Quicksilver

Quicksilver
(title subject to change)
story rating NC-17
pairing: DM/HG

Disclaimer: Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Draco Malfoy, etc. are the sole property and copyright of the lovely J.K. Rowling. This story is for entertainment purposes only and is in no way affiliated with the original Harry Potter novel series or the Warner Bros. films.

This story contains minor violence, some adult language, and overt sexuality.

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Chapter Thirteen
Lost

Naturally, the first little while after the showdown at Malfoy Manor was a bit weird. People weren\'t used to these sort of actions from Draco Malfoy, and he was uneasy with a hero\'s reputation. It also weirded him out to know that Harry Potter was his cousin, and that they were no longer on opposite sides except for quidditch. It wasn\'t the fact that he was related to Harry, though, that calmed the rivalry. It was the shared situation. How could he hate the Boy Who Lived when the thing that kept him alive existed in Draco as well?

Professor McGonagall taught a lesson on Quicksilvers to each year level, so that they could fully understand all that had happened. Everyone looked at Harry\'s scar in a new light...and started asking Draco if they could see his, as well. Some random Hufflepuff third year girl came up to him one day and said, \"I think you look better with blue eyes,\" then had run away giggling to her friends. The Slytherins, to his surprise, knew better than to say anything about him losing his pureblooded \"status\"...considering the fact that he was now a rarer sort of wizard, a more powerful one. It seemed to draw even more reverence, which, he had to admit, was repairing his damaged ego.

He wasn\'t getting attention from the girl he wanted it from the most, however. Hermione had spent a day in the hospital wing recovering from shock, tacteacted as if he didn\'t exist from there on. Every time he saw her, she clung to Ron Weasley\'s side as if to ward him off.

He finally caught her one day, walking out of the Great Hall alone toward the library. As she walked around a corner, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her aside. She looked up at him, eyes blazing.

\"What do you want?\"

\"Hermione, please let me talk to you...\" Draco said gently, knowing he had no choice but to be gentle...despite her reaction making him want to put his guard back up.

\"Don\'t fucking call me Hermione,\" she replied icily, hitting him like a slap across the face with his own weapons.

\"Just...for a minute.\" He was contemplating resorting to begging.

\"No, Malfoy. The second that you said this was a game, you lost.\" She turned and walked away without another word.

***

As soon as she reached the Gryffindor common room, Hermione was in tears. Why did he still persist? Did he really think she was still going to allow him to make her his sexual toy at his convenience? The day that he\'d yelled at her in the hallway, she\'d come back here to think on every instance that they\'d been together and it had all been about sex. All of it. He just wanted a shag out of her, for whatever reason. And no matter how much she...liked it, a lot...she didn\'t want to go on like that. Being used.

Several younger Gryffindors were piled onto and gathered around the big main sofa, looking at Colin Creevey\'s latest photo album, which included a great deal of pictures from the Yule Ball. Hermione wiped her tears hastily, then joined the gaggle of people at the couch. Colin smiled and said, \"Hi, Hermione! How are you?\"

\"I\'m...okay, Colin. Wow, you\'ve taken some wonderful shots here,\" she replied, looking over a page of smiling faces and dancing couples. Harry and Ginny beamed out of one image, Dumbledore and McGonagall out of another. Everyone looked so happy.

\"Thanks! You know I appreciate that. I had some pictures with you in them, and I\'d show them to you...but I can\'t,\" Colin said, while fiddling with the corner of one of the pages in his album.

\"Why not? I\'d really like to see how Ron and I looked...\" she said, her face falling.

\"Well,ave ave them to someone else already,\" Colin said sheepishly.

\"Who? Did you give them to Ron...or Harry..?\" Hermione was confused now.

\"No. I gave them to...\" he turned away, fidgeting nervously.

\"Who, Colin?\" she persisted.

\"Draco Malfoy. He\'d paid me ten galleons apiece for any shot that I took with you in it,\" Colin blurted, inching away from Hermione as if he expected her to hurt him.

\"He didn\'t even attend the Yule Ball!\" she exclaimed, confused and angry.

\"Yes, he did. He left early, though.\" Colin turned the pages of his album a bit until he found a single shot of Draco Malfoy in all his Yule Ball glory, laughing as he watched Crabbe dance. Several of the young girls surrounding them squealed and giggled at the sight of the blonde wizard.

\"Why did he leave early?\"

\"I don\'t know; he didn\'t say. He simply asked for any picture I took that had you in it, then he walked out. He looked like he didn\'t feel well, but I can\'t be sure.\" Colin grabbed the wrist of a girl trying to steal the photo of Draco and shook his head at her, then turned back to Hermione.

She had a haunted look on her face, indescribable at best. She thanked Colin, then slowly walked toward her dormitory. She petted a purring Crookshanks when she got to her bed, then sat down. She smoothed one hand over her bedspread, remembering vividly the day that he\'d snuck in here disguised as Ron.

He\'d bought pictures of her...which obviously meant he enjoyed looking at her as well as shagging her. If he was simply using her, then why...

\"It\'s still not enough...ever. You\'re mine now.\" That was what he\'d said to her. \"It\" referred originally to sex, then to her needing him...calling his name out for all to hear. But neither of those things was \"enough\".

Then what was enough? It couldn\'t be her death...he\'d begged Pansy Parkinson, on his knees with tears in his eyes, not to kill her.

Was her affection enough?

If that was the case, then why did he say those horrible things to her that day in the hall? She thought about the circumstances surrounding the situation...his sudden left-handedness, the color of his eyes changing...

\"Nothing is different. Not about me.\"

He was fighting against breaks in what he considered to be normal. Almost everything that defined his world had chanin tin the matte a f a few days.

He\'d lashed out at me because I was among the things that was different, she realized with a start.

\"How could I have been so stupid, Crookshanks?\" she asked her cat, who regarded her with concern.

\"You had to begin thinking for yourself as your true self. All it took was one small instance where you began to think more openly than the bind had previously allowed. If you can remember when you started to do just that, you can probably pinpoint when your bind began to unravel.\"

He\'d looked at -her- when his father told him that. Malfoy\'s bind had begun to dissolve because he\'d taken an interest in her! She burst into tears once more.

He looked amazing in Colin\'s photograph. She remembered how disappointed she was that he hadn\'t been there. How he\'d come into the Prefects\' bathroom the next morning instead. She shivered at the memory, then felt a stinging on her neck where the marks of his loving had been.

There wasn\'t a soul alive that wouldn\'t have been hexed into pieces for doing to her what Draco Malfoy did in those first few incredible days. She truly was his.

And she\'d lost him.