A/N: This chapter is dedicated to dxdevlin, who has so far left exactly half of the reviews on this entire story to date.
Disclaimer: ^! @#$%^&*()
Pansy looked like she was totally ready to screw Azera to the best of her abilities as her offender walked into Potions the next afternoon. Azera tried to ignore the death glares from both Harry and Pansy as she took her place next to Seamus, who was the only one being nice to her today. "Hey, Azera," he said brightly.
"Hi Seamus," Azera said miserably.
"Are you okay? You look upset."
Azera sighed heavily and looked into Seamus's eyes as if to evaluate how much she could trust him. "I just…" she broke off, thinking of the events from the last night and the following morning. "I just have a lot of stress on my shoulders," she said, reminded of the feeling she got when Harry touched her. Her back burned where his fingers had pressed into her skin, needing just a little more.
That morning, Harry had met Cho outside of the Great Hall for breakfast. They were all smiling at each other and putting their arms around each other's waists and everything. Azera had skipped breakfast.
To her surprise, Seamus was giving her a hug. It's better than nothing, a weary voice said inside her head. She was ready to accept any source of comfort at the moment. Seamus squeezed his arms around her shoulders and gave her a friendly kiss on the forehead as he pulled away. "Everything's going to be okay," he said.
"Thanks, Seamus," she said sincerely. "I'm glad I have someone to talk to."
"Anytime," he said, squeezing his arms around her shoulders and giving her a friendly kiss on the forehead. "Everything's going to be okay," he said.
"Thanks, Seamus," she said sincerely. "I'm glad I have someone to talk to."
"Anytime," he said. A little smile crossed Azera's face as she dumped a bottle of ground bezoar into her cauldron and then handed the flask to Seamus. Is he my only friend? She thought miserably as she heard Harry laughing at one of Ron's jokes. It sure looks that way.
Draco turned around and tried to catch her eye, but Azera simply wasn't in the mood. She knew firsthand how many girls besides Pansy Parkinson wanted Draco for themselves. She ignored him and added the next ingredient, the icy eyes boring a hole into her heart from the front of the room.
On the other hand, she knew how much Draco wanted her. She was really the only one that was up to his level in so many things, and she provided for him a pleasure that he felt he was entitled to. Let him suffer. He deserves to be brought down a bit. She tactfully ignored him for the rest of the class and fled straight to the common room after class, still not hungry, to work on her Transfiguration essay. Harry stopped by before dinner to drop of his books, and Azera could feel him staring at her from across the room. She kept her eyes glued to her parchment as she felt Harry pass her and then walk out the portrait hole. Finally, some alone time, she thought, throwing down her quill. The point bounced off the parchment, leaving a spot of ink. She fixed it with a wave of her wand as the portrait hole opened again.
It was Harry's friend, Ron, the redheaded Weasley boy. He came over to where Azera was sitting and sat stubbornly in front of her. She ignored him.
"Azera," he said.
"What?" she muttered.
"Why are you angry with Harry?"
Azera laughed. "Is he such a baby that he has to send his friends to talk to me? If he wants to ask me a question, he can come here and ask me to my face. I'm not sending message like some grammar-school preteen, Weasley," she said. Ron scrunched his nose up as he looked at her.
"He knows that you won't talk to him," Ron said.
"Damn right," Azera retorted, returning her gaze to her essay.
"Can't you just tell me, then, Azera?" Ron asked. "He really cares about you, and he's worried about you. You're like a ton of different people in one body."
Azera paused. "Let me tell you something about Harry," she said, putting her quill down. As she did so, she felt a current of air move past her ear. Ron had been sitting still in his chair for the entire time. She glared suspiciously at Ron as she leaned over the desk and prodded the air next to where he sat. What a b-
"Harry," she said as she plucked an Invisibility Cloak out of the air. Harry appeared next to Ron, looking a bit guilty. Azera stared at him for a moment, and then rumpled the cloak in her hands at threw it back at him.
"You're even less of a man than I thought," Azera hissed, gathering her papers and storming out of the portrait hole.
"Azera, wait!" Harry yelled after her.
"Right, it's not what it looks like, I know!" Azera cried at the Fat Lady, who was looking a bit shocked. Azera dropped her papers into the nearest coat of armor and roamed the halls restlessly, like a tiger looking for prey. She wandered down to the Slytherin wing, earning glares and murmurs of questions from passerby. Azera marched boldly up to the wall in which the Slytherin door was concealed. She banged angrily on the door with her fist. "Draco!" she yelled at the stone. "Draco, let me in! Now!"
