Title: Curiosity
Rating: R language and sexuality (mmm, sexuality…)
Spoilers: Books
Key: Hermoine/Draco mmm….
Summary: And yet another rendezvous… with fatal consequences?
A/N: Spring break acted as a horrible writer's bloc, apologies for late chapter. Many apologies, I shall go flog myself now.
**
before
**
His hands were empty and so was his mouth and Malfoy was very confused.
Where was he and what was he doing with Hermoine on his breath?
A confused finger lifted to his lips, and they came away wet.
Hermoine was looking at him angrily, her hand swiped at her lips, as if to try and rub them clean.
He had kissed...a mud blood.
"Bloody HELL!" He shouted, "BLOODY HELL!" He tried to wipe his lips but nothing seemed to get them clean.
"Don't come near me, or here, again." She pointed to the door, "Leave or I'll scream."
"Me first," He muttered, pushing past her, "Before I kill myself."
He stomped out of the room, pulling his robe tighter around his body, and trying to forget the feel of her lips.
Hermoine wiped her face angrily with her hands, as if doing so would make Malfoy get off her skin.
It didn't work and she still felt dirty.
And she remembered his lips and his tong-
NO!!!
**
now
**
He was actually lost in the halls of Hogwarts.
He had been attending Hogwarts for seven years, and he was lost getting back to his own room.
Damn mud blood.
No matter how many times he wiped his lips with his robe, Granger's stupid- no-good-mud blood-lips lingered.
They felt raw.
He cursed Granger, Potter, Weasley and himself under his breath, afraid of waking anyone who might become witness to how red his lips were.
They where bright red, surely anyone would notice; they felt like they were burning.
He felt like he was burning.
His skin felt puckered and hot and goddamnit, he needed a cold shower.
Anything...
He rounded the corner and found himself back at the infirmary.
He had gone in a circle.
GODDAMNIT!
**
When Malfoy had left, she had found herself moving as far away from the prone bodies of her friends.
They seemed dead, but like the late-night horror movies she had seen on the telly, their chests continued to move up and down.
They were breathing.
They looked dead… they had to be to look like that.
Yet, tendrils of air escaped from between their lips, and their chests still moved.
And she felt cold.
She sat in the corner, pulling her robes over her bare knees and wrapped her arms around her legs.
She was cold.
The stone floor was cool, the flickering torches casting little light and gave off even less heat.
Her lips felt clammy, slick and cold, like sick jello.
Her eyes barely reflected the dim torches as she fixated on Ron and Harry.
They didn't move.
And for a while, neither did Hermoine.
**
Malfoy couldn't get his feet to move away from the infirmary, away from the awful mud blood and her comatose friends. Rather, he found himself moving closer to the door, he found himself grasping the doorframe and peering in.
Granger was still there, this time she had retreated into the corner, the light barely revealing her small frame.
She seemed fixated, hypnotized even, by her prone friends. Her eyes, the damning brown, blank eyes, became faceted in the light of the torches.
Draco felt his insides twist, and for the first time in those months, he was sick: feeling scared and confused.
He stepped inside with every intent to do something about it, with every intent to mess with Granger's head and exorcize her damn blank eyes from his brain.
With bluster and bravado he began to open his mouth, a thousand insults on the tip of his tongue.
And then he shut it.
Before he knew it he was settling himself down beside her, drawing his knees in, and bringing a hand up to hover above her back. But that was as far as he could go; afraid of getting socked, or worse, kissed. He couldn't bring himself to touch her just yet.
He wasn't that far gone...
He couldn't bring himself to speak to her just yet either.
So he sat there, his arms wrapped around his legs, his eyes trying to find what was so interesting on the wall just above the cots, trying to find where he went wrong and found himself here, beside the infuriating mud blood.
Hermoine didn't say anything, Probably don't even register as a blip on her bloody rader.
And for once, it didn't make him angry. He didn't have the urge push or kick the stupid girl, didn't have the urge to yell at her or sneer and make remarks on her lineage.
He just sat there, staring at the wall, wondering when he would finally come to his senses and leave.
**
It was his breathing that awoke her. She had fallen into a fugue, the cracks in the wall holding more interest than breathing itself, so when she heard his breath, shallow and slippery, she found herself falling back into reality.
Draco was sitting beside her, his arms wrapped around the tops of his knees in much the same fashion as she currently sat. His robes were pulled tight, and his slate eyes scanned the walls with feigned interest.
She didn't know whether to run or stay put.
She didn't feel particularly up to running, or moving at all for that matter; but she didn't want to be verbally, or maybe even physically, abused either.
But Malfoy was doing neither.
