Arbitrary Alignment (5/?)
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Hermione/Draco
Rating: PG13
Summary: A Draco goes to the Order's headquarters/werewolf fic.
Disclaimer: If Harry Potter was mine Dumbledore would still be gay but his lover so absolutely be Filch
AN: Still waaaaay angsty but with a swirl of smut.
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Awareness
"He looks at me as if he's the spoon and I'm the dish of ice cream." The Jane Austen Book Club
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Previously
She began to liberally apply the salve on his chest and was so engrossed in the task that she didn't realize that his eyes had opened. Indeed she had no idea that he was awake at all.
She was reaching for the bloody tear on his neck, fingers thick with salve, when his hand shot out and wrapped around her wrist halting her hand.
Her startled eyes met his. "Granger?" he croaked out.
"Granger?" he said again.
But his eyes weren't filled with malice or disgust like every other time he had uttered her name, instead she saw astonishment and confusion in their grey depths.
The rehearsed speech she had ready for when and if he woke seemed to stick in her throat, her mind went blank, and she stood there like an idiot with her mouth hanging open.
"Granger is that you?" his hand tightened around her wrist as he struggled to sit up. He gasped, face transforming into a mask of pain as the slashes on his chest prevented him from sitting up.
Hermione finally found her voice "Don't sit up Malfoy" she used her other hand to push lightly on his shoulder till he slumped back on the bed
"Do you remember what happened?".
Through the haze of pain clouding his eyes Malfoy looked up at her with a dawning realization. She braced herself for the inevitable disgust and sneering hatred to twist his face but instead she saw slight fear in his eyes.
"Where am I? What have you done to me?" his words were slurred and sluggish.
His eyes traveled from her eyes down her body across her arm to where his hand was still gripping her wrist. His eyes widened before he released her hand, flinging her arm from his body.
"I haven't done anything to you. The Order found you like this Malfoy, this is the doing of that psychotic maniac you serve".
She reached forward again towards his neck, intending to finish anointing the raw tear at the junction where the smooth line of his shoulder met his throat.
Malfoy flinched away from her touch, shifting his body away from her towards the opposite side of the bed, and a look of absolute terror flashed across his face before his features reverted back to his familiar cold, emotionless mask.
That brief look of fear on his face caused pity and something else she couldn't name to swell in her chest and curl around her throat.
"Im not going to hurt you Malfoy, this is to help with the pain" Hermione said as she gestured to the opened container between their knees.
"Why would I want your help, filthy Mudblood" Malfoy spat out. Just like the first time she had heard those hurtful words they hurt her just as deeply, and the look in his eyes when he said it, pure hatred.
The old Hermione would have let the insult roll off her back, would have never shown how much those hateful words tore at her soul. But she was so inexplicably tired, she had barely slept at all the past couple of days trying to save the life of this ungrateful bigot, and to her absolute horror she felt the tears rise and cloud her eyes.
For a half-second Malfoy looked surprised before his facial expression became shuttered again, completely unreadable.
"Your not in the position to reject it Malfoy" she spat out his name like it was a curse. His eyes drifted to the wand by her side. She tampered down the urge to gloat, she had a job to do.
He held perfectly still, eyes carefully blank, as she reached out yet again. As her fingers met his skin his eyes slithered shut and she felt him tense but he didn't pull away.
She didn't know how she felt now that Malfoy was awake.
Before, when he was unconscious, and she had tended to his wounds it was all very clinical and impersonal. She viewed him as a task assigned to her, a responsibility, an obligation. The growing feelings of pity toward his plight she thought would dissipate once he awakened and regained his cruel, icy exterior.
But now it was hard to think of him as the same sneering arrogant Sytherin after that small uncharacteristic display of vulnerability. The flash of fear across his face was brief but she had seen it, and it had stirred more then just pity in her chest.
Now, as she leaned over Malfoy's bare torso, fingers lightly working the salve into his neck, she was acutely aware of their close proximity and the feel of his skin beneath her fingertips.
