Disclaimer: Still don't own them. Sadly.
Summary: This is the flipside to the last vignette. The same snapshot in time, but from Hermione's perspective.
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Even with her eyes closed, she could tell he was watching.
It was irritating to be observed so closely, so incessantly, yet it was also indescribably comforting.
She sighed, conflicted, ruffling the curls she hid behind. He gently pushed back the spiraled locks to kiss her goodbye, and her placid façade crumpled reflexively.
It wasn't that he was going, it was that he always left when she was in no position to argue about it.
"Don't," she complained.
"Don't what?" he returned softly, disobediently. He had the nerve to pull away even as he spoke.
"Don't go yet." She opened her sleepy eyes to pin him with a direct order.
"Will you miss me?" he teased. The prat.
"You know I will," she admitted honestly, resentfully. He was turning arrogant from all the sex, but it was too late to deny him now. "Bastard," she added.
"Tell me about your dream," he requested soothingly. "Was it a nice one?"
She sighed again. It was as pleasant a dream as she was likely to have, and she knew she only had it because she fell asleep sated and in his arms. She doesn't like telling him such things. He swells too much, the silly boy.
"I dreamt of Hogwarts," she answered.
"Was I there?" he asked. For more. Always for more.
"You were," she answered impatiently.
Her lover, her friend, her other self, it wouldn't have been a dream without him. She kept this to herself and turned to look him over in his repose, long, and lithe, and utterly beautiful.
He was still such a boy, but much more a man than he ever was at school for certain. She remembered him sitting quietly in class, during meals, in the back section of the library. How much of that delicate, reserved boy was left in this hard bodied soldier she curled around? As if in response to her question, he began to pull away again.
"Not yet," she ordered, finishing with a demanding tug on his arm and pinning him back down.
He relented easily and she held him tighter in reward.
"I miss the castle," she finally continued. "I miss the busy halls, the dorms, the portraits, and even the ghosts."
She remembered the swarms of students rushing to class, the fire crackling merrily in her tower room, the Fat Lady's salacious gossiping while the Grey Lady commiserated with Nearly Headless Nick about propriety when students were caught snogging in some corner or another, and, finally, Peeves taunting her and dropping buckets of water over her head as she rushed in vain to avoid him.
"Most of them," she corrected herself.
"I miss it, too," he empathized. "The grounds, the library, the unbreachable feeling of the Slytherin common room ..."
"Unbreachable isn't a word," she corrected automatically.
"No," he agreed a bit testily, "it's a feeling."
She smirked and gave him a pass. "You felt safe down there. The one place in the castle I would have been most uncomfortable and unwelcome ..."
"As I would have been in Gryffindor tower," he pointed out.
She couldn't argue with that. Even if he had begged the hat to sort him there, he would have made a miserable Gryffindor. Too skeptical, shy, and reticent from years of browbeating by his horrid father, Theodore would have been an even lonelier Gryffindor than he was a Slytherin.
No, that wasn't true. Hermione would have taken to him in an instant, as he would have to her. If they hadn't been sorted they way they had, she knew they would have been inseparable at school.
She kissed his chest and whispered, "I would have been your friend."
He frowned at her and her assumptions, and turned away.
"Don't do that," she huffed. "I'm the surly one, remember?"
"And I'm your whipping boy," he returned wryly.
"Don't act like you don't like it." She smiled coyly and played with his nipple.
"Or that I don't deserve it," he added sullenly.
And there he was, her Theodore. She needn't have worried that the soldier had usurped the boy. He was a whiney and needy as ever.
"We don't always get what we deserve, Rabbit," she answered annoyed.
"No," he agreed, "sometimes what we get is so much more."
Well, at least he admitted it, she thought as her playful smile reappeared on her lips.
She crawled over him and let her mouth take over for her fingers, enjoying the way his nipple puckered in her mouth. Did it feel as good for him as it does for her? If his groans are anything to go by, it was at least a very close call.
She kissed her way up his neck, inhaling deeply through her nose, catching his scent, so intoxicatingly sweet to her, she'll find it everywhere once he's gone. But, the feeling is so different then. The achy craving it gives her now will give way to more desperate desires when he's gone. She'll find his scent everywhere because she can never help looking.
But he cannot know it.
