Thirty-Two
Day: 1473; Hour: 17
Hermione scans the store quickly as soon as the woman's back is turned, finding nothing but the trail of water and dirt her boots had made. The sign on the door and the clock on the wall tell her it's ten minutes until closing, and she can't even hear the wheels of a cart over the elevator music playing through the speakers. Hermione ducks under the counter before the cashier's back is even out of sight, staring at the computer for two seconds like she's never seen one before.
Her fingers feel stiff and awkward on the keys, and then she hits panic, opening the internet and trying to remember. The piece of paper Draco gave her is shaking between her fingers as she punches in the numbers and hits Enter. Her eyes track across the map quickly, counting twice before she closes the website.
"Shit," she whispers, grabbing a small stuffed animal from the box on the counter and using it to wipe up her mess on the floor. She slides back out to the other side of the counter, the eye of the little monkey scraping against the floor as she wipes at one more streak.
She stands up, fully expecting the woman to be back and staring at her, but she still doesn't see her. Hermione shoves the monkey deep into the box, catching an elephant before it hit the floor. The tiles were still dirtier than they were, but at least there were no puddles. She's about to turn and jet out of the store until she sees a red string, a savings card, a name tag, keychains, and a set of keys.
The directions she had gotten from the website said that P&P had been off by about ten kilometers. They would have to continue East for that long before hitting a left, and it wasn't going to be an easy task. They would no doubt be running along a Muggle highway, in the dark, like a bunch of crazy people. Her legs hurt with just the idea of it, the skin on her thighs and ribs chapped and rubbed raw, and she wanted this mission to be over already. The longer it took them, the better the chance that there would be nothing left when they got there.
Hermione doesn't even really think before she's reaching forward, grabbing the key with the black box at the end, the letter H marked in white. Her fingers are numb on the metal ring, twisting it quickly, and taking two keys off to get to the one she wanted. She pockets the one to a car, her nail cracking as she hurries to slide the other two back on again. Her heart is thumping wildly and she can make out the click of shoes over the music now.
Twist, twist, and two keychains jingle off one another. Hermione holds her breath, as if the inanimate objects will now get that silence is preferred. She slides it back to where she had grabbed it from, her eyes wide on the dirt-smudged brass, and lets her forehead hit her hand on the counter. On her third breath the cashier clears her throat. Hermione looks up to find her emerging from the aisle, and it takes her two tries to smile.
"I'm sorry, we can't do that. Do you have the address? I might know where it is, or you can buy a map..." The woman returns the fake smile and then drops the pretense when she spots the dirt on the counter.
"Oh. Alright, I'll just try Floo...calling one of my friends again. Thank you anyway!"
"Sure," the cashier mutters, bending to retrieve cleaner and a roll of paper towels.
Hermione has to remind herself not to run as she leaves, shoving her hand into her pocket to wrap around the car key. She turns sharply toward the side of the building when the doors close behind her, and she raises her hand, folding it and moving her thumb as if she's dialing a number. As soon as she passes the windows, she throws herself forward into a run, puddles of water slapping up into her jeans.
Seven heads snap toward her when she rounds the corner, and the young girl raises her wand. An Auror gives her a stern look and smacks her hand down. Draco's smug look isn't there, perhaps because he's gone on too many missions with her to not know when she's in a panic.
"There are seven cars here, two more in the back. None of them have a GPS. All of them were un-" Draco had obviously thought – knew – it wouldn't work, and had used her determination as a distraction for the employees.
"Was the back employee parking?" Hermione cuts off Dean, and only looks at him for the time it takes for a single nod before she's running toward the back of the store. They start running with her, and she's glad she's not on a mission with anyone who thinks she's doing it for recreational purposes.
"Granger."
"I stole her keys," and she sounds a little hysterical.
There's a Jeep and a Honda in the back parking lot, and she whips around to the driver side of the Honda, yanking on the door to see if it's locked. It opens easily, and she has to step back from the strength behind her pull. Dean is the only one who makes a move to get in the car, the other six standing dully.
"Get in! Get in the car!" Hermione yells, and slams the door shut too hard.
"There isn't enough ro-"
"Make room," Dean bites out, cramming himself into Hermione's side, his legs planted awkwardly to either side of the middle console.
Hermione starts the car as they start piling in, Draco squeezing in next to Dean, and three people sitting in the back. One of the men grunt as another sits on his lap, and the girl pulls Hermione's hair between her palm and the seat as she throws herself in. Dean jerks back so hard he hits his head off the roof when Hermione throws the car into Drive and comes a little too close to his more sensitive areas. She hits the gas too hard, and the tires squeal as she pulls out. The girl slams the door shut behind her, and Hermione's hands are shaking on the wheel.
