A/N: Special thanks to Rhiannon for the beta-read!
Russian translation by ZiMinora available here: /readfic/11337029
They crashed inside in a cloud of splinters and ash. The front door shook in its pane. Paintings, lamps and half-finished mugs of tea fell to the ground and shattered.
"Get off me!" she screamed, from the tangle of limbs on the wooden floor. "Get off me or I'll fucking kill you!"
"Try it, Granger," he taunted, slamming a forearm against her chest while his other hand pinned her right arm to the floor. "How're you gonna do that without your wand?"
"You fucking prick!" She struggled against him, her hand straining to reach her wand lying just a few centimetres away. But the full weight of his body was on her like a stone statue and her head was spinning from the force of the Apparition.
With a cry of frustration, she lunged at his face with her free hand. Her nails pierced and scraped the skin of his cheek and he flinched sharply back, clutching his face. Taking advantage of his movement, she reached for her wand but before she could get to it and blast him through the roof as planned, he was back, curling a fist painfully into her hair.
"You bitch," he spat, scratch marks blooming red and angry on his pale face. He pulled her up by her hair and threw her against a wall with such force that bits of plaster and dust rained down on them.
"The fuck is wrong with you, Granger?"
Her head throbbed and she could see his teeth through her dizzy haze. His lower lip was bleeding from a fresh cut.
"I told you — " she coughed out, "— to get the fuck off me."
"Tell me why I should," he said, his voice now dangerously low and shaking with anger. "After what you just did, tell me why I shouldn't just break you right here?"
Her mind flashed with images from the mansion. Death eaters, dozens of them, and jets of blinding red and green. Rubble and debris everywhere. The heat of dark magic in the air.
To her left, a familiar cackle. A sound she'd heard so often it haunted her at night.
Carrow.
Harry had ordered her to stay behind cover, to never let herself be seen. But Carrow was so close…
A flash of red hair. Carrow was on the move. If she didn't act now —
She dove out from behind the pile of rubble and gave chase. A voice shouted after her, but it sounded distant and faded as blood pounded in her ears. Carrow laughed again as she shot a burst of green light over her shoulder. Hermione ducked, and the spell singed her jacket as it sailed past and exploded against a wall.
That's right, you bitch. Try it one more time. Hermione readied the spell in mind, clutching her wand so hard it burned her palm. She was vaguely aware of footsteps closing in behind her as she ran. Ahead, Carrow lifted her wand again.
That's it. Do it. She had to be fast and precise for the reflective spell to work. If this worked, if this worked…
But before she could take another breath, she felt a hand clamp around her wrist and a sharp tug behind her navel. The ground twisted away and the world hurtled around her.
"I knew what I was doing, Malfoy," she snarled at him now, straining against where he had pinned her to the wall.
"Oh, yeah?" he sneered, pushing her so hard she thought the wall might crack. "Giving away our position? Jumping out in full view of at least twenty Death Eaters? I thought you were supposed to be smart, Granger."
"I had a spell! If I'd just had a chance to try it — "
"She was trying to kill you!" roared Malfoy. He yanked her roughly by her collar as though to slam her into the wall again, but she collided her knee as hard as she could against his thigh. He stumbled back, swearing.
"That was the point, you idiot!" She pounced at him, raining her fists down on any part of him she could see. "My spell was going to reflect it back on her — "
"What in the ever-living fuck—" he shielded himself from her blows with his forearms. "— would be the point of that?"
"Because no one — " she struck him harder, knuckles on his jaw. "Not Harry — " His shoulder. "Not Ron — ". His ribs."Not anyone, will use, the fucking Killing Curse!" As she aimed at his temple, a look of pure fury on her face, he grabbed both her hands.
"Tell me how this spell of yours will be any different! Help me understand, Granger!" Ignoring her yells of protest, he wrenched her arms behind her back and shoved her chest against the wall. "You'd still be killing!"
"N-not directly." Pain was shooting up her shoulders. "It's using your enemy's magic against themselves."
"You lot are fucking stupid, did you know that?" Malfoy hissed in her ear, his breath falling hot and fast on her neck. "You risked your life for something so asinine — "
"It's not the same!" she cried, straining against his death grip on her wrists. Her voice was trembling now, but she refused to let him see her break. "It could change the entire course of the war!"
