Rogues

Rogues

Summary: He still remembers the last time, just before the war. When it happens next, it is by chance, in a small city, in a small country in some far thrown corner of the world, far from Hogwarts and Britain and Everything. H/H. Angst. Smut.

Rating: NC17

A/N: This is for Sabs and MaryCaroline who were brave enough to beta. They are the rock.

*

He still remembers the last time, just before the war. Soft kisses and shy smiles, laughs and thrusts and heavy breaths, murmurs and sleep. He remembers other times, too, of that, or bruising kisses and devilish grins and fast and hard, in the halls, on the grounds, out of sight.

But those times ended with the war when three decided, not two, to let it all go. He can't go back because not only he walked away, but she did too.

*

When it happens, it is by chance.

He is in a small city, in a small country in some far thrown corner of the world, far from Hogwarts and Britain and Everything. It is how he lives now. The streets are lined with trees and the sidewalks with flowers, and the people all smile at him as they pass, impressed by his clothing, suave and well cut, though probably not so by his hair, still messy and everywhere on his head.

It doesn't take him long to walk from the hostel - purposefully cheap so he can continue to live like this - into the centre of the city, and he slowly makes his way through the pedestrian malls to a small cafe, tucked just in the entrance of an arcade. He chooses a muffin, a pump water and a newspaper, smiling at the waitress, who's cute, as he does.

He is searching through his pockets for change, idly watching the crowds passing by outside.

It happens.

He barely recognises her at first. Her hair is shorter and it's black instead of cinnamon, her skin still pale, and she looks strangely gothic as she walks past, leather boots up to her knees and a thick, black cloak draped around her.

But it's her.

The change drops from his hands, and chatters as it hits the floor. The waitress gasps and comes out from behind the counter to help him, smiling at him with a flirty quirk to her lips, and bends down to pick up the coins. But he doesn't bend to help. His eyes are fixated to the spot where he first saw her. It takes him a few seconds, but he is then half out of the door, craning his neck out on to the street to catch another stray glimpse of her. He sees her struggling through her cloak until she pulls out some keys, unlocking the padlock on a white construction fence on the far corner of the street, disappearing into it a moment later.

He thinks that he should move or follow her or shout for her or do anything but stand there, but he doesn't. He stands there because he can't do anything more. He couldn't follow her at the end of the war, and he still isn't sure that he can now.

It takes does take him much longer to walk away, this time, though. Maybe that is a start.

*

It's two weeks later, and he hopes that hasn't left it too late.

He only has a few more days in the city, before he'll fly out again, to a different city on a different island, further up north, but the same country. He has thought of nothing of her for the past weeks - he's thought of nothing of her for the past ten years - but seeing her again has made it all come back; red lips and rosy cheeks and supple breasts and laughs and endless legs.

The streets are strangely deserted, with only a few scarce people walking through them, and most of the shops still closed even though it is past ten.

He approaches the building surrounded by the fence, only a few stories high but grand and old with a scattered collage of old signs all reading Hallensteins revealed across it's brick fascia. He reaches it, and stares at the fence a few moments before he knocks.

It's only when he has been standing there for several minutes, knocking his fist against the wobbly door, that he looks at his watch, muggle and tattered, and realises that it's Sunday, giving him only a day.

As he walks slowly back to the hostel, his shoulders and head low, he doesn't see her at the other end of the street, standing still and staring at his retreating figure.

*

When he arrives the next day, it is early so there is no chance of missing her. He doesn't even have to knock. She's already waiting for him as he gets there. She's not just there by chance - she is there waiting for him. He knows it by the look in her eyes as she sees him approaching.

They are silent for a few moments and then he hears her say hello, followed tentatively by his name. It is then he finds the moment he has been waiting for. He didn't realise how much he had wanted to hear her say his name again, and now he knows he doesn't want to live without hearing it again.

And again.

*

They sit in the same cafe he first saw her again, two weeks ago, in the back corner, sipping coffee, in nervous silence.

He breaches it first.

"Why are you here?" he asks over the top of his cup, his eyes not wanting to leave her.

She bites her lip. "I'm helping a friend." Her voice is different now, a camouflage, no longer with a pommy accent but a mix of everything in between. She's well travelled.

The lack of an accent doesn't gloss over her trepidation. "A friend?"

She huffs slightly. "It's not fair that you can still do that after... so long." She cracks a small, conceding smile - his favourite. "Fine. I'm here helping my ex-husband. He's the muggle on crew -the owner of the building - for the team building a new wizarding precinct. I'm the illusion advisor."

"I thought you had given up on magic?"

"I have. I, er, left him two years ago - quite unannounced. He asked, and I felt obliged to help. It's only for a few months."

"Ah." A sip from his cup. "Are there many wizards here?"

"Yes," she replies, nodding, "quite a few. Mostly from home, people affected by the war. They followed the muggles from America. It's safe here."

"All this time, I was trying to avoid magic, my past, and here I am, in a place determined to remind me of it." He smiles, just slightly, amused.

