The sight of Hermione Granger's head steadily bobbing up and down, up and down between his legs was something, Draco Malfoy had decided, he wanted burned permanently into the backs of his eyelids.
Fisting his hands even more firmly – more desperately – in the blankets covering the bed in his room of the Hogwarts' Heads suite, it was all he could do to maintain a grip on his increasingly slipping composure.
Tonight was a night of firsts, for both of them – Draco's first time receiving a blowjob from Hermione; Hermione's first blowjob, period.
His lips curled at the corners as he smiled faintly, remembering how her nose wrinkled at the word 'blowjob'; she preferred the term 'fellatio' – said it made the process sound more dignified.
Granger, he'd said, when you're on your knees with a bloke's cock stuffed down your throat, there's no place for 'dignified'.
After all this time, he should have known better, really. Hermione wore her dignity quietly – with a subtle grace – but stolidly…like an armor-plated cloak.
Her mouth on him slid all the way from tip to base, making slick sounds that had the rush of blood pumping at racing speed through his veins feel lit on fire, and the slight smirk slid from his face with a gasp.
"Fuck…just like that…"
In a way, it had been – and still was proving to be – a year of firsts. With the death of Voldemort and the subsequent end of the Second Wizarding War had come the rash of hastily-conducted Death Eater trials – of which he and his family had been a part. Start of term had seen his father sentenced to the Kiss, his mother on house arrest, and himself fresh out of Azkaban on very tenuous probation, under strict magical restriction and forbidden to associate with any persons deemed to have been on the "wrong side" of the War.
Thus had he arrived on platform nine and three quarters for his eighth – stripped of his shell of pride; alone, friendless, and equipped for certain failure.
McGonagall's announcement by owl of his appointment to Head Boy – a post he'd always coveted, perhaps one of the few trivial accolades he'd ever sought after for not entirely selfish reasons – had left him, the Ministry's latest straw man, numb where he should have been crowing in elation.
The news that Hermione Granger would be sitting for her N.E.W.T.S. as Head Girl had made him sit up sharp.
He'd had no idea what to expect would come of their enforced collaboration; in truth, neither, he thought, had their newly-minted headmistress, though she'd appeared calm and unruffled as ever as she'd discussed shared duties and the password to their rooms.
Her cultivated poise had, irrationally, infuriated him.
This girl – woman – has been tortured in my own home, by my own flesh and blood. She should refuse, if not outright reject, being made to come within even a hundred yards of me…
But Granger was not one to be underestimated. She faced this latest responsibility the same way she'd faced all those that had challenged her for seven years – squarely head-on, with the grit and determination to succeed where others had not.
She was a warrior, a lioness, by nature – prepared to fight.
What he had not anticipated was her expecting him – the snake, the coward – to fight, too.
She objected vehemently to the mockery large factions of the student body – including members of his own house (which stung the worst) – made of his authority. Seeing him struggle in class, she protested and got exemptions to the limitations put on his magic – including the use of his wand. Pitying his loneliness, she secretly ferried probation-violating messages between him and his three oldest, truest friends – Pansy, Blaise, and Theo. She defended their construed-as-unorthodox association to anyone who dared to hold an unfavorable opinion.
She ignored the hisses of "Death Eater" and "Mudblood Whore" and the pettily-cast hexes in the hallways.
She accepted without question or hesitation – as was her rightful due – his hesitant and broken apology once he'd built up the scant store of courage necessary to deliver it, as she deserved.
Her constant presence – initially considered a superfluous burden – had gradually become an anchor; her support, a touchstone.
Early morning rousings no longer seemed so dismal, with her freshly-scrubbed face and cup of tea brewed muggle-style waiting for him in their common room.
Study periods became the scenes of lively debates, from which both parties came away having learned something new.
Paired patrols which saw them walking in lock-step felt like…approval, like a warm clap on the back from a mentor (or a father) – always yearned for, but never received.
Nightmares no longer dogged his sleeping hours so relentlessly since she fell asleep on him during a late-night exam review – sitting on the couch with her head pillowed on his shoulder, slow breaths deep and even; the gentle rise and fall of her chest a sight of calm and peace.
She was there for him, listening without judgement when he told her of his childhood rearing as little lordling of a manor with the world on a silver string.
She was there, to lend a sympathetic ear when he fretted about his mother, who hung on his every letter, left alone to rattle around a huge estate without so much as a house-elf for company.
