With Teeth

By: Provocative Envy

###

now.

Hermione Granger is going to set the world on fire.

Well—parts of it, at least.

"We have dragons," she says, exasperated. "Charlie Weasley gave us an actual army of dragons and we're still using stunning spells to defend ourselves. This is unacceptable."

"Does it matter?" Malfoy drawls. "I mean, these are our last three missions, aren't they?"

She scowls.

"Besides," he continues blithely. "We can't exactly capture anyone with dragons, can we? And isn't that what Potter said he wanted? Less dead bodies?"

"You are the worst, do you know that?" she says. "The absolute worst Slytherin in the history of Slytherin."

"You're just mad because he picked me to be in charge of enemy interrogation."

"He gave me a ladybug! To practice the Cruciatus! How was I supposed to do that? To a ladybug?"

"Oh, piss off," he groans. "I got an earthworm, Granger, do you have any idea how difficult it is to even tell if they're in pain?"

She glares.

He arches a single blond brow.

"Just pick a bloody dragon, Malfoy."

###

Albus Dumbledore had been wrong about Voldemort's horcruxes.

There had never been just seven—or eight, technically, if Harry's scar was being counted.

There had been seven hundred and seventy-seven.

###

now.

Malfoy refuses to leave without having one last cup of tea.

"I get that we're soldiers now, Granger, but we're not barbarians," he says, picking up a tiny silver spoon and inspecting its polish with an imperious frown. He glances at her wrinkled clothing. "At least—I'm certainly not."

She exhales heavily.

"I am literally wearing your sweatshirt, you absolute moron."

He bristles.

"Where did you—have you been in my closet again? Christ, Hermione, I told you—"

"Well it isn't as if you lock it, which is what I told you to do the last time you took it upon yourself to lecture me about 'personal space'—"

"I did lock it! With magic! Normal people might construe that as a messageto stay out—"

"Oh, for the love of—you used first-year magic, it was like you were daring me to break in—"

He slams his teacup back onto an ornate enamel tray with a melodramatic clatter of gold-trimmed crystal and fine white porcelain.

She falls silent with a mutinous click of her jaw.

"I hate having to work with you, you know," he mutters. "I hate you."

"No, you don't," she grinds out, poking at a slightly stale blueberry scone.

"You sound awfully sure of that."

She snorts.

"China," she says pointedly.

He slouches in his seat.

"Maybe what happened in China is precisely why I hate you," he grumbles, face red. "But what did you want my sweatshirt for, anyway? You have at least thirty of your own."

"Been in my closet recently?" she sneers.

"So I can keep track of exactly how many pairs of beige knickers you own at any given time? No, thank you."

"Rather telling that you know they're beige, though," she says.

###

Horcrux #659

It was a three-tiered papal tiara from the fourteenth century—gracefully conical, crafted almost entirely from gold, speckled metal surface littered with sapphires and diamonds, rubies and emeralds and fragile fragments of inlaid silver. It was on display at the Vatican, resting atop a crimson velvet pillow behind six solid inches of bullet-proof glass.

They did recon while pretending to be tourists—newlyweds—and asked a friendly German couple to take a picture of them using the expensive SLR camera that Draco had insisted on.

"We're going to have to use the Imperius," she told him later that night, pulling on a pair of knitted black gloves. "On the guards."

He nodded, and then sniggered.

"Can you believe you used to call them Unforgivables?"

She flinched.

"Nothing is unforgivable," she said sharply.

He paused.

"I feel like that's supposed to be my line, Granger."

###

now.

The sunset is a brilliant pastel portrait of smoky orange and fading magenta, the threat of quickly falling darkness looming like a storm cloud on the horizon.

"How do we know which turtle it is?" he asks, grey eyes hidden behind bronze-washed aviator sunglasses.

"Tortoise," she corrects, digging her toes into the sand. "Turtles are aquatic."

He gapes at her, incredulous. His nose is already sunburned.

"Fine," he says, shoving his hands into the pockets of his shorts. "Which tortoise is it? Can't exactly go stabbing them all in the neck with a syringe full of basilisk venom, can we?"

"Did you not even hear what I said to you on the way here?"

