Dislcaimer: I don't own anything.

Warning: Probably rated PG-13.

Dose of Your Own

By: OurLoveIsForever

Chapter Fourteen: Who

Blimey, what could he possibly want at this time of night? I wondered, keeping completely still. He eased down on the edge of my bed, unmoving for what felt like forever. I could see the light of the small candle on my desk making dim shadows play across my eye lids. My heart pounded in my chest, causing my cheeks and ears to burn with heat.

"I hate this."

So did I. I most certainly didn't want to fancy him! I didn't want to be excited by the fact that he was barging into my room. He was a ruddy smarmy great git!

He sighed, a strange sound, foreign. "I hate you." Seconded, I thought. "You don't listen." No. "You're obnoxious." Yes, I could admit to that. "You won't-"

I wanted to say that it was extremely difficult to ignore him, but I kept my act going. I heard him sigh again. The side of the bed became compressed further as he eased down. "Nott told me to stay away from you. Tossed me against the wall, he did." I felt my heart racing faster. "Said that I wasn't good enough for you. Bloody big brother syndrome, that." He slid his hand over my side, causing me to jolt a bit. Surely, he didn't think I was still asleep! Despite myself, I allowed him to continue without pointing my wand between his brows. "Damn arsehole needs to mind his own business." Silence prevailed for a long moment. I stopped breathing entirely, losing my image of being peacefully asleep for sure. His hand didn't move. I assumed that he knew I was awake in the first place. "I can't bloody escape you, can I?" His hot breath on my neck sent shivers down my spine.

If there was ever a time that I had been utterly speechless, it was then. I couldn't think. My instinct took over. Slowly, I eased my eyes open, sliding my hand over his on my side. His skin was smooth, soft, manicured as most higher blood hands were. He jerked a little as I entwined my fingers with his. I remained on my side. "It's bloody late." I whispered, not entirely sure of what I was saying.

He chuckled a bit though for what reason, I hadn't a clue. His lips landed on the skin just under my ear. I closed my eyes at the sensation. It felt wonderful, unexpected, but wonderful all the same. A wave of some indescribable feeling ran through me coursing the way to the tips of my toes.

I had never felt anything like that reaction to his mouth on my skin. My breathing quickened as he eased my shoulders down toward him, onto my back. In the dim light from that candle, I could see the shimmer of his silver eyes. We looked at each other for a minute, taking in every detail. His eyes roamed to every corner of my face, memorizing it. My eyes, my cheeks and nose. My lips.

He lowered his face toward mine, for the first time, his eyes asked permission. I beat him to it by leaning forward, catching his lips with my own. My arms automatically went around his neck, pulling him closer to me. I clung to him. I rose upward to meet his lips with more intensity.

One of his hands went 'round the back of my neck, the other held me to him. I sighed into our kiss, but I had no idea why. I had little control over my actions. He was now on his knees beside me. I placed a hand on the side of his face, feeling the soft skin under my fingers. Every touch felt like pure magical energy.

There was an insistent pulling feeling in my lower abdomen that ebbed with every wave of kisses. I couldn't help but feel that this was right. This was what I wanted.

As if remembering himself, Malfoy pulled away. Nearly jumping off the mattress, he strode to the end of the bed. His hands ran through his hair. His lips were red and his hair a mess. I had never seen him look so bloody good.

Mentally, I slapped myself.

For the first time since I entered Hogwarts, when I had first seen him, I thought he looked a bit awkward. It was a passing moment, fleeting, but it nearly brought a smile to my face. Even the mighty Draconis Malfoy could look awkward at times. In the next second, he was watching me, looking for some sign that I didn't mean any of what had just happened. I could play his game easily.

Allowing a smugly pleased expression to come over my features, I leaned back onto the headboard.

"Enjoy yourself, Greengrass?" He murmured, his voice was deeper than I had ever heard it before.

I inwardly grinned, practically screaming 'yes' in my head. Outwardly, I kept my face blank.

"You were awake."

"Indeed, I was." I replied. "Brilliant observation."

