All You Want

5) It's Only Curiosity

When Hermione woke, Malfoy was gone. She could already sense his absence before she opened her eyes. The scent of him in the room was fading; it was hours old.

She knew logically that she shouldn't feel hurt, but she was.

Without opening her eyes, she rolled over and scolded herself. Did she expect to wake and find him still next to her? That he'd decide after a few days of shagging her that he didn't care about her blood status and then they'd date because the sex was so amazing?

She snorted and opened her eyes.

As she sat up and surveyed the room, she began to remember brief flashes of him attempting to get away from her and leave. Of him trying to go get someone else instead.

As she sat in the middle of the bed, a feeling of cold horror swept over her at her increasingly distinct recollection of him trying to fight through his instincts and stay away from her.

She had proceeded to climb on top of him and started giving him a handjob.

Hermione hid her face in her pillow at the memory.

After that, there had been a lot of incoherent sex that she could only partially recall. They'd both been swept up in the Alpha-Omega dynamic, full of words and promises that stemmed from somewhere instinctive.

She felt as though she'd been punched. Malfoy had probably remembered himself again the moment her heat ended, once his head had cleared from all the hormones and instincts she induced in him. The bitter smile that had appeared on his face as the fog finally faded from her mind stood out starkly in her memory.

Hermione still couldn't wrap her mind around it all.

Hormones or not, she wanted to die of embarrassment.

The worst part was that if it were to happen again, she wasn't sure she could have done anything differently. Despite her initial resolve to endure the heat alone, she had quickly discovered that resolving to do so was one thing. Actually trying to endure it was another matter entirely.

It had been awful.

And she categorized it as such with the authority of someone who had been crucio'd repeatedly by Bellatrix Lestrange.

Her body had felt like it was burning. Every inch of her attuned and over-sensitive in anticipation of something that wasn't happening and couldn't happen. Everything hurt her skin. Her clothes. Water. Even the sheets. Her state of arousal was unassaugeable. Anything she did to try to relieve it just increased the frustrated, all-consuming need.

The physical anguish had only been a part of it. It was the mental aspect of it that had nearly broken her.

She wasn't supposed to be alone.

The isolation provoked an overwhelming sense of wrongness in her at an instinctive level. She shouldn't be alone. She wasn't supposed to be alone. There was something profoundly wrong happening that she had been left by herself to endure it.

Someone was supposed to be there. Someone was supposed to be with her; to help her, soothe her.

But no one was.

She had been all alone. No one was there for her.

The relentless awareness made her nearly hysterical.

She was hurting inside and out and no one was going to come to make it better.

It just got worse and worse. Hour after hour.

When she had moments of not crying and trying madly to find some way to relieve the all-encompassing misery she was experiencing, she had wanted to call for McGonagall and beg her to send for someone, but there wasn't anyone she could think of. She wasn't going to ruin Neville's relationship with Hannah by having a week-long orgy with him. Goldstein, she—she didn't know. The thought of him just felt—wrong.