Haunted

20 | practice and patience

Possible trigger warnings:

(REVIEWING THESE MIGHT SPOIL PART OF THE CHAPTER SO PERUSE AT YOUR OWN RISK)

- discussions of blood purity and murder reminiscent of racism
- vague discussions of depression
- vague and minor mention of possible sexual assault

Okay, now onto the chapter...

His hand was warm on her knee. Her heartbeat was loud in her ears. In all the darkness, his connection to her, anchoring her, felt like a ray of light. She swallowed, that tide of panic she'd felt from the liminal space washing away like a ripple in a pond, and she whispered, "Finite."

When she opened her eyes, he was staring at her, his hand still on her knee. He was leaning all the way across the space that had separated them, his face abnormally close to hers, and she blinked slowly, processing their proximity. There was nowhere to look but into his eyes. He made to remove his hand from her body but she covered his fingers with her own, a gesture that was just as loud as it was quiet. He froze in place, his eyes flashing down to their connected hands, and then back up to her face.

She remained silent, refusing to answer the question his gaze posed. What was there to say?

She leaned in, maybe half an inch. Testing the waters. Checking to see how he'd react. His face was stony and his shoulders were tense but he didn't pull back. He waited for her to come closer and after a heartbeat, she did.

She moved slowly, her spine bending gradually, her neck tilting her head up to keep careful watch of his expression. If it betrayed even an ounce of rejection, she would retreat. But it didn't. He didn't. He just watched her, holding his breath. She was holding hers too.

There was such quiet in the room that the sound of her blood rushing in her ears seemed deafening. She licked her lips. His eyes shifted to follow the movement of her tongue. Adrenaline spiked in her nerves at his attention.

She hovered in place, refusing to draw any closer without confirmation from Malfoy that her assumption was even in the vicinity of correct. The world moved through molasses. Seconds took years to pass. "Well?" she asked, and his gaze focused even more intensely on her eyes. Her voice sounded thick to her ears. His pinky finger twitched under hers. He looked almost drunk, the blue of his eyes mesmerizingly saturated, his cheeks flushed. Or maybe she was just projecting. "What are you waiting for?"

Her lips parted in anticipation. He swallowed. She traced the motion of his Adam's apple with her eyes, unable to keep her gaze connected without interruption. She listened as he let out a shaky breath. Waited another moment. And then, despite all the expectation, she found herself still surprised when at last he closed the remaining space between their mouths. His lips grazed hers softly at first, almost experimentally, like he was assuming she'd pull away.

But she didn't. She leaned forward. She—

"Hazel? You awake?"

Hazel found herself forcibly pulled from what she now realized had been a dream, and immediately widened her eyes at the ceiling as her brain caught up to what she'd been imagining. Her cheeks were hot with... something. Embarrassment? Excitement? Something else?

"Yeah!" she called back after a moment, once her heartbeat had returned to a somewhat normal pace. And then Red was letting herself into the room, jumping onto the end of Hazel's bed as the door slammed shut behind her.

"I saw the most amazing sunrise this morning. I got up at—"

Desperately Hazel tried to listen to Red's story, rubbing the bleariness from her eyes, but flashes of Malfoy kept reappearing in her mind. The dream inspired a number of different questions that she would now have to devote some time to ruminating over. The most obvious, of course, being why in the hell was she dreaming about kissing Malfoy?