DISCLAIMER: In its use of intellectual property and characters belonging to J.K. Rowling, Warner Bros., Bloomsbury Publishing, et cetera, this work is intended to be transformative commentary on the original. No profit is being made from this work.
BETA READER: silverbluewords
THE FIFTH WAVE
Draco jerked awake, gasping for air. He could feel his school robes, bunched up and crumpled beneath him, serving as some sort of thin, inconsequential barrier between him and the forest floor. He had another set of robes bundled around him and tucked neatly up to his shoulders—to keep him warm, he assumed, as he'd collapsed into a restless, dreamless sleep. Robes that smelled like her.
Granger.
Suddenly, he bolted upright, groaning at the rush of sights and sounds that flooded his ears and swam across his vision. Corpses. Hundreds of them. Un-dead. Unyielding. Screams. Fractured light. A ring of fire. Scalding, writhing flames that twisted like serpents and breathed like dragons. Burning trees. Blackened earth. Falling. Fleeing. Suffocating. The warmth of Granger's hand in his. The stench of charred flesh. The snapping, searing maw of the beast within. Control. Control. The fight for control…
"Granger!" he shouted, wildly taking in his surroundings. Nothing but rocks and trees in every direction, where ruins and ashes should've awaited him. "Granger! GRANGER!"
No. NO! She couldn't have… Not her! Not her!
"Malfoy?" came a startled voice nearby. She emerged from the trees, remarkably intact, save for matted hair, grimy robes, and a scattering of scrapes and bruises pockmarked across her skin. Nothing critical. Her face seemed slightly blotchy, almost as if from the morning chill, but Draco suspected that she'd spent the majority of her waking hours crying. Crying for the unknown fate of her friends. He realised with a twinge of remorse that he didn't know what had happened to Pansy either. They'd all gotten separated. Hopefully, they'd managed to get out of range before—
No, he couldn't think about that now. Not while Granger still lived. Draco didn't waste another moment. Merlin knows he'd wasted far too many.
He rushed towards her as she rabbited on, "You needed rest, and I didn't want to wake you, so I just went straight ahead and erected the wards myself—I mean, honestly, I haven't the foggiest what you were thinking, trying to control Fiendfyre! Do you have any idea how bloody lucky we were to make it out of there al—mmrrph!"
He seized her by the shoulders and snogged her. Snogged her. He snogged Granger, the Hermione Granger, into insensate silence. And for once in her life, she ceased talking, ceased thinking, and just snogged him back. They'd survived. Against all odds, they'd survived. He didn't know how much time they had left—a day, an hour, or a single, fleeting moment—but he refused to squander it any longer. He didn't believe in any deities and he didn't have much to give her, but in the safety of darkness, he prayed for forgiveness. For acceptance. And that someday, she would think him good enough.
He shivered slightly as he re-enacted every fantasy he'd ever had about her in the searing, wet heat of her mouth, swallowing her moans and echoing them with his own. He desperately fought to slow down, torn between wanting this moment to last forever and frightened as fuck that if he waited too long, she would eventually come to her senses and push him away. No. He couldn't let that happen. Not here. Not now. Not when he'd finally had a taste of her. Like the stories that had once haunted his childhood. Like the fool who had sought to slake his thirst for immortality with the blood of a unicorn—so unbelievably exhilarating and pure, yet laced with a terrible curse that would henceforth doom him to a purgatorial half-life, because he, a mere mortal, had dared to gorge upon her essence.
Resigned to his fate, he tangled his hands in her thick, bushy curls and slanted her head to deepen the penetration, ruthlessly slathering her inner walls with his saliva and boldly stroking across the slick flesh with his tongue. Her helpless whimpers shot straight to his cock, the shuddering, heady sensations nearly blinding him with need. He immediately dropped his hands and slid them up the skirt of her uniform, groaning at the contoured patch of dampness that greeted him. She jolted at his touch as he pressed a finger between the puckered creases and rubbed it back and forth, chafing the fabric of her knickers against her and soaking his finger in the seeping moisture.
She tore her mouth away and cried out as her lower lips throbbed and squeezed around his finger, sucking on the firm length of it. Instead of revelling in his discovery, he found himself aching at the sight of her flushed face, swollen lips, and lustrous eyes. Eyes hazed by the elation of their survival and reckless impulse. But for him, those feelings only accounted for a mere fraction of his actions.
