Title: Pomegranate Winter
Author: Syn
E-Mail: [email protected]
Rating: R
Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me.
Content: Ginny/Draco
Spoilers: OoTP, I suppose, but nothing major.
Summary: Ginny gives her winter to Draco.
A/N: What an odd, not-nice little story. I told it in a random way, the scenes all jumbled up in an incoherent whole. You'll have to do dig to find the thread of the story. This isn't really romantic at all. It's mean and harsh and full of issues. Which I like.
Feedback: Yes please. I always appreciate it!
****
Juice runs down her chin, a tantalizing pink trail, dripping onto the dark black of his robes. He ignores the dark stain and tilts her chin in his hands, tongue darting out to lick at the trickling juice.
Her skin is like warm milk, smooth beneath his tongue. Her breath is startled and smells of fruit. Her mouth opens and he darts his tongue inside, exploring the dark, wet cavern. She makes a soft whimper in her throat, body shaking in time to the thump-thump of her heart. He can feel it hammering madly in the chamber of her chest; her breasts flush with his body.
His well-manicured fingernails scrape along the stone wall, scratching, the rough, pitted surface digging into his soft palms. Her back is against the wall, books forgotten on the ground at her feet, inkbottle smashed to bits, black ink staining both their shoes.
He takes no notice as he presses himself into her, kissing her hard, taking what he wants as she trembles beneath him, half-terrified, half-hungry for him. The dark fruit rolls from her fingers and is lost to the darkness as her hands reach upward, juice-stained fingers tangling in the feathery, white-blonde mass of his hair.
"This cannot last," she whispers as she comes up for air, the reflection of the fire spinning and twisting in her eyes. He smiles, dark and deep, sees the seeds in her eyes and knows...
This is her sacrifice. Outside, the world wilts and turns cold as a mother mourns her child.
****
It started with a seed of thought left hanging in her mind, lush with possibilities and willing to bear fruit. She keeps it to herself, wondering long into dark, O.W.L.-panicked nights if he would...
Could she...? She's not afraid to try.
She sees him suffering beneath the cool, arrogantly angered mask he presents to the school and she hates him. Hates him for what she knows he is. And yet...
She imagines things she shouldn't and then tries to burn them from her mind; like Dumbledore's phoenix, the seed will not die, no matter how hard she tries to rid herself of it.
He watches her, as if he knows her thoughts. She doesn't doubt that he does. His sharp gray eyes miss nothing as she sits at her House table, talking to her friends. She sees him watching, eyes narrowed, lip bitten between his teeth. His tongue flashes. Heat spreads throughout her limbs.
He smiles at her. Knows her secrets...dares her...
This goes on for some time. She doesn't think it will happen, but the seed will not die.
She goes to him, her feet following paths she's never walked, swept along by his dark heart calling her home. It is dark; the dungeons are dangerous and murky. Her hands shake.
She turns a corner and he's there, just...there. Waiting.
He doesn't say anything, just smirks, lips turned up at the corners, pointed chin lifted to study her in the guttering firelight from the wall sconces. He tosses a round fruit into the air and catches it in his spidery, deft fingers. She watches it like its a crystal ball that will tell her how this night will end, but the fruit is round and whole and there are no mystical answers inside, just damnation.
He approaches her like a white tiger, stalking his prey. His hand braces on the wall beside her head, his face closing in on hers, filling her view and eclipsing the rest of the world.
Her breath catches in her throat.
"Hungry?" He offers the fruit and much more besides. He wants to give it to her, to offer her the seeds she craves.
He lifts the fruit to her lips. Her hands close over his unconsciously, breath stuttering over her lips. He smells like danger and she drinks him in as much as she can. She takes the fruit from him.
The first taste is always the sweetest, her mother had always told her.
This taste is sinful. The meat is almost bitter in its sweetness...and four seeds tumble down her throat. He counts them with satisfaction.
His heavy lidded eyes flash and she sees desire in his mercury orbs. His mouth is open, breath pulsing over her skin in lustful puffs. She bites down and swallows and he, he leans in so close that her world completely disappears.
Her bag slips from her shoulder, the contents spilling out everywhere. There is a liquid splash, but they don't care.
Juice runs down her chin.
