Love

"The way you taste, the scent of your skin, the sound of your voice, the touch of your fingertips," he whispers into her ear, hands roaming everywhere and nowhere at all. "The light in your eyes..."

***

Years later, when presented with a plethora of bad memories, it was only natural she would pick the only one where they weren't yelling or screaming or quarelling to remember him by.

She thinks of him often, although she would never admit this to herself. It's hard not to. She tried to stop, but everywhere she looked, there he was--his footsteps echoing in hers, his voice in the whispers of the trees in autumn, his eyes in the heavy London fog. "You silly girl," he would say, and pull her into his arms. He talked to her like no one else did, treated her like no one else would. People regarded her like some revered, untouchable object--Hermione Granger, Best Friend to the Boy Who Lives and Possibly Most Brilliant Witch Ever (she could practically see the capitals in their heads)--but he looked at her like she was nothing, like he could just reach out for her anytime and she would be there, and she was.

She liked it.

It hadn't been very hard to fall in love with him, or maybe she had simply loved him all along. The epiphany overcame her one day; she had been laughing with Ron and Harry, trying to overlook the hopeful look in Ron's eyes, when Harry had suddenly whirled around and snarled, "Malfoy!" A furious duel soon ensued as Hermione stood by, stupefied, but not because of the hexes and curses that were whizzing by the tops of her ears and ruffling her hair.

She told him. His face flickered, darkened, and then he smiled langurously and pulled her in for a kiss. She'd said it to him several times afterwards, and each time he would cradle her face in his hands, those pale hands with impossibly long fingers and so experienced at reaching for the Snitch and many other things as well, and proceeded to kiss her until the thought was driven out of her head.

Which was, perhaps, his purpose.

***

Fingers deep inside her, swirling, he drawls, "The thing is, Granger--" she arches against him, moaning, "you're not that bad looking--" she feels herself convulse and screams into his left ear, "but really, this is all you're good for." He slams into her.

***

In the many years that follow, she reflects that he had never once reciprocated those three little words. Back then, of course, she hadn't noticed, or maybe she just didn't want to. She doesn't know where Ron and Harry are; they could be dead, for all she cares. She never noticed the gradual distintegration of herself until the day when she woke up and she was no longer in his bed and she'd realized then that it didn't matter.

She sits up in her bed, the sheets so white and the walls as well, and opens the second drawer of her nightstand. She carefully pulls out a small, square black box, roughly the size of her palm. The day when everything finally fell apart she'd woken up with it clutched tightly in her hands. She didn't know how or why she had it, or even what it was, but she liked to think that he had given it to her as a parting gift, maybe. She leans back on her pillow and opens it, tracing the insides lined with velvet and dozing off. Empty, she thinks. Maybe that was why they fit together so well, at least for a little while. Both broken, void, past the expiration date. Maybe he had thought that she would fill him, or provide whatever he was missing, but obviously he had been wrong.

He had never loved her. Looking into his eyes she could never find love, or even real affection. Well, she had loved him. Loved him as much as she could, with that limpid, tired, yearning sort of love that doesn't help either the lover or the object of affection.

Loves him still, really. She wishes she knew where he was.

Sitting up for so long tires her. She places the box back into her nightstand, pushes the drawer shut, and falls into a deep, dreamless sleep.

(Her nightstand is piled high with newspaper clippings detailing the end of the war, the death of the Malfoy heir's suicide, or murder?, the nervous breakdown of his fiancee. Ron and Harry visit her religiously, every week, holding her hand while she murmurs oaths of eternal love and other nonsensical things.)