He looked...tired.
There were bags under his eyes, faint, imperceptible lines. He didn't look well, he looked much like Hermoine had before the NEWTs: stressed and pulled thin.
Any sympathy that Hermoine had felt didn't not appear in her voice as she finally spoke quietly, "I'll scream."
He blinked for a few moments, startled out of whatever reverie he had been hiding in, "Excuse me?"
"I said I would scream if you did not leave, and yet you're back."
He looked at her as if she had said two plus two equaled bananas, "And you would do this why...?"
"Because."
"My, you have been gone long, haven't you?"
They fell silent, both unsure of how to proceed, but both unwilling to back down.
Malfoy resumed his examination of the wall, and Hermoine looked down at her feet and scuffed the floor with her shoes.
They stayed that way for a few minutes, until Hermoine summoned up the balls to ask the question that had been on her mind.
"Why, Malfoy, pray tell, are you here? Is it really taking you this long to think of a nasty comment to say?"
He didn't answer, rather dropped his head and began to examine his shoes as well, as if shamed.
Malfoy...shamed?!?
"I'll help you," She sneered, " Stupid mud blood," She ticked off a finger, "Ignorant bint," ticked off another finger, "My mother is a whore," And another, "Oh, and cannot forget the classic, teacher's pet-"
Before she could finish, Malfoy had pushed himself off the floor angrily, "Look, I didn't come here to verbally abuse you, or Potter, or Weasley, or have the same done to me-"
"Then why did you come?" Hermoine asked quietly, suddenly feeling...guilty?
This stopped Malfoy, and Hermoine watched as he seemed to struggle for an answer, as if he didn't know it for himself.
Rather than tell her that, he turned on his heel and ran out of the room, leaving a very confused Hermoine in his wake.
She pushed herself off of the floor, brushing her robes clean from the dust. The room was quiet again, to quiet.
Hermoine straightened her robes, brushed off the dust and left the room with one last glance at her friends.
She couldn't be there any more.
She just...couldn't.
**
Hermoine found herself walking the grounds a few hours later. School was in session and she had to physically remove herself from Hogwarts or she feared she would have found herself back in class, her butt in the first row seat, a sharpened quill gripped tightly in her right hand.
She couldn't do that again.
It had taken everything she had to convince herself that her time at Hogwarts was finally over, that she would never take another class again.
It had taken everything she had to leave and try her hardest not to look back.
And yet she was back.
She couldn't stay in her room, she couldn't go to class, she couldn't see Harry and Ron (she feared she might do something rash, like break a vase or punch her arm through a wall), and she couldn't visit Hagrid.
So she found herself skirting close to the Whooping Willows, looking for clues. At least that was what she told herself.
In truth she was scuffing her toes in the dirt and trying her hardest to fight nostalgia.
This, her foot lightly kicked a tree root that poked out of the ground, was where she had tripped the first time she had tried to get past the willow.
This, her hand cleared away a dusty rock, was where Ron plopped himself and refused to move after a particularly nasty run.
This, and she looked away from the red soaked ground, was where they had found Harry and Ron.
She closed her eyes and felt no tears.
Just fatigue.
The ground was still red and her eyes snapped open.
It was still red.
It had been three weeks and the ground was still red.
Hermoine looked up and examined the sky, watching as the black clouds moved slowly past. They had been up there for a while now, a physical reminder of her seemingly permanent mood.
click
It had been raining for a while now.
click
The ground was wet and soggy.
click
The blood was...fresh.
click
click
click
click
click
**
Hermoine felt her heart seize up in her throat; adrenaline electrified through her veins and her head swam.
Everything was on edge.
Everything became silent, the noises, became amplified, reverberating through her head as she tried to sift through her thoughts and pull out a cohesive plan.
Nothing came to mind.
The Whooping Willow seemed to twist and bend, its vines and branches lashing at her with fury.
She stepped back and tried to peer into the tree's branches.
A droplet, morning's dew, fell onto her cheek, trickling just below her eye.
A tear.
She heard the tree shriek as it's vines twisted and slapped at her with more ferocity, and she ducked behind an overturned boulder.
She felt more droplets hit her face, and she wiped them away.
Her hands came back up bloody.
Red smears covered her fingers and hands where she had wiped her face.
Bloody nose?
The tree screamed again and then Hermoine realized it wasn't that was making those awful noises.
She looked back down at her hands, realizing that the red wasn't from her nose but from the droplets.
It was blood.
The tree continued to scream, a guttural sound...
Malfoy.
**
"Malfoy!" She called, pushing her self up, and over the rock, "Malfoy! You stupid git!" Not stopping to think, she rolled under the whipping branches, feeling them lash against her skin.
