A Kiss
She sidesteps his swing and, while he is occupied with the momentum of his movement, brings her sword up to his neck.
“Dead.”
From the corner of her eye she can make out the impressed nod of their Swordmaster. Good, she has been training hard for this.
Malfoy is less impressed.
“Come on, Granger. Is that the best you can do?”
His voice is teasing but anger flashes in his eyes like lightening. There is only one thing that Malfoy hates more than being beaten, and it’s being beaten by her, the Mudblood. Hermione feels herself rising to the bait, a hot wave of indignation overriding all the tiredness in her body, all the aching in her bones. She’ll show the slimy little weasel.
She sinks into position, knees bent, both hands on the hilt of the sword. Malfoy charges at her with a ferocious yell, his attack more personal now, less focused on technique.
Hermione blocks him and the two swords collide in mid-air. The sharp clang of metal on metal reverberates around the training yard. She meets his gaze over the criss-cross of silver and nearly buckles underneath it—his eyes are steelier than the weapon in his hands.
Hermione pushes and the screech of the swords as they slide against each other rings in her ears. Before Malfoy has time to recover Hermione swings and hits him on the back of his armoured knees, knocking his legs out from underneath him.
Hermione kneels down with her knee on his chest, keeping him on the ground. She leans close, until their noses are a hairsbreadth apart, and does her best to mimic the voice that he had used to tease her with.
“No, Malfoy, this is the best that I can do. Also, you’re dead.”
Malfoy’s features twist into an ugly and bitter grimace. Beaten by the Mudblood, again.
Suddenly, his sharp, aristocratic face clears. He stares up at Hermione, assessing. He stares so long that she grows uncomfortable, and is about to ask him if he hit his head a little too hard on his way down, but she never gets the chance.
Because he brings himself up and crushes his lips to hers.
Her mind goes blank.
It feel as though the ground has been snatched up from underneath her and she’s free falling into a deep abyss. She can’t think. She can’t breathe. She can’t feel anything but him, his mouth moving insistently on hers.
His arms wind around her waist, pulling her closer.
Then, suddenly, he flips her around so that he is on top, breaking the kiss. Hermione gasps, the manoeuvre expelling all the remaining air, the air that wasn’t stolen by him, from her lungs. The hand that was a second ago gripping her back is now holding a sword to her throat.
She stares up at him, wide-eyed. His eyes are dark, shining in triumph.
“I believe you’re the one who’s dead now, Granger,” he says in a low voice.
It takes Hermione a few seconds to get her bearings. Then, as soon as she realises what has happened, she growls and kicks him off.
She storms away from the training yard, the sight of his arrogant smirk burned into her mind.
She lost. She lost because of a kiss.
For the remainder of the day Hermione furiously launches herself into her training tasks and duties, determined to not dwell on the humiliating incident.
However, as she lays down in bed that evening, exhausted and on the precipice of sleep, her brain presents her with one last thought for the day, a thought that intrusively makes its way to the forefront of her mind. It’s something that she has been trying to not think about, but also something that she’d be lying if she said she wanted to forget.
Because she swears, in the split second between the tip of his tongue nudging her lips open, and him slamming her into the ground, that she heard him groan.