A/N: I wrote this whole chapter listening to a magnificently soothing song by Daniela Andrade called Shore. If you intend to listen to it on Youtube, the magic starts at 1:15. ;)
Hermione watches in stupor the blank wall ahead of her. People shuffle in and out in the room, metal containers hit the table and people in starch white uniforms move restlessly among the beds. The air smells like pain killers and Pepperup potion.
"Miss Granger," a gentle voice calls her attention. "You are in St. Mungo. My name is Ophelia Brooks and I am your Healer today. Can you tell me if anything feels wrong at all?"
Hermione's eyes flick upwards and she stares at the young woman with a vacant expression. The Healer takes out her wand, murmurs something in a soothing voice, but the words escape her. They are fluid sounds hitting her eardrums in a broken, incomprehensible rhythm. A small, warm hand touches her shoulder and Hermione starts.
"Miss Granger?" the young woman asks again. "How do you feel?"
Feel. It's a terrible word with the power to cut through the frail numbness and her face scrunches up, her arms wrap around herself. It's very cold, she suddenly realizes. That's all she feels, all the feeling she allows to infiltrate behind the skin. The woman's worried eyes flit across her face, analyze her. Hermione catches dozens of voices around her, from the shrill voice of an old woman, to the piercing cry of a baby. They mingle together in a buzz that speeds up her heartbeats. She feels her throat dry.
"Water," Hermione breathes out.
The Healer nods and offers her a glass of cool water that she drinks greedily.
"Miss Granger," the Healer asks again, her voice calming like a lazy river. "You're in St. Mungo. You've been brought here after a terrible fight with Death Eaters. By the time you arrived here, you have been administered various healing potions and balms. Your injuries have been almost completely healed, save for the wound in your knee that should take a couple of days to mend completely. You suffered a severe blow to the head with an unidentified object and have been… subjected to the Cruciatus Curse."
Hermione winces, brings her knees to her chest and hides her head behind her arms.
"You're safe now, Miss Granger," the Healer assures, placing a timid hand on her shoulder. "In order to identify if you have been properly treated, I will need you to stand up. Can you do that for me?"
Hermione lets woman's arms support her as she is brought in a sitting position. However, as soon her feet touch the floor, she winces and crumbles. The Healer is quick, her arms are strong as they steady her and lay her back on the bed. Hermione rolls to the side, brings her feet to her chest and cries silently. A trickle of blood stains the perfectly white robe she has been given and the healer places her hand on Hermione's forehead. It feels soothing and she leans into it, willing herself to forget.
"Miss Granger," the Healer whispers now. "As your healer, I need to pull up your hospital robe to check for injuries. I need to stop the bleeding and make sure whatever wound I find there will not get infected. Can you let me do that?"
Hermione nods and lays on her back, unmoving. She's no more than a rag doll in the gentle arms of the Healer. There are just two of them between the drawn curtains that surround her bed and she feels a cool breeze on her core as the other woman murmurs a couple of charms and the tip of her wand moves around her sex. When she is finished the blistering pain ceases, the torn skin does not throb anymore.
"I'm afraid, Miss Granger, that I have to ask you a very uncomfortable question. I can assure that I've hexed these curtains soundproof and that whatever you tell me will remain strictly confidential." The woman pauses and then musters a neutral tone. "A wizard by the name of Draco Lucius Malfoy has brought you here an hour ago. As the wounds that I've just healed are common in witches that experienced sexual injuries I must ask… Miss Granger, were you sexually assaulted? Do you want me to report someone or call for help?"
Hermione denies it wordlessly, shaking her head as fresh tears well up in her eyes.
"Would you like me to leave you alone?" the Healer asks, leaving another vial of calming potion on a small table. When Hermione nods she adds "If there's anything that you need, anything at all, I've left your wand on a holster underneath your bed, as per the current procedure. Just wave it and say my last name and I'll be with you."