It seemed as if he wanted to ask "Well?", but was far too proud to say anything of the sort. Instead he opted for a surprisingly nonchalant expression.

I wondered if I could gather whatever would allow me to admit my own feelings, whether it was stupidity or courage. I allowed my grin to fall. My expression became serious. I watched him observe me. I closed my eyes for a moment before jumping over the edge of a metaphorical cliff. "I didn't slap you, did I? You don't see me running away, do you?" I asked, keeping his gaze. I felt a smile pulling at my lips. He was frozen at the end of the bed. I moved forward, to my knees. My hair fell past my shoulders, trailing onto my back.

Without pretense, he literally jumped over the footboard of the bed, wrapping his arms around my waist. I leaned back onto my palms. One of his hands came down over mine, supporting his weight. He did not kiss me right away. He looked me over, taking in my dark blue pajamas perhaps even the fact that I slept with no bra. I blushed a bit, remembering that detail myself. I looked him over as well. The same black bottoms hung low on his hips. He lacked a shirt and for that, I was suddenly thankful. His thin muscles were more prominent in the flickering light of the candle. I smiled. He was ruddy beautiful.

He placed a kiss to my forehead as I closed my eyes against it. "Say my name, Astoria." He whispered, hoarsely.

I opened my eyes to look at him. "Mal-Draco…" My own voice was thicker, deeper.

All pretenses, what little there had been in the first place, disappeared. He went in for the kill, locking his lips on mine. I felt him smirk into this kiss. I grinned myself, lost completely in the moment.

After a fair amount of snogging, he moved swiftly away again. I watched him do so. I knew men. Well, I knew them enough. I knew what we were speeding toward, tumbling toward, it seemed. He grunted when he went to sit in the chair beside my bed. "Can't you put on your dressing robe?"

"You could just leave." I retorted, taking the robe in my hands anyway.

"Yes, because it is so bloody apparent I am not desired here." He responded sarcastically. I rolled my eyes at him. "This was certainly not how I expected—"

"I didn't expect it either what with you sneaking into my bed at night." I ground out, pulling the robe over my shoulders. "What was your plan exactly? To catch me unaware?"

He leveled a disbelieving stare. "Most people would be asleep."

"That's not the point, is it? You could be a-"

Draco shook his head. "Does it really matter? It ended for the better, didn't it? Stop complaining."

I shrugged. It really didn't matter in the end. I felt a freedom within our prison. We were trapped but I had somehow discovered something that I had never expected. I had never expected any of this to happen. I thought, when I first re-met him, that perhaps I would fall for Nott. We never became charged in that way. When I had met Malfoy, we had been charged since the beginning. Whether it be with words, feelings or lust.

"Nott's going to hex me into the next decade."

"You scared?" I grinned over at him. "You're the one that chose your current state, Mal- Draco. Stop complaining."

He smirked like a rogue thief at my mimic of his demeanor. "Indeed. I suppose that I did."

It all felt so surreal. I wondered if it had even happened. I had always been grounded in reality for once it felt as if I were in the clouds. I felt a bit on edge, perhaps it was merely a joke or something of the sort. "You're not taking the mickey out of me, are you?" I asked, leaning against the post of the bed facing him.

His face contorted into an almost painful expression before it became completely blank of emotion.

"Oh, don't do that!" I growled, irritated that he had shut off his emotions so quickly. "Don't be an ass about this!"

"Apparently I am an ass!" He spat, crossing his arms.

I threw up my arms in frustration. "How can you always be like this? Just answer the bloody question!"

"Will you let me be anything else?"

I reeled back, a bit taken aback. "Of course, I –"

"Be honest! You see me as nothing more than a spoiled rich boy that sold his soul to the Devil." That was overstepping it a bit. I only knew that he was a bit of a jerk. Well, a 'Great Prat' but I never went much beyond that. "If all be known here, Astoria," I snapped to attention at his use of my name. The way he inflected the word made me shiver. I couldn't stop my body's automatic reaction. "You are the most infuriating woman that I have ever met."

