get out [h. granger]

fourteen

Shyla woke up the next morning with a killer hangover, the regret of drinking so much, and the wish that she had drunk enough to forget the night before entirely. Her dreams had been full of her father lecturing her on various things, from the fact that she had been drunk at all to what she had seen the night before.

"You would do well to remember," he had said, "that you have one purpose. You are here to continue our pure-blood line."

It didn't take a genius (not that Shyla was one) to figure out what he meant. She hadn't been able to get Pansy's kiss out of her mind. She could feel Pansy's lips on her lips. She could feel teeth tugging gently at her lips, a tongue swiping across her own, Pansy's hands, strong and dominating, gripping Shyla's thigh and jaw.

There was a reason Pansy and Millicent had fought so fiercely, and it was the same reason that Millicent wouldn't even look in Pansy's direction again. Sex was for the purpose of childbearing, and having a lover of the same sex didn't accomplish that. That didn't mean there weren't purebloods who didn't take these lovers. They were the ones who were married already, who had children. Even then, it was kept extraordinarily quiet. Even when it did get out, it was never men who ended up exiled, or with their names and faces in the gossip column of the Daily Prophet. They were never quietly killed and made to seem as though it was an accident. It was always the women.

When Shyla kept replaying the thought of the kiss in her mind, her first reaction was an overwhelming shame. She wished it had never happened—what would happen if her aunt was to find out? The Dark Lord? She had fought so hard to earn even a glimpse of freedom, what would happen to her if anyone found out? Death? Or perhaps worse, would she be caged again?

As Shyla sat at the Slytherin table, replaying the kiss over and over and over again in her head despite her desperate attempt to forget it, her second thought occurred. Had she just been in a state of drunken euphoria or had she liked it? She could feel the smooth and slightly sticky gloss on Pansy's lips. Her fingers jumped to her mouth, tracing over her own two lips and remembering Pansy's touch.

That settled it. She had something to do. Hurrying, she threw on her uniform and made her way to the Great Hall where she found her fiancée.

She put her hand on his shoulder. "Draco," she said, and her tone indicated a command thinly veiled as a request.

He stood obediently, though stared at her curiously, and together they walked out of the hall.

"What is it?" He asked impatiently. "I've made a lead with the cabinet."

Shyla pursed her lips, wondering whether or not she was going to regret this as well. "I need to kiss you."

Draco sputtered. "Pardon?"

"You heard me, husband."

"We're not married yet, Shyla!" Draco said. "And you can't just tell people you need to kiss them."

Shyla rolled her eyes at his rambling. She had made the mistake of asking him for permission, she could see that now. She grabbed the back of his head and pulled him roughly into a kiss. Once again, he obeyed, moving his lips with hers easily—he had clearly done this before.

Shyla pulled away when her experiment was done with a frown. It was nothing like the kiss she had last night. Her lips didn't buzz and tingle, they were wet. She felt the need to wipe her moth and perhaps gargle some salt water.

"Are you going to explain why you so desperately needed to kiss me?" Draco asked. "Thought you didn't want to have... sex."

Shyla raised an eyebrow, impressed. "So you can say the word," she said. "I was beginning to think Lucius had cursed you as a child or something."

"Get to the point!" Draco snapped.

"I was thinking and I realized we were going to have to kiss eventually. I refuse to kiss you for the first time at a wedding. Besides," Shyla paused, the lies already flowing so easily, "I've never kissed someone before. Is that not what a fiancée is for?"

Draco pinched his nose, muttered something under his breath and turned on his heel and walked away, clearly exasperated.

And Shyla was alone with her thoughts again. As she compared the kisses, she cursed herself. She didn't have time to stoop to silly teenaged nonsense, like which kiss she preferred or a sexual crisis. She was supposed to be practicing the imperious curse so she could kill the headmaster without getting caught, finding a way out of her marriage, and she had another tutoring session with Granger.

Curse it, she would have to save this moral dilemma for another time. She was already running late.

"You're late," Granger said, less short than Shyla thought she would have been.

"My apologies for wasting your precious time, Granger," Shyla said, already irritated. She did not want a repeat of their last study session, where Granger had coaxed more of the truth out of her than the Gryffindor deserved. Frustrated with herself, she subconsciously grabbed her wrapped hand.

"Is it bothering you?" Granger asked quietly.

Shyla grit her teeth. "No, but breaking your nose for asking too many questions might irritate it."

Granger was completely unfazed. She had a thick skin today, apparently. "Listen, Fawley, I know you don't want to talk about how you got a blood curse, but I think it would be healthy if you did!"

Shyla was afraid she was going to crack a molar, her teeth were so clenched. "Stop meddling in stuff you don't want to deal with the consequences of knowing, Granger. I thought I was a murderer in your eyes?"

"Let's say you convinced me otherwise," Granger said, her hands folded on top of table. "Not that you have. But you should know me well enough to know that you can't present me with a taste of knowledge and not expect me to chase it."

"Yeah, well, some of us are used to not getting what we want," Shyla said, staring at the table rather than Granger.

Granger hummed. "I always get what I want."

Shyla's head snapped up and she made eye contact directly with Hermione. Her heart fluttered strangely in her chest and her mouth felt dry. Without thinking about it, she crossed her legs. "If you're not going to tutor me like you're supposed to, I'm leaving."

She grabbed her bag, her mind fuzzy with fury as she stormed out of the room. She couldn't sit in the room, far too close to someone who made her so furious, and let Granger play her. Shyla Fawley was the one who played Granger, not the other way around.

She made her way up to the astronomy tower, ready to be done with the entirety of the human race. They were starting to get on her nerves, yet again. She threw her bags onto the ground and her body followed.

A beetle crawled across the ground in front of her. Briefly, she thought that the beetle must have it much better. No Dark Lord, no arranged marriage, no infuriating tutor. But she couldn't think about any of that. She couldn't think about how Granger hadn't even kissed her, and she still felt even better than when Pansy had just from a few stupid little words.

Instead of thinking, she raised her wand to the beetle. With a whispered word and a flick of her wrist, the beetle was no longer free. She felt it's strange, small mind tethered to her own and the peace she had come to associate with control washed over her. If she could not be free, then some tiny beetle would not be free either.

Anger flushed her and she raised her wand to the beetle again. A flash of green light severed the tether between her and the beetle. Hermione Granger would not plague her mind any longer. No matter what it took to get the stupid Gryffindor out of her mind, she would do it. She was in control of her life, and no one was going to change that fact, no matter how hard they tried.

a/n: wow this chapter took me forever to write! I had hellla writer's block on top of grad school and clinical. But im back in it now! Expect more updates coming soon as my school year is coming to an end! Bye for now :)