This story will be DARK, DARK, DARK.

I am giving FFN one final shot with this story only. I don't mind negative reviews on plot and prose but please, please don't insinuate anything about my ethnicity, religion, or personal life in your reviews. I will take the story down.

That being said, tags for this story are on AO3, but the major tags are:

-werewolves that are not actually werewolves

-dub-con

-smut

-Black Hermione Granger

-Tattooed Draco Malfoy

-demonic ring

-Dark artifacts

-virgin Hermione

-Morally grey Hermione

-misogyny

Ombré de la Lune

Chapter One

There is nothing about returning to Hogwarts that interests Hermione Granger.

She's spent the last three months in constant interview with all manner of magical peoples—different countries who want to know all about how she won the war, and a Britain that only wanted to know what it was like to fight by the Chosen One's side. Three months in front of flashing camera bulbs, of delivering speeches to announce Harry so he can receive awards, of cutting ribbons in front of buildings, and she's completely and utterly bored.

After a Summer fraught with what she can only describe as tying up loose ends, she has no desire to hearken back to a time where she went to sleep with cramps in the muscles of her quill hand and woke with the knowledge that she still had more parchment to fill.

All she wants to do this year is turn nineteen and graduate.

Shick. The door to her train compartment is shoved open. Someone tall and lithe leans against the frame in a haphazard manner. In the moment of contemplative silence that follows, the sounds of the train have risen in volume. The gushing of the smoke, the screeching of the wheels, the chugging of the engine.

"Salazar, fuck," the person said, "you are short."

Hermione doesn't look up from her book on constellation origins as he enters. With another shick, they are sealed in the quiet together. She doesn't dare to chance a glance through her lashes. With him, everything is a game. She remembers visiting him at Azkaban before his trial, remembers the way he answered questions with questions and spoke fluent sarcasm. He's always been a nasty thing and in Azkaban, he was thus unchanged. Only intensified.

Back then, his personality had been the only large thing about him. He'd sat in the corner of his cell for the duration of all of her questions, curled in on himself with his knees to his chest and his hands in his hair, snarking back at her as though his sentencing depended on it. He was already so dirty, so covered in grime that stained his platinum hair and pale skin.

She'd been there to get answers and had left with an irritation that pervaded her mood for days. No one with that much of an incorrigible attitude could have the necessary emptiness to create ruthlessness. The gaping hole in one's chest that was required to become a Death Eater and relish in it. To find a way to fill that hole with darkness. Malfoy's attitude and snark had been a way of protecting himself from an emotion that someone truly evil would never feel.

Fear.

The fact that he was capable of feeling fear was the exact reason why she'd spoken on his behalf at his trial later that Summer. In a way, though she'd received none of the answers she needed about his state of mind the day she was tortured at his family home, she had gotten an answer to the question of Malfoy's humanity.

A humanity that his parents also possessed, though with varying degrees of selfishness. Selfishness required to put others in direct way of harm if only to preserve their own treasures. Their home, their fortune, their son.

Malfoy hadn't intentionally hurt anyone. Any time he was faced with it, he had shied away. He was a coward and for that reason, Hermione chose to speak for him. He carried himself small and shrunken throughout the duration of the trial and then, upon his release, she saw just how high he could hold his head, and it had nothing to do with his six-foot-three-inch height.

She'd spent the last two weeks since then wondering if she had been the one who returned that confidence to him.

The way he sits now seems to take up the entire compartment. His height, the debonair air that hovers about his countenance like a haze of invisible smoke, the way he stretches one leg out and twirls an ice lolly in his mouth. His hair is messy, much too long and scraggly to be a hairstyle that his parents would ever allow, and he wears black denims, boots, and a dark grey jumper with sleeves that seem a bit too long for him. She can see the burnished buckle of his belt and his fingernails are painted black.

"Have you always been this miniscule?" he asks, pushing a free hand backward through the chin-length strands of blond. "Don't rush to reply—you can finish ogling me."

Hermione jolts, her shoulders shrugging. She's been staring after all, it seems. She turns to the next page in her book.

"I'm seated, Malfoy. I only look small because you're a behemoth."

"I'm hardly a behemoth. A towering dragon, perhaps. But you?" He tsks and slides the sweet back into his mouth. "A veritable fey of the woods."