This is just perfect. The war will end and she'll go to a Muggle jail for stealing a car. Her parents were going to freak. Hermione Granger, Car Thief. She had wanted a lot of things when she was younger – things her parents couldn't afford. And no matter how simple it would have been to shove it in her pocket, she never did, and she never regretted that she didn't. Now she made the decision to steal a car in all of five seconds.
She doesn't dare look out the rearview mirror when she reaches the front parking lot, because in her head it is the cashier in front of the doors, screaming, one hand with a phone dialing the police and a shotgun in the other. They hit the road with a bump, the tires squealing again as she turns sharply onto the road. Another car blasts a honk at her for a solid five seconds as they swerve to avoid hitting her. She had been busy studying for her Apparition test and preparing for war when she was old enough to drive. She learned for one month in the summer, the kind of driver where her parents had to tell her to go faster rather than slow down, and never got her license. She could drive just fine, but high speed probably isn't a very good idea.
Someone lets out a ragged breath from the backseat, and she realizes that this is the first time many of them have even been in a car. She doubted any of them had been, except Dean, but this wasn't going to be a nice, safe joyride to sway them toward respect of Muggle inventions. They are probably freaking out as badly as she is at the moment.
"Do you know where we're going?" She glances at Draco with his question, and finds him looking at her as if she was the crazy person who created automobiles, and is very disapproving of the fact.
"Yeah. She left to ask her boss so I got on the internet to find it myself. She left her keys... I just did it. Pee and Pee were a little too far to the West. We have to go straight for seventeen lefts, and we make the eighteenth. It's somewhere straight ahead after that." She gives him a look, because somewhere, at some stupid point in time, she began to need his assurance that she didn't just screw up.
"Watch where we're going, Granger."
"Yes, please," the girl whispers.
"What is this thing? A metal death trap?" the older Auror asks, his voice sharp, though she doesn't know if it's because of where he is or the girl on his lap.
"It's called a—" Hermione starts, because facts calm her down. Knowledge, theories, ideas, facts. Not so much stealing a car.
"He knows, Hermione." Dean's voice is soft, calming, and more strained from his uncomfortable position than the way she drives.
Fourteen more left turns before she could rid herself of the thing. It made her feel dirty, though it could have been the dirt all over her and the way Dean's sweaty arm was turning it back into mud. She just hopes that the police aren't on their way, or drive past them and wonder why there are eight people shoved into a car. They would have to use magic then, deal with some messy politics, and she's pretty sure it would break the thread she was hanging onto with Lupin. She couldn't even think about what he was going to say to this now. She's pretty sure she gets into more trouble now than she did at Hogwarts.
"Stop!" Dean yells the second she slams her foot onto the break. She had been contemplating driving straight through the red light in an attempt to get there quicker, but the cars zooming across put her off.
Everyone in the car lurches forward, and Dean slams the shift up into Park to avoid it crushing his bits. A stream of curses sound off around her, and Hermione breathes in deep, clutching the steering wheel tighter. "Sorry about that."
"Have you ever drove a car before, Hermione?"
"Yes, but I'm trying to avoid the police catching up to us, Dean."
"It would be nice if we weren't killed in the process."
"Fritz, if the police come after us-"
"I'm aware, Grudder, but I-"
Hermione tries to latch onto the names. She usually makes it a point to know everyone's names before a mission, as a matter of respect. She had gotten to the meeting too late and they had left for the mission too quickly for her to ask.
"How far is-" Draco cuts himself off when she reaches between Dean's legs to put the car back into Drive, and she glances at him a second before his eyes move from her hand to her face. "How far is the location after we go left?"
She eases her foot onto the gas, and she's pretty sure there is a sigh of relief from Dean when the car doesn't jolt forward. "I'm not sure. Maybe a five minute run?"
"Are we going to start at the turn?" It sounds like the voice of Grudder.
"We'll leave the car somewhere else. The Muggle authorities will be looking for it. Go past the turn Granger, and then we'll go back to it on foot."
She isn't sure how that will work out either, considering what they look like, but it's the best they could do. The clock on the radio shows five past the hour, meaning the store closed five minutes ago, and the woman was bound to know by now. If she hadn't before they even left the parking lot.
She can see Draco and Dean tense out of the corner of her eye, and someone inhales sharply from the backseat as she comes up on another red light. She frowns, easing into it, and shoots them a look for doubting her. Draco is still staring at her, his hand tense on the dash, and it makes her more nervous. She holds his eyes, not knowing the look there, until the light on his face turns green and she presses on the gas.
"Three more," Dean whispers reassuringly to himself, before the car erupts in yells, grunts, and curses as she slams on the breaks again.
She throws one hand up into the air, forgetting herself and slamming a palm down on the horn. "You have to stop there, you idiot!"