"I was sleeping," he says defensively.

"On the back of a dragon? I swear, I sometimes think you're narcoleptic, Malfoy, honestly."

He crosses his arms over his chest.

"You taught me breathing exercises, Granger, I don't know why you're acting surprised that I actually use them."

She glowers, the Lycra strings of her bikini top chafing against the back of her neck.

"Because you had insomnia," she bites out. "You were having nightmares every time we left England, and it was—it was affecting me. You know why."

A wave crashes, a gentle roar of white noise that brings along a warm whisper of salt-soaked wind.

"Just tell me how to find the fucking turtle," he sighs.

###

Horcrux #12

It was a candlestick, sleek and white and tapered and topped with a preternaturally flame-resistant wick. It had been stored for years in a moldy linen closet in the ancestral Lestrange mansion outside of Rouen, kept in a raw, unassuming cedar box with a dozen others that look just like it.

They were standing in the sparsely decorated foyer, waiting for their eyes to adjust to the dim lighting, when she finally spoke.

"Listen, Malfoy," she hissed, jabbing him in the throat with her wand. "I don't trust you. Harry doesn't, either, okay, which is why you're here with me, and I don't care what your mother did for us—you're a slimy little weasel, just like your father, and if you do anything that puts me or the people I love in danger—I will make what you watched your aunt do to me in your drawing room look like a bloody holiday, do you understand?"

His expression flickered.

"Thought I was a ferret," he said, impassive.

She clenched her jaw.

"Oh, shut up," she snapped, marching blindly down the nearest hallway. "We have to find the kitchen."

"Granger—"

"God, Malfoy, just shut—"

He cursed and grabbed her elbow, jerking her body towards his; she spun wildly and pitched forward, ending up with her palms splayed flat against his chest.

"What do you think you're doing?" she demanded harshly.

He gestured at an enormous spider web that was taking up the entire left side of the corridor; it was shimmering with magic, slavering dewy drops of ice-clear venom, and had a spider the size of a frying pan spread out across its interior.

"Acromantula," he said smugly.

Her nostrils flared.

He pushed her away.

"You're welcome, Granger."

She stiffened—

And he laughed.

###

now.

"You would be the first person I see when I come out of a coma," he says, wincing as he tries to sit up. "I was at least hoping for the dragon. I'd probably have even taken the manticore—can you believe that, by the way? A fucking manticore in the Galapagos Islands?"

She squints at the linoleum-tiled ceiling.

"You're such a prat," she says thickly. "You're an insane, idiotic, suicidal prat and what I really can't believe is that I haven't killed you yet."

He scratches at his chin.

"You're so sweet to me. Really. Did you bring flowers, too?"

She sniffs.

"Stop saving my life, Malfoy. I don't appreciate it in the least."

"Potter does, though."

Her face twitches.

"Harry and I are not on good terms right now," she says tersely. "He tried to send me to Ireland with Neville while you were—indisposed."

He chokes on a sip of orange juice.

"Yeah? How'd that go?"

She fidgets.

"He made inferior coffee."

He offers her a crooked smile, and his lips are dry and chapped, peach and pink and just the slightest bit red around the edges—and her chest is tight around her next breath, tremendously so, because she is suddenly aching with how very much she wants—

"Missed me, then?"

She tugs the sleeves of an oversized green sweatshirt down past her wrists.

"Don't be stupid," she scoffs. "I missed your French-press."

###

Horcrux #372

It was an opal—pearlescent and luminous, a gorgeous swirling miasma of cream and silver and reflective shards of blue, violet, yellow—and it was fitted into the center of a soft leather collar that hung around the neck of a gigantic black leopard in a jungle in Peru.

She spent two days building an elaborate trap, designing a unique system of ropes and pulleys that could be easily camouflaged to look like poison-green vines and then attaching them to an iron-barred cage—suspended from a nearby tree—before setting out a 72-ounce Porterhouse as bait.

Draco went to the nearest village and came back with a crossbow.

"For when your plan doesn't work," he explained, shrugging.

###

now.

"You're hovering," he remarks irritably, reaching around her to pick up a pair of antique binoculars. "And this cave really isn't big enough for that sort of thing."

