The first week of her winter vacation sped by in a blur of novels and tea and snowflakes. Harry and Hermione spent an entire day decorating Grimmauld place, putting up a large tree in the living room, filling the entire building with floating candles and garlands of falling snow that melted into nothingness before they hit the ground. Hermione spent the winter equinox with Ginny, Hannah, and an incredibly pregnant Luna Lovegood, sitting around on the floor of Luna's house surrounded by candles and good friends. It was so refreshing that she nearly forgot about the fact that she'd invited Ginny and Draco Malfoy to her house for Christmas Eve dinner until Ginny brought it up.

Hermione was, once again, doing her best not to panic at the thought of Draco in their house. This time, though, it was more about the fact that she couldn't stop thinking about him, dreaming about him, and she still wasn't sure where they stood or what they were doing at all. He was confusing. Warm one minute, pressed against her body and touching her like she could break if he went too far. And then he was insufferable, rude, and drunk. Or at least, drinking.

When the doorbell rang, Hermione nearly jumped out of her skin. Harry shot her an odd look from the armchair he was sitting in, but she swallowed it down and joined him at the door. Harry pulled Ginny into their customary it's-been-too-long hug and Draco handed her a bottle of wine. She couldn't help but notice that he had that intense heady look in his eyes, the same one that she remembered so vividly in a night that was otherwise a blur of spiked ciders and closet kisses.

"So, Granger," he'd began, as they settled down at the table. "I'm interested in hearing about your latest creature of the week. "Let me guess. Government subsidized sunglasses for basilisks!"

Hermione laughed at him, rolling her eyes. "You know as well as I do that there are no known basilisks currently alive, Malfoy."

Draco shrugged, indifferent. Then grinned. "Alright, even better. Notice-Me-Not charms for all the thestrals who are now uncomfortable that so many of us can see them?"

Harry and Ginny's conversation dropped abruptly and Hermione couldn't help but wince herself. "Well," Ginny said, glancing around at her dinner companions. "That was rather morbid, Malfoy."

"My apologizes for not being sufficiently housetrained, Ginevra."

Ginny flushed red in frustration and shot him a look that he took in stride, lifting up his wine glass and gesturing it at her in a 'cheers' motion.

"Who would have thought," mused Harry, aloud, "that the four of us could ever sit down to a dinner and act… like mates?" Hermione glanced and saw Draco looking at her with an odd expression on his face, as if he were trying to solve a riddle, but Harry didn't seem to notice.

"To putting the past behind us." Hermione lifted her glass now as well, returning Draco's intense stare, waiting for him to respond. Draco only nodded and clinked his glass against hers, and then against Harry and Ginny's, and the four settled into their Christmas feast.

After dinner, Harry and Ginny claimed they were going to take a Christmas walk through the city (staying a respectable distance apart, of course) and would probably be gone for at least a few hours.

This left Hermione and Draco sitting on opposite sides of the now-empty table, watching each other. Hermione fidgeted slightly under his gaze, wondering if she should say something about the week before, about the way they left things in the closet. While she debated internally about whether or not it would be a good plan, Draco stood and walked around the table, catching her hand in his and pulling her to his feet. They stood, looking at one another for a moment, and Hermione wasn't sure which one of them acted first.

Draco's hands rested on the side of her neck and her hip, and she slid her fingers up into his silky blonde hair as they pressed their lips together, letting thoughts of the world drop away and focusing in on only each other. Hermione wasn't sure what had possessed her lately. What got into her head when she was around him. She had never been like this before, certainly not with Ron. This desperate need to be touching him, to feel his hands on her skin and his lips on her lips. She knew, rationally, that they weren't necessarily making the best decisions. That he had a lot to work through, but so did she. But when she looked into his eyes she got lost and her entire sense of rational thought seemed to melt away and the only thing she could think of doing was pressing her lips to his, and so she did.

Hermione leaned back so that she was half-sitting on the table and pulled Draco between her legs, letting him run his hands over her sides and twist his fingers through the small curls along the nape of her neck. When their lips broke she leaned further into him and kissed along his jaw and then down his neck, drawing a groan from him.