****
He is not a good man. He is cruel and taunting. He hates just to hate. He hurts to enjoy the pain of others. He steals, swindles and twists everything he can get his hands on.
He yearns for a burn on his arm, a mark of servitude and family pride. He believes in the purity of blood and scorns anything he deems inferior to himself and his ideals.
She knows this, never lets herself forget it for a moment.
He is not good. He will never be good, but he has something she wants. Something deep and dark and dangerous. The seed is caught in her throat and she yearns to swallow, to let herself perish in the darkness of his world.
She has betrayed everything she was ever taught. The certain truths of her childhood have been tossed away and ignored. She should feel ashamed, terrified...anything.
She realizes her own heart is numb when, dark in the night, long after every ghost had since given up, she follows her feet back to him and is swallowed in his own black, tangled heart.
He touches her, owns her. And she in turn owns him. She has something he wants, she can feel it when he touches her, kisses her, makes burns on her backside from the frantic friction of her naked body on the carpet, trapped beneath him.
He doesn't trust her yet, nor should he ever. She feels the same, even when he pushes her against the wall and slides his hands up her thighs, beneath her skirts and into the wet, scorching cleft of her body. And even when her mind can't work, can't make sense of what has happened to her, she knows one thing.
He needs her, wants her.
"I can't live without you." And it sounds like one of her mother's romance novels and a lie and a million things that shouldn't be trusted, but...she swallows it, swallows it like the seeds of her winter betrayal. "I wish the winter wouldn't end..."
Her reply is lost to his bare shoulders, fingernails digging into his skin. He hisses and pulls her down with him.
She does not protest.
****
Rain slicks down his face. He turns his eyes on her as she stands next to him, hidden behind a clump of bushes by the lake.
No one to see them, no one to talk. No one to save her.
He hits her, hand a cold realization of hatred on her cheek. She glares through the pain, loathing everything about his lean frame, rain dripping off his pointed chin, white-blonde hair plastered to his skull.
His body trembles.
"You can't."
"I have to. You know I do..."
But he won't take no for an answer. He grabs her, spins her, knocks her against the tree and presses in close, so close, too close and then he's kissing her, just kissing her and stealing bits and pieces of her resolve and anger. There is nothing but him and her and them and the rain and the world telling them that warmth was on its way.
****
Cold seeps through her bones. They should have left long before now--it isn't safe. But she lingers, not daring to stir him, to disturb the orbs beneath the pale, fluttering eyelashes that rested on his cheeks.
He draws in long draughts of air, steady, peaceful. She kisses his chest in the center, whipcord, all hard angles and delicate bones.
His eyes flutter open and he is unguarded for a slight second. He smiles and fingers her hair, draws a thumb across the swell of her ripe lips.
Then the mask falls into place and he pushes her away.
It is very cold in the empty classroom and even colder in his heart.
She knows this. She lives there.
****
His teeth scrape over her nipples and she sucks in a breath, fingers tangled in his hair. He works one hand under her skirts, the fruit slipping and squishing beneath his ink-stained boots.
She can't think, can't breathe as he finds her, wet and aching and suddenly, so suddenly his that neither one of them can quite wrap their minds around what has happened.
The dungeon is empty and the stones are thick.
He wants her to scream. Does his best, but she keeps it in, even when he pushes her legs apart and works his rough way in between. Her lip trembles at the hardness and then the searing, breaking, ripping heat as he cores her, stabbing deep and biting down on her neck.
Her hands find his shoulders and she presses her fingers into his robes, gripping hard. She won't cry out, won't give him the satisfaction.
He bangs her head against the stones and she closes her eyes.
This is not how it was supposed to be. But it feels more right than she could ever put into words.
She bites him back and he hisses, then smiles darkly and licks at the traces of juice still on her chin.
She swallows and feels cold seep from his bite and into her bones. She welcomes it.
****
Snow filled the windows, blocking out the crisp sunlight. He cornered her in the Library, pushed her against the bookshelf marked I-J and kissed her hard, twisted his hand in her hair and took what he wanted.
The shadows were dark and deep, dust from the books tickling her nose. No one saw them.
