AN: reminder that Juno and Draco are aged up to 18 in this fic <3. I've had this chapter planned for sooo long, since I started writing this story, and I'm so excited it's finally up, it's so significant and aghhh just I'm so excited.
CW: Sexual content. Mentions of scars, implications of abuse. It is from this point that mature themes develop in the story, and the plot darkens. Reader discretion is advised.
The academic year was nearing a close, the days blurring into one as the summer approached. It was June now, and, despite the promise of a new season, of warmer weather and glorious sun, the wizarding world felt darker, colder and more dismal than ever.
Like the changing of the season, there had been a shift.
Draco became less himself every time Juno saw him, physically he was present, but his mind would wander, eyes glassing over as his thoughts distracted him and took him to somewhere else completely. He looked utterly exhausted, his cheeks were sunken into his skull, the hollows of his eyes a violent hue of purple, he'd always had a light complexion, but now, his skin was a dusty grey, as though he never really saw the sun. Juno supposed, however, this sort of change was custom amongst the students - they were all at war, after all.
Harry was the same. In every DA meeting he seemed to be even more distressed. He was withdrawn, and secretive, spending much of his spare time huddled with Ron and Hermione, quietly whispering between themselves. He was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, and it was evidently starting to show.
Everyone was feeling it. The shift was like a potent aroma, lingering in the air until, eventually, they all became climatized to it. All the members of the DA were much more subdued, there wasn't much to be happy about. The teachers and students alike floated through the corridors like ghosts, acting the part, but never truly present. It was even taking its toll on Dumbledore. He'd always looked ancient but he'd never looked so old.
As the weeks drifted into June it became particularly warm. Scotland had been blessed with a rare heatwave, and so, students shed their robes, rolled up their sleeves, pushed their hair back, walking around with pink, sunburnt cheeks, casting cooling charm after cooling charm. They weren't used to such heat.
Despite the conflict, the week of sun was relatively pleasant for all at Hogwarts. It was the last good memory Juno and Draco would have for a while.
On Friday, Draco, who was always so proper and put together, trudged down to the lake looking dishevelled. He'd abandoned his robes, and unbuttoned the first few buttons of his shirt, allowing a small glance at his prominent collarbones. His hair looked unkempt, disturbed by the constant motion of him pushing it out of his forehead, kinking into a natural wave. He threw a lopsided smile at her as he approached, she blushed slightly, but returned it quickly. Juno was without tights, her shirt unbuttoned from the top and creased, her sleeves rolled up over her elbows, hair pulled out of her face into a thick ponytail at the back of her head, lolling back on the grass, catching the rays of sun against her skin. She'd charmed a fan to follow her around.
"It's too bloody hot," Draco huffed theatrically as he collapsed next to her.
"Hello, to you too, Draco, my week's been great, how about yours?" Juno laughed sarcastically. He merely rolled his eyes, throwing his arm over his face to shield him from the sun. "Fancy a swim?"
At first he looked at her eagerly, eyeing the still water of the lake. It looked refreshingly inviting. He was about to agree when suddenly the skin of his left forearm tingled and realisation hit him like a freight train. He physically deflated, sighing inwardly, face dropping before meeting her hopeful gaze.
"No," He hummed, slumping against the tree trunk, "You go ahead, I'll watch,"
The smile on her face turned cryptic, and she eyed him curiously, before carefully scooting towards him, taking his left wrist and pulling it towards her, gently running her thumb over the material of the shirt on his forearm. "You have the mark," She stated, without question, or accusation. He met her gaze with terror in his wide eyes, mouth agape, stumbling to find words - any words. She let go of his wrist and took his hand, giving it a squeeze before smiling softly at him. "It's okay-"
"Yeah," He sighed, casting his eyes downwards, feeling a mixture of embarrassment and shame, "Yeah, I do,"
"Oh, Draco," She breathed, sympathetically.
"It's okay if you hate me, I get it-"
"How many times will I have to say this for you to believe me?" She chuckled softly, reaching her hand up and running her fingers through his hair, "I will never think that you are an inherently bad person, Draco. I'll always know that you're abundantly good,"
She tugged at his sleeve, motioning in request to lift it up - he nodded shyly. Delicately, she rolled the hem of his sleeve up, revealing the dark ink that had tainted the pallid skin of his inner forearm. He assumed she would feel disgusted upon seeing it, that she would finally realise the evil that lurked within him - but, all she could feel was sadness for the boy in front of her. Ever so gently, she traced her fingers along the lines of the ink.
"Come on," She broke the silence, smiling up at him, "it's boiling, let's go for a swim."
Nodding, he stood to his feet, pulling Juno up with him. She began unbuttoning her shirt, before she realised he was watching her, and her cheeks blushed a violent shade of red.
