Glimpse 3: Contented Development
"Shut the curtains, will you?" she moaned, eyes straining against the salmon orange screen her eyelids provided her gaze.
She felt completely exhausted, spent, and she couldn't even remember why. All she knew was that if somebody didn't get the block that bloody light from falling upon her bed and face, there was going to be mass homicide after the initial shock and drowsiness of waking up.
"Parvarti, I'm not kidding—" Hermione started again, getting more agitated with every passing second, before a clump of bunched white sheets unceremoniously falling on her face muffled her sentence.
"Shut up," she heard a voice very near her utter with almost as much venom as she held in her tone for the sunlight. She turned, groaning in pity for herself that she had such inconsiderate dorm mates, when her eyes snapped open as she felt a leg brush her own. Her dorm mates never slept so intimately near her and their voices were distinctly not male.
"Wha—" she gasped, sharply sitting up and clutching the nearest sheet to her body instinctively. Her eyes adjusted to the morning-sun lit room filled with parchment, quills, and textbooks in a disarray at a far corner of the room, under which there was, presumably, a desk. She was only able to comprehend a few more scenes of organic nature, posted on the walls in all their subtle, dim-lit color, depicting the birds and trees in the night, before suddenly turning her head to her right where she presumed the leg might be attached to a body.
"Can you stop your bloody moving, it's barely ten yet…" the same surly voice grumbled, squinting his eyes in Hermione's direction after lifting his face from his pillow.
Hermione drew in a sharp, cold breath before scrambling off her side of the bed in pure, unadulterated disgust. Before she could realize what went wrong, she tumbled off the side and landed on the cool floor, pulling the sheets along with her to be almost completely useless in the breaking her fall department.
Hearing a raspy laugh from the body on the bed, she carefully stood up as steadily as she could and clutched the stolen sheet to her body more securely.
"Oh, my God," her lips offered a summary of what was going on in her mind. Eyes begging to be removed from the sight of a naked Draco spread upon his bed, resting on his stomach, yet unwilling to look anywhere else, she had to bite her lip to keep the chunks from rising in her throat as the previous night's memories flooded her mind.
Skin. Lips. Discarded clothes, body heat. No alcohol.
Her knees began giving out as she remembered details, put together pictures and words—the whole horrid enchilada. Hermione had just fought with Ron, and then with Harry about Ron. She had been wound up, set on releasing that energy, taking it out on something or someone, desperate to be in the company of someone other than the Agreeing Idiot Twins. Cue the Malfoy entering.
"No, that's not it," she heard Draco's voice from the bed as he sighed in defeat and realization that she wouldn't let him get any more sleep. "You didn't call me God last night, per se…"
"Shut up, just…" she raised her hand at him, looking away as the chunks protested their way up her throat despite her best efforts to remain calm. "Oh, God."
Draco watched in amusement as Hermione vigorously started wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, intent on chafing it off, apparently. He smirked as he remembered that his lips hadn't lingered on her mouth that long, anyway. But he could humor her.
"Where are my…" she muttered to herself, now on the task of finding her clothes, one undergarment at a time, all the while shielding the view of her nude body with sheets.
The contented smirk still firmly in place, the shameless blond leaned against the headboard of his bed and watched Hermione pace about nervously as thought it was The Morning After Show.
"Panties?" he finally asked, seeing that her search was completely pointless and taking up too much time. Her eyes snapped up to him. "Customarily, you ask the guy where those are if you simply cannot find them elsewhere," he grinned like a Cheshire cat, instantly producing the blue cotton dangling off his index finger seemingly out of nowhere. "That's just what we go for."
"Give me those," Hermione fumed, stressing each syllable as she snatched her underwear off his lazy finger. "Where are the rest of my clothes?"
Draco linked his fingers together and stretched them above his head, expanding his sore muscles and contracting them. "That one's up to you, doll. It was all kind of a blur last night—clothes weren't exactly the primary concern."
"I thought I told you to shut up about that," Hermione spat over her shoulder as he eyes resettled on the messy bedroom floor once again. "No need to relive the biggest mistake of my life over and over again."
"Bollocks," Draco retorted, walking toward his dresser as naked as the day he was born without a second thought, while Hermione made a point to look in the exact opposite direction after she accidentally got a sneak peek. "I gave you the greatest shag of your life and you confirmed that many, many times last night, sweetheart, so let's not start singing the Mistake Song this morning, okay?"
Fishing out her pants, Hermione awkwardly put them as she held a sheet to her.
"Last night," she grunted in effort, "should have never happened. I was—" Grunt, "—not myself."
