The Shattered Dragon

Chapter 25: Hollow

In February of Fourth Year, Viktor Krum invited Hermione to go ice-skating with a few of the other Durmstrang students and their girls. She had already been to the Yule Ball with Viktor but there was something about this casual "date" that made her even more nervous than dressing to the nines and appearing in the Great Hall. The idea of him selecting her for an intimate afternoon with a few of his friends was intimidating and she'd shook the whole time she was in the bath, scrubbing her skin with sugarplum scented soap, pulling a comb through her damp hair. Ginny had helped her to dress and plaited her hair into to two pretty pigtails that hung down her back.

"Girls can't help but be beautiful in the winter," she'd said to Hermione, giggling. "The cold makes our eyes sparkly and our cheeks all pinked up. He's going to love you. Hermione's gonna get snooooggged," she sang, each word drawn out louder and longer the more embarrassed Hermione looked.

Still, the energy she felt that day...the anticipatory fear and excitement, a combination of hesitance and want, was one of the most delicious feelings she'd ever had.

And she did get snogged.

Preparing to go visit Draco a few hours after lineup filled her with the same bubbling electricity, the same heat in her cheeks as she wondered what would be waiting for her behind the black lacquer doors of his suite. Leanna stopped by and lingered in the doorway of her room, smiling as Hermione wove her hair into a French braid.

"Do you mind if I say something that might...get your blood up?" Leanna asked, smiling wide.

"What's that?" Hermione asked, looking over her shoulder.

"I just wanted to say that you are...so...fucking...lucky," Leanna said on a laugh. "God, Draco is the best kisser in the world. Wouldn't you agree?"

"Yes," Hermione answered, doing her best to keep her eyes bright and her smile friendly.

Inside her throat was tightening as she thought of Leanna in his room, stripping for him, serving him. Draco had accused her of jealousy back before the gala and she'd been too proud to see the truth. And it wasn't just the physical touches, it wasn't even the fucking, the kissing. What she was jealous of was the possibility of some other woman taking care of him, some other woman making sure he got to bed, falling asleep with his head in her lap as she stroked his hair or ran a thumb over his eyebrow, some other woman listening to him cry, telling stories of his childhood. She was jealous of the idea of him breaking, cracking, revealing himself to someone else, some other woman, a woman who hadn't earned what Hermione had.

"We didn't do anything, Sparrow. It was just a kiss. I mean, a kiss that blew my mind...it was definitely—"

"Ok thank you,"

Leanna sighed, finishing up her hair with one last pin.

"There's no one in the world for him but you, Hermione. We all know that now," she said. "And honestly, I'm glad things are back to normal."

"Not quite yet," Hermione said, frowning at her reflection in the full-length mirror. "But they're getting there."

Draco had been sitting on the sofa for nearly two hours, careful to only have one glass of firewhiskey as he stared into the fire, waiting for his Sparrow to arrive. The ice rattled in the glass when he lifted it to his lips, his hand shaking. She'd agreed to visit him but he was sure she would cancel, change her mind, or she would show up and he would frighten her, hurt her again. It had only been a month since Trevor's attack and he felt foolish to even ask anything of her. A kiss, a touch, any intimacy at all was no doubt an enormous hurdle for her to leap and he had no right to ask her to do it. Yet she'd been the one to come to him. She'd said she wanted him.