Disclaimer: Not mine, etc, etc.
A/N: This chapter is set in a span of a couple hours, alternating views on the situation, instead of the normal skipping around days and such. Hope it's not too confusing.
Hermione:
She couldn't imagine a more perfect morning. Her eyes opened sleepily as she gazed across Draco's chest and out the bedroom window. It was dusky and a fresh blanket of snow had fallen, thin and fragile as Draco's hair.
Carefully, so as to not wake him up, she tiptoed down the stairs and flew out the door. Her bare feet tingled in the crispy snow, but her heart was as light as her first day at Hogwarts. She felts years younger since telling Draco everything. He had looked at her, kissed her and told her nothing was different for him.
He came from behind her and tackled her onto her back. Snow flew in the air around them, spraying her in the face. As she looked up at his face, she could see some clinging to his eyelashes. She kissed his eyes, tasting it on her lips.
"You're so beautiful." He whispered and touched her cheek.
"Where?" She asked, her bare legs shivering.
"Here." He smiled and touched her forehead. "Here." Her lips. "Here." Her heart.
She wiggled under his weight, which was such a welcome burden, and tried not to cry.
"What's wrong?" he asked, his brow furrowing.
"It's all so perfect. Haven't you ever had something so perfect that you were afraid of trying to keep it that way?"
Draco:
He looked down at her, surrounded by snow and a tear like an icicle on her cheek. He brushed it off with his thumb and listened to her explain to him how perfect he was.
His heart was racing, and he pulled her up. Clumps of snow fell from their skin. She was almost as pale as the white on the ground.
"Promise I'll always have you." She said.
"I promise." He hugged her, and then led her inside.
As she walked to the fridge, he looked out and saw their imprints on the ground. Two dark splotches on a sea of straight and soft. Just a moment before they had been lying there, and now they were gone.
Draco meant what he said, when he promised her he'd always be there. But as he turned from the splotches that were once human beings, he knew it wasn't him that was at risk of leaving.
Hermione:
She opened the fridge and looked inside. Her and Draco kept it well stocked, often going out and buying food together with plans for the week. She opened the drawer assigned for fruit and pulled out an apple.
Draco hadn't moved from the window, and seemed to be looking at the spot where they had been wrestling moments before. She smiled at his shadow and then walked over to the sink. She turned on the water and ran the apple underneath. It fell in ripples; the red skin of the apple looking like it was bleeding clear blood.
She feels his arms around her waist so she looks up and sees their reflection in the window. She loves that the house is full of windows and clear screen doors. She imagines people looking in and seeing their life, green with envy.
She turns off the water and shakes the apple clear of water. Biting into it, juice dribbles on her chin. He turns her in his arms and licks it off her lips.
Draco:
Her lips taste so good. He stays like that, touching lips, for a minute. She pulls back from him and takes another bite before extending the apple to him. He bites from it while it's clasped in her hands. She wipes below his bottom lip and then sucks on her finger.
"You taste so good." She says as if it's a revelation.
"I taste like you."
Hermione:
She ducks under his arms and moves around the room, trying to find something she hasn't seen before. But she thinks to herself that when you know you have something indefinitely, you don't pay much attention to the details.
She hears a clatter in the background and turns around. Draco has dropped the milk carton on the ground, a large amount sliding on the floor.
"Here, let me help." She says and gets on her knees, wand in hand.
"Stop, no, it's ok."
She stands and peers down at him. He's using a towel, scrubbing at the linoleum.
"Draco, I can just…" she siphoned off the rest, and he frowned.
He stood and touched her elbow.
"Thank you." He said and threw the towel in the sink. "Sometimes I forget, you know?"
She nodded and put her apple on the kitchen table.
"I'd always make little mistakes at Hogwarts for the same reason. Going back and forth between worlds sometimes left little space for complete accuracy."
"But it's not supposed to be this way, Hermione. I've always had magic…my entire life…I-"
"Am only human." She finished for him. "Come on, let's forget about it."
Draco:
He desperately wants to change the subject and deflect attention off of him. He tugs gently on her hand and grins.
"Did you shower last night?" he asks.
"No…"
He raises an eyebrow. She gasps.
"Shall I lead the way?"
She slips her arm around his and shakes her head, laughing.
The water turns on loudly, hitting the floor in big splats. Hermione is pulling her clothes off and throwing them on the floor in tight little balls. As soon as he's checked the temperature, he turns to face her and sees her naked. Her breasts are these high orbs, round and perfect. He cups them in his hands and then lets go. She steps in and he yanks off his clothes, stumbling to join her.
Just as he is about to run his hands along her smooth body, she gets out. Her hair is barely wet, but damp enough to make it darker at the top. He jumps out, not turning off the water and chases her.
She slips a little at the bottom of the stairs before running up them laughing wildly. He tries to grab at her feet but misses.
