Seven
Day: 1000; Hour: 16
Hermione has been here for several days. Several days and then several more. She remembers getting to Grimmauld Place after wandering the front yard of the safe house dazed and frantic for thirty seconds. The place had been almost empty, except for Moody and two Aurors who were bounding down the steps as she burst through the living room. Moody had pushed something into her hand, and she had had just enough time to be thankful that her wand was wrapped in her hair before the madness kicked in.
She remembers having to retreat, falling back as Death Eaters closed in, but she had kept her mind about her. The air was open and clear, and she could see and think and know. It had been Ginny who had activated the coin, her urgency evident in the level of heat it had brought, as they had been grossly outnumbered until the call for backup came.
It had been hectic, screams rebounding off the walls, and spells missing the mark more than they hit. Hermione didn't think she had been at it for more than an hour before she backed around a corner and found herself stunned. She had not had the luck of looking up to find an apologetic face, instead triumphant eyes greeted her through a bone mask, and she was sunk with immobility and the coldness of her dread.
There had been walls, and awkward body positions; hushed voices that hit her eardrums with incoherent noise, and then the blinding pain of a Cruciatus before everything had gone black.
She had found herself in a cell when she awoke, small and stone, the bars uneven and tight together. She spent days waiting for them to come back to get her and bring her to Voldemort, or to do the things she had heard in prisoners horror stories. She had spent even longer waiting for her friends. But no one came.
Day: 1002; Hour: 1
There had been the foulest scent in the very beginning. Like feces and rot, and she gagged on the stench of it every time she breathed. She had gotten used to it though, which is unfortunate. The stink had put her off to food, and now all she can think about is eating. She doesn't care if it is something she hates, like meatloaf, because Hermione thinks she could eat a human being right now. She could close her eyes and eat her own kind, because she had never known a hunger like this. Her stomach was tangled in knots, hard to the touch, and woke her with pains.
Her thirst was different, but the same in need. Her lips were chapped bloody, her saliva slow and unhelpful, and her mouth dried out like it has been baking in the sun for all these days. Even the walls of her throat feel like sandpaper, and all she tasted was dust and dirt on her palette.
The darkness was constant, engulfing. All she had were her thoughts, and sometimes she realized they were growing more irrational. She thought about faith, and religion, and she wondered if she was already dead and waiting for something from that great unknown that people spent their entire lives trying to figure out. It could be hell; her here, in pain, in the dark, alone forever. Who she was, what she has done, all that she knew no longer mattered here.
She thought she might die here, and she is terrified, constantly. But then she doesn't, because she knew this was what they wanted her to believe. She had always been stronger then what they thought she was. Always, and always, and always.
Day: 1003; Hour: 15
She knew of delirium though she had never experienced it before. Sometimes she heard footsteps or murmurs, and other times she thought she saw shadows though there was no light at all. And that was why, when her vision turned bright white and then hot red, she believed she was dying or imagining things. Even with the shriek that followed, and the sudden mad jangled noise of metal hitting metal.
"Hermione!" The woman repeats her name four, five times before she can place it.
Lavender. Or what she imagined to be Lavender. She was not sure, because it felt like it has been years, and she was tired and exhausted, and still could not see.
The metal clanking grows louder, harder, and she heard a voice running off a slew of...unlocking charms? Then it stops with a frustrated cry, and calls for possibly the last person she expected to hear the name of, though she isn't sure why. "Draco! How did you- Draco!"
"There's still other fucking people!" Yes. Yes, that was Malfoy. "For shit sake, get the light out of her face, Brown."
There is a commotion, and Hermione's heart beats wildly at the erratic light swinging across her cell before there is warmth. Her breath is rushing quickly, because she can feel now, and they must be here. They are here, with Lavender's over-perfumed arms wrapped around her shoulders.
"Don't cry, Hermione. You're all right now. We're getting you out of here." Neville's voice is soothing from her side, his hand on her dirty, greasy hair, and she does not realize she was crying until he says it. And then suddenly, she cannot hold back, and she sobs loudly into the sharp curve of Lavender's shoulder.
Lavender cries with her, squeezing her hard enough to send jolts of pain up her already cramped stomach. "We thought... Oh, Hermione."