The man in the other car yells something out of his window, and it's loud enough for her to hear 'bitch' inside the car. Dean flips him off, Hermione accelerates, and someone grunts at the display of Muggle road rage. She can feel Draco's eyes burning into her, as if he's watching for any signs that she's about to do it again.
"I will never get into another of these things again." Fritz, she thinks.
"The Muggles can have it."
"I think that was the turn right there, that little dirt road – did you see it?"
"I doubt that a dirt road would be listed on the map," Hermione answers Dean, looking over at the teenagers in the car that rushes forward to pass them. The three stare back, one of them flicking a cigarette out the window with an incredulous look. The other two laugh, and Draco's frown grows deeper.
"I don't think they would want a house on a main road tho-" Dean starts, but Draco cuts him off in annoyance.
"Stop the car, Granger."
He is obviously on the same page as Dean, though he gives her an exasperated look when she pulls over to the side of the road instead of stopping the car right then. He seemed to have no concept of how a road works, but she doesn't bother filling him in. He's too angry and they aren't on good terms, and she doesn't need a fight right now.
She kills the engine and everyone rushes for the doors like she really drove that badly. Hermione closes her door and takes a step back, watching them pile out of the car. It reminds her of the Halloween before Hogwarts, when she was nine, and her cousins babysat her. She had been crammed into her aunt's van with a bunch of people she didn't know, two rolls of toilet paper clenched in her sweaty palms. She remembers the strain of voices singing loudly to the radio, a cute boy with his arm around her shoulders, autumn in her nose, and giggling madly in the dark.
Her sight is obstructed by fabric and she pushes it away from her eyes. Draco pulls his hand back from placing the hood of her cloak on her head, and the fabric is warm against her body, and smells like him. He hands her her holster, and they are sprinting across the street before she can even put it on. She swivels her hips as she runs, putting it behind her back and drawing the straps over her shoulders. She shoves her arms through the sleeves of her cloak and draws her wand as soon as her feet hit the dirt road.
She's back to soldier mode; the fact that she stole a car some distant, irrelevant memory inside her head. She has to push harder to keep in line with Draco's long strides. They run down the middle of the road in a two-four-two formation, and her and Draco will break to the left, the last two to the right, and the middle will keep straight when they spot the house. The trees are black and the sky is perhaps the most beautiful shade of purple she has ever seen. Light, and open, and if she doesn't think too hard, it's almost as if she will run and sink right into it.
Draco holds up his hand before they go around the bend in the road, and the murmuring of voices drift toward them as the rocks stop shifting under their feet. He turns and motions toward the girl and one of the Aurors, jerking his head for them to come forward. He holds out four fingers to the remaining four team members and then points them toward the woods on the right side of the road, then shakes his hand toward the noises. The four of them nod and cross the road, and Hermione takes a deep breath before following Draco's back into the woods on the left. She hates having to go through the woods, because it was always too loud, and her nerves were always shot from freaking out at every snapped twig or rolling rock.
They crept through, moving slowly to be as quiet as possible in the extreme silence around them. Laughter travels on the air somewhere in front of them, and a baby starts crying. The sound almost faltered her footsteps and she watches Draco's shoulders grow more tense. A voice of a child yells out something that causes more laughter, and Hermione knows this is going to be a lot harder in different ways than she's used to. No one wanted children in the crossfire of anything. At least, not her side.
Draco stops after several agonizing minutes and she comes up to stand at his side, looking through the leaves. She would have been doubting this being the right place if it weren't for the robes some of them were wearing. She counts three teenagers, eight almost-teenagers, three children, and one baby. A figure moves past a window on the second floor, and she looks up to Draco to find his eyes on her. She gives a nod as the Auror steps up to her other side, and the girl takes a few seconds before stepping up to Draco's. They aim their wands, casting Stunning and Binding spells, and an array of colors jet out from the other side of the woods a moment after theirs. There are screams, and a single second before something hits the tree in front of Draco and they rush away from it, the crack echoing out as it smashes onto the floor of the woods.
Ten minutes later finds them with eighteen children, because they are all really children, bound in a huddle on the front porch. The rest of the house is empty of both people and anything useful. Some of the children scream, some glare, others threaten, and most of them cry.
"They were hiding their kids?" Dean bunches his cheek and tilts his head as one of them tries to kick out his leg.
"Well, I guess there ought to be something they do like us." The girl is proud, because it's her first mission and she doesn't realize this one has been a failure. Hermione hopes it's the closest she'll come to knowing it.
"Take your fucking Mudblood hands off my brother," a boy seethes, and she can see the anger in his eyes mirrored back from behind hundreds of masks.
"I think she might take him home actually. Raise him as her own," Draco drawls, glancing at the baby Hermione was rocking in her arms before his eyes flick up to meet hers.
