The Transgressor

@The Transgressor@

by:GoldenSilence

She came to him that night like she did a multitude of other nights, walking softly on the cold stones as if silence blanketed her. She wasn't sure why she came anymore. Once you repeat something enough times, you lose sight of why you began in the first place, and where you will ever end. Hermione knew only the now, that she came for a haven from all else as he did. She didn't ask why. She didn't really care about him any more than she really cared about herself.

They didn't fit together at all. It was like someone had jammed them together randomly with the same pin and the only way they felt empathy for one another was because they were in the same pain. She certainly shouldn't meet Draco like this, not when she was dating Ron, but Ron dated her only to hide from the truth about him and Harry, and hiding from the truth was what Hermione was doing too, in her own way.

At first it was Hermione didn't love, then it was she couldn't, and then it was she shouldn't.Hermione's life was a long list of dos and don'ts that muttered in her subconscious all the day long like a humming train. Eventually though, the train stopped, the words collided, and rules that once had a purpose suddenly lost their intention and meaning. Life was no longer a system; it was an algorithm that Hermione stared at uncomprehending, as blurry and remote as the person at the center of it.

And the person at the center of it no longer consisted of only Hermione. Hermione felt like she was grasping for the phantom strings to tie up what couldn't be tied, parcel and bundle it and put it away, far away. She wanted to drown it with a rock, so that it could no longer float to the surface and distort it.

In her darker moments, Hermione found herself thinking that if it no longer existed, then neither would she, at least not in the same sense. Harry or Ron wouldn't understand, or maybe she told herself that because these meetings with Draco were continued by a side of her she didn't want them to know.

All of her life, being a prefect, getting good grades, all of it was just another check in the check off list. All of it could be rationally explained, but the reasons weren't really why Hermione was living her life so. If you asked her, even she couldn't have said why. She didn't get good grades because she wanted good job. She got then because cared about future, obsessed about it to the point Ron teased that her death would terrify her because it was only thing that wasn't planned.

Hermione lived in terror that she wouldn't be good at something and because she never thought she was good at anything, she had to be good at everything as a safeguard of sorts. Good grades not much of a constitution for living. As it was, Hermione didn't do a lot of living, more of existing. Existing was taking up space, living was what you did with that space, how you occupied it. Hermione didn't occupy any space for any long amount of time because always trying to get away from it, from every class, every hour spent studying, as fast as she could without giving it up altogether.

That was where Draco factored in, to help her get away. She knew that beyond whatever happened, beyond who she was, there was who he was and beyond both what they were and what their lives were. There was..This. This Hermione called it when she referred to it at all, which wasn't often. Images may have always been present of it in her mind, or being acted in front of her eyes, but that they were mute. With words, they would have had meaning and with words, they would have given reality to something that was always meant to stay surreal.

Draco and her were nothing like Ron and her. Ron was part of her day, whereas Draco was part of her heart, locked there so she could never entirely be rid of him without first ridding herself of it. To get rid of her heart would be to rid herself of her life. Hermione thought sometimes she'd liked to, if only to prolong this dream. It was solely a dream; it had no base in emotions or actions. For all Draco was in her heart, she did not love him.

It was more complicated than that and probably simpler, because usually the most complicated things are at heart simple if only you find the right connection, the contingency that turns all chaos into order. Practical Hermione, who never did anything without weighting each side carefully and thinking, was still searching for it, while every minute with Draco adding more and more to the problem.

************

She came to him whenever he called for her, which was, as loathe as he was to admit it, more often than not. He heard the doors shut behind her, but he did not seek to find her in the dark, but stood still, waiting for her to creep up behind him like she always did, thinking she could surprise him. For all the hours she spent in his bed, in his room, they never spoke to each other. It was always like this, always like a dream. No, on second thought, not a dream implied happiness or fulfillment that lasted only fleetingly and could never really be obtained.

Draco didn't fancy her, he didn't care about her. He didn't want to spent every day knowing she was at the end of it when she was the beginning. Because only with her, after being with her, after indulging in his fancy, could he go and do what needed to be done. It was only through her kisses that he found the courage to kill, only through her tears that he was cleaned of the blood that spilled over his hands.

As her hands touched his shoulders tentatively, he turned around and kissed her as fiercely as he wrenched her hands away. He paused in kissing her to look at her, learning of all that was written in her face there, all the words she would never tell him and he would never ask to her. She didn't breathe as he stared, her eyes not following his or even focused on his, but fixated firmly on a point over his shoulder. Often when they were together, she didn't breathe, afraid that to breathe would be to make these acts of fiction and imagination too set in fact.

Sometime he wouldn't let her. Would put his hand over her mouth and nose and watch her skin turn flushed, from rosy pink to rosy reddish purple. Through it all her eyes would never widen, but watch him, with calm that irked him more than her fury and anger.

Her calm eyes were a challenge to him to kill her. Draco couldn't understand them any more than he could her. Perhaps they were calm because she accepted her fate, or perhaps because she trusted him, or because she was secure in the thought that he was a coward and would not go through with what he had began. He ought to kill her. He had to kill her. But how can you kill what you feel you've created?