Her heart raced and she kissed him back, eyes open, watching the entrance to the stacks and him. He was lost in her, hungrily lapping at her mouth, pulling her in.
He didn't talk. He rarely did.
****
His fist was swollen, chin crusted with blood from his nose. She dabbed at it with the sleeve of her robes.
"Filthy Potter..." he muttered under his breath, not glancing up at her.
"Harry didn't do this. Ron did."
"Filthy Weasley, then," he amended, attempting a smile. She glared at him and then sighed.
"What were you doing trying to hit me with a Bludger anyway? You're a Seeker, not a Beater."
"No reason," he said, obviously in one of his defensive moods.
She looked at him long and hard, saw the wind on his cheeks, felt the damp of his robes from the furious snowfall outside on the pitch. She was equally as abused by the weather, though not bloody. Her ribs hurt from the whack of the Bludger he'd shot at her.
"Were you trying to hurt me?"
He doesn't answer. He doesn't have to.
****
Spring comes in, tumbling and thundering, turning the castle into a rain soaked island amid a flooded lawn, lake and forest.
She stands out in it, bruise still on her face but free, free, free...
He touches her back and she feels the cold of winter slide over her. She wheels and he's standing there, just standing there in the rain.
A piece of fruit is in his hands. He tosses it up and catches it in his fingers. She is haunted by the image. A droplet of rain quivers on her lip and pools on her tongue.
"Hungry?" he asks and she hesitates. She wants to taste the fruit again...she wants to taste him. Her mouth closes and she turns away. She won't let herself.
Spring has come.
"I can't live without you."
She flinches and feels the hollow of her chest expand and threaten to choke her to death. He folds his arms around her and puts the fruit to her lips.
One bite...just one bite...
****
No one notices her deception, she realizes. She almost wants them to.
She draws hearts on her papers. No one notices. She writes his initials. No one notices.
He makes his mark on her, physically and mentally. He is stealing everything about her and taking it to him, making her empty inside. And she gives herself up willingly. She wants him to take everything she has, to eat her like a piece of damning fruit.
He does. He eats her more thoroughly than she could ever have imagined. He is lost in her. He can't live without her, he says. She wants to believe this.
But he is not a good man. He will never be a good man. Never.
She knows this is true, even as she lies to herself. Winter can't last forever, after all...
****
"Just one bite...to make it last longer..."
"No."
"I need you."
"No you don't. You need someone to overpower."
"Is that what you think I do?"
"I know it is."
"It isn't! You're...you...you don't take anything! You give back!"
"Because I have to! Do you think I like that? Like the way you touch me and make me feel?"
"You never complained."
"Well now I am."
"But you don't mean it. I know you; I know how you react...when I touch you here. Or here. Or when I kiss you."
"D--don't. Someone could be watching."
"I'll stop if you take a bite, promise...I'll be better..."
"No you won't. You know you won't."
"FINE! I don't know why I ever wasted half my year on a stupid little bitch like you!"
She watched him storm across the grounds, rain thundering down, drowning him, making his mean shape seem dim. He disappeared into the castle. She knew he'd be back.
The pomegranate was at her feet in the mud.
She squashed it beneath her foot and smiled.
****
The seeds were long gone. Her heart was still empty. She missed him, missed his mouth, his gray eyes and the pattern of his teeth on her skin.
He watches her across the Library as she studies for her O.W.L.'s. Summer approaches, high on the heels of spring. She looks up, meets his eyes and smiles.
His eyes flash. He wants to get up, walk over to her and take, just take everything he's ever wanted from her. She watches him watching her and then breaks the eye contact and looks back down at her Astronomy notes.
Winter is long over. The cold remains in her bones, a remnant of him and of her own betrayal. She's not sure what has happened.
She wanted him, wanted to love him. She's sure she does, somewhere deep down beneath the cold. She knows he loves her, perhaps even more than he hates her.
But winter is over and their time, long gone. The seeds have passed from her eyes, the taste of the fruit a half-memory. There is no going back.
She won't let herself. Her months of suffering beneath his intolerable cruelty and vision of love have hardened her. Now she enjoys his pain, as he enjoyed hers, only there will be no respite for him.
And yet...her mouth still aches for fruit, a tiny seed rising like a phoenix in her mind...