With these last words she pulls the curtain aside and steps out. Out of the corner of her eyes, Hermione sees Ginevra, upright on a bed, glancing anxiously around her. When her eyes land on Hermione she wants to speak, but her words are cut out by strong arms around her as a man that can be anywhere between 35 and 50 years old holds onto her to dear life.
"What did they do to you?" he demands, turning around to billow at the Healers who try to push him out of the ward. "She's my daughter! I am allowed to see my daughter whenever I please! You, idiots don't know how to take proper care of her anyway."
"Father," Ginevra says in a measured tone. "I'm alright. Nothing happened."
"Nothing happened?" he seethes. "You almost got yourself killed. This is not what I had in mind for you when we moved here. The idiots," he spats again as his daughter gives him a meaningful look. "This is a disaster!"
The man attracts stares and not just because of his commanding demeanor. He has the face of a Roman God and the body of a gladiator. Even in his anger, or maybe because of it, he has this allure that draws people in, captures the interest of the others. He's dressed in the finest robes and only has eyes for his daughter, blue, large eyes that are the exact shape and color as Ginevra's. He is a brunette though, with jet black hair and he's tall and imposing with shifty eyes, straight jaw and a well-groomed beard. If his daughter is a quarter Veela, than the man must be half… the child of a Veela and her mate, the product of an unbearably strong connection.
Ginevra lays her head on his chest and it's the first time when Hermione sees any vulnerability on her face. The man's voice softens to such a degree that it's almost unrecognizable:
"Where did they hurt you? Has it healed? Should I Floo in another Healer from the States?"
She shakes her head and closes her eyes and right then Padma appears in the doorway of the big ward they're held in. She wears patient robes too, sports a fresh scar on her forearm and smiles weakly at Hermione.
Padma steps closer, asks permission to sit on the bed. Hermione makes room for her without saying a word.
"We've survived this one too, eh? All of us, thank Merlin," Padma says meekly. Then she pauses, casts a furtive glance around them and says in a much quieter tone. "I saw Draco Malfoy bringing you in, you were pale as a ghost, Hermione. Is there… anything I can do to help?"
Hermione sighs heavily, looks up to the worried eyes of Padma without speaking. The black haired witch takes Hermione's hand in hers, squeezes reassuringly. "You can tell me, Hermione. I won't tell a single soul, I swear on my father's grave."
The words hurt the back of her throat, they buckle against her teeth before they unwillingly spill from her lips.
"I think I raped Draco Malfoy," Hermione rasps out, no louder than a faint whisper.
Padma's eyes search hers, meet hallowed irises, red whites. The dark haired girl seems to have stopped breathing for a second and then she pulls Hermione towards her chest, hugs her with no restraint. Padma's black eyes are silent, but she rocks Hermione gently, as one does to a child, for minutes at an end.
"No one gets unscathed out of a war," Padma says much later, her hands still around Hermione.
She goes away only because another Healer comes to chase her out. Ginevra and her father have gone too and before she has time to fear loneliness, Ron appears in the doorframe, covered in dirt, as if he's fresh from fighting, contrasting drastically with the cleanliness that bounces from wall to wall. The moments his eyes lay on her he sprints, hurrying to hug her fiercely. What little courage Hermione has, it crumbles in his embrace and she grips him fiercely, content beyond measure to be tucked safely at the familiar chest. He smells of debris and chocolate and she wants to inhale him.
"I thought I lost you," he says as he only pauses to examine her. "I went to see Ginny and I… Merlin, Hermione, she looked dead…"
He tells her everything. He cries without even realizing it as he recounts the fight that took place in her absence. It was a fierce battle and Ginny has been tortured by means of Cruciatus before being shackled in a dungeon. There were dozens of Death Eaters and they all aimed to kill. A whole neighborhood was burned to the ground. Auror Bailey, the youngest of them, is dead. And he has feared for her life every single moment. After it was over, they all looked for her, Keens and Malfoy everywhere, before someone announced him they were all in St. Mungo. He had been so afraid…
They lay pressed together on the bed, but the more his hand remains intertwined with hers, the more Hermione feels him fading away from her mind. It's as if, if she would close her eyes, he would disappear completely. Instead, Draco's figure takes shape beneath her eyelids.
