shirt. Draco didn't follow her and try to stop her from stripping off her top again, but he did glue his eyes to the ground at his feet. Stupid fucking boy. What did he think she was doing?

"Look at me." She was in jeans and a white cotton bra like the one she had worn that day at the Manor, and she wanted to cross her arms over her chest but she didn't.

"Put your damn clothes back on, Hermione. I don't know what the fuck kind of game you're playing, but I'm not having it." He sounded like he thought she had gone mad, and Hermione supposed she couldn't blame him, really.

"I'm not playing any game, Draco." The anger ran out of Hermione's voice and it cracked as she spoke. "Please, just look at me." Draco lifted his head reluctantly and swept his hair back off his face, his guarded stare fixing on her in the soft light. She watched as his grey eyes widened and a strange, sharp hurt blossomed to life in them.

"This is what I am, Draco." Hermione's eyes met his unflinchingly. "This is what I see every morning and every night. So don't tell me I'm not a mudblood."

She took a few steps towards him, and he stood silent and still, his gaze dropping to her chest, her stomach. The words scrawled there by his Aunt Bellatrix's cursed blade. She saw him gulp. Hermione stepped closer and stretched out her arm to him so he could see the word scrawled on it, wanting to hurt him. "Read them."

Draco shook his head.

"Read them!"

"No!"

"Fine, I'll do it." Hermione glared defiantly at him, pointing to each one as she said it aloud, not even having to look to find each slur, knowing their precise locations by heart. "Mudblood. Whore. Slut. Mudblood. Mudblood." Hermione's jaw felt like it was ratcheting tighter and tighter with each word that she ground out, and Draco flinched like she had struck him. She stared at him, eyes hard.

"If Muggle-borns are just dirty mudbloods, then I'm a mudblood." She paused. Took his hand, and Draco didn't resist; he let Hermione place it flat over the small, scrawled mudblood that marred her chest. His hand spread warm over her scarred skin just above the swells of her breasts, and she held his hand pressed firm to her skin, sending warmth radiating through her. Hermione leaned forward.

"There aren't any exceptions, Draco," she whispered harsh and broken in his ear. "So what does that make me?"

"You aren't a mudblood," Draco said it without pause, and then added. "No exceptions." Tears sprang back into Hermione's eyes and she bit her lip, trying to stifle the sobs she knew were coming. She felt like she was splitting in two, and her exhausted mind couldn't contain her emotions. Draco's hand was still flat on her chest, but when she started crying in earnest, he moved it. Both his arms encircled her, and with vague shock she felt his lips press warm and soft on her forehead as he drew her close.

"Shush. It's okay, Granger. Hermione. Hermione. It's okay." His voice was shockingly gentle.

"No it's not," she sobbed. "Nothing's okay." The war, the scars that traced Hermione's skin, Harry's tired eyes, Ron's hard ruthlessness - Draco's hand. None of that was okay. It was all horrible and wrong and Hermione just wanted it to be over. But it never would be, because every single fucking day of the rest of her life, she would wake up and see mudblood carved into her flesh. Hermione's hands scrabbled and grabbed fistfuls of Draco's shirtfront, her face ended up buried into his chest, and he held her tightly and shushed her as she cried. Rubbed her back firm and soothing. Pressed his lips on top of her head - not quite a kiss, just pressure, his breath hot on her scalp. She didn't care that he was Draco Malfoy, ex-Death Eater and obnoxious arsehole. He was here. They stood there clinging to each other for Merlin knew how long, until Hermione's sobs finally began ebb away.

She could hear what Draco was murmuring now that she wasn't sobbing and sniffling noisily, and she just listened for a moment, her cheek and ear squashed against the thin fabric of the long-sleeved Muggle tee shirt she had bought him just a few days ago. Dark grey, of course. His chest reverberated under Hermione's ear and she sighed softly, his low words out of step with the steady lub-dub of his heart.

"You're not a mudblood, Hermione. You're the finest bloody witch our age that I know, and I've always thought so, much as it used to pain me to admit it even to myself. You're determined and talented and clever, and fucking annoying as hell. And to be brutally honest with myself, if you weren't here now I don't know what I'd do. Commit ritual suicide, maybe." He laughed, short and choked. "Merlin. I'm sorry. For all of it. You're not a mudblood. I'm so sorry, Hermione."