"You ripped your stitches. You probably need new bandages."

He swears and lifts up his shirt.

"I can't see—is it bad?"

The long, jagged cut running along his left ribcage had split open, cracked down the middle like a fault line before an earthquake.

"That's disgusting," she observes with a grimace. "And I've changed my mind. No bandages. No antibiotic ointment. No touching at all, in fact."

His abdominal muscles contract as he chuckles.

"I'm lodging a complaint with Potter," he says. "You're an abysmal caretaker."

She tilts her head to the side.

"You don't happen to know what gangrene looks like, do you?"

"Maybe you should check that medical encyclopedia you keep in your bag that you think I don't know about," he suggests coyly. "Hypochondriac."

She brandishes a large, rectangular, hospital-grade bandage.

"I am now going to make absolutely sure that the adhesive bits wind up on your scabs," she informs him crossly.

He settles his back against a cold slab of granite.

"Just get on with it," he says. "Before the bear wakes up and we have to call for the dragon."

###

Horcrux #262

It was a muted brown bottle of 110 year-old Speyside Scotch whisky, hidden in the bowels of the Cragganmore distillery in Ballindalloch, candy-red wax seal intact and parchment label barely faded.

"On a scale of ten, how upset d'you think Potter would be if we just…drank this?" he wondered while leaning against the side of an upturned, decommissioned copper still.

She pursed her lips.

"Seventeen," she replied drolly. "But he probably wouldn't mind if we took an extra day to come back."

He hummed.

"Remember Switzerland?" he asked, wistful. "The Calvin bible?"

"We're not doing that again," she said flatly.

"Why not?" he whined. "As far as public marriage proposals go, I thought it was quite tastefully done—"

"We needed the key to the honeymoon suite, Malfoy, and the innkeeper was delusional enough to assume that we were together—"

"—so much free champagne, Granger, it was glorious—"

"—wasn't like any of it was real—"

"—definitely could have put more effort in to making it seem real, though, you didn't even cry properly—"

"—why you even had a ring in your pocket, I've no bloody idea—"

"—definitely try it again, maybe stage a fight during one of those haunted castle tours—"

"—not even listening to me, are you?" they asked in unison.

Their eyes met.

She bit her bottom lip, refusing to smile, and his chin quivered for a brief second—

"It's a bit fucked how much I like pretending to be normal, isn't it?"

She studied him intently.

"At least it's still easy for us," she said. "To pretend, I mean."

###

now.

"My mother wants us over for Halloween," he says, running a hand down the silver-blue spine of their sleeping dragon.

A cricket chirps in the distance.

"Your mother hates me."

"You bought her a vacuum cleaner for her birthday," he reminds her.

"It was a Dyson," she retorts. "It was expensive, not to mention practical. It isn't as if she has house-elves now."

"No," he says wryly, "just a regular housekeeper."

"Who she has to pay," she replies. "Because it isn't slave labor. Rather relevant distinction, don't you think?"

He pokes at their campfire with a scraggly tree branch.

"Probably best not to rub too much salt in that particular wound, Granger."

She rolls her eyes.

"Your father liked it," she mumbles, petulant.

"That's because my father's a helpless sycophant and you're..." he trails off.

She furrows her brow.

"I'm what?"

He tenses.

"You're you," he says, cheeks flushed with color. He clears his throat. "Can you pass me the marshmallows?"

She hesitates.

"Just don't give any to the dragon," she eventually says. "He still gets moody when I make hot chocolate."

###

Horcrux #400

It was a brick that was used to build the Great Wall of China. Ancient and dark grey and worn smooth by centuries of anonymous footprints, it was part of the bottom step in a shallow set of stairs made up of crumbling edges and loose, aerated mortar. There were two runes carved into the upper left side—one that looked like the head of a battle axe, furious and deeply-gouged, and a smaller, much less violent half-circle directly below it.

"Inertia," she translated, tapping her finger against the half-circle.

"And the other one?"

"It has…multiple meanings," she hedged.

"And?" he repeated.

She fiddled with the zipper of her sweatshirt.

"Undead," she answered quietly. "It could mean undead. Or—"

He reached out, grabbed her hand, tucked his thumb around hers and forced her to stay still.

