She held the cigarette to her lips like a shield, a barrier between herself and the world.
In secondary school, the girls had held their trendy slims between two extended fingers, as if they were strung-out models satisfying hunger with nicotine. She had no time for such pageantry. She held her fag like she held her joints, fingers bunched at the filter, breaths long and slow through the side of her mouth.
Each drag was a step nearer to death, each exhale a cloud of smoky clarity. The ember would burn closer and closer to her lips and, paradoxically, as the smoke heated up to burn her lungs, she felt alive.
Her friends disapproved. It was a nasty habit, they warned. Quite irresponsible. She didn't care – they were all going to die anyway, why did it matter? Besides, she liked they way the tobacco killed the jitters and he liked the way it made her hair smell.
He had told her that once, as his hands shielded the flame of the proffered zippo and she leaned in close to light up. Her head had been bent to hide the lighter from the breeze, and as she straightened with her fag lit orange, he had commented that her hair smelled like cigarettes, and that it was nice. It wasn't a compliment, but rather an objective statement of fact. They had stood, quiet as shadows and he white as the moon, and let their exhalations dance up to the sky together, intertwining swirls until she couldn't distinguish which breath belonged to whom.
And then, when she could practically taste the ash of the ember, she had tried to expand her lungs out of her chest to pull in all of the drug she could manage. Though he had finished before she had, he had stuck around to watch her flick the spent end to the cement and release the air in a slow hiss from her lips. He had locked solemn slate-grey eyes with her before grinding his discarded butt into the ground and moving to leave.
As she turned her head away from his departing back to look out over the darkness of the forest, a slight trace of a smile tugged at the corner of her lips. The boys could complain all they wanted, but it wouldn't matter to her – smoking cigarettes reminded her that she was breathing.
I like this Hermione. That's pretty much it.