(A/N: THIS STORY IS NO LONGER R-RATED FOR LANGUAGE ONLY. THAT'S RIGHT, FOLKS, THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS SEXUAL CONTENT, SO CONSIDER YOURSELVES WARNED! Now; two quick questions that needed answering. First: yes, I made up Draco's middle name, and it was intended to be horrible, lol. I just thought it sounded... suitably haughty, I suppose, for a Malfoy name. Besides which, I know so many people with the most God-awful middle names it's ridiculous, like parents figure they just have carte-blanche to do their worst, since not that many people will ever hear it, I guess. I went to high school with a girl whose middle name was Hildegard. Hildegard, okay??? She was Irish! There was no reason for Hildegard! Anyway, I digress... that's the story of Draco's middle name. If anyone knows what his "real" middle name is, according to JKR, I'd love to hear it. (Personally, I would hazard a guess that it's probably Lucius.) Other question: NO, Hermione absolutely does not know that Draco is "getting it on" with Pansy at the same time he is pursuing her; she would never tolerate that. Never. She is aware that Pansy is besotted with Draco, because the whole school is aware that Pansy is besotted with Draco... but that's all. Okay, so... onto the cough-SEXstuff-cough er, chapter...) 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
There was no denying the sudden and intense wash of relief Draco felt when the library door creaked open and then closed again, seemingly of its own accord. He had been afraid that, following the scene with Pansy in the corridor, Hermione would decide not to keep their midnight appointment.
Girls could be ridiculously touchy where other girls were concerned, after all, he reflected, conveniently choosing to forget the rush of jealousy he had felt when Hermione had appeared in the cellar of Honeydukes some twelve hours ago, wearing a man's sweatshirt.
But the point was, she was here now, shrugging off the invisibility cloak, and looking extremely self-conscious standing there, just inside the library door, wearing a pair of soft knit pajamas, pale blue and decorated with little stars and moons. Draco saw that the short capped sleeves and modest v-neck of the pajama top were edged with delicate lace, and wondered whether, by virtue of that fact, she considered these the sexiest nightclothes she owned.
And they were sexy... simply because they were on her body.
He grinned. "I'm glad to see you," he said, with complete honesty. "I was afraid you might not come."
"I was afraid of the same thing," she said, approaching him. He noticed that she was still wearing her hair in that infernal braid. "I didn't know how you made out with Pansy. Is everything... okay?"
"Everything's fine," Draco told her, clasping her by the shoulders when she reached him and kissing her on the forehead by way of greeting. "Pansy believes whatever I tell her." This, too, was the perfect truth. With Granger, honesty was the best policy whenever possible- because she could see through him in ways that Pansy could not.
Hermione tried to rest her head on his shoulder then, but he didn't let her. Instead he grasped her chin gently with his thumb and forefinger and tilted her face up toward his. She blushed the moment their eyes met.
"Are you ready?" he asked softly.
"I'm ready," she whispered- then wetted her lips nervously with her tongue and added, in a cracked little voice, "I think."
Still holding her chin, he lowered his lips to hers in a slow and tender kiss.
"You think too much," he whispered a moment later, once he had pulled gently back. "For tonight, at least, don't think- just act. Okay?"
"Okay," she repeated, and then he did let her drop her head forward against him, with a deep, shuddery sigh. "Okay... I trust you, Draco."
He didn't know why it was that his heart sank when she spoke those words.
By all rights he should feel elated; this was what he had been waiting for. Tonight was the culmination of the past several weeks' effort; tonight she would be his in every sense of the word- he would have her any and every way he wanted her, and in the morning, this bizarre power she seemed able to exert over his emotions would be broken, and he could go on with his life. Right?
Right.
Because whatever this so-called power of hers was, it tied directly into the fact that he wanted her with near frantic intensity; it was lust-based, nothing more. And it was time to put it to rest, once and for all.
"Is there room under that cloak for two?" he murmured.
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They reached his room without incident, silently treading the deserted corridors of the school beneath the invisibility cloak, which Hermione had magically altered so that it would accommodate them both, edging their way carefully across the Slytherin common room, hardly daring to breathe, due to the fact that even at this late hour it was currently occupied by three people. Crabbe and Goyle, apparently feeling revived by their day's rest, were playing cards at a low table (Draco felt Hermione stiffen and press even closer against him; he wrapped one arm protectively about her waist without being consciously aware of doing so); the game was "War", and even a game as simple as this often gave the Neanderthal-like boys pause for thought as they carefully considered whether a given card was a six or a nine, and which was worth more; a king or a jack. At stake was an unfortunate younger student's bag of Honeyduke's sweets. The final person present in the room was Pansy, seated on the floor in front of the fireplace, talking animatedly once again to her Durmstrang friend- Draco silently and fervently thanked every deity he had ever heard of that the subject of Pansy's enthusiastic discourse was her day at the salon, rather than the evening's activities that had followed.
And then they were through the common room, down a short corridor, and, once he had quietly performed several advanced unlocking charms, into Draco's room itself.
He divested them both of the cloak, tossing it casually over the back of his desk chair, then gave his attention to re-locking the door, using an even longer and more complicated sequence of spells than he had used a moment ago to unlock it; he wanted to be damn sure that there would be no interruptions whatsoever tonight, or tomorrow morning, or for however long Hermione Granger was in this room. The moment all the locking charms were in place, with a powerful soundproofing spell thrown in for good measure, he put out the wall sconces with a flick of his wand and turned his attention to the fireplace, starting a magical blaze that bathed the room in a soft, flickering golden light. It would provide all the illumination and all the heat they would need for the night.
When he finally turned his attention back to her, he realized with a jolt that she was shaking, and looked to be on the verge of tears.
"Granger, what's wrong?" he asked, frowning, drawing her into his arms as he spoke.
"I just hate them," she said, in a small, choked voice, her eyes downcast. "I hate them, I hate them, I hate them so much."