Malfoy's screams grew louder and his voice sounded hoarse, strained.
More red droplets splattered against the ground.
Safely at the base of the tree, her body pressed against the bark, the wood digging into her skin. Her eyes burned, they stung from her sweat and the blood; red droplets began to plunge down faster.
She could barely spot Malfoy's twisting body from between writhing branches.
It looked...broken.
Her wand was back at home, and Malfoy's lay at the perimeter of the tree, precariously close to the lethal leaves.
Acting on instinct she didn't know she still had, she watched, detached, as her body tucked, rolled, snatched the wand, and slip between the branches to sanctuary behind an overturned rock.
She couldn't breathe, but her lungs seized up in a frantic imitation anyway.
Malfoy stopped screaming, suddenly, the writhing, snapping branches moving with eerie silence.
All that she could hear, that she could pick up on, was the thrashing of the tree and her heavy breathing (that didn't seem to do her much good).
But Malfoy was still silent, and she glimpsed, briefly, his hateful blue eyes rolling to the back of his head.
She had to get him out of there.
Against her best interest, against anything sane what so over, she clambered between the branches and clambered up the gnarled trunk, her fingers scraping, raw and bloody, as she scrambled up the thorns and protrusions and the splinters.
With Malfoy's wand, held surprisingly steady, she whispered as many incantations and spells and curses and hexes that she could remember, hoping that they would trigger something (anything!) and free Malfoy's limp (hopefully alive) body.
But nothing seemed to work.
"Alohomora!" It was the last one she had, "Alohomora!" She screamed louder, her voice cracking...
…Still nothing.
The tree, whipping, thrashing, screaming, and Hermoine watched, waiting to hear the telltale snap of the neck and the final, last crack of the spine.
Something to tell her that she could give up; that there was nothing left for her to do.
"Let him go," She whispered, more to herself than to anyone else, "Please."
She closed her eyes, and felt her arms, still wrapped around an unmoving branch, go numb.
The thrashing stopped so suddenly that Hermoine still had her eyes closed when Malfoy's body, limp and bloody, dropped to the ground.
**
tbc…
**
Read and Review" revitalizes body and soul!
Thanks for sticking w/ me so far, AP testing and all proves to be great solutions to writer's bloc~!
-dafnap
rock!
Rating: R language and sexuality (mmm, sexuality…)
Spoilers: Books
Key: Hermoine/Draco mmm….
Summary: And yet another rendezvous… with fatal consequences?
A/N: Spring break acted as a horrible writer's bloc, apologies for late chapter. Many apologies, I shall go flog myself now.
**
before
**
His hands were empty and so was his mouth and Malfoy was very confused.
Where was he and what was he doing with Hermoine on his breath?
A confused finger lifted to his lips, and they came away wet.
Hermoine was looking at him angrily, her hand swiped at her lips, as if to try and rub them clean.
He had kissed...a mud blood.
"Bloody HELL!" He shouted, "BLOODY HELL!" He tried to wipe his lips but nothing seemed to get them clean.
"Don't come near me, or here, again." She pointed to the door, "Leave or I'll scream."
"Me first," He muttered, pushing past her, "Before I kill myself."
He stomped out of the room, pulling his robe tighter around his body, and trying to forget the feel of her lips.
Hermoine wiped her face angrily with her hands, as if doing so would make Malfoy get off her skin.
It didn't work and she still felt dirty.
And she remembered his lips and his tong-
NO!!!
**
now
**
He was actually lost in the halls of Hogwarts.
He had been attending Hogwarts for seven years, and he was lost getting back to his own room.
Damn mud blood.
No matter how many times he wiped his lips with his robe, Granger's stupid- no-good-mud blood-lips lingered.
They felt raw.
He cursed Granger, Potter, Weasley and himself under his breath, afraid of waking anyone who might become witness to how red his lips were.
They where bright red, surely anyone would notice; they felt like they were burning.
He felt like he was burning.
His skin felt puckered and hot and goddamnit, he needed a cold shower.
Anything...
He rounded the corner and found himself back at the infirmary.
He had gone in a circle.
GODDAMNIT!
**
When Malfoy had left, she had found herself moving as far away from the prone bodies of her friends.
They seemed dead, but like the late-night horror movies she had seen on the telly, their chests continued to move up and down.
They were breathing.
They looked dead… they had to be to look like that.
Yet, tendrils of air escaped from between their lips, and their chests still moved.
And she felt cold.
She sat in the corner, pulling her robes over her bare knees and wrapped her arms around her legs.
She was cold.
