Trigger warnings: Dub-con moment. Toxic Draco – I can't give away more because it's a major plot point. Hang in there. Mild Ron bashing of sorts as well.

Ombré de la Lune

Chapter Four

When Hermione goes to the Library on Saturdays, she never brings her wand.

After spending a year with it glued to her hand, never wanting to be parted with it, she just wants to feel normal for a little while. The Library is safe, the castle even safer, so she likes to do her reading and homework in her favorite nook in the back corner. No one ever comes back there because it's at the end of the Muggle Technical Books section. If a random student comes back there, it's not for long and while they're there, they don't interact with her.

Hardly anyone ever interacts with her.

On the third Saturday in October, Hermione takes her Astronomy homework with her to her nook and gets to work. It'll be an easy constellation plotting assignment, so she's not worried it will take more than a few hours. With the rain pounding a dull melody on the castle roof, it's a soothing, calming experience.

She rather likes being lonely. It's different than the loneliness she felt during her First Year, before she befriended Harry and Ron. This loneliness is a choice. There's a security in it that she thoroughly enjoys.

Ron.

The thought of him makes a shudder roll through her body. She feels guilty that he makes her stomach churn but then again, she supposes he did it to himself by being a royally awful boyfriend. Between the barely sending her letters and only putting his arm around her in front of cameras and interviewers, she isn't sure if there's one single thing she can attribute to how horrid their relationship was. She wants to feel fortunate that he wasn't abusive or infidelious but it still feels like she got the short end of the wand with him.

Thank Merlin she never gave him her virginity. Aside from a few rushed, hurried exploratory nights with his fingers and her hand, she thinks it's a blessing that she was never quite ready. Perhaps it's not that she wasn't ready—perhaps it's just that deep down, she knew he would have been an absolutely inattentive shag.

And besides. He took the break-up like a complete sodding arsehole. Crying and blubbering, begging her not to leave him when she broke up with him in person on a Friday. The. photographed snogging the living trolls out of Hannah Abbott against a wall in Diagon by Monday.

Hermione's beginning to wonder if she hates men.

At least Harry is doing well. In his last letter, between paragraphs of him bemoaning the difficulties of Auror training, she remembers he wrote that he was thinking of shopping for a ring for Ginny when he became a Junior Auror. That would be a nice, positive distraction for the press. A hero's wedding, the Chosen One in wedded bliss.

Anything to finally become invisible.

The only warning Hermione gets is the smell of spiced cologne, and then she hears Malfoy's voice behind her.

"You never answered my question."

Hermione tries not to jump.

She pretends to be fully focused on her star charts, quill scratching across parchment. Seated in her nook at the table with the window to her left and the stacks to her right, she doesn't feel quite as safe and solitary as she did one minute ago.

"What question?"

A hand on the table to her right. It's got black and silver rings on every long, slender finger. Nails painted black like coal.

Hermione sucks in her breath.

A left hand on her parchment, thumb smearing the wet ink. Breath on the top of her head, moving down to her temple, hot near her ear.

Her body goes rigid.

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see the side of his face. His high cheekbone, the angular slope of his nose, the swell of his lips. He's gazing down at her homework but his proximity makes her feel lightheaded in a way that she can't name.

Why would he want to be this close to her?

"You've placed this constellation a little too far to the left, don't you think?"

"And what makes you think you're qualified to tell me how to do my work? I know what I'm doing, thank you."

"I'm only trying to help."

"No, you're trying to cause me grief via arrogance." As she stares at the chart, she sees that he's right. She's put the Lyra constellation in the wrong spot. She feels the mortification like a punch to the gut, forcing herself to ignore it. "Why don't you pull out an ice lolly and try to seduce me again?"

Malfoy pauses, his fingers drumming against the table. "I like playing with you, Granger, but I'm uninterested in volleying questions and taunts back and forth today." His fingers halt their patterned movements. "Why did you speak up for me at the trial?"

She doesn't care if he wants to play games or not. He's the one who set up the board and placed the pieces. He's the one who made the first move. She's in now, and she's not tapping out until one of them wins. He's annoying.

"Why do you want to know so badly?"

There's a silent pause after her question.

It shatters like glass when he slams his left hand down over the top of hers, pinning it to the table. At the same time, with a speed and strength that feels inhuman, his right hand curves around the front of her throat. His thumb pushes her jaw upward, forcing her head back against the front of his shoulder with the way he's leaning over her from behind.

A strangled noise leaves her throat, the only audible way she can show her fear as his fingers dig into the sensitive skin of her neck.

Merlin, his hands are so big.

"I said I don't want to play, you filthy girl." His tone is as rough as the rocky crags of the cliffs on either side of the Hogwarts bridge. "I want you to answer my fucking question. Why did you speak for me?"

Hermione's body is shaking again, her legs trembling so violently that her teeth chatter. Her heart races at a speed that she can't possibly measure. She brings her hands up in front of her, trying to show defenselessness. Without her wand, she feels naked. Powerless. Weak.