(end)
****
Author: Syn
E-Mail: [email protected]
Rating: R
Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me.
Content: Ginny/Draco
Spoilers: OoTP, I suppose, but nothing major.
Summary: Ginny gives her winter to Draco.
A/N: What an odd, not-nice little story. I told it in a random way, the scenes all jumbled up in an incoherent whole. You'll have to do dig to find the thread of the story. This isn't really romantic at all. It's mean and harsh and full of issues. Which I like.
Feedback: Yes please. I always appreciate it!
****
Juice runs down her chin, a tantalizing pink trail, dripping onto the dark black of his robes. He ignores the dark stain and tilts her chin in his hands, tongue darting out to lick at the trickling juice.
Her skin is like warm milk, smooth beneath his tongue. Her breath is startled and smells of fruit. Her mouth opens and he darts his tongue inside, exploring the dark, wet cavern. She makes a soft whimper in her throat, body shaking in time to the thump-thump of her heart. He can feel it hammering madly in the chamber of her chest; her breasts flush with his body.
His well-manicured fingernails scrape along the stone wall, scratching, the rough, pitted surface digging into his soft palms. Her back is against the wall, books forgotten on the ground at her feet, inkbottle smashed to bits, black ink staining both their shoes.
He takes no notice as he presses himself into her, kissing her hard, taking what he wants as she trembles beneath him, half-terrified, half-hungry for him. The dark fruit rolls from her fingers and is lost to the darkness as her hands reach upward, juice-stained fingers tangling in the feathery, white-blonde mass of his hair.
"This cannot last," she whispers as she comes up for air, the reflection of the fire spinning and twisting in her eyes. He smiles, dark and deep, sees the seeds in her eyes and knows...
This is her sacrifice. Outside, the world wilts and turns cold as a mother mourns her child.
****
It started with a seed of thought left hanging in her mind, lush with possibilities and willing to bear fruit. She keeps it to herself, wondering long into dark, O.W.L.-panicked nights if he would...
Could she...? She's not afraid to try.
She sees him suffering beneath the cool, arrogantly angered mask he presents to the school and she hates him. Hates him for what she knows he is. And yet...
She imagines things she shouldn't and then tries to burn them from her mind; like Dumbledore's phoenix, the seed will not die, no matter how hard she tries to rid herself of it.
He watches her, as if he knows her thoughts. She doesn't doubt that he does. His sharp gray eyes miss nothing as she sits at her House table, talking to her friends. She sees him watching, eyes narrowed, lip bitten between his teeth. His tongue flashes. Heat spreads throughout her limbs.
He smiles at her. Knows her secrets...dares her...
This goes on for some time. She doesn't think it will happen, but the seed will not die.
She goes to him, her feet following paths she's never walked, swept along by his dark heart calling her home. It is dark; the dungeons are dangerous and murky. Her hands shake.
She turns a corner and he's there, just...there. Waiting.
He doesn't say anything, just smirks, lips turned up at the corners, pointed chin lifted to study her in the guttering firelight from the wall sconces. He tosses a round fruit into the air and catches it in his spidery, deft fingers. She watches it like its a crystal ball that will tell her how this night will end, but the fruit is round and whole and there are no mystical answers inside, just damnation.
He approaches her like a white tiger, stalking his prey. His hand braces on the wall beside her head, his face closing in on hers, filling her view and eclipsing the rest of the world.
Her breath catches in her throat.
"Hungry?" He offers the fruit and much more besides. He wants to give it to her, to offer her the seeds she craves.
He lifts the fruit to her lips. Her hands close over his unconsciously, breath stuttering over her lips. He smells like danger and she drinks him in as much as she can. She takes the fruit from him.
The first taste is always the sweetest, her mother had always told her.
This taste is sinful. The meat is almost bitter in its sweetness...and four seeds tumble down her throat. He counts them with satisfaction.
His heavy lidded eyes flash and she sees desire in his mercury orbs. His mouth is open, breath pulsing over her skin in lustful puffs. She bites down and swallows and he, he leans in so close that her world completely disappears.
Her bag slips from her shoulder, the contents spilling out everywhere. There is a liquid splash, but they don't care.
Juice runs down her chin.