"So fucking self-righteous," he laughed scornfully, and she wanted so much to choke him. "You think you're better than the rest of us because you won't use the Killing Curse. Saint Potter and his noble band of — "
"Not me, Malfoy," she panted through clenched teeth. "I'd kill you where you stand."
"Oh yeah?" He whirled her around abruptly, stretching out his hand to summon her wand. It shot into his hand like a magnet. He shoved the wand into her hand and held it against his throat. "Then do it, Granger."
Her wand pulsed with rage as she pressed it to his neck. Sparks burst from its tip. Blood dripped from his cheek where she had scratched him.
"Why did you save me?" she demanded, her voice trembling harder.
He said nothing. Sweat glistened on his brow and his eyes were the colour of a storm.
"Tell me, Malfoy!" She grabbed his collar and shoved him hard. "You could have let me die. One less pest for you to deal with. One less headache in this fucking hellscape of a war."
He stumbled backward, not saying anything, only staring at her with an intensity that seemed to ignite the very air between them.
"Isn't that what you've always wanted?" She put both hands on his chest and pushed him hard again. "To destroy me? To kill the insufferable little Mudblood?"
He flinched as though she had slapped him.
"Isn't it?" she screamed and lunged at him again till the back of his knees caught the arm of a sofa. He grabbed the front of her shirt as he tumbled, and she pitched forward with a yell and collapsed on top of him.
"Kill me, you bastard," she screamed, her eyes now stinging with tears. She pulled his hair and clawed at his face, growing angrier each time he blocked her attacks with a hand or a forearm. "Kill me, kill me!"
"Fucking bitch!" he suddenly cried, and wrenched her head back by her hair.
Then, in a moment that felt like time had stopped, he pressed his mouth to her neck and sucked on her skin, and his quivering groan thrummed throughout her body.
Hermione's eyes shot wide open. Something coiled and tensed low in her abdomen as his tongue laved at her exposed neck, his teeth clumsily scraping her skin.
"Fuck," she strained against his grip on her hair, but he was stronger than her, and soon his mouth made a path up her neck, her jaw, before finally crashing against her own like a breath they'd both held for years.
It was a kiss like nothing she had ever known. They scrambled for each other, clutching at hair and hands and clothes like there was nothing solid left in the world. She parted her lips for him without hesitation and let him draw the rage from her body, let him taste and devour her, because maybe he needed this as much as she did.
His leg kicked out beneath her and the coffee table made a heavy thump as it fell on its side. Without leaving her lips, he rolled them off the sofa and onto the floor.
She was surprised at how easily rage gave way to lust, how both emotions seemed to balance so finely on a single thread, so much so that every angry arch of her body, every curl of her fingertips and every shuddering breath on her lips seemed primed just for this moment, just for him.
As he moved and shifted on top of her, she grew aware of the tenderness in his brutal, war-hardened body like stars in the night sky. She felt his trainers scuff the floor, his knees straddling her thighs, the stiffness in his jeans pressing against her stomach, the hard muscle of his chest on hers.
He continued to kiss her furiously, his hands grasping her face, and she returned the kiss with equal fervour. She tasted blood on his lips. Everything about the war coursed through her then, the losses, the grief, the pain, and maybe, she thought, as his lips found her neck again and his hands began to clumsily unbutton her shirt, maybe it was the same with him. He slipped a hand beneath her and unhooked her bra, pulling it easily over her head. As the material of her shirt fell open, he pressed open-mouthed kisses down her neck, over her collarbone and the tops of her breasts. She moaned as he took her left nipple between his fingers, tugging and pinching it while he palmed her breast. He closed his mouth over the other and sucked deeply, like she was a drug he had denied himself for far too long.
It was intoxicating when he moaned, and he did it often as he took her in his mouth and his hands. The men Hermione had been with - Ron, Viktor, and the one drunken time with Seamus - had always been silent during sex, as though expressing their passion would somehow diminish their manhood. But Malfoy moaned with abandon and it drove her crazy. She would never have thought so, considering how she barely heard him speak unless he was strategizing battle plans or asking someone to pass the sugar.
But everyone needed a release, she supposed, and today, they had both found it in each other.
Her nipple looked red and distended as he pulled away, now kissing further down her belly. She swallowed and arched her back, her skin on fire everywhere he touched. She threaded her fingers through his soft blond hair as he unbuckled her belt and pulled her jeans and knickers down to her knees.