"Hermione."

She glanced up. Her pupils were large and black, glassy, eclipsing honeyed amber irises in near-perfect ovals—

"Hungry," she said. "It could mean undead, or it could mean hungry, or it could mean both, and if it means both then we need to leave, now, because the sun is going down and we're three hours from Beijing and our magic doesn't work here, Malfoy, you know that, and I don't want to—did you just call me by my first name? Why would you—"

He swooped down, fused their mouths together—he felt her gasp and all he knew was that he wanted to take—

But she tasted like grape soda and peanut butter, all salty sweet chemicals and bright bursts of flavor, and her lips were moist and soft and pliant beneath his, lush and luscious, and as his tongue met hers—tentatively, yes, because he was still uncertain if he was allowed to touch, allowed to want, allowed to need—it was like an explosion of heat, a spark and a match and gallon of fucking gasoline and it was a revelation, truly, because he felt it in his spine and in his heart and in the fucking webbing between his toes—

She pulled away.

"I can't do this," she said desperately.

###

now.

His footsteps are aggressive as he stomps out of the dining room.

"Malfoy!" she yells, chasing after him. "Draco—don't you dare leave—stop walking, stop walking right now, or I swear, I swear I'll—"

He halts, spins around, spears her with a glare so fantastically reminiscent of their school years that she falters.

"You'll what, Granger? Tell on me to Potter?" he spits out. "Like I give a shit what he thinks right now."

Her expression hardens.

"Harry deserves to be the one to end this, Draco."

"Why?" he snarls. "Because his life was the only one ruined by the fucking Dark Lord? Really? Remind me where your parents are, Hermione—that is, if you even know. You don't, do you?"

She takes an instinctive step back.

"No," she says calmly, "I don't. But we're not talking about me. We're talking about Harry and how he's the only person I've ever known who would die to keep a world full of ungrateful strangers safe. This has always been his fight, Draco. Always."

"Of course," he says magnanimously, "and we're all just here to sit back and watch him play the bloody hero. How could I have possibly forgotten?"

"Is that what this is about?" she bleats. "God, since when do you even care about being anyone's hero? You aren't—that isn't who you are."

The skin around his mouth tightens.

"Nice to know where I stand, I suppose," he says in a tone positively dripping with acid.

She winces.

"I didn't mean—"

"We have one horcrux left," he interrupts. "Let's just get it over with, shall we?"

###

Horcrux #73

It was a 1928 Lionel train set, a line of tiny tin cars with chipped green paint and cast-iron bumpers and burnt-out headlamps. It was sitting at the bottom of a cardboard box in a Boston pawn shop basement, forcibly forgotten and collecting dust amidst a pile of broken, long-lost toys.

But when they went to break in, they found that the door was already unlocked; similarly, the security cameras had been disabled, the containers in the basement were neatly labeled, and there was a short, uncluttered path leading straight to the ground floor exit.

"This feels ominous," he said, moonlight glinting off of his polished platinum belt buckle.

"This feels like a trap," she returned, scalp prickling as she peered around the brick and shadow-shrouded alley.

"How would it be?" he asked in confusion. "No one knows we're here."

"Oh, Draco," a new, terrifyingly familiar voice cooed from the far end of the empty street. "Did you really think you could muck about, destroying the Dark Lord's things, and never be discovered?"

Draco paled.

"And with my very favorite mudblood," Bellatrix Lestrange went on, footsteps echoing menacingly. "Care to share, nephew?"

He drew his wand. His hand was trembling.

"I won't let you hurt her again."

Bellatrix pouted.

"Is that your final answer?"

A muscle worked in his jaw.

"Even if you kill me, she'll get away. You can't have her, not this time."

Hermione stared at him, eyes wide, dread pooling in a lukewarm puddle in the pit of her stomach—

"Oh, Draco, I'm sure I'll find the mudblood again eventually," Bellatrix simpered. "You and I, however—well, your mother deserves so much worse than to simply lose you, traitorous bitch that she is, but—I suppose your corpse at the door is a start, isn't it, sweetest?"