They slip into silence for scarcely a moment before she asks, "What have you been doing?"

He takes a large gulp of his coffee. "I don't really know. I've been... travelling, everywhere but home. I cashed out my vault, converted it to muggle currency, and I've been on the road since."

"How can you afford it?"

"I stay at the cheapest hostels, eat at the cheapest restaurants, and work where I can."

"And wear the best." She points to the small CK emblazoned on his jacket, and smiles.

"Ah," he says, picking at it, "that was Ginny."

He sees the swallow move down her throat. "You've seen them, then?"

"Just once," he says quietly. "A few months ago. I was in Sydney, and so were she and Ron. She refused to let me leave without at least having The Ginny Treatment."

They share a smile, before she tentatively moves on, "How's Ron?"

He looks away for a second, then back. "He's good. He went back a few years ago... after his divorce. He has a little girl now, Katie." He moves suddenly, putting his coffee down on the table and searching through his rucksack before pulling out a wallet. He opens it, and passes it to her, pointing to a photo enclosed. "That's her there. She's just turned three."

"She's gorgeous," she says, passing it back to him with a smile on her face that melts him. "God, one of us has a kid. Maybe I should've never said hello, you're making me feel old." A slight grin, cheeky.

"Maybe I should've never left in the first place."

*

They talk more, for over an hour, before they lapse into silence, not comfortable but not uncomfortable. He can't believe she is there, that she wants him to be there and he wants to be as well. He'd forgotten this.

"What happened to you?" he asks, seemingly out of the blue. "You used to be so incessantly chatty. I never used to be able to shut up you up. Never." There is a distinctly suggestive tone to his voice.

A blush rises up her cheeks, and she remains quiet for a moment. "I don't know." She meets his eyes, and he sees it all there. Pain, anguish, memories. "What happened to you?"

*

A while later and they are walking. They are far from the cafe now, down the other end of the city heading towards the arts precinct, crossing a bridge. His hand has come to rest at the small of her back, hers brushes his side as they walk.

There's a small flower stall at the end of the bridge, with stemmed flowers sitting most undramatically in white plastic buckets. They stop, and she takes her time in picking some. He searches through his pocket and hands over the money to the smiling stall keeper, old and frail.

As they continue to walk, the flowers in her hand, she says, "Can we... can we go back?" He doesn't reply. "We're not even the same people, anymore, are we?" They come to a stop, and they face each other.

"I don't know," he replies, his fingers brushing lightly up her arms. "It still... it still feels the same. I don't... I don't know."

He thinks that if this was a muggle movie, she'd start crying now. But she doesn't. Instead, she talks again, like she did when they were young, a breathless rush of thoughts and ideas, all coming out very quickly. At some stage he leans in and silences her by kissing her, gently at first until she starts to kiss back. Her arms wrap around him and somehow he feels it all - time, doubt and anguish - begin to melt away.

*

It's sometime later, and after they find their way back to her car in a nearby parking building, they drive out of the city, over the hills, to the harbour. She parks the car in a storage garage at the port, and they walk across to a wharf. He distances himself from her as they walk, feeling uncertain around her. He doesn't know what she is expecting, nor what he is expecting himself. It is like being a teenager again.

They board a ferry to across the harbour, and stand at the back, slightly apart from each other, leaning against the railings. The wind is strong in the summer sun as the ferry begins to move, and her hair, a different colour but still bushy, waves ferociously, flapping in her face. At some point, he tentatively reaches a hand out, brushing a stray wisp from her face and tucking it behind her ear. It's sometime after then he finds that she is kissing him, her arms around him and hands on his back as she leans against the railings. He responds enthusiastically, ignoring the looks he imagines they are getting from other passengers.

He doesn't care about them.

Somehow, she is in his arms again, after thinking it would never happen and after thinking he never wanted it to happen. It's only now he realises how much he did want it to happen.

*

Fortunately, her house is not far from the wharf where they depart, and it only takes a few minutes of frenzied walking to get there. They reach the door and his arms are around her again, his chest pressing against her back as she fumbles around in her bag, trying to find her keys.

"Use your wand," he murmurs, lowering his lips to her neck, quickly abandoning any pretence held over the past years that magic was unnecessary. Anything would be necessary and praise-worthy if it would get him inside faster, to get him even closer to her than currently.

Though he's older now, and more experienced than he was the last time, he now feels no different than he did the first and last and inbetween times. Young and eager and blinded and desperate.

As he hears the chatter of keys, he thinks that he has never been so relieved; not when he first saw her again, not when it was clear that Voldemort was really gone, not when he lasted more than a minute their first time. He sighs against her skin and she laughs shakily, urging her neck up to his lips as she finds the right key and swings the door open.

They step inside to a large room, huge windows spanning the two far sides, views of tinder dry hills and deep blue waters. It's modern and clean, sans for the randomly placed stacks of books, scattered across the floor and furniture.

His lips leave her neck as he closes the door behind him, and she turns around in his arms. "You still read, then?" His voice makes no effort to hide his amusement.

