A/N: This is a very short chapter. I intended it to be in the previous chapter, but wanted to tweak it a little.

Chapter Playlist:

Neptune : Sleeping At Last

Someone to Stay : Vancouver Sleep Clinic

Dust to Dust : The Civil Wars

Chariot : Jacob Lee

One Last Time : Jaymes Young

The difference in her touch is palpable, he can feel it, taste it in her kiss, every breath designed for him to understand her intentions. The salt of her tears in his mouth relay a deeper meaning, and finds it impossible not to meet her intensity.

Draco had never kissed anyone like this before, with intention to convey his deeper desires, his true feelings and emotions shoved into every touch. He thinks she can hear what he can't say as he holds her against him and kisses her with a desperate hunger.

He can feel it in her shuddered breaths mingling with his, that although they're at war, she's kissing him like they've already won. Hard, urgent, victorious— like they've spent the past years running, fighting, and only now, only with each other, have they found a reason to savor a moment within the chaos.

Her hands graze over his waist, her fingers set to removing the only fabric between her and the evidence of his reaction to her. There's a pause in the darkness between them as they silently agree what they both want… the conformation coming from the smallest of gestures, her hand gently wrapping around his length and a shuddered breath escaping him as he wraps his hand around her own. The dimly lit tent provides flashing shadows over her honey colored gaze locked on his and he sets to get lost in her.

As he's kissing her, he thinks she taste of gold.

It's the color of beginnings and innocence; before nature is green, it's gold, but just as nature fades to green, because nothing gold can stay— his insecurities tells him so to will they; because how could he possible deserve this? How could he possible hold something so fleeting? His mother told him once, didn't she?

Nothing is promised forever, dear.

His hands grip— at skin, at clothes, at hair— like the spoils of war that he is. He fears of losing her to the monsters he helped snap at her heels. He fears she'll realize her forgiveness of what he truly is could never be given so easily; that she will find reason him worth abandoning the moment her skin leaves his… so he doesn't let it.

But her kisses are bruising, and his intent to remind himself he could never deserve someone so golden, so pure— are removed from his mind completely.

Her skin is completely bare to him now, and his hands demand to learn every inch— and he learns that Hermione Granger's heat tastes of war and the sweetest nectar his lips have ever indulged.

He learns that she grips his hair as tightly as she grips the sheets beneath her as his mouth relishes her slick heat. He learns that his body fits perfect tucked between her thighs as she lays beneath him. He learns that her curls create the perfect halo around her parted lips and closed eyes, which he watches between the rise and fall of her breasts as she arches her back to meet his fingers pulsing inside her, the pressure of his tongue against her bud. He learns that he's never seen anything so glorious as the sight of Hermione Granger coming undone at his touch.

He feels her shaking to the point of ecstasy and for the first time while being with a witch, he thinks that this isn't sex at all, but a confession; his confession of how long he's looked for a place that made him understand what it meant to be apart of something outside of himself, what it meant to belong, what it meant to have a choice and always, always choose her.

For this moment, at least, he allows her to believe them capable to holding on; and he clings to her, with hopes that even after she realizes he has always been destined to crash and burn, that something as precious as this moment might exist amongst their chaos— amongst him rising too close to her, as she had become his golden sun...

…that she may look back on this time, thinking of the monster she so foolishly thought capable of soaring in her light, and remember— as her nails ran blazing trails down his back, his thighs, and chest, and her moans floated over him like prayers, and she reduced him to ashes with her kisses against his shoulder as he buried himself inside her— that he found that there was beauty in setting himself on fire.

A/N: I could have waited to post this with the next chapter, but I have a feeling that one is going to not be ready until next week, and I have to go back to work today (ugghkkk) so I wanted to give this little taste of Draco's POV to get you by in the mean time :) I'd recommend reading this again when I post the next chapter as it will pick up where this one ends exactly...

I started another Dramione fic that's less angst and more light humored... where Harry/Hermione return to Hogwarts to make up for the year they missed.

I would love to hear your thoughts on that one if you find yourself waiting in the meantime for this stories next update. The other fic is called: The 12 Step Program for a Recovering Death Eater.

A/N (pt why does she write so many A/N instead of one): Inspiration pulled from poem: Robert Frost, Nothing Gold can Stay & Emily Palermo, Apollo

A/N: (lol stop, just make one A/N woman): Also, apologies for freaking anybody out with my last authors note about SHIT ABOUT TO GO DOWN. I only meant that, you know, SHIT IS ABOUT TO GO DOWN, but never fear, I have a feeling you will be happy with where our characters find themselves in the coming chapters, maybe... who knows, *wink wink*, I know, I'm the worst :)