The magic of a kiss is something very specific. There is much to be gleaned from a kiss, and although it is the magic of hormones (and therefore not magic at all but mostly science; specifically biology, which is mystifying enough on its own) there is something which feels very much like the sensation of
performing magic. It manifests from somewhere in one’s blood or internal organs or somewhere else anatomically unknowable, pulsing with something that will, in some way, change the course of one’s life.
Some kisses are like doors. A kiss goodbye is a door closing, which both participants can typically feel. That’s another thing about a kiss: it is a generally faultless method of communication. Very infrequently are things misrepresented with a kiss. A door which is opening is typically felt by both parties, viscerally and with the sensation of a collision, like apparition and being transported through time and place; like transfiguration and being reconstructed down to the elements, made new in some other form; like potions, bubbling up with chemistry; like alchemy, turning common glitters into gold.
For Draco Malfoy, the particular kiss he was experiencing with Hermione Granger (whom he had kissed before but also
not kissed and really, honestly, there was no need to delve into these details again) was a door being opened, and it was not unlike the incomprehensible door to the inexplicable room on the impossible castle’s sentient seventh floor. For one thing, it had not appeared with any convenient sort of timing. He hadn’t precisely walked in front of her three times thinking very intently about what he wanted to discover, but…
hadn’t he, in a way? And inside the door was a collection of madness, of wonder and disarray, of
what is this and
seriously, what the actual fork
is this—but also
this is treasure, isn’t it? This is the discovery of splendor. This is affluence piled up in labyrinths of luxury. This is a blaze of solid richness. This is a sumptuousness that required years to build.
If his first kiss with her other self had been the turning of a handle, then this, with the version of her he had always (and yet never truly) known, was the destruction of a hinge. She’d caught him completely by surprise, flinging the door open with artless haste, and he’d let it smack him in the face, dumbfounded and frozen for perhaps ten years too long, or possibly merely a single second. Time was magic that way, and so was this. So was
she, and when he melted into it—when he finally said
yes, fine, come in, I should have known this door was here, I’ve always wondered what it led to—it washed over him in waves; swarmed at him in droves; draped over him in swaths of resolution.
Oh, he thought, feeling the scattered pieces of his life shift into alignment.
Oh.
I have been broken so I could find a new shape.
Oh.
I have suffered so as to one day be worthy of something.
Oh.
I have learned to doubt so that someday, I might recognize faith when I uncovered it.
Oh.
I have been humbled so that when it happened, I would know what it took to grow.
Oh.
It didn’t have an identifiable taste, but neither did gratitude, nor fascination, nor curiosity. It didn’t make any sort of sound, but he suspected collisions with this volume of quietude rarely did. Her lips were as soft as he’d imagined, the little hint of uncertainty even better up close—that piece of her which remained daunted, which retained its fragility, was as vulnerable and wistful as he so often felt—and it was not at all like kissing some other version of her.
Either that, he thought, or he was now some other, unidentifiable version of himself from where he’d started.
He slid his fingers around her wrist and noticed the
M carved in place there, and when they broke apart (one second or ten years later) he brushed his thumb over it with contemplation, studying the feel of it beneath his touch. He wasn’t the type to look for signs, certainly not anymore, so it wasn’t that.
But it also wasn’t nothing.