"I hate to break up the reunion," Malfoy drawls, "but we have several other cells to check, and a building to search."
"Just give us a second!" Lavender snaps, delicately removing the tears from her makeup smeared face with a single finger. "Come on. Let's get you back to get you checked out."
Lavender lifts her arm, Neville grabbing the other to help pull her to her feet. The movement is too much, and she finds her body cannot support her weight or the motions. A fire ignites along her bones of pain and powerful ache. She cries out in response and they drop her, startled.
Malfoy is there then, speaking over the sounds of her friends rushed questions and apologies. His grip is gentler than she imagines it has ever been when he grasps her chin and pulls her head back to look up at him. His eyes are intense on hers, inspecting her own, her face, opening her mouth to look along her gums.
"How long since you have eaten?"
She means to answer him by letting him know she has no idea, but all that comes out is a rasp and crack, and she coughs on dust and dryness. She shakes her head, the force of the cough robbing her of breath, heavy in her chest.
Malfoy holds her chin firmer, lifting a red marker and placing the wet tip against her forehead. She closes her eyes, remembering the red letters on prisoner's foreheads to inform the infirmary of what was known to be wrong. She is one of them, she realizes. The dirty and torn, once missing people, who line beds behind floating curtain walls.
"Close your eyes, Granger," he whispers, softly, making him unrecognizable to her for several dizzying seconds.
She does as he says, and a hot, damp cloth presses into her palm. He closes her dull fingers around it, holding it, and slips the cloth from between her fingers. The stone is ice cold in counter to the fabric, and there is a pull before she is gone from the cell all together.
Day: 1008; Hour: 12
It takes her five days in the infirmary before the Healers let her go. They try to give her therapy sessions, but she does not accept them. I was kidnapped, I was hungry. That's it, she tells them, because it is the truth. She did not walk away scarred, and she considered herself luckier for it than she had ever been in her life. The man who had taken her must have gone back to the fight and was killed or captured, she thought, because that was the only reason she could have been abandoned there. Unfortunately, she knows the price on her head from being Harry Potter's best friend.
She does not see Malfoy, but there is a long night with Neville and Lavender both as they recount events and she tells them the same story she gave the Healers and Lupin both. She does not see Malfoy again for over three weeks, and it isn't until then that she notices just how much she has gotten used to him.
Day: 1030; Hour: 20
"I thought you went to bed." He looks up at her in the dull colors from the television, speaking lowly. She can still hear him, the TV muted, and only the silence of the old room between them.
"I did," she answers, taking a seat across from him. Malfoy watches television a lot at night, and even when they aren't somewhere with a TV set (which is usual), he still sits and stares as if there is one there.
"Did you hear something?"
"Just now?"
"That woke you?" He looks paranoid, and she thinks he has been spending too much time with Moody.
"Oh, no. I...it was strange. Have you ever been dreaming, and then just woken up for no apparent reason? It wasn't a nightmare or anything, but I just woke up in the middle of it wide awake."
He shrugs, settling his eyes back on the fitness infomercial. "I've heard it's because you're emotionally connected to something that is or has happened at that exact moment, and so you feel propelled to recognize it."
Hermione furrows her brows. "Where did you hear that?"
His lips turn up in a slow smirk. "Professor Trelawny, actually."
"Go figure," she mutters sourly.
"It has some merit. I'm not sure about the connection to an event in your past life aspect of it, but...say, a woman's intuition."
"That something is happening to someone I know?"
"Comforting, isn't it?" he mumbles, flipping the channel to a cosmetic infomercial now.
"You're a prat."
"You're a bitch."
"You're a ferret."
"You're a beaver."
"Git."
"Whore."
"Slut."
"Cu-"
"Eh!" She points at him, eyeing him dangerously.
He snorts. "What is it with women and that word?"
"It's offensive. It's a dirty word."
He smirks again, the look he aims at the screen is something she can't place. "There's nothing wrong with getting a bit dirty, Granger."
At first, she thinks this may having something to do with bloodlines, but it only takes a second after the thought to realize just what sort of smirk he was giving. She blinks rapidly at the flirtatious undertones, and wills the mad blush on her cheeks away.
