My outline does not say in chapter XX this and that happens. My outline has a list of points that will pass and each chapter is, as I have said a lot of times before, just chunks of words cut at an appropriate time, making all chapters roughly the same length.
As such, no, I can't say how many chapters are left.
And, really, to the select few: it is beyond rude to nag me to finish it. If you want it finished, feel free to say "rocks fall, everyone dies" OR alternately "and they lived happily ever after" and go read something else.
Hermione was surprised.
No, surprised wasn't quite the right word. It was just that when the slightly crazed idea to come on to Malfoy had entered her mind, she hadn't quite realized it would be this… nice.
She wasn't sure why she had made the decision in the first place. She was just feeling so rejected, undesirable and alone and then he had looked at her with that almost gentle expression in his eyes for just a second….
Ok, if she had to be completely honest with herself, she knew why she had done it.
Because she could.
And also because she knew he wouldn't reject her and because just being wanted felt good. She wasn't really sure how far she had meant to go, but she found herself disinclined to stop again. He didn't just want her; he wanted her.
Since this was the first time she wasn't under the influence of magic and assorted other things, she hadn't expected to enjoy it this much. She hadn't thought she'd dislike it either, of course, since she didn't recall him slobbering or anything like that, but it had mostly been her ego she had wanted to soothe, not her hormones.
Now it seemed she had a chance to soothe both.
It was true that she loved being wanted in itself. It gave her a thrill that a mere shift of her hips could make him groan and a brush of her lips against his jaw could make him tremble. She got an ever bigger thrill from wrapping one of her legs around his, making his kisses and touches more urgent. He was now whispering in her ear about how much he wanted her.
But more than getting that thrill from knowing the power she had over him, she liked the kisses and the touches he administered just for the feel of them, and when she was squirming under him it wasn't just a ploy to manipulate him into a frenzy.
She wanted more. And this was the bit that surprised her.
She did have enough sense to briefly debate how far she should take this, but she came up with no reason why she should stop. Theo had dumped her. Malfoy was a more than willing participant. Who cared about the rest? There was the brief moral dilemma of him having a girlfriend, but that should really be his dilemma and not hers. He was the one who couldn't seem to stick to one girl.
Ok, maybe that was the lamest defense ever, but the fact remained that even though she could choose whether she would be a part of this, he was the one doing something he really oughtn't. If he was willing to do this kind of thing at all, then she was really doing Astoria Greengrass a favor by outing his behavior.
Her reasoning wasn't working. She was beginning to feel her conscience nagging at her. Bugger. She put her hands on his chest and slightly pushed. He wasn't quite willing to budge, but instead began doing things to her ear that gave her gooseflesh. For a second she forgot what she was going to do, but then she remembered and with a sigh, she pushed again, harder.
His grunt was almost one of pain. "Decide that you're done teasing?" he hoarsely whispered. "Please un-decide. I can make you feel good…"
He ran his hand down her thigh and lifted her leg slightly, pushing down against her in a way that made her gasp before she could check her reaction.
"See?" he muttered. "You liked that."
She did. He seemed very good at finding out just what she liked and then using it. Botheration. "Astoria," she said.
He looked at her, uncomprehending.
She tried again. "You can't do this to your girlfriend."
His expression cleared. "Don't worry about that," he said. "She's really not an issue."
Hermione frowned, sort of wishing that he'd move away so her thoughts could clear. "You broke up?" she asked.
"Something like that," he muttered, and then he kissed her again, effectively making sure she couldn't object.
She didn't want to.
She reached up and began undoing more of her own buttons. Malfoy stiffened against her, his entire body going rigid. "Please tell me this isn't just about tormenting me," he whispered. "I'm not sure I could handle it. Not again."
"I do want to torment you," she replied. "I want to drive you out of your mind. And I want to make it worth it. For both of us."
The sound he made was close to a whimper and Hermione almost wanted to laugh. Almost, because she was feeling rather breathless herself. Not to mention the ache she had to be touched. She pushed against him and he obliged, sliding his hand in between the folds of her newly opened shirt to caress her midriff.
It wasn't her midriff she wanted caressed, damn it. And as a randy teenage boy, that shouldn't be where his hands were wandering, anyway. What was with these Slytherin boys? With a grunt of objection, she moved his hand up.
