The Bracelet, Chapter 48
Title: The Bracelet
Author: AkashaTheKitty
Characters: Blaise Zabini, Draco Malfoy, Ginny Weasley, Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Pansy Parkinson, Ron Weasley, Theodore Nott (whew)
Genres: Drama, Friendship, Hogwarts Years, Humor, Romance
Warnings: HBP Spoilers, although slightly incompatible.
Overall Rating: R
Summary: Hermione is a stuck-up know-it-all; Draco is a sadistic prat; Theo has a scary way of knowing everything; Harry is too busy with his girlfriend and his hero status to pay much attention; Ginny really isn't very interested in anyone beyond Harry but unfortunately does pay attention; Pansy wants what's hers; Ron doesn't know how to get what's his; and Blaise definitely has both his hands in the cookie jar. Or maybe that's not how it is at all...
Go here if you didn't read previous chapters.
At first her words didn’t quite register with him, but then they slowly sunk in.
‘I’ll do it.’
“You’ll…” He shot to his feet. “You’ll what?”
“Did you change your mind?” she asked. “That would be so typical of you.”
He ignored her statement. “Why the sudden change of heart?”
“You’ll free me, won’t you?”
“I wasn’t talking about some peck on the cheek,” he warned. “I wanted it to rival last time.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I can slap you if that’s what you wish…”
He sneered at her. “That didn’t count. It wasn’t a kiss.”
“So you want me to be drunk?” she asked suspiciously.
“No!” He ran his hands through his hair, feeling thoroughly distressed and confused and… excited! Could she really mean it? Would she really allow this or was it just one more way of tormenting him? “I just want to feel that again,” he muttered. “That’s all I want.”
She looked at him, suspicion radiating off her. “That almost went out of hand and we were in public. If you plan on doing that here, in private, near your bed…” She frowned down at the bed she was sitting on as if it had done her a personal offense by being the place where he slept.
He laughed at the absurdity. “Think for a second, Granger,” he scoffed. “You aren’t smashed this time, everything is completely different, and you’re just doing this to buy your freedom. What are the odds that your mind won’t stay perfectly clear and that you won’t knee me if you think I go too far?”
“I have permission to knee you?” she asked just a tad too eagerly.
“Absolutely not!” he hurried to say. “I’m just saying that if you don’t like what’s happening, you’ll probably find a way to put me in my place.”
“Hmm…” She still looked skeptical.
“I’m very flattered that you think you will become overcome with lust…” he mocked, “but I think you have enough moral strength to overcome the evil temptation that is my body.”
Pink tinged her cheeks and she scowled at him. “Get over yourself.”
“Hey, I’m not the one nervous that anything will get out of hand.”
“I’m not nervous, I just don’t want to risk you scheming to take advantage of me.”
He felt extremely annoyed that she would think this of him. “I won’t,” he snapped. “Just a kiss, nothing more.”
She nodded her acknowledgement of this. “I still don’t understand why you want this…”
“Enough talk. On your feet.”
She gave him a puzzled look. “Why?”
“You changed your mind, didn’t you? Well, I’m collecting. And unless you want me to collect on the bed…”
As he had predicted, she immediately jumped to her feet.
“Good girl,” he murmured, earning him a murderous look. “Now,” he said, walking closer to her, “please stop looking as if you’d just as soon clobber me as kiss me.”
“How am I supposed to look, then?” she challenged.
“As if I’m about to kiss you and you know it won’t hurt?” he quietly suggested.
He could clearly feel the apprehension on her. She was becoming skittish, and she even flinched when one of his movements were too sudden. His heart sank to his feet and he stopped right before her, unable to go through with it. He couldn’t kiss her like this. Not when she actually seemed a bit scared of him. He closed his eyes, remembering a time when she had pressed against him, willingly offering him her lips. Just one time and it had reduced him to… this.
It wouldn’t work. This wouldn’t be anything like the kiss haunting his dreams no matter how much he wished for it. He sighed and stepped back.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, frowning at him. “I said I’d do it.”