For a moment she thinks he might be serious until she spots the twitch of a smirk on his lips as the young boy begins thrashing against his magical binds. She stares down at the baby for a moment before reminding herself to pick up more birth control. She has only a week left. The little fingers curl into her neck and she wraps the blanket more firmly around him, glancing at the back of Draco's head and shaking her own.
"You would know all about liking Mudbloods, wouldn't you? You-" The boy jerks back with a hiss, as if the proximity of Draco's hand actually burned him. "Don't touch me you fucking blood traitor! You Mudblood infected pi-"
The back of the boy's head hits off the house as Draco shoves a hand against his chest. He pulls his hand back, leaving the Portkey there, and the boy is gone before he can manage to wiggle it off of him. Draco stands and stares at the spot too long, and Hermione wonders if he saw himself, like a ghost. He had known that sort of disgust and hatred once, had owned it even.
She reaches out her hand to maybe slide it up along his shoulder, but drops it. "Draco."
She says it too softly and his face is a mask when he turns, an eyebrow raised like whatever she was going to say next was bound to piss him off. "What?"
"What are we going to do with him?" The baby smacks his hand into her chin and when she looks down at him he laughs, drool dripping down onto her shirt. She thinks of his brother, of the indiscriminate affection of babies, and something rushes up inside of her that she can't explain. Suddenly her eyes are wet, nothing makes sense, and she just wants to take him to her parents.
She kisses his forehead on instinct, and when she raises her eyes, Draco is staring at her oddly. "Take him to the Ministry."
"The Ministry?"
"He's not a lost fucking puppy, Hermione."
"Well, I'm not saying to take him back with us." She's exasperated, and he gives her a look like he doesn't understand, but she doesn't either. "I'll take him to the Ministry."
"Okay."
"Okay."
Day: 1473; Hour: 19
"I stole a car." Hermione tells Lupin this with her eyes firmly planted on Ron's eyelids.
She had come directly after leaving the Ministry, impatient to see her friend, and disappointed to find him still asleep. Harry looks up at her confession, chewing slowly on one of the sweets he had stolen from the 'Get Well' table. Harry had come that day to find Ron in the bathroom, he had told her, and though the redhead had gone back to sleep not ten minutes after Harry's arrival, it was more than she had had with him.
"A car?" Lupin doesn't sound like she thought he might. Instead, he's just tired.
"I'll write up the report tonight, but I wanted to let you know now. The map was wrong, and we were several kilometers off from where we should have been. We were in the Muggle world, caked in mud, in our robes, on the highway. No one was hurt, the car was fine except maybe some interior damage... The Muggle authorities are sure to have my face on video, though."
Lupin lifted his eyebrows and closed his eyes, his forehead folding in wrinkles as he sighs. Again, it's not the reaction she expects. "I can't tell you that there won't be repercussions for you across the wizarding line. I'll talk to the Ministry."
"We couldn't use magic and-"
"If things had gone badly, there would be problems, Hermione. As it is, it worked out, and you did what needed to be done. I consider it one of the less extreme choices in your list of transgressions."
Hermione blinks at him and returns her gaze to Ron. She lifts a hand, her fingertips swirling through the strands of red that are standing straight up. His mouth is open, eyes moving with his dreams, and his hand is large under hers. He had acted very oddly, Harry had told her. He had just sort of stood there in a shock, and when Harry hugged him, he had not hugged back for several seconds. He hadn't said much of anything at all, and Harry's mouth had been pulled down in worry since she walked through the door.
Ron was probably going to have to talk to someone, and someone who was not them. Neither one liked the sound of that very much, but she knows that sometimes it's what has to be done. She has no idea what Ron had went through as a prisoner, and she's almost glad at the idea that he won't tell her – she doesn't know if she could stand to know. She doesn't know if she's strong enough for his memories, and for his family grief.
But she would be here for him. No matter what it took, or how much it hurt, or if he hated it. No matter what this war had done, it was always going to be the three of them. Always, always, always.
Day: 1473; Hour: 21
Draco is sitting on the couch when she enters the house. His notebook is in his lap, unopened, as he reads through a small stack of papers. The mission reports, she's guessing. The older Auror is sitting in a recliner by the window, his white beard turned grey in the shadows. He glances away from the view out the window and to her face, giving her a short nod before taking a sip of black liquid. He had been the only one who hadn't given her a look after he got out of the car, like she had just tried to kill all of them.
She strips off her cloak, clumped and bunched with dried dirt, and lets it drop to the floor next to her trunk. She looks as if she just emerged from underground, only spots of her skin peeking through the layer of grime, and all she can smell is dirt. Harry had looked quite worried when she entered Ron's room, until his eyes had scanned and found no proof of blood.
The silence in the room is thick as she pulls the top of her trunk up, though it might just be in her head. She digs out a set of clothes, grabbing what she needs for a shower, and avoids looking at the pictures taped to the inside of the top. Sometimes she stares at them for days, and other times she cannot look at them at all.