Because Draco felt he had created her. This Hermione he chose to spend his time with was not same as other Hermione. This Hermione was silent and compliant. This Hermione was how he liked her best. She should be subdued, should realize that she was nothing, that what he gave her was an honor, that her death would be an honor. Draco didn't do this because she wanted it; he did this because he wanted it. Draco didn't try to explain it. Draco's wants didn't have to be explained, they were carried out, willingly or no.

Even if Hermione hadn't complied, he would have gotten his wish in the end. Draco knew that even if didn't care about her or her wishes, that if she had been replaced with anyone else, he would not have wanted it nearly so much. There was something about her, different even when she was not speaking. Draco had to admit none of the other girls had wanted it, not like she did.

She often cried when they were together, too. She had been crying now, he could see it in her eyes as she slept an hour or so later, little curls of her hair twisting free of her braid and onto her face and shoulders.

Draco looked at his hands as Hermione slept; they were white and small and stuck out in the night. Her life was in them, he thought and not because he had reached out and grasped for it, but because she had chosen to put it there and because he had chosen to keep it, just as one day soon, he would chose to close his fingers one by one, and crush it.

He could, you know, with just a turn of his delicate fingers, a crinkling of his small palm. Any time he chose, because it was all about choices, really.

Choices were important to her. Choices made her think this was her will, that this was not something beyond them, not something without a reason. Draco let her think this. It was important she had some semblance of control, that she lived in this haze and never bothered to clear away the murkiness and see the facts staring her in the face. For if she had seen the reflection of what she doing with clarity, would she not have run?

He had given her chances to run. Many. But she hadn't. She was attached to him, thought Draco smugly as he gave her hair a harsh pull, like one of those yoyo curls of hers, incapable of ever springing away from its source no matter how it struggled.

Silly girl, but perhaps better in the end she didn't try to run. Draco liked a chase, liked to feel that every death, every taking of life was an effort. It gave the killing an importance he otherwise never would have felt in his heart of hearts. Draco had convinced himself that he had no conscience, though he did. Just because he did what he did, killed who he killed, became a death eater, none of it meant he had no conscience or priorities.

He had priorities and a conscience, so twisted that they were all backward. Draco saw in black and white, but lately he was finding he had to squint to do so, to block out all the colors that streamed past. Life wasn't black and white and he knew it, but that did not mean he didn't view it that way. Sometimes viewing things as you envisioned them was ten times better than facing the reality anyway.

By being with her, Draco was trying to run from reality, but allowing himself to be caught up in it, to be ensnared by it for even one minute was dangerous, because the more he allowed himself to become part of the bubble, the harder it became to pop. It reminded him of the bible. That which caused you to sin should be cut off if you want to get into heaven, just as Draco must get rid of Hermione to get rid of that component of him that opened his eyes and wouldn't let them close on all he did. He must if he wanted to succeed, though he knew he wouldn't go straight to heaven.

He would go straight to hell.

"Well, at least you know where you are going in life."

She was awake. He knew that even before she spoke, even before he realized he had spoken his earlier thought aloud. He could tell even with his back turned towards her. He could always feel her presence, but when she was awake there was something that jolted, that charged the air and made the bed a bed again, her skin real, the water pitcher of actual substance. Draco frowned. He liked her better asleep, unable to disturb things. He liked kissing her better when she was asleep, taking her when she was asleep, because then she could not take him, could not kiss him back. When she was asleep, she couldn't have any part in this wrongdoing, for what they were doing was wrong, to both his way of thinking and hers.

Draco hated how she made hell sound, like a destination at the end of the road, or rather, the destination at the bottom of the pit that Draco's road led into, so that he couldn't climb away from it or escape from it no matter how hard he tried.

Her comment brought out something in him, though he wasn't sure what. He kissed her hard, bit her lip until it bleed, held her face immobile like a porcelain doll's to shut her up, to make her safe again and not dangerous.

Dangerous, she had to be killed and his heart, however much he wanted to be rid of it, held hopefully stitched to her life, pleading for it, putting it off further and further down the line until eventually, if he didn't end it soon, it would vanish altogether around the bend and pull his heart along with it, and him as well; her path would become his. He couldn't allow that. After all, his heart was only one part and his head, will, and duty bigger and stronger; one against many were never very good odds.

"Be quiet." He hissed at her. "Don't talk to me of where I'm going when you yourself have no clue. Your path is a bunch of dots, scattered and leading nowhere. Is that why you sleep with me? You think I can hold all those fragments together for you? Well, let me tell you something. I was the one that made them. I made you. I made you and I made this, and I am going to shatter both just like I shattered your life before this."

"Then do it. End it."

She just stared at him with those eyes, with that same expression she wore when she choked her or ran a fingernail down her face just to see her bleed. Draco still could not comprehend that look of acceptance.

"I knew it. All those times you've hurt me, it's just been a test of yourself, to see how far you'll go, to see how far you can go before I start to scream. You don't have the will," she said, challenging him.

Draco put his hand over her eyes, felt how fragile they were, the eyelids that were such a thing layer of tissue, the eyelashes that brushed his skin.