He didn't have to ask who she was talking about.
That bright, hot possessiveness, with which he was becoming quite familiar, flared. "They're never going to touch you again," he said vehemently- and he meant every word. Even once he was through with her, he did not intend to let Crabbe or Goyle anywhere near her. "You have my word on that, Hermione. I won't allow it."
There was a pause, then- "are you saying you allowed it last time?" she asked, her voice suddenly brittle.
"For God's sake, no! I just didn't think to forbid it... but I have now, and they will listen to me. Look, I always knew they were capable of taking younger students' sweets, and smarter students' notes, but I had never thought them capable of taking..."
"Me?"
He looked down, meeting her eyes steadily. "You," he said emphatically, "are mine, and no one else's, for the taking, ever."
It briefly occurred to Hermione that she ought to protest, and vehemently, such a blatant declaration of ownership... but why, really, when it made her feel so... safe?
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And then any opportunity for further pondering of that subject was cut short when Draco scooped her bodily into his arms and crossed the room in a few swift strides, depositing her on the bed, to sink helplessly into the lavish silken duvet- green and silver, of course- that lay cloudlike atop the surface of the mattress. Kneeling beside her, he instantly commanded, "roll over onto you stomach."
"What? Why-?"
"Just do it, Granger," he drawled.
And there it was again. She ought to take offence at the tone of that command, and damn it, she knew she ought to take offence. And yet instead she found herself obeying him, her trust in him implicit, complete.
She stretched out on her stomach, her arms criss-crossed and her head laid upon them, face turned to the side to keep an eye on Draco- but the next moment he moved out of her line of vision, swiftly and smoothly straddling her hips, so that he was half-kneeling, half-sitting atop the backs of her thighs. She raised her head with a jerk.
"Draco! What are you-"
"Shhh," he cut her off, leaning down so that his chest was pressed warm and solid against her back and whispering directly into her ear. "Don't move." And he sucked her earlobe into his mouth, causing her to give a great, shuddery gasp of surprised pleasure. "Sensitive there, are we?" he murmured smugly a moment later. Then, "I just want to undo your braid, Hermione. Stay still a moment, hm?" His fingers were already working deftly by the time he finished speaking.
It took him several minutes to free her hair of its long, thick plait, and then for several more minutes he simply played with the newly liberated curls, plunging his hands into them, letting the soft, dark strands run over his fingers, reveling in the sensation the way a man who had been lost in the desert would revel in the cool, sweet waters of an oasis pool.
Pushing her entire tumbled mass of hair off to one side at last, he leaned down again and placed a kiss on the nape of her neck. As he did this, his left hand darted to retrieve his wand from where it lay on the nightstand, and an instant later her pajamas, both top and bottom, had vanished from her body to reappear draped over the chair along with the invisibility cloak. Left in nothing but a pair of shell pink panties, Hermione gasped again and stiffened, attempting to push herself up, but Draco would have none of it. The sheer weight of his body held her easily in place.
"Hey," he murmured, his lips moving against her neck as he replaced the wand, "you said you trusted me. Do you still?"
That small, traitorous corner of his mind started to whisper that taking advantage of her trust this way was just plain-
But he quelled it, viciously. No second thoughts, damnit, not now, not when he was this bloody close...
And she relaxed once more, the word "yes" escaping her lips in a sort of breathy little moan.
Draco leaned back and up into a kneeling position once more, still straddling her, but no longer holding her immobile with his weight. Slowly, starting at her shoulders, he ran his hands down the sides of her body, past the swell of her breasts, which were pressed into the bed below her, over the dips and curves of her waist and her hips, his fingers skimming over the fabric of her panties in an agony of longing- God, he wanted to rip them from her body, but he had to take it slow... slow... slow down.
This was such sweet torture.
He took several deep breaths in order to get a handle on himself, then eased off of her, until he was kneeling beside her, as he had been doing when first he'd placed her on the bed.
He had to clear his throat before he could speak, and even then, when the words came, his voice was so husky that he barely recognized it. Pansy had never affected him like this. No girl had.
"Roll over," he managed at length. "Roll over and let me see you."
Hermione buried her face in the duvet for a moment, apparently gathering her courage, then, in an abrupt, decisive movement, she did as he asked, flipping over onto her back, her eyes flicking to his face, and then just as quickly away, fixing on a point just over his left shoulder as her hands wound tightly in the bedclothes on either side of her, no doubt, he thought, in a conscious effort to prevent them from flying to cover her modesty; shield from his view the things that no man had seen before.
A deep, rosy blush spread across her features, and her chest, now exposed in all its glory, was rising and falling with rapid, hitching breaths. Draco realized distantly that what she was doing was enormously difficult for her; that she was actually suffering, in a way, under his scrutiny, that he should say something, do something, to soothe her... but for the moment, he was as if entranced; he couldn't tear his eyes away.
"Holy... shit," he breathed reverently. "Granger... wow."
Hermione had never been given to wearing tight-fitting clothes, or otherwise showing off her figure in any way whatsoever, and for this reason, Draco had never had an entirely clear idea of what she looked like beneath her school uniform and voluminous outer robes. Even on the rare occasions when he had seen her in causal clothes, such as earlier that day in Hogsmeade, she had been dressed for comfort rather than to impress him, in her ratty old jeans and a sweatshirt at least two sizes to big. But now...
Now there were hardly words to describe her as she lay atop his luxurious silken bedclothes, in the flickering light of the fire, holding herself still for his inspection, though he could tell just by looking at her that her every instinct was screaming to cover herself and flee. Yes, her trepidation was plain to see, though, ever the Gryffindor, she was clearly trying her damnedest to keep up a brave front.
She still couldn't quite bring herself to meet his eyes, though; that would have been too much for her. She was a hair's breadth away from being completely overwhelmed.