"I'm five-foot-nine," she says, feigning boredom. She's for some reason acutely aware of the fact that she's wearing her school uniform, knee-length skirt, blazer, and tie seeming prim compared to his relaxed Muggle way of dress. Where his hair is a messy mop that nearly grazes his cheeks, the tight coils and kinks of her curls are oiled and moisturized to ensure they fall in cloudlike spirals to her chest. He's all mess and hard lines—she's propriety, cleanliness, and soft curves. "That's hardly considered diminutive."

"To me, you might as well be a little daisy amongst the grass." The lolly comes free of his lips with a loud pop. It's pink so she can't tell if its stained his tongue. "I could pluck you."

There's something disarming in the words. They're so Malfoy and yet they're so not that it's eerie. Because who is she to know who Malfoy is? Her memories of him start wicked and bleed into cowardice. There's nothing to compare it to.

But something akin to unease twists in her abdomen nonetheless.

"But then you'd die," he continues, his gaze rolling towards the window as though this conversation is more than droll, "wouldn't you?"

Hermione's gaze snaps up. The ability he has to say the most unnerving things as though they're common things to say to a person disturbs her. It's when he says things like this that she has to stop and ask herself if he's just a Slytherin or if there's something unhinged at the seams that pull him together. Is this the way he talks to everyone, or is this just the person he's become?

There's no way for her to know.

"Do you want something, or are you just here to bemoan my height?" Hermione crosses one leg over the other, gazing briefly at a mystery bruise on the russet brown color of her skin. The contusion appears dark purple, much like a ripe plum and she has no idea where she's gotten it. "I'm somewhat busy at the moment."

"Somehow—and I think you'd agree with this—I feel that your compartment is the only one that's got enough room for me," he drawls. He sucks on the lolly, watching the trees and greenery flashing by.

Hermione says nothing because she does agree with him, but she doesn't think it's only him. There's a wall up between her and the other students this year. There's only five other Eighth Year students and none of them are students Hermione was close with. The rest of the students see her as something of an unapproachable anomaly. She's the Witch Who Won the War. A veritable celebrity.

You can't just befriend a celebrity, even if she's unwilling to be.

She has a feeling that Malfoy isn't talking about that, though. It's more likely he's talking about himself. Though selfless enough to feel fear, he still carries loose threads of selfishness that he occasionally likes to weave together for his own amusement.

"You like the stars," he says. "Is that it, then?"

At this, she does look up. She studies him, wondering at his angle. Draco Malfoy has never had any desire or need to get to know Hermione Granger. There's nothing in his pale grey eyes or written in the sharp angles of his face to show her that he's anything but calculating. He has a reason to be asking her this—he must be.

"As if it's any business of yours." Her tone is clipped like a broken sheet of ice. With the way his legs are outstretched, she's practically between his thighs. And while she's only had the displeasure of being in-between a wizard's thighs once, she knows she doesn't want the second time to be Malfoy—even if it's on the bench across from him in a train compartment. "Someone's reading, and you think it's an invitation for conversation?"

"Everything is an invitation for whatever I want."

Hermione shifts in her seat as that little pool of unease grows into a lake. "How very spoilt of you."

He shrugs, twirling the lolly back and forth for a moment. His hair falls forward, into his face. She stares at him openly for a solid three seconds of risk. He looks tired.

"I don't wish to talk," Hermione says. "And you look exhausted. Sleep, because the silence is best for me."

"Does it look like I'd fit on this bloody bench?" He looks at her with incredulity, somehow managing to make his gaze so intense that she shifts in her seat yet again. "I'm not lying down."

"So tip your head back. I don't care what you do." She snaps it at him, pointedly glaring down at the pages of her book. "So long as it's not talking to me."

"You're a bit of a bitch, aren't you?" He's laughing as he says it, his teeth stark white against the pink lolly as he tugs it out of his mouth again. "That's a Slytherin trait, you know."

"I'm not a bitch." Offended, she glowers at him. "The only Slytherin trait I would deign to have is resourcefulness."

"You can't deign to have a personality trait. They're inherent."

Hermione hopes her gaze is as intense as he seems able to manage to make his. "I have no qualities pertaining to Slytherin house. I was sorted into Gryffindor before the Sorting Hat even reached my head."

