Point of View

"Blaise..." Hermione sighed, pulling back from his kiss.

"Yes?" he mumbled, starting in on her neck with practiced elegance.

This time Hermione drew completely out of his embrace, pushing the straps up on her bra as she did. "What are we doing?" she asked despondently.

Running a hand over his chest he answered with carefully calculated ease and honey in his voice, "We're compensating. Filling in all the gaps for things we just can't have."

Quietly Hermione defied him. "It's not a thing we can't have. It's Draco."

Reaching out Blaise took Hermione's hand and guided her gently to the love seat, rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand, brushing hair out of her eyes, and tilting her chin up so he could look in her eyes. They were not chocolate, as so many boys in his dorm had called them. They weren't honey, of toffee, or cinnamon. They were brown, maybe amber at a stretch, and they were not her best feature. "Why do we have to have this conversation every time luv?"

Hermione blinked heavily, and her chapped passion infused lips were almost turned up in a wry smiled. "Because I know I'm going to wake up in the morning, in your arms, and feel dead guilty."

Contritely Blaise countered, "But your won't be dead."

Ignoring his attempt at flirtation Hermione asked him, "Don't you ever feel guilty? Pretending my hands are his and my lips are his? Does that ever bother you?"

For a moment Blaise thought silently, his nose wrinkled, icy blue eyes squinted shut, "Yes, but I know guilt is better than being lonely."

"I never liked being lonely," muttered Hermione, shaking her bushy head madly. "I'm glad you found me," she said distinctly, crawling playfully into Blaise's lap, tugging his arms around her middle, just over the innocent cotton panties.

Blaise chuckled into her hair, "I only found you because Draco is too dumb to notice he's got a beautiful girl after him."

"And you, you're after him too," chided Hermione. "I am beautiful. Aren't I?"

Blaise answered by gluing his lips to hers fervently. Moaning into the collision Hermione let her eyes close with a snap and opened her imagination. Her hands lifted up to fist hair she knew must be some how blond and slick, the tongue invading her mouth was a dragons, and the erection pressed up against her stomach was definitely Draco Malfoy's.

Blaise never let Hermione wear lip gloss because then he would know he wasn't kissing Draco, and on some level the pretending was so much more difficult for him because Draco was not feminine in any way.

Except for his hands, long, moonlit, and delicate. So unlike Blaise's thick masculine hands that smelled slightly of peppermint lotion because Draco wore that kind of lotion and Hermione needed Blaise to smell like Draco.

The fantasy went on and Hermione felt Draco enter her from behind. "Draco," she moaned softly.

Blaise shattered into him roughly repeating his name continually into Hermione's ear. "Draco, Draco, Draco..." Then they collapse. Neither one opens their eyes. Hermione felt Draco sprawled on top of her and she welcomed the pain of his weight, and Blaise loves the way Draco feels so frail beneath him, so totally consumed by him.

In the night the fire puts itself out and the only light in the room enters from a tall window, casting the shadows of sensually removed clothes, slashing harshly across photos of one boy strewn out over a table, a tall champagne glass with two straws lies forlornly on its side, and heap of light misty green sheets wiggles to life.

Blaise's head drags itself out of Hermione's hair woven with the hair gel of her obsession and he cradles her head against himself in the crook of his head and shoulder. "Wake up," he breaths into her ear, tickling her awake.

Her mind tries to make the voice sound like Draco's, but she can't manage that and reluctantly she opens her eyes, a flurry of movement in her stomach when she sees only Blaise looking down on her. "I thought you were..."

"I was," he answers plainly. Hermione smiles, glad he can't see the blush rising along her cheeks. "Look at our world," he nods to the room surrounding them. The abyss they have sunken into so willingly.

They take it in, all of it. Some where it registers that the photos littering every surface constitute stalking, and that the pieces of blond hair they wear dangling from their necks makes it unhealthy, but there is seemingly nothing they can do. "Everything we have created," she sighed, but she was proud of their little niche of peace in harsh reality.

"We sound like a married couple," barked Blaise.

Hermione buries her head in his chest, knowing he is completely right. She sits up quickly though, as if jolted away from Blaise, "Maybe we are married though."

"To him," finishes her lover. Hermione gathers a sheets around her and walks to the table, sinking down on her knees, fingers running over the moving pictures of a happy boy at stages of his life most people forget they have.

"Where do we go from here?" she asks hopefully, grasping at the hair that tonight might be the night she gets the answer she wants.

Blaise shakes his head sorrowfully, "Back to the beginning."

"When do we get to reach the end?" she whines, crawling back to him.

"Is there an end?" he muses, "I don't think there is one. Not for us anyway."

"Why not?" Hermione asks, that whine carved into her voice permanently. "All we need to end our problem is the solution," her voice is mathematical, logical.

Blaise does not have to answer because he knows that she knows that their solution has been dead...for seven years.