dedicated to: my girls, my solar system and the squad.
written to: Wilder Mind, the whole album.

He could never sleep and sometimes she couldn't sleep, so they didn't-sleep together. She never asked about the raggedy blanket just as he never asked how she got the firewhisky onto the castle grounds. They never speak.

Months into the school year and he hadn't figured out why he came back for the optional seventh-eighth year, but he was here, going from class to class and pretending everyone wasn't avoiding him. He ignored the Snape-less dungeons, the empty common rooms and emptier house table, the distant memorials. Maybe he thought nostalgia would coax sleep back to his bed, the lullaby of lake water against his window…

Their heels drummed against the cold stone sides of the Astronomy Tower with the blanket beneath them. A mason jar of blue fire sat pressed between their thighs, glass tempering its coiled heat. He did his best to ignore her hip against his, her arm against his - Merlin's beard, how was she so warm when it was chilly? He knew he should've brought his suit jacket, but who the hell wears a suit jacket while "hanging out" with one-third of the Golden Trio under the stars?

Whenever he felt like torturing himself, he wondered why she came up here when she knew without a doubt who - what - she would find. How could she seek warmth from him without feeling his aunt's mark left burn? How could she tip the bottle back, knowing his mouth had been there? How could she share when he'd done his damn best to break her the only way children knew how?

Down in the lake, the giant squid floated at the surface and tangled its tentacles with the merpeople to birth turbulence and waves. Water smashed against the shore. It was an arrhythmic beat as crest met crest and trough in turn, accompanied by an esoteric language of bubbling laughter sweeping up, over their heads, up.

He felt her shiver. Halfway to putting his arm around her shoulder and pulling her close, he paused. They weren't that close, were they? It would be weird. Bucktoothed Granger without her buckteeth, smartest damn witch of their age, savior ten times over and ten times that to come. Slippery Malfoy who was better at being led than leading, better at slinking and sulking than stalking, couldn't find the right side (let alone the winning one) with a Muggle label maker.

Scowling to himself, he leaned back on the arm next to her instead.

Here they were, both gunning for oblivion.

He chugged the whisky, savoring the burn and pretending it was courage, before handing it over to her. She set the bottle beside her. The liquor loosened long-held curiosity from the back of his throat. "Doesn't it seem totally fucked up that we're both up here?" He paused. "Together?"

She shrugged, but his eyes were on the curls she spun around her fingers. "You've heard me scream. You've seen me at the closest I've ever been to breaking and you did nothing."

"What a character reference."

Her shoulders straightened out. The silver in the moon kept sneaking its way to to illuminating the blasphemy along the inside of her arm and he kept looking away. He could almost smell the dungeons and his aunt's favorite apricot tea and Nagini's meals and. Did she remember? Could she forget?

She spoke with her usual pragmatism. "We were teenagers."

"Are," he pointed out.

She turned to him, face shadowed and hair haloed in the captured moonlight, the bottle in her hand. "What could you have done?" she asked, tipping her head back for a drink. When she swallowed, her eyes were bright and grimaceless. "Stand in a rundown palace of… decaying greatness that bled against the world and beg relief for a dirty Mud -."

His finger was against her lips; he thought that stopped her, knew her breath, warm and soft, pitter-pattered his heart. "Don't."

"Mudblood."

He kissed her.

One hand went for the bottle and the other curved around her waist, palm pushing her shirt up to savor the curve of her side. He swept through her mouth, tasted her, sought to steal the curse - his favorite as a child, "Mudblood Mudblood Mudblood, Granger!" - and leave her clean from it. She sighed into his lips. Irrational thoughts that said he could sweeten the past burdened him. It felt like they were swelling and railing inside him, cracking the cage of his ribs in their rush for mass exodus.

His lungs remembered air before he did and he looked at her and she looked at him and the lake creatures continued their game and they looked.

She didn't say she forgave him, that he didn't need forgiveness. She didn't say his nothing was okay, that at least he hadn't held the wand against her arm and laughed at her screams. She didn't say it was war, that he had nothing to be ashamed of.

She just leaned against him, stilted by the recrimination he felt he should feel, on the edge of the Astronomy Tower at two in the morning.

Hold my gaze, love, you know I want to let it go.
We will stare down at the wonder of it all
And I-I will hold you in it and I-I will hold you in it.