With nervous energy Hermione began to babble to fill the uncomfortable silence, "The Order found you like this, they brought you here almost a week ago. You were unconscious almost the whole time. Do you remember what happened, anything at all?"
She finished, sitting back on her heels, and looked expectantly at Malfoy for his reply.
He stared back at her.
His stomach chose that moment to rumble loudly and he looked terribly embarrassed and at the same time defiant, as if daring her to laugh at him.
She wanted answers, but for the moment her curiosity would half to wait. She sighed and began to move off the bed, again Malfoy flinched away. She choose to ignore it.
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She went downstairs to grab some food for Malfoy. She found a canister of beef stew that she warmed up and some hearty grainy bread that she put on a tray to bring up along with the last of the pumpkin juice.
When she returned he was still crouched against the backboard and he was sniffing his hand, the same hand that had gripped her wrist. He was cradling it to his face, inhaling, nuzzling it and purring?
It was beyond peculiar.
His head shot up as she closed the door and she was surprised to see his cheeks flush, he was blushing.
He refused to look in her eyes, instead hungrily fixating his gaze on the tray in her arms. She sat on the bed and set the tray in between them.
Malfoy wasted no time in attacking the food. He began shoveling the food down with manners atrocious enough to rival Ron's. He ate all of the food on the tray, but he seemed to have extra enjoyment from the chunks of beef in the stew.
As he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand he seemed to realize she was sitting there, watching him scarf the meal down. He had the grace to be embarrassed but she also saw confusion present in his eyes.
He was the first to break the silence that had settled over their heads, heavy and stifling, "What happened to my clothes, where are they?"
She explained that she had destroyed them, that they were torn and bloody, and unsalvageable.
Then that uncomfortable silence again.
Even more unsettling the way he way looking at her, like he wanted to eat her, wanted to devour her whole. She closed her fingers over the cool wood at her side. It whispered to her you are safe I am here you are safe.
He was shifting on the bed now, restlessly moving and his gaze was straying towards the door. "I...I need...that is..."
"Yes?...spit it out Malfoy" she was tired of this, her head was buzzing and she couldn't think, couldn't form coherent thought, she wanted a hot cup of tea and dreamless sleep.
She wanted to be five again, before that letter had come. She wanted her mother to sing her to sleep and run her hands through her hair, and oh god mother.
Something squeezed painfully in her chest and she had to remind herself to breathe in out in out.
"Granger...I...I need to use the loo".
She looked at him then, really looked.
Besides the gashes running the length of his torso there were dirty streaks darkly contrasting with the alabaster skin. Matted tangled hair hung over his glassy eyes, he looked like death warmed over and he stunk. She wrinkled her nose in distaste. He smelled of dried sweat, and blood, and foul dirt.
"You need a bath too, you reek."
He scowled, but moved to slid off the bed, knuckles white where his hands clenched at the sheets, breath stilled in the cavern of his mouth then emerging, groaning through his chapped lips.
He stood, swaying.
She wrapped her arm around his waist steadying him. As her hand curled around his body, tightened on his hipbone, he pushed her away snarling, "Don't touch me"
So she didn't.
She trailed behind him as he stumbled down the stairs, panting heavily as they reached the bottom. She led the way to the bathroom next to her room.
His face was flushed and sweating as he grasped his side breathing heavily, and she wondered briefly if the fever had returned. But any concern was squashed by bitterness of his denial of help, as if her touch would taint him.
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She went into her room, after giving him a towel, and sat down to collect her thoughts.
She needed to contact Moody and Lupin, let them know Malfoy had awakened. So far as far as she could tell he hadn't shown any indication of symptoms of lycanthropy like Lupin had said.
Something was off though, he seemed disorientated and fearful of her, unessararilsy jumpy. So far he was being surprisingly cooperative in as much as he hadn't attempted to attack her.
She shouldn't have cared, but his obvious disdain and disgust hurt as freshly as when as a first year she had encountered the pointless bigotry. She pushed the hurt and the strange interaction that had just occurred between her and Malfoy to the back of her head, she would analyze it later, and concentrated on contacting Moody with her report.