“I changed my mind,” he murmured.
“You can’t!” she immediately objected. “We had an agreement!”
He snorted. “I don’t feel like it anymore, deal with it.”
“You promised me something,” she said, her voice slightly unsteady. “I was willing to go through with my part, aren’t you going to go through with yours?”
He said a few choice words that Hermione decided weren’t suited for her ears and promptly blocked from her mind. “That’s really all you care about, isn’t it?” he growled. “Being free of me?”
“You promised!”
“And you promised me a kiss that could rival the first one.”
“How do you know it wouldn’t have?”
“You were scared, Granger. It wouldn’t have been good when you were bloody scared of me! I’m not that callous.”
“I am not scared of you!”
“Don’t lie to me when I can feel it! You really think that I…” He swallowed and looked away. “You really think I might lose control and hurt you, don’t you? I don’t know how to fix that, so please just go away.”
She crossed her arms. “No. We had an agreement.”
“You really don’t understand, do you?”
She shrugged, still with her arms crossed. “How am I supposed to understand? You don’t make any sense! First you want something at all cost and then, suddenly, you don’t want it anyway.”
“I knew you’d probably not be eager or anything, but I just didn’t think you’d be scared.”
“I’m not scared.”
“I felt it, Granger.”
“Well, you must have read me wrong.”
“I never read you wrong! I know your emotions better than my own.” He laughed bitterly. “I wonder how that feels to you, to know that nobody will ever know you as well as I do…”
“You obviously don’t know me that well if you think I’m scared, Malfoy.”
“Ah, but I do. It’s the curse of the thing, didn’t you know? I know you, there’s not a single thing you’ve been doing that I don’t know about as long as it made you feel more than the vaguest flicker of emotion. I even know all your favorite dishes.” His mouth turned to a bitter line. “It’s actually hard to be cruel to someone when their happiness makes you feel close to ecstasy. And it’s feeling those things that’s making kissing you so… addictive.”
Hermione looked at the bracelet around her wrist. “You think it’s because of this thing that you liked it?”
He slowly nodded. “It’s hard to explain what happens when I get the feedback… It’s very intense, very gratifying.”
“So I’m betting you’ll get a whole lot of witches to wear it now. Poor things. Maybe next time you should skip the cruelty phase.”
He stared at her. “Uh… right. Why don’t you just go now? Get some rest or socialize with your moronic friends.”
She shook her head.
“Look, Granger… the deal is off. I appreciate your sacrifice but I’m not into the whole fear thing. If I were, I’d have been more thrilled to follow You-Know-Who.”
“Am I scared now?”
He paused. No, she wasn’t scared. She was mostly annoyed, actually. “I’m not trying to kiss you right now,” he said. “There’s no danger.”
“Oh, please,” she scoffed. “As if there’s any danger in kissing you.”
“You wouldn’t have known it…”
“Are you going to do it or not?” she interrupted. “I’m not getting any younger over here.”
He shook his head. “This was all just such a bad idea from the beginning.”
She threw her hands up in exasperation. “I swear, sometimes I’d give anything to know what’s going on inside that thick skull of yours.”
His eyes gained a thoughtful gleam. “Anything?”
“Don’t be getting any ideas. Besides, past experience tells me that you won’t want whatever it is anyway.”
“Well…” He looked at her pensively. “There might be one way…”
“What?” She was feeling slightly apprehensive at allowing him to change the deal.
“You would get the insight you want so badly and your freedom.”
“And in turn you’d get what?”
He gave her an assessing glance. “In turn you not only kiss me but actually make an effort to enjoy it. Help me actually get the feeling I’m looking for.”
“WHAT?”
He flinched. “You know, it’s really not flattering when you do that.”
“Why does it even make that big a difference?”
“It does. It was you enjoying it as much as me that made last time so intense.”
Hermione blushed a little. “I was drunk,” she mumbled.
“Do you really need to hide behind something in order to allow yourself to even consider liking it?” he angrily asked. “It’s not like there will be any consequences. Nobody is watching this time. Nobody will know but you and me. You’re perfectly safe.”