Day: 1035; Hour: 7
Hermione hits the ground with a loud smack, all the air pressure inside of her evaporating past her lips. She blinks, blankly, at the tall Ministry ceilings before regaining her mind, which seemed to shoot out the back of her head as soon as she hit the wall. Or glass. Or whatever it had been.
She lifts herself up on her elbows, dizzily watching static blue lines sinking into the doorframe. The door she had pushed open is still ajar, giving her a perfect view of half the laughing people inside the room. She glares at them, heated brightly, and takes her wand from her pocket at Neville's pity-filled (yet smiling) face gesturing for her to put it on the table beside the door.
Ever since a heated meeting several months ago, when three Aurors were hexed, it was taken as a safety precaution to leave all wands outside of the room. Hermione hasn't been to a meeting at the Ministry since far before that, and it had not been anything anyone told her to do.
She drops her wand on the table, tentatively trying to pass through the doorway again. She keeps her eyes hard on the floor, taking a position around the small table at the center of the circle.
"Shut up, Malfoy." He ignored her, shoulder still shaking with silent laughter.
"Thanks for dropping in, Hermione," Fred whispered, smacking a palm off her shoulder.
"Lame," Hermione told him, giving him a petulant look before turning back to the older man nearly screaming across from her.
"He should be brought back! This is the whole reason he was there in the first place!"
"I assure you that he is used to danger, and can handle himself well."
"This is different! You-Know-Who has found out about the missing Horcruxes, and he is furious! He knows there are only two left, and has disbanded some of his followers to collect both before Harry can!"
Hermione can actually feel the tips of her ears pull up as she hears Harry's name, and the middle of the argument she walked into is now beginning to make more sense.
"We know the locations, Harry and his team are currently en route-"
"There's not enough! What if the Death Eaters have already gotten it, and are waiting there for him? What if he gets there, and then they show up? It's dangerous enough that they'll know where he's heading and so the whereabouts of his location. You want to send our only hope of winning the war right into the hands of Death Eaters?"
"I agree," Tonks spoke up. "Not that Harry can't handle himself, but it's dangerous. He would need more people."
"He doesn't even have to go. Pull him out, bring him home, and send in others," another woman spoke.
"And what if it's too late by then?" Arthur stepped forward. "I love Harry, and we all know that. But no one can Apparate to either location because none of us have been there. If we pull Harry and his team out, it could put us a day behind them. By then, the Death Eaters would surely be there."
"They might be already!"
"We can Apparate or Portkey to the nearest towns of each location, and from there, it's just about locating the-"
"We can't risk-"
"Harry wants to finish-"
"He won't-"
"What if-"
"I believe he can-"
"Alright!" Moody bangs his fist against the table, effectively causing everyone to fall into silence.
It's McGonagall who speaks after though, her face more weathered than Hermione has ever seen it. "I believe it is in the best interest of Mister Potter that we bring him back. We'll send the rest of the team with him in, but Harry must come back. We cannot risk it, no matter how much we may want to. It is not worth his life, and there are others there to cover for him."
"So it's worth theirs?" Seamus asks, with far more nerve than Hermione has known from him.
Arthur and Molly's head lower simultaneously, because they both know Ron will go either way and Hermione's heart lurches painfully inside her chest. It is not worth the war, is what McGonagall had meant, because that was the truth. Harry had become the hero, the livelihood, before he could even speak more than a handful of words. Ron was dispensable. They all were.
"Don't be trite, Finnigan," Malfoy snaps.
"Harry has an uncanny ability to locate the Horcrux at each location. We all can't ignore the fact that he is connected to the Dark Lord, and that that link seems to be helping in the search-"
"I believe Dumbledore would have sent him in." Colin Creevey raises his head, and half the room stares at him for the name he has brought forth, and the other half send glances in Malfoy's direction. He shifts next to her, the fabric of his cloak brushing against her side. She spares a glance at him from the corner of her eye, and his head is not bowed as she expects, but raised and greeting.
"However," Moody continues from where he was cut off, both eyes unerringly set on a very twitchy Colin. "In the end, it's in our best interest for him to come home. We're in contact with two members of his team to make sure he is forced to follow the order, instead of the disobedience he is more known for."