The situation was hopeless and perverse. She often questioned her circumstance and sanity, and came to frighteningly logical conclusions. Conclusions that called for punishment. "This will hurt me more than it hurts you," her mother used to say. She understood the truth of that statement now. She understood in ways her dear, sweet mother never could have.
She dragged her nails up his chest slowly as her thoughts darkened, digging in deeper as she inched forward along his smooth, pale flesh, and enjoying the sight of the red lines blooming in her wake. Soon she would cut him, but he did not protest. He stiffened in readiness, accepting her attentions in whatever form they came. For good or ill, he was willing, always willing, for her.
Sometimes the only way to cherish something is to be forced to recognize its worth to you.
They had both paid dearly for the comfort they found in each other, and yet they could not help but come back for more. She ended her assault at this thought and instead peppered his face with kisses, moving down is jaw to his lips, so soft and eager. His sigh of pleasure was almost musical and resonated in her chest as if it were born there.
Gods, have mercy.
They kissed and touched and held on to each other while everything else fell away. Thoughts, feelings, memories, until all that was left was new and innocent and instinctual. His mouth on her mouth, his skin on her skin, his heart beating against her heart.
His hands moved up her sides, just barely grazing her breasts. As he skimmed under her ribs, her muscles contracted involuntarily, and she attempted to stifle a gasp.
"Ticklish," he mused, obviously pleased with the discovery.
"No," she answered firmly. How ridiculous. She's never been ticklish before.
His long, gentle fingers skated lightly up her sides, causing her muscles to contract again, and her chest to shake with repressed laughter.
"Liar," he accused teasingly, grabbing her sides a bit more firmly and wrenching an unwilling peal of laughter from her.
Her eyes widened at the surprising lack of control she had over her own body. Leave it to Theodore to find yet another way to both provoke and pleasure her against her will.
He squeezed again and she rolled off of him in a fit of giggles. He took the opportunity presented and rolled with her, pinning her firmly beneath him, and continued to torment and delight her.
It had been so long since she laughed uncontrollably, she had forgotten how it can wind a person. She gasped for him to stop. He tilted his hips forward to press his erection against her and she gasped again.
"Stop what?" he asked mischievously.
Her cheeks burned from the strain of her reflexive grin and the flush of exertion, embarrassment, and pleasure. And yet she could not stop smiling. Somewhere inside she would have cursed herself for feeling so intensely happy, but the joyous light in his eyes as he looked down at her smiling, pink face drowned out everything but the desire to hold, and kiss, and make love with him.
"Stop teasing me and make me cum again," she answered with a blissful sigh, angling her hips so that all he had to do was push forward to answer her request.
He leaned in for a kiss and froze just before they could connect. His muscles tensed and his eyes dilated.
He was being summoned.
He pulled away quickly, leaving behind a cold, gaping, void that was rapidly filled with fear and shame. She reflexively pulled the sheet up to cover herself and watched him as he did the same with his Death Eater's robes, each button and clasp distancing him further from her until he vanished in a sea of black.
He removed his mask from his inner pocket and glanced up at her. She had never actually seen him wear the thing, and wondered if she would even recognize him at all beneath it if they were to come upon each other in the dead of night, or even the brilliant light of day.
Where was he, her Theodore? Where did he go when he disappeared behind that mask? And how did he manage to come back to her, again, and again?
And, gods, whatever would she do if one day he didn't?
She nearly dropped the sheet and ran to him, but retained just enough stubborn dignity to stay put, and inhale deeply and evenly while her eyes betrayed everything he ever wanted to hear from her.
More, probably.
He stared back at her for a long moment, then slipped on the mask, his body straight and hard. She imagined his eyes to be the same, but she could not know it. He turned to the door as soon as the shadow slipped over his face.
Even without seeing his masked face before her, she knew.
She would know him in any light, or without one at all.
She knew by his elegant outline, youthful yet undeniably masculine. By his carriage, so unassumingly aristocratic. By the gentle slope of his shoulders, brooding, but resolute.
She knew by the scent she tracked by day, and the visions she chased by night.
Nothing would ever hide or obscure him from her. She'd know him anywhere, feel him, possess him, be possessed in return.
In lightness.
In darkness.
In dreams.
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A/N: Again, I'm posting without aid of my beta, who is just too damn busy to read my boring fanfics. Apologies for all mistakes.
Besides encouraging me to write more, reviews for this series really make my day.
Thanks to all of you who take the time : )