THIRTY-FIVE

She was aware of his movements in the darkness, of the feel of his hand closing around hers as her fingertips traced over his skin. He trembled only very faintly tonight, and she wondered if he was learning to control himself better, or if perhaps he simply wasn't as thirsty tonight after having had actual blood twice in the same number of nights after literal years of abstaining.

The shadows seemed to recede, she could see the faint paleness of his skin in the near-blackness. "How do you do that? With the shadows?" she asked, searching his blood-colored gaze, unable to help herself despite the sharp cognizance that there was something far more pressing she'd been of a mind to ask him when she'd first arrived.

He shrugged, chuckling quietly, the deep rumble of it seeming to tickle along her flesh. "As with the mist, I don't know." Sighing, he brushed her hair back from her face, the darkness not impeding his vision as it did hers. "In your room the other night …." He paused, forcing a gulp down his throat as he shook his head. "I had no idea you didn't see me, that you didn't recognize that it was me, until after you'd fallen asleep."

"Well, that answers that before I could ask." Hermione frowned, uncertain. She knew it should've occurred to when she'd first realized it was Dolohov to think he'd used his abilities to have his way with her without her knowing his identity. That she should've suspected it had been deliberate because he had to think she never would've accepted him if she'd known who he was.

Now, of course, she knew none of that was true anyway, but no speculations of the sort had even crossed her mind as they once would have.

As they should have.

"Do you think …" She inhaled deep and let the breath out slow, trying to collect herself. It was difficult to focus being this close to him. Especially when she could barely see him. Somehow the darkness made her all the more aware of his nearness. "Do you think there might be something in the book about this whatever it is between us?"

Again Antonin shrugged. "I wish I could say for certain, but it's still only a guess that it'll have anything about my curse."

Furrowing her brow, she reached with her free around the back of his neck. She could barely reach, drawing an airy laugh from her as she stood on her toes to rake her fingers through the curling ends of his dark hair.

"So," she said, suddenly quite conscious of how her own action had moved them closer together. Of how she was now pressed against him. "Does that mean we're … stuck with this?"

He cupped her face with one hand, his thumb moving over her lower lip in a feathery brush. "Would that trouble you were it so?"

Hermione felt her heart flutter in her chest, uncertain how to answer even as she was perfectly aware whatever answer she might give might be influenced by their whatever it was.