"But-"
"Albus Dumbledore," Moody hisses, again focused on Colin, "was not a fool. There are other options, and the Ministry and most of us in attendance seem to agree that we will be taking them."
"Aye," was the general call that swept the room, a few adamant yells of disagreement buried under.
Malfoy raised his hand, still tense from their old Headmaster's name being in the conversation. "I'll go."
"Ron won't work with you," Hermione blurted, before she even knew if she would speak at all, and Malfoy turns a very steely look to her.
"He has."
"No, he- What?"
He glares at her for several more seconds before turning his eyes back to Moody. "I'll go."
Moody nods and sweeps the room. "We need two teams. Backup for Harry's team, and another to go to the other location. Who else?"
Hermione's hand rose to join every single other one in the room.
Day: 1038; Hour: 17
It has been desolate for days. Hermione does not see a single person, and there was an eerie silence around her or in her chest. She knew that there were very important things happening at every moment that she sits and breathes, and it frustrated her that so many are a part of it, but she was still sitting safe.
She cannot read, or think properly, or sit still. Her insides were too alive for her to calm down, and there is no one there to rid her concentration on what else was going on. The only thing that had her gathering her frustration had been the possibility of seeing Harry. But he had not come and she didn't know where he was. She broods, and waits, and time grows frantic in her veins as she waited for some sort of news. Not knowing has always been what Hermione considered the worst thing. Even if it was bad news, there were plans and ways to deal after. Not knowing anything meant she had nothing to figure out, but a million different possibilities that could or could not be true.
Day: 1041; Hour: 2
An Auror shows up six days in, but she sleeps and sleeps, until Hermione thinks she may be dead in her room.
Day: 1043; Hour: 1
"Granger."
She jumps, her bones stretching in surprise, and her hand loses grip of the cup she was holding sending it shattering to the floor. Glass chips and ice tea cling to the legs of her jeans, and she yelps when she steps to turn and cuts her foot.
"What?" she barks at the blond, his eyebrow raised high as he leaned casually against the doorframe.
"You're getting blood all over the floor."
"Shove off!" She is quite moody when in pain, and she limps her way to the table.
Malfoy sighs and grabs a dishcloth, wetting it and tossing it hard enough at her, that it slaps her forehead. "You're not very coordinated."
"Well maybe if you didn't just creep up on people like that."
"Or if you just listened better. I think the only thing you pay attention to is the sound of your own voice."
"I may talk a lot, Malfoy, but at least I'm not obsessed with mirrors and keeping my hair shiny."
His eyebrows rose then, and she thought this might have been a bad time to try and attack his old vanity, considering his rumpled state and the scruff of a beard on his face and neck.
"I can tell," he drawls sardonically. She shoots him a look at his reply and he smirks.
"How's Ron? Did you get it?"
The smirk falls away, and he is carefully blank, and more devoid of a reaction than the Auror had been when she asked her the same question. "I can't tell you that."
She snorts. "You owe me that much."
"I owe you nothing."
"If it weren't for you, I would have found out myself!"
"Moody chose-"
"Because you told him not to have me go!"
"Your capability wouldn't have matched the demands had we been greeted by Death Eaters upon our arrival." He dropped back into a bored, professional drawl.
"That's rubbish! I would have been perfectly fine in that setting! I've gotten better-"
"But not good enough."
It is something she knew, but not something she would take from him anyway. She threw the washcloth at him, which he ducks, though the fact that she still tried to throw a bloody washcloth at him gets him angry enough.
"Who are you to tell me that? You're no one!" she yelled, and his face grows fierce as he takes three steps toward her. "You've hardly seen me at battles-"
"I've seen you enough, and you're shit. You would have fucking killed yourself, and I'm sure that would have done wonders for Potter, since Weasley was already on the line as well. Don't you think? Are you there at all when you fight? There's-"
"I am, and that's why I know I would have been fine! And it was my choice! Mine!" She pushes herself off the table, waving an angry finger at him. "You don't get to make that for me!"
"Well, I did, so get over it, Granger. You may be a self-sacrificing fucking Gryffindor, and if you want to go and get yourself killed in the end, go for it. But not now, when-"
"You had no right! You-" She stepped forward, forgetting her foot, and cried out.