He answered with something somewhere between a laugh and a groan. "You're killing me. But please don't stop. I'll be a happy corpse."
His hands slid up to fully cup her breast and she practically purred. She liked the feeling of his hand, and she liked how his breathing had become even more labored. She was becoming increasingly flushed and tingly and her own breathing didn't come quite as easily anymore.
Suddenly his hand stilled and he drew back a little. Hermione felt a little bit confused until she noticed the feel of body-temperature silver moving against her skin. He'd come across her snake and rose pendant and it had puzzled him when it had come to life, nothing more.
He moved his hand a bit and the snake stopped moving. He still kept looking at it rather blankly, though.
"I'll just move it out of the way," Hermione muttered, pushing it aside.
That seemed to snap Draco out of it and his eyes moved to hers. For a minute, he kept the blank look, but then he groaned—and not in a good way. His head fell to her shoulder and suddenly, without a warning, he hit the pillow just to the right of her with his fisted hand. She jumped with surprise, but he was not done. He hit it again… and again.
Hermione didn't know quite what was going on inside his head, but deciding that Draco was definitely showing signs of being unstable, she edged to her left, away from under him. He let her go. He had rolled slightly to the side, but Hermione noticed that he wasn't looking at her at all.
"What's going on?" she demanded to know, feeling rather unsettled.
"Too good to be true," he hoarsely whispered. "Too bloody good to be true. I should have known."
"Why are you angry?" Her voice had risen as her level of upset was escalating.
"Why are you here? Why are you not… Why are you here?" he countered.
She looked away. Did it matter? "Does it matter?"
He swallowed and the hand that had been hitting the pillow was forced open, only to clutch at the fabric instead. "No," he finally said. "It doesn't matter. I don't care why."
"Why are you mad?" she asked again.
"I'm not…" His entire body was tense and he still didn't look at her. "Not really. Just… a little frustrated. I hate stopping."
"I didn't ask you to stop! I didn't—" want you to. She stopped herself from saying that. She was confused and a feeling of rejection was settling in again. For some reason he was stopping even though it seemed like it was almost painful for him to do so. She slowly began buttoning her shirt, willing the pressure behind her eyes to go away. She didn't want to ask him again what was going on. She had a feeling she wouldn't like the answer.
"Why didn't you go to him like you should?" His voice was hard considering he supposedly wasn't angry.
Why indeed. "None of your business," she whispered without any force behind the words. It probably was a little bit his business, seeing as she'd dragged him into it. But what could she say? 'I did go to him, but he turned me down'? That just seemed wrong.
"If you had a fight with him," he murmured into the pillow, the strain still evident, "kissing me was probably the worst thing you could do. And sleeping with me… he would never have forgiven that and you know it."
She didn't reply, just focused hard on her buttons. She wouldn't need Theo's forgiveness.
"It's him you want," he continued, sounding as if he forced the words out. "He's your boyfriend. Tomorrow you'll make up with him and you'll be glad that you didn't let me… that we didn't…"
"He broke up with me!" She managed to say the words without her voice cracking… much.
He looked up, a resigned understanding that she didn't want to see evident on his face. "You'll still make up," he quietly said. "He's too crazy about you to just let you go like that. Us sleeping together would have been a really bad idea for you."
She shook her head, not trusting her voice to explain that, no, there would be no making up. Theo had been too quick to hurt her. But what was she supposed to do? Beg Draco to resume? The disappointment was overwhelming. "I'll get out of your hair," she mumbled, turning from him so he wouldn't see her face and making a weak pretense of pushing a lock of hair behind her ear when a tear managed to slip free.
She didn't relish him reminding her of Theo, but more than that, two rejections in one night was a bit more than she had ever wanted to experience. No matter what reason was supposedly behind it. She had thought Malfoy would be sure to go for it. He wanted her. She knew he did. But apparently, he was putting other matters above sleeping with her. That shouldn't hurt, since it made sense rationally, but it did. As vain as it sounded, she had actually thought he wanted her more.
Suddenly she just wanted to get out of there.
She scrambled around Draco and to her feet and had taken all of two steps away from him and her second humiliating experience of the night when he caught her wrist. "Wait."
She froze. Wait? What could he possibly need her to wait for? She tried to pull her arm free of his grasp, but his fingers just tightened.
"Wait," he repeated.
"What do you want?" she dully asked without turning back to him.