As she finished the call she heard a loud thud, felt the vibrations beneath her feet.
It had come from the bathroom.
She was suddenly afraid Malfoy had collapsed. She ran to the bathroom, calling through the door, "Malfoy? are you all right".
She could hear the sound of the shower water hitting the tile and then a low moan. She didn't think just acted.
Pushing her way through the door she careened across the bathroom floor to the shower and tugged back the shower curtain.
Malfoy was crouched on the tub floor, water cascading over his naked form, fingers clutching at the dark mark on his forearm. Through his clenched fingers she could see the snake, snarling, hissing and twisting on his arm.
Later she would remembered all that pale skin, the breath of his shoulders, the texture of his hair. But all she could see right then was the tension in his brow, furrowed with distress, the way he was gasping with pain. He was hissing through tightly clenched teeth.
She reached out to touch his bare shoulder "Malfoy".
He jerked at her touch, eyes clouded with pain. "Granger...I...it..." he panted as a fresh wave of agony burned into his forearm, shook his body.
"Please...ahhh...help me!!!".
His plea was so full of hurt and need that without thinking she climbed into the tub and wrapped her arms around his frame, rocking back and forth with him as his body jerked and shook.
He buried his face against her neck and she could feel the warm pants of his breath against her pulse. She sat there with him, hand rubbing soothing circles on his bare back as he rode out the waves of pain.
The small gasps he made faded out slowly and she gradually became aware that her clothing was plastered to her body and that all that separated her skin from his was that wet material.
The shower water pounding down on their bodies was icy but the heat from his body seemed to burn through to her skin. She couldn't help but be aware of their positioning, one of her arms stroking the skin of his back the other tangled in his hair.
He stiffened, went still, seemed to become aware of their intimate embrace also.
His face was still buried against her throat and as he turned his head slightly the wet heat of his lips brushed against the bare skin of her neck. She couldn't help her quick intake of breath at his involuntary touch nor the way her hands unconsciously tightened on him.
His head shot up and he swore pushing her roughly away.
She fell back, landing on her rear, wincing as her tailbone collided with the bottom of the tub, crashing against the hard porcelain. Through the water streaming down her face and the wet strands of hair that had fallen forward, she could see in his eyes confusion and want and something else she couldn't name, as his eyes swept up and down her body.
The long-sleeved white linen shift she had on was shapeless and modest enough but the water had plastered it to her skin and rendered it completely transparent and she followed his eyes with her own as his eyes trailed down her body, lingering on her breasts and hips before coming to rest once more on her face.
Tremors were coursing through his body now, and she shifted forward, reached out to touch to help.
And then he was turning away and telling her to leave, to get away, to go away. But she could barely hear him over the music of the water and she wanted to touch him again, hold him, feel that skin on skin contact, see all of him.
He was yelling now, "Get out, GET OUT!" still hunched over, arms clutching his knees to his chest, intently fixated on the grimy water puddling at his feet. She could see him, glimpse behind the tangle of limbs and streaming water, that part of him.
And what she saw was so unexplainable, unexpected, frightening in its implications that it pushed her into action.
She scrambled out of the slippery tub, knees banging against the rim.
She ran all the way back to her room and only after she had stripped off her soaking wet shift and was shivering, angrily pulling on trousers and an oversized sweater, was she able to think that no matter how much he protested her presence, demanded for her to leave, a certain part of his anatomy had certainly told her differently.
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Next Up: Malfoy's point of view, his thoughts and take as all of this (the above) is going on.
Preview chapter 6: ...he watched her lips move. Full and moist, he wondered how they would taste. She fell silent, worrying her bottom lip in between her teeth. He wanted to replace her teeth with his own, sink his incisors into her plump flesh and taste her blood. The sheer lunacy of the animalistic urge to do just that shook him out of the trance he was in. Tearing his eyes away he stared instead at the faded grey blanket. He had always held tight reign on his thoughts and his emotions, but it was as if he had no control now. And the creature inside of him roared that it was hungry even as his full, distended belly gurgled contentedly...