He reflected, still staring at her, captivated, that he had considered her pretty (for a mudblood) for a long time already, and had admitted to his attraction, however grudgingly, ever since Valentine's night. But he now realized, wonderingly, that 'pretty' didn't even begin to describe this vision before him. Dear God, had he been blind?
She was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
Finally- "Draco?" she asked hesitantly.
"Yeah," he said, his voice ragged. He swallowed hard, then; "you're... bloody hell, Hermione, you're incredible."
He wouldn't have thought it possible for her to blush any more deeply, but she proved him wrong then. She turned positively crimson, and, her eyes seeking his again, but shyly, so shyly, whispered, "I'm cold."
And she was, he saw then, trembling- but not with cold, he thought. No, he didn't think she was cold at all; just overwrought and desperate for an excuse to cover up. In a swift movement, he yanked his own shirt off over his head, then stretched out full-length beside her, pressing his warmth against hers, keeping himself levered slightly up on one elbow, leaning over her and stroking her cheek with the his other hand. He lowered his head and gave her a lingering kiss, then asked, "better now?"
"A little," she admitted.
He smiled and turned her in his arms- she was completely pliant; unresisting- so that she lay on her side, facing away from him; then he curled himself around her in a spooning position, his now bare chest pressed to her back, skin on skin. He positioned one arm under her head, cushioning it, and reached around her with the other one, first brushing his fingertips across the soft skin of her breasts, then gently palming each in turn.
"Draco-ohhh!" She stiffened and her head snapped backward into his chest, slamming against his collarbone almost painfully.
"Shhh," he whispered, and dropped a kiss on her temple as he continued to explore her body with his hands. "Don't think... just act. Right?"
"Right..." the word came out as a whimper, because he had just slipped his wandering hand gently yet inexorably between her legs, cupping her there and rubbing soft, slow circles through the fabric of her pale pink panties.
"Mmmhhh... Draco... I... don't..."
"S'Okay," he murmured thickly, then quelled her in the most effective way he could think of; by lowering his lips once more to hers, stopping any further protests and slipping his tongue into her mouth just as he pushed aside the silken barrier of her panties.
As his fingers stroked up and down between the softness of her panties and the softness of her flesh, she was literally writhing beneath him- he couldn't honestly tell whether in pleasure or in an attempt to escape, nor at this point did he truly care- and whimpering continually into his mouth, for he refused to release her from the deep, probing kiss he had initiated. But nothing could have prepared him for her reaction several long, exploratory moments later when, just as she began to relax against him once more, he plunged two fingers deeply into her.
She twisted onto her back again and her body arched right off the bed, going as taut as a bow, and then she screamed- an unmistakable cry of distress that traveled directly from her mouth into his and was lost.
At this, he finally broke the kiss, now at absolute war with himself as she threw her arms around him and buried her face in his chest, scratching his back with her nails as she hung onto him as if for dear life, clinging to the very source of her pain, seeming unable to form the words to ask him to stop, the only sound escaping her a small, breathless sort of negation- "ngh...ngh... ngh..." muffled against his skin.
And God, he wanted her so badly. She was so tight- so bloody tight- Pansy had not felt anything like this, no girl he'd been with had- if she was like this just for his fingers, then he could only imagine... he wanted nothing more at that moment than to yank off his trousers and pound into her without pause, without thought, without mercy.
And yet, he couldn't... he couldn't do that to her. Not when he knew he was hurting her so. He should, in fact, stop, right the hell now- he knew he should, and yet- and yet...
In the end, he decided on a compromise. He would go forward, but as slowly and as gently humanly possible. After all, he rationalized, all girls were supposed to feel pain the first time, but Pansy had gotten over it quickly enough. The sooner they worked through this, the better. For both of them.
Right?
Wrong, whispered that stubborn bloody corner of his mind; wrong, this is all wrong, she's not ready, this is plain wrong...
He gritted his teeth and deliberately ignored it.
Shifting slightly, not removing his fingers from her body, he brought his other hand up against the back of her head, holding it hard to his chest, his fingers moving gently, soothingly, in her now damp hair- she had broken into a clammy sweat, he distantly realized, and was shaking against him harder than ever- and began murmuring to her again, soothing nonsense words, promising her it would be better soon, all better, just relax, everything was all right... at the same time, he began to move his fingers within her, out then in, out then in, and was answered, with each thrust, by a whimpered cry against his chest.
Wrong, this is so wrong...
But what finally managed to convince him to stop was when he scissored his fingers within her, stretching her around them, and she shrieked against him, whipping her head from side to side, and he felt, as she did so, a sudden and intense flood of hot tears unleashed against his chest- and quite suddenly he heard in his mind, as clearly as if she had spoken aloud, those four simple words she had uttered that night in the library when she had given herself over to him; "Draco... don't hurt me," she had said, and now- God, she was sobbing from pain; what in the hell was he doing?
This couldn't go on.
Slowly, carefully, he withdrew his fingers from her. The moment he had done so, all the tension seemed to go out of her body; she literally went limp in his arms, her own arms, which had been wrapped so tightly about him, falling away; she would have collapsed backwards had he not still been holding her head against his chest. He now moved his other arm beneath her as well, splaying his hand out across her back, high up between her shoulder blades, and gently eased her back down onto the duvet. Shifting himself off of her so that he lay beside her once more, he cupped her face and turned it toward him- and was shocked and dismayed by what he saw.
Bloody hell, what had he done? How badly had he hurt her, anyway?
A fever-bright flush lay along the tops of her cheeks, damp tendrils of her dark hair were stuck to her forehead with sweat, her lips were parted, and the lower one was smeared with blood, much as it had been on Valentine's night, but from a vastly different cause- she was biting it, he realized, with a stab of remorse (an emotion with which he had had, prior to now, very little experience- and one he decided he didn't like a bit); my God, she bit her lip bloody. It was her eyes that affected him most, though; they were half-closed, unfocused, and swimming with tears; her thick, dark lashes were clotted with them. It looked like she was in the midst of... of some sort of swoon... and dear God, did girls actually do that? Wasn't that just melodramatic rubbish out of one of Pansy's romance novels?