"Gods, Granger." He mumbled, into the top of her hair. "Fuck, who would have, oh fuck-" she had nipped at the skin on his neck and then lathed her tongue over the spot, and she couldn't help but smirk into him as he swore at her ministrations. Draco's hand once again slipped up under her sweater, brushing his now-warm fingers over the skin underneath, and she didn't flinch away this time, and he was bolder in letting his hand inch up further, sliding over her soft skin.

Draco used his other hand to tug her head back again and he caught her lips in his own once more, and they stayed like this together, pressed up against one another. Hermione pulled back to take a deeper breath of air and he took the opportunity to tug her sweater up and off her head, tossing it beside her on the table, leaving her standing in her beige lace bra, a stark contrast to her dark skin, and he groaned at the sight.

"Merlin, you should wear less hideous clothes, Granger." He paused, then, and laughed softly, leaning down to trail kisses over her collarbone and over the top of her breasts, drawing small gasps from her mouth. "Or, perhaps not. All of this will be for my eyes only."

"If you're lucky," Hermione mumbled before she let her eyes flutter shut, clutching at his shirt with her hands and moaning softly as he dropped his head lower to flick his tongue over her nipples through the thin fabric. Only you," she said, voice breathy and higher than she was used to. "Could insult me and still, oh, make me feel so good."

Draco chuckled again at her and bit softly at her skin, causing her to moan again. "Yes, well, I've always had a talent for insulting people, haven't I?"

She paused, waiting for him to have some revelation like he had after the party and stop doing these things that felt so wonderful, but he didn't. He just kept kissing her skin, moving his fingers in small circles against her hip. When he pulled back, it was only a little, and he used the increased space to tuck his fingers into the waistband of the jeans she was wearing, flicking open the button and sliding them down off her hips.

Hermione shimmied slightly to allow him to slide them down, and stepped out of them when they hit the ground. Draco took a moment to run his eyes over her body; lace bra, black panties, smooth dark skin. Then his eyes hit the scar that ran from the middle of her left ribcage to the top of her hip and he let out a deep breath. It was still puffy and tinged slightly purple, it had never healed the way a normal non-magical injury would have.

"Who?" Draco whispered, as he ran a finger over it, carefully, making sure she wouldn't recoil.

She inhaled, counted to four, and exhaled again. It's over. You're safe. You're here and this man would never hurt you. Not now. "Antonin Dolohov."

Draco made a noise that almost sounded like a hiss and he looked up, his eyes dark as he caught her gaze. "He's dead now." He said it like it was a promise. Hermione didn't think she liked it - but with him the line between love and hate blurred more every day.

"It doesn't matter." She said, catching his hand and pulling it off the scar, kissing his palm and then fingers in turn. "I'm fine."

His shoulders tensed but he nodded once, and she leaned forward again to recapture his lips in another kiss. As she did so, she reached out and pulled his buttons open, feeling open and vulnerable in her undergarmets and him still fully dressed. As she opened the last button she pulled back, tracing her eyes and then fingers over his muscular chest, slashed with thin white scars. Except, she knew where they were from. Knew what Harry felt about them, how much it haunted him. Deciding that Draco was not one for pity, Hermione instead kissed one, and then another, and then she slid the shirt from his shoulders and let it fall to the ground.

Draco had captured her lips in a kiss as she did this, and so she didn't see, at first. At first, she was so focused on the way his chest and shoulders felt under her hands, caught up in his lips and the way his hands rested against her waist.

And then.

And then she pulled back from the kiss, trailing her eyes over his chest, down his arms-

Hermione's breath stopped and her heart slammed into her chest. Dark ink on pale skin, a horrendous twisted design, curly hair and rank breath on her face and she tried to take a deep breath but there was no air, no air for her to breathe. She vaguely registered shaking her head, wrapping her arms around her body, the feeling of cold tears dripping down her cheeks. Someone grabbed her arm and she screamed, wrenching her entire body away from the grasp and barely registering as she crashed to the ground, hip slamming into the flagstones. The pain was negligible, compared to the rush of blood in her ears and her muscles tensing and her nerves screaming up at her that something was wrong that everything was wrong that the pain was coming back any second any second-

"Hermione!" Someone was shouting her name. Her name, not mudblood, not whore, but her name and it felt like a tug back to reality. When it registered in her brain she also realized that there was someone holding her hand, squeezing it tightly.