"You can stay."
Her eyes widened and she gave her arm another futile tug. "If you think I'm still sleeping with you—!"
"No," he quickly reassured her. "But you came here to not be alone, didn't you? You were upset and now I know why, I guess. You don't have to sleep with me to stay."
She frowned, still not wanting to look at him. "What is this? I don't need you to—"
Now he tugged at her arm, making her lose her balance enough to sit down on the edge of his bed. "Would you just be quiet? You don't have to need me to not want to be alone. I'm thinking you came here because your friends probably wouldn't be as sympathetic of what happened as you'd like."
"Oh, and you are?" she murmured.
"You knew I wouldn't turn you away."
"I thought you wouldn't."
His jaw clenched. "Be honest. It wasn't sex you wanted in the first place, anyway. I'm just offering what you really wanted."
"And what's that?"
His eyes were a strange mix of resignation and determination. "Just comfort. Nothing to regret."
Draco was a liar. He was angry. Angry with himself for believing that he could have her—again! When would he bloody learn? He had gladly ignored all the signs that she was doing it for the wrong reasons and even been pleasantly surprised when she seemed to enjoy when he touched her, but then… then there had been the reminder he could have lived without.
The reminder that she belonged to Theo.
He wouldn't have minded ignoring that too, not at all. At this point in time he was most definitely thinking with his dick. But it hadn't taken more than one look at her face to bring him to the next reminder.
She didn't want to be in his bed and was probably wishing he was Theo.
That had hurt a little, but desperate for gratification as he was, he had been willing to ignore that too. For one night he could pretend. As long as she was willing, it was ok, right?
But it wouldn't be ok. It would ruin everything for her, and he'd found quite suddenly and inexplicably that he didn't want to be a part of making her that miserable. And once again he'd felt her moving from just within his grasp to just outside of it.
He'd been dancing on the edge of release and the change from anticipation to frustration was not one he'd been able to make gracefully. For a second he'd even considered just kissing her again, feeling her body against his, and letting go. That wouldn't have been sex, would it? It certainly wouldn't have done much for her.
But he didn't want to use her like that. He should want to, but he didn't. Somehow, he guessed, he'd come to care enough about her to not want to use her unless there was a reasonable chance that she was gaining something from it too.
He hated his own reasoning because it left him unfulfilled.
And to top it off, she didn't seem to understand. She was upset that he hadn't gone on with it. Upset. He'd denied himself something he wanted more than anything else for her and she was bloody upset? That was just typical, wasn't it? He could do nothing right by her.
Still… he couldn't let her just leave like that. She had had what seemed like an awful day and he had to try and make her feel better. Why, he had no idea—sad people usually made him want to run in the opposite direction lest they expect him to listen to their problems—but he was compelled to try and do something.
It was quite disgusting, really. Only, he wasn't disgusted. He was just frustrated and angry at himself and trying not to let her see while he offered her the only kind of comfort he really knew that didn't involve getting naked.
Why he even offered it, he didn't know. She wasn't likely to want to accept. She was upset with him for not sleeping with her, plus she didn't actually like him that well, but he found himself coaxing her into lying down next to him—which honestly didn't really help his painful state—and he found himself telling her that it would be all right, that Theo would see reason in the morning and everything would be fine.
Merlin, he'd kill the bloke if he didn't fix this.
After a while, he ran out of things to say and just put his arm around her waist and looked at her wild curls at the back of her head, wondering what to do to make her relax and just go to sleep. Her body was stiff and she hadn't said a word. The silence stretched and he spent the time fighting his libido since, mad at him or not, Hermione's soft body was appealing to him in a way he found hard to ignore.
When the soft sobs started about an hour later, he suddenly didn't have the problem of his libido to worry about anymore at all.
The new problem was not thinking up elaborate ways to kill Theo.
"Hey, mate, what are you doing?" Blaise asked, visibly confused. "Now is your chance!"
Theo's cynical smile turned cold. "But he doesn't want that, Zabini."
"What?" Blaise was looking from one to the other. "You're not going to go all noble on us, are you?"
"Just shut up, Theo," Draco hissed, having little hope that he would.
"He didn't tell you?" Theo asked Blaise, hardly bothering to feign surprise. "He may have entertained the thought of dating Granger once or twice, but he never meant to even if he got the chance. Not really."