She was indecisive for a few seconds, biting her lower lip and fidgeting. “Well…” she finally said. “No groping!”
“Groping wasn’t part of the deal,” he calmly said. “In fact, I don’t think I ever tried to grope you. Not even when you slapped me, although you’d think I had.”
Hermione’s blush returned. “I already said-“
“Yes, yes.” He waved a hand dismissively. “Do we have a new deal?”
“Ok, fine,” she said, crossing her arms. “But I can only try.”
“As long as you do try, it’s fine,” Draco quietly answered.
“So… uh… how do we go about this?” she asked a bit awkwardly.
“First, you keep quiet while I try to do my part,” he said, closing his eyes.
He’d never done this before, and he only had the basic idea how this worked. He wasn’t even too sure he really wanted it to. A few seconds went by and nothing happened. It wasn’t working. He frowned. It had to work, or she wouldn’t give him what he wanted. It was the price he had agreed to pay.
He tried again.
It was as if there was an invisible wall that he didn’t know how to tear down. He knew that he had to want to do it in order to be able to, but he sort of did want to even if he didn’t. He wanted to do it because then she would give him what he craved. He needed for this to work, damn it.
“What’s wrong?” Hermione asked, actually sounding concerned.
“Nothing,” he said. “I’m just not very good at this.”
Open up for crying out loud. I don’t mind whatever she senses, I really don’t.
“It doesn’t seem like nothing,” she commented.
“I’m thinking too hard,” he muttered. “Maybe we should try it the other way around.”
“What do you mean?”
“I need to be distracted a bit, then it might work,” he clarified, as he walked back over to her, carefully trying to sense any alarm in her.
“Distracted?” she asked. “You mean…”
“Yeah,” he said. “You’ll be the distraction.”
“And how will I know when it works? Will it be easy to tell? What exactly are you doing?”
“It’ll be very easy to tell. I’m opening the emotional link to work both ways. As it works now, it is only open one way, but that doesn’t mean the other way didn’t strengthen as well. It might, in fact, be a little overwhelming and very strange when it happens, but just try to keep it separate in your head. If you stay analytical, it should be easy enough for you to sort out… I think. Maybe.”
Her eyes widened. “I’ll be feeling you?”
“You wanted insight, didn’t you? You’ll never get a greater insight than that.”
“You’ve been able to do this all this time?” she incredulously asked.
“Yeah. Don’t look at me like that. I wasn’t going to just do it for no reason.”
“Could you have closed the other ‘link’ too?” she demanded.
“No. Trust me, if that had been an option, I would have done it weeks ago. Before any of this mess.”
She was pouting and scowling at him. “Fine,” she muttered. “I suppose I couldn’t expect you to tell me.”
“I didn’t know you’d care to know…” He shrugged. “But could we stop talking now? As you said, you’re not getting any younger…”
“Ha ha.” She stuck her tongue out at him.
Draco raised an eyebrow. “Well, isn’t that an invitation if I ever saw one…”
She quickly retracted the tongue and glanced nervously at him.
He shook his head. You wouldn’t know that this girl had half of Hogwarts snogging her at will. He stepped closer to her, purposely crowding her and forcing her to step back until she reached the wall. She squeaked in surprise when she did and he raised an eyebrow.
“Not scared,” she said again. “If you claim that I am, I will knee you.”
No, he supposed scared was too strong a word. But she was definitely nervous. He didn’t care to point it out and risk receiving a knee to his groin for his troubles, though. And he honestly couldn’t decide whether he was offended or amused. “Not saying anything,” he replied. “Just wondering why you’re trying to crawl through the wall.”
She immediately straightened, shrinking back a little when she came up uncomfortably close to him. “It’s just strange,” she said rather defensively. “You can’t expect me to be comfortable with it.”
No, she wasn’t comfortable. It didn’t stop him from wanting this kiss more than anything else, though. “Do you want to call it off?” he asked, wincing slightly.