What was she supposed to do again? Her brain was still spinning and lost and she knew there was something she had been told to do.

"Alohomora," she whispered, voice raspy and weak. "Baubilious… colovaria, draconifors-" Draconifors - something in that stuck in her brain and all of a sudden everything rushed back to her and she gasped, forcing her eyes open.

Somehow, Hermione had ended up on the floor. Draco was knelt in front of her, his shirt hastily tugged back on, and he looked absolutely panicked. His eyes were wide and he was squeezing her hand and saying her name over and over like it was a prayer. When he realized that she had opened her eyes again, he let out a ragged breath and immediately let go of her hand, pulling back from her just a little bit.

Hermione blinked, and became aware of a sharp pain in her hip, as well as the fact that she was currently sitting on the ground of her dining room in a bra and knickers. "What…" she looked up at Draco, trying to figure out what had happened. And then she remembered it, all at once. His mark.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, reaching out a hand for him. He pulled back further, now sitting more than a foot away from her, and he wrapped his arms around his legs. He was holding himself tightly in a way that she had never seen before, that made him seem even more vulnerable than he had a moment ago. "Draco, I'm-"

"Don't." He cut her off, voice not sharp but pained instead. "It's not your fault." Draco glanced down at his own arm, and then back at hers. "I didn't know that you…"

Hermione frowned and wrapped her arms around herself as well, shrugging awkwardly. "Not all the time. Not as much as I used to."

Draco frowned at her, searching her eyes for something. "When was the last one?"

She swallowed, looking down into her lap, and sighed. "At your wedding. The chandelier. It's the same one that was there, well, it looks the same as the one that was there. When Bellatrix…"

Draco growled now, and he leaned forward but didn't touch her. "If she wasn't dead I'd fucking kill her, for doing this to you. I'd slice her open and watch her bleed."

Hermione's head shot up and she looked at him, expecting to see humour in his eyes or something to give away that he would never actually do something like that. It wasn't there. A cold chill washed down her spine and she remembered who he had been, what he had seen. Even if he had been brainwashed, even if he didn't believe it anymore. He could now sit across from her and say with no remorse that he would murder someone to avenge her. She had that same feeling, the distinct worry that this was not alright and that she did not like this, mingled with something that felt a lot more like she did like it. And it scared her.

"Do you know where my sweater is?" She asked, and Draco nodded, standing immediately and returning with her sweater, handing it over so she could pull it over her head. When she tried to stand and winced at the pain he reached out and helped her up, but let go of her instantly, watching as she tugged her jeans back on.

"I'm... Granger, we never should have…" Draco ran a hand through his hair, tugging at it a little in frustration. "This was my fault. This was a bad idea."

Hermione reached out then, grabbing his hand and tugging him closer, leaning her forehead on his chest and breathing in the comforting scent of expensive ink and broom polish and a deep musk that seemed too indescribable to be anything but him. She could hear his heart thudding against his chest and took comfort in the rhythm of it. "No." She said, careful but firm. "This is not your fault. This is no one's fault. I just. I just need more time."

Draco lifted a hand to rest against her back, rubbing soothing circles over it. "Okay." He sounded like he wanted to fight it, to tell her it wasn't worth it - he wasn't worth it. But he held himself back and she was grateful, if only because the last thing she wanted to do at that moment was admit that he might be right, and this might be a very bad idea indeed.

A/N: Alright! We're officially caught up to everything that has been posted over on ao3. Like I said, I'll be updating first over there and primarily over there, but my goal is to keep this version updated as soon after as I can. Hopefully that won't be much of a problem.

Also, as things start to get a bit more explicit, these chapters will be edited down to remove the content ffn is not okay with. I'll make a note here when that's been done, and the full versions can be found on ao3.

I update on Tuesdays & Fridays, and you can follow me on tumblr (same username as here) as well so you don't miss them. I've also posted a lot more of my work there, and more on ffn than there is here.

Thank you for reading and I hope you've enjoyed the story so far!