He'd told her that he loved her, but she hadn't said it back to him. And he realised, at that very moment, with a despair crippling enough to silence his burgeoning arousal, that he couldn't let himself go through with this. He didn't have the strength or the fortitude to detach himself, fuck her like any other woman, and pretend that it didn't matter. Because it did. He could lie to her, but if he lied to himself, it would only destroy him that much more slowly, dragging out the pain.
He wrenched himself away and sank to his knees, burying his face in his hands and struggling to breathe in through his nose and out through his mouth in a desperate attempt to repress the urge to scream himself hoarse or simply to turn his own wand on himself, whether to Obliviate or Avada his mind into silence, he cared not—so long as it all went away...
"Malfoy?" she squeaked in alarm, dropping to her knees beside him.
She gently rubbed circles across his back in a tentative gesture of comfort, but he flinched at her touch, snarling at her, "Don't touch me!"
Her tearful gasp alerted his attention back to her face, already stained with trickling streams of hurt and confusion. A horrible dread washed over him. He'd done it again. Rejected her before she could reject him. And to what end?
"I'm s—sorry," she sobbed. Her inane apology only caused his face to harden further.
"What the fuck are you apologising for?" he snapped.
"I—I've only done this once," she wept. "W—with Ron, but neither one of us really knew what we were doing, and now I r—really want to be with you, and I j—just don't know how to d—do it right—"
"SHUT UP!" he bellowed, unable to restrain himself any longer. "SHUT UP!"
His incredulity at her abject failure to comprehend the power that she exerted over him, followed by a scalding surge of irrational jealousy, screamed through his head and seared his vision. He lusted for blood, for murder, for the dark satisfaction of bathing in a sea of the bleeding, hacked limbs that had taken her virginity. He fought to rein in his demons, the last vestiges of his sanity pleading with him to see reason—that he had no right, no right, to succumb to such senseless rage, not when he himself had fucked at least half a dozen others. But none of them, none of them, could ever tear him apart like this. None of them had ever twisted him up with such insidious mastery. And worst of all, he knew that he'd brought it upon himself, because he'd waited, like a fool, for death to draw near before telling her the truth.
"Gods, what the devil is wrong with you?" she finally spat back, angrily swatting the tears off her face. "No, you know what? Forget it, Malfoy! You don't have to say a bloody thing, because Godric forbid you ever tell me what you're really thinking! NO, I might 'use it against you' or something as completely and utterly asinine as that! You think that your life is so miserable? That no one cares about you? Well, you'd be right, Malfoy! Nobody cares about you! NOBODY! Because you don't let them care about you—"
"I DON'T GIVE A PISSING FUCK ABOUT ANYONE ELSE!" he roared, on the verge of hysteria. "I ONLY WANT YOU! BUT YOU'RE SO WRAPPED UP IN YOUR OWN FUCKING DELUSIONS THAT YOU CAN'T EVEN SEE THAT! IT'S SICKENING, THE WAY THAT YOU LOOK AT YOURSELF! HOW CAN YOU BE SO FUCKED-UP—"
"WHAT ABOUT YOU? YOU CAN BE ANYTHING—ANYTHING THAT YOU WANT TO BE! YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO BECOME AN AMAZING AUROR, AND THE MINISTRY HAS SOD-ALL TO DO WITH IT! YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE HOLDING YOURSELF BACK AND PUNISHING YOURSELF FOR CRIMES THAT WEREN'T EVEN YOUR FAULT—"
"NOT MY FAULT, GRANGER? ARE YOU FUCKING MENTAL? I'M THE ONE WHO CALLED YOU 'MUDBLOOD!' I'M THE ONE WHO STOOD BY AND DID NOTHING AS MY AUNT TORTURED YOU TO WITHIN AN INCH OF YOUR LIFE! FOR ALL WE KNOW, I'M THE ONE WHO PROBABLY KILLED YOUR FRIENDS IN THAT FUCKING FIENDFYRE! HOW WOULD YOU FEEL THEN? FUCKING HELL, DO YOU HONESTLY THINK THAT THERE'S GOOD IN EVERYONE, GRANGER? DO YOU? WELL, SO DID DUMBLEDORE, AND LOOK WHERE THAT GOT HIM—"
"DUMBLEDORE DIED THINKING THAT THERE WAS STILL GOOD IN YOU, AND SO WILL I!" she declared, heaving with the strength of her own conviction. Her eyes gleaming with resolve, she ploughed straight through his sneering retort, shouting at him, "And that is why I forgive you! For all of it!"