"I need your report, Granger." She jumps at the sound of his voice, scraping over his tongue. It sounded as if he was too tired to even speak.
"I'm aware of the post-mission procedure," she responds, and then feels bad about it. She didn't want to fight, and he sounded exhausted. "Just...after I shower, okay?"
He doesn't respond, and doesn't look at her, so she pauses and then leaves for the bathroom. Her boots feel too heavy on her feet, her legs half-dead, and she wants to sleep for a very long time. The shower is better and worse at the same time – she scrubs the crusted dirt away, renewed, but she nearly falls asleep against the wall of the shower. She has to blast it to cold to wake herself up, and she's still shaking when she leaves the bathroom.
Draco is gone from the living room but the Auror remains, his glass full again. She digs parchment and a pen from her trunk and plops down on the couch, on the cushion Draco had been, her handwriting sloppy from the tremble in her fingers. The Auror looks at her when she leaves, his eyes bloodshot and his lips in a grim line. She briefly contemplated staying because he looked like he might want her to, but she knows older people like to keep their secrets far too close to them for that. She thinks it's because they had lived too long with them to ever let go.
Draco's door is cracked less than the space she would need to fit her pinkie through. She remembers watching him disappear into this room the night before, when she had walked past it and joined the young Phoenix in another bedroom. She taps the parchment against the door instead of her fist, though she doubts he's sleeping. Not with the door cracked and the light on. She opens it before she gets a response, shifting nervously when she meets his eyes.
It is times like these when she doubts everything. She questions every move, right down to the act of closing the door, in case it might give him the idea she thought they were going to be doing something – just in case he didn't want to. He had been distant since she left with Harry to rescue Ron. There hadn't even been a look that felt all that personal, at least not out of anger, and she couldn't know what that might mean. She thinks it's a little ridiculous that after all this time she could be so unsure around him, but she doesn't know if anything will ever be solid between them.
It hardly seems fair that he's sitting there, on a bed, in only his underwear. He had to know by now how utterly distracting that was for her. It takes all of her will power not to ogle him, and trace the lines of his chest with her eyes, or think about a lot of things she shouldn't think of this second.
"Do you think they'll give him back?" She blurts this out, not even aware she was going to ask until she did. She had been standing still too long after the door clicked shut, wondering if she should have let the door click shut, and his eyes hadn't wavered. She's pretty sure he does that on purpose, to watch her fidget.
"To his parents?" Draco asks, because somehow he already knew what she was talking about. The baby she had held on the porch.
"Yes."
"Probably. Unless his parents are sent to Azkaban..." He trails off with a shrug. Sometimes she thought he knew her more than he should be allowed to, but it never stopped him from saying things he knew she wouldn't like.
"I just..." she pauses, collects her thoughts, and goes to speak again when he cuts her off.
"Is that the report?" Because maybe he knew how easily the conversation could lead to his youth, or the things that exasperated him about her like how she always felt bad for things she couldn't help. Because he probably knew that she was bound to go on a rant about children, and the things you are taught and the things you learn, and relate it to some beautifully destroyed thing. Like innocence, and him maybe, too.
"Yeah."
She didn't move to give it to him and his eyes drop to his open notebook, his hand reaching up to cover his mouth. He moves it down, his mouth pulling into a frown, the bottom lip pulling away from his teeth, and then he squeezes his chin. She can hear the scrape of his scruff against his palm, and imagines it on her cheek. Some days she wakes with a red face, like a rash, from the pull of his facial hair.
"I really don't blame you, and-"
"Gran-"
"It's not what I meant when I ask-"
"Shu-"
"I'm sorry fo-"
"Stop," he barks, and glares at her.
"I'm just sorry for that whole night," she rushes out before he can interrupt her again. Most of that night. She isn't sorry for getting to Ron on time, but the rest of it was a nightmare.
He ignores her, looking down again. She isn't surprised. He is angry for the whole event, but she thinks he might be angry for what he had said yesterday. To let you die, and the struggle of words because he didn't know how to say it, or maybe he didn't want to. As sick as it might be, it's proof for her. That Draco did care for her, at least a little. At least enough to get angry for putting him through that. Maybe he had gotten backup because of what Lupin said, and how they had almost ruined everything.
But, sometimes, she wants to think that it was because of her. Because he couldn't let her die. Because maybe he, too, felt this devastating, cruel, and wonderful thing that she tried so hard to convince herself was something else. She remembers the look on his face when she had turned for the door, when she left for the mission, hope and goodbye hanging in silence from their ribcages. She didn't know what it meant, the look, but it had made it hurt more. It had made her heart explode.
"Alright, well..." She pushes away the awkwardness, his diverted eyes, the fact that she doesn't know what to do. "I already told Lupin about the car. I saw him earlier. You shouldn't get any problems because of it."