He took her face gently in both his hands and bent so close over her that their noses nearly touched, his own frustrated arousal now forgotten in the rising tide of concern he felt.
"Granger," he said thickly.
No response.
"Hermione?"
She blinked at that, and two tears streaked down the sides of her face as a result; then her eyes slowly widened and focused on his face.
"Draco," she whispered, "I'm sorry. I thought I was ready, but I just... didn't... I'm so sorry!" A fresh spate of tears was unleashed from her eyes and she tried to turn her face away, but he wouldn't allow it.
"Listen to me," he said quietly, yet urgently. "Hermione- are you listening? I don't want you to be sorry, you've nothing to apologize for, we're done for tonight and in the future, I'm going to let you set the pace, we'll go as fast or as slow as you like, there's no reason to rush; we have all the time in the world. Okay?"
He kissed her forehead, then the tip of her nose. "Hermione... okay?"
"'kay," she breathed, her eyes drifting shut.
Draco frowned; he didn't like her coloring at all. He pressed the back of his hand against one of her cheeks, then the other, and finally her forehead.
She was too warm, he thought, going into healer mode; too damn warm by half. Reaching over her, he retrieved his wand, and passed it twice over her forehead, murmuring temperature reducing spells as he went. A potion, such as the one Snape had used on him when he'd been ill, would have been preferable, but he didn't have any in the room. Once he had done what he could, He stretched out on his side, wrapped both arms tightly about her and pulled her up against him. As she nestled into him, still trusting, even after what he had just put her through, he murmured, "have you been feeling sick today, love?" The endearment escaped him before he had realized he was going to speak it, and, disturbing as it was, he tucked it away to be examined at another time. Right now he wanted to figure out if she'd already been under the weather, or if he had done that to her single- handedly.
"Tired," she whispered, her voice muffled, "little warm, too... but mostly just... tired... so tired from... exams."
Of course. Bloody exams. He remembered, suddenly, the excuse she'd told him she had given to Potter and Weasley for not accompanying them down to Hogsmeade that morning; that she was going to spend the entire day locked in her room, sleeping off the exams. Of course... she was exhausted. She really should have spent the day sleeping- he knew first hand how little rest she'd gotten during exam week, he'd been up with her studying every night until two, three, four o' clock. Well, mostly studying...
But he'd never needed all that much sleep; just a few hours a night was sufficient for him, and it had never occurred to him that she might require a fair deal more in order to operate at full capacity... and then today, her first good opportunity for rest, he'd kept her up all day, and then he'd kept her up all night, and so of course she'd started to come down sick. If he'd been thinking straight, he wouldn't have been able to expect anything else.
The first thing he felt was relief, that her suddenly feverish condition didn't have anything directly to do with his... attentions... that there was another, perfectly reasonable explanation for it. But this was followed swiftly by a powerful wave of guilt, and if he had disliked the stab of remorse he'd felt earlier, he hated this- yet, he couldn't deny it.
Selfish, that's what he had been; bloody selfish all day. He realized this with a sort of wonder; he'd never scrutinized his own actions this closely before, and had certainly never previously allowed himself to be bothered by the fact that something that was good for him may have been less than beneficial to someone else. Until this moment, the only thing in his life that had been of more importance than his own personal wellbeing was his parents' wishes. After his own wellbeing, and his parents' wishes, came Pansy, because she tied directly in with his parents' wishes, followed by Snape, his mentor; then Crabbe and Goyle, because they had been his tag- alongs almost since he'd first started to walk and so he'd always felt responsible for them, and then the rest of Slytherin House.
The fact that all of a sudden his feelings for this girl; this Gryffindor of tainted blood, best friend of his arch-nemesis, threatened to eclipse all that and move straight to the head of the line, so to speak, was terrifying. He shouldn't feel guilty about tonight, damn it all to hell. He shouldn't. He shouldn't. He shouldn't. He shouldn't. If anything, he thought indignantly, he had every right to feel sorry for himself- after all, he'd stopped short of taking what he'd wanted, hadn't he? And a damn good thing he'd gone and had himself a little Pansy hors'dourve earlier in the evening- if he hadn't taken the edge off that way, he didn't think he'd have been able to stop... Granger just ought to be grateful his self- control had been up to snuff, because just about any other guy in his situation would most likely have gone ahead and...
And what?
Raped her? Because that's what it would have amounted to. Was he trying to find a justification for rape? He was quite suddenly horrified with the direction his train of thought was taking. He didn't condone men hitting women, and he most certainly didn't condone rape... The thought that Crabbe and Goyle had attempted to do that very thing to her on Valentine's night could still make him actually shake with anger when he allowed himself to dwell on it...
And yet... she had so nearly pushed him over the edge.
Nearly. But not quite. And maybe, he thought, in mounting desperation, maybe it would have been better for him in the long run if he had just gone ahead and taken his pleasure of her... at least then they both would have known where they stood with each other. Whereas this... this state he found himself in now was agony, because the fact that he had stopped- thereby denying himself something he'd wanted desperately- which was simply not something he did- ever- meant that Granger... Hermione... was more to him than a mere physical conquest, no matter how hard he'd been trying to convince himself otherwise over the past several weeks.
If all she had been was a physical conquest, he wouldn't have stopped. He'd have gone ahead, and found a way to justify it to himself, because after all, she had come willingly to his room, and once there, she had never said 'no', she had never said 'stop'... he would have fucked her, he would have justified it, and he would have gone on with his life.
And yet when it had come right down to it, he hadn't been able to do it. He hadn't been able to stand hurting her.