He faltered, staring at her in disbelief. "No," he whispered, determined to deny her. "NO, YOU'RE LYING! Take it back! TAKE IT BACK—"
"NO, I REFUSE TO TAKE IT BACK!" she shrilled. "You don't want to believe in yourself? FINE! I don't fluffing care anymore, because I believe in you! And I will never give up hope, not as long as I know that you're still capable of it!"
He clenched his jaw in response, biting back his indignation and glaring into her eyes without really seeing. He wanted her to leave. He wanted her to stay. He wanted to hold her. He wanted to push her away. He wanted to love her, but he didn't want her to love him back. She needed a hero, not a charity case—one who would save the day and stand by her side as an equal, not trail behind her like a shadow or a burden. But how would he ever find the words to convey that? How could he make her see?
"I don't deserve you, Granger," he finally conceded, at a loss for anything else to say. He cringed at the truth of his statement, hoping that she would understand.
"I'm only human, Malfoy. Human like you," she responded firmly, but kindly. "And nobody's perfect. Not even me."
Before he could say another wasteful word, she kissed away his fears and all of his protests, clambering onto his lap and planting her knees in the ground on either side of him. This time, she slipped her tongue into his mouth, eliciting a condemning groan from his throat as he helplessly sucked upon it. As she mindlessly threaded her fingers through his hair, he leaned back on his haunches and widened his stance, spreading her legs further apart. She jerked her hips down in response, and he inadvertently released her tongue, shouting aloud at the jolting contact.
His shaky breaths blasted into her gasping, reddened mouth as he tenderly laved the bruises that he'd left upon it. He gazed into her soft, brown eyes, beaming down at him with such open affection that it tore down the final wall between them, and finally, finally, he let the pieces fall and crumble, knowing that she would give him the strength to rebuild. "I love you," he whispered, barely brushing against her lips.
And this time, he knew that he'd finally used that word right. He didn't use it as a noun, like some commodity that people can just leisurely fall in and out of, a last-minute declaration, a threat, a weapon, a means to an end, a duty, a claim, some object that he could possess, or even a feeling. No, he'd used it as a verb—an action. A constant, on-going action that persisted in the absence of tenderness. One that persisted even in anger, sadness, and fear. An action of re-evaluation and change. Of admitting wrongs and learning how to live with them. Of forgiveness. And the weight of that knowledge crushed him down against reality more than it sent him floating up towards the sky, as he'd heard countless fools proclaim. But somehow, he found that it didn't hurt as much as before. Because now he knew why. And that gave him the courage he needed to bear it to the bloody end.
"Then make love to me already, you thick git," she choked, half-sobbing with relief and a renewed deluge of joy.
At long last, he slid his tongue back where it belonged, buried between her lips and swallowed into her depths. He slicked in and out at a demanding, insistent pace, curling his tongue against the roof of her mouth, dragging it across the ridges, and stroking her into mind-numbing bliss.
She whined in need, tightening her hold on him and shamelessly slamming her snatch down on his prick. Desperately, she chafed her thighs against the fabric of his trousers for temporary relief, sobbing in liberation as he strained through the thin barriers that separated them and wedged the overstretched cloth between her quivering pussy lips.
Seeing her sprawled across his lap, begging him with those big, brown eyes to fuck her hard, fuck her deep, and make love to her, he dispensed with all inhibitions and simply lost himself in her. In a haze of animalistic need, heightened by emotion, the monster that lurked within his heart crawled out of the shadows at last, compelling him to roughly yank her knickers off, unbuckle his trousers, and frantically shove them down to his knees.
Cupping her rear, he wrenched her wide open for him and impaled her upon his throbbing shaft, groaning and shuddering at the slippery excruciation with which she engulfed him. She cried out, instinctively clenching at the hardness sheathed inside of her.