Pairing: Hermione/Draco
Rating: PG13
Summary: A Draco goes to the Order's headquarters/werewolf fic.
Disclaimer: If Harry Potter was mine Dumbledore would still be gay but his lover so absolutely be Filch
AN: Still waaaaay angsty but with a swirl of smut.
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-
Awareness
"He looks at me as if he's the spoon and I'm the dish of ice cream." The Jane Austen Book Club
-
-
-
Previously
She began to liberally apply the salve on his chest and was so engrossed in the task that she didn't realize that his eyes had opened. Indeed she had no idea that he was awake at all.
She was reaching for the bloody tear on his neck, fingers thick with salve, when his hand shot out and wrapped around her wrist halting her hand.
Her startled eyes met his. "Granger?" he croaked out.
"Granger?" he said again.
But his eyes weren't filled with malice or disgust like every other time he had uttered her name, instead she saw astonishment and confusion in their grey depths.
The rehearsed speech she had ready for when and if he woke seemed to stick in her throat, her mind went blank, and she stood there like an idiot with her mouth hanging open.
"Granger is that you?" his hand tightened around her wrist as he struggled to sit up. He gasped, face transforming into a mask of pain as the slashes on his chest prevented him from sitting up.
Hermione finally found her voice "Don't sit up Malfoy" she used her other hand to push lightly on his shoulder till he slumped back on the bed
"Do you remember what happened?".
Through the haze of pain clouding his eyes Malfoy looked up at her with a dawning realization. She braced herself for the inevitable disgust and sneering hatred to twist his face but instead she saw slight fear in his eyes.
"Where am I? What have you done to me?" his words were slurred and sluggish.
His eyes traveled from her eyes down her body across her arm to where his hand was still gripping her wrist. His eyes widened before he released her hand, flinging her arm from his body.
"I haven't done anything to you. The Order found you like this Malfoy, this is the doing of that psychotic maniac you serve".
She reached forward again towards his neck, intending to finish anointing the raw tear at the junction where the smooth line of his shoulder met his throat.
Malfoy flinched away from her touch, shifting his body away from her towards the opposite side of the bed, and a look of absolute terror flashed across his face before his features reverted back to his familiar cold, emotionless mask.
That brief look of fear on his face caused pity and something else she couldn't name to swell in her chest and curl around her throat.
"Im not going to hurt you Malfoy, this is to help with the pain" Hermione said as she gestured to the opened container between their knees.
"Why would I want your help, filthy Mudblood" Malfoy spat out. Just like the first time she had heard those hurtful words they hurt her just as deeply, and the look in his eyes when he said it, pure hatred.
The old Hermione would have let the insult roll off her back, would have never shown how much those hateful words tore at her soul. But she was so inexplicably tired, she had barely slept at all the past couple of days trying to save the life of this ungrateful bigot, and to her absolute horror she felt the tears rise and cloud her eyes.
For a half-second Malfoy looked surprised before his facial expression became shuttered again, completely unreadable.
"Your not in the position to reject it Malfoy" she spat out his name like it was a curse. His eyes drifted to the wand by her side. She tampered down the urge to gloat, she had a job to do.
He held perfectly still, eyes carefully blank, as she reached out yet again. As her fingers met his skin his eyes slithered shut and she felt him tense but he didn't pull away.
She didn't know how she felt now that Malfoy was awake.
Before, when he was unconscious, and she had tended to his wounds it was all very clinical and impersonal. She viewed him as a task assigned to her, a responsibility, an obligation. The growing feelings of pity toward his plight she thought would dissipate once he awakened and regained his cruel, icy exterior.
But now it was hard to think of him as the same sneering arrogant Sytherin after that small uncharacteristic display of vulnerability. The flash of fear across his face was brief but she had seen it, and it had stirred more then just pity in her chest.
Now, as she leaned over Malfoy's bare torso, fingers lightly working the salve into his neck, she was acutely aware of their close proximity and the feel of his skin beneath her fingertips.
