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Hermione can’t help but stare.French vowels roll of his tongue and bloom in her stomach. She wants to swallow them, make them her own, lick every verb and adjective and pronoun from his lips.Her fingers itch to run the ice cube in his whiskey across his collarbone. Her tongue aches with the need to trace the jagged lines across his chest.Just the sight of him creates phantom blossoms, red and purple and beautiful and his , on her skin. There’s ghostly teeth scraping against her neck and whispering lips tracing the bumps of her spine. Fingers connect the constellations on her arms, mapping out the universe with a soft scrape of a nail, and hot air soothes the slur etched into her arm.His eyes meet hers. He falls silent. She smirks.They only just make it to his hotel room.
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“Come on, Draco, how are you doing so well?” Hermione rests her elbow on the desk and flutters her eyelashes like she has seen Pansy do so many times before. She resists the urge to tug down her skirt. This much thigh shouldn’t be on show in a professional environment.His eyes flash up to meet hers - Pansy’s - and Hermione forces her lips to smirk.“I want in on your secret.” She tries again, licking her lips - seductively, she hopes. It probably doesn’t work. “Mother dearest demands I get better grades if I want to inherit our great fortune.”“Pans, I’ve explained this all before.” He’s exasperated, eyebrows pinched as he stares down at the words inked into the decades old pages.“Remind me.” It’s an attempt at a drawl. It sounds more like a drunken slur. But it works.“You know it’s all my own effort. I need people to realise that I am more than the tattoo on my arm. I need to prove it to myself.” He sighs. It’s the most vulnerable Hermione has seen him since the final battle. “If I can do this, then I am taking a step away from that old persona. I’m going to makes life for myself beyond gossip articles and charity events.”“Oh.”Hermione forgets to act frustrated and disappointed. She feels dirty, forcing this secret out of him. It’s something she shouldn’t know, something he would never trust her with. She decides then that Harry and Ron don’t need to find out why Draco Malfoy is suddenly doing so much better than them in their studies, and almost doing as well as her (better in potions, but that’s besides the point). They can fester in their suspicions.Hermione never forgets the pure desperation in his features.
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It’s dark, but the bright light from his wand makes the pale expanse of his arm almost glow. The contrast between the white skin, almost ethereal in the light, and the darkness that scars his own skin fascinates her.It should scare her.But his hand is outstretched in offering. He isn’t hiding from her. He is simply being.So Hermione pushes the sleeve of her jumper up to her elbow, revealing her own scar, and grasps his hand with her own.There’s a brief moment as she winces at the pain in her ankle (sprained, at worst), but then she is watching his expression mould into something like understanding as he stares down at the marks inscribed into their skin.Something hovers between them, binding them in some form of unbrekabke vow.It feels like solidarity.
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Liquid heat, crimson and sticky and deep, clings to her skin and seeps into her pores. Her fingernails are dyed. Red traces the lines of her palms. Silver protrudes from black clothing and pale skin has lost its pink sheen. Even the mark on his arm has lost any sign of life.If you can even attribute life to that kind of scar.Fingers run along the dark material, remembering how his own claws had dug into her arms, how his wand had pressed into her throat. Nails dig into his flesh, before they release, pushing the body into the abyss. Hermione stands as Draco places his hand on her back. Gently, a caress, a surety.“Hermione-““If anyone asks, it was self defence.” There is no crack in her voice. His grip tightens. “I was defending myself.” Dark hair floats in clear water, ebbing and flowing like tendrils. It reminds her of ink. Dark apparation.“Of course.”Wind quietly rustles summer leaves. It whispers:
Dolohov Dolohov Dolohov
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Bright red slashes past his cheek. Draco dodges at the last second. His wand is raised in the next.
The spirit to fight leaves him.Hermione Granger twirls and bends in a cloud of smoke and fireworks. Her hair is a haphazard halo. He is entranced. He fails to spot the bright light shooting straight for him.Pain shoots down his spine and as he opens his eyes, a hand disrupts his vision.“Do you trust me?”Her hands are callused and delicate and weapons of fury. She has chapped lips and her face is bright red with effort, but brightness shines upon her like light from the heavens and Draco can’t speak. His tongue is lead.“Malfoy, do you trust me?”He takes her hand.