In the end, he leaves too, chased away by an old Healer with a short patience. Hermione spends the night looking at the ceiling, reliving what happened. She thinks she can feel his burning skin, thinks she can hear him saying "No" to her. She remembers his horrified expression, his bruising grip on her hips, the tormented pleasure that colored his face and shook his body. His silver eyes, their pleading gaze are ingrained in her memory, appear before her eyelids every time she closes them.
Why didn't he bring her to St. Mungo's directly? Why hasn't he used his wand to stop her, to break through her panic attack? And most important, how could one person feel pleasure and pain in the same time, the way he had clearly felt?
Hermione feels dirty, tainted by something she knows she won't be able to scrub out of her skin. Was sex in general, or sex with Draco Malfoy, always like this? A battlefield in itself, where pain drips from her body like her blood and sweat have dripped on his? Because, to her, it felt like a primal ritual, an incarceration in the confines of her own mind and body, unlocked by an even more dangerous, feral need for release. Or did it happen this way because she forced him to comply with her madness, because she has subdued him?
At the break of dawn, there is noise in her ward again. A woman moans painfully as Healers seem to rush around, their uniforms rustling around her curtains. Hermione's heart skips a beat. Has there been another attack, are there more victims?
"Breathe for me, Mrs. Conrad, inhale and exhale and we'll see that this baby arrives safely into the world."
Baby?
Hermione sits up on her bed and waits behind the curtains that provide her privacy. She closes her eyes and listens to every little sound: the noise of the Healers' shoes as they rush across the floor, the cries of the mother, subdued by the pain, the chanting of the incantations that are being murmured. What happens outside her curtains it's a battlefield too, but one's whose outcome she waits with hope. The cries of pain go on for an almost an hour, until, along with the sunrise, the cry of the newborn fills the ward and she can hear laughter and joy in the Healers' voices. Hermione cries when the baby cries again, right beneath the slanted rays of sunshine that color the ceiling of the ward.
A new emotion blooms in her chest and the more the baby cries, the more she feels the powerful spark strengthening in her veins, pushing away the fear, the doubt and the sorrows.
I'm alive.
Whatever might have happened she has been given this new day, she has witnessed in silence the birth of a new life. She, herself, feels reborn, emboldened by the morning. She reaches her wrist and shivers when she feels her own pulse. It's a constant reminder that she's alive, alive, alive. Someone has opened a window and she breathes in with an insatiable thirst. The scents from the garden outside mix with the smell of medicine and perfectly clean robes, disrupt the round the clock order of the hospital. She hears birds singing and they lull both her and the baby to sleep.
In the end she only hears the new mother, now alone with the infant, sobbing quietly, chanting love words to her beloved baby boy. In a moment or two she will be moved elsewhere, so the baby can meet his father and the rest of the family, but for now it's just the three of them, the birds and the morning air.
Life wins.
He opens up his door the moment she knocks. He has this agitated look upon his face and dark circles under the eyes: he looks like he hasn't slept in a long time.
"I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry."
They say it in the same time so the only thing that's left is to stare at each other, as if their gazes would try to crawl beneath the other's skin, hoping to understand what lies hidden there. They barely dare to move, aware that they'd only be walking on eggshells.
"Can I come in?" she finally asks, softly, and he moves aside without a word.
His apartment looks different in the morning, flooded by warm light, welcoming and serene. She sits unmoving, until she can hear him shuffling behind her, finally coming to face her.
"Are you alright?" he says with difficulty and she nods. He paces the room.
"Listen, Granger," he starts gravely. "You must believe me when I say I did not intend for things to go so wrong. I brought you to that Muggle house because I knew St. Mungo was going to be overcrowded after the battle. I knew I could heal you myself, but I had never anticipated… an emotional response. I saw you on a battlefield before and you always looked like you could outlive every other person around. How am I to understand what happened? Fuck, Granger, I never wanted to hurt you."
