Shaelune

The foundation is canyoning

Fault lines should be worn with pride

I hate to say it

You're so much more

Endearing with the sound turned off.

--incubus

Part V. "These pleasures he could hide and deny in the harsh light of reality."

Hermione had never liked sunsets, and this one was no different. They always held, in their sudden, unprecedented blazes of breathtaking beauty, a hollow sense of bitterness and regret; even if she appreciated the violet-gold fire across the reddening sky to the fullest extent, she would never feel as if she loved it enough, and then it would be gone as quickly as it had come, drowned in blackness, abandoning her in the faint light of faraway stars.

It was cold on the terrace, and, as the crimson globe of sun sank further beneath the deafening dark ocean, the wind blew her hair in a long dusky curtain across her face. The frozen stone of the balustrade pressed chills into her spine. She couldn't say anything and couldn't really even think, and she hated that- that he could silence her with the simplest, most primitive motion, that the feverish heat of a single unwilling kiss could steal her breath and impede her mind. And every time she tried to feel indignant, the memory of his hands- not his lips or his hair or his eyes- just the sensation of his hands capturing her hips with their long alabaster fingers was enough to send her reeling back into dreams.

Waking her (did she want to be woken?), there were footsteps somewhere below. Exhaustion almost kept her from moving, but curiosity fueled her steps down the rickety iron staircase and into the darkened courtyard, where she could barely see: the only light places were the stone at the top of the walls, and the strange white flowers blossoming on the trellis, incandescent dagger-shaped petals slicing the black ivy. Blurry moonlight spilled over the stone and into the murky water of a pool carved into the recesses of two adjacent hedges.

The girl standing to one side looked as though she'd been caught stealing the crown jewels. Her eyes were wide, her brown hair disheveled about her cloaked shoulders, shoulders shaking so that Hermione wanted to reach out and comfort her; but before she could even speak, the girl, like an animal that had been briefly caught in light, dashed around one of the hedges and vanished. Her heavy steps echoed away, barely disturbing the sea-haze that covered the ground.

It had been random and a bit unnerving, but all she cared about was that she had been made to waste all the energy it took to descend down the stairs, and this frustrated her and made her want to call out to the girl, to reprimand her. She went to the entrance to the courtyard and looked out into the foggy gardens, hoping to catch a glimpse of the girl's long dark cloak or round, startled eyes, but there was nothing: only shadow and mist, and the faint reflection of light from the inn on the wet ground.

Hermione noticed that she was cold, and frustration gave way to fatigue as she sank back against the wall, feeling the condensation on the stone seep through her jacket. This certainly wasn't the most comfortable place to have a nap, but she didn't think she could muster the energy to climb those stairs again; it was as though exhaustion had overcome every muscle in her body, and they clamored in unison for rest.

It was as she lay crumpled in her skirts among the hedges, eyes almost focusing, that she noticed the age-darkened crimson bloodstains on the marble flagstones beside the pool.

--

Melaina's breath came in shallow gasps, barely audible in the loud foggy silence of the spring night; she found herself deeper and deeper in the labyrinthine gardens, rounding trellises and towers of trickling fountains until she was so dizzied and tired she could barely see.

She had fallen so low that she could barely differentiate between waking and dreaming. In the middle of breakfast that morning she had blinked and suddenly the picture-windowed dining parlor was dim and small and quiet, and there were hands on her whose owner she couldn't see but whose touch she knew all too well.

Melaina still didn't know how long she had been in that other room or how she might have appeared to anyone else- and it was cliché, but she realized she didn't care. Somehow this seemed so much more important and devastating than anything they could conceive.

Cold seized her; she was suddenly terrified that she would slip into dreaming again, and unfamiliar statues and greenery twisted and blurred in her vision. Her hands were probably scraped raw from gripping loose stones, but she was just so scared of the dreams that she couldn't reach and couldn't control. There was no way to wake herself up- even when the reverie was a realization of her deepest wishes, she couldn't bring herself to forget that it wasn't true.

But Melaina was weak and exhausted, and just like Hermione, she was no opponent for the comforting, coaxing fingers of sleep and warmth wrapping themselves around her mind, cradling her down gasping into a well of illusion and untruths and insatiety.

It was so dark.

--

Draco wasn't staring at anything. His eyes were usually kept occupied with appraisal or search, but now they were empty and idle, gazing onto the last reddish stains of sunset on the night sky as he mulled over the complications of his life with offhanded apathy. The delicate little glass he was fingering inattentively was long since drained; his legs were stretched out before him on the couch and the fire had died in its grate.

He was thinking that this was something he really ought to care about, because if he was going to be as halfarsed about the initiation as he was turning out to be, he at least expected himself to earn decent marks. This assignment was about forty percent of their grade and if Granger thought she could do it without him- or that he would let her- she was sorely mistaken.