"Did you want to be in Gryffindor?"

"Of course." She tilts her nose up. "I've always known who I am."

"Cunning." Malfoy nods once, raising his lolly as though it's an alcoholic beverage. "Slytherin trait. You were mis-sorted."

Hermione is fuming. The anger licks at her insides like the flames of a forest fire. "I was not mis-sorted. I was sorted correctly and exactly as I should have been."

"I don't think so. I think you knew what you wanted and the Sorting Hat gave it to you. When a Slytherin knows what they want, the magical world has a way of making it happen. Especially if they want it badly enough."

"And what of you?" She slams her book shut, holding her place with the thumb of her right hand. "You've got all sorts of traits that I can see just from the entirely two real conversations I've had with you—at Azkaban and right now. I'd say back then, you were rather Hufflepuff, weren't you? Making it very clear with your deflective questions and self-deprecating jokes that you thought it was only fair that you be punished for your actions."

Malfoy watched her with that same infuriatingly-intense gaze. She couldn't tell if there was anger she saw dancing behind the cage of his eyes, or amusement. And still, he sucked on that pink ice lolly. It was getting smaller, as was the cramped compartment with him in it.

"I'd call that resourcefulness, actually. Ensuring that I give myself the best possible chance at life. If I didn't let my guard down, I could have gotten the Kiss. I was hoping I could garner myself a life sentence instead. In order to do that, I had to—"

"See me as human?"

These words—these words finally rattle him. She can see it almost like a gust of wind crashing into him and over his body. He pulls the lolly from his mouth, appearing suddenly disheveled. She knows she's caught him off guard.

He can't answer without letting his guard down again and this time, he's not staring down the end of a future in a cell.

"I have absolutely no qualities of any House other than Slytherin," he says, unmoving except for the way he rests his forearm on his thigh. Hermione watches him twirl the lolly near his knee in a thoughtful manner. "But you? You've got ambition—a will to complete the tasks you want to complete. I'm willing to bet you're rather resourceful, judging by your exposes in every wizarding newspaper and magazine that came out this Summer. Add those both to your cunning plots to usurp the rules and get yourself sorted where you wanted, I'd say you might even be more Slytherin than me. You're just missing the key element."

"Heritage?" She scoffs, preparing to open her book and seek out her previous spot. "Heritage isn't even a trait that's recognized anymore. It was built on blood purism and hatred for Muggleborns. Pureblood culture thrives off of keeping Muggles and Muggleborns in a perpetual state of insignificance."

She supposes she could say she's a changed witch.

"Self-preservation."

Hermione's heart skips a beat. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"If the fifteen speeches you gave in Potter's Golden honor this Summer was of no indication, I'd say you don't give a flying fuck about yourself, Granger." He breathes a laugh that lacks mirth. It drips in a sense of achievement that he feels he's reached, the achievement that comes from getting the correct answer. "And as much as I know neither of us wants to talk about last year, I'd like to remind you that I've seen how willing you are to lay your life down for a cause. You've got no sense of self-preservation. You'd die for people you know, and kill for people you don't. You're foolish and unfortunately, foolishness isn't a Slytherin trait."

Hermione is silent, staring at him with wide eyes. It's perhaps the most accurate reading on her person that she's ever received. She isn't sure whether to be livid with him for being a prat, or angry with herself for presenting herself in such a way.

But she hasn't only presented herself as such, and she knows it. She knows he's right.

It's just difficult to hear it coming from him.

"I wasn't mis-sorted," she says through gritted teeth. "I'm in exactly the House I was meant to be in and I think I've done a good job of living up to it. Not that it's of any consequence to you."

It's meant to be a conversation-ending sentence but Malfoy doesn't seem to see it that way. He leans forward, pushing his sleeves up and resting his elbows on his thighs. His face is merely one foot away from hers and this time, when he slips the ice lolly into his mouth and smirks around it, she can smell the strawberry flavoring on his breath.

She tries with all of her might not to look down at the rich black ink of his Dark Mark. Instead, she holds his gaze with all of the Gryffindor bravery that she knows burns in her veins because in the game that he's playing right now, she loses when she falters. She cannot falter.