She doesn't say a thing for a long time, rummaging through the echoes of his words. His voice has sounded harassed, heavy.
"Draco…" she murmurs, bracing herself for the worst: "Did I… did I rape you?"
He stops abruptly, stares at her.
"I was about to ask you the same question," he mutters, his chest moving fast as if trying to shake a huge weight off it "you were not in your right mind, but I was. I should have… I should have stopped it."
"Why didn't you?" she asks, but it's not accusation.
He groans. "I couldn't, alright? I just couldn't, Granger. I'm fucked up like that."
She doesn't move from her spot. "Is it always like that? Sex. It is always so painful, so… animal like and dangerous?"
He shakes his head, takes one of her hands in his.
"No. Granger, fuck, no! There are a million ways to do it, but what happened yesterday was something you should have never experienced. It is not supposed to be like this. Especially the first time."
"But you enjoyed it," she points out in what she hopes it's a neutral tone. "I still see you, so lost in that rapture, unable to fight it. Do you enjoy some pain? Or is it just the other's person pain that does it for you?"
His fingers dig into his scalp, he pulls at the roots of his hair.
"I don't know, Granger. I've never felt it before. I had no idea… None of it was normal." Then, a little bit more calm. "I never meant to hurt you."
She fixates her big, brown eyes on his. He's so wound up in sorrow he looks about to crack.
"I don't have any answers for you," he says, defeated.
She nods, sits down on his sofa, caressing its edges absent-mindedly. There are different ways to approach this. The first one would be anger. To be angry for him letting it go so far, to enjoy it to that degree, despite her obvious pain and emotional distress. Hell, maybe he had even given her something, a potion or another, to heighten her anxiety or to increase her sexual desire, maybe that's what caused her breakdown. But hasn't she been drawn to him before? It is easy to let anger win because she feels she has been robbed of something in that extremely vulnerable moment. There is something bubbling up just beneath the surface, a mix of words like "abuse" and "assault" and maybe even "violation".
The second option would be self-incrimination. She has been the one that lost control on her emotions and jumped on him like he was no more than a means to an end. He has told her "NO", he has vociferated loud and clear that he was against her attempts to disrobe him and have intercourse. She has attacked him physically, biting his hand to distract him and take him like a cavewoman. Did she like it? She chews her lip and tries to sort through her memories, in order to distinguish pleasure from pain. There was this distinct moment when she had felt, despite the hurt and the blood, that they fit just right, that his body was not an unknown territory, but something she recognized. She has had this innate knowledge of how to move in order to make him lose control. It must have been that primal instinct that guides all people through their first sexual experience.
The third option is acceptance. She can chose to blame this on the extremely stressful moment, life-or-death moments usually make people behave in an irrational manner. Perhaps they are both just as guilty for the traumatic experience they were part of. She could have tried to keep it together, he could have tried better to stop her. She can chose to let this moment define it or she can… rectify it. To associate sex with pain, with something dirty is an option. She knows many people who engage in safe, sexual intercourse and they seem quite happy together. So does she want to be the one to judge it through the outcome of a single experience?
She looks at him looking at her in apprehension. Her gaze travels from his rumpled hair to the dark circles beneath the grey eyes to the chewed, dry bottom lip. He wears pajama bottoms and an old T-shirt and his eyes never leave her face.
Hermione stands up and he mirrors her gesture. He has this mien of a haunted animal, like he expects her to strike any second now. She breathes in, closes her eyes. When she opens them there's a look in them that he cannot recognize. She has decided to be brave.
Draco's mouth hangs open when she makes her way into his bedroom, leaving the door ajar. There is this moment, when all can spiral out of control, when tension swelters in the space between them like a festering wound. And then she hears him moving, unsure steps that follow her into the room. He is standing in the doorframe and she's on his bed, laying on her back and staring at the ceiling. With shaky hands, she motions for him to join her.