“No! How many times do I have to say it?” She drew herself up, angrily glaring at him. “Don’t think you can just bully me into mmpf-“
She talked too much. She always had. Besides, catching her off guard was better.
He kissed her.
And this time, she let him.
He wasn’t completely prepared for the jolt of raw desire that went through him as her lips softened under his. He knew it wasn’t mutual, but it didn’t detract much from the feeling. Her hands had come up to rest on his arms, but she wasn’t pushing him away. She wasn’t rejecting him. When he sought to deepen the kiss, she yielded.
She was so soft and pliant. No, she didn’t feel any great passion right now, but she wasn’t repulsed, either. He could live with that. It was just a kiss. As long as she didn’t really mind, he wasn’t hurting anyone and it meant more to him to have this than he’d like to admit.
He tried to open the link again. For her to know how this felt… Yes, he wanted it. Even if it meant that she saw how pathetic he was in his need. Hell, she would have noticed that a long time ago if she hadn’t been so blinded by who she thought he was.
Suddenly it worked. The barrier disappeared and Hermione broke the kiss with a gasp, her eyes widening as she suddenly felt everything at once.
Draco was a bit disappointed that the kiss had to end so soon, but he accepted it. She had done her part. She had allowed him to kiss her like he wanted to without pushing him away or in any other way ruining it for him. Perhaps she hadn’t really enjoyed it, but he was sure she’d done her best. Now he just looked at her, well aware that she could all but read his thoughts, and quietly praying that she wouldn’t use it to ridicule him. He didn’t remember the last time he had really shared his deeper emotions with anyone; he couldn’t bear it if she were to use it against him.
She gave a small shaky smile. “Now who’s scared?” she asked in a quiet voice completely devoid of derision.
Relief flooded him when he realized that she wasn’t going to mock him. She must feel how much he wanted her, how kissing her made him feel… and she wasn’t going to use it against him.
Her eyes were dazed and heavy-lidded and her lips were moist and swollen.
He desperately wanted to kiss her again.
He forced himself not to.
Then she kissed him.
Author: AkashaTheKitty
Characters: Blaise Zabini, Draco Malfoy, Ginny Weasley, Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Pansy Parkinson, Ron Weasley, Theodore Nott (whew)
Genres: Drama, Friendship, Hogwarts Years, Humor, Romance
Warnings: HBP Spoilers, although slightly incompatible.
Overall Rating: R
Summary: Hermione is a stuck-up know-it-all; Draco is a sadistic prat; Theo has a scary way of knowing everything; Harry is too busy with his girlfriend and his hero status to pay much attention; Ginny really isn't very interested in anyone beyond Harry but unfortunately does pay attention; Pansy wants what's hers; Ron doesn't know how to get what's his; and Blaise definitely has both his hands in the cookie jar. Or maybe that's not how it is at all...
Go here if you didn't read previous chapters.
At first her words didn’t quite register with him, but then they slowly sunk in.
‘I’ll do it.’
“You’ll…” He shot to his feet. “You’ll what?”
“Did you change your mind?” she asked. “That would be so typical of you.”
He ignored her statement. “Why the sudden change of heart?”
“You’ll free me, won’t you?”
“I wasn’t talking about some peck on the cheek,” he warned. “I wanted it to rival last time.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I can slap you if that’s what you wish…”
He sneered at her. “That didn’t count. It wasn’t a kiss.”
“So you want me to be drunk?” she asked suspiciously.
“No!” He ran his hands through his hair, feeling thoroughly distressed and confused and… excited! Could she really mean it? Would she really allow this or was it just one more way of tormenting him? “I just want to feel that again,” he muttered. “That’s all I want.”
She looked at him, suspicion radiating off her. “That almost went out of hand and we were in public. If you plan on doing that here, in private, near your bed…” She frowned down at the bed she was sitting on as if it had done her a personal offense by being the place where he slept.
He laughed at the absurdity. “Think for a second, Granger,” he scoffed. “You aren’t smashed this time, everything is completely different, and you’re just doing this to buy your freedom. What are the odds that your mind won’t stay perfectly clear and that you won’t knee me if you think I go too far?”