"Look away!" She squealed. He laughed heartily, throwing his head back and baring all his teeth, a mischievous glint in his eye as a smirk settled upon his features.
"Fine," He laughed, throwing his hands up in surrender.
They both turned the opposite way, quickly ridding themselves of their clothes. They were silent, and couldn't help but steal glances at one another, their bodies flushed red, and not just because of the heat.
Draco was left in an expensive looking pair of grey boxers, his physique was as sharp and chiselled as the rest of him, his torso was long, shoulders broad, his stomach defined, skin pale and littered with a small flurry of freckles if you looked close enough. He was skinny but he held himself in such a way that he didn't seem lanky, though his limbs were long and slender. His back was Juno's favourite thing of all. She didn't realise a back could be so beautiful. It was etched with defined lines that flexed and moved with his body, a few small moles scattered along the skin - she could stare at him for hours. Scars of varying shapes and sizes were carved over his body - some seemingly accidental, others not. He had three long silvery marks slashing up the left side of his torso, across his hip and up his waist, across his chest, underneath one of his collarbones was a jagged line, his legs and arms had different scars across them, some bigger than others, some lines, some circles, some looking as though they were magical in origin, while others looked like they'd been inflicted by the bare hands of another. They were all healed, and hardly noticeable, likely due to the fact he'd been away from home so long, but still, she could see them, and that familiar sadness settled on her chest. Her eyes wandered as he finished undressing, from his shoulder, down the length of his arm, resting on the biggest scar of all, the dark mark. He smirked as he caught her staring, a smug look in his eye, causing her to roll her eyes and turn away, attempting to hide her ever-deepening blush.
He couldn't pretend he'd not been stealing glances at her, though. How could he not? She wore a matching pale yellow bra and underwear set, and he shuddered at the sight of her. She truly looked ethereal. Her skin was pale and soft, her collarbones creating hollows in her décolletage, dipping with the curve of her breast. His eyes ran the length of her torso, admiring the dip of her hips and the supple bump of her lower stomach, roaming the silver and purple lines that stretched over her skin, like the veins of the cities from the heavens. He felt light-headed looking at her.
Both coy, and eager to escape the heat, they hurried into the lake, quickly submerging their bodies in the icy water.
"Fuck-" Draco yelled, as he lowered himself up to his neck. "It's freezing,"
Juno squealed at the same time, quickly swimming towards Draco, splashing him with her legs. He gasped heavily, surveying her with a shocked expression, before grabbing her ankle as she tried to swim away.
"You little shit," He laughed, pulling her body towards him. She thrashed and struggled against him, but he wouldn't let go, and, in one swift movement, he had thrown her up into the air, letting her fall back down into the freezing water with a huge splash. When she resurfaced, her hair stuck to her face, and she sprayed the water out of her mouth at him. She pouted, crossing her arms over her chest and scowling at him as best she could when he was looking at her with that cheeky grin of his.
"Come on," He laughed, reaching towards her, at first she was wary, but eventually she melted into him as he wrapped his arms around her neck and pulled her to his chest, "there, there, it's fine. You always start these things and you can never win," He pulled back, patting her head like a child as she rolled her eyes.
They stayed close to one another, studying each other carefully. Once again, Juno reached for his left arm, pulling it to the water's surface, running her fingers over the intricacies of the mark.
"Tell me about it," She whispered, lifting her eyes to meet his gaze, that was watching her intently.
And he did;
"The world is a cruel place, a shitty place, filled with shitty people. Up until I met you, there had only ever been one person in this world worth fighting for, my mum - she's always been the only person worth saving. If I have to fight on the wrong side of the war, then so be it, if it's for her. I have to do this, I have to be on this side, or it's my family that faces the consequences. If it were just me and my Father, maybe it would be worth the risk, but I wouldn't risk hurting my mother, I couldn't. He holds her over me, he has me right where he wants me - the Dark Lord, because he knows there's nothing I wouldn't do to keep her safe, he knows I'd never fight against him if he'd hurt her.
"Dumbledore is just as much of a villain as any. He's raising an army of children to fight for him, at least Lord Voldemort recruits adults - I'm the only one properly initiated in his ranks that's still at school. Dumbledore is using kids like Wizards Chess pieces, he doesn't care about the casualties - it's 'all for the greater good', and he knows he'll never live to see it, he doesn't care who he has to sacrifice.
Then there's Saint Potter. The king in Dumbledore's game of chess. I hate him. I hate him so much. And you know why? It's envy." He let out a disbelieving laugh at this, Juno squeezed his shoulder reassuringly, "I hate him because he has all the right people guiding him and pushing him to do the right thing, he doesn't have to go against the grain to do what's right, he has an army of people supporting him, and telling him exactly what to do and how to be this moral hero. Every adult in my life, every role model I have is pushing me to do the wrong thing, I don't get to choose, I don't have the privilege of being guided to the moral high ground, either I be the bad guy, or I die with my family."
