Breath Mints / Battle Scars
XLV
February 23rd, 1999
"Stay."
She's got her back to him, blouse halfway buttoned, wondering if anyone at the Ministry will notice she's wearing the same clothes as yesterday — and it's so quiet she's not even sure he really said it.
"What?" she asks in a casual voice, hoping he didn't and glancing halfway over her shoulder.
"Stay," he says again, a little louder — a little more sure of it. He's leaning back against the headboard, green sheets still tangled up beneath him, lazily swaying his propped knee back and forth.
She abandons the buttons and turns fully to face him. "I don't understand."
Draco huffs and swings his legs sideways to sit at the edge of the mattress. She's shocked how natural a movement it is to step between his knees when he reaches for her — to let his hands slide up the backs of her thighs.
"You should stay," he murmurs, resting his forehead against her ribs. It's a simple, subtle thing, and yet the blossom of heat it sends through her is anything but.
"Pansy and Theo," she says, more a reminder to herself. Already, her fingers are carding through his hair — still so surprising in its softness — and she wants nothing more than to let his mouth trail lower and lower on the path it's already started.
But Theo's letter still sits on the nightstand in her periphery.
"They can wait," says Draco, nuzzling at the space above her navel as he starts to untuck her blouse from her skirt. He's not often like this. And she wants to close her eyes and let her head drop back, but she stills his hands instead.
"I get the feeling he wouldn't ask if it wasn't important."
Draco sighs, warming her skin with it briefly before he leans back. "That's what you get when you hang other people's clothes in public, or whatever the Muggles say."
"Is that what you call saving someone's life? Because that's what I did. And it's dirty laundry, by the way, not—"
He reaches up and covers her mouth almost like it's an instinct. She raises an eyebrow at him, but when he drags the pad of his forefinger down along her bottom lip, she doesn't think. Just opens her mouth and sucks on it gently.
Draco hisses out a breath and tugs her into his lap in one fluid movement. "You have to stay," he growls, mouth sweeping forward to trace the column of her throat — teeth grazing her pulse point and biting down.
Hermione allows herself a small moment of weakness. Figures she's earned it. She lets her head loll forward onto the smooth, warm curve of his shoulder, small gasp breaking on a moan when he flattens his tongue and laves it slowly across the expanse between her collarbone and her ear.
"I don't trust it when you're anywhere else," he whispers, nibbling on the lobe and making her shiver. "As it is, you're the one who asked to be taken to my bed. And I think I like the look of you in it."
She's helpless — can't not taste him, buried in the crook of his neck as she is, smelling his clean sweat; his sweet, smoky scent, like damp morning earth. She finds herself kissing along the cords of muscle of his throat — can almost feel the blood rush through his veins when his breath hitches and his grip tightens on her waist.
"Stay," he demands again against the shell of her ear. His fingers slide beneath the hem of her skirt, stretched tight where she straddles him. "Stay, and I can make you come. I'll make you come so hard, Granger, I promise." His teeth drag on her earlobe just as the warmth of his palm settles between her legs. "I want to taste you again. I want to eat you."
She huffs out another gasp against his skin, feeling the blush bleed out across her face. She'll never know how he says things like that with such confidence — so unabashed. How he makes her throb so easily.
"You're being selfish," she says, practically a squeak as he starts to trace the damp seam of her underwear, rocking his fingers back and forth. Smiling into her skin when she bucks against him.
"What, you think this isn't what he wants to do to Pansy?" He tugs her underwear to the side, guiding wet fingers back and forth over her center. Tracing her entrance. "Fucking hell, it's so obvious. Maybe not on Pansy's end, until now. But Nott was always done for when it came to her."
Hermione almost swallows her words when he slides two fingers inside of her. "So you think he loves her too?"
Draco scoffs, pulling away from her neck and taking her chin in his free hand to line their gazes up. "Are you blind?" he asks, incredulous, as he runs the tip of his nose against hers. "Haven't you seen the way he looks at her?" He nips at her bottom lip. "Fuck, Granger — you should know that look by now."
Something flutters in her chest — something bright and heady and all-consuming — and then she's kissing him. Sloppily. Drunkenly. Uncontrolled. But he must enjoy it from the rough sound he makes when she presses an insistent tongue into his mouth. His fingers start to pump faster, his hips raising with every thrust like he wishes it wasn't his fingers at all.
And she has more than half a mind to reach for the fasten on his trousers
"We have to stop." Hermione drags herself away from him the way adhesive peels from skin — a process painful and slow. Pulls his hand from between her legs, glistening in such a way she can't help but flush a deeper red. "We...have to stop," she repeats, breathless.
