Part Three

It takes me a few minutes the following morning to remember what happened. Everything from the past and present is blurring together. That summer, and this one, running together like watercolours with too much water, or in my case, too little sleep.

But I saw them, I remember it now. The mere recollection leaves me gasping, and hard, and wanting. I wonder if I can get myself off quickly and quietly enough before one or the other of them comes in to check on me before work, but just as I snake one hand down into my already sticky pyjama pants, I can hear Ginny's soft footsteps on the landing, tiptoeing down the stairs.

I can't do this anymore. But I can't stop myself.

I slip out of bed and make my way down the stairs, still slow and sore from the attack. The impact as each foot lands on the step below still sends painful shudders through my body.

I reach the top of the second flight of stairs, the ones that lead down into the kitchen. They've torn out the upper half of the wall at the far end, and dug slanting ditches to let light into the broad windows set where the stone walls now end, at about shoulder height. They've redone the counters and replaced the kitchen table: exchanged the dark, gnarled old wood of past generations with an airy birch and stainless steel. It looks… grown up. And muggle.

And Ginny… looks like she belongs here. She's wearing a sleeveless, fitted shirt and a pair a pale green underwear, her little bare feet curled onto their sides so that the softer inner soles don't touch the cold tile floor.

Her hair is backlit by the morning light, and it glows like a beacon. A warning.

She hears me, then, and turns her smile on me like a ray of something bright and nearly painful.

I'm blinded as I step down into the kitchen and try to contain the urge to touch her, to take her.

But I cannot. When she turns to face me, her back resting against the counter, knife and fruit abandoned, I can't help myself.

I reach out to her, press my hips against her, run my fingers behind her ears and up into her hair, let my lips follow, kissing and nibbling along the length of her milky white neck. I feel her shiver at my touch, feel her grasping at the front of my shirt, pulling closer, the smell of sweat and soap and come mingling on her skin.

I want her. It's overpowering. It's dangerously intoxicating. The morning light illuminates us, there, encircled in a single, wide and warming beam, surrounded by the sparkling dust in the air around us.

Her lips brush against my cheek, and I move to catch her warm wet mouth in mine.

It is sweet, and dark, and perfect here.

But I cannot.

Not knowing she can never be mine.

No.

I pull away from her slowly, and she looks up at me, dizzy, dreamy, and vague. She brushes slim white fingers across her pink lips.

I want to suck them into my mouth.

Instead, I go.

That night she is late to dinner. She's been out, working, and Potter has come home earlier than usual. He and I sit across the wooden table in the kitchen, a pot of beef and barley stew between us, and a couple of butterbeers open on the table.

I wince slightly as I reach to serve myself another bowl, and Potter looks up, concerned.

"It still hurts?"

"Only sometimes," I answer, momentarily unsure what, exactly, I'm lying about.

We eat in silence, and I feel like he's watching me. Does he know? Did she tell him? Will he banish me when he finds out?

I shudder to imagine going back to my cold little apartment in Knockturn Alley. But I've been here for weeks, now.

I've lost my appetite. I stand and carry my dish to the sink, then rest my hands against the counter and sigh.

"I should probably go."

I can hear him frowning, his mouth full of food. Then understanding dawns and he swallows too quickly, and coughs, before and standing up and blurting: "No."

"I can't stay here," I tell him, and turn to catch his eyes, and try to transmit the pain, the agonizing longing.

He understands, I think.

But instead of letting me go, he reaches out to me, places a hand on my shoulder, then lets it slip down to my lower back.

My breath hitches.

He doesn't understand. He can't possibly understand.

I press back against his hand, because I can't help myself.

When I feel him letting go, the ground collapses underneath me.

"Draco," he says quietly. An apology?

"Don't," I whisper back. And then I brush past him and out of the room. Because I can't stay in there one moment longer without grasping for him like a grasped for her.

How can I go on like this?

Three days later, it happens again.

I catch them, sort of, for an instant. He's leaning back against the wall of their bedroom, and she's on her tip-toes, calves straining, reaching up to whisper something in his ear. He smiles, and looks in that moment years younger.

I turn away, trudge up the stairs to the third floor bedroom where she and I used to hide, and smoke, and swoon.

I find the pack of muggle cigarettes she's secreted up here, tucked into a box on the bookshelf next to the window.

I light it with her muggle lighter and sit there, smoking in evening light. It's not until I've finished one, and waited another ten minutes in the stillness watching the sunset, that I hear her footsteps on the landing.

"You found them," she says through a smile, and climbs up onto the ledge beside him. Her cheeks and chest are flushed. They've been fucking. I know it. I can smell it.

She flushes even more, then, as though she could read my mind.

But she lights a cigarette anyway, dangling her bare legs over the edge of the windowsill, and her hair blows around her eyes. I watch her take a long drag, releasing the smoke from of her mouth softly, letting it float away from her parted lips, then as she lick them until they are moist and glistening.

I can't…

I can't stop myself. My hands reach for her hair, my mouth for her mouth, and she take another drag, then blows it through my lips and I breathe it in, sucking it down into my lungs, breathing out as we kiss.