I gave him a dull look. If that was really all he had to say…

"I'm not a good man, Astoria." He whispered my name like a prayer. "I'll admit to that plain as day. I bribe. I cheat. I steal. I deal with dark things."

I shook my head slowly. "See, this is where you must be confused." I let the corners of my lips pull up into a coy smile. "You seem to forget that I, too, was in Slytherin." Edging around the bed, I felt the cool carpet on my bare feet. Every sensation felt sharper. I could feel him watching me as I weaved my way to the window. It was nearly dawn. I was unsure of the time, but it must have been nearly six in the morning. I flattened my palm against the lead glass. "You're operating off the assumption that I'm a 'good' woman." I turned my head a bit so that I could see him out of my peripheral vision. "I make bribes for information, Draco. I lie. I'm fair at taking the piss when I must. I'm prejudiced just like everyone else."

His eyebrows rose. "You've never killed." It was as if he were trying to one-up me.

I jerked a bit, turning to face him fully. His face was cold, emotionless. "No, I haven't."

"I have." He crossed one leg over the other. "You've never watched torture."

My entire body froze. Watched torture? Watched torture? "Malfoy, I've been tortured. I've watchedtorture. I've lived torture. So whatever point you are trying to prove is a irrelevent one. I think you need to stop trying to explain yourself away as not worth my time or whatever." I snorted, waving him off. "And don't try that blood quality bit because we both know that isn't true."

He sighed, seeming a bit deflated, if that were even possible for him. "Who?"

I knew what he was referring to and I hesitated a bit. I wondered at the fact that he did not know. Surely Nott had told him of the torture. "The Carrows. My fifth year."

"Bloody hell." He muttered, rubbing his hand on his neck. I pushed my emotions from my mind. Emotions never helped whenever the subject was brought up. "Nott never—"

I snorted slightly. "Nott is not at liberty to discuss my private matters."

"How did they torture you?" It seemed almost as if he were forcing himself to ask questions, as if it were torture itself.

"I don't like to talk about it."

He gave me a questioning glance before shaking his head. "You don't trust me."

"I—" I stopped, narrowing my eyes toward him. "You don't trust me either."

"If I didn't, would I be here?"

"Would you?"

"You wouldn't be in this house if I didn't trust you." He said with a nonchalant shrug. "There's no point in trying to deny it. I do. I'm really not sure why."

We sat in silence for a time. I played with the thought of telling him of my torture. It seemed that now, I simply had a hard time admitting when I did trust someone. I don't really know how it happened, but it did, and that was the most persuasive argument of all. "Cruciatus, seven times. Not in succession, mind you." I neglected to mention the play on my fear. That was something I kept locked away. Only Nott and one other knew of that time. I turned to face the window. On the horizon, the dawn was beginning to break. I wondered if perhaps it would be the last dawn I would ever see. I took in the lightening of the sky just beyond the trees and flowers. I glanced down to the grounds, looking for that peacock. It was nowhere to be seen. "The rebels of Slytherin. I believe the exact reasons were: I saved a punished student, set Alecto Carrow's door on fire, sticky charm on Snape's hallway, shoelace charm during supper, and finally," I paused. The biggest rebellious act that I had ever performed, the whole reason for my disinheritance, something that was only known to a select few and I was about to let Draco in on the secret. "Death to the Dark Lord." I whispered the words like an incantation to a lock within my memory. I remembered every detail. "I scrawled it above the Head's table."

Draco's eyes went wide with no restraint. "You?"

I grinned. "Me."

"They got Longbottom for that."

My grin grew slightly. "I framed Longbottom for that. That's not to say that the Carrows didn't catch me on the sly, but what would it say if a Slytherin was breaking ranks? That they were torturing the daughter of a known Dark Lord supporter?"

A new expression dawned on his face. A look of appreciation crossed over his features. It was as if he were seeing me in a brand new light. I watched him in the reflection of the window.

"That was the last straw. Amycus Carrow owled my father, who immediately deemed a ruling on my already questionable inheritance." I nodded a bit. "Those Army members were a pain sometimes, though they did serve as wonderful fall-men." I saw Malfoy—No, Draco shake his head a bit amused. "I'm not pro-Mudblood, of course, but I didn't want some crazed dictator telling me how to live my life." I smiled at his reflection. "Certainly not what you expected?"