He's rubbing his cheek now, the scraping the only thing that fills the silence. She watches the movement, and decides she wants to shave him one day. She wonders if he will let her. She bites her lip when he doesn't respond, walking forward to hold the report out to him. He's still for a second longer and then sighs, snapping his notebook shut.
He meets her eyes when he grabs the parchment, and his face looks set. Looks the way it does after he's reached a decision that he isn't sure if he's happy about or not. When he isn't sure if it's the best plan he could do. She didn't even know there had been some sort of choice.
He tosses the notebook to the floor, followed by her report, and leans back against the wall. He's too tense to be relaxed, and she's too weak not to watch his muscles stretch with his movements and look away quickly enough for him not to notice. "What do you want?"
"Huh?" Articulate, Hermione, good job.
"Why are you hovering?"
"I'm not hovering."
"You're hovering."
"I want to shave your face." She blushes as he pauses, his eyebrows rising. She really has to work on not blurting things out tonight when she doesn't know what else to say. Though, with her emotions, and why she was really hovering, she figures this might have been the least embarrassing and awkward of them all.
"Beg pardon?" She ignores the quirk at the corner of his lips as he asks, and sets her jaw. Brave face.
She really doesn't want to, but she repeats it, hating the amused look he gives the wall behind her. "I've just always wondered about it."
"Shaving my face?"
"Shaving a face."
"Why don't you just charm yourself a beard and go at it?"
"Because that's...weird." It reminds her of the whole Polyjuice incident at Hogwarts, a very traumatic experience for her, not that she would tell him. She also never really thought of shaving someone's face before. He did odd things to her brain.
"You seriously want to shave my face?" He gave her a contemplative look, and she marches on before he can think too much and it gets more awkward.
"Are you scared?"
"Hardly. Though letting you near my neck with a razor isn't exactly relaxing."
She laughs, and for some reason, he looks surprised. "Oh, come on, Draco. You know I wouldn't do anything on purpose."
"That makes me feel loads better. For some reason, letting you experiment with razor blades on my face sounds completely appealing."
She doesn't know what to say, knowing from the start that he wasn't going to let her, and now she is stuck trying to make a graceful exit. She notices that he's waiting for her to speak, his thumb tapping against his leg, so she rushes out the words. "I'll be gentle."
His lips twitch again, and she knows the look that changes his stoic expression for just three seconds. She knows because he likes to whisper a lot of perverted things into her skin when he's ravaging her mouth or owning her body, when he makes her want to do them all. He opens his mouth but changes his mind, surprising her when he pushes himself off the bed and walks toward his trunk. She stares when he bends over to rummage through it, and shakes her head. It just felt like it had been forever, and it was all her fault, really.
She had been replaying the last time they slept together in her head since the moment she left the bed that day. She felt like it had been months since she touched him, really touched him, and he just had to be difficult. Perhaps it was because she had chosen to leave rather than stay that day. Maybe it was because she had reminded him of Pansy then – because she was the only friend Draco Malfoy really had, and she had been about to jump off a cliff without thinking twice about it. Maybe he decided it was better to keep some distance now. She couldn't begin to know the things that went through his mind, and she didn't want to guess. Even implying in her own head that he felt more than a casual, almost flippant friendship toward her was dangerous and stupid. But she needed him now. She needed the way he made her feel, and forget, and be okay.
She just hated the rationalized distance, and the air of detachment he did so well with her. It made her want to shake him until he reminded her of the passion that she has seen rule him. Sometimes she knew he had to care as solid as her bones, but sometimes he made her think he never could. It was best for her to keep her own emotional distance, but he made her forget to do that a lot. She should hate him for it. She couldn't.
He doesn't look at her when he walks past her and out of the room, a can of shaving cream and a razor in his hand. She follows him down the hall and into the bathroom, and she closes the door behind them before she can even contemplate it. He doesn't seem to notice, setting the supplies on the sink and turning on the tap.
"You're looking at me like a Potions project."
She looks up at his voice, catching his eyes in the mirror, and watching as they glance down at the smile that's too shy on her face. She thinks to say something witty, but it might come out too scathing, so she ignores his comment altogether.
"I won't be able to reach you properly. You should sit on the tub." She schools her voice into an analytical tone, because he's making her too nervous, and she doesn't want to give herself a chance to feel more awkward.
She turns the water off in the sink and grabs everything off the side, noticing the aftershave for the first time. She had never been sure if it was the shaving cream or the aftershave that she smelt on his face sometimes. It was only when they were staying somewhere they couldn't use magic and he had to shave the Muggle way, but she always secretly hopes that it's there when she gets close enough to know.
Detached, detached, she thinks, clearing her throat. She's sure it's pretty bad when just thinking of his different scents puts her mind in the gutter. That really couldn't be healthy at all.
