Happy birthday, @theheavycrown. Some demon!draco for the prime enabler of the creature fic bender I’m currently on.
It’s the moonless nights when he comes.
The bed creaks and Hermione feels the mattress shift. When she opens her eyes, darkness like a black hole looms over her. Impossibly long fingers slide possessively around her shoulders, pulling her close, lips finding hers, as he slowly bleeds into view. His pale skin and hair barely visible in the dim light.
She wraps her arms around him, pulling him desperately close and kissing across his face. “Draco... Draco... I didn’t know if you’d come again.”
He feels so close to human. Almost. Everywhere she touches him, he feels almost human. His fingers are almost human but too long. His features still almost the same but the angles are sharper now, harder. His eyes are still silver, but now there’s a luminous glow behind them. Everything about him whispers, “other.”
He wraps his arms tightly around her and lies there for several minutes just holding her. She runs her fingers across his shoulders, trying to feel him, to memorise the weight of his body resting against hers and what it feels like when he grips her close against his chest, so she can replay it on all the nights when he isn’t there.
He breathes in against her hair, and his hands begin roaming across her body, gripping her closer, dragging her tight against him so that she wraps her legs around his hips, pulling his mouth against hers.
There’s a bitter aftertaste to his kisses, like ash on her tongue.
She draws back, running her fingertips across the sharp angle of his cheekbone before tracing up an elongating ear.
His silver eyes stare down at her in the darkness, the irises are tinged with blood red.
There’s a pang in her chest as she realizes that the expression in his eyes isn’t the same. There’s something missing now in the way he looks at her.
He looks away. Preoccupied with ripping her slip out of the way so that it no longer obstructs his view. She reaches out and tilts his face up so that their eyes meet again.
“Do you remember me, Draco?” she asks after a long silence. “Do you remember why you come here?”
He goes rigid, staring at her, then a growl vibrates through him, starting low in his chest and the rising up until she feels the burn of his breath on her face as he grips her crushingly close. He buries his face against her shoulder and she feels his fangs drag across her skin in a way that sends a shiver racing down her spine.
She gives a laugh and presses their faces together. “Yes. You married me, once upon a time.”
She kisses him again as he pulls away the shredded remains of her slip until she’s bare beneath him. He slithers down her body, serpentine and possessive. Running his fingers across every inch of her. Following it with his tongue and his teeth. She moans at his touch, gripping his shoulders, twisting her legs around him, raking her fingernails across his shoulders as she shatters, feeling them score across his skin.
Remember me. Remember that I touched you. Carry the marks with you when you go.
When he pushes into her, he pauses and his shoulders twist. With a long groan, his wings emerge and unfurl, black enough to swallow the night sky. The deadly claws on the arch of the wings are only inches above her face. She’s used to it now, but she still experiences a stabbing jolt of fear every time she watches it happen. His wings flare out when she tenses and wraps her arms and legs tightly around him.
His shoulders tremble when her fingers trail near his wings. She brushes her fingers lightly against them and he gives a rasping moan as his body jerks.
The rest of the world can fade away. He’s all she sees and that’s more than enough.
“Hermione,” he says, nuzzling her afterwards when they’re lying side by side. He’s folded his wings possessively around her, they’re warm and soft against her bare skin. Her legs are tangled with his and he’s cradling her face in his hands, staring at her, studying her.
She rests a hand on his cheek, her fingers resting on the sharpening angle of his cheekbone for a moment before her hand slides back to run through his hair. There’s a ridge under his hair just past his hairline. She traces her fingers over it.
She wonders if they’ll be visible by the next time he comes.
“Of course I’m alright. You came back,” she says.
They talk for the rest of the night. With every passing hour, Hermione watches the humanness slowly bleed back into him. She tells him about her research, about her theories. He doesn’t tell her what he does when he’s away. He doesn’t want her to know, although she has her guesses. He reminisces about her, what he remembers of them.
“You called me a cockroach,” he says.
Her eyes crinkle in the corners as she notices his mannerisms returning, his left eyebrow is quirked up and the corner of his mouth is pulling in a vague smirk.
“Well,” she says, “you were—back then.”
They only have until dawn. He’ll vanish as the sun rises.
She knows that there are parts of him that are fading away. Every month, each time he manages to slip between dimensions and return to her, there’s less of him. Fewer of those infinite facets that she’s memorised. The ones that remain when he returns are sharpened. On the inside and outside, he is becoming more of who he is.
She curls closer, pressing her face against his chest, listening for a heart that’s ceased to beat. He wraps his arms around her, hands running up and down her back, wings tightening protectively around her. She wonders what kind of hell he’d bring down if anyone ever tried to take her from him.
Personal vice defines what a demon’s nature is. It is the key to who they are.
Draco was always sinfully possessive.
He will always come back for what is his.
And she will always be waiting for him.