She was there, eyes reddened and arms open, when the letter he'd been dreading came to inform him he was now officially an orphan; when he sobbed the last of his little boy's heart out mourning a father he never could stop loving.
She was there, on the roughly stumbling days when the wreckage of his once brightly shining future seemed like fetters 'round his ankles – there, always there, with a hand out…offering him a leg up.
Somewhere, somehow, they became…friends.
And so, he was determined to be there, for her.
He was there, when she wove stories of a little girl who'd grown up knowing what it was like to be the only one who was different and having to hide it.
He was there, guilt-riddled remorse eating at him as she described the joy of finding out magic, which wasn't supposed to exist, was real – and the disappointment of realizing she was still an outcast, still a freak, because it didn't run in her family.
He was there, as she worried over her friends – over Harry and Ron limiting their career choices by not continuing their education, over Ginny's pursuit of professional quidditch rather than a 'steady job', over the Patil twins' unswerving faith in divination predictions.
He was there, with strength she could lean on when she admitted how much she missed them, now that they were no longer here.
He was there, with soothing murmurs and caresses, the nights she woke thinking she was still on the run, or – worse yet – on his drawing-room floor with his mad aunt looming over her, cursed blade in hand.
He was there, rocking her all night long while she wept into his chest after winter hols were over and she returned from Australia with a tan and the knowledge that the Obliviation on her parents was apparently irreversible.
And then, quite suddenly…they became more than friends – after another Yule Ball and a traditional, obligatory shared dance led to a careless, ill-timed comment recalling his opinion on the appearance of her dress in fourth year…which led to their kissing behind a tapestry of dryads on a second-floor corridor, hands buried in hair and mouths fused together – kissing frantically, as though trying to drink the last breath from each other's lungs.
There were no more words between them that night, only urgent, fervent movement…of shedding clothes, of grafting skin to skin; of the shuddering, explosive birth of a new emotion – beautiful and fragile as a soap bubble – settling between them.
For him, there were rarely any words, he found. He was not like her; turns of phrase and the 'right thing to say' did not spring so easily to his tongue as they once had…
So, he showed her, instead.
He showed her, as he sent a carefully-worded owl to his mother and defended their relationship to his friends and hers, alike.
He showed her, when he wrote away to the wizarding libraries for tomes and obscure magical treatises that, while inconclusive, provided hope where it seemed there was none.
He showed her, with linked hands in public and excursions to Hogsmeade and twilight stargazing after curfew on the shores of the Black Lake.
And increasingly he showed her, at night when it was just the two of them, with naked limbs and lips and tongue and fingers and cock – showing her, with all he had to give.
And now, here they were – her on her knees with his dick shoved balls-deep in her throat; and him sweating, doing his desperate damnest not to lose it.
She'd grown her hair out, and the straightening charms he's been teaching her (which he used on his own hair) made it fall in a pin-straight curtain, soft as satin. The sight of it strewn across his thighs had his fingers twitching with the urge to bury themselves in the long strands, and his knuckles tightened in the twisted bedsheets.
He didn't trust the fraying threads of his self-control were enough to allow him to be gentle.
Hermione looked up, tongue swirling around and around and over the crown while her hand fondled and pumped until his legs shook and he panted for breath – locking eyes with him along the length of his prone body.
She'd wanted to do this, for him.
You're always doing…things…just for my pleasure, when we're…together, like this, she'd said earlier this evening, once he'd peeled her out of her weekend jumper and sweatpants and pressed her back into his mattress. I want to be able to do that for you. Tonight…let me.
How could he deny her? He had.
Her honey-laced whiskey eyes remained riveted on his face, lips straining as she grinned at his gaping jaw but didn't pull off.
Any other girl, he'd say it was showing off, solely for appearance's sake.
Not Hermione Granger.
She was studying him as assiduously as she would a knotty arithmancy problem – learning what he liked, reading his tells from the jump of the tight-strung muscles pinned under her forearms and the hitches in his breathing…working to maximize his pleasure.
How fortunate for him that she always had been a quick study.
Her hand curled around his hip felt it buck slightly as her tongue traced the thick vein running the underside of his cock – and so she did it again…and again, until a low, drawn-out moan clawed its way up and out of his throat.
"Oh, Merlin…Hermione…"
She wanted to do this, she'd said. For him…
As his back arched, head thrown back and hands trembling spasmodically over the covers, his mind condensed that verbalized desire into three simple words:
She.
Wanted.
Him.