The stone floor was cool, the flickering torches casting little light and gave off even less heat.
Her lips felt clammy, slick and cold, like sick jello.
Her eyes barely reflected the dim torches as she fixated on Ron and Harry.
They didn't move.
And for a while, neither did Hermoine.
**
Malfoy couldn't get his feet to move away from the infirmary, away from the awful mud blood and her comatose friends. Rather, he found himself moving closer to the door, he found himself grasping the doorframe and peering in.
Granger was still there, this time she had retreated into the corner, the light barely revealing her small frame.
She seemed fixated, hypnotized even, by her prone friends. Her eyes, the damning brown, blank eyes, became faceted in the light of the torches.
Draco felt his insides twist, and for the first time in those months, he was sick: feeling scared and confused.
He stepped inside with every intent to do something about it, with every intent to mess with Granger's head and exorcize her damn blank eyes from his brain.
With bluster and bravado he began to open his mouth, a thousand insults on the tip of his tongue.
And then he shut it.
Before he knew it he was settling himself down beside her, drawing his knees in, and bringing a hand up to hover above her back. But that was as far as he could go; afraid of getting socked, or worse, kissed. He couldn't bring himself to touch her just yet.
He wasn't that far gone...
He couldn't bring himself to speak to her just yet either.
So he sat there, his arms wrapped around his legs, his eyes trying to find what was so interesting on the wall just above the cots, trying to find where he went wrong and found himself here, beside the infuriating mud blood.
Hermoine didn't say anything, Probably don't even register as a blip on her bloody rader.
And for once, it didn't make him angry. He didn't have the urge push or kick the stupid girl, didn't have the urge to yell at her or sneer and make remarks on her lineage.
He just sat there, staring at the wall, wondering when he would finally come to his senses and leave.
**
It was his breathing that awoke her. She had fallen into a fugue, the cracks in the wall holding more interest than breathing itself, so when she heard his breath, shallow and slippery, she found herself falling back into reality.
Draco was sitting beside her, his arms wrapped around the tops of his knees in much the same fashion as she currently sat. His robes were pulled tight, and his slate eyes scanned the walls with feigned interest.
She didn't know whether to run or stay put.
She didn't feel particularly up to running, or moving at all for that matter; but she didn't want to be verbally, or maybe even physically, abused either.
But Malfoy was doing neither.
He looked...tired.
There were bags under his eyes, faint, imperceptible lines. He didn't look well, he looked much like Hermoine had before the NEWTs: stressed and pulled thin.
Any sympathy that Hermoine had felt didn't not appear in her voice as she finally spoke quietly, "I'll scream."
He blinked for a few moments, startled out of whatever reverie he had been hiding in, "Excuse me?"
"I said I would scream if you did not leave, and yet you're back."
He looked at her as if she had said two plus two equaled bananas, "And you would do this why...?"
"Because."
"My, you have been gone long, haven't you?"
They fell silent, both unsure of how to proceed, but both unwilling to back down.
Malfoy resumed his examination of the wall, and Hermoine looked down at her feet and scuffed the floor with her shoes.
They stayed that way for a few minutes, until Hermoine summoned up the balls to ask the question that had been on her mind.
"Why, Malfoy, pray tell, are you here? Is it really taking you this long to think of a nasty comment to say?"
He didn't answer, rather dropped his head and began to examine his shoes as well, as if shamed.
Malfoy...shamed?!?
"I'll help you," She sneered, " Stupid mud blood," She ticked off a finger, "Ignorant bint," ticked off another finger, "My mother is a whore," And another, "Oh, and cannot forget the classic, teacher's pet-"
Before she could finish, Malfoy had pushed himself off the floor angrily, "Look, I didn't come here to verbally abuse you, or Potter, or Weasley, or have the same done to me-"
"Then why did you come?" Hermoine asked quietly, suddenly feeling...guilty?
This stopped Malfoy, and Hermoine watched as he seemed to struggle for an answer, as if he didn't know it for himself.
Rather than tell her that, he turned on his heel and ran out of the room, leaving a very confused Hermoine in his wake.
She pushed herself off of the floor, brushing her robes clean from the dust. The room was quiet again, to quiet.
Hermoine straightened her robes, brushed off the dust and left the room with one last glance at her friends.
She couldn't be there any more.
She just...couldn't.
**
Hermoine found herself walking the grounds a few hours later. School was in session and she had to physically remove herself from Hogwarts or she feared she would have found herself back in class, her butt in the first row seat, a sharpened quill gripped tightly in her right hand.
She couldn't do that again.
It had taken everything she had to convince herself that her time at Hogwarts was finally over, that she would never take another class again.