“I have permission to knee you?” she asked just a tad too eagerly.
“Absolutely not!” he hurried to say. “I’m just saying that if you don’t like what’s happening, you’ll probably find a way to put me in my place.”
“Hmm…” She still looked skeptical.
“I’m very flattered that you think you will become overcome with lust…” he mocked, “but I think you have enough moral strength to overcome the evil temptation that is my body.”
Pink tinged her cheeks and she scowled at him. “Get over yourself.”
“Hey, I’m not the one nervous that anything will get out of hand.”
“I’m not nervous, I just don’t want to risk you scheming to take advantage of me.”
He felt extremely annoyed that she would think this of him. “I won’t,” he snapped. “Just a kiss, nothing more.”
She nodded her acknowledgement of this. “I still don’t understand why you want this…”
“Enough talk. On your feet.”
She gave him a puzzled look. “Why?”
“You changed your mind, didn’t you? Well, I’m collecting. And unless you want me to collect on the bed…”
As he had predicted, she immediately jumped to her feet.
“Good girl,” he murmured, earning him a murderous look. “Now,” he said, walking closer to her, “please stop looking as if you’d just as soon clobber me as kiss me.”
“How am I supposed to look, then?” she challenged.
“As if I’m about to kiss you and you know it won’t hurt?” he quietly suggested.
He could clearly feel the apprehension on her. She was becoming skittish, and she even flinched when one of his movements were too sudden. His heart sank to his feet and he stopped right before her, unable to go through with it. He couldn’t kiss her like this. Not when she actually seemed a bit scared of him. He closed his eyes, remembering a time when she had pressed against him, willingly offering him her lips. Just one time and it had reduced him to… this.
It wouldn’t work. This wouldn’t be anything like the kiss haunting his dreams no matter how much he wished for it. He sighed and stepped back.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, frowning at him. “I said I’d do it.”
“I changed my mind,” he murmured.
“You can’t!” she immediately objected. “We had an agreement!”
He snorted. “I don’t feel like it anymore, deal with it.”
“You promised me something,” she said, her voice slightly unsteady. “I was willing to go through with my part, aren’t you going to go through with yours?”
He said a few choice words that Hermione decided weren’t suited for her ears and promptly blocked from her mind. “That’s really all you care about, isn’t it?” he growled. “Being free of me?”
“You promised!”
“And you promised me a kiss that could rival the first one.”
“How do you know it wouldn’t have?”
“You were scared, Granger. It wouldn’t have been good when you were bloody scared of me! I’m not that callous.”
“I am not scared of you!”
“Don’t lie to me when I can feel it! You really think that I…” He swallowed and looked away. “You really think I might lose control and hurt you, don’t you? I don’t know how to fix that, so please just go away.”
She crossed her arms. “No. We had an agreement.”
“You really don’t understand, do you?”
She shrugged, still with her arms crossed. “How am I supposed to understand? You don’t make any sense! First you want something at all cost and then, suddenly, you don’t want it anyway.”
“I knew you’d probably not be eager or anything, but I just didn’t think you’d be scared.”
“I’m not scared.”
“I felt it, Granger.”
“Well, you must have read me wrong.”
“I never read you wrong! I know your emotions better than my own.” He laughed bitterly. “I wonder how that feels to you, to know that nobody will ever know you as well as I do…”
“You obviously don’t know me that well if you think I’m scared, Malfoy.”
“Ah, but I do. It’s the curse of the thing, didn’t you know? I know you, there’s not a single thing you’ve been doing that I don’t know about as long as it made you feel more than the vaguest flicker of emotion. I even know all your favorite dishes.” His mouth turned to a bitter line. “It’s actually hard to be cruel to someone when their happiness makes you feel close to ecstasy. And it’s feeling those things that’s making kissing you so… addictive.”
Hermione looked at the bracelet around her wrist. “You think it’s because of this thing that you liked it?”