With nervous energy Hermione began to babble to fill the uncomfortable silence, "The Order found you like this, they brought you here almost a week ago. You were unconscious almost the whole time. Do you remember what happened, anything at all?"
She finished, sitting back on her heels, and looked expectantly at Malfoy for his reply.
He stared back at her.
His stomach chose that moment to rumble loudly and he looked terribly embarrassed and at the same time defiant, as if daring her to laugh at him.
She wanted answers, but for the moment her curiosity would half to wait. She sighed and began to move off the bed, again Malfoy flinched away. She choose to ignore it.
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She went downstairs to grab some food for Malfoy. She found a canister of beef stew that she warmed up and some hearty grainy bread that she put on a tray to bring up along with the last of the pumpkin juice.
When she returned he was still crouched against the backboard and he was sniffing his hand, the same hand that had gripped her wrist. He was cradling it to his face, inhaling, nuzzling it and purring?
It was beyond peculiar.
His head shot up as she closed the door and she was surprised to see his cheeks flush, he was blushing.
He refused to look in her eyes, instead hungrily fixating his gaze on the tray in her arms. She sat on the bed and set the tray in between them.
Malfoy wasted no time in attacking the food. He began shoveling the food down with manners atrocious enough to rival Ron's. He ate all of the food on the tray, but he seemed to have extra enjoyment from the chunks of beef in the stew.
As he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand he seemed to realize she was sitting there, watching him scarf the meal down. He had the grace to be embarrassed but she also saw confusion present in his eyes.
He was the first to break the silence that had settled over their heads, heavy and stifling, "What happened to my clothes, where are they?"
She explained that she had destroyed them, that they were torn and bloody, and unsalvageable.
Then that uncomfortable silence again.
Even more unsettling the way he way looking at her, like he wanted to eat her, wanted to devour her whole. She closed her fingers over the cool wood at her side. It whispered to her you are safe I am here you are safe.
He was shifting on the bed now, restlessly moving and his gaze was straying towards the door. "I...I need...that is..."
"Yes?...spit it out Malfoy" she was tired of this, her head was buzzing and she couldn't think, couldn't form coherent thought, she wanted a hot cup of tea and dreamless sleep.
She wanted to be five again, before that letter had come. She wanted her mother to sing her to sleep and run her hands through her hair, and oh god mother.
Something squeezed painfully in her chest and she had to remind herself to breathe in out in out.
"Granger...I...I need to use the loo".
She looked at him then, really looked.
Besides the gashes running the length of his torso there were dirty streaks darkly contrasting with the alabaster skin. Matted tangled hair hung over his glassy eyes, he looked like death warmed over and he stunk. She wrinkled her nose in distaste. He smelled of dried sweat, and blood, and foul dirt.
"You need a bath too, you reek."
He scowled, but moved to slid off the bed, knuckles white where his hands clenched at the sheets, breath stilled in the cavern of his mouth then emerging, groaning through his chapped lips.
He stood, swaying.
She wrapped her arm around his waist steadying him. As her hand curled around his body, tightened on his hipbone, he pushed her away snarling, "Don't touch me"
So she didn't.
She trailed behind him as he stumbled down the stairs, panting heavily as they reached the bottom. She led the way to the bathroom next to her room.
His face was flushed and sweating as he grasped his side breathing heavily, and she wondered briefly if the fever had returned. But any concern was squashed by bitterness of his denial of help, as if her touch would taint him.
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-
She went into her room, after giving him a towel, and sat down to collect her thoughts.
She needed to contact Moody and Lupin, let them know Malfoy had awakened. So far as far as she could tell he hadn't shown any indication of symptoms of lycanthropy like Lupin had said.
Something was off though, he seemed disorientated and fearful of her, unessararilsy jumpy. So far he was being surprisingly cooperative in as much as he hadn't attempted to attack her.
She shouldn't have cared, but his obvious disdain and disgust hurt as freshly as when as a first year she had encountered the pointless bigotry. She pushed the hurt and the strange interaction that had just occurred between her and Malfoy to the back of her head, she would analyze it later, and concentrated on contacting Moody with her report.