"Says who?" he hisses, nipping at her bottom lip again.
A loudly cleared throat makes them freeze.
"Well, I'd certainly appreciate it," comes the groggy, muffled voice of Zabini from behind his bed curtains. "Unless one of you can fucking remember how to cast a silencing charm. Otherwise I'll have to blind and deafen myself to get to breakfast."
Mortified, Hermione starts to right her clothes, trying to pull away, but Draco keeps her steady in his lap, response as casual as ever.
"I thought voyeurism was one of your things, Blaise. You know. Like that time in Fifth Year, after the quidditch game—"
"Oh, fucking hell, not this again."
"I, for one, remember vividly."
"Shove off, Malfoy — fine! Do whatever you want with Granger ten inches from my face. Go for it. I'll just —" His voice becomes severely muffled by something else, but the rest of the sentence sounds vaguely like "lie here and suffocate."
Draco grins against Hermione's lips, kissing her once more, slowly, before pulling back. Her cheeks are still burning, and he reaches up to take her face in hand, tisking. "Shy as ever, Granger. When are you going to learn you have no reason to be ashamed?"
She's not sure why she says what she does — it's clear from his eyes, he's only teasing — but maybe she's bitter about being caught yet again with her knickers down, literally. Or maybe she just has no self control.
"For years, you gave me every reason to be ashamed. Don't you remember? About my teeth, and my hair and my dirty blood."
His face falls slowly, and she wonders whether she's ever going to stop ruining things. Watches anxiously as a muscle works in his jaw, shifting in his lap all the while.
There's too long of a silence. The dormitory's too quiet. And it's so uncomfortable, she's halfway considering taking it back by the time he speaks.
"I regret that."
She blinks at him — has no hope of masking her surprise.
"I don't regret a lot of things, but I regret that." His hands have fallen to her waist, toying absently with the buttons on her blouse. "I'm almost as mad at myself as I am at you for believing any of it."
She huffs, but he continues before she can argue.
"You don't have an excuse. You don't." He shakes his head and shrugs, then dips forward to place another open-mouthed kiss on her throat, setting her even further off balance. "How could you let such a stupid, scared, spineless little boy make you feel inferior? You? You. There's no excuse."
She breathes out slowly into the silence that follows, staring over his shoulder at the bedsheets. But before she's even halfway constructed an adequate response, she's beaten to it.
"Rubbish apology, mate."
"Fuck you," Draco tosses offhandedly at Zabini's bunk.
"It's an awful apology," she echoes, even as the corner of her lip quirks up. "You should work on it."
"He won't."
"Fuck you and your mother." But just as he turns, likely to lob something at Blaise's bed curtains, Hermione slides off his lap. It steals back his focus, and she can't deny the way her throat closes up a bit when she sees him grapple for her hand.
"Where do you think you're going?"
She allows herself to smile at him — to steal one more kiss before she sets about fixing all the damage he's just done. "I'll be an hour. Two, at the most."
Draco makes a show of rolling his eyes, sliding back into his languid position against the headboard. But she's just started retucking her blouse when the shock of purple makes her go still.
She's not sure how he got it back.
He props the journal on his kneecap and sets about his lazy scrawl, pretending not to notice the way she's staring at him.
"How did you—"
"Apparently it's no longer evidence." He looks up at her, face deceptively blank. Threads his fingers through the mussed hair she's responsible for and drags it back out of his face. "In their eyes, I have no more excuses not to send in entries. They gave it back."
"Oh." She turns away. Finishes with the blouse and then starts to hunt around for her stockings, all the while trying to fill the silence. "You know, I still have no idea how it got entered into evidence in the first place. I had it last, and I certainly wasn't planning on using it."
"Mm," he hums casually. "Suppose Smith is less of a tit than I thought after all."
She stops again and glances up at him, halfway crouched by the foot of the bed where her stockings lay tangled up. "What?"
"Well, to be honest, I thought he'd fuck it up. Thought even an intelligent person would have trouble nicking something off you." Draco jolts a brow at her over the journal's corner. "You should keep a better eye on your things, Granger."
She can't help the way she blinks vacantly for a moment. The slowness of her spine as she straightens up. And when her voice does come out, it's softer than she'd like.
"You…had him take it?" She clears her throat. "Had — had Zacharias take it?"
He just shrugs, still writing. "Figured it was a safe bet. Someone who already hated you."
It takes her a few seconds to realize she's drawn her wand. She thinks she might notice in the same instant he does, the look in his eyes shifting just a fraction as he finds the tip of it aimed at his nose.