"And you want to hear the best part?" Draco asked over his shoulder, chuckling aloud as he pulled on a pair of trousers. "You weren't even pissed. There was no Firewhiskey, no alcohol of any kind. I thought it was going to be fun to hear your excuses last night, but you weren't much for talking—you know, on account of all the shagging, but now that we're good and bitter as the sun came up, let's hear it, cutie. Why'd you sleep with me—sober?"
"I told you," she hissed, eyes raging with ire as she glared at his naked back, "I wasn't myself last night. I was very upset and very moronic. Now can we get back to the part where you shut up about it? Because you don't seem to be getting that."
"And you don't seem to be getting a very important part of this," he accentuated, skulking toward her with smooth feline grace and grabbing her shoulders before she had a chance to snap her bra into place.
Connecting their lips forcefully, he ran his tongue along the entrance to her mouth, pleased when she opened it for him without a second thought. She moaned into the kiss and arched her body toward his, almost out of habit, as he moved his lips against hers expertly, danced with her tongue as she danced with his.
"Ugh," she suddenly pulled away, pushing against his chest to disentangle from their intimate embrace. "Stop."
"You enjoyed it just as much last night," Draco plowed on, despite the newly-restored horrified expression on Hermione's face; despite the kiss that just happened between them and her futile attempts to act repulsed; as though he was merely continuing his sentence from where he left off. "You seem to be missing a bit of that."
Throwing her jacket on over her nearly naked upper body, not bothering with so much as an undershirt, she zipped it closed and darted toward the door, intent on exiting out of this nightmare and back into her life.
But her legs made a detour of their own.
She stopped before the door knob, turned and moved back across the room toward Draco, grasping his broad shoulders and shoving him toward her as she closed her lips over his once more. Her lips were hurried but scorching; rapidly moving but confident.
Pulling back, her dilated eyes met his, lips parted, though relaxed. No repulsed expression. Yet.
Before he knew what happened, Hermione made a second dash toward the door. Once there, she exited this time, shutting it firmly behind her, and leaving him standing in the middle of his anarchic room, bare-chested and still looking at the spot where she had been kissing him just a few moments ago.
He inhaled and cleared his throat.
"That's what I thought."
"Pass me the stirrer."
She continued writing, her text open, and her quill moving at a rapid pace. Her eyes were trained to the text on the book, recording it with perfect ease, but her mind wasn't comprehending a word of what she was copying.
"Hermione," Dean said more forcefully in her ear, jarring her from the continuous zone in her mind had began to vacation.
"Yeah?" she answered, guiltily. "Sorry, I was just finish the last paragraph, so…"
"You got into it," he nodded. "Can you pass me the stirrer? Right there, by your arm. Yeah, that's it. Thank you. One of us has to continuously stir the potion in this stage and we still need the Earl Grey tea leaves. Do you mind?"
Hermione glanced toward the cauldron, and then toward the supplies table. "Not at all."
Approaching it, she grabbed a shallow, metal dish from the stack at the end of the table dipped the ladle into the bowl full of tea leaves.
"I need that after you," a familiar voice behind her declared. Trying to keep her scoops steady, she briefly shut her eyes and reopened them.
"Fine."
A long silence passed between them as she carefully gathered the ingredients into the dish, extremely aware of Draco Malfoy and where he was standing behind her.
Opening her mouth to say she was done, she heard him inhale, as though he was getting ready to speak.
"I…" He seemed to be choosing his words very carefully. "I… wanted it… as much as you did."
Hermione turned her head to look over her shoulder, not quite meeting his eyes, but settling on his feet. From anyone else, she would have expected some grand apology, something big to convince her that it wasn't her fault and that he hadn't manipulated her into doing something she didn't want to. She would have expected reassurance that she was great, not that it was any reason to gloat for him, of course. She would have expected some great speech about being willing to commit if she wanted, so that she wouldn't feel like some kind of whore.
But Malfoy, she knew, would not offer that for her. He wouldn't go that far; wouldn't go the extra mile. Not unless it was something he felt extremely ashamed about—and even then she wasn't sure what the extra mile, for him, would entail.
The fact that he said what he said, though, made it seem more real for her. Honest. Not good, definitely. But the situation definitely developed layers all of a sudden.
Abandoning the ladle in the bowl, she turned and faced him, eyes meeting briefly, glances platonic.
"I know."
And then he began scooping the Earl Grey into his dish.
Author's Note: I don't know why my recent updates are always so short. But I'm extremely happy that I can call this the third Glimpse of Stranded Pieces of their Strength because I feel like I've abandoned this story, not having updating in forever.
Enjoy and see if anyone can pick up so major Buffy/Spike 'Wrecked' undercurrents. I can't say I was I channeling just them, but I'm not going to lie. There are just times when Hermione is just the Buffy and Draco is Spike.
Beach.