He hadn't had a kiss this good in… forever.

Draco could only feel her pressed against him, the warmth of her skin through her dress burning him like he was on fire, the pounding of her pulse that had somehow become the pounding of his.

They were connected. By the past, by hatred, by agony, by…

By the seats of Merlin's saggy sweatpants! What was he doing?

Draco wrenched away.

He didn't make connections. He didn't want them. They weren't safe, they weren't for him, and they were everything he avoided. And the last thing he wanted was to connect with a girl from the side of light. With a Gryffindor. With a mudblood… with bloody freaking Hermione Granger.

Panic raced through him making it difficult to take the next looked beautiful with her chocolate coloured tresses dishevelled and her mouth wet and swollen from his. Her white dress making her look like a fallen ran his hands through his fine platinum blond hair, hauling in long breaths to get that another surge of lust under control.

"This isn't going to happen," he said. "I... What is wrong with you, you mudblood."

She stared at him incredulously.

"Don't you dare, pin this on me, you bloody ferret! You kissed me!"

A looked of regret passed so fast across his face that Hermione would have missed it if she hadn't been staring at him, schooling his features back to the sneer that he loved so much.

"Oh! Get over yourself, Granger. I just thought, it would be a damn sad sight if you lived your pathetic life without ever getting kissed. What with two guys rejecting you in the past hour or so. So I supposed that I would do you a favour, we Malfoy's are magnanimous like that," he smirked.

And with the last look of loathing and a muttered mudblood, he shoved her to the side and strode away towards the dungeons.

Make that three guys, you absolute stupid moron. First Ron then Viktor and now even the albino ferret. Yule ball, my arse, she thought.

She looked at the retreating back of the boy who had given her, her first kiss. And she had never loathed a person so much in her life. She hated him for taking that perfect moment and ruining it. As hot tears dripped on her pristine white gown that she had so lovingly chosen, washing down the wretched make-up that Ginny had insisted on, her heart broke.

Oh! How she was going to burn this tainted white dress in a bonfire and dance around it, she tears blinding her vision she ran towards her dorm, just wanting this horrible day to end.

While on the other side of the castle, in the Slytherin dungeons Draco Malfoy looked at the blood red rose, that she had worn in her wrist as a corsage. The corsage that he had snatched without her knowledge while shoving her.

With a look of pure regret and sorrow marring his angular face, he pressed the rose in the pages of his old potions book.

The book, dog-eared around the edges, it's spine broken, and it's pages yellowed with age.

A book that he had read so many times that he could remember each and every word.

Sometime in the future...

"Dad!"

"Dad!"

Draco braced himself before his hurricane of a son, crashed into him. He looked into his son's stormy grey eyes.

"Put on your brakes, little guy, before you crash into a wall or something. What is it Scorp, where's the fire, son?" he asked.

His son put on an expression that was pure Slytherin. Man! he was so proud. Scorp smirked, reminding him so much of himself. He fished out an old dilapidated book from his back and shook it in front of his face like a prize. Smiling in triumph, he opened the book to a page which had a rose that was pressed inside it. It was his old potion's book. A book that he had lugged everywhere with himself.

Before Draco could grab the book from the little tyke's hand, Scorp held it at his back.

So, this was how they were going to play it, Draco thought.

"So, this is where you keep your stuff from your old girlfriends. Inside school books?" His son asked with such glee that it would have put any seasoned blackmailer into shame.

"Return that book, Scorp! Right this instant," he said with a mock glare.

"Uh... huh! Not this easily. Maybe a trip to the Weasley Wizard's Wheezes might just do the trick," he said innocently.

"You little git! Ok fine. We will go to that wretched shop this weekend. Now scram" Draco grabbed that book from his son's hands.

"You are a complete sap Dad, admit it."

He shook his head while a smile threatened to spill from his lips, at the retreating back of his twelve-year-old son. His son was so much like himself and so much not.

He opened his old potions books, running his hands lovingly along it's old yellowed pages. The rose, which was previously a blood red had faded with age living behind a faint shadow of what it was. There was no lingering fragrance left amidst the pages, but he remembered it alright. He remembered everything about that night. Her lips. her body pressed against his, her breath, he remembered it all. As if it had happened yesterday.

Before he could take a trip to the past, soft feminine hands hugged him from the back.

He pulled his wife of thirteen years to the front so that he could hug her.

She looked up into his eyes filled with so much love, sometimes he thought that this was a dream. A beautiful dream but dream nonetheless.

"Please don't tell me, our son was blackmailing his father. Oh boy! I knew this day was coming. This is what I get for living with a bunch of snakes" she said with affection.

"Get used to it, love. But you can have the next one as a Gryffindor," said Draco.

"You bet your pretty arse, Malfoy. Lyra will get sorted into Gryffindor next year, just like her Mom. Then we both can team up against you, snakes. So what was he holding you against?"

Draco showed her the dried rose hidden amongst the pages of the old book. She ran her finger around its edges and then looked up at him... angrily.

"Please, don't tell me that, Pansy Parkinson gave you this. And you kept it," she huffed with fake anger.

"Oh please. Give me some credit. I could barely tolerate her voice. This rose is from someone, someone special to me more than my life."

Before she could get really angry, he pulled her snugly against him tucking her head in the crook oh his neck, her favorite place.

"You remember our fourth year, the yule ball," he asked.

She pulled away and made a face, she replied, "like I could forget. I surely remember a certain someone who was an utterly insufferable jerk."

"Well, this rose is from your corsage, the corsage that I stole from you that night. Even then I was crazy about you and your bushy head," he replied with a smile.

"I love you Draco Malfoy," she said with all the love in the world, as her eyes glazed with unshed tears.

"I love you too Hermione Granger, always have and always will."

She raised herself on her toes to capture his lips in a deep kiss. He needed no further encouragement, he crushed his lips onto hers as if she wasn't different as if she was just an extension of his own being, his own soul. He had been kissing her for years, but damn, it still felt like the first time.

They had come a long way from that fateful night in the dark corridor and his love for her had only grown from then.

A/N- hope you like this one-shot. Don't forget to review, it makes my day.

Tada...

Don't forget to check out my other fics. They are all Dramione. Please, please review!

"cucking-frazzy", "Obliviate: The start to an end!" and the " five-year meddler".