"You're so fucking tight," he growled, gritting his teeth against the tortuous sensations. Fuck! One thrust! One thrust and he already had to struggle not to come. Salazar help him, he wouldn't last… He'd wanted her so badly, for so long, that everything he'd ever felt and dreamed about her came crashing down on him, and he could hardly even breathe or think or bloody keep himself upright. Their first time together, and he wouldn't even last… He tried to focus on anything, anything but her narrow, silken passage, pulsing and stretching to accommodate him, the heat of her skin smoothing against his, and her devastating cries of bliss.
"You're so b—big," she whimpered, adding to his torment with breathy little gasps and fevered moans as she rocked back and forth on him, unwittingly sliding him in and out. "Ah! Ah! Oh, Godric, it's going so deep!"
"F—fuck," he trembled, sweat dripping down his brow as he willed himself not to move, not to surrender. He didn't even have enough strength left to plead with her to slow down. He could no longer feel the rocks or the debris of the forest floor dampening and digging into his knees or soiling the front of his trousers. He only felt her. Mindlessly, he groped and palmed her quivering breasts in retaliation, using his thumbs to trace over the creases of her starched shirt and the thin cups that attempted to shield her tightened, straining nipples from his touch. Oh, and those noises she made as she rode his cock, the enthusiasm with which she fucked herself with it, the way that she instinctually snapped her hips down at just the right angle for that sensitive ridge on his head to graze and rub every nerve inside of her pulsating cunt…
"Dra—co," she moaned. His heart stopped. "Oh, Draco!" Draco, Draco, Draco, she murmured over and over again, crying his name out with the reverence of a prayer. Draco, she'd called him. Not Malfoy, but Draco. Not the son of a Death Eater, not the heir to centuries of pureblood arrogance, not the boy she hated for bullying her, but Draco. Just Draco.
"DRACO!" she screamed, throwing her head back and succumbing to spasm after spasm of shattering ecstasy.
His hips bucked and he shouted out as she tugged on him and drowned him in compressing waves, mercilessly constricting his entire length and pulling him even deeper into her soaking, sweltering heat. Fuck it, he couldn't wait any longer. Without even waiting for the agonising contractions to subside, he slammed her down on him with a bestial roar and drove himself in up to the hilt. He plunged into her without remorse, yanking her skirt up and hungrily watching her dark, pink pussy lips tremble and slaver down his cock as he speared her over and over. Fuck, how he longed to lash that cunt with his tongue and lap up her sweet cream. He'd give it a nice, long, flat lick straight up the middle and suck on those throbbing pussy lips, scraping them with his teeth and fucking into her dripping entrance the same way he fucked her mouth...
But he wanted to make love to her. Not fuck her like an animal. So instead, he sought out the delicate skin of her neck, running his tongue over her pulse and drawing lazy, wet circles with the saturated tip wherever he could taste the erratic leaps of her heart fluttering against it. He gently pinched her with his lips, causing her to mewl in delight. Spurred on by her reaction, he pulled the skin into his mouth, growling possessively at the salty taste of her sweat. He licked and nipped her with starved, suckling smacks as her canal flooded, powerless to the assault.
The dishevelled curls of her hair tickled lightly against his jaw as he ravaged her. Moaning with need, he worshipfully caressed the strands, running them between his fingers and entangling his hands in the lush locks. "Hermione," he groaned. "Hermione, I can't—Hermione, I'm going to—fuck!"
He'd said her name. Her given name. And in the heat of the moment, the foreign, unused syllables tasted neither strange nor wrong upon his tongue. Only liberating and bittersweet in the reveal. Like a secret. Their secret.
She threw her arms around him and held on for dear life, riding out his deep, jarring thrusts, and slanting her mouth over his, opening wide in unspoken consent. He shoved his tongue all the way in, his moans echoing into her hot cavern as she eagerly nursed upon him with each rhythmic slide between her lips. Fuck, he couldn't get deep enough. He pounded her from below, harder and faster, pulling his glistening length out to the tip and swiftly plunging back in with thick, complete strokes that penetrated all the way up into her weeping channel. He drenched himself in her scent, her taste, and her sticky, musky fluids as they trickled down and smeared across his thighs.