****
He is not a good man. He is cruel and taunting. He hates just to hate. He hurts to enjoy the pain of others. He steals, swindles and twists everything he can get his hands on.
He yearns for a burn on his arm, a mark of servitude and family pride. He believes in the purity of blood and scorns anything he deems inferior to himself and his ideals.
She knows this, never lets herself forget it for a moment.
He is not good. He will never be good, but he has something she wants. Something deep and dark and dangerous. The seed is caught in her throat and she yearns to swallow, to let herself perish in the darkness of his world.
She has betrayed everything she was ever taught. The certain truths of her childhood have been tossed away and ignored. She should feel ashamed, terrified...anything.
She realizes her own heart is numb when, dark in the night, long after every ghost had since given up, she follows her feet back to him and is swallowed in his own black, tangled heart.
He touches her, owns her. And she in turn owns him. She has something he wants, she can feel it when he touches her, kisses her, makes burns on her backside from the frantic friction of her naked body on the carpet, trapped beneath him.
He doesn't trust her yet, nor should he ever. She feels the same, even when he pushes her against the wall and slides his hands up her thighs, beneath her skirts and into the wet, scorching cleft of her body. And even when her mind can't work, can't make sense of what has happened to her, she knows one thing.
He needs her, wants her.
"I can't live without you." And it sounds like one of her mother's romance novels and a lie and a million things that shouldn't be trusted, but...she swallows it, swallows it like the seeds of her winter betrayal. "I wish the winter wouldn't end..."
Her reply is lost to his bare shoulders, fingernails digging into his skin. He hisses and pulls her down with him.
She does not protest.
****
Rain slicks down his face. He turns his eyes on her as she stands next to him, hidden behind a clump of bushes by the lake.
No one to see them, no one to talk. No one to save her.
He hits her, hand a cold realization of hatred on her cheek. She glares through the pain, loathing everything about his lean frame, rain dripping off his pointed chin, white-blonde hair plastered to his skull.
His body trembles.
"You can't."
"I have to. You know I do..."
But he won't take no for an answer. He grabs her, spins her, knocks her against the tree and presses in close, so close, too close and then he's kissing her, just kissing her and stealing bits and pieces of her resolve and anger. There is nothing but him and her and them and the rain and the world telling them that warmth was on its way.
****
Cold seeps through her bones. They should have left long before now--it isn't safe. But she lingers, not daring to stir him, to disturb the orbs beneath the pale, fluttering eyelashes that rested on his cheeks.
He draws in long draughts of air, steady, peaceful. She kisses his chest in the center, whipcord, all hard angles and delicate bones.
His eyes flutter open and he is unguarded for a slight second. He smiles and fingers her hair, draws a thumb across the swell of her ripe lips.
Then the mask falls into place and he pushes her away.
It is very cold in the empty classroom and even colder in his heart.
She knows this. She lives there.
****
His teeth scrape over her nipples and she sucks in a breath, fingers tangled in his hair. He works one hand under her skirts, the fruit slipping and squishing beneath his ink-stained boots.
She can't think, can't breathe as he finds her, wet and aching and suddenly, so suddenly his that neither one of them can quite wrap their minds around what has happened.
The dungeon is empty and the stones are thick.
He wants her to scream. Does his best, but she keeps it in, even when he pushes her legs apart and works his rough way in between. Her lip trembles at the hardness and then the searing, breaking, ripping heat as he cores her, stabbing deep and biting down on her neck.
Her hands find his shoulders and she presses her fingers into his robes, gripping hard. She won't cry out, won't give him the satisfaction.
He bangs her head against the stones and she closes her eyes.
This is not how it was supposed to be. But it feels more right than she could ever put into words.
She bites him back and he hisses, then smiles darkly and licks at the traces of juice still on her chin.
She swallows and feels cold seep from his bite and into her bones. She welcomes it.
****
Snow filled the windows, blocking out the crisp sunlight. He cornered her in the Library, pushed her against the bookshelf marked I-J and kissed her hard, twisted his hand in her hair and took what he wanted.
The shadows were dark and deep, dust from the books tickling her nose. No one saw them.
Her heart raced and she kissed him back, eyes open, watching the entrance to the stacks and him. He was lost in her, hungrily lapping at her mouth, pulling her in.
