Chapter: Civil War
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"All of life is a dispute over taste and tasting."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
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Note: Yes, I've finally relented and changed the rating. This story is now M for mature, although it's not a very hard M… Well, see for yourself.
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Hermione peered through the steam to view her reflection in the mirror, fogged and streaked with condensation that made the outline of her body blurry and imprecise. She saw nothing but a pale blob, slightly pinkish from the heat of her shower, and found that it was remarkably preferable to the alternative likeness that she would have seen had the heat and moisture been absent from the bathroom. In a hazy world away from all the rest, with light dimmed by nebulous vapor and sharp lines turned soft, she could forget and remember as she pleased.
A long time ago Hermione decided that she didn't really believe in God. At the beginning of the war, when the first reports of the torture and murder of innocents began to roll in, when time seemed to stand still for the pain of hearing of another tragic hero who wasn't really a hero at all, she wavered, caught between tradition and anger and determination, for one sleepless night. In the morning she rose from her bed having resolved not to throw her allegiance away to a god that could allow those kinds of things. She did not want to believe that something that cruel existed to tolerate without interference the monstrosities they heard of every day.
And then her innocence was gone.
She had not been a particularly religious person to begin with. Her parents had been those sort of Presbyterians who made the long trek to the neighborhood church maybe once every two months. But she had never before believed that God did not exist until that restless night. Since the war, things had been different.
Hermione stared at her reflection.
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She was pulling on a soft pair of flannel pants and a worn t-shirt when it all came back to her. She sat on her bed and put her head in her hands, hair dripping and lank about her obscured face.
Nothing. For a moment, blissful nothing. She welcomed it and sank into herself.
Release.
Then she saw sparks, and her senses crashed open.
He was not gentle and she had to curve her spine back over the desk to accommodate for him. The wetness on her face became the wetness on his, and suddenly neither knew who had really been broken.
He tasted vast and cold, and she was lost within it. Their bodies, just illusions and energy in the huge spectrum of everything, seemed to meld into one and he was kissing her so hard.
Finally everything came back, hit her fast enough to make her stumble, and she put her hands against him and pushed. No more nothing, because it couldn't have lasted. He made a sound deep in his throat like torture but stepped away from her.
"I can't… I just…" She couldn't speak and fled like a child.
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Hermione fell asleep at eleven with her hair still wet. Thirty-seven minutes later the doorbell rang, and she jerked awake. She sat up, swung her legs around the side of the bed, and stayed still and quiet, trying to decide whether the noise had been part of a dream or otherwise. But then the rhythmic pounding started, a fist on her door over and over, and she was really awake. She grabbed a can of pepper spray and wished for the thousandth time that her door had a peephole.
Padding over to the door, muscles tingling with the hope that the impatient person at her door was not an ax-murderer, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the passing bathroom. She was all rumpled clothes and slumped shoulders, her eyes smudged with blue and her hair falling in snarled curls around her face because she hadn't done anything to make herself presentable. But she decided if it was an ax-murderer at her door he wouldn't really care.
She took a deep breath, swung her door open, and dropped her can of pepper spray.
And Draco Malfoy said, "You can't just leave us out here."
He looked just as bad as she did. Mirrored blue smudges.
Hermione backed away, just a step, because he looked entirely desolate. Then she croaked, because she had only just woken up, "W-What are you doing here? How…?"
But he didn't answer her, and stepped into her flat and came so close. He kept walking until she was against the wall, looking back and forth (anywhere but his face) for an escape.
"You can't just leave us. It doesn't work."
She finally stopped panicking, even though he was very nearly touching her with his entire body, and began to focus on the fact that he sounded very nearly insane. She wished desperately for her can of pepper spray.
"Us?" She asked in a very small voice, wanting clarity.
Please, not the voices in your head.
His eyes, very angry and very lost, lighted on hers. "Your fucking students!"
She let out a sigh of relief before he placed a forearm over her shoulder and pushed so that she could hear something in her collarbone pop. She let out a yelp even though it didn't really hurt.
She could only see him. He was close and all she could see was his face and the hard lines of his anger and confusion. "I don't u-understand, Draco… Let me go, please." It finally registered that she was scared, and the fear hit her like it actually had weight.
But he dropped his head and shook it, breathing out hard through his nose. And then, instead of letting her go, he pushed closer and grasped her waist and lifted until only her toes could touch the fading carpet of her flat. He pressed her there, his chest against hers, her eyes now completely level with his, and smiled grimly.
"I took a walk today, in Diagon Alley. I tried to clear my head after what happened this afternoon. It didn't work," he said bitterly, his voice a near whisper into the skin of her cheek, and Hermione was gasping with the fear of it. "You can't just leave my fucking head, do you know that?"
He said it like it was her fault, and she almost felt like she should apologize for it. But he didn't giver her the time.
"I noticed another thing, too. I don't know how to act around anyone anymore. You set us up for your idea of bloody redemption and left us out in the real world to rot. You told us what we feel is wrong but you never told us how to fix it, how to exist without what we've known for our entire lives. Everything is fucking… adrift. The civil war after the revolution, Granger."