He looked down at her once again; she had drifted off into a deep and much- needed sleep. Realizing that he'd been holding his wand all this time, he finally set it back down on the nightstand, then smoothed her hair back from her face, and frowned as he noticed, once again, her slightly bloodied lower lip. He licked his thumb and used it to wipe away the blood. She didn't wake.
And that was when it struck him.
"God help me," he whispered aloud, his arms tightening about her slumbering form as the full force of realization finally hit him; "I need her. And not just her body, and not just one time... I could have had that tonight, if that were all I wanted. No, I need her- all of her- on a permanent basis. Aw, bloody hell, I am- so- fucked."
There was no denying the sudden and intense wash of relief Draco felt when the library door creaked open and then closed again, seemingly of its own accord. He had been afraid that, following the scene with Pansy in the corridor, Hermione would decide not to keep their midnight appointment.
Girls could be ridiculously touchy where other girls were concerned, after all, he reflected, conveniently choosing to forget the rush of jealousy he had felt when Hermione had appeared in the cellar of Honeydukes some twelve hours ago, wearing a man's sweatshirt.
But the point was, she was here now, shrugging off the invisibility cloak, and looking extremely self-conscious standing there, just inside the library door, wearing a pair of soft knit pajamas, pale blue and decorated with little stars and moons. Draco saw that the short capped sleeves and modest v-neck of the pajama top were edged with delicate lace, and wondered whether, by virtue of that fact, she considered these the sexiest nightclothes she owned.
And they were sexy... simply because they were on her body.
He grinned. "I'm glad to see you," he said, with complete honesty. "I was afraid you might not come."
"I was afraid of the same thing," she said, approaching him. He noticed that she was still wearing her hair in that infernal braid. "I didn't know how you made out with Pansy. Is everything... okay?"
"Everything's fine," Draco told her, clasping her by the shoulders when she reached him and kissing her on the forehead by way of greeting. "Pansy believes whatever I tell her." This, too, was the perfect truth. With Granger, honesty was the best policy whenever possible- because she could see through him in ways that Pansy could not.
Hermione tried to rest her head on his shoulder then, but he didn't let her. Instead he grasped her chin gently with his thumb and forefinger and tilted her face up toward his. She blushed the moment their eyes met.
"Are you ready?" he asked softly.
"I'm ready," she whispered- then wetted her lips nervously with her tongue and added, in a cracked little voice, "I think."
Still holding her chin, he lowered his lips to hers in a slow and tender kiss.
"You think too much," he whispered a moment later, once he had pulled gently back. "For tonight, at least, don't think- just act. Okay?"
"Okay," she repeated, and then he did let her drop her head forward against him, with a deep, shuddery sigh. "Okay... I trust you, Draco."
He didn't know why it was that his heart sank when she spoke those words.
By all rights he should feel elated; this was what he had been waiting for. Tonight was the culmination of the past several weeks' effort; tonight she would be his in every sense of the word- he would have her any and every way he wanted her, and in the morning, this bizarre power she seemed able to exert over his emotions would be broken, and he could go on with his life. Right?
Right.
Because whatever this so-called power of hers was, it tied directly into the fact that he wanted her with near frantic intensity; it was lust-based, nothing more. And it was time to put it to rest, once and for all.
"Is there room under that cloak for two?" he murmured.
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They reached his room without incident, silently treading the deserted corridors of the school beneath the invisibility cloak, which Hermione had magically altered so that it would accommodate them both, edging their way carefully across the Slytherin common room, hardly daring to breathe, due to the fact that even at this late hour it was currently occupied by three people. Crabbe and Goyle, apparently feeling revived by their day's rest, were playing cards at a low table (Draco felt Hermione stiffen and press even closer against him; he wrapped one arm protectively about her waist without being consciously aware of doing so); the game was "War", and even a game as simple as this often gave the Neanderthal-like boys pause for thought as they carefully considered whether a given card was a six or a nine, and which was worth more; a king or a jack. At stake was an unfortunate younger student's bag of Honeyduke's sweets. The final person present in the room was Pansy, seated on the floor in front of the fireplace, talking animatedly once again to her Durmstrang friend- Draco silently and fervently thanked every deity he had ever heard of that the subject of Pansy's enthusiastic discourse was her day at the salon, rather than the evening's activities that had followed.
And then they were through the common room, down a short corridor, and, once he had quietly performed several advanced unlocking charms, into Draco's room itself.
He divested them both of the cloak, tossing it casually over the back of his desk chair, then gave his attention to re-locking the door, using an even longer and more complicated sequence of spells than he had used a moment ago to unlock it; he wanted to be damn sure that there would be no interruptions whatsoever tonight, or tomorrow morning, or for however long Hermione Granger was in this room. The moment all the locking charms were in place, with a powerful soundproofing spell thrown in for good measure, he put out the wall sconces with a flick of his wand and turned his attention to the fireplace, starting a magical blaze that bathed the room in a soft, flickering golden light. It would provide all the illumination and all the heat they would need for the night.
When he finally turned his attention back to her, he realized with a jolt that she was shaking, and looked to be on the verge of tears.
"Granger, what's wrong?" he asked, frowning, drawing her into his arms as he spoke.
"I just hate them," she said, in a small, choked voice, her eyes downcast. "I hate them, I hate them, I hate them so much."
He didn't have to ask who she was talking about.
That bright, hot possessiveness, with which he was becoming quite familiar, flared. "They're never going to touch you again," he said vehemently- and he meant every word. Even once he was through with her, he did not intend to let Crabbe or Goyle anywhere near her. "You have my word on that, Hermione. I won't allow it."
There was a pause, then- "are you saying you allowed it last time?" she asked, her voice suddenly brittle.
"For God's sake, no! I just didn't think to forbid it... but I have now, and they will listen to me. Look, I always knew they were capable of taking younger students' sweets, and smarter students' notes, but I had never thought them capable of taking..."