And then she raised her wand and Hermione stood frozen, stunned—she should have been Apparating, she knew that, she should have been halfway to Pennsylvania, should have been leaving, disappearing, running running running—but—except—you can't have her—not this time—mudblood mudblood mudblood—

"Avada Kedavra!" she shouted.

Silence descended.

"You—" he broke off abruptly. He looked sick. "You killed her."

There was a thrum of energy buzzing between them—like the remnants of a lightning strike, like the air was still vibrating with electricity, like an angry winter breeze that tasted like ash and impatience and steaming fresh scorch marks.

She scratched at her forearm.

"It doesn't matter," she lied.

###

now.

"I steal your sweatshirts because I'm afraid of dying," she confesses, damp hair plastered to her skull. "I'm afraid of dying, and of you not being able to get to me in time, and I want—the sleeves are too long, okay? They're easy to grab on to. And I want—it matters to me. It matters to me that the last thing I ever get to touch is a part of you, even if it's something ridiculous and—and petty, really, because you and I—that's what we are, we're ridiculous and we're petty and I don't want—I don't expect—"

The wind picks up, howling, screaming, dragging along torrents of pin-thin raindrops—

"Why are you doing this now?" he demands, arms locked around her neck as he braces their combined weight against the deck of the ship. "And don't tell me it's because we're about to die. We've been about to die every minute of every day for the past eighteen months."

The roll of the tide feels ferocious beneath his feet.

"Really?" she shouts back. "I'm trying say something important and you're complaining about my timing?"

The mast splinters into pieces with a resounding snap of rope and wood and a background thump of thunder.

"You know what?" he bellows, indignant. "Yeah, I bloody well am! I haven't exactly been subtle, Granger, but all I've ever gotten from you is 'we can't, Draco' and 'Potter is better than you, Draco' and 'here, let me buy your mother an incredibly offensive birthday present so that you have to spend the next six months running interference between us, Draco'—and it's been fucking frustrating, alright? You can't just—"

The shredded remains of an off-white linen sail whips around their ankles, slapping wetly against the exterior of the collapsing crow's nest.

"You cannot possibly be this dense!" she shrieks, squaring her shoulders. "I don't care if you're the one who kills Voldemort or brings back my family or rescues me from a bloody manticore—it's enough, okay, it's enough that you would do those things, that you want to do those things, I promise, it is—but what I really care about, Malfoy, is whether or not you're actually going to be alive long enough to for me to tell you that I'm in love with you, so if you wouldn't mind shutting up—"

A vein of neon yellow lightning lurches across the sky.

Surprised, he opens his mouth—

"Wait," she says quickly. "I think the dragon's here—and is that—is that Harry?"

###

Horcrux #599

It was a sterling Tiffany baby rattle, taken abroad and subsequently dropped into the gutter of a busy Cairo bazaar. It was old and used, with a shiny silver top tarred black with age; multicolored grains of sand had crept into the crevices of the elegant, scrupulously engraved name that ran along the inside of the handle.

"This is morbid," she remarked, clutching the ends of her argyle headscarf. "What do you think happened to the baby?"

He pocketed the rattle and dragged her to a nearby coffeehouse.

"I imagine he's living a magic-free, pseudo-happy life in a London suburb, actually."

"Really?" she asked, dubious.

"Yes, really." He cleared his throat. "It's my father's, unless there is a secret surplus of Lucius Malfoys hiding out in Egypt. And he's basically always been pseudo-something, hasn't he? 'Happy' just so happens to be the most recent applicable adjective."

Her jaw dropped as he ordered for them in clumsy Arabic.

"I—you—I'm sorry," she finally said. "I didn't see the name."

"No need to apologize," he replied, voice bland. "After all, what's another priceless Malfoy heirloom sacrificed to the Dark Lord's cause? Sentimentality has never been a family trait—I'd hate to make it one now."

She took a sip of Turkish coffee; the foam was thick, mostly sweet and only slightly bitter, but—

"I think this calls for some really destructive explosives," she said, decisive.

He smirked.

###

now.