He slowly nodded. “It’s hard to explain what happens when I get the feedback… It’s very intense, very gratifying.”
“So I’m betting you’ll get a whole lot of witches to wear it now. Poor things. Maybe next time you should skip the cruelty phase.”
He stared at her. “Uh… right. Why don’t you just go now? Get some rest or socialize with your moronic friends.”
She shook her head.
“Look, Granger… the deal is off. I appreciate your sacrifice but I’m not into the whole fear thing. If I were, I’d have been more thrilled to follow You-Know-Who.”
“Am I scared now?”
He paused. No, she wasn’t scared. She was mostly annoyed, actually. “I’m not trying to kiss you right now,” he said. “There’s no danger.”
“Oh, please,” she scoffed. “As if there’s any danger in kissing you.”
“You wouldn’t have known it…”
“Are you going to do it or not?” she interrupted. “I’m not getting any younger over here.”
He shook his head. “This was all just such a bad idea from the beginning.”
She threw her hands up in exasperation. “I swear, sometimes I’d give anything to know what’s going on inside that thick skull of yours.”
His eyes gained a thoughtful gleam. “Anything?”
“Don’t be getting any ideas. Besides, past experience tells me that you won’t want whatever it is anyway.”
“Well…” He looked at her pensively. “There might be one way…”
“What?” She was feeling slightly apprehensive at allowing him to change the deal.
“You would get the insight you want so badly and your freedom.”
“And in turn you’d get what?”
He gave her an assessing glance. “In turn you not only kiss me but actually make an effort to enjoy it. Help me actually get the feeling I’m looking for.”
“WHAT?”
He flinched. “You know, it’s really not flattering when you do that.”
“Why does it even make that big a difference?”
“It does. It was you enjoying it as much as me that made last time so intense.”
Hermione blushed a little. “I was drunk,” she mumbled.
“Do you really need to hide behind something in order to allow yourself to even consider liking it?” he angrily asked. “It’s not like there will be any consequences. Nobody is watching this time. Nobody will know but you and me. You’re perfectly safe.”
She was indecisive for a few seconds, biting her lower lip and fidgeting. “Well…” she finally said. “No groping!”
“Groping wasn’t part of the deal,” he calmly said. “In fact, I don’t think I ever tried to grope you. Not even when you slapped me, although you’d think I had.”
Hermione’s blush returned. “I already said-“
“Yes, yes.” He waved a hand dismissively. “Do we have a new deal?”
“Ok, fine,” she said, crossing her arms. “But I can only try.”
“As long as you do try, it’s fine,” Draco quietly answered.
“So… uh… how do we go about this?” she asked a bit awkwardly.
“First, you keep quiet while I try to do my part,” he said, closing his eyes.
He’d never done this before, and he only had the basic idea how this worked. He wasn’t even too sure he really wanted it to. A few seconds went by and nothing happened. It wasn’t working. He frowned. It had to work, or she wouldn’t give him what he wanted. It was the price he had agreed to pay.
He tried again.
It was as if there was an invisible wall that he didn’t know how to tear down. He knew that he had to want to do it in order to be able to, but he sort of did want to even if he didn’t. He wanted to do it because then she would give him what he craved. He needed for this to work, damn it.
“What’s wrong?” Hermione asked, actually sounding concerned.
“Nothing,” he said. “I’m just not very good at this.”
Open up for crying out loud. I don’t mind whatever she senses, I really don’t.
“It doesn’t seem like nothing,” she commented.
“I’m thinking too hard,” he muttered. “Maybe we should try it the other way around.”
“What do you mean?”
“I need to be distracted a bit, then it might work,” he clarified, as he walked back over to her, carefully trying to sense any alarm in her.
“Distracted?” she asked. “You mean…”
“Yeah,” he said. “You’ll be the distraction.”
“And how will I know when it works? Will it be easy to tell? What exactly are you doing?”
