Grandloves//Tomarry

26

She wants to go home. She wants to fall into his arms; wants to laze around in the spot of sunlight that drifts across the left side of his bed in the early afternoon; doze off into warm dreams, head in his lap as he reads through some mind-numbingly boring text; laugh in his face when she beats him again in exploding snap, until he tosses her onto the couch and has his wicked way with her—everything. She misses everything.

He is mercurial on the best of days, catastrophic on the worst. He is volatile and violent—deadly when infuriated. He still scares her sometimes, cloaked in the inky darkness of black magic.

But she belongs in the circle of his embrace—there is nowhere else in the world she would rather be. Nowhere else that feels like home.

Lyra reminds herself very calmly of how wonderful it feels to have his mouth upon her, dexterous fingers skimming down her thighs, biting into her hips. She doesn't want to forget all of this in the face of a horrid school year.

She feels so far from him, distanced by the infinite space between them. A vast channel that transcends physical space; he is lost in a darkness that she cannot follow him into. Behind every sweet kiss and loving caress haunts a prowling evil, subdued in her presence, but only in that moment. She knows that when he leaves to those places she does not know of, something dark overtakes him.

Perhaps even more foreboding is her lack of fear.

He may be drenched in the dark arts, but this does not deter her from seeking his somber heart, from letting that darkness consume her, time and again.

She thinks about this—all the wonderful little spaces in time that she has collected—when Dumbledore calls her into his office; when the stares follow her down the hall; when she curiously does not meet Professor Snape's gaze.

When she feels the familiar black magic that she is so intimately aware of, coming from Draco Malfoy.

"Malfoy," she calls, after a Potions class one utterly unremarkable day in autumn. The hallway has long since deserted with students rushing off to their next class.

He stills, turning around to face her quite slowly, as if facing his death precession. She doesn't know why—where is his scowl of disgust? His barrage of insults that are always ready on his tongue and, she'll admit, occasionally very creative?

"What, Potter," he returns, in a tone that attempts imperviousness but misses by a mile.

"Why are you doing this?" She asks, resigned to the fact she's fairly sure she knows the answer. "Why did you curse Katie?"

He flies into a livid (terrified) rage. "What are you talking about, Potter?" He scowls fiercely. "You've lost your mind—I've nothing to do with—

"Is he making you do this?" She interrupts, pressing to her real point.

Malfoy splutters inelegantly, flailing slightly as his face completely drains of color. "W—Who is? Potter, you've really gone round the bend, more than usual even. I was in detention, I couldn't have—

And then she is cutting him off again, grabbing him roughly by the collar of his robes and bodily tossing him into an abandoned classroom. She tosses up a silencing charm and a locking charm, before turning to him.

"I don't want to know what your assignment is," she starts, steady and unerring, even as Malfoy's complaints grow louder.

She pauses. "But I also don't want you to die." Which is difficult to admit. But she above all others knows what it's like to feel the wrath of the dark lord—she is intimately aware of how dangerous he really is. How Malfoy has been doomed to death.