She flips the lid down on the toilet seat and reaches around him to turn on the tap, adjusting for a comfortable temperature. Her arm brushes his, and when he moves she thinks he's pulling away until his arm rubs back and forth on hers. She pulls back in curiosity to find him lathering up his face with the shaving cream.
He pauses the first time, and looks up to her on the second giggle. His eyebrow comes up as she covers her mouth, pressing her lips together. Did she honestly just giggle? She couldn't help it – she had always thought men looked a little funny with a full beard of shaving cream. She had discovered that in fourth year, laughing while Padma glared and deemed Hermione unworthy of looking at the sexy men in her magazine.
"Quite done?"
"I think so." Hermione grins, sitting down on the toilet, her one leg between his. The space between them was cramped at best, and his kneecap was distractingly close between her legs.
"Good. I don't really care for you laughing while approaching me with something sharp."
"Coward," she mutters, dragging the blade up his cheek.
They are both silent for at least a minute, Hermione fully concentrated on the curves of his cheek, jaw, and upper neck. She could shave her legs in the amount of time it took her to get a quarter of his face done, but she was nervous. Something about being this close to him, and of him trusting her enough to – like he kept pointing out - take something sharp to his face. His breath kept puffing out against her face, her hair, her ear. Every time she moved to rinse out the razor his leg would press into her thigh and her shoulder would meet his, and she would think how he was one garment away from being naked. Every stroke of the razor revealed more of his face, and she wanted to touch the skin, to feel how smooth it was beneath her fingertips. So she did, even if it is obvious that her thumb really doesn't have to run the length of his cheekbone to tilt his face up, she can't help herself. The experience is...she isn't sure what it is, but it makes her stomach get all screwy, and it feels really personal.
She looks up to find him watching her, his eyes a bright grey and his stare intense. Her breath catches a little in her throat and she looks at his neck quickly, as if not making eye contact meant that he wouldn't notice the strange huff of air in her throat. He pulls his bottom lip into his mouth as she brings the razor over his chin, and the skin moves out when he sticks his tongue between his lip and his teeth, pushing out. She almost jumps at his fingers on her wrist, which wouldn't have been a good thing, and his fingertips slide up her hand until he's grasping the fingers she has wrapped around the razor. He moves their hands in short strokes, and she looks at the curve of his tongue before meeting his eyes again.
She doesn't really think about much of anything. It's like the rest of her body held a mutiny on her brain, and she just did it. Her hand had been sliding over his neck to his nape, her shaving cream covered fingers pushing up into his hair. His eyes looked to be tracking every movement of her face before settling back on hers again. Then it happened, just as she was about to return her concentration to his chin. Suddenly she was pulling her hand back, the razor was dropping somewhere over her shoulder, and she launched herself at him. Later, in her head, it will be like when the cheetah finally launches itself out of the grass and onto its prey. She'll also chastise herself for being dramatic, and realize it was a lot more of simply falling into him.
She can't see his face, her eyes closed and her lips against his, but she can feel his hand grab her arm and the other flail at her hip for something steady to hold onto. It's no use, and they fall halfway into the tub, his head cracking off the side.
"Fuck!" he yells against her mouth.
Hermione opens her eyes wide, her face flaming with her embarrassment. His hand leaves her arm for his head, and she really has no idea why she basically just attacked him. She pulls up, about to apologize, when he drops his hand from his head to the tub. It smacks into the water pounding out of the tap, and he lifts himself up, his other hand wrapping around the back of her head to pull her down again. His mouth meets hers, their teeth clinking together, and shaving cream rubbing off his face and onto hers. She's too flustered to even notice, gripping tighter to the back of his neck and clenching onto his shoulder.
Her stomach flutters, and goosebumps spread across her shoulders and down her arms. Her heart hops, and skips, and does a wild dance inside her chest. She had missed this, so much. To be wrapped around him, to feel him, to get lost within him. She wants to melt herself into his skin, and breathe him.
His tongue rushes past her lips, running over the ridges at the roof of her mouth before sliding against her own. There's a faint taste of the shaving cream, and it grows stronger when she enters his mouth. She draws back on instinct from the strange taste, and he turns his head, spitting into the tub before turning back toward her. She's kissing him the moment he does, and the taste is still there, but she doesn't care.
He wraps an arm around her waist, squeezing her to him in squelches of wet cloth, and she's distantly aware that he's pushing them up and back. She puts out a hand blindly, trying to find something to grab and help pull her along, but the only thing she can cling to is him. She pulls her legs up until her knees are against the edge of the tub, using them to push herself forward as he slides up so his back is against the side and not the bottom. It really has to be one of those most awkwardly positioned snogs she's ever taken part in until his hands grab her bum and slide her over the edge, her knees hitting the tub to either side of his lap. The bottom of her legs are still strange and cramped against the other side of the tub, and judging by their angle, his legs are still resting on the ledge.