And now my hands are everywhere, searching, probing, as we stumble off of the ledge. The cigarette is tossed and forgotten as we struggle toward the unused bed, Sirius Black's childhood bed, and I push her shirt up and let my mouth explore the warm, sweat-moistened creases under her breasts, trying to draw out and separate the smell of her, and the smell of him.

Because I can smell him on her… and as my mouth travels further down over the fine soft hair below her navel, and further down to the swollen lips, I can smell his come, mixed in her wetness.

I lap it up.

All of it.

My tongue thrusts deep inside her and I can taste him there, his come, thick and heady and so different, so distinct from the sweet, acrid taste of her. And I want both. I want all of it.

I move up to kiss her again, letting her explore my mouth, sharing what I've found.

"I can taste him on your tongue," she whispers into my mouth, and I growl, because I'm reduced to mere animalism now. My cock is achingly hard, and leaking, and I want… I want…

"I want you inside of me," she moans. "Now…" then, "please…"

And I'm lost. I'm powerless to resist. Not just to be with her again, after so long, after years of wanting and waiting… but to be with him thereby somehow, too.

I thrust into her knowing he's just done the same, knowing the walls inside of her are coated with him, knowing that, when I come, it will mix with his inside of her, together, again.

It doesn't take me long to finish. I imagine she's relieved, but who knows?

Afterward, she lingers in the bed with me, sharing an illicit indoor cigarette passed between sticky fingers and slick lips.

Night veils us as the swirls of smoke drift out the open window.

Three Years Earlier

Potter is onto us. I'm sure of it. He knows, he must, because when we descend the stairs this morning, having smoked and kissed, and fondled on the windowsill, he looks hurt.

I try not to sneer.

It's his house, afterall.

And his girl.

Sort of.

He starts spending time in my room, and I'm sure it's because he wants to keep an eye on me. Ginny gives us a wide berth when we're together, because more often than not we erupt into heated quarrels.

Afterwards, he sulks. And I… well I sulk, too. But with more dignity, I like to think.

Ginny and I, we struggle to find stolen moments alone to kiss, and touch - pressed behind closed doors and hidden in dark stairwell, but it's never long enough, because Potter is always around the next corner, or Weasley, or Granger. It's surprisingly crowded in that old house. And I feel like everyone is watching me.

I can't blame them.

And then one morning, Ginny sneaks into my room. It's early, I'm still half-asleep, when I feel her cold little knees pressing into my back and I turn to her, raise myself up over her as she slides underneath me, smiling wickedly, and reaching to bring my mouth to hers.

And then we hear footsteps by the door, and Potter barges in, brooms in hand, saying "Malfoy, up for a match?"

It takes him a few seconds to recognize that I'm not asleep, and not alone.

And a few more seconds to recognize that it's Ginny in bed with me.

"Oh. S-sorry," he mutters, and ducks out. Ginny looks worried, makes excuses, and leaves.

I don't see him again for the next few days. He doesn't come bother me in my room, isn't around every corner, doesn't come down for supper.

I'm not sure whether I miss him, exactly. But I notice that he isn't there.

I imagine he's sulking, but that doesn't ring true, really.

And then Ginny leaves for the Burrow, to spend the weekend with her family. And Weasley and Granger are visiting her Muggle family, to announce their engagement.

And I'm still on house arrest pending my trial. And Potter hates being mobbed by adoring fans (or so he says) so he never goes out anyway.

Which means it's just the two of us in the old house. And suddenly it doesn't seem that crowded anymore. Not at all.

He shoves past me as I'm leaving the restroom, but I ignore him. When he shoves past me again on my way out of the kitchen, I contain the urge to shove him back. Barely.

But it goes on like that. A whole day of being knocked around. Until, finally:

"What do you want, Potter?" I bark, exasperated.

"I want you to get out of my fucking way, Malfoy," he snaps back, wand raised and eyes blazing.

I'm unarmed, though, since the arrest. But I don't back down.

"Fuck you, Potter. All day with this. What the fuck is wrong with you?"

He inhales, like he's going to say something, but then closes his mouth and clenches his jaw, storming past me and out into the hallway.

I kick the old kitchen table, then swear at my throbbing toe.

He avoids me for the rest of the night, but the next day, as I turn the corner inro the sitting room, he pushes past me, and I lose my balance, teetering, as though my entire weight, my entire being is trying to decide whether to stand, or fall.

I knock into the wall, but instead of letting him go, I grab him by the arm and spin him around so that he is facing me.

"What?" he growls.

I glare at him, trying to see through the messy brown bangs and the mask of hatred, but all I see is anger. And maybe hurt.

And maybe… something else.

I realize suddenly, he's looking at me, too.

He's searching for something in my eyes, I can see it, but I don't know what he's looking for, much less whether it's there to be found.

Something strange is passing between us. Something… I can't quite grasp. I'm reaching for it, just behind the veil of my awareness… just under the surface… but I can't recognize it… this strangeness.

I turn away from him, break the seal of eye-contact.

But as I walk back up the stairs to my room, I feel the faint, dizzying curiosity, like a swarm of gnats, buzzing around me, and I can't think about anything but the look in his eyes as he gazed into mine.

What was he looking for? And… If he'd kept looking… if I'd not turned away… what might he have found?

AN: I wrote this entire chapter while listening to Strobe by Deadmau5, on repeat. Hence the rising and falling erotic archs throughout.