marked me (like a bloodstain)

a rose by any other name

if i told you i thought there was a sin in your heart, could you honestly tell me i'm wrong

It wasn't love.

Hermione knew that much. For Merlin's sake, she had experienced it enough throughout her life to distinguish the feeling from the barbed vines that were currently wrapping, twisting, and disfiguring her heart. No, this suffocating, obsessive mess she felt every time her attention drifted from the paperwork in front of her to the silver-eyed sin just a few desks to her left was nowhere near that.

Love, from her knowledge, was pure and true.

No one could say that about Draco Malfoy. Let alone about the fingerprints he had left marked on her hips and throat, or the way his mouth and tongue had conquered hers.

What had plagued Hermione all these years was guilt. It was having to live with the consequence of allowing him to crawl under her skin, to further tear open the scars her weary, exhausted body carried before the world tried to fill her emptiness with a light that was an artificial shade of gold. In that moment of reckless selfishness, she believed she became the last warm touch Malfoy had felt before being locked up in a lonely, cold cell, robbing him of a better memory to last him a lifetime. It was also knowing that her unexpected indulgence had produced an unexpected life. A life that Malfoy would have never known he helped create because she would have never found the courage to reveal it.

Guilt. That was it.

That was all Hermione felt these years. It was what she felt now as she observed him bent over a stack of files with a MACUSA Auror, a crease between blonde brows that was so similar to the one Scorpius wore when he concentrated on coloring inside the lines.

"Look what we have here." A familiar coffee cup and a familiar freckled face obstructed Hermione's view to the left. "Someone's favorite flat white from her favorite little Mexican cafe."

With narrowing eyes, Hermione leaned against the back of her chair, giving her stiff shoulders some relief. "Pansy likes the flat whites from Herrera's. I like their cafe de olla."

Ron's overly-eager smile wilted. "Right. Well, it's the thought that counts, isn't it?"

"Oh, do forgive him already, Granger," Blaise teased from beside Hermione, his messy pile of archives overtaking her neat space. "You know there isn't much going on inside Weasley's head. If this is what his best thought buys, I can't imagine you two will ever be friends again."

"Are you sorry, Ronald?" she questioned just as he aimed daggers at Blaise. "Because the words have yet to actually leave your mouth. Or Harry's. But he doesn't think he's wrong here. Do you?"

The coffee cup flew out of Ron's outstretched hands and into Blaise's. He then grinned, sliding his chair out so he could kick up his feet. "This is why you two broke up, isn't it? Because if it came down to it, Weasley would always choose Potter's side over yours?"

"We never dated!" both Hermione and Ron hissed, one slightly louder than the other. When a few heads turned their way, the jumble of murmurs and quills scratching against parchment quieting, she reached over and smacked Blaise upside the head. Before he could let out a curse at the coffee that dribbled down his chin and onto his robes, Hermione waved her wrist at him, his chair suddenly zooming across the bullpen.

Ron let out a snort, a precursor to an obnoxious laugh, but she turned her glare at him, effectively stifling the noise into a nervous clearing of the throat. "Listen, 'Mione—"