Breath Mints / Battle Scars

XLIV

February 22nd, 1999

The sheets clinging to the damp, naked flesh of her side are Slytherin green — and she's thinking that should feel stranger than it does.

She's always had bad timing. Always had bizarre epiphanies and aimless trains of thought strike at the wrong moments. And this feels like the absolute worst moment to be wondering what her fifteen-year-old self would be thinking — this moment, with Draco Malfoy's strong, pale hand splayed across her bare hip, holding her in place; with her knee hitched up high to accommodate and her hair clinging to the pillow with sweat; with those Slytherin green sheets gathered into her fist as her breath catches around a moan; with him pressed against her back, quiet gasps sweeping across the nape of her neck as he slides in and out slowly — slower than he ever has — because she asked him to.

And yet she's wondering all the same. Figures her fifteen and sixteen and even seventeen-year-old selves would all be horrified to find that their future held a moment like this. Because surely, the universe can't have tilted so far on its axis that she's staring at serpent-adorned bed curtains as those warm, electric pulses surge up from between her thighs. Surely, it can't be Malfoy — Draco — she's letting do this. Surely, it can't feel the way it feels.

But it is. And it does. And it's sunken in before, but never quite this deep. Because before, every time always felt so spur-of-the-moment. Unexpected collisions in even less expected places.

This, however — this is deliberate. Letting him tow her along the deserted corridors and down the all too familiar Dungeon steps. Letting him lead her wordlessly through the common room, a few Slytherins still awake — none of them even looked up. Watching him cast silencing charms around his four-poster, with the sleeping form of Blaise Zabini not two meters to the left.

And a part of her is realizing why she blurted out those ridiculous words in the boathouse.

To her, the bed is a symbol, and Hermione has never shared a bed — a real bed — with anyone. Not with Viktor. Not with Ron. Not even just to sleep. There's something too personal about it. Too vulnerable. It's incredibly different from those pillows on the floor of the Divination classroom. It's as if—

Draco's lips glide from the pulse point on her throat to the shell of her ear, grip tightening on her hip ever so slightly as he rocks in a little deeper. Still so torturously slow.

"If you're going to solve puzzles in your head while I'm inside of you," he murmurs, voice a little ragged, "the least you could do is include me."

Hermione tilts her head, nose brushing his unexpectedly. She speaks against the corner of his mouth, each slow thrust moving her lips across his cheek. "You want to help me solve a puzzle?"

His hand frees her hip, palm splaying out across her thigh — sliding up along the tendons to the crease behind her knee. The delicacy of it mixed in with the way he rolls his hips makes her shiver and buck against him.

"Well yes, if it's so much more interesting..." He slides in to the hilt, jolting the breath out of her. "— than this."

She's left panting for several seconds, eyes falling shut as she fists the sheets tighter in hand. The word, "Faster," falls from her lips in a hiss.

Draco hums into her shoulder. "Odd. I seem to remember you begging me to go slow."

She scoffs instinctively, the jerk of it proving interesting with the way they're connected. He tenses. She groans.

"I did not beg you for anything."

His lips part against her pulse, teeth grazing skin as he speaks in a breathy croon meant to be her own. "Please. Oh, please please, Draco — fuck me slow."

She grinds herself back against him in a way that's supposed to be indignant but earns a moan from both of them instead.

"I never said that," she gasps out.

"Please," he mocks in a whine. "Please, please, please."

And she would be pulling away — swatting at his arm and giving him a dirty look — if he weren't punctuating each word with a languid, angled thrust. Instead, her eyes roll back into her head, and she pushes herself tighter against him, tucking her nose into the crook of his neck to press a kiss to his throat. She tastes salt and finds herself tracing her tongue over the spot in search of more.

"Oh, now I have your attention?" he murmurs — deep vibrations against her lips.

"You never lost it."

He goes still inside of her. Just hovers there for a long moment, his dark shadow draped over her side. And she has a feeling he's talking about something else entirely when he says, "I don't believe you."

