Draco Malfoy is almost certain he has fucked up. He turns to look at Hermione Granger's face - her lovely, flushed face - and tries to remember exactly why this is a bad idea. He's sure once they can flush away the post coital haziness, they can think of enough reasons to alphabetize the list, make a pie chart, or maybe percentagatize the points so they can figure out which of the hundred reasons for them to not be having sex is the most pressing.

His past?

Her present?

His name? The fact that he's been awful to her their entire childhood?

But they don't mention any of them and while they are still reeling from what transpired, with heavy breaths, he feels Hermione skim her fingers along the lines of his jaw. She giggles and Draco's trying to remember the last time he's felt this happy. Blissfully unaware of anything or anyone else, the world or even his past seem as distant as the stars in a cloudy night. Draco thinks he's known some semblance of this feeling, he must have, but can't really remember it. Can't recall anything else worth remembering but the fact that he knows now that Granger has a tattoo on her back. A lighthouse. And in his mind her face is angelic - flushed and breathless as he stared at first the tattoo, then her - as she explained that it was for her parents. A remembrance because she will never stop searching for them.

"You're phenomenal," he told her, fingers tracing the ink.

Her face turned redder in response. He almost told her he loved her then, but she pulled him up to her and kissed him breathless before he could even form a syllable.

Now the restless tapping of his heart beats in the same rhythm as hers as he puts his hand on her chest. He spreads his palm and she chuckles.

"You're like David," she says. "Michelangelo's David."

"Who's that?"

"A sculpture." She props her head up, a mess of lovely curls and stares at him in the soft light of the lamp. "He's supposed to be the perfect man."

His turn to blush. "You flatter me, Granger."

She shakes her head. "You always were, you know. Perfectly handsome. It's just that I never - never let myself think of it."

And the light from the lamp reflects in her eyes, melting umber. He reaches his hand to touch her face and she leans in, smiling. His heart skips a beat, then two. He's sure now that he has never been happier, not even when he rode a broomstick for the first time in his life, not when he got his Hogwarts acceptance letter. Nothing felt quite as right and still uncanny as this and he would blame this on alcohol but neither of them drank in the after-party. So they deliberately stepped into the scene. This bed, her apartment, the books on the shelves and Hermione Granger's restless heart in his hand. And this reality corners him so suddenly that the words tumble out on their own accord.

"I think I am falling in love with you."

Her smile falls. And he curses his useless mouth. He used to be so good at hiding his feelings. He used to be good at hiding, period. Suave and in control, his heart used to heed to his brain and not the other way around. And how good was that. How perfect was that because saying what you feel only makes things worse. Only sharpens the blunt edges of the ugly truth. He called her a mudblood when they were young and now he is falling in love with her.

How do you rationalize that?

She is probably only looking for a rebound after Weasley and he saddles her with his embarrassing emotions.

It's embarrassing for sure.

It's so embarrassing being in love.

So utterly dreadful, so moronic, so awfully self disintegrating. There are useless sonnets and songs that make love seem a magnificent emotion, some force beyond nature, something as wonderful as a flash of brightness against a gray canvas.

Well, Draco disagrees.

Love is awful. Degenerative. Something that sucks out any sort of preservation out of his mind and fills him with a desperate longing. It makes him hypersensitive. He wouldn't know all the notes of Granger's floral perfume if he wasn't desperately in love with her. He wouldn't sense her entrance in every room even with his back turned to the door. He wouldn't be hungry for her in a way he's never felt before even though they've had sex just now.

Hermione stares at him and he waits for her to belt out her rejection with sincerity. He thinks of what to say when she explains to him that this was a one time thing, that she's been kind to him after all of their history because that's her nature. So he gets up, already out of the bed before she opens her mouth. He curses under his breath and picks up his pants from the floor, not daring to turn up the light to make this worse. Since she hasn't said anything till now, it seems like an answer of it's own. He finds his shirt strewn away at her desk and as he turns to reach for it, she finally speaks -

"What are you doing?"

What does it look like? I am leaving because you are unjustly nice and warm and I know if I stay another minute I will think of hundred stupid reason to come back, to try to win your heart. To lure you into the trap of my life. His tainted life. Poisoned with a name that is both his destiny and doom.

"Leaving."

"Why?"

He purses his lips. "Look, I apologize for blurting that out, and I don't want you to be - to think that you owe me - any - anything. So it's better if I -"

But what comes out of her mouth stops his stuttering excuse in a blink.

"I think I am falling in love with you too."

"What?"

Hermione crosses the duvet around her body, but her neck is bare. Even in the flickering light of the lamp he can see the hickeys he left blooming on her skin. It twists his heart.

"I'm falling for you too." She offers her hand. The one his aunt Bella had scarred. "So can you please come back to bed?"

His heart has jumped and settled in his throat. His voice comes out hoarse by its agitated drumming as he says, "This is a bad idea."

She shrugs. "Probably."

"This may make our lives more complicated."

"I don't mind."

"I can't even offer you anything worthwhile. I'm - I'm messed up, Hermione."

She smiles. "So am I."

He can't think. His knees shake. Damages goods, that's all he can offer her. Fragments of happiness juxtaposed with tumultuous surge of self-loathing that makes life harder for him. Mere pieces of pure, blissful moments. And love, he thinks. So much love that she can drown in it. That it won't matter that he's damaged, that she's damaged. That no amount of glues and tapes can stitch their sense of self in a healthy way ever again. But it won't matter , he tells himself. I won't let it.A desperate hope fills his heart. Hecould be that man who stays with her when she has bad dreams, he could help her find her parents.

Pansy once told him life is a mere condensation of all the chances they have ever had. Even the ones they didn't take. If Draco looks back in his life, the chances he took, his path as it layed in front of him.

Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape once offered their hands to save his soul, but he didn't take them. Then The Dark Lord. He didn't stop his parents from thrusting his hand into the jaw of the monster. He didn't scream when the monster scarred his wrist and his mind.

And now Hermione Granger offers her hand. Messy and lovely, so close he can touch the tips of her fingers without even taking a step forward. The light from the window falls on top of her hair, her dark mess of hair almost seems like a halo. These are the small, inconspicuous, devastating moments that make him wonder if god truly exists. It must be a sign from above, to make a moment so breathtakingly perfect.

"Draco," she says. "Come back to bed."

Hermione Granger offers her hand. And, with a glaring tornado lodged in his heart, Draco Malfoy takes it