"Me?"
He looked down, meeting her eyes steadily. "You," he said emphatically, "are mine, and no one else's, for the taking, ever."
It briefly occurred to Hermione that she ought to protest, and vehemently, such a blatant declaration of ownership... but why, really, when it made her feel so... safe?
00000
And then any opportunity for further pondering of that subject was cut short when Draco scooped her bodily into his arms and crossed the room in a few swift strides, depositing her on the bed, to sink helplessly into the lavish silken duvet- green and silver, of course- that lay cloudlike atop the surface of the mattress. Kneeling beside her, he instantly commanded, "roll over onto you stomach."
"What? Why-?"
"Just do it, Granger," he drawled.
And there it was again. She ought to take offence at the tone of that command, and damn it, she knew she ought to take offence. And yet instead she found herself obeying him, her trust in him implicit, complete.
She stretched out on her stomach, her arms criss-crossed and her head laid upon them, face turned to the side to keep an eye on Draco- but the next moment he moved out of her line of vision, swiftly and smoothly straddling her hips, so that he was half-kneeling, half-sitting atop the backs of her thighs. She raised her head with a jerk.
"Draco! What are you-"
"Shhh," he cut her off, leaning down so that his chest was pressed warm and solid against her back and whispering directly into her ear. "Don't move." And he sucked her earlobe into his mouth, causing her to give a great, shuddery gasp of surprised pleasure. "Sensitive there, are we?" he murmured smugly a moment later. Then, "I just want to undo your braid, Hermione. Stay still a moment, hm?" His fingers were already working deftly by the time he finished speaking.
It took him several minutes to free her hair of its long, thick plait, and then for several more minutes he simply played with the newly liberated curls, plunging his hands into them, letting the soft, dark strands run over his fingers, reveling in the sensation the way a man who had been lost in the desert would revel in the cool, sweet waters of an oasis pool.
Pushing her entire tumbled mass of hair off to one side at last, he leaned down again and placed a kiss on the nape of her neck. As he did this, his left hand darted to retrieve his wand from where it lay on the nightstand, and an instant later her pajamas, both top and bottom, had vanished from her body to reappear draped over the chair along with the invisibility cloak. Left in nothing but a pair of shell pink panties, Hermione gasped again and stiffened, attempting to push herself up, but Draco would have none of it. The sheer weight of his body held her easily in place.
"Hey," he murmured, his lips moving against her neck as he replaced the wand, "you said you trusted me. Do you still?"
That small, traitorous corner of his mind started to whisper that taking advantage of her trust this way was just plain-
But he quelled it, viciously. No second thoughts, damnit, not now, not when he was this bloody close...
And she relaxed once more, the word "yes" escaping her lips in a sort of breathy little moan.
Draco leaned back and up into a kneeling position once more, still straddling her, but no longer holding her immobile with his weight. Slowly, starting at her shoulders, he ran his hands down the sides of her body, past the swell of her breasts, which were pressed into the bed below her, over the dips and curves of her waist and her hips, his fingers skimming over the fabric of her panties in an agony of longing- God, he wanted to rip them from her body, but he had to take it slow... slow... slow down.
This was such sweet torture.
He took several deep breaths in order to get a handle on himself, then eased off of her, until he was kneeling beside her, as he had been doing when first he'd placed her on the bed.
He had to clear his throat before he could speak, and even then, when the words came, his voice was so husky that he barely recognized it. Pansy had never affected him like this. No girl had.
"Roll over," he managed at length. "Roll over and let me see you."
Hermione buried her face in the duvet for a moment, apparently gathering her courage, then, in an abrupt, decisive movement, she did as he asked, flipping over onto her back, her eyes flicking to his face, and then just as quickly away, fixing on a point just over his left shoulder as her hands wound tightly in the bedclothes on either side of her, no doubt, he thought, in a conscious effort to prevent them from flying to cover her modesty; shield from his view the things that no man had seen before.
A deep, rosy blush spread across her features, and her chest, now exposed in all its glory, was rising and falling with rapid, hitching breaths. Draco realized distantly that what she was doing was enormously difficult for her; that she was actually suffering, in a way, under his scrutiny, that he should say something, do something, to soothe her... but for the moment, he was as if entranced; he couldn't tear his eyes away.
"Holy... shit," he breathed reverently. "Granger... wow."
Hermione had never been given to wearing tight-fitting clothes, or otherwise showing off her figure in any way whatsoever, and for this reason, Draco had never had an entirely clear idea of what she looked like beneath her school uniform and voluminous outer robes. Even on the rare occasions when he had seen her in causal clothes, such as earlier that day in Hogsmeade, she had been dressed for comfort rather than to impress him, in her ratty old jeans and a sweatshirt at least two sizes to big. But now...
Now there were hardly words to describe her as she lay atop his luxurious silken bedclothes, in the flickering light of the fire, holding herself still for his inspection, though he could tell just by looking at her that her every instinct was screaming to cover herself and flee. Yes, her trepidation was plain to see, though, ever the Gryffindor, she was clearly trying her damnedest to keep up a brave front.
She still couldn't quite bring herself to meet his eyes, though; that would have been too much for her. She was a hair's breadth away from being completely overwhelmed.
He reflected, still staring at her, captivated, that he had considered her pretty (for a mudblood) for a long time already, and had admitted to his attraction, however grudgingly, ever since Valentine's night. But he now realized, wonderingly, that 'pretty' didn't even begin to describe this vision before him. Dear God, had he been blind?
She was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
Finally- "Draco?" she asked hesitantly.
"Yeah," he said, his voice ragged. He swallowed hard, then; "you're... bloody hell, Hermione, you're incredible."
He wouldn't have thought it possible for her to blush any more deeply, but she proved him wrong then. She turned positively crimson, and, her eyes seeking his again, but shyly, so shyly, whispered, "I'm cold."