His tone makes her shift away, even as every muscle and every nerve ending in her body begs her not to. That strange, throbbing emptiness takes his place when he slides out, and she feels abruptly cold as she twists in the emerald green sheets to face him.

The only light by which to see him comes from the thin sliver of sea-glow seeping through a crack in the bed curtains. It paints a quarter of his face blue, the rest left in shadow, but she can see his right eye. Can see the bruises — part of the reason she wanted to face away in the first place.

"What don't you believe?" she whispers, resting her head on the pillow.

He stays propped on one elbow, staring at her. For a moment, he doesn't answer, letting the rougher-than-usual pads of his fingers trace the hollow beside her hipbone. He glances down, watching the movements as he speaks. "You say one thing, and you do another."

"I—"

"You tell me we're the same, but you spend all your time trying to remind yourself why we're different."

"That's not—"

His palm flattens out across her bare stomach, the soft caress surprising her into silence.

"You say you'd pick me out of a room of hundreds," he continues, still watching his hand slide back and forth, "and then you run."

A lump forms in her throat, and he lets that hand drift downward, disappearing beneath the sheets. His eyes flit back to hers when one finger slides between her legs — still warm, still wet from moments ago — and she can't help but twitch as she holds her breath.

"You fuck me in a hospital bed," he says softly — always speaking in tones that don't match — and his forefinger starts to draw torturous circles around her clit. "You let me have you first — I couldn't even believe it when I saw you bleed. I thought you were lying."

She gasps sharply when his thumb slips inside of her.

"You let me have you first," he says again, "but you can't bear the thought of anyone knowing it."

Her mind wants to turn to static, ripples of pleasure shooting up her spine, but she wakes up enough to defend herself. "I changed my—"

"Yes, you changed your mind, I know." Draco lets the back of his thumb press hard against her inner walls, and her back arches, hands coming to rest on his chest without knowing it. "I'm only making a point."

"What — god — what is your point?" She's hardly focused now, all efforts diverted to angling her hips so she can press harder against his hand.

"You say you love me," he whispers, going still.

She freezes too. Holds her breath.

"But all you ever do is cause me pain." He stares at her out from beneath those blond lashes, unapologetic. Blinking slowly as he watches her process his words.

After a moment, she releases that breath, and it tousles the damp hair hanging across his forehead.

"Pain," she echoes at first, because it's all she can think to say.

His eyes flit back and forth between each of hers. As though he's reading her like a chapter in a book. A chapter he doesn't understand. "Yes," he says. "Pain."

But when his jaw grazes hers and he leans in to kiss her, she finds herself pulling away. Because there's something she's been wanting to do — to try — and if it can somehow simultaneously prove him wrong, then that's two birds with one stone.

But god above, what a thing it is to watch all his defenses fly up at just that slight movement. Fear and fury and doubt cloud up in his eyes as they break away from hers, like he suddenly can't stand to have her look at him. And it's simply too sharp and painful to witness for even half a second longer.

With twice his enthusiasm, she surges forward and captures those lips. His small gasp makes way for her tongue to slip inside, caressing the sharp edges of his teeth — the soft warmth of the roof of his mouth. It's a more filthy kiss than she thinks she would've ever dared before, but after a day like today she feels very little still exists in the way of limits.

She slips one hand across his forehead between them, being careful not to press too hard on the bruises as she smooths out each crease of worry.

"So quick to doubt me," she murmurs around the lash of his tongue.

His arms have curled around her now, and he's giving back as good as he gets — starting to press her down into the mattress.

"Wait," she says, breaking away from his lips once more, because if she lets him settle between her thighs she'll never get the chance to try what she wants to. And before the doubt can creep back across his face, she strokes a hand down the sharp plane of his cheek and tells him, "Trust me."

He does.

Enough to allow her to slide out from under him. Enough to turn and sit back against his headboard, raising a curious brow as she sets about finding her wand in the messy pile of their clothes.