It's Saturday and she's in the Library doing homework and it's Hogwarts and war is over. Why on Earth would she have needed her wand?

"I j-just wanted t-to h-help." She's stammering, just like she did when Bellatrix was questioning her. The irony of her nephew being the only other person to make her stammer is poetic. Her heart beats to the tune of a terrified sonnet. "I w-was—I w-was—"

"Spit it out." His fingernails dig on their way up to grip her jaw more fully. He shakes her head. "I don't have all day."

Hermione's never felt this way before. This is different than the situation with Bellatrix Lestrange. Bellatrix was an evil that she knew. She had been studied, tracked, written about. Her behavior was expected and in-character.

But this? This wasn't something Hermione had studied. The Malfoy she knew was a bully, yes, but it was always out of derisiveness. A need to make others feel low with mean-spirited jokes that only bullies would find funny. This Malfoy wasn't someone that made any sense. He never would have touched her, not even with the handle of a broom.

Anson and Emily were right.

It's that complete newness of encountering someone that feels ruthless that takes the Witch Who Won the War and renders her a tremulous, stammering mess in her wooden seat.

"I wanted to help you," she manages to say.

He jerks her head again and she squeezes her eyes shut. "Why?"

"Because when I went to visit you and ask you about that night at the Manor, you were too… Human. Infuriating and annoying, but still human."

"There's lots of humans in Azkaban."

"Yes, but my goal wasn't to get you out of prison, Malfoy," she says, trying to pull her head out of his grasp. She manages it, only to have his ink-stained left hand tuck its knuckle under her chin and force it up again.

His gaze is intense as it meets hers, closer than it's ever been to her before.

"You were trying to spare me the Kiss."

His breath smells of spearmint toothpaste and strawberry. It's an oddly dizzying mixture that she isn't sure goes well together. It draws her gaze to his lips and twists something unfamiliar in her gut.

"Yes," she replies, tone quiet. Her fear is edged with ire now. "Will you let me go?"

His answer is to move his hand from the front of her throat to the back of her neck. Her shoulders curl on instinct, anticipating him squeezing on her pressure points and hurting her. Her body is unaware of what he's capable of. She is unaware of what he's capable of.

"Why would you care if I got the Kiss or not? I've done nothing for you."

"You have, even if inadvertently. You didn't identify Harry—"

"That's not enough. That's nothing, and you know it. Back then, I was saving my own skin."

"You were picking a side."

"No. At that point, I was picking both sides. Self-preservation may be something you lack but it's definitely not something I'd ever give up."

"Malfoy," she says, intentional in the way she locks eyes with him. There's heat scorching her cheeks at their proximity and the horrifying yet intimate press of his fingers against her neck. She ignores it. She has to. "It was your self-preservation that helped make the decision for me. Truly evil people care only about hurting other people for the sake of causing pain. People who deserve fair trials, people who deserve justice…" She sighs. "People who make mistakes deserve to be given chances to make things right. Though, I'm beginning to think I made a mistake myself."

"Your logic has no sense to it. Selfish people deserve second chances? Selfless people are unforgivable?"

"I—"

He shakes her violently once, hard, and she can't help it. She whimpers.

"Make," he snarls, "it make sense."

He does have a temper. Yes, Anson and Emily were right. He's got a temper and she doesn't think he realizes it.

"People who—" She stops, shuddering against the pain of his fingers digging into the soft flesh of the sides of her neck. "People like Voldemort don't care about themselves, therefore they don't care about their agenda as much as everyone thinks they do. Some people are selfless in the way that they cause evil things for the pure sake of making evil happen. People who are selfish will always care about something, no matter what. Themselves. That means they have the capacity to care in the first place."

He doesn't remove his hands. "And you think that because I cared more about myself—enough to save you and Potter—that I'm some sort of stone creature with a heart of gold?"

"I wouldn't say save. I'd say—" His hand squeezes hard again, choking her words off. Shock renders her speechless. Is this something he enjoys?

"I saved your lives. I maintain that I saved your lives. If I'd identified you, you'd both be dead right now, and there'd be a madman on a made-up throne." He breathes the words in a grave tone. "You know that."

Hermione curves her fingers around his hand, prying at them. Her breath rattles in her throat. Sharp pinpricks of lightning burn through her entire body. She presses her thighs together, unsure of why her pelvis feels uncomfortable. Her mind screams at her to try to do something to protect herself. To kick or scream or hit him. To claw at him with her hands. To do something.

How can she be so scared of him yet so unwilling to fend him off?

"Yes," she gasps, nodding in frantic jerks of her head. For some reason, she's squirming in her seat, a strange, desperate feeling pooling in her abdomen. The best way she can describe it is like she really, really needs to use the loo but without the accompanying pain. Her gaze dances back and forth, searching his eyes. "Yes, you're right. You saved our lives."