It was surreal, listening to Draco Malfoy speak to her so softly, so casually kindly, in that familiar voice which not so very long ago would have only held sneering contempt for her. It was like Hermione was in a dream, and the whole world had been upended. Her mind skittered. She didn't dislike him at all. Not at all. Hermione twisted her face away from his warm, hard chest and pushed it up, and her mouth landed clumsily, hard, against his. Draco's hand froze on her back. His lips were soft and warm and dry - and motionless with shock on hers. And then he groaned and spoke a muffled fuck against her lips and kissed her.

It was exactly how Hermione had always imagined he would kiss - not that she had imagined...well, maybe once or twice a long time ago - and then she stopped thinking coherently. Draco's lips were insistent and his mouth so hot and wet, his tongue flicking teasingly at hers and making her moan and quiver. He kissed like ice so cold that it burnt, and when you touched it with your tongue you couldn't pull away without your skin tearing. Hermione never wanted to stop kissing him - she couldn't. He kissed like he wanted to crawl inside her skin, not satisfied with fleeting touches but wanting to clash together until they both bled from the pleasure of it. She wanted that oh god she wanted it.

Draco kissed with skill and intent and he sucked on her bottom lip and her clit throbbed and her pelvis rocked out against his thigh and her nipples begged to be touched - squeezed and pinched and stroked ever so lightly. Hermione latched onto the tip of his tongue in mimicry of sucking his cock, and his fingers spasmed and dug into the soft skin between her shoulder blades and pinned her against him. Draco moaned, low and quiet, and the desperate hunger in the sound made Hermione's knees go weak and she leaned against him, his thin, hard body steadying her, his erection pressing into her lower belly through their clothes.

Draco wrenched his mouth away from hers, and his mouth, wet and starving, kissed a sucking trail along her jaw, down her neck. Hermione's head fell back and she whimpered, body aching for him, her want seeping from every pore, swimming in her head. And then Draco's lips landed on the word Bellatrix had etched into Hermione's chest, and a shock of wrong and no, not there dragged her out of that delicious, mindless daze, and Hermione came back to herself jarringly. She was wrapped in Draco Malfoy's embrace, her shirt on the floor and his arms possessive, one hand splayed greedy on the naked skin of her back, his mouth kissing her scars like his soft lips and wet hot tongue could heal them. Hermione's world staggered and lurched.

Hermione released her grip on Draco's shirt, pushed against him hard. For a second his arms tightened around her and he pressed another intent kiss on her scarred flesh, and then he let her go with a small, abject sigh of loss. She stumbled back searching the floor frantically for her shirt, and upon seeing it snatched it up and began hurriedly dragging it back on. She couldn't look up at him, her face red as a lobster and tear streaked, hair straggling down from its neat bun, lips tender from their frantic snogging. She knew she looked dreadful. And her treacherous brain was asking her slyly, over and over again, what was that, Hermione? What was that?

There was a thrill in Hermione's stomach and her breath was coming short and shallow. Her nipples tingled inside her cotton bra and her lips felt dry. She had wanted him so badly. In fact, she still did, right this very moment. It was a feeling that repulsed and terrified her even as it set off hard, throbbing shocks between her legs.

"Hermione..." She looked up at Draco. He was staring at her with parted lips and a look of faint surprise on his face; pale and pointed, with that full mouth that was parted with desire and those eyes that shifted from stone to silver depending on his mood, and right now they were quicksilver and she could have lost herself in them.

"I didn't mean..." Hermione gasped through lips that felt numb and she knew her eyes were round and stunned.

"What?" he asked dazedly.

"I didn't... I..." She backed up a step and nearly tripped over her discarded and forgotten jersey as it tangled in her heels.

"What?" he asked dazedly again sounding like a broken record, and Hermione would have laughed if her brain hadn't already imploded. Draco's fingers went to his lips and touched them lightly, and then he drew them away, stared at them puzzled and then back up at her. "What was th-" he started to ask, and Hermione shook her head frantically.

"Nothing. Nothing," she denied breathlessly, as she panicked and turned and ran. Up the stairs drawing her wand and slurring a frantic alohamora through Draco-kissed lips, scrambling out into the bright light of the dining room and turning and shoving the trapdoor closed with a bang behind her. Hermione froze, a gasping, tousled mess, shirt half-unbuttoned and eyes wild, and looked around the room. A breath whooshed out of her as with excruciating relief she saw the room was empty. There was no one to see her like this.

"Oh god," she touched her mouth just as Draco had touched his.

"Oh god," she murmured again dizzily. Hermione's breath felt stuck in her chest and her clit ached with lingering pulses of desire, and she felt like throwing up, mind swirling and blanked with panicked shock. What the bloody hell had she just done? Nothing. She told herself as she buttoned her shirt properly with clumsy, fumbling fingers and smoothed and retied her hair. Nothing. She told herself as she made herself walk - walk, not run - slowly upstairs to her room. Nothing. She repeated as she stripped off all but her knickers and curled up in bed under the blankets, shutting her eyes but unable to shut out the memory.