"I never see you like this." His voice is quiet and low — contemplative — as he watches her conjure a hair tie and set about gathering her chaotic mane into something manageable.

"With my hair up?" she asks, trying not to get distracted by the angled slopes of his shoulders, now more visible in that sliver of light.

He shakes his head and she realizes where his gaze is trained. Flushes red as she glances down at her bare torso, the sheets gathered around her waist.

"You see me naked all the time," she says, resisting the powerful urge to cover herself. Draco may have said he loves her, but he has never explicitly called her beautiful — and she's wondering now if he notices the slightly larger swell of one breast as opposed to the other. The clumsy smattering of freckles in the valley between them. She wonders if it bothers him that she doesn't have more to offer in this department.

"But I never get to look," he says, and again it's like he's reading, eyes sweeping back and forth across every available inch of skin. She starts to itch with it, growing nervous. And she can't be nervous if she plans to follow through on this.

So she swallows and wets her suddenly dry lips and makes herself ask, "And what do you think?"

The last thing she expects is a scoff. "You know what I think," he drawls, shaking his head. Sharp. Dismissive.

She swallows again, infinitely more nervous now. "No. You've never told me."

Something passes through his gaze at that. There's a slight quiver in his brows. He readjusts his posture where he sits, silent for a long moment.

Then, "I've shown you what I think."

Her pulse settles a little in her chest, but she's still far from satisfied. She urges herself to sit tall and push him to his limits. "I'd like to hear what you think, if you don't mind."

His lip curls up at the snark in her tone, eyes narrowing just a fraction, and for the briefest moment it feels like they're back in First Year. Testing and riling one another. "Oh, if I don't mind?"

"Yes, if you don't mind." She sits up even straighter, internally hyper-conscious that she's on full display for him.

Draco crosses his arms, letting his head fall back against the headboard and surveying her through lowered lids. His expression exudes superiority and arrogance, and for just a moment she well and truly panics.

Because what if this is one of those moments he chooses to air out the ugliness between them?

"Well, Granger, if you must know —" he all but hisses, and it takes everything in her not to squeeze her eyes shut. Not to yank that sheet up and over herself and hide. "— I used to imagine you."

Her expectations fly out the window. "What?"

Draco shifts with discomfort, glancing down at the sheets in favor of looking at her and tugging on a stray thread. "In Third Year," he continues, tone still sharp and somewhat indignant. "Father was suddenly around less. Busy with meetings — I'm sure you know what sort. I suddenly didn't have to spend nearly as much time trying to best Saint Potter, because I knew I wouldn't get a scathing letter every time his marks were half a point better than mine."

She feels a stab of something. Guilt? She thinks he'd murder her if he knew it was sympathy, judging by the way he shoves past the subject.

"I had time on my hands that I'd never had before, and lots of space in my head he wasn't taking up any longer." A quick glance her way, then back at the seam of the sheet he's unraveling. "I was thirteen," he says with a shrug. "I didn't know what was wrong with me. I just knew I constantly felt like I had to sneak off to broom cupboards and shove a hand down my trousers."

She feels herself blush. And that's where he sort of loses it.

His tone comes out bitter and biting and increasingly furious, and it in no way aligns with anything he's saying.

"I felt like I lost all self control. I was so ashamed of it, but it was also the only thing I ever wanted to do. And Merlin fucking knows I'd never seen anything as pretty as you."

Her breath catches. He hardly seems to notice.