She jerks it back in reaction while the other is still in the air, and instinctively grabs Malfoy's shirt to keep herself from falling. His hands grip her elbows, pulling her up the rest of the way, and he is dizzyingly close now.
He smells of fresh air and old sweat, his head bent to look at her. She thinks if she were to push up on the toes of her foot, the fringe hanging over his forehead would brush against hers. His hands are warm and firm, and it is very silent for a very long time. His eyes are not blank, nor flashing in anger, and she doesn't know what he is feeling, which bothers her. The muscle at the side of his jaw clenches and unclenches, and she tracks down the bone to his chin. Her gaze stays far too long on the fullness of his lips before moving up the aristocratic line of his nose, and back to look at him. He breathes out hard, his warm, warm breath following the curves of her face.
Her heart beats in hard, solid thuds, and she isn't sure if she's breathing too hard or not enough. His left hand unclenches from her elbow, ghosting up the length of her arm to grip her shoulder. It makes her aware of her own hands, one now un-fisted and splayed on his chest, with the knuckles of her other brushing against the leg of his trousers. She does not know what the moment was, but is almost positive it was something more than it had ever been. She thinks he might kiss her, or maybe just stare at her for more impossibly long seconds, and she finds her breath stuttering on the thought.
He breaks their eye contact, looking down and down. She is not sure if she imagines the second more that he looks at her mouth, because then he is simply looking through the scant space between them to the floor. His fingers tighten again at her elbow, her shoulder, and he pushes her back lightly and steps back himself.
"I'm here to take you to Potter," he rasps, clears his throat, and turns from the room.
Hermione stares at his back, a whirlwind of emotions, and is startled at what has happened for a solid five seconds before she is then startled at what he has said.
Day: 1043; Hour: 5
Harry was warm and hard, fresh from the shower, and his arms around her were suffocating in the best way possible. She mutters his name into the spot where his neck meets his shoulder, over and over again, as if to convince herself that it is honestly him.
They talk for hours, and hours more, and Hermione hates the stutters in conversation that comes with not knowing how much one can expose on different events. He looks well, fed and maybe a little tired, but nothing at all like the images in her nightmares. They catch up on their friends and acquaintances, sharing stories, and Hermione knows she is doing something akin to gossip but it is for good reason.
When they reach Malfoy, Harry stares at a spot on her shoulder. He was out near us for something, with a few other blokes. They joined up for a bit to help us out. He's...different. And Hermione looks uncomfortably at the bit of dried ink on the side of her finger, and replies with an I know. They leave the subject, floating there in the corner of the room, with many things left unsaid, and continue on as if the revelation has never happened.
She visited with Harry until long after night had broken, and it was somewhere in her thirteenth cup of tea that he told her he must leave soon. He can't tell her where, he says, but he will be back soon enough. Hermione despises that he must leave when he's only just arrived; when the happiness and contentment of their friendship had just begun to sink in again. Though she does not crumble with the news, she is stricken with a deep sadness. Harry pulls her to him, hugging her, and whispered promises into her hair.
This will all be over soon, and we can move on. Then we'll see each other so much we'll get fed up. It's almost over, Hermione. It's so close to being over. And she doesn't know if it is she that needs to hear it as much as it is Harry who needs to be convinced.
Day: 1050; Hour: 18
Hermione passed Malfoy in a Ministry corridor, and he does not even glance at her. There have been several days of silence where she thinks of Harry, Ron, and then of Malfoy to stop herself from obsessing too much. She wasn't even sure she liked Malfoy, though she knew she did not hate him. The strange gap of seconds had been playing continuously in her head since it happened, and she still couldn't pinpoint how it made her feel. It was unexpected and weird, but there had been curiosity and intrigue in the intense span of that moment. She didn't know where she was going with Malfoy, but she was going somewhere.
Late at night since then, she allowed herself to wonder the possibilities of what could happen. She was drawn to Malfoy, though she couldn't explain how or why, and there was no doubt in her mind that he was attractive. His personality and attitude were seriously lacking, but...what if she thought, and that was a dangerous thought.
