Onyx_and_Elm

You taste like fucking opium.

I’d love to be gone. I’d give anything to be gone. Let me be gone.

The slant of his handwriting is the sort you see from psychopaths. Ink is splotched everywhere. It’s almost as messy as his life, and it’s riddled with things she’d never have known from looking at him.

She hasn’t slept.

How could she? With both the past and the future colliding inside her head? Thinking about the touches he’s already given and the hate he’s going to give when he finds out?

It’s the first time she acknowledges that she doesn’t want him to hate her.

It’s also the first time she acknowledges that kissing him was…different.

He’s tall — taller than most of the boys she knows, and even though she’s always told herself that height should have nothing to do with it, there’s something about sinking into the inky darkness of his shadow. His hands are long…delicate. Aristocratic in every sense. There would’ve been no way for her to know in the past how smooth the pads of his fingers are, but after feeling them trace her naked hipbones after slipping beneath the waistband of her jeans, she knows. Oh, she knows.

And even if he did believe that, he’d never believe she hadn’t read it.

Moments like these make her regret giving up her Time Turner.

Right now, there’s nothing she can do.

She gawks at him. “Who are you to lecture me about segregation, Death Eater?” And even she knows it’s an overreaction. She swallows and sits back a little, flushing. “Sorry,” she mutters. She wonders where her filter has gone.

“Touchy, touch-y,” he tisks. He’s never had a fragile ego. Just a large one. In all the years she’s known him, she’s never seen Theodore Nott lose his cool.

She scoffs. Bristles. Opens her mouth to argue. Can’t think of anything.

She's no idiot. He isn’t sitting here on a whim. But he’s also Theodore Nott, and asking him to explain himself is like asking grass to grow in winter.

All that’s clear is that he isn’t leaving.

And she feels like she’s fallen into a snake pit. So many snakes. Too many fucking snakes.

Hermione barely hears. All she can think in this moment, of all things, is how much she regrets S.P.E.W.

Her hand closes around the binding, and she knows she’s sealed her fate. “Thank you,” she says, somewhat dazed.

She has to look. She can’t help it. Out the corner of her eye, she sees Malfoy’s stare — like the barrel of a gun. Sees the way his fist is balled on the desk.

A knot forms in her throat.

At every side, people are staring, but she’s sprinting now. Her heart rate kicks into high gear, because she can hear Malfoy’s own footfalls, heavy and fast on the stone behind her. He’s running, too.

He’s actually chasing her.

Fuck, fuck, fuck…

It’s the worst scenario she could think of realized.

His legs are longer than hers. He’s faster.

She only makes it as far as the statues in the entryway before he catches up, but her wand gets caught in her pocket as she turns, trying to yank it free.

And the height she’d been admiring just this morning becomes a suddenly damning disadvantage. He crowds her into the wall, backing her up until she’s pressed against the rough stone beside the doorway to the Great Hall.