She thinks maybe they should move, but then she rocks forward into the hardness in his lap; they both moan, he sucks her tongue, and she can't imagine a better place. He squeezes her bum again, pulling her forward and jerking his hips. Hermione rushes out a breath into his mouth as he groans, grabbing her hips and grinding her against him. He bites her lip, and her hands are slick against his skin from the water and shaving cream. She rubs her palms against his nipples and he kisses her harder, exhaling heavily from his nose. Licking his teeth, she twirls her tongue around his before snapping her neck back, needing oxygen.
Hermione stares at the ceiling, panting wildly as he yanks her shirt up, wet from him. He gives a chaste kiss to her neck as her bra follows, and then his mouth is around her nipple. She lets out a shaky breath, and can't help the whimper when he bites down, bordering on the edge of too hard. She clutches his head to her, pulls his hair, and then presses him tighter again. He laughs, the air vibrating against her nipple before he pulls back.
He leans his head against the wall, moving a hand to each of her breasts, his lips swollen. She raises an eyebrow at his satisfied look and leans forward, tracing his smirk with her tongue until it disappears and he kisses her. He pulls back for a moment, his mouth moving over a breath, and then changes his mind on whatever he was going to say. His face changes for a moment, like he isn't sure about something, before he leans forward to kiss her. His fingers drift down to her sides, barely skimming her skin, and it's too tentative compared to their earlier actions. She kisses him harder because of it, and his fingers clench, unclench, clench, and then grip hard into her hips. As if he couldn't help it. She would like to tell him that if they could help it, none of this would have started in the first place.
She stands in jerks, her legs tingling and numb, and he stares up at her, eyes hooded, as she pulls her pants and knickers off. She nearly falls over, the cloth sticking to her legs in the small space, and he laughs. A low, husky laugh that makes her want to do a lot of things that she wouldn't say out loud.
He's so hard against the confines of his shorts that it looks painful, and she doesn't know if he's wincing from that or cramps in his legs when he pulls them off the rim of the tub. His fingertips are gentle on the red, raw skin of her thighs where her wet jeans had chaffed while she was running earlier. It takes him a few attempts to stand, his fingers wrapping around to the back of her legs and traveling up to her hips as he gets to his feet. She grabs his face and kisses him, and he returns it hotly, reaching down to her thighs to pull her up and against him. The weight unbalances him and they nearly fall over again until she reaches up blindly and grabs the shower rod, the nails of her other hand digging into the skin on his shoulder.
He waits until her legs wrap around his waist before letting her go, grabbing her hands to place both on the rod above her head. She pulls back to give him a confused look but he doesn't look at her, breathing unevenly into her neck as she grasps the metal bar. His hands are in her hair, across her back, her stomach, her bum, and his mouth burns a trail down her body. She moans and he leans back for a moment, licking his lips, before bringing his attention to the expanse of skin between her breasts.
The hand on her bum squeezes and then slides down, down, and her eyes fly open when he eases a finger into a place she was sure no fingers should ever go. Most men didn't even want to know a girl had one of those, and here he was with his enthusiastic finger. She's so glad she took a shower right before, though it still must be completely unhygienic, and the blush overheats her already hot skin. "I... I don't..."
"Shut up."
He doesn't remove his finger, and she thinks to tell him how gross it is, and say something rude right back – but then his mouth and tongue are burning hot on her nipple, his other hand is slamming two fingers inside of her, and she forgets to be indignant. Her back arches, the shower rod jerking in her grasp, and there's some odd, guttural sound coming from her throat. It feels as if there is stimulation everywhere, and she whines in a way that will embarrass her later, wondering which way to move her hips.
"Fuck," Draco swears viciously, and it really sounds like he's pissed off about something. He nips and licks his way to her other breast, and she catches sound against her skin as he mutters to himself. She tries to hear it but it's too low under the roar of the tap and the blood in her ears, and she's far too distracted to try and listen to something he obviously doesn't want her to hear.
His hands leave her at the same time and she sags with a disapproving grunt, her arms trembling. She looks down when her legs begin swaying, and his eyes meet hers for a moment before flicking toward the wall over her shoulder. He wraps an arm around her waist as she frowns, his tip prodding at her entrance before he thrusts up and pulls her down at the same time. She jerks into him at the movement, all her oxygen leaving her in a gasp at the feel of him. She could never get used to how good this was. Never, not ever.
She digs her fingers into his shoulders for leverage, her cheek pressing into the side of his head and her breath panting in his ear. She can feel his tongue on her shoulder and then his teeth, grabbing her backside to jerk her down harder and faster. She forgets about his inability to meet her eyes, closing her own against the strands of his hair. She moans his name, her heels digging into his bum and her nails scraping along his shoulder blades, until she's unaware of anything.