And there's something in his manner that's infuriating to her. In the calm that radiates from him, the steadiness in his breathing. Even she's not sure she could actually hex him in this moment, but a part of her wants him to be afraid of her. Just a little.
"Any idea what you plan to do with that?" he asks in that unbearably dull tone.
"I could swell your eyes shut," she offers quietly. "Or I could turn your muscles to lead. I could do any number of things to you. I could unravel every memory in your brain if I wanted to."
He slides the journal further down his knee so he can see her fully, and still his face doesn't change. She can feel her teeth grinding.
"Seems a bit excessive."
She extends her wand until it's half an inch closer to him.
"After all of that? After everything you saw me putting into it, you were going to sabotage me? Sabotage yourself?" Her wrist is trembling.
Malfoy's expression darkens just a fraction. "I told you to leave it alone. But you wouldn't listen."
"If I hadn't, you'd be dead."
"Better me than you," he says simply. Like it's a matter of fact, as basic as the meaning of a rune or the ingredient in a potion.
Her wand arm falters for just a moment before she can stabilize it. "You...I — nothing happened to me. I'm — I'm here now, I'm standing right in front of you—"
"Why do you think I want you to stay? I can protect you when you're right in front of me."
The sudden prick of tears behind her eyes is sharp and painful. She resolutely ignores it. Has a point to make.
"Malfoy—"
"Granger."
She huffs and presses her wand another inch closer, the tip of it not far from his skin. "Let's make something clear, yes?"
His brow raises slowly in challenge as he folds both hands on top of his knee.
"I am in your life, now. You said I had to earn you, and I think I finally have. I am more than happy to be pulled into your tide."
He smirks the way he always does when he's uncomfortable. "Poetic."
"Be quiet." She waves her wand in his face. "Listen for once in your life. If you want me to stay, you will never undermine me again. You don't get to gamble with your life, or mine, or anyone else's ever again."
He scoffs, of all things, so she takes that last step forward and presses the tip of her wand into the soft flesh beneath his chin. The way she did what seems like a lifetime ago, in that destroyed lavatory.
Malfoy goes silent.
"You told me once that you saw me as a threat," she murmurs, searching his guarded eyes. "I hope that's still true."
He blinks once, slowly. And his tone is much changed when he answers, "It will always be true."
A rush of strength and pride floods through her at the words. She steps back — lowers her wand and says, "Good," before turning away. "I'll be back soon."
It will never be easy to interpret Pansy, but if the way she keeps tugging on strands of her hair and the way her hands keep twisting in the hem of her skirt are anything to go by, she's nervous about the way she looks.
"You—" Hermione clears her throat. "You look good."
Pansy scoffs loudly, immediately making her hands still and glaring at the gold bars of the Ministry lift. "Fuck off, Granger. I don't need your approval."
"You realize he'll probably be covered in dirt—"
"I said fuck off."
Hermione tucks her lips in and nods. "Right then." Adds a moment later, under her breath, "It's a nice skirt, though."
"I know it is."
"Right."
The remaining thirty seconds in the lift pass in awkward silence, leaving Hermione to think only on that same feeling she's had since she knocked on the door to Pansy's dormitory. The feeling that she's intruding — on something private and personal. Something uncertain. Intruding, even when she has to be here.
She won't go into the cells with her. She's decided that already. She'll wait at the doors, with the guard, for as long as she has to wait. And then she'll escort Pansy back out. That'll be the way of it.
It doesn't matter how curious she is.
The guard is that same greasy man she's encountered almost every time she visited the holding cells in the past, and he doesn't seem a bit surprised to see her.
"Good morning," she says, though they are far from friendly.
The guard flashes his blackened teeth.
"Pansy Parkinson here to see Theodore Nott."
His dull eyes shift to look Pansy up and down, and Hermione can feel her go tense beside her.
She clears her throat. "Quickly, if you please."
He doesn't take his eyes away. "Isn't this one on probation?"
"Yes," Hermione snaps, unable to hide the twinge of irritation. "Which is why I am escorting her. Will you let her pass?"
Slowly — like he's got all the time in the world — the guard slides his gaze back to her. "Who's it she's meant to see again?"
She gathers a calming breath and clears her throat again. "Theodore Nott."
And the first sign that something's wrong is in the practiced furrow of the guard's brows. The rehearsed confusion that passes over his face.
Pansy senses it, too, before he says a word. Goes downright rigid at Hermione's side as the guard reaches up to scratch the side of his greasy head.
"Nott…" he echoes languidly. "Nott. Mm…no. Can't say we have anyone by that name."
Her nails dig into her palms. "Excuse me?"
"I said we don't have anyone by that name. Not anymore."