"Hermione." Draco's voice was soft, full of awe, and affection filled her entire being at him being there, relishing her name in his mouth, not just Granger which came with equal affection not the scorn of years past, but her name that she rarely heard from him.
"That's not done yet," Hermione murmured as Draco tilted a glass jar with beads meant to be transfigured into lightning bugs but were all really supposed to be fairy lights. "They're meant to be fairylights, but I had a thought to make them into living lightning bugs and I kept fucking it up."
She blushed furiously at swearing in front of him, and he looked at her, balancing on one hip, the jar tilted in his hand clinking lazily as she came up beside him. The proximity of him had set her nerves on end and she wanted to brush up against him just to reassure herself that he was, in fact, there. To relieve the intense pressure that had encompassed her body like a taught balloon, ready to burst, or rise into the sky, or both.
"You'll get it. I'm sure of it." Draco turned the jar in his hands and the beads clinked gently again, before he set it down, and Hermione's breath caught in her throat because Draco had gone still, aware she was there and calculating what he should do. She wondered what he wanted to do.
"I-" Hermione turned to face him and her entire body became jittery. She never had Ron in her room, not alone at home. Not like this, and she shook Ron from her mind because she couldn't understand why she had thought of him when Draco's perfectly pink and parted mouth was slightly open in curiousity, beckoning her. "Can I-" Hermione groaned internally and closed her eyes to scold herself, "-can I kiss you?"
Upon reopening her eyes, she saw that Draco's face had become blotchy and his mouth was curving into that charming smile she loved on his face so much. A shadow of wickedness thrilled her insides into goo.
"How scandalous, Granger." Draco teased, even as he took a step toward her. "Your parents haven't been gone for more than five minutes, and you're already trying to get me naked."
Hermione's entire body flamed. "No!" She sputtered, half laughing but it only sounded like highly embarassed squeaking. "Not naked-, " yes, naked, please, "-I just-"
"I'm teasing, Granger." Draco tilted her chin up with the tip of his forefinger and she obliged, sighing at the feel of his breath on her skin. Self consciousness still engulfed her and flamed her skin, but she was starting to not care. "All I've thought about for the past few months was kissing you."
Breathing had suddenly become hard, and she had to make a conscious effort to expand her lungs. Draco was so close now, she was vaguely aware of the clock on her wall ticking the seconds in a false rhythm. Or was that her heart skipping around inside of her, listless and elated?
"So kiss me." His hand closed around her throat, soft before his thumb skimmed her skin and traced her jaw.
Draco kissed her.
It was nothing like kissing him under her tree atop her hill.
Heat exploded across her mouth where his lips fell on hers and she immediately parted her lips to invite him in. His hand was brushing her skin, her neck and jaw, sending shocks of electricity through her and she felt embarrassment threaten to overwhelm her from being so aroused at such simple gestures, but Draco was already pulling her close and she had no time to think.
Draco's tongue tasted of the breakfast they shared, tinted by Lady Grey tea. She thought her senses were going blind from overstimulation and her underwear was uncomfortably humid. Draco took two steps toward the wall, half carrying the weight of her and she fell into the rhythm of it, allowing herself to be pressed flat, and her legs opened involuntarily; Draco took that as invitation and his own muscular thigh slipped between hers and she moaned, then whimpered as Draco dragged his teeth against her lip.
And he let out a groan too, the sound of him vibrating against her entire body because there was no room between them. The air was thick and Hermione pulled away to gasp for air; she found her palm pressed flat against Draco's chest, a motion meant to ask for a reprieve she didn't truly want.
"Sorry." Draco breathed and he retreated. And Hermione slumped against the wall, her knees weak.
"Don't be." Hermione closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the wall, but her lungs just filled with Draco's mixture of intoxicating scents and she shut her eyes tighter, confused. "I've-" she bit her lip and decided to leave her eyes closed. "I haven't been with anyone, since-"
" Him ," Draco finished for her. Hermione opened her eyes to find him scowling a little, the middle of his eyebrows pinched and his lips pursed, but bruised pink from their intensity. Hermione's embarrassment lit her face on fire and she glanced away. But Draco continued. "I should've done something. Said something. That night- and I teased you about it because I was jealous- I had heard rumours about him and Chang-"
"It's fine!" Hermione cut him off, unwilling to relive her poor judgement, then pulled her clothes around her, realised she was in a jumper, and settled for wrapping her arms around herself to fill the warmth of Draco's vacated space.
"Hermione. It isn't fine. No one should treat you this way. That way. The way I have for all those years…" Draco's face scrunched up and Hermione recognised remorse. She wanted to kiss it away but was too mortified to do it.
