A Hunger Like This
*Hogwart's Flashback- 5th Year*. The snow fell in slow, deliberate spirals, drifting from the heavens like remnants of something lost. It clung to rooftops and settled in the crevices of cobbled streets, casting the world in an eerie, weightless hush. The air smelled of pine and charred wood, of winter’s breath exhaling over the village, and still, beneath it all, the lingering trace of spiced butterbeer curled at the edges of Hermione’s scarf, as if trying to hold onto warmth that had already slipped away.
She walked alone, her footprints the only disruption in the pristine expanse of white stretching before her. Each step felt like an intrusion, a fracture in something fragile. Hogsmeade had always held an almost dreamlike quality in the snow, but tonight, it felt suspended—like a painting left unfinished, waiting for something, or someone, to ruin it. Harry and Ron had stayed behind, laughter spilling out of Zonko’s, their world still filled with fleeting joys. But Hermione had chosen solitude, drawn instead to the quiet, to the space where thoughts could stretch and unravel without interruption.
The path back to the castle felt endless. The air pressed against her, heavy with something unseen. There were no voices now, no rustling of cloaks, only the muffled sound of snow packing beneath her boots. For a brief, stolen moment, she could almost pretend there was nothing beyond this—no war creeping in from the edges of their youth, no unspoken things lingering between shadows and stolen glances, no ghosts of choices not yet made.
She should have known better than to think peace would last, even in this borrowed quiet.
The laughter came first, slicing through the night like the sharp edge of a blade, too bright, too brittle. Not the kind that carried warmth, but something else—something laced with cruelty, with the need to be heard, to be seen. It sent a shiver down her spine, one that had nothing to do with the cold.
Then, as she rounded the bend, they appeared, framed against the snowfall like figures in a fractured tableau. Pansy Parkinson’s laughter cut through the hush of winter, her voice a stark contrast to the muted world around them. Hermione slowed, breath catching in her throat.
Pansy was clinging to Draco’s arm, fingers curled around his sleeve, her posture one of effortless possession. Her smile was careful, practiced, a performance perfected over years. But Hermione didn’t look at her. She looked at him.
Draco’s gaze was distant, his body present but his mind somewhere else, anywhere else. The indifference was palpable, an absence made visible. Hermione had seen it before—how he let Pansy linger at his side but never truly acknowledged her, how he tolerated her presence like background noise, something inevitable but unimportant. And yet, Pansy never seemed to notice. Or maybe she did, and chose to pretend otherwise.
The wind shifted, carrying the scent of firewood and frost, and for a fleeting second, Hermione wondered if Draco knew. If he understood just how transparent he was. Silence had always been his shield, his most well-crafted lie, but tonight, even that seemed threadbare. Some truths could not be buried beneath indifference.
Pansy saw her.
Hermione knew it before their eyes met—felt the change in the air, the tightening of muscle, the way Pansy’s grip on Draco’s arm became something rigid, something possessive. The smirk that followed was slow, deliberate, a blade sliding between ribs. "Oh, look who it is," she drawled, voice thick with condescension. "Taking a little stroll, Granger? What, did Potter and Weasley finally come to their senses and leave you behind?"
Hermione inhaled, slow and steady, willing herself into stillness. "You’re painfully predictable, Parkinson. If you’re going to insult me, at least make it interesting."
Pansy’s eyes narrowed, a flicker of irritation betraying her, her lips pressing into a thin line. Hermione knew that reaction well—had seen it countless times before. Pansy wanted a reaction. She wanted something raw to tear into, something to twist and use. But Hermione had spent years perfecting the art of withholding, of ensuring that people like Pansy never saw what lay beneath the surface.
Draco remained silent.
He always did. That was part of the game, wasn’t it? Silence was complicity. Silence was safe.
Pansy turned to him then, expectation coiled in her frame, waiting for him to reinforce the rules of their world. But he didn’t. He didn’t even look at her.
Something in Pansy’s expression shifted then, the edges of her confidence fraying. Her fingers twitched against Draco’s sleeve, gripping harder, as if trying to anchor herself, to tether him back to where he was supposed to be. And Hermione saw it then—the recognition, the quiet realisation creeping into Pansy’s features. She had known. Maybe not everything, maybe not the full depth of what had existed in stolen moments and unspoken words, but she had sensed something shifting beneath the surface. And now, in the absence of his denial, she had the proof she needed.
The moment stretched, fragile, unbearable.
