She wants to walk away, so I let her go.
I don’t reach for her as she stands in front of me, head hanging between her shoulders as she hides her eyes from me. It’s probably for the best; I fucking adore her eyes. I actually adore her whole face, how she is incapable of hiding a single emotion that passes through her. From where I come from, faces must be kept unmarked and polished like white marble. There mustn't be any creases from smiles or lines across the forehead from frowns. Granger though- I have seen this girl fall apart in class, sob into her sleeve, laugh in the most unladylike way imaginable and that utter transparency astounds me. It always will, probably.
“Draco-” her words disappear into the rush of blood pounding through my ears, like my heart- at least what remains of it- will jump out of my body and fall to her feet in a bloody heap at any given moment now.
She looks up at me, bottom lip trembling and blast me to hell and back for this but I want to lean in and kiss her till she stops shaking like a leaf; till I anchor her the way she has anchored me for the last few months. My nerves feel shot and I imagine this is what it probably feels like to be Crucioed- limbs twisting, blood curdling, skin singed. I try breathing through my nose, hoping I don’t catch a whiff of her warm vanilla scent that will likely linger in my senses till I am six feet under; but of course, the universe has never been very inclined to be kind to the likes to of so the breeze ruffles her curls and I am suddenly pulled back into this memory of us.
Her sweat-slicked skin pressed against mine as she cradles me between her legs, nipping at my throat as I pound into her. I bury my face in her curls- soft but untamed, just like her- and I inhale her scent. I have read about Muggles injecting some drug called heroin into their veins, how one shot is enough to be pulled in forever. I never quite grasped how one could do that but I get it now as her scent infiltrates my senses, burrowing beneath my own skin. This is what it feels like to be drugged, to be addicted. I pour my desire into her with a few rough thrusts and she tightens around, muttering a prayer of my name.
“I understand, Granger-” I swallow around the ache in my throat, my chest, “You don’t have to explain.”
A crease appears between her eyes and it bothers me more than it should, given where we are and how none of it will matter anymore in a few minutes; I wonder if this pain is reciprocated, if she too feels like her oxygen supply will be cut off the moment we walk away. I wonder if she will cry- I hate it when she does- and I wonder some more about why that hurts me too. The crease remains as she stares at me, her brown eyes flicking between mine to see what it is that I am trying to say without saying anything at all. But what I want to say cannot be said; it won’t do either of us any good. I nod, my neck stiff with emotions I have no name for.
As I turn, her fingers find the hem of my sleeve and suddenly my heart is in her hands and it hurts so much, all at once, that I want to take her against the wall, like I have done so many times now. I want to devour her, like I have done so many times before- in lust, in anger, in pain, in passion.
My four poster bed is only a few feet away but we cannot seem to wait anymore; her shirt is discarded on the floor of my room and mine hangs around my shoulders as I crush my mouth against hers. She draws blood with her bites and I roughly push aside her knickers so that I can slide inside her; she is so warm and so fucking tight, wet with such much desire for me that I feel a little light-headed if I think about it too much. She gasps as I pick up pace, pressed between my chest and the stone wall behind her. Draco, Draco, Draco- my name is all her mouth can form as I imprint marks on the side of her neck, across the valley of her tits. Her hands are laced through my hair, pulling my strands every time I thrust into her.
It is absolute chaos when we collide; it is utter madness. Granger and I are remarkable at control, at being in command of our own impulses and inhibitions. I am a man, made of flesh and blood, with an impressive libido but this woman- the one tightening around my cock right now- makes me feel voracious, at the brink of insanity. I have never wanted anyone the way I want her, like I might deny air before I deny her.
Granger comes around my cock with a shudder that sends ripples of pleasure through my own body and with three more thrusts, I spill inside her. I sink my teeth into her bare shoulder as she mutters a string of colorful curses that make the corners of my mouth tip up in amusement and something akin to affection.
The same affection surges through me right now, like the yawning mouth of a deprived child looking for a hand to feed him. Her eyes- her bloody eyes- are wide and full of so much guilt that it makes me feel sick to my stomach. Is this because my mask has slipped and she can see that she has ripped me to shreds with nothing but mere words? Have I become this transparent in front of her? I recall a conversation with my mother from years ago, one that seemed so ordinary then but now comes back in sharp relief as I hear her words echo inside of my mind. She’d said that the most intimate a person can be with another is when silence speaks more than words can; it is when someone knows another so well that the creases of their face can be read as clearly as a book. I suppose that was bound to happen because throughout the last few months, we went from fucking against walls in broom closets to sometimes studying in the library together to reading in bed- naked and reeking of sex.
But now that I look at her, slipping away from me even though she is only half a foot away from me, I know that we always knew that we were a shot in the darkest dark; the eons of war between good and evil are too vast in comparison to the fleeting moments that we have stolen from them. It is just that when I envisioned myself laying flat on the ground, bloodied and defeated by the indisputable good, I never saw myself unarmed and undone by a mere girl with wild hair and the warmest fucking eyes.
“You should have been named after a constellation too, Granger-” I whisper as I trace the smattering of freckles on the bridge of her face. She smiles a little, soft like the mellow light pouring from my bedside lamp.
“So that I can sound as pompous and silly as you?” Granger laughs, rolling her eyes with so much endearment that my hands shake a little because of it.
“How dare you-” I tease, feeling the corner of my own eyes crinkle with a smile, “I am neither of these things.”
“Yes, Malfoy-” she deadpans, “and the sun rises out of my arse.”
“I don’t know about that, love-” I squeeze her backside a little underneath the sheets, “but this is a mighty fine arse.”
Granger, for all her confidence and bravado, blushes a lovely shade of red and hits me across the chest. I laugh despite her completely misguided- perfect, actually- analogy of my character. She is about to pull away when I pull her in closer so that the tip of my nose can trace a pattern across her face, creating a constellation from her freckles.
“You have stars on your face, Granger.” I whisper as I kiss her eyelids, the corners of her mouth and her temple. She softens against me, like she can mold herself within my arms if she tries hard enough and Merlin knows I want her to try hard enough.
What I do not tell her is that she burns so bright that stars might as well gather together and name themselves after her.
I tuck the memory like a letter in a drawer in my mind, knowing that every detail of every moment of us- what a laughable thing to even think that we could exist as a couple- will be something I revisit again and again and again. So I lean in and kiss her forehead, lingering a little longer than I should because I know this is the last time. She has broken my heart and in doing so, might have broken her own a little too but that does not mean that we’ll ever exist again. I cannot be her friend, neither can I be her lover; after kissing her in places where no one else has, I don’t think I can even be her enemy. In hindsight, I don’t think I have ever truly hated her and now, the idea of resenting her is abhorrent to me. Hermione Granger will go on to win wars and lead the Magical universe into better times and marry some bloke with goodness in his heart and have a brood of his children and I will become a thing of her past, a secret she might spill to a friend years later over too many glasses of wine. She will run this world like a damn circus all on her own- and Salazar, she would look fucking grand doing it- and I would be stuck here, in this is cursed moment, standing on this tightrope alone.
“Draco, I am-”
“I know,” I say, taking a step away from her and hardening my jaw against the tremor in my voice, “I am too.”
She wants to walk away, so I let her go.
I let her go and she will never know that I would stay forever if she says, “don’t go,” but she won’t.