Hermione was a virgin, and furthermore, she was inexperienced with most intimacy. She had kissed and been kissed, and there were a few brief fondling sessions with Ron before they decided it wasn't going to work the months following sixth year. She thought rationally that it was slightly ridiculous to be in her position, and not because of personal morals or wanting to save herself for marriage, but because there hadn't been enough time. She would not sleep with Malfoy, because she believes in relationships, but perhaps she can make time for other things if it ever happened. It was a curious thought, to wonder what Malfoy would feel like to touch her, or taste like to kiss her.
It was one she denied ever having had by the time mornings would roll around. She spent her days refusing to admit that she even wondered about him in such a sense, but alone at night, she could not help but let her mind wander.
Day: 1052; Hour: 5
Neville, an Auror, Dean, Malfoy, and she sat around a table at Grimmauld Place, studying a chart that Malfoy drew on with a bright pink marker. He does not speak to her the entire time, nor look at her. When he talked about what she must do, where she would go, he informs the room as if she were not there.
This was her first indication that something was off. The passing at the Ministry could have been put to him being busy with his thoughts, or just determined to reach his location, and indeed, it has been - until now.
She was confused by what seemed to be ignorance of her person, but she tried not to act like she thought so, because she might be wrong.
Day: 1059; Hour: 8
It was another week before she saw him, nodding his head slightly to tell her to follow him through winding alleys. Once he felt they were safely away from the eyes of Muggles, he pulls pulled a folder from his coat and she does the same.
Her fingers flick across the edge, because he seems angry with her for no apparent reason. It had been long enough since last time, that she had briefly forgotten he had seemed so weird.
"What's-" She began her question to validate his identity, and he growled in annoyance, yanking the folder from her hand and pushing the other into her chest. She doesn't grab it immediately, and it hits the ground when he pulled his hand away.
He turns, stalking off, and she calls his name in surprise and indignation. He does not stop, waver, or reply.
Day: 1067; Hour: 15
The first time she saw him at a house, alone in the room, she managed to get out four words before he picked up his plate and disappeared into the bedroom he was sleeping in. Anything she said to him for the next week, outside of meetings, was to his back or a scornful glare that quickly became his back.
The longer it went on, and the more times it happened, just meant the angrier she became. He never acknowledged her presence unless she made him, and when she received his attention, it was fleeting and never the kind a person would want to have. It was almost worse than it had been in the beginning, and Hermione couldn't understand why. She did know that she was very close to tearing his hair out.
Day: 1068; Hour: 12
Cho Chang shrugs her delicate shoulders, continuing to pick at her muffin as if it were a particularly nasty creature she was forced to dissect. "I know it's coming to a close. That something is going to happen. But it's not really hitting me because nothing has changed."
Hermione nods, swallowing her gulp of water. "I know, but I can still feel it. Everyone can. We're all jumpy, and waiting."
"It scares me," Hannah admits, jumping into the conversation she had seemed not to even hear before. "Because we're fighting, and we've done so much and gone through it all...but it doesn't matter. This was all just a prep. Like we were trying to get rid of as many as possible, all in preparation for the last battle. Because nothing matters after that. Everything we've done will mean nothing in the end."
This had always been Harry's battle, and I've known that all along, she thought to tell them. It felt too personal in the walls of her throat though, so she stays silent. Hannah was right. It comes down to Harry and Voldemort in the end, and it wouldn't matter how many battles they had, won, or lost, before that.
Sometimes, like this moment, Hermione could feel the weight of the world tip against her shoulders, and she imagined how Harry must feel. To know this information in the most personal of ways. To feel the ache of war, and know you're the only real hope of ever ending it. That an entire world's outcome waited for who spoke the words first.
Her heart shuttered, her breathing making the passages hurt. Guilt, sympathy, fear.
Day: 1070; Hour: 19
"I've entered the room, Malfoy. Isn't that your cue to scurry out?"
He scowls at the table instead, closing the notebook that has become an extension of him. Battle plans and top-secret nonsense. It was thin now, just a couple dozen pages left within the binds. The rest, used and dangerous, were burned. She recalls seeing him in the back of one of the houses once, the wind blowing yellow-lit papers around the yard and black smoke rising up to stench his clothes and hair.
If he had planned on leaving, he wasn't going to give her the satisfaction now. Which had been exactly what she wanted.