"You were a child. We all were." Hermione stepped toward him and touched his arm in an attempt to comfort him. He didn't pull away so she stepped into him and hugged him. His arms came up around her and she sighed in repose.
"You were too. You didn't act like I did." Draco murmured into her hair. "You're the least spiteful person I know."
Hermione laughed at that. "You don't know half the things I've done." Draco pulled back to look at her, his eyebrow quirked in an unasked question. "I jinxed Marietta. Those pimples were me. I put Skeeter in a jar with an unbreakable charm on it. Like a pet. I got Umbridge…"
Draco sighed. "You did it for survival. I had no excuse besides-"
"Weren't you doing it for survival too?" Hermione tilted her chin upward to look at him, inhaling the smell of him like Amortentia.
"I don't know how you could see it that way." Draco shook his head slightly, frowning.
"If you showed any weakness, what would have happened to you?" Hermione asked, wanting to kiss the crease between his eyebrows away. "Wouldn't you have been bullied?"
"Nothing worse than what I did to you." Draco slipped a little from Hermione's arms and she tightened her grip to hold him there. Mortification, embarassment, they had no room here when Draco was being so vulnerable.
"You're wrong. They were in your house. You'd have gotten no respite. You'd have been treated as a traitor." Draco scoffed and Hermione doubled her efforts. "It was survival, Draco. It was."
Draco said nothing but he had softened in her arms at the sound of his name. She nudged him and nuzzled his chest, smelling the light scent of grass and dew still clinging to the fabric. "Okay?"
"'Kay" Draco's voice was muffled by her hair. He chuckled, it sounded a little wet like he had almost begun to cry. "You smell like coconuts."
Hermione blushed. She had put oil in her hair that morning before her walk in an attempt to combat the frizz that she anticipated would happen. She dislodged her face from his steadily beating heart and looked up at him again, their mouths pressing their breaths into each other's lips.
And she kissed him slowly as she slung her arms onto his shoulders and tiptoed to get better access to his mouth while his hands curled into her thick hair, tugging her head back a little and earning a throaty groan from Hermione, Draco responded in kind.
One of his hands released its hold and scooped her back, the space between her shoulder blades, into his palm before he glided down the fabric of her jumper, to its hem, then his thumb stroked her smooth skin there; Hermione jumped slightly at the sensation before he pressed more firmly, grasping for her flesh now that he felt it bare against his fingertips, soft and inviting. Hermione felt the rough skin imprint on her skin and memorised it.
She honestly couldn't care less for who he was and what he did before the war. Not that she knew him now. Not knowing that just like her, Harry, and Ron, much like everyone else in the wizard war, they were just trying to survive. And it was Narcissa Malfoy, wasn't it, that let Harry live despite finding him breathing?
Pureblood, muggleborn, halfblood…it didn't matter. Not anymore.
Hermione had begun to unbutton his shirt, desperate for more of his body against her own, and Draco's hand had found her bra clasp under her jumper, his thumb stroking the delicate skin under her breast where the bra hung a healthy distance away from her flesh and Hermione was sure he could feel her heart thrashing against her ribcage.
Brrringg, brinnggg .
They jumped apart, panting. Draco looked around for the noise, his eyes were glazed over and trying to focus. Hermione recognised it as the home telephone, and squeezed past Draco into her upstairs hallway where the noise grew louder, beckoning from downstairs.
"Hermione?" He called after her and she knew he was following her.
"Sorry! It's my telephone!" she called over her shoulder, then answered it, breathless. The bare house and previously occupied kitchen stared accusingly at her. "Hello?"
"Hermione, dear." her mother's voice bleared into her ear. "I think I left the oven on. Could you check it?"
"Mom. I made breakfast this morning." Hermione rolled her eyes. "I'm also twenty four years old! I can be alone at home with a boy!"
"Unless that boy is your fiance," Hermione noted the hopeful tone of her voice and sighed, "there will be none of that happening under our roof!"
"Did you call me from the office just for this?" Hermione groaned. "Yes mom. The oven is off. Call me if you need me to come in."
She hung up and turned, crumpling against the wall beside the phone to look at Draco who was leaning against the archway of the kitchen where the phone was located. She smiled, feeling her cheeks tingle from her lingering blush.
"I'm happy to go back to my place." Draco grinned. Hermione stepped into him and hugged him, laughing. He was breathing into her hair again. "Does your place have any anti-apparition charms?" Hermione shook her head. "Hold on tight, Granger."
And with a sharp tug behind her navel and the sensation of being sucked into a void while simultaneously pressing all of her body against Draco's, they were gone.
