It was three in the morning when her ring burned.
Draco appeared the instant she stepped into the shack and apparated them. She found herself crushed against the wall as his lips found hers, and he ravenously kissed her.
She gripped him tightly, running her hands along his shoulders, desperate for the feel of him. Her fingertips were overly-sensitive from all the new skin she'd regrown.
She gave a low whimper against his lips as his hands slid up her throat to cradle her jaw, and he drew back to study her, his sharp eyes taking in every detail of her face.
Someday I am going to love him in a moment that isn't stolen, she promised herself.
“You're alright? You've been alright?” he asked, studying her.
“Yes. I'm fine. I'm fine. Are you alright? Have you been hurt at all?” She gripped his hands in hers.
Draco dropped his forehead against hers. They stood for a minute before he slipped his hands free and turned her face up to study her eyes again. She knew she looked tired, and thinner, and grey from staying indoors with little sunshine. She gave him a wan smile as she met his gaze.
“I should have called you sooner.” His fingers were tracing along her cheekbones as though he expected her to shatter in his hands.
She shook her head.
“It wouldn't have been worth the risk. We shouldn't be doing this now. I shouldn't have come,” she said as her hold on his robes tightened. She drew his mouth down against hers. As he kissed her, he pulled her away from the wall and walked her backwards towards the bed.
The steady tick of the clock on the wall felt like a countdown.
She usually unbuttoned his clothing, or pulled at it until the buttons gave away, but instead she pulled her wand out and muttered a spell she'd used a thousand times in the hospital ward. His clothing flickered and phased off of him. She repeated the spell on her own clothes.
“Efficient,” he said under his breath as his hand slid up her bare spine.
She gave a breathy gasp as his skin pressed against hers.“I don't want to waste time.”
She ran her fingers along his neck and down over his shoulders. She was so desperate she could feel her heart pounding inside her chest as he arched her body against his chest and kissed across her breasts and down her stomach as he pushed her back into the bed.
She reached for him, pulling on his shoulders. “Please, Draco — we don't have time to go slow. I can't come back tomorrow.”
He lifted his mouth from her hip, and she ran her fingers along his jaw, feeling the faint stubble under her fingertips. She pulled him back up her body and traced her fingers lightly across the back of his neck as she kissed him, parting her legs and wrapping them around his hips.
She didn't close her eyes. She kept them open and studied him, memorising everything in his face. She watched the way his eyes flickered and changed colour when the pupils dilated, silver, grey, mercury, diamond, and ice. She wanted to commit to memory the way he felt under her hands; the tendons in his neck and the curvature of his bones; the taste of his skin and the scent of oak moss and papyrus and cedar in his skin when she buried her face in his shoulder.
He entwined their fingers as he pushed inside her. His expression was of possessive, searing adoration and a hunger that she could feel in her soul.
She kissed him. She closed her eyes as she kissed him.
Don't let this be the last time. Don't let this be the last time. She said it to herself over and over again as she wrapped her arms around his neck.
Afterwards, Draco had her gathered against his chest, his head resting against the top of hers, his fingers drawing runes and patterns across her skin.
The words were silent, but she could hear them in the shifting of the air, and feel the faint, rapid movement of his jaw as he mouthed them. Over and over again, until her throat felt thick.
She closed her eyes for several minutes before she sat up and stared intently at Draco.
As he looked up at her, his quicksilver eyes were guarded. She studied him, memorising him; this aspect of him that was hers alone.
She entwined her fingers with his and traced her over-sensitive fingertips along the ridges of his knuckles. Her mouth twitched, and she hesitated.
“Draco,” she finally said, “there's a chance — we're hoping, that the war will end at Hogwarts. We don't — we aren't sure how much longer we're going to last, if it doesn't.”
His fingers twitched.