"You in those fucking ridiculous Muggle jeans, with your monstrous hair and your gorgeous little mouth. Fuck, I hated how it always used to be you. I'd lie right fucking here —" He slaps the mattress, and her pulse jumps. "— and do my level best to picture Pansy in one of her absurdly short skirts, or Johnson that time I saw her changing after Quidditch practice, and I would just..." He trails off, squaring his jaw and gritting his teeth as he makes the lewd up-and-down motion with his hand in favor of saying it. Then his eyes jump to hers, quick and unexpected. Like the crack of a whip. "But every fucking time my mind would just — just fucking implode, and one second it'd be Pansy up against the wall and the next it'd be those fucking eyes." He points at her. An accusation. "That fucking hair. These hands." He reaches out and yanks on one, making her gasp before he lets it drop. "One second it's Pansy, and the next it's you I'm on my knees for, and it's your cunt I can taste — though I swear I never imagined you'd taste quite like you do, fucking hell — and you just fucking blindsided me."

It's like one of his diary entries. Incessant, furious rambling he can't seem to stop.

"I was supposed to find you repulsive. I was supposed to think of you like vermin, and yet there I fucking am, pumping myself fucking dry night after night, wishing I knew what you felt like on the inside. Wondering if Weasley fucking knew and wanting to be fucking sick. And to make matters worse, I still fucking hated you. I thought I was losing my mind, because every time I looked at you — with that superior little tilt of those fucking hips, and those ridiculous fucking eyebrows — I could somehow simultaneously picture making you writhe under me and kicking your fucking teeth in. Because I didn't know you. I knew absolutely fuck-all about you except that your blood was supposed to be filthy and that your eyes made my mouth water."

Her cheeks are wet. She hardly knows.

"And now look at me." He spreads his arms wide and gives a defeated, incredulous sort of huff. "Now, I do know you, and now I'm fucking hopeless. Now I don't lose sleep over missions, or Marks, or my fucking father — I lose sleep over you. Wondering what happens to you if I ever fuck up again. If I'm already fucking things up just by being involved. You — you sit there after barging your way into my head, into my fucking bloodstream — trespassing — and you want to hear what I think? You want me to tell you you're pretty? So bloody beautiful I want to gouge my fucking eyes out? You want to hear that? After you took this stupid fucking organ out of my chest with your little fist and you just —" He gathers his own hand into a fist. "— just fucking squeezed until it looked fit to burst? After I begged you not to stand between me and whatever consequences I fucking earned? After I told you I couldn't stand to have one more fucking thing weighing on my conscience? After all this fucking pain you put me through, you want to hear what I think?"

He's panting when he finishes, hand still pulled tight in a bloodless fist between them. And she slaps the tears off her cheeks as quickly as she can, even as she knows he's already seen.

For a moment, they do absolutely nothing. For a moment, it feels like nothing can be done.

But nothing is not an option.

"Pain?" she asks again, stupidly, into the raw silence.

"Yes," he breathes. "Pain."

She has to do it now — before she allows herself to process what she's just heard and utterly break down.

So she sniffs back the residual tears and screws up her courage, walking forward on her palms until they bracket his thighs beneath the sheets. "Alright," she says and starts to tug them down from around his waist.

"What are you doing?" Gone is the furious vitriol of moments ago, and now he's the one who sounds nervous.

"Tell me if this is pain."

His hand shackles her wrist before she can slide the sheet down those last critical inches past his hipbones, the smack of it loud in her ears. When she glances up at him, a question in her eyes, he looks suddenly young. Boyish. Frightened and unsure.

She quirks a gentle brow, leaving the question unspoken.

And he puffs out a breath he must've been holding for a while. "Can you — can you blame me for expecting you to bite?"

That stabbing pain in her chest swells, and her hand shakes a little as she places it on top of his. "No," she says, slipping her fingers beneath his until they loosen and free her wrist. "But I won't."

His fingertips linger on her skin. It takes him a long time to fully let go, and when he does she's quick to pull the sheet down the rest of the way. Before either of them can change their minds.

And even though at times it feels like she's been intimate with him in every possible way there is, this is different. She's never been in control like this, and it's so brutally obvious how much that scares him.

He's still hard. Skin still as silky as it ever was when she dared to touch him before, but from the way he sucks the air in through his teeth as she wraps her fingers around him, it's clear they're both in new territory.