He loosens his hold a fraction, something in the furrow of his brow that halts the rage she knows she saw building there. "So you agree. You think I saved your lives."

"Yes." She takes another breath. "Was that your intention?"

"It was the outcome."

"But is that what you wanted? Did you want to save our lives?"

He averts his eyes for a second as he thinks to himself. He seems to be contemplating how best to respond. Like he's holding something back. As he remains lost in that thoughtful domain, his thumb absentmindedly rubs up and down along her pulse, like it's made of soft velvet.

She shivers.

His gaze snaps to hers, traversing her entire face. The icy chill of his anger is back, collecting there like frost along the edges of rose petals.

"Potter was our best chance at winning."

"And what about me? I was beneath Bellatrix's wand for fifteen minutes, nearly twenty. You said nothing. You could have told her who I was."

"I could have."

"But you didn't."

"I was seconds away from it the entire time," he spits out, his lip curling into a sneer that's nostalgic in a way that's morbid enough to curdle her stomach. "All I needed to do was say your name."

"And yet you didn't."

He's silent. He simply glares down at her. Hermione knows this answer won't be easy to drag out of him. She tried before his trial.

It was the one question he refused to answer. The one he's still refusing to answer right now.

"Unless you're too much of a coward to say my name at all," she taunts, wary of the fact that he's in the perfect position to snap her neck if he wants to. That's overdramatic, of course, but five minutes ago, she would have thought it was dramatic to fear him strangling her. "Come on, Malfoy. Go on and say it if you think you can."

There it is.

The same facial expression she saw in Astronomy.

Fire that burns so hot it's pale. The eerie calm of unchanged facial features.

Fury.

"You want to know what I think, Granger?" he says, his face looming even closer. He moves his fingers from her neck, his wrist twisting until they're wrapped in the depths of her braids. He pulls with more force than she's expecting, forcing her head all the way back until she's looking up at the ceiling. And then he slants his face over hers, those pale grey eyes as cold as Winter and so intense that it worsens her tremble.

Hermione tries to take a breath, finding it difficult with the angle of her exposed throat and the drag of his fingertips down the front of her hyoid bone. She's on the cliff's edge of choking. Her fingers are wrapped around the edges of her seat, knuckles aching from how hard she's holding on.

"I think," Malfoy murmurs, his breath hot against her mouth, "that if you're going to try to goad me, be sure you're prepared for just how far I'll go. I'm not a coward. I choose who I am… What I say… And whose name I touch with my tongue. And you would do well to remember that no matter what you did in the war, no matter what you did to get me out of Azkaban… If you can't get that fucking shaking under control, you're every bit as weak as I used to be."

As he speaks, Hermione's thighs involuntarily squeeze together.

"U-Used to be?"

"Oh, Granger." He breathes a laugh that she can feel reverberating throughout her entire body, his eyes trained upon her mouth. "Granger, Granger, Granger."

Gods above.

The way he says her surname.

His fingers are traveling past the base of her throat, down between the valley of her breasts, along the length of her torso. Her eyelids flutter for reasons unknown to her as every nerve ending in her body catches flame, beading sweat at the dip of her lower back. Those long, slender fingers attached to large hands that feel like they've been all over her, come to a stop at the hem of her skirt. They pause as his voice lowers to the juxtaposition of a gentle whisper.

"The boy who used to hate you is long, long gone."

Hermione looks up and down the length of his face. Her mind is spinning, whirling with something she can't fathom. The words that come out of her lips don't make sense to her. The feelings in her body don't make sense to her.

"And where…" She swallows. "Where is the man you've become?"

"Right here."

Malfoy's still looking at her lips when his hand shoves beneath her skirt and grabs the bare flesh of her upper thigh. His fingertips push between the tight press of her thigh muscles, pressing in and pulling them apart the smallest of amounts.

He's one inch away. One inch. His skin is searing in its temperature, like his blood is boiling. It feels like things are crawling underneath her skin, traveling from him to a place that someone's only ever touched.

Why? Why does he want to touch her? Why is he doing this?

What changed?

Hermione shakes so hard her breath comes in gasps.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say I make you nervous," he murmurs, his gaze dropping to her lips. It slowly scours her flesh on the way down to where his hand is gripping her thigh beneath her skirt, and then travels back to meet her eyes again. "Your cunt calls like a siren."

He lets go of her with much less force than she expects, and is gone before she can finish her first cough for air. She's left to wonder how he can tell what she's feeling inside of her body, how he can sense the electricity that's slicing through her center. She's left with the way she can still feel his fingers on her skin.

There's a deep, dark part of herself that would have been completely fine if he'd moved his hand up one inch higher, right here in the Library.

I was wrong, she thinks as she massages her aching throat, I was so wrong.

Malfoy is one of the most intense people she's ever met, and she's not going to McGonagall until she figures out what's different about him this year. Until she figures out just who Draco Malfoy is and what's wrong with him.

Or maybe what's wrong with her.