She stayed astride him as they progressed, as things grew warmer and the world around them blurred away. There was nothing but Draco, his hands and eyes, the beating of his heart. She re-explored his body. He was different, he felt damaged in her hands. He had scars she didn't recognise, and his fingers twitched sometimes when he was pulling her closer and trailing his hands across her skin.
She laid against the length of his body, relishing the heat of him while his hand traced up the curve of her spine. He nipped along her shoulder until she gave a low moan and her body shuddered against his. She kissed down his throat and along his collarbones and took note of how he reacted, the ways he tensed and his breath caught, the way his fingers twisted in her hair and slid possessively down her throat.
Mine. She could feel it in his touch, but he didn't say it.
Mine.
His eyes weren't like a wolf's. They were a dragon's, deadly and possessive. He stared at her as though she were all that mattered in the world. It made her blood burn.
Her thighs bracketed his hips as she sat astride him and shifted. She met his eyes. Her heart was pounding in her chest and her pulse was racing, and she knew he could feel it.
She drew his hands to her hips as she slowly lowered herself. His eyes turned black, and his jaw tensed as he gave a low hiss between his teeth, but he didn't hurry her as she paused and adjusted to the sensation and then rolled her hips forward.
It was — familiar, in both good ways and bad.
Over the table, she'd tried not to pay attention, not to how it felt, how it touched her inside, the sensation or the movement. She'd torn her mind away and focused on the bite of the table against her hipbones, the clock, the texture of the wood beneath her fingertips. Poetry. Potions. Anything else.
It had always been a matter of experiencing it as little as possible.
Now she wanted to notice what it was like. They were connected. He was in her and under her. His hands guiding her hips as she moved with him.
It was good. It had felt this way when they used to have sex, she was certain.
The heat of his touch was like a fire. It wasn't too fast or too much for her. He went as slow as she needed him to.
It used to be slow. She remembered that. Slow and intimate as he whispered against her skin. The burning reverence of his touch as he used to make love to her.
That's what it had been. Making love.
That's what they'd had.
Her eyes burned, and she dropped her head down as her shoulders shook.
“I love you.” She gripped his hand in hers so tightly it hurt. “I wanted my whole life to show you.”
Chapter End Notes
"Hermione, I'm tired." by bookloverdream.
Reaching for the portrait by bookloverdream.
The war had eaten him by thegirlthatreadsfantasybooks.
"Hands steady enough to build a bomb" by ellefair.
June 2005
Hermione felt as though she were turning to lead. There was constant aching pain in her chest, and a stone seemed to be lodged in her throat; she felt it each time she swallowed.
A palpable sense of horror and despair spreading around and through her. It was as if she was drowning with the rising tide; the water had reached her face, sliding slowly across her skin, lapping a little higher each minute. She was locked in place and could do nothing but sit, feeling it draw over her.
She wanted her occlumency back.
Now that she remembered having it, she felt its loss. Death and mutilation, everyone she'd seen die, right in the forefront of her mind. It hadn't always been that way. There used to be space from the emotional agony, but now there wasn't.
Soon Draco would be another person who'd died because she couldn't save him.
She didn't think any amount of occlumency would ever make the pain of it fade.
If she could just occlude a bit, she thought she'd be able to say everything she felt she needed to say, to ask him what she wanted to know. Instead, each time she tried to broach the subject, her voice would break, her shoulders would begin shaking, and she'd start crying and then hyperventilating.
Draco would stoically let her cry and then wrap his arms around her and calm her when she started overbreathing.
She'd jerk away angrily.
She wanted to scream at him.
It was easy to be angry at him — at least she was still trying. He was just going along with it.