And she was, he saw then, trembling- but not with cold, he thought. No, he didn't think she was cold at all; just overwrought and desperate for an excuse to cover up. In a swift movement, he yanked his own shirt off over his head, then stretched out full-length beside her, pressing his warmth against hers, keeping himself levered slightly up on one elbow, leaning over her and stroking her cheek with the his other hand. He lowered his head and gave her a lingering kiss, then asked, "better now?"
"A little," she admitted.
He smiled and turned her in his arms- she was completely pliant; unresisting- so that she lay on her side, facing away from him; then he curled himself around her in a spooning position, his now bare chest pressed to her back, skin on skin. He positioned one arm under her head, cushioning it, and reached around her with the other one, first brushing his fingertips across the soft skin of her breasts, then gently palming each in turn.
"Draco-ohhh!" She stiffened and her head snapped backward into his chest, slamming against his collarbone almost painfully.
"Shhh," he whispered, and dropped a kiss on her temple as he continued to explore her body with his hands. "Don't think... just act. Right?"
"Right..." the word came out as a whimper, because he had just slipped his wandering hand gently yet inexorably between her legs, cupping her there and rubbing soft, slow circles through the fabric of her pale pink panties.
"Mmmhhh... Draco... I... don't..."
"S'Okay," he murmured thickly, then quelled her in the most effective way he could think of; by lowering his lips once more to hers, stopping any further protests and slipping his tongue into her mouth just as he pushed aside the silken barrier of her panties.
As his fingers stroked up and down between the softness of her panties and the softness of her flesh, she was literally writhing beneath him- he couldn't honestly tell whether in pleasure or in an attempt to escape, nor at this point did he truly care- and whimpering continually into his mouth, for he refused to release her from the deep, probing kiss he had initiated. But nothing could have prepared him for her reaction several long, exploratory moments later when, just as she began to relax against him once more, he plunged two fingers deeply into her.
She twisted onto her back again and her body arched right off the bed, going as taut as a bow, and then she screamed- an unmistakable cry of distress that traveled directly from her mouth into his and was lost.
At this, he finally broke the kiss, now at absolute war with himself as she threw her arms around him and buried her face in his chest, scratching his back with her nails as she hung onto him as if for dear life, clinging to the very source of her pain, seeming unable to form the words to ask him to stop, the only sound escaping her a small, breathless sort of negation- "ngh...ngh... ngh..." muffled against his skin.
And God, he wanted her so badly. She was so tight- so bloody tight- Pansy had not felt anything like this, no girl he'd been with had- if she was like this just for his fingers, then he could only imagine... he wanted nothing more at that moment than to yank off his trousers and pound into her without pause, without thought, without mercy.
And yet, he couldn't... he couldn't do that to her. Not when he knew he was hurting her so. He should, in fact, stop, right the hell now- he knew he should, and yet- and yet...
In the end, he decided on a compromise. He would go forward, but as slowly and as gently humanly possible. After all, he rationalized, all girls were supposed to feel pain the first time, but Pansy had gotten over it quickly enough. The sooner they worked through this, the better. For both of them.
Right?
Wrong, whispered that stubborn bloody corner of his mind; wrong, this is all wrong, she's not ready, this is plain wrong...
He gritted his teeth and deliberately ignored it.
Shifting slightly, not removing his fingers from her body, he brought his other hand up against the back of her head, holding it hard to his chest, his fingers moving gently, soothingly, in her now damp hair- she had broken into a clammy sweat, he distantly realized, and was shaking against him harder than ever- and began murmuring to her again, soothing nonsense words, promising her it would be better soon, all better, just relax, everything was all right... at the same time, he began to move his fingers within her, out then in, out then in, and was answered, with each thrust, by a whimpered cry against his chest.
Wrong, this is so wrong...
But what finally managed to convince him to stop was when he scissored his fingers within her, stretching her around them, and she shrieked against him, whipping her head from side to side, and he felt, as she did so, a sudden and intense flood of hot tears unleashed against his chest- and quite suddenly he heard in his mind, as clearly as if she had spoken aloud, those four simple words she had uttered that night in the library when she had given herself over to him; "Draco... don't hurt me," she had said, and now- God, she was sobbing from pain; what in the hell was he doing?
This couldn't go on.
Slowly, carefully, he withdrew his fingers from her. The moment he had done so, all the tension seemed to go out of her body; she literally went limp in his arms, her own arms, which had been wrapped so tightly about him, falling away; she would have collapsed backwards had he not still been holding her head against his chest. He now moved his other arm beneath her as well, splaying his hand out across her back, high up between her shoulder blades, and gently eased her back down onto the duvet. Shifting himself off of her so that he lay beside her once more, he cupped her face and turned it toward him- and was shocked and dismayed by what he saw.
Bloody hell, what had he done? How badly had he hurt her, anyway?
A fever-bright flush lay along the tops of her cheeks, damp tendrils of her dark hair were stuck to her forehead with sweat, her lips were parted, and the lower one was smeared with blood, much as it had been on Valentine's night, but from a vastly different cause- she was biting it, he realized, with a stab of remorse (an emotion with which he had had, prior to now, very little experience- and one he decided he didn't like a bit); my God, she bit her lip bloody. It was her eyes that affected him most, though; they were half-closed, unfocused, and swimming with tears; her thick, dark lashes were clotted with them. It looked like she was in the midst of... of some sort of swoon... and dear God, did girls actually do that? Wasn't that just melodramatic rubbish out of one of Pansy's romance novels?
He took her face gently in both his hands and bent so close over her that their noses nearly touched, his own frustrated arousal now forgotten in the rising tide of concern he felt.
"Granger," he said thickly.
No response.
"Hermione?"
She blinked at that, and two tears streaked down the sides of her face as a result; then her eyes slowly widened and focused on his face.