She smiles fondly at him, slowly twining her arms around his neck. "Read? Me? I'm afraid you have got me terribly mixed up with someone else. I've never read. Wouldn't even know how to."

He smiles wryly and looks at her for a moment before he finds her lips back on his, slow and gentle at first, growing hard and insistent as the kiss develops. His hands move slowly over her skin, tracing her body out through her clothes, learning the shape of her again, curves and bumps, arse and breasts. Hers are not so satisfied, and between encouraging his to do more, they get his jacket off and the buttons of his shirt unbuttoned, fingers then tracing up and down his chest and stomach. He doesn't let her win at first, despite the feelings her touch elicits, continuing to touch her at his own leisurely pace, fingers gently pushing up the bottom of her shirt and flitting teasingly across the skin of her stomach.

"Harry..." he hears her murmur, voice surrendered but with a definite tinge of 'I will kill you, Harry Potter, if you do not hurry up.'

His lips leave hers and he grins, his breath ghosting against her face. She sighs softly in disappointment, but he sees her smile when the hands resting at her stomach finally push up, pulling her shirt off. He shrugs out of his own shirt, and captures her lips again, relishing the taste of her. They undress each other quickly and, in midst of kisses and stumbles, find their way to a bedroom.

She falls back first as they reach the bed, and he follows, pulled down by her to rest between her open legs. As he starts kissing her, his hands move along her sides, tracing the curves of her breasts, cupping them gently. His lips leave hers slowly, and move down along an agonising trail, from throat to neck to breasts. She is mumbling about something, true to form of not being able to shut up, but whatever she is saying comes out only as an incoherent mess of throaty gasps and moans. He deals a final lick to a nipple and comes up again to kiss her quickly before making to delve deeper, only to be stopped by urgent hands on his back and arse.

"Later," she says, clear and assertive now. "It's been too long. Just... just now."

He silently agrees and leans up again to kiss her, gently and slowly as he positions himself. He relishes the feeling for a moment, of her lips and body and everything, and he wonders for the millionth time since that morning how he has survived without this, without the million other things. He has tried to convince himself that others have come close since the last time, but he knew then and he knows now that none of them have. None have even come close.

He thrusts into her, burying himself to the hilt and intensifying the kiss as he begins to move, his tongue plundering her mouth furiously. As her legs wrap around his back, urging him, they quickly become nothing but moans and thrusts, delicious cries and shouted names. Their hands, cold touches against heated skin, map out each other's bodies as they move together. His lips leave hers as her head falls back against the pillow, settling again on her neck as her nails scrape up his sides, rolling her hips and pushing against his thrusts.

His thrusts begin to become desperate as her chest heaves against his with her moans. He hears her murmur his name, deep and throaty and frenzied, and the sound is enough to drive him off the edge, her name on his lips as he does. His thrusts slow for a second as he recovers before he starts driving into her again, his hands palming her breasts and his lips flitting across her skin until she, too, reaches her release.

*

It's sometime later; moments, seconds, minutes; when he tilts his head up from her neck to kiss her. It is slow and languid, and it doesn't last long.

They fall asleep, then, exhausted.

*

He wakes first, his head pillowed against her chest. As he sobers, he cheekily thinks that maybe this was what he missed the most about her.

Seemingly reading his mind to stop him thinking such things - and ruining any plans he had for her - it is then she stretches languidly, her eyes fluttering open slowly.

There is a small moment of uncertainty as they look at each other, finding themselves as they have many times in the past, only many years ago. He worries that maybe she thinks they have rushed back into it - and maybe they have. He doesn't worry about that thought himself, though, because he trusts what he feels for her, maybe for the first time now that he is free of impending doom and worry, and allowing himself to feel like this for her again.

His worries are quashed when she smiles at him, tentatively at first until he smiles, too.

There is silence.

"When does your plane leave?" she asks quickly, biting her lip a timid but slightly hopeful look on her face.

Oh. His plane. Right. He shifts his head and looks around the room for a clock, finding one. "In about... about an hour ago." His eyes close and he smiles, dropping his head with a laugh. He looks back to her and sees her trying not to smile.

"Oh. That's... that's too bad." She takes a pause. "When does the next flight leave?"

He shuffles up so that their faces are resting close, his hands dancing on her sides and stomach. "I don't know," he murmurs softly, his lips brushing over hers gently before pulling away. "You never know with these small countries." Another kiss, longer. "It could be a few months."

"Oh, that's terrible," she says, moments later, after another, longer, drugging kiss. "Whatever will you do?" She is no longer bothering to hide her grin.

"I'll cope, I'm sure," he replies, smiling. His look becomes slightly more sombre as he continues, "We do have a lot of catching up to do."

Her look matches his, and her voice is soft, "Yes. We do."

They are quiet for a few moments, content in thought and being close again, a tangle of limbs and arms. A while later he musters up a cheeky smile, and as he kisses her again, asks, "Should we start now?"

Her laugh is her answer.