"I can't believe you don't have condoms," she says, slick satin sheets tucked neatly around her breasts. "You have tampons in your bathroom—"

"They're yours!" he cries, outraged. "You made me buy an entire box when we got back from Brazil—"

"—rather worrisome amount of hairspray—"

"—said, and I quote, 'I never want to see another anaconda again'—"

"—live alone, honestly, it's not like I was here that often, you could have been shagging anyone—"

"—keep a fucking toothbrush here—"

"—still a virgin!" they both exclaim.

He turns towards her, navy duvet slipping down his bare chest, and props his head up with his elbow.

"You're a—really?" he asks.

She toys with a strand of her hair.

"I may have been waiting," she admits archly.

"For?"

"Don't be annoying."

He grins.

"Go on, Granger," he teases. "Tell me what you were saving yourself for. Was it a person? Was it me?"

She narrows her eyes.

"I will leave, you know."

He swoops down and presses a closed-mouth kiss to her shoulder.

"Remember Iceland?" he asks quietly. "With the waterfall and the swimming—"

"And the stalking?" she finishes. "You followed me to a pond and then watched me undress!"

He grimaces.

"You're making it sound sordid," he says. "And it wasn't. It was beautiful. You were beautiful."

She swallows.

He trails his fingertips across her forehead, the bridge of her nose, the bow of her lips and the point of her chin and the line of her jaw before drifting up the soft slope of her cheeks—

"Just—tell me how to not fuck this up, Granger. Please."

###

Horcrux #777

It was a tarnished, two-pronged fork, slim and roughly-molded, covered in chalky white barnacles, swathed snugly in seaweed—and it was waiting for them in the Unplottable ruins of Atlantis.

"How did Voldemort even get here?" she panted, hauling herself into the mouth of an underwater cavern.

"How did he manage to unearth a live human to fucking murder once he did get here?" he countered, swiping an aggravated hand through his hair. "That's what I want to know."

A half hour passed, and they found out that the Kraken wasn't just a legend, but was in fact eighty feet long and very much alive and in possession of ten slimy purple tentacles that were thick enough to be mistaken for tree trunks. It resembled an octopus and spat out tendrils of noxious black ink and had four eyes banded across the middle of its head. Rows and rows of razor-sharp incisors filled its wide-open mouth, and they stared in horrified fascination as it roared, loud and harsh and utterly, implacably inhuman.

"We only needed a fork," he said weakly, stumbling backwards.

They ran around the perimeter of the cavern, searching for a way to escape—

"There!" he said, pointing at a barely visible crawlspace about fifteen feet up the side of the craggy cave wall. "You go first, you're smaller, I'll hold it off!"

She stuck her wand between her teeth and began to climb—but the rocks were sharp and coarse, cutting into the thin skin of her palms, and blood was running in sticky crimson rivulets down the inside of her wrists, coating her fingertips, her sleeves, and then her foot slipped as she heard him cry out—

"Draco!" she yelled, dropping her wand.

A tentacle was wrapped around his midsection, squeezing, and his wand was lying next to hers, broken in half, and she didn't think, didn't stop, didn't feel anything but panic and pain and a deafening crescendo of fear fear fear—

She jumped down, scraped her knees, ignored the way her right ankle folded over, the flash of agony that accompanied a shredded tendon—and she scrambled for her wand—

Later, she wouldn't remember what spells she cast or what sort of magic she called on. She suspected that it was Dark, suspected that it was likely illegal and unlikely to have ever been taught to her at Hogwarts—she chose not to care, though, chose to forget and to only remember the way he'd embraced her, after, the way he'd whispered into her neck, face wet and ribs cracked—she would remember the way his shirt had been torn open, the way his tongue had tasted as he captured her lips and devoured her, hands roaming and hips rocking and the way he'd stepped back, wrenched himself free, gazed at her with such overwhelming intensity that she felt branded, stuck, found—

"The fork was in its mouth," he said, coughing, holding it up triumphantly.

now.

"We never named the dragon," she says drowsily, curling into the warmth of his chest.

He twirls a strand of her hair, mesmerized by the way the sun catches different shades of brown—kaleidoscopic streaks of fiery caramel and burnt sienna all tinged blonde and gold, with auburn undertones that glow chestnut red in the late afternoon light.

