Dramione Drabbles

9. War & Freedom

She never imagined an adolescent flame could turn so deadly.

At fifteen they kissed one another on patrol. The first time a boy slipped his tongue between her lips and made her feel desired.

She kept Draco to herself and suspected he did, too. Hermione, his dirty little secret. After three kisses in June, school came to a close. She dreamt of peppermint lips and the drag of solid white teeth all summer long.

At sixteen, she learned how to comfort someone and expect nothing in return. Tight-lipped, subtly explosive, selfish, and uncouth, Draco pushed her away and reeled her back in. He took her virginity in Filch's supply closet. It was harsh and unromantic and horribly cruel when, afterwards, he revealed his Dark Mark and asked if she still wanted him.

At seventeen, he saved her life.

"Where have you been?" he wanted to know. An unmasked face in a sea of secret soldiers, intent to torture and kill them. The wild jealousy in his eyes was really asking: who have you replaced me with?

"Nowhere." No one.

He slipped her his wand, told her to stun him, save her friends, and run, promising to find her again.

Seventeen was the longest year of her life.

Draco used his wand to track her whereabouts.

She didn't know if she could trust him. If he was the cruel sixteen-year-old who hurt her all year long, or the fifteen-year-old who'd kissed her, pulled away, stunned, as if he'd come to a shocking revelation, then kissed her again with reckless, open-hearted abandon.

By eighteen he was her confidante and closest friend.

They met in public spaces. Chiswick. Richmond. Hammersmith. She wore Muggle clothes, and he showed up in all black. Autumnal chic. Trendy Londoners didn't blink twice. He'd sweep her onto an empty double-decker, a vacant pub, a locked greenhouse in the botanical gardens, remove his leather gloves, and touch her face, her hair, rub her cold hands between his palms and kiss her fingertips. He took note of her scars. The ones he recognised and the ones he didn't. Demand who did it, vow to make them pay, then offer everything he knew about Voldemort's next moves.

At eighteen, he confessed he loved her.

It was the worst of the war. She'd been beaten, tortured, scarred, and branded. Draco hardened, trained and bathed in Dark Magic. They did not belong with one another.

Keeping her safe was like clutching a bar of soap beneath the tap and praying it wouldn't slip from his fingers. But he tried his damned well hardest, and she loved him for it.

By nineteen, freedom tasted like luxury.

War-torn homes, constant nightmares, society's vitriol, friends who didn't understand, a world who wished them apart.

It was caviar and champagne.

The ability to sleep in the same bed and touch one another when they felt like it (always), and say I love you without the fear of never saying it again.

(494 words, first written July 2023, photo prompt from twitter)

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more to come!

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