"You've been ignoring me, for some reason." He raises an eyebrow at the dark cover of the notebook, but keeps his mouth firmly shut. "More so than usual."
She puts her hands on her hips, a horribly girly stance she had adopted since she was eleven and never grew out of the habit of. She is content on getting an answer out of him, because she knows there has to be one. She had been going somewhere with him before he decided she dropped off into obscurity, and she needed to know why.
"I know it's not just some personal problem that's sprung up all of a sudden..." He seems amused by this, which brings her pause before she forges on. "Because you've been the same way you usually are with everyone else around you - except for me."
"Don't flatter yourself."
"I'm only being honest."
He stops making swirling patterns on the table and looks up at her. "I had thought my blatant ignoring of you would have sunk the message in. I don't like you, Granger. I don't like to be around you, nor speak to you, nor look at you. You seemed to be getting a little too used to the opposite of this, so I used more extensive means to sink the point home. Or, at least try to."
"If you didn't like me so much, you wouldn't talk to me in the first place." She didn't buy his excuse, and they both knew it. "You hated me at Hogwarts, and you still spoke to me."
"To insult you. Which, in case you haven't noticed, also happens to be what I do now. You, it seems, have lost sight of that."
"We have decent conversation, Malfoy, and what do you mean I have lost sight of that? In case you haven't noticed, I enjoy insulting you as well."
"You're too comfortable around me."
"What?" She was confused by what he meant to say.
He stands, tucking his notebook under his arm and moving to the sink to drop his cup in it. "When I was first around, you hardly looked at me - and you still looked as if there were fifty wands shoved up your ass. Now, you won't stop talking, or invading my private space."
She snorts, raising her chin at him. "I didn't realize you wanted me to ignore and hate you as much as all the others do."
"You should have."
"Yes, you really gave it away when you talked with me, or didn't say anything when I was 'invading your private space', Malfoy."
"At least you've got a clue to it now then."
"Fine. Whatever, Malfoy. Go be by yourself, with no one who wants to do anything more than hex you, because you're a-"
"Don't take me on like I'm a fucking pity case, Granger," he growled, turning toward her.
She felt mean, and maybe a little reckless. "Isn't that what you are? The poor little son of a Death Eater, abandoned and on his own in enemy territory, no matter where he goes in the world. The little boy with big plans and ambitious dreams, who lost everything just to-"
He shoves her hard in the shoulder, his palm connecting like wood to her bone. She's forced to take a step back, but he joins her in proximity again by taking one forward. "Why is it that you're always opening your mouth when you've got no room to do so? You shut the fuck up. You don't know shit about my life, and I don't want your opinions, your thoughts, your bloody pity. What I want is for you to stay out of my face, my space, my life. Got it this time?"
"No," she shoots back at him, bending her head back to glare up at him. "What I want is for you to stop being such a coward. Why is it that you're so bothered by someone talking to you? Because it's not normal. It's words and speech, Malfoy, it's friggen conversation. I don't care if you prefer to be alone in your depression and sinister brooding, because I'm not going to leave you alone."
"Why?"
She opens her mouth, moves it around air, her oxygen packed up and waiting for a release in words. "Because I don't have to, and I can damn well do what I want! If I want to talk to you, then I'm going to. If I want to go into a room where you are, then I'm going to. If I want to jump off a building, then I'm going to!"
"Take what you want, and sod everyone who doesn't like it, is that it?"
"When it comes to you, yes!"
He nods, slowly, something fierce and predatory on his features that made her back up when he stepped forward. She hits the wall in three steps, and he reached out, grabbing her arm and yanking her forward until she crashes into him instead. It is one, two seconds where his other hand moved, gripped her ear and yanked it, and she moves her head back to give him less room to pull. She gave a short cry in surprise and discomfort, but then he was kissing her and she had no breath to make another sound.
"Are you happy now?" He pulled back from the hard kiss to breathe the words, and then kissed her again, softer now but just as demanding.
She breathed out in short bursts from her nostrils, her heart hammering wildly, and she wasn't sure if this was really happening. When he moved his head, taking her bottom lip between his own, she releases a long pent up breath and curls her fingers into his shirt, kissing him back.