As she finished the call she heard a loud thud, felt the vibrations beneath her feet.
It had come from the bathroom.
She was suddenly afraid Malfoy had collapsed. She ran to the bathroom, calling through the door, "Malfoy? are you all right".
She could hear the sound of the shower water hitting the tile and then a low moan. She didn't think just acted.
Pushing her way through the door she careened across the bathroom floor to the shower and tugged back the shower curtain.
Malfoy was crouched on the tub floor, water cascading over his naked form, fingers clutching at the dark mark on his forearm. Through his clenched fingers she could see the snake, snarling, hissing and twisting on his arm.
Later she would remembered all that pale skin, the breath of his shoulders, the texture of his hair. But all she could see right then was the tension in his brow, furrowed with distress, the way he was gasping with pain. He was hissing through tightly clenched teeth.
She reached out to touch his bare shoulder "Malfoy".
He jerked at her touch, eyes clouded with pain. "Granger...I...it..." he panted as a fresh wave of agony burned into his forearm, shook his body.
"Please...ahhh...help me!!!".
His plea was so full of hurt and need that without thinking she climbed into the tub and wrapped her arms around his frame, rocking back and forth with him as his body jerked and shook.
He buried his face against her neck and she could feel the warm pants of his breath against her pulse. She sat there with him, hand rubbing soothing circles on his bare back as he rode out the waves of pain.
The small gasps he made faded out slowly and she gradually became aware that her clothing was plastered to her body and that all that separated her skin from his was that wet material.
The shower water pounding down on their bodies was icy but the heat from his body seemed to burn through to her skin. She couldn't help but be aware of their positioning, one of her arms stroking the skin of his back the other tangled in his hair.
He stiffened, went still, seemed to become aware of their intimate embrace also.
His face was still buried against her throat and as he turned his head slightly the wet heat of his lips brushed against the bare skin of her neck. She couldn't help her quick intake of breath at his involuntary touch nor the way her hands unconsciously tightened on him.
His head shot up and he swore pushing her roughly away.
She fell back, landing on her rear, wincing as her tailbone collided with the bottom of the tub, crashing against the hard porcelain. Through the water streaming down her face and the wet strands of hair that had fallen forward, she could see in his eyes confusion and want and something else she couldn't name, as his eyes swept up and down her body.
The long-sleeved white linen shift she had on was shapeless and modest enough but the water had plastered it to her skin and rendered it completely transparent and she followed his eyes with her own as his eyes trailed down her body, lingering on her breasts and hips before coming to rest once more on her face.
Tremors were coursing through his body now, and she shifted forward, reached out to touch to help.
And then he was turning away and telling her to leave, to get away, to go away. But she could barely hear him over the music of the water and she wanted to touch him again, hold him, feel that skin on skin contact, see all of him.
He was yelling now, "Get out, GET OUT!" still hunched over, arms clutching his knees to his chest, intently fixated on the grimy water puddling at his feet. She could see him, glimpse behind the tangle of limbs and streaming water, that part of him.
And what she saw was so unexplainable, unexpected, frightening in its implications that it pushed her into action.
She scrambled out of the slippery tub, knees banging against the rim.
She ran all the way back to her room and only after she had stripped off her soaking wet shift and was shivering, angrily pulling on trousers and an oversized sweater, was she able to think that no matter how much he protested her presence, demanded for her to leave, a certain part of his anatomy had certainly told her differently.
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Next Up: Malfoy's point of view, his thoughts and take as all of this (the above) is going on.
Preview chapter 6: ...he watched her lips move. Full and moist, he wondered how they would taste. She fell silent, worrying her bottom lip in between her teeth. He wanted to replace her teeth with his own, sink his incisors into her plump flesh and taste her blood. The sheer lunacy of the animalistic urge to do just that shook him out of the trance he was in. Tearing his eyes away he stared instead at the faded grey blanket. He had always held tight reign on his thoughts and his emotions, but it was as if he had no control now. And the creature inside of him roared that it was hungry even as his full, distended belly gurgled contentedly...