tears
Outside Gryffindor Tower, 2nd November 1996, 8:46 pm
Her head was a maelstrom of unbridled fury. Her anger burned white hot, snarling and growing out of her control like a torrent of fiendfyre. The strength of it would have razed the corridor she was standing in until it was just ash and smoke.
Fuck Ron. Fuck Lavender. Fuck everyone.
Every breath she took was harsh, belaboured. She didn’t know who she was more angry at. Lavender, Ronald, or her own foolish self for falling for him and thinking so fucking stupidly that he might have felt the same back. Even thinking of him hit her with bitterness, pain, and pure fury, the lopsided smile, smattering of freckles she used to chart like constellations, every new one bringing a small smile to her lips, the sleepy blue eyes the same colour as the ocean, calming, warm, welcoming.
The warm hugs he gave her whenever she struggled, the sheepish smile he gave her when she helped him out with his homework. Again.
The fantasies she’d had of him joining her in the prefect’s bath, sneaking into a broom cupboard with him, sneaking kisses between class.
And that bitch took him from me. She said she was my bloody friend last week. Traitor traitor.
And he left me like this, left behind 5 years of friendship for some slag. Fuck him.
Behind her, she heard a sudden clap, jolting her out of her storm of thoughts. She turned on her heel, whipping out her wand on instinct, ready to yell out a curse when she was met with a solid torso, clad in a fine knit black sweater. She looked up to meet a pair of slate grey eyes, flat and lifeless as the person they belonged to.
Her first thought was Draco Malfoy looks like a marble statue.
Her second was but he’s so beautiful.
Her third was I fucking hate him and I have never wanted to jinx anyone more in my life .
He had the audacity to sneer down at her, because at some point Draco Malfoy had grown from a whiny, spoiled brat to a stupidly tall, stupidly attractive man. And he was clapping, slowly, deliberately. Glamour rippling around his left hand. He looked like a dragon watching its prey put on a good show; he looked terribly, terribly entertained.
“What the fuck do you want Malfoy? Because you should know that I am currently furious and have never wanted to see your obnoxious ferrety little face more in my life so I could curse the shit out of you.” Her voice was shrill, and she sounded too much like a little girl for her own liking.
“You do realise you were literally broadcasting your thoughts out into the corridor for anyone you see? I was simply congratulating you on your particularly impressive display of the thought projection spell. I haven’t been able to achieve such potency in projecting my thoughts since my final burst of accidental magic at the age of five.”
He sounded like smooth velvet. He sounded like a reasonable adult. She hated him more at that moment.
How dare he catch her at her lowest, and make her out to be some kind of crazy little girl?
Fuck. Accidental magic.
She hadn’t had her emotions get the better of her control of her magic since she was a child. And the one time she lost control, Draco bloody Malfoy had to turn up and see all of it.
He had his features schooled into a perfectly innocent, sharp smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. No, his eyes were glimmering with mirth at her expense. Hermione’s rage forged into something sharper at the added insult. The added mortification. Added to years of repressed fury at him, intertwined with humiliation.
Hermione was at a breaking point. And it was all his fault .
She wanted to hex him until he was at her feet bloody and bruised. She hated him so, so, very much at that moment. For invading her thoughts this past month, for sowing the seed of her insecurities over the years. But there was something keeping her rooted to the floor, her mouth from hurling back insults and jinxes. She wasn’t ready to shed her inhibitions and explode into a roaring flame of fury.
So she forced her anger back inside her until she felt like she was going to choke. Because that was what she always did. When Ron had hated her in fourth year for going to the Yule ball with Viktor Krum, and then sheepishly apologised and acted like nothing had happened, she had bottled her anger. Because there was a war starting soon, and it wasn’t about her. And she had never been very good at keeping friends, she couldn’t afford to lose anyone else.
Malfoy was still staring at her with that strange intensity, something akin to malice gleaming in his eyes.
She felt like an empty shell.
He looked like he’d enjoy nothing more than to shatter the husk of herself into a million pieces.
“Fuck you Malfoy. I’m sure nothing in there is of any surprise to you anyway. I mean, you know everything with your superior intellect born from years of clearly superior breeding and ooh, blood . Of course you wouldn’t ever have bursts of accidental magic as a member of the sacred twenty-eight.”
Her voice had lost its shrill edge. She sounded more like a woman again, a woman who had struggled more these past five years to keep her friends alive than she ought to have. She sounded weary, tired, but there was still a biting edge of anger.
“Touché, mudblood. Thank you for the much unneeded insight into your sordid fantasies about weaselbee.” His voice was sardonic, as always, but so much lower than she remembered from when she first met him, or punched him in the face and called him a foul, loathsome cockroach.
“I didn’t know you were such a voyeur, especially for mudbloods and blood traitors .” She was getting defensive, angry, but humiliated. And humiliation was not her best look.
“I didn’t exactly want to see all of that, you do realise, don’t you? It was all just you projecting. I was just a poor, unfortunate soul that was utterly violated seeing your erotic fantasies.”
“Then why didn’t you just bugger off and you wouldn’t have needed to be unnecessarily ‘violated’?”