The part of his reasoning that always tried to convince him into spontaneity wanted to get up that very instant and find her and work, but the other voice- the one that remembered and calculated and played devil's advocate, perhaps the one that was the devil's advocate- remembered tears and the ring she had been wearing and he stayed still. He felt the aftereffects of the fire's warmth on one side of his body; the other, curled into the velvets of the couch, was still cold. Vaguely, he wondered where Pansy was, and finally decided that if he waited long enough, she would come to him.

He wasn't wrong. There was a distant ringing on the other side of the door and he admitted her with a lazy, impotent flick of his wand; she shut it quietly behind her and shuffled across the room, gowned in uncharacteristic shimmering black, the silks draping in a manner that might have been slatternly- but they were obviously expensive, and the draping was obviously unintentional. He reached up, almost affectionately, and fixed her bodice so that the hooks fastened past her decolletage.

She looked at him; confusion and hesitation and perhaps a bit of

warmth were written in the lines of the little smile she gave him as she

took the glass and lay down beside him on the couch. For once he was content just to hold her, stroking her hair and the soft fabric of her bodice; they were nameless lovers, each using the other as best they could. Pansy shook, and hoped he could convince himself it was a shiver of passion.

Draco woke later, the gentle, innocuous beat of her heart not quite pounding in time with his- just enough to distinguish them- and his fingers tangled in burnished gold. He was almost filled with a kind of warm satisfaction when he realized that he could do this whenever he wanted, so he watched her sleep, watched the black silk rise and fall with her breath and the childish innocence held by her relaxed features, usually tight with anticipation or ambition. Still traveling the strange bridge between dreaming and waking allowed him these dalliances, these pleasures he could hide and deny in the harsh light of reality.

Harsh noises on the balcony, harsh stirring and widening and harsh bright candlelight in his eyes- of course it was Granger, who else could it be?

He moved Pansy aside slowly, calmly, and got up, feeling the shock of life in his muscles and the slight rush of old champagne. There was a glimpse of her hair and the trailing of her shadow behind her in the light of her suite as she entered; he went and knocked on the door that tied their rooms, refusing to throw himself at her mercy, running an impatient hand through his hair. She was either tired or satanic tonight, or perhaps both, because he knew she reveled in his anger; and accordingly, the time that passed before she opened the door shimmered between inexorably long and inevitably short.

And then she was there- was it the first time he had seen her since that hour in the café, in the streaming silver sunlight and the hot rising vapor of tea? he couldn't remember- standing in the doorway, backlit by fire, with sleep-mist veiling her eyes and her hair in night-wild, shadowy spirals behind her arms and shoulders. Her expression was unyielding and silent; she leaned wearily against the doorjamb. "What do you want now?"

Draco prided himself on never losing sight of his irritants. "I think the question on everyone's minds is what the fuck you're doing banging about on the terrace at four in the morning."

She smiled, wanly, and he could tell that- satanic or not- she was tired, she wasn't up to her usual combative railing. "Well, everyone's just going to have to remain curious, aren't they?"

And she shut the door in his face.

Draco stood there for a moment, trying to decide whether to be quietly angry or hysterically angry. It wasn't as though there was ever any contest.

He whipped out his wand; it rattled loosely in his hand as he spelled the lock open and got the useless door out of his way, and he grinned with vindiction rather than lechery when he saw he had caught her undressing.

Rolling her eyes, Hermione shrugged her jumper back on. "And what are you planning to do once you've got me shivering and backed into a corner, Malfoy? Kill me? Rape me?" She shot him a withering glare, arms folded.

"Oh, you wish," he spat, still holding his wand. "What are you doing up at this hour, Granger? Or were you unaware that other people might be trying to sleep?"

"Oh, sorry," she exclaimed, amused. "I just assumed that, being the exceedingly popular and rebellious and cool person that you are, you'd have something better to do nights than sleeping. It's such a mundane activity, after all. So very... Muggle."

He was suddenly very close to her and his wand was shaking against her throat. "Take that back!"

She didn't seem fazed. "Draco Malfoy, frightened by a word? Does that kind of cowardice excite Miss Parkinson, or does she just tolerate it because you're so good-looking?"

"I'm serious, Granger," he told her. He could feel sweat collecting beneath his palm.

"Yes, you smell serious," Hermione agreed, half-smiling. She didn't seem quite so tired now; her eyes danced with that maddening secretive knowledge that drove him absolutely insane with anger that he hated feeling.

He drove the wand- impressive, fourteen inches, slender, inflexible pine, core of dragon heartstring, how appropriate- further into her white neck, bruising the skin. He wanted to mark her, to make her infuriatingly oblivious friends notice it, to make her scramble for explanation. He wanted to disable her mechanism for pretension, to force incriminating honesty from that pretty alabaster throat.

She smiled and looked behind him.

"Draco?"

He sighed and released her. "Yes, Pansy?"