It didn't mean anything. It had been a mistake. Hermione had been an emotional wreck, not thinking clearly. She hadn't meant it. Draco had just reacted, like any teenager would. It didn't mean anything. Nothing. Hermione rolled into a tight ball under her blankets, and tried to pretend it hadn't happened.

Draco stared at the empty stairs, echoing soundlessly with the frantic, panicked thud of Hermione's steps. Stared long after the trapdoor had boomed shut in the wake of her desperate flight. He stood and stared but didn't see, because his mind was picturing again what had happened, and his lips were burning hot with the memory of her skin. Her jersey lay on the floor in a crumpled pile and he picked it up, soft wool in his hand. He didn't know what to think. He knew what he felt, but he didn't know if he should be feeling it. He thought he probably shouldn't.

Draco sat down weakly on the edge of his bed and folded the jersey neatly, just to give his hand something to do. It wanted to plunge into Hermione Granger's long, dark, wild hair and tangle and pull; he wanted to grasp the naked swell of her hip, cup the heavy weight of her breasts, trace the jut of her jaw and the shape of her lips. Her jersey was soft and the warmth of her body still lingered on it. He hadn't expected that. Draco would never have expected that. But oh, Merlin, he had fucking enjoyed it. Kissing Hermione Granger. A shocked smile curved his mouth and he shook his head in slow disbelief. Once upon a time the thought of kissing her would have disgusted him - know-it-all, mudblood, Granger. With buckteeth and a butter-wouldn't-melt-in-her-mouth prim and proper attitude. Things had changed.

Draco smoothed his hand over the jersey in his lap. Did he care that she was a Muggle-born anymore? He had left the Dark Lord, defected; that part of his life was gone now, so... In for a knut in for a galleon - he thought, eyes glazed on the wheat-gold of her jersey, remembering the taste of her. He admitted silently to himself that kissing Hermione had been like the rich, throaty burn of well-aged firewhiskey, or the feel of Sylph-woven silk sheets on his cheek. He had no fucking clue what to do with that realisation though. Hermione Granger.

She had kissed him, so frantic and urgent and he had wondered for just a second if she had gone mad, if she was too upset to be in her right mind, but then there were her lips pressing against his warm and pleading and he hadn't cared. He had thrown caution to the bloody winds and done exactly what a tiny part of him that he had tried to ignore had wanted to do for days now; kissed Hermione fucking Granger.

Maybe it was just that she was the only person around. Maybe it was because she was nice to him when everyone else despised him. She spent time with him so that he wouldn't be alone. But Draco thought it might be more than that. Her intelligence, her kindness, her pretty brown eyes, and undeniably fit body; the way she put up with him when he was being a miserable, snarky prat. Her fucking annoying mannerisms, her incessant cheerfulness when he was feeling miserable, the unwanted compassion in those warm brown eyes, her damned virtuousness; Draco liked all of it. Even the bloody annoying bits. Fuck. He wasn't sure what that meant, except that kissing her had made him forget everything else, everything bad and awful and terrible that had happened was gone; it had been only her and wanting to pleasure her, wanting to be inside her, wanting to devour her.

Hermione had pushed him away in the end, Draco thought with his thumb rubbing idly over the knitted fabric of her jersey. She had said, nothing, eyes wild and terrified and frantic, and run away. She had probably only kissed him because she hadn't been thinking straight, too upset to realise what she was doing and just desperate for the distracting heat of mouths interlocked and spiking lust. Maybe the long hours down in the cellar were just making Draco crazy, sending him round the twist, and he only wanted Granger because she was basically the only person he ever saw. He didn't care.

Draco resisted the urge to bury his nose in Hermione's jersey and breathe in her scent. Instead he went to bed and lay there silently, playing the kiss over and over in his head, and resisting the urge to jerk off lest Hermione somehow see it in his eyes the next time he saw her and murder him for it. He resisted right up until what felt like the wee hours of the morning, when, still sleepless, Draco sighed and swore and scrambled out of bed to where her jersey lay on the small table, and breathed in her scent. Smooth and sweet, with rich, woody undertones, and he blushed and gave in and buried his face fully into the tickly wool and breathed in deep. And then he slid back into his small, empty bed with her scent lingering in his nostrils and the memory of her mouth greedy on his, her skin smooth under his hand, the swell of her breasts inside her cotton bra.

His hand stole under the covers with a groan of defeat.