He made a small noise and his long fingers run up the length of her neck to cradle the back of her head in his palm. Her stomach fills and flops, and she had the ridiculous notion to cry out if her lips weren't currently occupied. The emotions inside of her are raging, and she thinks she might burst, or faint, or crumble down.
She pressed herself into him, stretching out along the length of his body, and thought perhaps this was a bad idea, but she does not care at all. His hand lowers from its previous grip on her shoulder, the tips of his fingers ghosting down her arm to her side, and he wraps his arm around her. His fingers are bent into his palm, his hand a fist at her hip, and he brushes his knuckles against her. They press harder into her, the muscles clenching in his arm and drawing her tighter to him when she opens her mouth to his tongue. She flicks the tip with her own, curling around it before following him back into his mouth. He tastes of orange juice and himself, the roof of his mouth cold and his tongue hot.
The kiss is slightly sloppy in the tint of desperation that seems to have flooded them both, because they both seem to realize that it will only last so long before reality kicked back in. They chase it away with heat, and touch, and breathy little noises, but time will bring it back. It is feverish, passionate, and mind numbing; it was the best she had felt in a very long time.
Her fingers curled into his hair, and he pulled back fractionally, his words more air and rasp than anything solid. "Is this what you want, Granger? Hmm? Should I just take this?"
"If you want," she whispers, though she won't be able to recall what it is she replied with later. He bends his head at the answer, and she pushes up on her toes, meeting him halfway to kiss him again.
Later, gasping for breath, both red and lipped-swollen, he will drop away from her quickly. There will be a pause of settling down, of awkwardness, and he will turn to leave before she can find something to say. Is this why you were mad? She'll ask. He'll only smirk and give her an answer that isn't an answer, I wasn't mad, before walking away.
Day: 1071; Hour: 18
She makes to sit in the recliner before telling herself she should have a little more bravery, and sits beside him instead. She hasn't been near him since yesterday, and she didn't know where he had gone all that day. It is the house she stays in when she must deliver messages though, and so she figured he might have had an errand.
He doesn't say anything to her when she sat on the other side of the couch, and didn't acknowledge her at all. She tried to be normal, to watch the television as she had done with him before, but she was suddenly made of nerves and sweaty hands.
It's was an hour before acknowledged her, and she jumped when she turned her eyes toward him to find him looking back at her. He raises an eyebrow at her in question or thought, and hands her the remote.
"You never give up the remote."
"Unless I'm going to bed." Same caustic tone, same insulting expression.
He pushes to his feet, leaving the room, and Hermione blinks at the darkened hall that he disappeared down. She wasn't sure how to handle the situation. She had never been in such a place. Sure, she had been at the beginning stages of a relationship with Ron, and a short possible one with a Muggle boy who lived down her street. But she didn't know if she was starting such a thing with Malfoy, and to top it off, it was Malfoy. She still called him by his last name, for God's sake. She had never met a boy like him, let alone being involved with one like him to any degree.
Ron would have taken her hand, or scooted closer, or started a light conversation with flirtation. Malfoy had just...sat there, and watched TV.
She had, of course, run over what she had been doing thirty million times in her head since he kissed her. She thought about it despite the fact that every time she does, she tells herself not to. She wanted to go with what was happening for the first time in her life, and she just didn't want to think about why it was a bad idea, or all the repercussions.
Perhaps the reason she was in her twenties and still a virgin was because she didn't take many chances in her life. She didn't know if Draco Malfoy should be one of these chances, but what is regret? It is something that happens in the past, and that life moves on from. She can move on from Malfoy if she wanted to, at any time. No one had to know. It was just...
Well, who knows what it was, because she sure doesn't.
She isn't attached, so he can't hurt her. It is a means to break time, to explore different things, to get to know the feeling that welled up and overtook her when they kissed. She may be behaving recklessly, dangerously, and against all the wishes her friends would make upon her, but she has done that throughout her life except when it came to boys. It's an experiment, she tells herself. Like research. Or something. Because he makes her feel like she has never felt before, and there is more of a demand in her to explore that, than to turn against it. Just this once, she thinks. Just to give up on that tightrope she tries to keep herself walking on all the time.
If it happens, it happens. She will not push for it, and if it started to feel like she should push against it, she will.