"Draco," she whispered, "I'm sorry. I thought I was ready, but I just... didn't... I'm so sorry!" A fresh spate of tears was unleashed from her eyes and she tried to turn her face away, but he wouldn't allow it.
"Listen to me," he said quietly, yet urgently. "Hermione- are you listening? I don't want you to be sorry, you've nothing to apologize for, we're done for tonight and in the future, I'm going to let you set the pace, we'll go as fast or as slow as you like, there's no reason to rush; we have all the time in the world. Okay?"
He kissed her forehead, then the tip of her nose. "Hermione... okay?"
"'kay," she breathed, her eyes drifting shut.
Draco frowned; he didn't like her coloring at all. He pressed the back of his hand against one of her cheeks, then the other, and finally her forehead.
She was too warm, he thought, going into healer mode; too damn warm by half. Reaching over her, he retrieved his wand, and passed it twice over her forehead, murmuring temperature reducing spells as he went. A potion, such as the one Snape had used on him when he'd been ill, would have been preferable, but he didn't have any in the room. Once he had done what he could, He stretched out on his side, wrapped both arms tightly about her and pulled her up against him. As she nestled into him, still trusting, even after what he had just put her through, he murmured, "have you been feeling sick today, love?" The endearment escaped him before he had realized he was going to speak it, and, disturbing as it was, he tucked it away to be examined at another time. Right now he wanted to figure out if she'd already been under the weather, or if he had done that to her single- handedly.
"Tired," she whispered, her voice muffled, "little warm, too... but mostly just... tired... so tired from... exams."
Of course. Bloody exams. He remembered, suddenly, the excuse she'd told him she had given to Potter and Weasley for not accompanying them down to Hogsmeade that morning; that she was going to spend the entire day locked in her room, sleeping off the exams. Of course... she was exhausted. She really should have spent the day sleeping- he knew first hand how little rest she'd gotten during exam week, he'd been up with her studying every night until two, three, four o' clock. Well, mostly studying...
But he'd never needed all that much sleep; just a few hours a night was sufficient for him, and it had never occurred to him that she might require a fair deal more in order to operate at full capacity... and then today, her first good opportunity for rest, he'd kept her up all day, and then he'd kept her up all night, and so of course she'd started to come down sick. If he'd been thinking straight, he wouldn't have been able to expect anything else.
The first thing he felt was relief, that her suddenly feverish condition didn't have anything directly to do with his... attentions... that there was another, perfectly reasonable explanation for it. But this was followed swiftly by a powerful wave of guilt, and if he had disliked the stab of remorse he'd felt earlier, he hated this- yet, he couldn't deny it.
Selfish, that's what he had been; bloody selfish all day. He realized this with a sort of wonder; he'd never scrutinized his own actions this closely before, and had certainly never previously allowed himself to be bothered by the fact that something that was good for him may have been less than beneficial to someone else. Until this moment, the only thing in his life that had been of more importance than his own personal wellbeing was his parents' wishes. After his own wellbeing, and his parents' wishes, came Pansy, because she tied directly in with his parents' wishes, followed by Snape, his mentor; then Crabbe and Goyle, because they had been his tag- alongs almost since he'd first started to walk and so he'd always felt responsible for them, and then the rest of Slytherin House.
The fact that all of a sudden his feelings for this girl; this Gryffindor of tainted blood, best friend of his arch-nemesis, threatened to eclipse all that and move straight to the head of the line, so to speak, was terrifying. He shouldn't feel guilty about tonight, damn it all to hell. He shouldn't. He shouldn't. He shouldn't. He shouldn't. If anything, he thought indignantly, he had every right to feel sorry for himself- after all, he'd stopped short of taking what he'd wanted, hadn't he? And a damn good thing he'd gone and had himself a little Pansy hors'dourve earlier in the evening- if he hadn't taken the edge off that way, he didn't think he'd have been able to stop... Granger just ought to be grateful his self- control had been up to snuff, because just about any other guy in his situation would most likely have gone ahead and...
And what?
Raped her? Because that's what it would have amounted to. Was he trying to find a justification for rape? He was quite suddenly horrified with the direction his train of thought was taking. He didn't condone men hitting women, and he most certainly didn't condone rape... The thought that Crabbe and Goyle had attempted to do that very thing to her on Valentine's night could still make him actually shake with anger when he allowed himself to dwell on it...
And yet... she had so nearly pushed him over the edge.
Nearly. But not quite. And maybe, he thought, in mounting desperation, maybe it would have been better for him in the long run if he had just gone ahead and taken his pleasure of her... at least then they both would have known where they stood with each other. Whereas this... this state he found himself in now was agony, because the fact that he had stopped- thereby denying himself something he'd wanted desperately- which was simply not something he did- ever- meant that Granger... Hermione... was more to him than a mere physical conquest, no matter how hard he'd been trying to convince himself otherwise over the past several weeks.
If all she had been was a physical conquest, he wouldn't have stopped. He'd have gone ahead, and found a way to justify it to himself, because after all, she had come willingly to his room, and once there, she had never said 'no', she had never said 'stop'... he would have fucked her, he would have justified it, and he would have gone on with his life.
And yet when it had come right down to it, he hadn't been able to do it. He hadn't been able to stand hurting her.
He looked down at her once again; she had drifted off into a deep and much- needed sleep. Realizing that he'd been holding his wand all this time, he finally set it back down on the nightstand, then smoothed her hair back from her face, and frowned as he noticed, once again, her slightly bloodied lower lip. He licked his thumb and used it to wipe away the blood. She didn't wake.
And that was when it struck him.
"God help me," he whispered aloud, his arms tightening about her slumbering form as the full force of realization finally hit him; "I need her. And not just her body, and not just one time... I could have had that tonight, if that were all I wanted. No, I need her- all of her- on a permanent basis. Aw, bloody hell, I am- so- fucked."