Hermione couldn't breathe properly, and she was gulping air against him. Through it all, she felt a crack of pity and lifted her eyes to stare directly into his, her breath calming as the fear left her suddenly. "I'm sorry, Draco. I don't know what else to say but that I'm sorry for everything. But you have to know… you have to know that it's all for the best, and that something good will come out of it in the end." She couldn't concentrate any further and fell silent. He was so close to her. She could feel every part of him.
He was the first to drop his eyes and press hard into her. He was the first to meet her lips with his, but she was not far behind.
There was something, this time. No bliss, but something hotter and more archaic.
She could taste his loss and his confusion and his hate. He hated her. He wanted her. She kissed him like she had nothing to loose. He pushed fast against her and slid a hand under her thigh to hitch her knee over his hip.
There.
Hermione's eyes flew open and she made a sound in her chest that didn't seem like her. He was hissing his breath through his teeth as he laved her neck and breasts through her shirt. Her tears fell steadily into his pale hair. So long ago, she had done this.
Yes.
She managed to rip his shirt over his head just as he did hers. She wanted him bare before her. He let out a deep rumble when he saw she was wearing nothing underneath. She shouldn't have whimpered like a child when he touched her skin, touched his mouth to her breasts hard like punishment. She felt him all over.
She couldn't remember how his trousers ended up around his knees and her frumpy pants fell to the floor, but soon she was poised at the entrance, the cliff, with her legs smelling like apricot peach from her shower wrapped around his waist and his hand in between their bodies making her cry. He stopped just before everything broke and she clung to him, breathless and choking on air, open-mouthed against his bare shoulder.
His voice came harsh in her ear. "Tell me, Granger. Tell me you don't want this. Please."
But she couldn't. She couldn't even speak.
There was something hard and cold and bleak in his eyes as he pushed her back until she was against the wall once more and was finally there. Her back arched on its own accord, tight as a violin string, until she started to move with him. He damned her with oath after oath even as he groaned against her with each thrust.
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Later, after they had made it just as far as her bed and unknowingly discarded the sheets, twisted and forgotten on the floor, Draco said something like, "This is nothing, you know. This is nothing."
And Hermione replied in a distant manner, "Of course. Of course it isn't."
Or something like that.
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Ron was running away from her.
Hermione was dreaming.
She couldn't catch him. She had to explain.
Ron kisses her, and a viscous heat grows between them.
She couldn't fucking CATCH him.
How could she have forgotten?
"Ron!" She breathed as she started awake, lying still for a moment to regain her bearings. There was a swell of disgusted guilt in her chest, of betrayal and hate.
The other side of the bed was empty but still warm.
Hermione finally sat up and saw that he was standing at the door to her bedroom, dressed and groomed like nothing had ever happened. He was perfectly composed while she was shivering and naked on the bed with tears carving valleys down her face.
Not fair.
She reached for the sheets on the floor and covered herself.
"You were saying his name in your sleep."
Hermione's patience ran out, and she threw his words back in his face like the bitch she really was sometimes. "Yes. But this is nothing, isn't it?"
He barely flinched but it was there, and he looked like he wanted to say something more. Instead he turned and left, slammed the door behind him and left her.
She didn't cry at all.
She didn't see him again for more than a year.
She didn't want anything more, she told herself.
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"The future influences the present as much as the past."
- Friedrich Neitzsche
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Author's Note: Whoever said emptying a full bladder is better than sex didn't know what they were talking about. That's my pearl of wisdom for today. :)
Yes, I know it has been a long time coming and that this is rather short. In my defense, semester finals have only just finished and I'm tired. There you go.
Wow! This month has definitely been one of nominations and success, both in my fanfiction life and otherwise. I'll keep my interesting new developments in real life under wraps, but as for the other stuff:
This story has been nominated for three separate awards at two separate award sites (eek!). The first is at the "He Had It Coming" Dramione Award Site (Thanks Youoweme5bucks-now/Mimi), and I've been nominated for best WIP. I know the URL won't work, but you'll have to copy and paste it if you'd like to check it out: http/dramione.
The second is at Dangerous Liaisons Awards (thanks to whoever nominated me!), and I've been nominated for best Drama/Angst Fic (The I Never Really Loved You Anyway Award. Hehe!) and best WIP, although the category for that one was already full and it'll go in either the WIP or complete categories in the next round, depending on whether I've completed it or not. http/ check them out/vote (if you like?). It's very exciting, but I'm up against some pretty fantastic fics so I have very, very small expectations.
Another thing: I've written a one shot called "Because This Is How It Goes," so if you feel like something depressing go have a look. It's very, very different from The Nietzsche Classes.
Anyway, I hope the steaminess/angstyness of this chapter is satisfying and it at least partly makes up for the obscene length of time between my updates. Now that the semester is over maybe I'll have more time. Love you all, and let me know what you think!