“It’ll be very easy to tell. I’m opening the emotional link to work both ways. As it works now, it is only open one way, but that doesn’t mean the other way didn’t strengthen as well. It might, in fact, be a little overwhelming and very strange when it happens, but just try to keep it separate in your head. If you stay analytical, it should be easy enough for you to sort out… I think. Maybe.”
Her eyes widened. “I’ll be feeling you?”
“You wanted insight, didn’t you? You’ll never get a greater insight than that.”
“You’ve been able to do this all this time?” she incredulously asked.
“Yeah. Don’t look at me like that. I wasn’t going to just do it for no reason.”
“Could you have closed the other ‘link’ too?” she demanded.
“No. Trust me, if that had been an option, I would have done it weeks ago. Before any of this mess.”
She was pouting and scowling at him. “Fine,” she muttered. “I suppose I couldn’t expect you to tell me.”
“I didn’t know you’d care to know…” He shrugged. “But could we stop talking now? As you said, you’re not getting any younger…”
“Ha ha.” She stuck her tongue out at him.
Draco raised an eyebrow. “Well, isn’t that an invitation if I ever saw one…”
She quickly retracted the tongue and glanced nervously at him.
He shook his head. You wouldn’t know that this girl had half of Hogwarts snogging her at will. He stepped closer to her, purposely crowding her and forcing her to step back until she reached the wall. She squeaked in surprise when she did and he raised an eyebrow.
“Not scared,” she said again. “If you claim that I am, I will knee you.”
No, he supposed scared was too strong a word. But she was definitely nervous. He didn’t care to point it out and risk receiving a knee to his groin for his troubles, though. And he honestly couldn’t decide whether he was offended or amused. “Not saying anything,” he replied. “Just wondering why you’re trying to crawl through the wall.”
She immediately straightened, shrinking back a little when she came up uncomfortably close to him. “It’s just strange,” she said rather defensively. “You can’t expect me to be comfortable with it.”
No, she wasn’t comfortable. It didn’t stop him from wanting this kiss more than anything else, though. “Do you want to call it off?” he asked, wincing slightly.
“No! How many times do I have to say it?” She drew herself up, angrily glaring at him. “Don’t think you can just bully me into mmpf-“
She talked too much. She always had. Besides, catching her off guard was better.
He kissed her.
And this time, she let him.
He wasn’t completely prepared for the jolt of raw desire that went through him as her lips softened under his. He knew it wasn’t mutual, but it didn’t detract much from the feeling. Her hands had come up to rest on his arms, but she wasn’t pushing him away. She wasn’t rejecting him. When he sought to deepen the kiss, she yielded.
She was so soft and pliant. No, she didn’t feel any great passion right now, but she wasn’t repulsed, either. He could live with that. It was just a kiss. As long as she didn’t really mind, he wasn’t hurting anyone and it meant more to him to have this than he’d like to admit.
He tried to open the link again. For her to know how this felt… Yes, he wanted it. Even if it meant that she saw how pathetic he was in his need. Hell, she would have noticed that a long time ago if she hadn’t been so blinded by who she thought he was.
Suddenly it worked. The barrier disappeared and Hermione broke the kiss with a gasp, her eyes widening as she suddenly felt everything at once.
Draco was a bit disappointed that the kiss had to end so soon, but he accepted it. She had done her part. She had allowed him to kiss her like he wanted to without pushing him away or in any other way ruining it for him. Perhaps she hadn’t really enjoyed it, but he was sure she’d done her best. Now he just looked at her, well aware that she could all but read his thoughts, and quietly praying that she wouldn’t use it to ridicule him. He didn’t remember the last time he had really shared his deeper emotions with anyone; he couldn’t bear it if she were to use it against him.
She gave a small shaky smile. “Now who’s scared?” she asked in a quiet voice completely devoid of derision.
Relief flooded him when he realized that she wasn’t going to mock him. She must feel how much he wanted her, how kissing her made him feel… and she wasn’t going to use it against him.
Her eyes were dazed and heavy-lidded and her lips were moist and swollen.
He desperately wanted to kiss her again.
He forced himself not to.
Then she kissed him.