Draco hesitates for a bit and then he lays on his side, resting on his elbow and looking at her. She meets his gaze and chews on her bottom lip. His free hand strokes her cheekbone, pushing aside a strand of her hair. She squirms under the touch at first, but then leans in, welcoming the warm touch on her face.
"You can leave now if you want," his voice pierces the complete stillness of the room. There is a thick air of indecision licking at both their skins.
"Do you want me to leave?" she whispers, fixating large brown eyes on his.
He shakes his head, but then retreats his hand.
"I don't want to hurt you."
"I know," she says and he sighs heavily.
"I've hurt you anyway," he says, a mournful look on your face.
"Then show me it can be different," she challenges and it changes everything. She sees his hands flexing, notices the silver eyes darkening. His whole body locks so, tenderly, she brings one hand to his heart, waits to feel the agitated heartbeat underneath.
He wants to refuse her touch, but her hand rests on his chest now, fingers trailing irregular paths on the fabric of his T-shirt. He glues his gaze to her face. She brings his dormant palm to her face again, leans into it, shifts on the soft mattress. Then, before he knows what has happened, she brings her lips to his, pressing softly. Her tongue darts out to lick his lower lip and he sighs before bending his head to capture her mouth. His mouth is tender, stilling and then speeding up their kiss and Hermione discovers she likes the irregular rhythm but wishes he would not hold back anymore. Because it still makes her feel like she's taking advantage.
When his lips move to her neck, his free hand, the one that's not supporting his head, moves to her mid-riff. It barely strokes her but it's enough to send tingles down her spine, to make her breathing a little more erratic. He halts.
"Is it okay if I touch you here?" he murmurs in her ear when he cups her breast, hot breath tingling her earlobe and then she shivers: it's an awakening of sensations she welcomes.
He's patient, conquers one inch of compliant skin at a time and then looks up questioningly. She skims her fingers over his neck and then pulls his T-shirt over his head, glad to be reacquainted with the naked skin underneath. She pushes him back now, rolls on top of him. They both freeze for a moment, as they are reminded of the day before and its implications, but then his hand moves to her breast again, gives it a tentative squeeze.
"I have wanted you for such a long time," he rasps and when she searches his eyes she finds them determined, dead set on his affirmation. There is nothing lackluster about the way his hands move now, thumbs swiping over her covered nipples, moving with barely restrained haste. She places herself on top of his already hard member and they moan in unison.
She moves. I have wanted you for such a long time echoes through her brain, brings a sense of power and she draws up the courage to bring her blouse over her head. The image of her upper body, clad in only a blue bra leaves him a little breathless. The daylight allows their eyes to feast on the other person's body and they do so greedily, until they tense with the anticipation of greater things to come.
He stands up and his ardent fingers unclasp the bra. He is now eye level with her breasts and takes one of them into his hot mouth, sucking it until she feels that familiar fever taking hold of her.
They don't rush when they undress each other. By the time they're both naked and she's standing beneath him, Hermione has forgotten about the day before and does not think about the next. All she thinks about is what she feels, his warm, delightfully heavy body on top of hers. Maintaining eye contact, he brings one of his hands between them, moves along her folds tenderly.
"Tell me if it hurts and I'll stop," he whispers, ever so attentive, as his middle finger rubs at her entrance.
She shivers at the contact, moaning and arching on the bed as his finger slides into her wet core. She watches him clench his jaw, expectantly. But this is not pain, this is pleasure at its best.
"Move it again," she asks, breathlessly and he complies.
She rides her high with complete abandonment. Before long, he has inserted a second finger and her body latches on to him until she coats his hand in a proof of her excitation.
He is sweating now, trying hard to maintain his focus, to not do something wrong. His hair is damp and it sticks to his forehead, his neck is stiff, despite her caresses: he fights his pleasure. So she's the one that sneaks up between them and her fingers wrap around him, making him close his eyes and bow his head as his fingers lose rhythm inside her. She braces herself, places him at her entrance.