"Don't bring this upon yourself any more than it already is."

"Why not?"

Draco pulled his hands back and slapped her as hard as he could, suddenly infuriated, at her, and at himself, but more at himself. He realized why couldn't kill her. He'd never been angry with her. He wanted to be angry when he killed her, wanted to feel something.

Dangerous. It was all so dangerous. He was dragging her into a fire and hoping not to singe himself in the process.

"Damn it, stop tempting me! Are you so drugged by me fucking you that you don't understand what I will do?

She came to him and put her hand over his in a gesture so intimate, so loving, it made him hate her. "I understand. Nothing is to be explained. I know that for us there is no past and no future." In some bizarre way, Hermione really did understand this, more than understood anything else about Draco. Because if he had had a future, how could he have loved her knowing the consequences?

"No, you don't understand. Not at all. Are all you mudbloods so stupid? I will kill you, I want to kill you. Don't you realize that or are you so blinded by love?

"Don't flatter yourself." She said, and she said it with a smile full of teeth and a face set in stone. She knew how she hurt him and she enjoyed it. And Draco was frightened of her, of the idea that her words implied, that she was messing with his head as much as he was messing with hers. That was when it struck Draco for the first time, that maybe he wasn't in this alone, that she was more than just an object alien from him, that she wasn't something he could distance himself from because if he did, it would be like trying to destroy a reflection.

She hated him as much as he hated her and he only now just fully realized it, because he'd been hiding from it, avoiding it like something unwanted. He had been living on the surface of her love and now the surface had tumbled out beneath him, leaving him no longer elevated, dropped back into life with all its choices and consequences pushing on him like impatient hands, hands that were as hard as stone and buried him beneath him until he couldn't free himself.

He had wanted her to love him because it would make her easier to hurt, easier to shape like clay, to step on it before it even hardened into something that would take an effort to break. He didn't want her to love him because he'd love her. That wasn't it. Not at all. He hated her. He hated her so much he wanted nothing more than to pick her up and throw her against the wall and watch her come apart before his eyes, watching her every step of the way, every minute of torment.

She was in control now and she knew it, as she grabbed him, and pressed him down on the bed and kissed him hard, tearing off his clothes and trying in her emotion to make him feel, pulling him so close that the lines of their contours melted almost into one, with little space between them to allow them to be defined. Draco let her to do so, his passion the source of his hate as much as his hate was of his passion, an endless circle. What was important was this minute and outside it, the days and hours surrounding it, didn't matter because this minute was unique and they lived inside its bubble until it popped and all time came rushing back again in a whirlwind

When it was over and she had worn herself out, Draco allowed himself the rarity of staying in her arms, though it repelled and repulsed him. It was not her that repelled and repulsed him, it was the proximity. He held her in his arms, held her safe, and free, yet at the same time a captive, as he was. He made sure she was asleep before he made even the smallest of moves, wanting it all to come to a conclusion so he could stop cursing himself for

his weakness, doubting the foundations that built him. There's a peace to be found only in the face of death and Draco, watching her every breath, every flutter, every fidget, as he pulled the translucent silk covers over Hermione's face, was watching death.

You could not destroy what you yourself were a piece of. Luckily, the piece of Draco invested in this could do with a retraction.

He had no use for a heart, for that part of him that was always hanging back

And he knew that once he killed her, it would be gone. It wouldn't hurt because it didn't love her but it would be gone all the same because it was invested in her power.

**************

Hermione was awake, but she kept her eyes closed for his sake, for she knew him without ever bothering to make an effort to do so. It was just there were things as fundamental about him as they were about her, and she accepted them, all of them.

Why did she allow him the closure of thinking she could feel nothing? She should have wanted him to feel the pain she felt. Maybe, in the end, she did love him. Didn't you always realize things when it was too late?

She laughed and it became smothered in the sheets. In killing her, he was granting her the one thing she'd ever wanted. Good thing he'd never known that or he would have never gone through with it. Imagine Draco granting someone's dream come true like a prince out of a fairy tale. She wanted to spring up and throw her arms around his neck and thank him, tell him she loved him, but her mind hazy, she could not make herself move, she was paralyzed and she forgot why, exactly.

All she knew at the back of her head was how to hurt him the worst. It was so simple. Truth always hurts the worst of anything.

"I love you," she whispered into the sheets, her voice weak, and then willing it to be strong, to be loud, to be heard one last time, "I love you."

She felt his hands move from around her neck, felt him through the blankets smothering her body, and knew he had heard her. Draco pulled back the blankets and stared at her, terrified as she died with those eyes he had dreamed about, eyes of knowing and knowledge, eyes that hated him and loved him, conscious of everything unspoken and everything obscured behind the shadows that were him. On her lips was a smug smile, showing that she had beaten him, that he hadn't won the game at all but been forced back to square one.

It was the wave she had anticipated, the wave the toppled everything, the one that would bring her down while he rode it to the top.

Draco had succeeded in unstitching his heart from her life by pulling it out thread by thread, but each thread had left in its wake a hole, a hole that hurt worse than ever having a heart to begin with.

*The end*