Draco still said nothing. His posture was impassive, his face carefully blank, but Hermione knew him. Knew the tension in his shoulders, the rigid stillness of someone standing on the edge of something dangerous. He felt it too—the weight of exposure, the inevitability of it.
Dread uncurled in Hermione’s chest, cold and creeping. Her fingers twitched at her sides. She needed to leave before Pansy could open her mouth, before she could seize this moment and twist it into something cruel, something irreversible.
She stepped back. Once. Twice. And then Pansy inhaled, her lips parting, the sharp edge of her voice already forming.
Hermione didn’t wait to hear it.
She turned, walking away, the snowfall thickening around her like a shield. But she didn’t go toward the castle, couldn’t. Pansy’s gaze was too heavy, the implications suffocating. Instead, she turned toward the trees, toward the only place where breath came easier.
The Shrieking Shack loomed in the distance, half-forgotten and waiting.
She didn’t stop until the village was far behind her, until the laughter and voices dissolved into nothing but the whisper of snow falling against the earth. The air was thinner here, sharp in her lungs, the cold biting deeper now that she was no longer moving.
Hermione pressed a hand to the wooden railing, its surface rough beneath her fingertips, splintered and weathered by time. The shack stood silent before her, its windows hollow, its frame warped with age. It had always felt like a place caught between worlds—a relic of things past, a ghost of something violent and restless. It belonged to no one, just as she did in this moment, standing on the threshold of something she couldn’t name.
The sound of footsteps in the snow shattered the quiet.
She didn’t turn around.
"What the hell was that?" Draco’s voice was sharp, edged with something she couldn’t immediately place. He never raised his voice, never let emotion fray the careful detachment he wore like armour. But tonight, something in him was coming undone.
She exhaled, slow and steady. "You shouldn’t have followed me."
"And you shouldn’t have walked away like that," he shot back. "You looked like you were going to—"
"Going to what?" She turned then, eyes flashing, the tension coiling between them like a wire pulled too tight. "Collapse? Cry? Run away?"
Draco said nothing, but his jaw tightened, the ghost of an answer flickering behind his expression. He shoved his hands into his pockets, exhaling sharply, his breath curling in the cold between them. "You shouldn’t have left like that."
Hermione let out a hollow laugh. "And you shouldn’t have left Pansy."
Something in his expression darkened. "Since when do you care about Pansy?"
"I don’t," she admitted, her voice quieter now. "But she does. And she was right there. You should have stayed."
A muscle in his jaw jumped. "And let you walk off looking like you were about to disappear?"
"That’s not your concern."
Draco stepped closer, not enough to touch, but enough that she felt the weight of him, the gravity of something neither of them ever acknowledged in the daylight. "Maybe it is."
She inhaled sharply. "You don’t get to do this."
"Do what?"
"Act like you care." She hated how her voice wavered, how weak she suddenly felt. "What is this, Malfoy? What do you want?" For a brief moment, something cracked in his expression, raw and unguarded, before he smoothed it away. Then, his expression hardened. "Nothing."
She let out a bitter laugh. "Good. Then stop following me. Go back to your perfect little life, to your friends, to her. That’s where you belong."
His lips parted slightly, but no sound came out. For the first time that evening, he looked unguarded.
After a moment of tense silence he stepped back. "Fine."
The word was too final, too sharp. It sliced between them, severing something fragile before she could decide if she wanted to hold onto it.
She turned away first. The cold pressed against her skin, creeping into her bones, but she barely felt it. Behind her, his footsteps crunched in the snow, retreating, vanishing into the night.
She should have felt relieved. She didn’t.
Days passed. The castle remained unchanged, the same halls, the same routines. And yet, something was different. The space he had once occupied in the periphery of her world felt too quiet now, a silence she didn’t know how to fill.
She saw him next in the dining hall. She had been leaving just as he walked in, Pansy and the others flanking him like always. This time, they all ignored her, and she didn’t dare look his way.
But she felt him.
Felt the weight of his presence, the way the air shifted just slightly in a way only she would notice. Her fingers curled around the strap of her bag as she walked past, willing herself not to look back. It was nothing. It was supposed to be nothing.
Her pace quickened, each step measured, deliberate. She told herself it was nothing, that it didn’t matter, that it shouldn’t matter. But then, just as she reached the threshold, she hesitated. It was only for a second, a fraction of a pause that no one else would have noticed, but she knew—knew—that he did.
She should have kept walking.