There is this look that goes between them: he's more scared than she is now, and they're bound by their desire mixed with the same need for that particular connection that still feels like uncharted territory.
This is it. She feels his tip at his entrance, warm, eager flesh asking permission to join their bodies. She pushes herself into him and Draco hisses at the contact. His eyes, heavy with lust, are boring into hers with an intensity she has never experienced before and that dizzies her a little: he pushes forward, stretching the walls of her vagina until her head falls back on the mattress. The muscle of her vagina stretch around him and he sinks into her all the way.
She had prepared herself for that pain again, tightening her muscles to face it, but it just feels like being invaded by goosebumps and joy. He might have penetrated her core only, but she feels him in every inch of her body, a body that seems to welcome him despite everything, yearning to preserve this moment forever.
Then he moves and she releases a moan that feels like breaking a lock.
She thinks of all the other people having sex right now, skins on skin and moaning bodies becoming one with their passion, one with their partner. She thinks of how Harry and Ginny must have sex, all wrapped up in their love, in that need for each other that she was first to notice in both of them and that will probably follow them for the rest of their lives. She wonders if they call it making love or if that's just instinct taking over too.
She thinks of Ron and Padma and now, that it doesn't hurt anymore, she's bewildered at the ecstasy they displayed before her and understands why she hasn't interrupted them earlier that night. Maybe, just maybe, Draco likes a little pain but she has this knack for observing other people going at it like their life depended on that act. She remembers just how wild and free Padma had looked, how beautiful she was in the throes of her orgasm. She recalls Ron's face, focused and sincere, as he sped towards his release, as those strong arms held the woman before him like she was a tasty fruit that he could not get enough of her.
She wonders how the delicate Luna looks in bed with her own fiancée, if she's the same candid girl or if her instincts transform her too in an object of a desire, if her body turns into a nest of pleasure.
She wonders how many people are doing it in the exact same moment, how many of them achieve an orgasm. She sees faceless men and women wrapped in each other's limbs, tasting each other's sweat and lips, their bodies pushing frantically into beds and kitchen tables, begging for release. She does not feel shame for imagining other naked beings, nor guilt, she only thinks they're all part of a wonderful ritual, atoms of one compact body of bliss.
"Go faster," she rasps.
Draco thrusts into her harder and she forgets her own name, being reduced to nothing more than a powerful energy that seeps through her skin to connect with his. He fights to maintain control, but she doesn't want him to censor himself in any way. Instead, her trembling hands grab his shoulders and her hips arch to welcome him, taking him to the hilt. She loses herself in him, calling his name, again and again until, finally, the explosion occurs and she's removed from reality. She floats now, carried by an outstanding emotion that overrules her other senses and she realizes she must have crawled beneath his skin to inhabit the body there, to make it her own.
Distantly, she hears him grunt and moan and then she feels him spilling inside her, sealing their union before he collapses on top of her, his neck on her shoulders. She comes back to the world when she hears him breathing harshly against her neck, his body shivering on top of her. She shivers too, grips him with trembling hands so she doesn't have to disentangle herself from him.
This is a perfection she can endure.
None of them moves. His eyes bore into hers once more while she smiles lazily, tired limbs accepting his weight with joy. And when her breathing calms, she finally feels sleep claiming her. His breath slows too, his eyelids are heavy now, his arms reamain around her, his heartbeat is steady, a divine flutter on her breast.
She's alive.
A/N: I loved writing this one. I hope we can make up after the last chapter? :) I'd love to hear your opinions on this, your constructive criticism is what makes a better author. Especially since there are only 3 or 4 more chapters left.
Secondly… IMPORTANT NEWS! I am terribly excited to announce that I wrote a new story! It's very, very different from this one and it focuses on Rose Weasley. I've titled it Not All the Good Guys Win and it has mystery, adventure and the very essential lemons! ;) I thought it was fun to portray Rose as anti-hero and quite a nasty one at that. I would really appreciate if you have a look and tell me what you think about it. Just access my author page to find it. :)
So… what did you think of this chapter?
