. . .

ruddy cheeks

. . .

Her grandmother was yelling at her about something — shaking her shoulders and cupping her cheeks to make her understand. But Hermione was too busy watching the ruby red splatters of red scatter into halos of distraught on the floor; they were the only remnants of the warm cherry pie that wafted the serene smell through the kitchen and into the family's nostrils.

Hermione wanted to lick the floor clean and wipe up the array of scarlet jewels with a silky lave of her tongue, but instead, she feigned impassiveness when her grandmother continued to reprimand her for toppling over her days' worth of work on the oak wood floors.

The stains of merlot were captivating, the filling leaving a glimmering pattern to soak through the mind of the a nine-year-old and extremely unhappy and brown-eyed Hermione.

Years later she remembered the way the cherry pie filling squelched underneath her hands as her grandmother forced her to clean up. And she recalls how she sucked on the ends of her ruby red stained fingers afterwards, relishing in the marks of grimy fruit tainting the plains of her palms.

—

The sick slap of skin rang through her ears, and another shout of her father coursed through her veins. Breaking of glass, and drenching of hard liquor, and more and more and more crying.

Hermione locked herself in her room, humming the soft, supple tune of a lullaby that she heard on the crackly, static radio in her apple-scented kitchen when she was younger.

A slamming of a door, and blood-dripped floors, and howls of words.

Humming and humming and humming till Hermione heard nothing.

—

Malfoy had called her a Mudblood, meaning dirty blood or tainted blood, during a Quidditch row between Slytherin and Gryffindor.

He was beautiful — in an objective way, of course. Hermione never had trouble thinking that, even when he had made fun of her own bushy hair as she scurried around the Hogwarts' Express, asking for a missing toad. Generations of purity lined up his face in the most symmetrical ways — the most ravishing ways. Mercurial grey eyes and baby-soft blond hair and iridescent silver skin.

Clad in the impeccable pressed Quidditch uniform, his gelled back hair, and a smug curve of the lips, he insulted the tattered brooms of the Weasley twins, his hoarse voice dripping with unrestrained loathing. She bit back, wanting to feel his flesh between her teeth, insulting the grandiose façade he put up about his true athletic skills; he was merely wealthy, nothing more to it.

He had looked at her soon after with a poised purse of his lips, sneer plastered on his aristocratic features and abhor dripping from his swirling light eyes in waves of fervour, and said the word, no qualms about it.

Her veins supposedly coursed with mud, sullying her heritage, her name, and her status as a witch. She itched crassly at the veins running rivers up her forearms, never breaking eye contact from Malfoy's white hot gaze as the Slytherin team chortled mercilessly behind him.

Later, when she rubbed Ron's back as slug after slug slithered out of his mouth with slimy belches, Hermione tried to ignore how her palms sweat from the thought of his precious mouth forming the word.

She dreamt that night of a pale blond, with a sensuous pointy nose and fair slopes of red-tinged cheeks, dirty under her own touch.

—

It was in some sick sense that she thrived off the bitter taste of blood on her tongue from the cots of dead bodies scattered around the Great Hall in the aftermath of the War.

Some sick sense made her flutter her eyes shut briefly, sucking in the cool, tangy taste through her nostrils in bouts of appreciation.

She watched Ron mourn his fallen brother; and watched Andromeda Black sob over her child; and watched Parvati cry over her best friend; and watched Dennis starched with a pale face over his brother.

But Hermione focused on the mingling of blood and sweet, sweet sweat.

It thrilled her to the core.

And seeing Malfoy for the first time with dirt-smudged cheeks and blond hair scattered with cowlicks made Hermione's heart begin a staccato rhythm against the caverns hollowing out her chest. For the first time, he was tainted, ridden with the soils of the world; nothing left her more breathless.

—

Eight years, four months, and twenty-seven days after the War, Hermione found him.

He was working in the Ministry as a filer — to repent all his crimes in one low, demeaning job.

Hermione had been waiting for the lift, her pale pink blouse impeccably tucked into the grey woollen skirt and her sleek ebony heels tapping at the marbled floor with intent. When the ding finally rang out, she stepped inside with purpose, tucking her blazer into the crook between her scarred left forearm and her torso.

Malfoy had entered minutes later, still a head taller with luscious blond hair flowing from it. He held onto the handle on top of the lift, nodded toward her in one sign of acknowledgement, and ticked his jaw.

She had watched him from the corner of her eye and noticed his robes still pressed to fine precision, shoes still polished till they looked ready to squeak, and trousers still form-fitting on his waist.

Objectively, she wanted to ravish him.

Subjectively, she wanted to soil him.

—

Keeping courtesies, Hermione knocked on the unevenly forged wooden door of his office — if you could even deem it that — with two knuckles and waited. And waited. And waited.

He creaked the door open two minutes later and out emerged his head. "Sorry, Miss Granger, I was rearranging the file cabinets."

She smiled victoriously and waved it off. "No need, Malfoy. I just came to see if you'd be up for drinks later?"

"Me?" he said, more as a reaffirmation than a question.

"You."

Silence. Unbearably itchy silence that tickled underneath her nose.

"I — I. . . okay," was all he said.

And she gave him her address. And that was that.

—

"Do you want to come in?" she asked softly, tucking her hair behind her ear in an attempt to seem feminine, as if he would care — as if his opinion about her mattered, in some strange, deranged way of thinking.

Malfoy nodded once, waiting for her to swing open the scratched mahogany door, key fitting into the lock in one placed thrust.