Instead, she turned her head just slightly, barely enough to glance back. And there he was, his gaze locked onto hers, unreadable, distant. But not indifferent. Never indifferent.
She barely had time to register it before he looked away, turning toward his usual seat, his expression closing off once more. And just like that, the moment was gone, slipping between her fingers like something never meant to be held onto in the first place.
Except, something had to give. It always did. And that night, when she turned a corner in the dim corridor leading to the library, he was there.
Waiting.
She halted mid-step, the flickering candlelight casting restless shadows along the stone walls. He leaned against the bookshelf, posture deceptively relaxed, but she knew better. The stillness was a façade, his tension coiled beneath the surface like a wire pulled too tight.
"Are you following me now?" she asked, her voice low, careful.
He tilted his head slightly, considering her. "Would it matter if I was?"
Something bristled beneath her skin at that, the quiet challenge woven into his words. "It should."
Draco exhaled through his nose, slow and measured. "You don’t want me here."
She should have said yes. She should have turned, left him standing there beneath the dim torchlight, let this strange, shapeless thing between them dissolve into the silence it belonged to. But she hesitated.
He caught it.
"Say it, Granger. Say you want me to leave."
She opened her mouth, but the words didn’t come.
Something shifted in his gaze then—something unreadable, something dangerous. He stepped closer, close enough that she could see the way the light caught the strands of his hair, the sharp cut of his cheekbones, the faint crease between his brows as if he, too, was standing at the edge of something he didn’t quite understand.
"You never look at me in the Great Hall anymore," he murmured, his voice barely above a whisper.
Her breath hitched. "You never give me a reason to."
A muscle in his jaw flexed. "Is that what you need? A reason?"
She hated the way her pulse stuttered at his words, the way his presence felt like gravity, pulling her toward something she had no business wanting. She hated that she wasn’t moving away.
"We said we would stop," she reminded him, but it felt like a fragile thing between them, like something spoken into existence only to be broken.
His expression didn’t change. "Then stop me."
She should have.
She didn’t.
His fingers grazed her wrist first, hesitant, waiting. When she didn’t pull away, he pressed forward, the heat of his palm searing against her skin in the cold corridor.
The world outside of this moment—outside of them—ceased to matter.
And then, slowly, like a tide inching forward despite itself, she let herself lean in.
"This is a mistake," she whispered, but the words were threadbare, unravelling between them before they could take hold.
Draco’s jaw tensed, his grip on her wrist loosening just slightly, as if testing the weight of her resolve. "Then why aren’t you stopping me?"
She had no answer, at least not one she was willing to give voice to. The truth swelled between them, heavy, unspoken, a presence unto itself. It had always been this way—silent accords written in glances, boundaries traced in the dark only to be crossed again and again. There were no rules here, no logic, only inevitability.
His breath was warm against her cheek, his fingers drifting from her wrist to her elbow, a slow, deliberate path. He didn’t touch her like he had any right to—only as if he was waiting for her to tell him he didn’t.
She didn’t.
The space between them tightened, pulled taut by something neither of them had the strength to sever. Her pulse pounded in her throat, loud enough that she was certain he could hear it. The weight of his gaze burned, seared into her like something permanent, and still, she didn’t move away.
She should have. She always should have.
But then his lips ghosted over hers, hesitant, testing, as if offering her the final chance to turn away. The moment hung, trembling, suspended in fragile indecision. And then, as if something inside him snapped, he deepened the kiss, pressing her back into the wall, his touch no longer tentative but desperate. A low, unsteady breath escaped him as his hands found her waist, fingers digging in just enough to anchor himself to her, to something real. His mouth was feverish against hers, all restraint unravelling, a carefully constructed dam finally giving way to the flood.
She felt herself grow dizzy—from the sweet taste of his lips, from the heat curling beneath her skin, from the rush of having him near after so many days spent apart. His scent, sharp and familiar, overwhelmed her senses—frost and firewood, something darker beneath. The ache of absence dissolved between them, replaced with something frantic, something consuming. His hands slid higher, tracing the shape of her, as if relearning what he had spent so long trying to forget.
The kiss deepened further, turning heady, intoxicating, a demand rather than a question. She met him with the same urgency, her fingers tangling in the fabric of his robes, pulling him closer as if she could press him into herself, as if that would make any of this easier to survive.
And just like before, just like always, the reasons they shouldn't, the promises they made, the inevitability of consequences—none of it mattered anymore.
Maybe it never had.