THE SYMMETRICAL TRANSIT (DRAMOINE) BY EVERYTHURSDAY

Part 10

10:36pm

"So what did Buckley have to say?" Hermione was still unsure on how to act around him, but Buckley was a safe conversation and one that needed to be started.

She had been trying to ask him since they left the wizarding world, but he had told her to wait until they were in a private area for it. She waited until he was shutting the door behind them.

"Buckley gave the pendant to an ex-girlfriend," he paused when she groaned, "and the last he heard she was living in Rome."

"Rome."

Malfoy nodded. "Rome."

"Fan. Tastic. Did you get a name?"

He nodded, scratched the back of his head, looked at her and jerked his head toward the bathroom door. "Do you want to take a shower first or...?"

"Oh! Uh...um..." She did feel rather dirty, actually, and had been craving one ever since she stood up in the supply room. "Whichever."

He paused, unsure, before looking away from her and waving his hand toward the door. "Go ahead."

She wondered if it was a normal thing to picture him naked all the time now. Even right then, standing near the table and busying himself with some sheet of paper on it, she was discarding his clothes and remembering the shape of him. The chords of muscles in his back, the curve of his bum, the valleys of his chest and stomach, the mark on his pelvic bone, the scar right below his left nipple. All played out in her mind as she tried to change the setting from a dusty and cluttered room to their current surroundings.

In the bathroom, she could see his marks on her in her reflection. When she stripped her clothes off, she smelt him all over her skin. And she breathed in really deep through her nose, over and over, until she was dizzy with so much oxygen.

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