It had taken everything she had to leave and try her hardest not to look back.
And yet she was back.
She couldn't stay in her room, she couldn't go to class, she couldn't see Harry and Ron (she feared she might do something rash, like break a vase or punch her arm through a wall), and she couldn't visit Hagrid.
So she found herself skirting close to the Whooping Willows, looking for clues. At least that was what she told herself.
In truth she was scuffing her toes in the dirt and trying her hardest to fight nostalgia.
This, her foot lightly kicked a tree root that poked out of the ground, was where she had tripped the first time she had tried to get past the willow.
This, her hand cleared away a dusty rock, was where Ron plopped himself and refused to move after a particularly nasty run.
This, and she looked away from the red soaked ground, was where they had found Harry and Ron.
She closed her eyes and felt no tears.
Just fatigue.
The ground was still red and her eyes snapped open.
It was still red.
It had been three weeks and the ground was still red.
Hermoine looked up and examined the sky, watching as the black clouds moved slowly past. They had been up there for a while now, a physical reminder of her seemingly permanent mood.
click
It had been raining for a while now.
click
The ground was wet and soggy.
click
The blood was...fresh.
click
click
click
click
click
**
Hermoine felt her heart seize up in her throat; adrenaline electrified through her veins and her head swam.
Everything was on edge.
Everything became silent, the noises, became amplified, reverberating through her head as she tried to sift through her thoughts and pull out a cohesive plan.
Nothing came to mind.
The Whooping Willow seemed to twist and bend, its vines and branches lashing at her with fury.
She stepped back and tried to peer into the tree's branches.
A droplet, morning's dew, fell onto her cheek, trickling just below her eye.
A tear.
She heard the tree shriek as it's vines twisted and slapped at her with more ferocity, and she ducked behind an overturned boulder.
She felt more droplets hit her face, and she wiped them away.
Her hands came back up bloody.
Red smears covered her fingers and hands where she had wiped her face.
Bloody nose?
The tree screamed again and then Hermoine realized it wasn't that was making those awful noises.
She looked back down at her hands, realizing that the red wasn't from her nose but from the droplets.
It was blood.
The tree continued to scream, a guttural sound...
Malfoy.
**
"Malfoy!" She called, pushing her self up, and over the rock, "Malfoy! You stupid git!" Not stopping to think, she rolled under the whipping branches, feeling them lash against her skin.
Malfoy's screams grew louder and his voice sounded hoarse, strained.
More red droplets splattered against the ground.
Safely at the base of the tree, her body pressed against the bark, the wood digging into her skin. Her eyes burned, they stung from her sweat and the blood; red droplets began to plunge down faster.
She could barely spot Malfoy's twisting body from between writhing branches.
It looked...broken.
Her wand was back at home, and Malfoy's lay at the perimeter of the tree, precariously close to the lethal leaves.
Acting on instinct she didn't know she still had, she watched, detached, as her body tucked, rolled, snatched the wand, and slip between the branches to sanctuary behind an overturned rock.
She couldn't breathe, but her lungs seized up in a frantic imitation anyway.
Malfoy stopped screaming, suddenly, the writhing, snapping branches moving with eerie silence.
All that she could hear, that she could pick up on, was the thrashing of the tree and her heavy breathing (that didn't seem to do her much good).
But Malfoy was still silent, and she glimpsed, briefly, his hateful blue eyes rolling to the back of his head.
She had to get him out of there.
Against her best interest, against anything sane what so over, she clambered between the branches and clambered up the gnarled trunk, her fingers scraping, raw and bloody, as she scrambled up the thorns and protrusions and the splinters.
With Malfoy's wand, held surprisingly steady, she whispered as many incantations and spells and curses and hexes that she could remember, hoping that they would trigger something (anything!) and free Malfoy's limp (hopefully alive) body.
But nothing seemed to work.
"Alohomora!" It was the last one she had, "Alohomora!" She screamed louder, her voice cracking...
…Still nothing.
The tree, whipping, thrashing, screaming, and Hermoine watched, waiting to hear the telltale snap of the neck and the final, last crack of the spine.
Something to tell her that she could give up; that there was nothing left for her to do.
"Let him go," She whispered, more to herself than to anyone else, "Please."
She closed her eyes, and felt her arms, still wrapped around an unmoving branch, go numb.
The thrashing stopped so suddenly that Hermoine still had her eyes closed when Malfoy's body, limp and bloody, dropped to the ground.
**
tbc…
**
Read and Review" revitalizes body and soul!
Thanks for sticking w/ me so far, AP testing and all proves to be great solutions to writer's bloc~!
-dafnap
rock!