"It's of consequence to me because you living up to those traits are the reason why I'm sitting here, free of a cell. If it weren't for your foolish, selfless lack of self-preservation, I would be in prison. I suppose I'm just curious as to what your overzealous Gryffindor-esque reason could be for doing it."

"First you say I should have been in Slytherin. Now you're saying that it was the fact that I'm a Gryffindor that saved your life. Which is it?"

He sticks his tongue out, tilting his head to the side as he drags the lolly along it. Hermione has no idea—no, absolutely no idea—why she can't take her eyes off of the movement.

"Why did you speak up for me?"

"Why do you never give straight answers?"

"Because I don't want to. Why did you speak up for me?"

Gods. Hermione's never felt this simultaneously confused and terrified in her entire life. All at once, her thoughts start to race. Is he angry with her for speaking up for him? She'd only wanted the Wizengamot to know that he wasn't truly evil—that he hadn't actually harmed anyone. That he hadn't identified Harry. Did he want to go to Azkaban?

Or is this some sort of prequel to the school year? Is this his way of letting her know that he's going to go right back to being the person he was before? Is this his way of menacing her? If so, it's certainly working.

"You're holding that book like a shield," he says. "Answer the question."

A command. A command. Hermione's never been given a command before.

She doesn't know what to do with it.

"I spoke up for you because…" She knows the answer and its simple. So, so simple. But it feels like its lingering at the edges of her consciousness, faint and out of reach. Like a lone warrior across a fire- and death-ravaged battlefield where she's the only survivor of her army and the enemy is thousands strong. "Because I… I wanted to…"

He drags that lolly out of his mouth so slowly that she feels like she can't breathe.

What is this? What the Hell is this? Is he casting some sort of spell over her? Why is she so damn frightened?

"Malfoy," she says, unable to focus on anything other than that candy. Her voice is meek in an uncharacteristic way. "Can you please stop?"

"Stop what?" There's nothing in his face—no trace of a smirk, nor hint of amusement. Only the intensity of an unfaltering gaze. The gaze of someone winning the game.

"Being cruel. You're being—" She stops because she actually needs to catch her breath. There's so little air in the room. "—being cruel."

"I'm not being cruel. I'm asking questions. And look at you—you've got your feelings hurt when you could have just answered my initial question in the first place."

Things are clicking into place so slowly. She feels pained, like she's trapped in quicksand and losing time. There's only been one other time where she's felt this scared, and he was present there, too. She can almost feel the phantom pains of the Cruciatus, ghosting along her veins as it burns her blood to ash.

That his voice, words, and actions in this train compartment alone can put her right back in that state of mind?

What the Hell has changed in the past weeks?

"Yes, Malfoy," she hisses, fingers clutching onto her constellations book as though it were the answer to immortality that she held in her hands. "I like stars."

He tries to drag the lolly along his tongue again but this time, Hermione isn't having any of it. Without thinking deeply on it, her hand shoots out and wraps around his wrist. She's briefly aware of the fact that her hand is very small compared to his, and she squeezes it until her nails bite flesh. She hopes he fears her Muggleborn poison.

"Stop," she snaps.

He is frozen there in that seat, his lips curved up into a smirk that is too much him. Like someone's painted the features of his face to enhance rather than cover them. Like a shadow version of Malfoy has attached itself to the front of him to make him overzealously Malfoy.

Her hand feels like it's going to go numb.

"Take a deep breath, Granger," he murmurs, and then his gaze flickers downward to look at her hand on his skin. The lolly pops out of his mouth. "Your legs are shaking."

Like he's caught flame, she lets go of his wrist and pulls her hand back.

Malfoy is slow and deliberate as he leans back, tips his head until he's looking up at the ceiling, and sucks on his candy in silence.

Hermione doesn't know why. She doesn't know why she's trembling, she doesn't know why she feels so off-kilter in his presence, and she doesn't know why everything he's saying about her is right. Everything he's ever said about her has been right.

It's this realization that send her into a panic.

She's on her feet in seconds, leaving her book and purse behind on the bench. One shick later, and she's outside in the train hallway, her back pressed against the now-closed compartment door. Questions repeat in the expanse of her mind like a mantra, questions that raise alarms. Her inability to answer them makes everything worse. She's always hated Malfoy but she has never once in her entire life feared him.

There is nothing about returning to Hogwarts that interests Hermione Granger.

Except him.

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