The wall slid open. A perplexed Draco stood on the other side. "Azera," he said smugly, as if he knew that she would come to him. "Come in."
Azera stepped through the door. The stone slid shut behind her, leaving her backed against the wall facing a roomful of Slytherins. Azera was willing to bet anything that this common room had never seen a Gryffindor past the sliding wall before. Draco smoothly took her hand and led her through the room across to the roughly hewn stone steps that spiraled upwards. He led her up the stairs until they reached the first landing. The steps continued to spiral up into the fortress-like wall. Draco opened the door off the stairs and beckoned Azera inside. The lavish dormitory was empty. Thick green sheets upholstered in silver covered the mahogany four-poster beds. Draco nonchalantly swung his cloak off his shoulders and tossed it onto one of the beds. He then turned to face his visitor.
"What brings you to the Slytherin Tower?" he asked, shutting the door. The room was fairly dark, save for a stream of moonlight that filtered through the window.
"I needed to see someone, anyone," Azera said, "I needed to get away from Potter."
"Mm, I see," Draco said absentmindedly. "He is a prat, isn't he?"
"The worst."
"I can help you feel better," Draco said simply, fiddling with the buttons of his shirt, which had already become half undone. His hand left his shirt buttons and went to Azera's shoulders, pushing off the folds of the robe. The black material fell to the floor around her feet as Draco wrapped his arms around her body and tackled her gently onto the bed. Azera undid the remainder of the buttons and tossed the shirt to the ground, holding her body against Draco's naked skin.
"Draco," she murmured, his hands tracing over the thin material of her blouse to find the buttons. Skin pressed against skin as her shirt loosened around the upper half of her body.
*I don't think you should do it. *
Fireworks exploded in front of Azera's eyes, her fingers tangled in Draco's hair, as their lips met in a fury which she had never even imagined.
*It's just that I don't want you to do anything stupid. *
Draco buried his face in her neck, his lips tracing lines across her jaw and her half-exposed collarbone. He grabbed a fistful of her shirt as he squeezed her hand so hard that her fingers were jammed together.
*Azera, tell me what's wrong. *
She felt Draco inch his hands up the back of her shirt. Her hair had come loose of its tie, and it was swinging in his face. He pressed her impossibly close against him as they rolled over on the bed, their hands tangled up in each other's hair and in the belt loops of their jeans.
*Azera, wait. *
Draco once more began fumbling for her shirt buttons.
*Azera, wait. *
"Harry," Azera whispered.
*Azera, wait. *
"Wait."
"What?" Draco said, looking up. He had half of the buttons of her blouse undone, and she could see the top of her bra peeking out from her shirt in the darkness. She shifted on the bed, disentangling her limbs from Draco's. "Azera, what are you doing?" he said, his voice cracking slightly under the burden of how much he wanted her body at that moment.
"I don't want this," she said, gesturing at the both of them, "to just be about kissing and…and skin," she said, doing up the buttons of her shirt and then running her hands over the smooth skin that stretched over Draco's muscular arms. Her fingers ran down the sides of his stomach and came to rest just above the belt of his pants. She nestled her body against his, feeling his warmth creep through her clothes to a place that no man could ever touch. "I don't want what we were about to do," she said honestly.
"Why?" Draco asked.
"Because. I just don't," she said. "I want you…more than you can imagine, I expect…but I don't want…that would be too complicated," she finished, leaving the unfinished fragments hovering in the air between them.
Draco blinked, and then slid his hand up the curve of her thigh and over the length of her arm to her chin, which he lifted towards him. He bent down and they kissed slowly. Her tongue blindly traced along the curve of his lips in the first kiss that they had shared which was something more than just a kiss. This was realer than that.
"I love you, Azera," Draco said.
"I love you too," she responded, her fingertips caressing the skin of his bare chest, her arms wrapping around him to keep him warm, to lend him some of what she had to give. She kissed the tip of his nose and raked her hands through his hair, which shimmered slightly in the moonlight.
Azera slowly drifted off to sleep, her head resting on Draco's collarbone and her arms still wrapped around him. Her bare foot rode slightly up the leg of his trousers in her sleep, pushing the material up. Draco sighed and ran his arms through hers, so that his upper arm rested under her armpit. He let their noses touch in the darkness, and then he too fell to sleep in the darkness of the Slytherin 6th year dormitory.