He didn't talk. He rarely did.
****
His fist was swollen, chin crusted with blood from his nose. She dabbed at it with the sleeve of her robes.
"Filthy Potter..." he muttered under his breath, not glancing up at her.
"Harry didn't do this. Ron did."
"Filthy Weasley, then," he amended, attempting a smile. She glared at him and then sighed.
"What were you doing trying to hit me with a Bludger anyway? You're a Seeker, not a Beater."
"No reason," he said, obviously in one of his defensive moods.
She looked at him long and hard, saw the wind on his cheeks, felt the damp of his robes from the furious snowfall outside on the pitch. She was equally as abused by the weather, though not bloody. Her ribs hurt from the whack of the Bludger he'd shot at her.
"Were you trying to hurt me?"
He doesn't answer. He doesn't have to.
****
Spring comes in, tumbling and thundering, turning the castle into a rain soaked island amid a flooded lawn, lake and forest.
She stands out in it, bruise still on her face but free, free, free...
He touches her back and she feels the cold of winter slide over her. She wheels and he's standing there, just standing there in the rain.
A piece of fruit is in his hands. He tosses it up and catches it in his fingers. She is haunted by the image. A droplet of rain quivers on her lip and pools on her tongue.
"Hungry?" he asks and she hesitates. She wants to taste the fruit again...she wants to taste him. Her mouth closes and she turns away. She won't let herself.
Spring has come.
"I can't live without you."
She flinches and feels the hollow of her chest expand and threaten to choke her to death. He folds his arms around her and puts the fruit to her lips.
One bite...just one bite...
****
No one notices her deception, she realizes. She almost wants them to.
She draws hearts on her papers. No one notices. She writes his initials. No one notices.
He makes his mark on her, physically and mentally. He is stealing everything about her and taking it to him, making her empty inside. And she gives herself up willingly. She wants him to take everything she has, to eat her like a piece of damning fruit.
He does. He eats her more thoroughly than she could ever have imagined. He is lost in her. He can't live without her, he says. She wants to believe this.
But he is not a good man. He will never be a good man. Never.
She knows this is true, even as she lies to herself. Winter can't last forever, after all...
****
"Just one bite...to make it last longer..."
"No."
"I need you."
"No you don't. You need someone to overpower."
"Is that what you think I do?"
"I know it is."
"It isn't! You're...you...you don't take anything! You give back!"
"Because I have to! Do you think I like that? Like the way you touch me and make me feel?"
"You never complained."
"Well now I am."
"But you don't mean it. I know you; I know how you react...when I touch you here. Or here. Or when I kiss you."
"D--don't. Someone could be watching."
"I'll stop if you take a bite, promise...I'll be better..."
"No you won't. You know you won't."
"FINE! I don't know why I ever wasted half my year on a stupid little bitch like you!"
She watched him storm across the grounds, rain thundering down, drowning him, making his mean shape seem dim. He disappeared into the castle. She knew he'd be back.
The pomegranate was at her feet in the mud.
She squashed it beneath her foot and smiled.
****
The seeds were long gone. Her heart was still empty. She missed him, missed his mouth, his gray eyes and the pattern of his teeth on her skin.
He watches her across the Library as she studies for her O.W.L.'s. Summer approaches, high on the heels of spring. She looks up, meets his eyes and smiles.
His eyes flash. He wants to get up, walk over to her and take, just take everything he's ever wanted from her. She watches him watching her and then breaks the eye contact and looks back down at her Astronomy notes.
Winter is long over. The cold remains in her bones, a remnant of him and of her own betrayal. She's not sure what has happened.
She wanted him, wanted to love him. She's sure she does, somewhere deep down beneath the cold. She knows he loves her, perhaps even more than he hates her.
But winter is over and their time, long gone. The seeds have passed from her eyes, the taste of the fruit a half-memory. There is no going back.
She won't let herself. Her months of suffering beneath his intolerable cruelty and vision of love have hardened her. Now she enjoys his pain, as he enjoyed hers, only there will be no respite for him.
And yet...her mouth still aches for fruit, a tiny seed rising like a phoenix in her mind...
(end)
****