He took a step closer, and tilted his slightly to the left, as if assessing her. She felt tiny pinpricks on her skin as she held her breath at their sudden proximity. She could feel the heat from his body; count the eyelashes fanning around his eyes. She felt like she was on the stand, waiting for her sentence to be read out.
Except Draco Malfoy felt like her judge, jury and executioner.
Briefly, she wondered why she even cared what his verdict was, he was just a pointy git. But before she had time to go down that train of thought, he spoke.
“Because, Granger, maybe I enjoyed seeing you all naked, hot and bothered at the mercy of someone. Even if that someone was the weasel.”
Before she had time to formulate a response, or even process what he said, he spoke again.
“Oh, and Granger? Hex him. And nice ass by the way.”
And he turned on his heel and strode off, the tapping of his expensive dragon-hide shoes echoing in the empty corridors.
What the hell?
Hermione seethed silently, a red-hot blush burning at her cheeks. Steaming wet tears streamed down her cheeks from anger and humiliation. From both Ron and Malfoy.
But when Harry came to comfort her, she let him believe that the tears were because she was upset at Ron. Because it was so much easier to say than explain whatever the encounter with the ferrety git had been.
And when Ron barged in, and she hexed him, just like Malfoy told her to, she felt a sense of total catharsis. Free in a way she hadn’t felt in years.
And a small part of her was almost glad that she ran into him.
Gryffindor Tower, 2nd November 1996, 11:53 pm
She returned to Gryffindor Tower just before midnight, using her prefect status as an excuse to roam the corridors of the castle aimlessly, deep into the cool night. The common room was blissfully empty and welcoming when she climbed through the portrait hole, the only sound the crackling of the dim fire, as it bathed the room in warm amber hues. It was so beautifully welcoming, and some part of her was almost relieved that she didn’t have to face the pity of her friends. They meant well, but Hermione had far too much pride for pity.
Poor, swotty Hermione. Rejected so publicly by someone she’s been pining over for years. Well, it’s not like anyone would ever date her .
Some time during her walk, her tears had dried up, replaced instead with a cold steely determination to never let anybody humiliate her like she had done to herself, and let Ron do to her, ever again.
And as she made her way towards the girl’s bathroom, she found that she didn’t even really care that Malfoy had memories of her, rather, of a vision of her, totally naked and an object of sensuality. His parting comment had caught her off-guard, she could admit that freely. It had been strangely nice to have someone compliment her looks, her body. Even if it had been vulgar and uncalled for.
And if her suspicions about his heritage were correct, he wouldn’t be able to use those memories as blackmail — she had her own information that could ruin him. Mutually assured destruction. Malfoy wouldn’t be able to tell anyone, he was far too smart and had too much of an instinct for self-preservation to do anything that could hurt him or his family. She wouldn’t be humiliated twice over one stupid night.
She looked in the mirror in the Gryffindor girl’s bathroom as she stripped herself, readying the water for her bath. She looked at the slender figure which had filled out since she was a scrawny young girl, the silvery stretch marks that created a pretty tree of winding lines on her thighs, the slight outline of her ribs. And for the first time, she wondered how it would feel to be seen in such a way, seen as an object of pure desire. As a woman, not just the swot who only existed when people wanted help with their homework.
That thought haunted her as she soaked in the bath, lingered as she washed her hair and followed her all the way back to the dormitory, to her plush four-poster bed. And Hermione collapsed onto the plush sheets, and drifted off to sleep thinking about, imagining, feeling desired.
...
...
“Fuck. You feel so good. So perfect”
A warm body over hers. Large hands gripping her wrists, hard enough to bruise. Utterly pleasurable. Heat pooling at her core, wet, warm, slick. A low, silky voice.
A gentle pressure, giving way to pleasure pleasure pleasure. Bliss. Kisses everywhere, trailing down her neck, bites and nips and sharp pain that only heightened the pleasure. She arched into his touch, moaning, panting, desperate for more. More of this all consuming pleasure. Heat. Desire.
She could smell the saltiness of their sweat, the scent of arousal and sex. Feel the silk bedsheet meeting her bare body like a cool balm. Hear a low grunt from above her.
“Look at me when I’m fucking you.”
She shook her head, eyes screwed shut, determined not to break the illusion and wake up. He wrapped long fingers around her neck, and she couldn’t help the small moan that slipped out. The fingers let go and moved up to her chin, tilting it up.
“Open your eyes Hermione.”
Distorted. Muffled. But she knew that voice. That tone.
“Wake up Granger! Open your fucking eyes!”
She saw startlingly clear grey. Crystalline grey. Gleaming with terror.
He was hunched over her, fully dressed in inky black robes, wand pointed towards her. Looking her right in the eye. And he was holding something in his right hand which was tense by his side.
He took a step closer, brow creased in concentration.
“Fuck. I’m sorry Granger.”
She groggily tried to move, but everything she did in her dream state was in slow motion. All she could do was gape, eyes barely even open, tired down to her very bones.
“Obliviate.”
And Hermione’s eyes shot. And all she could make out was the dark crimson canopy of her four-poster. But all she could see was Draco Malfoy’s face as he obliviated her, because she had a feeling it was a memory she had drudged up in her dream. And all she could feel was the soft, aching pleasure that dream Draco Malfoy had left in its wake. She had had a sex dream about him.
I’m so fucked.