Yes… oh, yes. Please… she thought, gripping his hair nervously as she kicked her jeans off. She had never craved anything so much.
He parted her with his fingers, so gently at first that she cried out when he dove his mouth to her cunt. He wasn't done being angry with her, not with the way he roughly spread her thighs apart, not with the punishing way he lapped at her. She threw her head back and moaned in high, shallow breaths. She was gripping his hair with both hands now, and even the impossibly soft feel of it on her skin struck a chord deep in her abdomen. He plunged his tongue inside of her and curled forcefully up, again and again, moaning loudly as he did so and sending shockwaves throughout her body.
"You taste like fucking heaven, Granger," he growled, and his words rolled and throbbed inside her like an incantation. She felt herself coiling tight against his mouth, no doubt soaking him to his chin. She strained onto him, willing him closer, deeper, no longer knowing who was using whom.
Just as her walls began to flutter around his tongue, he pulled away. She groaned and he caught her mouth with a slick, bruising kiss. Then he yanked her head back by her hair and growled in her ear.
"I'm going to fuck you into this floor." A breathy whine rose in her throat and she seemed distantly aware of how she must look to him now, naked, wet and incoherent in his arms. She sought his mouth again and answered him with a desperate kiss, panting and clutching his face to hers as he shucked off his belt and trousers.
"Please," she heard herself whisper.
"Please what?" he asked, squeezing her chin between his fingers. "Please what, Granger?"
Her brown eyes widened and darted between his stormy grey ones and down to his cock, which rose red and hard as he stroked it. A staggered breath escaped her lips. "P-please fuck me."
When he entered her, it felt smooth and right and perfect. Her cunt stretched and wrapped around him like a glove. He rocked his hips forward as she snapped hers up, and before long, they had found a rhythm tuned just for them. A hot, desperate, angry rhythm of two people who had lost too many friends to count, who had lost irretrievable parts of themselves, who no longer knew the difference between hate and love.
She yearned for him every time he pulled out of her. She craved his fullness inside her because it made her forget her own brokenness. And in the intimate way he fucked her, chest pressed firmly to hers, whispering dirty praises in her ear, she thought she might be helping him too.
"You'll be the death of me, Granger," he panted in between fevered thrusts. "You're so fucking gorgeous, you're so perfect. Fuck, you feel so good."
Sometimes he raised himself on his arms to look at her, his strokes becoming deep and powerful. And in those moments, she caught a breathtaking fragility in his eyes, like he was on the precipice of falling somewhere he had no hope of climbing out of. His eyes shone and she took his handsome face between her hands and kissed him with everything she had.
As they neared the end, he lowered his mouth to her neck and slid a hand between them. He pressed his thumb to her clit and moved it in small, tight circles. Within seconds, she was squeezing and pulsing around him, pleasure coursing in her blood, and with a few final rapid thrusts, he came undone too.
He collapsed on top of her, breathing heavy and ragged and she held him to her like a lifeline. They caught their breaths together, limbs as tangled as when they first crashed into the house.
Hermione suddenly felt more exhausted than she ever had in her life. Every late night spent fighting, every pre-dawn alarm, everytime she slept with one eye open, caught up to her then and weighed her bones to the floor. Next to her, she heard Malfoy's breaths getting deeper. She watched him through half-closed eyelids and for one brief moment, forgot the war.
When her eyes fluttered open, the sun was casting a burning orange hue in the room. Malfoy was awake, staring stonily up at the ceiling. She realised she had been lying on his arm and jolted up, apologizing.
He said nothing, but slowly got to his feet and reached for his jeans. They pulled on their clothes in silence.
She cleared her throat. "W-we should probably clean this place up, they might have use for it."
"Mm," he nodded, still avoiding her eyes. As they raised their wands, the house righted itself. Wooden splinters rejoined the floorboards, chunks of plaster zoomed back in place along the walls, broken pieces of paintings, lamps and mugs came back together.
It was like they had never been there.
"Right, then," she said uselessly. "I'm going to go. Harry and Ron are probably worried sick."
He merely grunted, running a hand through his hair. As he stood there, in the glow of the setting sun, she thought she had never seen anything so beautiful.
He summoned his wand to Disapparate, and in the moment before he disappeared, he caught her in his stare, and she saw in it his shining, breathtaking fragility.