"Does he really need a name? He's back in Sweden now, isn't he?"

His tongue brushes the shell of her ear as he speaks.

She shivers.

"He should have a name," she murmurs, caressing the inside of his wrist.

His pulse jumps, corded, powder-blue veins throbbing under the heat of her skin.

"Seems a bit unnecessary," he says, running a lazy hand down the small of her back.

"Maybe," she replies, tracing a slow, steady spiral around his navel, fingernails grazing the patch of wiry blond hair below it. "It's funny, isn't it?"

He yawns.

"What is?"

She looks up at him, catalogues the angular planes of his face, the length of his neck and the breadth of his shoulders and the pebbled pink symmetry of his nipples—

"That we used to hate each other so much," she says. "When we were in school."

He reaches down, hitches his arm behind her legs and rolls her on top of him, spreads his hands around the curve of her waist as she straddles his knees

"Why is that funny? You punched me in the face when we were thirteen. My nose bled for an entire fucking hour."

She giggles.

"You deserved that."

He pinches her thigh.

"Why is it funny, though? That we hated each other?" he asks, dragging his thumb along the hollow of her pelvis.

"Because you'd think we would've had to change to end up—like this," she explains, motioning vaguely towards the rumpled sheets and torn-up condom wrapper. "You'd think we would be different, wouldn't you?"

He shifts his hips.

"Aren't we?"

She taps the divot between his collarbones.

"No," she says. "We're the same. Different priorities, maybe, but—you're still a selfish, manipulative prat who's isn't nearly as funny as he thinks he is—"

"Yeah? Well, you're still obnoxiously stubborn—"

"—complain about everything, it's preposterous—"

"—bossy little know-it-all, you can't stand to be wrong—"

"—and you're stupidly competitive, I don't even know who you're trying to impress—"

"—so patronizing, God—"

"—bit of a bully, you should really be nicer to Neville—"

And then he leans forward, to cut her off—

And she bends down, to meet him halfway—

And it's a compromise, and it's a promise, and it's—

###

Their first kiss had been a poorly-timed mistake.

Their second had been a collision, chaotic and messy, a clashing crash of relief and release—it had been made up of adrenaline and lust and the copper tang of recently spilled blood, tearstains and bruises, and it had all been terribly raw and terribly wrong, too.

Their third had been awkward and a bit clumsy, and their fourth had been slower, deeper, the answer to an unasked question, and it had only gotten better after that, their fifth and their sixth and their seventh all blending together, a fuzzy culmination of a hundred separate moments, a thousand separate wishes, and there was an eighth, of course, and there was a ninth, a tenth and a twentieth and a hundredth, and they were different, all of them, and some were sweet, and some were angry, and some were filled with laughter while others were interrupted by arguments—but that didn't matter, would never matter, because they knew that there would always be another one, that they would run out of numbers before they ever ran out of kisses to count.

###

now.

"I can't believe she re-gifted a bloody vacuum cleaner," she snaps, unwinding her Burberry scarf and tossing it onto the back of their sofa. "It's been a year, how passive-aggressive can she actually be?"

He pats her on the back, hand lingering on the zipper of her dress.

"She was just upset about the ring," he replies consolingly. "She was insulted that you didn't want hers."

She stills.

"What about you? Are you—insulted? That I don't want something from your family?"

He shrugs.

"Not particularly," he says honestly. "There aren't a lot of Malfoy traditions I'm all that interested in upholding. Not anymore, at least."

Her posture relaxes.

"Besides," he continues, smirking, lacing his fingers through hers and pulling her into his arms, "how can I be insulted that you decided to keep the ring that I bought you in Switzerland? That's romantic by our standards, Granger."

She cocks an unimpressed brow.

"We must have impossibly low standards."

He kisses the tip of her nose.

"Oh, the lowest," he agrees, ducking as she swats at his shoulder.

It's quiet, then, nothing but the far-off sounds of gridlocked traffic and raucous New Year celebrations managing to permeate the close, closeted atmosphere of their flat.

"But did she really need to wrap it using Slytherin colors? That just seems unnecessary, even your father looked uncomfortable—"

He kisses her to shut her up.

Mostly.

###