He must be able to feel her trembling. She can certainly feel his. And she figures she may as well say it out loud, even though she's sure he already knows.

"I've never done this before." Glancing up at him as she manages a gentle stroke, up and down, she clears her throat and says the words she's always hated to say. "But I'll try my best."

In her mind, if the best isn't the end result, then she never really tried at all. But she's not sure that really applies in this situation. It doesn't matter, though. Before she can properly overthink it, he responds in a quiet voice and changes everything.

"I wouldn't know the difference."

She can't stop the way her eyes pop wide. The way she blinks vacantly up at him for too many seconds. "You've never…?"

"No." And she can tell by his guarded eyes, he thinks she's going to judge. Make assumptions.

There's no way for him to know how that ripple of selfish pleasure rides up her spine. Not until the small, coy smile splits her face — and even then, perhaps he thinks she's mocking him.

So she says exactly what she's thinking, and then forbids herself to stall any longer.

"Something of yours for me to take, then. I think that's more than fair." She dips her head, her lips only a hair's breadth away. "Don't you?"

"I—"

She tastes him. Lets her tongue glide up his smooth, thick length. Slow. Experimental. But from the way his spine lurches up off the bed — the way he gasps — it's like she's burned him. Hermione waits with the flat of her tongue against the head, allowing him a moment to ball the sheets beneath him into fists. Then she decides she was too distracted on the first go to get a true sense of how he tastes, so she does it again.

He groans — loud enough to give her a real appreciation for his silencing charms — and she closes her eyes to focus. There's salt and musk and a faint sweetness she never expected. It has her licking a third, long stripe upward before she even realizes, opening her mouth wider this time.

And when she reaches the head, spurred on by the shifting of his hips, she gathers a deep breath and takes him into her mouth.

It's abruptly and abundantly clear that nothing the girls ever said on those late nights in the dormitory was accurate.

Oral sex is a privilege.

She knows that in the instant he lets loose a guttural, "Fuck," and tangles lazy fingers into her hair. And she commits herself to the intimidating task of making his first time unforgettable. Goes into it with the unmasked intent to ruin him for anyone else, ever.

And then it's just a fever of sound. His labored, disbelieving breaths and profane, pleading whimpers — the wet, almost grotesque slurps of her mouth and tongue as she bobs her head up and down his length until her jaw aches — the quiet rustle of her hair as he tugs it free of the conjured tie, so he can gather it into his fist instead — the desperate choke in the back of her throat as she gags when he loses control, thrusting his hips against her face — the silent drip of sweat down her temples — those soft, little encouragements he gives that she'll remember for the rest of her life.

Because she's willing to bet Draco Malfoy has never uttered the word 'sweetheart' in his life. And yet —

"Fuck — like that, sweetheart — yes — fuck — just like that. Don't — don't stop."

God, the way he stutters.It's side of him she's never seen.

"Pl-please — please, I'm — fuck — fuck, I'm begging you. I h-have — I have to. Please — please. Let me. Please."

And for some reason it doesn't occur to her what he's asking for until she feels the warmth as he comes down the back of her throat, bitter salt splashing onto the edges of her tongue. She wills herself not to choke — to wait to breathe. Inhales through the nose and focuses instead on how beautiful he sounds, committing each of those desperate gasps and ragged groans to memory.

And when at last he pulls free of her mouth, panting, she makes good on a promise to herself and meets his gaze head-on as she swallows. Allows one stray drop to leak out between her lips before swiping it up with her thumb and licking it away. His eyes flash at the sight of it.

"Was that pain?" she asks, voice more calm than she could've hoped for.

A heavy breath blasts from his throat.

"Of a sort you can't even imagine."

February 23rd, 1999

The soot-stained letter Draco finds on his sill the next morning is from Theo, and it's addressed to her.

Granger,

Maybe you're all out of favors, but I thought I'd try for one more. I need to see her, and her probation doesn't allow for it without an escort.

Bring Pansy to me. Please.

Theo