He was silent. I was content to wait, keeping my eyes on the grounds, which shimmered with dew in the growing light. It was beautiful, perhaps the most gorgeous thing that I had ever seen. I couldn't quite place the feeling that I got when I looked out over the grounds of Malfoy Manor. A sense of calm? Of peace? Perhaps a sense of contentment? A weight was off my chest.

"I believed him." Draco muttered, his voice deep and quiet. It seemed almost as if he were speaking to himself. "I believed that if I just listened, did what I was told, and kept my neck from under his boot, that we would survive." I didn't turn to look at him, fearing it would break the spell of trust that had been somehow cast within the room. "We survived, but at what price?"

I could hear him stand behind me. In the moments following, I could hear his footsteps approaching the window. He came to stand beside me, his palms resting on the sill as he leaned onto them. The dawning light caught his hair, making it appear as a halo.

"I've seen things that I never want to relive again. I'm looked at in public with disdain. I have a permanent mark of my past on my arm. It doesn't fade. It doesn't feel. It is simply a numb place in my life. It's consuming and threatening." He sighed a bit, turning to look at me. "For all that, I never bowed to the pressure. You know a week after the final battle, when we were being held at Hogwarts awaiting the Ministry's decision regarding our punishment, as if having our lives threatened and ripped apart wasn't enough, I had a masked man push me against a wall telling me that I should kill myself."

I turned to him sharply. Someone had told Draco to kill himself? I gave him a questioning glance.

He gazed onto the grounds, hardly acknowledging that I was even there. "I went to the Astronomy Tower that night. I was too much of a coward to throw myself off, but I certainly gave it some serious thought. I had so many thoughts running through my head, Astoria." He turned to me then, his eyes full of emotions, unrestrained, raw and overflowing. I wanted to hold him to me, but I allowed him to keep speaking. "I've seen so many people killed in the most unimaginable ways. The Dark Lord was creative." He closed his eyes. "Nott and I—we—"

For the first time, I was seeing the true Draconis Malfoy. He no longer had the mask of indifference and relative apathy. Instead, a hardened man stood in front of me, remembering the ill deeds of his past, deeds that could not be taken back. "I deserved what I got. I'll be the first to admit that, but if there is one thing that I do deserve most of all, it is the chance to prove myself."

He moved toward me, his left hand lightly skimming over the skin of my right. "Evil doesn't disappear when one source of darkness is crushed. As long as there is light, there will be darkness. That is the way of the world." He shook his head slightly. "I won't say that I am good person at all, but I am a bit changed." I nodded a bit. "I will defend what matters to me. I will do it by any means necessary, whether or not that is deemed to be Dark is a pity."

Slowly, he brought my hand to his mouth and rested his lips on the upper side. With so much care that made me think I would break, he turned my hand over to kiss the inside of my wrist.

"I don't know why I feel like I have to tell you any of this." He muttered, much like a child, into my skin. "I just keep speaking without restraint."

I smiled. "I know the feeling."

Movement could be heard in other parts of the house. His lips were moving up my arm before I pulled away. "We need to be getting ready. That ritual starts in the afternoon."

"That's plenty of time to—" The corners of his lips quirked up into a lecherous smirk.

"Cetainly not." Honestly, were all men ruled by their lower anatomy?

He sneered a bit, turning away toward the door of my room. "You better not repeat anything you've heard in here, Greengrass." I smirked when he turned around in the doorway. "Wily minx." He disappeared into the hallway, the door magically closing behind him.

I stood at the window for a minute watching the sun continuing its trek into the sky. I rather hoped as I watched the grounds that I would be able to see that peacock again. My stomach felt uneasy. Even for the happiness I felt with my emotions making sense, I felt apprehension. Something was going to happen. I shook my head trying to think straight. An echo of a previous conversation floated into my mind.

Just what did I want to save?

Secretly I wondered if it was more a matter of 'who'.