"I heard my name."

"It was nothing."

"Oh. All right."

He knew she'd have questions later, and she would, in her passive, invasive sort of way, expect satisfactory answers. He didn't know that he could give them to her- the ones she wanted, anyway- and he didn't particularly feel the desire to.

Draco glanced at the girl under his wand and felt, for a second, felt the bridge of fire that connected them in a way that nothing else could: their loathing of each other, the only true thing they shared.

God, he hated her.

--

Melaina was choking. The hands, silken and white, were on her neck and they were strangling the blood from her till the skin there was pale to match the hands and they were indistinguishable, and a sweet deep unintelligible voice was whispering a string of comforting, persuasive indictments into her ears. She arched backward and cried out for help one last time, blindly searching the starry ivied skies-

And there was suddenly comfort and warmth around her, and someone's arms wrapped about hers and she couldn't feel their hands. She sought vision and found blackness- but a safe warm blackness, not the cold clammy inarticulate one she had lost herself in so often of late. This blackness she could smell (clean and almost minty) and- Melaina reached up- touch; it was soft and segmented and a bit strawlike against her limp hand.

Harry tapped her gently with his wand. "Ennervate," he said quietly, tracing the simple charm-pattern in the air; her eyes opened and fluttered wildly for a moment before focusing. If she recognized him, he couldn't tell.

"What happened to you?" he asked, hoping she could remember.

She looked apprehensive and a little frightened. "Oh, nothing..." she laughed weakly, trying to smile. "You know. These corsets."

"Oh!" Harry exclaimed, setting her down on her side and reaching for the laces that seamed the back of her gown. This was the kind of person Harry was: unlike the majority of fifteen-year-old boys, he was always the very last person to see any kind of opportunity for sex in a situation. Instead, he saw people and their problems largely without any prejudice against race or gender hampering his ability to help them as much and as quickly as possible.

And help her he did; Melaina breathed gasps of relief when the tightly boned corset came free. She wanted to thank him, but the oxygen flooding her lungs was so potent that she couldn't speak.

Now that the immediate danger had passed, Harry saw that she looked like she belonged in Slytherin, with her expensive rust-colored dress and corset- both old-fashioned eccentricities that much of the wizarding world, especially the younger Hogwarts set, had abandoned decades ago. She wasn't notably pretty or temperamental; rather, her looks were bland- two modestly set brown eyes, an unremarkable short nose, thin pale lips and a somewhat weak chin. But he had learned not to judge house by the person, and so reserved judgement on that until she regained speech.

"What time is it?" she asked after a minute, without opening her eyes.

Harry glanced at the leather-banded watch he wore, a gift from Hermione last Christmas. "About midnight?"

"Midnight!" she exclaimed, trying to sit up. "Where- what are you doing out here?"

"Taking a walk," he said slowly. "Why? Is that okay?"

Melaina studied him as she successfully rose to her feet, brushing off her gown, trying to straighten the hopelessly crumpled skirt. "Of course, I didn't mean... I'm just surprised, it didn't seem so late. I'd better be getting back," she finished quickly, starting to move away.

"Wait!" Harry cried, alarmed. "Are you sure you're all right? What were you doing out here?"

"Taking a walk, same as you," she said, smiling, as though it should have been obvious. "Nothing out of the ordinary, Harry. If you'll kindly let go of my wrist-"

Harry looked down at his fingers, clamped over her blue-veined arm. "Oh- right. Sorry. Er, sleep well."

Melaina rounded the corner out of the garden, still wearing her calm smile.

--

Hermione had really not enjoyed being interrupted, just as she was about to finally go to sleep in an actual bed, by a jumpy, neurotic Draco Malfoy. It wasn't as though he was usually Hufflepuffian when it came to being cheery, but he had been in a really foul temper and eager to take it out on her- normally understandable, but he had willing, pliant Pansy right next door. She had fended him off as best she could, eventually luring him out by pulling her own wand from her trouser pocket and threatening to hex his entire pelvic region onto the continent. A lovely choice of words, she'd thought, and it had worked nicely; she heard Malfoy shouting at Pansy for a moment, a door slamming, a few muttered curses (the walls in their suite were rather thin), and finally there was peace and darkness.

Before tonight, she hadn't noticed the small stones embedded in the midnight-blue underside of her canopy, sparkling in the faint moonlight streaming through from the balcony. She was vaguely reminded of Hogwarts as she watched the little representations of stars winking at her from above, separate from the wide, dramatically painted and threatening skies outside and the new world around her, a snippet of what had begun in the past few years to feel like home. With half-open eyes fixed on shining stars, kisses and rings and shouting and shadows and bloodstains didn't matter to her anymore; wrapping herself in velvet and silence, she was able to drift into darkened sleep, undisturbed by dreams.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns

The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds

To dying ears, when unto dying eyes

The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;

So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

--alfred lord tennyson