Hermione led in him into her flat, following the trail of eggshell walls till they met her sitting room, adorned with brown leather couches and a patterned Persian rug. He sat down, slouched underneath her gaze, crossing his hands and waiting for her to speak.

She asked him if he wanted anything to eat seventeen minutes later; he had nodded again.

Munching on the berry scones she had cooked earlier, Malfoy remained silent. He dropped a dollop of strawberry jam on the corner of his mouth, and Hermione leaned forward and connected them, tasting the flavours of rich fruit down to her bones. When he didn't push her back, but instead slowly brought up his trembling hand to rest baselessly at her neck, Hermione pushed him flat down against her couch, still nipping at his lips with ardour.

Malfoy barely resisted again, leaving her to set the pace, as she moved her lips over his to suck on his bottom one, extracting a low moan from the depths of her throat. Her hands splayed across his lean chest, knees resting at the side of his hips. Her fingers made motions of their own, travelling in quick movements of both torment and salvation until she ripped his shirt in half, buttons spewing all across her rug in silent drops. Now as the contempt obliterates from the depths of her memory, all Hermione could focus on was Malfoy laying limp on her couch, his tongue responding in waves of heat against her navel.

Forty three minutes in and Hermione suckled on the tender skin of his neck and ran her hands through his hair, properly tousling it into a flopped mess on his scalp. His trousers lay shed and slightly torn on the floor, and her senses were tickled with the sensation of her own heat meeting with his in gasps and groans.

She scratched down his back until she felt the warm liquid stain her fingers. He didn't seem to mind the blood — not anymore. And she kissed his scars with caresses of her tongue, down his chest, over his clavicle, up his jaw, and soundly on his swollen lips.

Forty seven minutes — Hermione laid in silence next to a sweaty and sated Malfoy, her nails running down the sides of his torso, grime collecting with every last scrape of his dank skin.

Fifty eight minutes later, Malfoy politely bid her adieu, giving a curt nod. He hesitated briefly before leaning forward for one last lingering kiss on her cheek before disappearing into the ashes of the floo. She could only wonder what he looked like as he came out on the other side.

An hour and twenty-one minutes in, Hermione furiously scrubbed at her skin, leaving trails of red marks down her skin and raw and splotchy pores shouting for relief.

And even later, she could still feel him tainting her, down to every last cell in her body.

She hated it.

But she loved it even more.

—

"You're late," she said, lingering her touch on his wrist before pulling him in further into her office.

"I had an appointment," he offered as an explanation, eyes blank and void.

She attached her lips to his neck and placed his hands on her waist. "Where?"

"St. Mungo's," was all he whispered. His therapist. She understood. Mildly.

"Mhmm."

Her teeth grazed the edge of his jaw, pulling him by the neck to accompany her height against his. He didn't respond immediately, but tentatively, he craned his neck back. She bit down, hard. A small, strangled sound came out of his mouth, but she muffled it with her tongue.

Sixty eight minutes later, he left her office with nine purplish love bites adorning his neck.

He softly kissed her forehead before leaving, and she ignored the tiny warmth that spread to her toes.

—

"Hi," he said quietly, a single flower in his trembling hands. It was pale pink coloured and the verdant steam was bent at the end, but he softly transferred it to her hands anyway.

She didn't think to respond, dropping the floral plant and cupping his cheeks instead. Staring into his eyes, she hoped it could be considered as a thanks enough before she started her trail of white hot kisses down his Adam's apple.

—

Three minutes after she descended from her climax, she rolled off his torso, keeping their distance.

And thirty seven seconds later, he reached out to lace their hands together in a sweaty, clammy, sticky pile of fingers.

She didn't resist — no matter how much she wanted to.

—

"Do you want to. . ." he gulped, ". . . come to my flat?"

"For sex?" she asked nonchalantly, keeping her gaze steady at the small bend in her fingernails.

"I can make pasta," Malfoy offered.

"No need," Hermione said. And he nodded. "When?"

"Whenever."

—

It was a grungy old place, laced with water damage on the ceilings and tattered couches he probably pulled out of the dumpster. A low, acid smell leaked from the nearby building, suffocating the place in a foul scent only cured by a flick of her wand. He wasn't allowed magic anymore.

He held her hand as they walked to his kitchen, and he gave her a bowl of bow-tie pasta doused in pesto sauce. They both ate in silence until she started kissing his neck.

She found that the door creaked, and the floor creaked, and even the bed creaked.

And when she finished in a gasp, he found enough strength in him to kiss her full-heartedly on the lips.

They had sex at his place every single time after that.

—

The smell of sex still lingered on her skin, seeping at her pores, lapping at her toes, and engulfing every sense of her until all she could feel was his dirt and all she could taste was his dirt. It left her satisfied — in a way that seemed so unnecessary up until that point in her life.

She knew of his shy smiles after his milky release speckled her thighs; and she possessed his soft caresses on her face after his hair was unmanageable; and she held his nuzzles into her neck as he cried sometimes, dripping hot water down his cheeks and burning at his skin; and she gripped onto the way he said Hermione, almost the way he uttered Mudblood years and years ago, but with sweet intentions and eyes that could light up a country; and she relished in it.

Forever, he was tainted, ridden with the soils of the world; and nothing, she'd argue, left her more breathless.

a/n: yes, she uses him really hard in this one-shot in a really sick sense. i wrote her to be that way. i kind of like it, though. sorry if this is crap, it's my first fic. also no beta, so all mistakes are mine. thoughts?

update 12/6: creds to the photo on cover: Marion Bolognesi