As he finally finished, Juno found herself speechless. She didn't know what to do, or to say, and she felt overwhelmed with feeling as she looked at the boy whose story had made him sink further into the depths of the water, whose expression was plagued with sadness and anger and guilt and exhaustion. She just wanted to pull him into her arms, to hold him and cradle him and assure him that everything would be okay. She wanted to take him away, to hide him from the cruelties of the world, to keep him safe until this was all over. He was similar to Harry, in a way - they were both just young boys, with the weight of the war on their shoulders. Gently, she wrapped her arms around him, fiddling with the hair at the nape of his neck, his hands found her waist and rested on the small of her back. He sighed contentedly, lifting his eyes to meet hers, finding that they were already staring straight back at him, filled with fire. An electricity sparked between them, and before he had a chance to even think, her lips were on his.
He'd kissed a hundred girls before, but nothing had ever felt like this. At first their lips had brushed gently, delicately, testing each other out, before they realised they were starved of each other, and it became desperate, hungry, like the only thing in the world that mattered was satiating their need for one another. He was drunk on her, the feeling of fire that pulsed between them as their skin touched, the heavenly smell of lavender and lemongrass making him dizzy. Their hands roamed every inch of the other's skin, as though they were trying to commit every curve, every blemish, every dip and bump to memory. He could feel her heartbeat flush against the skin of his chest and he wished he could feel it all the time, the steady thrum of her heart against his, it was the most serene and grounding thing. They were desperately close, and yet, their bodies were acting on instinct, doing all that they could do be impossibly closer. He never wanted this to end, it was heaven on earth, and if this was what heaven was like he wanted to repent every single one of his sins and die right then, so he could spend eternity just kissing her. It was as though his entire life had been leading up to this moment - he supposed their entire friendship had, the tension finally bursting like a broken dam - the wait had made it all the more satisfying.
Somehow, in their entanglement of limbs and ardent embrace, they'd made their way to the edge of the lake. They lay together on the shore, lips still intertwined. Juno's bare back was laid upon the grass, Draco's body hovering over hers slightly, his hands running the lengths of her torso. Finally, they pulled apart, their chests rising and falling rapidly as they caught their breaths. They exchanged a knowing look, and all it took was a subtle nod of the head from Juno and his lips were back on hers, somehow even more hungry than before.
It was heavy, and desperate, but Draco was simultaneously so gentle with her. Their bodies moved in perfect synchrony, fitting together like a lock and key, acquainting themselves with every inch of each other. They were a tornado of heavy hands and heavy breathing, and eventually they were both overcome with searing white pleasure and they let go, falling into oblivion, losing themselves in the throes of each other.
Moments passed of blissful silence as they laid beside each other, catching their breaths and basking in their pleasure. Reality hit Draco almost at once.
He couldn't find it in him to regret what they'd just done. It was wonderful, and unforgettable and undeniably the best sex of his life. He couldn't allow himself to regret it for the same reason he did regret it; he loved her. Draco Malfoy loved her. He loved the girl who'd approached him so gently all those months ago, who'd given him a place of security and comfort, who'd done everything she could to understand him, who'd supported him and accepted him, and saw only the good in him when he reeked of the bad. He'd met a girl who was the sun personified, the kindest, loveliest, most wonderful girl in the world, who smoked too much and cared too much and loved so fiercely without fear of being hurt, who cried over birds with broken wings and would show kindness to anyone who asked for it. He, the poster-Slytherin child, the boy who obeyed the Dark Lord's every order, who hated everyone and everything apart from two women in his life, he who couldn't find it in him to care for the greater good, or anything for that matter, he who was a coward and a bully, who would rather internalise evil than fight against it, had fallen in love with a girl who embodied everything in the world that was good. So, he didn't regret it because he loved her, he didn't regret it because that would be the single most wonderful moment in his life, it would be the light that would guide him through the peril of the war, it would live on in his memory as his fondest moment at Hogwarts but, he did regret it, because, regardless of this, regardless of the fact that this perfect human had come along and shown him of all people how to love, regardless of the fact she had chipped away at his icy heart and withdrawn the tiny bits of good that were left in him, it wasn't enough. There would be no outcome where the two of them could be happy, where they could have anything. They both knew what was coming.
It wasn't fair to Juno. It wasn't fair that he was letting her believe that he was good. He wasn't good. The fragments of good she had drawn out of him had come entirely from her, he couldn't take the credit for them. In the end, she'd be left disappointed. Nothing would come of this but pain. He had to be the villain everyone knew that he was.
This had to end here.
Quickly he stood, throwing on his clothes, not even casting a glance in her direction as she watched him with a confused expression on her face;
"I have to go," He mumbled, walking away towards the castle, without so much as looking back.