"Take me! Take me!" he demanded, screwing her down on him with brutal slams that nearly dislodged her and driving his tongue deeper and deeper between her swollen lips with each wild gasp that he coerced from them. He nearly rose to his knees on each lunge, grinding them into the dirt and grunting from the sheer force of his exertions. She didn't understand how much he needed this, how much he needed her, to accept him, embrace him, save him, free him, purify him… He punctuated each silent plea that she wrenched from him with a desperate thrust of his hips. Please, please, please...
"Draco," she whimpered. "Draco, look at me."
Shaking, he stared at her flushed face, her damp, tousled hair, the clinging strands that threaded across her cheeks, her reddened lips, the bruises that he'd scattered down her neck, and finally into her beautiful, brown eyes, brimming with vulnerability and fierce, fierce passion. For him. And him alone.
"Do you see it?" she panted, biting her lip and keening as he rammed his engorged shaft against the entrance to her womb.
"See what?" he rasped.
"You," she gasped between moans. "The way I see you."
This time, when he looked, he did see himself there. Or, rather, a reflection of him, encircled by the bright, earthen halo of her eyes. He squeezed his eyes shut, unable to bear the sight. He'd never felt so terrified. He drove into her with renewed vigour, afraid that this could all end at any moment. He would awaken, cold and alone, to a world in which he had no place. A world without her.
Yet in her eyes, he'd seen himself, surrounded by light, and even now, the disconcerting image remained burned into his brain. He'd seen himself surrounded by patience, pride, and most of all, love—pure, unconditional love that did not rise and fall with the tides, bloom and fade like the seasons, or wax and wane like the moon and stars. This love is not as poetic, he realised, because it is real.
Even as trees fell and crumbled back into the earth, as flowers withered and leached out their colours, as perpetual winter chained the leaves with frost, as songbirds fled and left the world in silence, and as grey skies smothered the dawn, he made love to Hermione Granger. There, in the open chill of night, even as darkness crept in on them from all sides, he defied the cold. In condemnation, he had found salvation. In destruction, he had found completion. In hate, he had found love.
"HERMIONE!" he shouted, her name gutturally torn from him as he pumped his seed into her with fervid, shuddering spasms and shallow surges of his hips.
"DRACO!" she cried back, clenching around him as he shot his load deep into her convulsing canal. She rode him into oblivion, helplessly clinging to him and wringing out every last drop from his spent, oversensitive member. "Draco, I love you!" she wailed with abandon. In that instant, he saw nothing but her, felt nothing but her, as he threw his head back in a silent scream and perished in a second, rippling orgasm, giving and giving and giving everything he had to her. Everything, until he had nothing left.
She took him. Purged him. Completed him.
Slowly, his soul drifted back into his physical body, and he held her tightly as she collapsed upon him. He nuzzled into her shoulder, into the crook of her neck, and back up to her lips, breathing and brushing against them with sincerity and all of the tender promises that he would never find the words, or the strength, to articulate.
"Draco?" she whispered, her small, warm hands gently stroking his face. "Are you—crying?"
Bewildered, he reluctantly broke their kiss, reached up, and covered her hand with his. He traced over her wet fingertips with his and observed, "Yeah, I… I suppose I am…" He stared back at her with equal confusion, lost in his own wondrous belief.
"What's wrong?" she tremulously asked, her eyes already welling up with concern.
"Nothing," he realised. "Nothing's wrong. I'm just… happy." He choked back a startled and utterly mortifying sob, burying his face into her shoulder and marvelling at the profound notion. "Fuck, I'm actually happy. I am so bloody, honest-to-Salazar happy."
"I'm glad," she wept, her tears splashing onto his face. He frowned, anxiously glancing back up at her. But when he saw her beaming down at him, not with pity, but with love—in its simplest, purest form—he couldn't help cracking a small, crooked smile in return.
Suddenly, he felt more alive than he had in years. He felt free. And he wondered where he'd gone so wrong in his life, that with all of his inheritance and self-proclaimed nobility, he'd never known this feeling. Never known this joy.
So this is what it's like, he wondered to himself. Being happy.
TO BE CONTINUED