InsaneJournal

Special delivery for goeungurl
Title: Under my skin like ink.
Author:
Recipient's LJ name: goeungurl
Pairing(s): Draco/Hermione
Rating: R - NC-17
Summary Draco finds that the ink of history can be hard to over-write.
Word Count: 1,174
Warnings/Content: Shower!sex, slight angst, slightly PWP and EWE.
Disclaimer: Not my characters, I just make them play with each other.
Author's/Artist's notes: What a great set of prompts! You suggested a prompt of writing/ink, so I tried to twist that a little. I was a bit worried that I was a bit heavy with exposition, but I hope you like it!



The war ended. The good were victorious, the evil fell. The story ended the way everyone wanted. For many, their participation in the war, and subsequent punishment, was as clear as cut glass. The Death Eaters who had taken pride and great joy from torturing the students of Hogwarts School, for instance, and had not been able to escape capture, were sent to trial, and then prison. For life.

Those that admitted to working with Voldemort, but claimed that by the end they did so against their real will, received much lighter sentences. Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy were decreed to serve a minimum of five years, their family home was stripped, their possessions auctioned to pay for damages caused by the actions of Voldemort.

Their son's punishment was much less, though in some ways much more, severe. Draco escaped Azkaban prison, though he did not escape the stares and the whispers that went hand-in-hand with being a traitor to the just, an outcast. The black mark inked into his skin the constant reminder, to the witches and wizards who passed him in the cobblestone streets of Diagon Alley, the tiled floor of the bookshop where he worked, the carpeted halls of the Ministry where he was required to check in every month, that he had not been on their side. Not the whole time. It told them that he was not to be trusted, not with their families and friends.

He went about his business, submersing himself in the ink and bound parchment that he sold all day, every day, attempting to lose himself in the false histories of fiction - they were preferable to the stories that painted him a monster.

Only one person really tried to see past the mask and the mark, despite everything; a person who worked to find redemption for the damned, who liked to read the back-stories and previously uncovered deleted scenes about the antiheroes.


Hermione awoke to the sound of running water. Instinctively, she reached out, looking for Draco, though when her hand grasped only bed clothes, she opened her eyes. Confused, she looked over at the illuminated alarm clock beside her bed, and groaned aloud. Three in the morning was much too early for anyone to be awake, let alone showering.

Throwing back the covers, Hermione swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up, shivering in the chill air outside the warm cocoon of blankets. Without pausing to throw her dressing gown over her thin cotton pyjamas, the witch padded on bare feet across the hall and stopped outside the bathroom, resting her head against the cool wood. Mingled with the heavy jets of water was a sound Hermione almost didn't recognise, and certainly would never have thought could come from Draco, of all people. It was almost alien, a low, pained cry that brought tears to her eyes and goose bumps to the surface of her skin. She knocked twice and paused for a moment again, before she pushed open the door and crossed the threshold.

Draco was standing underneath the onslaught of water, scrubbing at the skin of his left forearm with a white scrubbing cloth, now spattered with tiny drops of red. He didn't look up at the sound of the door opening and closing, nor did he meet her eyes when Hermione softly called his name.

"What are you doing, Draco?" she said, though it needed no real explanation. The normally pale skin of his forearm had been scrubbed into a raw mess, and was likewise spotted with blood. Hermione pushed open the shower door and ran a hand across Draco's bare shoulders, down his back, trying to turn him around to face her properly.

"Draco, stop," she said, an urgency in her voice now, and when he went on ignoring her, stepped into the shower beside him, disregarding her clothing. A fine spray of water began to settle across her skin and in her hair, as she stepped closer to Draco, tugging on his hand. "Stop," she whispered, twining her fingers around his tightly.

"It won't come off," Draco muttered, his voice low and hoarse against the backdrop of the water splashing onto the tiled floor.

Her dark eyes shining, Hermione shook her head. "Of course it won't come off," she said, taking the cloth out of Draco's hand and dropping it to the ground. "It wasn't made to come off. It was meant to stick."

He raised troubled eyes to her face, and clutched her hand tighter. "What if this is all they ever see? What if to my dying day all people will remember is that I was a Death Eater?"

Hermione reached up and cupped Draco's face in her hands, holding him tight. "So what? They don't matter. What's important is that you aren't a Death Eater now. We can't take back what we did, none of us can."

Draco took a shuddering breath in, and nodded once. Hermione smiled, and brushed away the wet strands of hair plastered to Draco's forehead with her fingertips. She rose onto her toes and pressed her lips to his, wrapping her hands around his neck.

He responded in kind, twisting long pale fingers through the wet tangles of her hair, pulling her flush against him. Hermione ran her tongue along Draco's bottom lip and moaned softly as he lifted the cotton shift off her torso, before bending his head to nip gently at the flesh of her throat. Hermione gasped as she felt his tongue against her breasts, as he sucked one nipple into his mouth, then the other. As his mouth worked against her flesh, Draco pushed her pyjama shorts down her legs, leaving them pooled at her feet with the water of the shower.

The water ran down Draco's back as he straightened up and cradled Hermione in his arms, her back pressed hard against the cool glass for support. The witch ran her fingernails down his back as Draco thrust into her quickly, his groan mingling with hers at the friction.

Nothing else mattered. Every thought had been wiped from his mind as easily as pages are ripped from books. Hermione's back arched forwards as she attempted to match Draco's movements. As the pressure mounted in his body, Draco's arms began to shake. A low sound, starting deep in his throat, spilled out of his mouth as he climaxed, the shake in Hermione's body informing him that she, too, had reached her peak.

They remained like that together, oblivious of the now cold water streaming down their bodies, as their breathing returned to normal. Draco lowered Hermione to the ground, and she reached behind him to turn off the water.

She took Draco's arm in her own hands and lifted it, pressing her mouth to the mark branded there, tasting only clean, cool water on her tongue. "This ink is just as important as any you'd find in the history books, Draco. You can't change your past, but you can write your own future."