"Come here, you vixen!" he yells out and hears a door slam.
When he reaches the top all doors are closed. He grins. So this is how she wants to play?
Each door he approaches he waits until he has the doorknob in hand before yelling "Gotcha!" and flinging it open. Every room is empty.
He gets to the last one and then waits. He hears a rustling inside. The sounds of sliding and tugging. It is his father's old study. He hasn't stepped foot in there his whole life, even after he left.
"Gotcha!" he cries and sees her standing there, looking at him. She is holding a stack of papers in her hands, her eyebrows creased.
"You didn't tell me…" she says.
"I tell you everything." He answered simply.
"Not this." She shook her head.
He tried to grab the papers from her hand but she let them fall to the floor.
"What…are you mad?" he asked.
"No. Not mad."
He sighed, his ribcage rattling and his heart beating out of control.
"What haven't I told you?"
"Do you remember," she said and tucked a piece of hair behind her ears. "When we were first talking, I asked you if you liked your job?"
He continued to stare at her, trying to think of some empty gap he had created but forgotten.
"Yes." He thinks he does anyway.
"You told me you hated your office. That you couldn't stand your job but you did it anyway just to have something to do. But you don't have a job, Draco. You manage the estate and that's it."
"How do you know that?" he licks his lips and finds that they are dry. He needs a drink but doesn't move.
"These papers." She motions to the ground. "They're from the Ministry. They say that you can have your father's position. You'd inherit everything of his…you'd even start at the pay he was at."
He finds it strange that they are both already naked but in finding these papers she has made him feel more exposed than he was before.
"Yes. Well."
"Why haven't you taken them up on it? You could do so much with this position."
"It isn't that simple, Hermione." His eyes search her face and she's looking right back.
"Why not?"
"Because I hate…because…it's not…"
"Because, because, because? You have a position that matters. You can change things. Don't you care?"
"Yes, I care. I just don't think you see. Don't you remember last year? When I told you that I hated being boxed in? It made me feel so small, Hermione."
She nodded. She took his hand.
"Then what are you going to do?"
Hermoine:
He looks at her, and he has no answers-she can see that. But how can she make this man who has everything see that all she wants is for him to have a purpose in life?
"Baby…" she whispers and doesn't know if she's ever called him that before. "Baby, what do you want to do in life?"
"I just…don't know, ok?"
She remembers, not too long ago, when they were two people who would argue until one was right. Then, when they met again, they were two people who used this past judgment and hatred to fuel their sexual desires. The reason they had fallen apart, she realized, was because they didn't fight anymore and in the back of her head she wondered if that meant the loose connection between hate and lust was gone as well. She thought that not fighting meant he didn't love her.
But perhaps the reason they loved each other so much was because they had grown. They weren't the two kids in black robes anymore. They weren't the passionate lovers that they were in Ireland. They had healed each other, fixed each other, and now they needed each other.
So instead of pressing him, instead of making him feel bad for not knowing, she let go. She did what was right.
"That's ok, it's ok."
Draco:
"It's ok?" he asked. He was part grateful, part confused. "How does someone like you tolerate someone like me?"
She smiled, a beaming and wide smile, and it warmed his core.
"What do you mean?"
"You have everything figured out." He said and moved close to her. He ran his thumb across her jawbone. Her face was so smooth, even without makeup. "How can you stand my not knowing?"
She shrugged and bit his thumb, gently.
"I don't know, Draco. Because I love you?"
"Question or statement?"
"I love you." She wrapped her arms around him and he could feel her heart beating against his. "I love you, I love you, I love you."
Three hours later.
Hermione:
"Shit, ok, ok, ok." She got out of bed and tried to yank on clothes that were lying on the floor.
"Why are you getting up?" Draco stretched and she watched his chest expand and then get small again.
"I have to work." She responded and put on a sock.
He closed his eyes again, apparently satisfied, and she ran around looking for her gloves.
"Where are you?" she said to herself, searching for bits of purple fabric.
"Looking for these?" she turned and Draco was smiling sleepily, holding up two magenta hands in his own.
"Oh, yes." She breathed.
He came to her and took one hand in his, slipping on the correct glove slowly. He repeated with the other and then clasped both hands together and kissed them.
"I love you." He said.
She loved him too, so much. It shouldn't be possible but there it was. Draco and Hermione, in love. She kissed his lips quickly and turned to leave before she changed her mind.
The wind bit at her cheeks and heels, but she kept going until she reached the gates. Draco always laughed at her for walking to the gates before apparating, but it always reminded her of kindergarten and the early years of school where her mom walked her to the bus and then she was whisked away.
She looked around herself and took it all in. The soft footprints she left in the ground, the silent winds that carried her hair off her shoulders. Then she took a deep breath and left it all behind.