Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Hermione Granger
Setting: midst of chaos! au
Word Count: 902
He placed his head into his hands and applied pressure to his eyes with the heel of his palms and she tightened her grip on the spine of the grimoire.
She watched him and his habit: running his thumbnail down his right arm, hard enough to leave red lines. Her own habit kicked in, her fingers went to pull his away from his skin, but faltered when he pushed back from the table and reached inside his collar.
She had given him the chain three weeks ago when she had found his family ring in the jacket she was about to burn, and it had stank: with her blood, with Dobby's blood, the bitter stench of the floorboards and of Narcissa Malfoy's perfume.
His thanks was worth more than what she think her gift did, but there was none that persuaded her not to take it and accept him from him.
War was raging outside their vacuum: his Mark and her scar were proof, so what was this? It wasn't the forbidden lick of adrenaline rush, nor was the heady mix of lust and want for body warmth that grew them together, together and together and so many other times. Each touch meant more than comfort, each kiss meant more than desire and each fight was worth more than burying the hatchet or trying to put the reckless-ness blame on the other when something went wrong that day: altogether it felt like a death sentence, because when she and him could put a name to that and that would be their Time's Up.
They were not walking on a blurred line: he was never just another boy who could unveil her and she would allow him to continue and he had never set out to be one. He had set out to stick, to infiltrate and to course within her veins as if he was born just for that purpose alone. When her friends existed within carefully constructed and stacked boxes, she had drawn a thick, biro-black line around him, a circle, his personalised and un-categorisable territory, his turf on her own soul.
He stood with his back to the light so shadows fell with his hair overhead his eyes and she wanted to see them at the same time she dreaded it.
Time's up. Time's up. Time's up.
"We are past the point of screaming at each other for pushing themselves out into battle and add more bruises to your tailbone when we have sex against the wall and smother our own voices. Our pattern of letting the other slip away and hold each other too tightly when we eventually got back in one piece is erosion to rationality. I can't take another spell because I was looking for you out there, and you can't have your injuries un-attended as you look for me among the lived."
Sometimes, she had to convince herself, being in love with someone who loves you back isn't enough.
"If I want anything to mean something out of this, if I want anything to be worth all of this, if I am left with anything after all of this: it has to be you." He was cautious with his words: it had to be blunt and piercing just because they were never the pair for delicacy.
It wasn't sacrifice, it was fairness: everyone should have something to lose on the battlefield, then the deaths, the loss and the chaos would mean something, then people would have an excuse as to why they started the war. Hers… it wasn't for absolute power and cheating death, it wasn't to fulfil a life sentence disguised as a prophecy, it wasn't for protecting family: hers was to save everything she had ever wanted in the form of the man who had sunk down on his knee in front of her, ready to lay himself for her like it was his sacrifice.
"Don't say yes because you feel obligated. Don't say yes because it would mean I will be happy. Don't say yes because you want the past two years to have a meaning. Say yes," his gaze shot from her fingers into her eyes, and she felt as if he did shoot her right through the heart, just as he did every time he did it with his stares, his gazes and his hooded looks, "Because you want this. Say yes because you want this for as long as we both shall live."
She wanted his skin on hers, but knew he exactly didn't want it so she could think clearly, he could be vulnerable and both of them could be sensible inside this room of ignorant bliss.
"Say yes," she stopped breathing when he unclasped the chain and slid the ring off, "Only because you love me."
Her lower jaw froze and she couldn't locate her tongue to reply.
She had everything and nothing to tell him.
She had everything and nothing to give him.
She had everything and then now, she had nothing to promise him.
Five. Gringotts. Sword. Hair. Polyjuice. She regretted using her red permanent marker and she didn't expect and she would stand, he would be able to see and add it over her head.
Her lower jaw froze and she couldn't locate her tongue to reply.
And waited for the blizzard to come.
And for nothing else to worth losing afterwards.