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He can tell it’s not enough. Molly’s clawing at his back and urging him on feverishly, but already he knows that this time won’t be any different from all the other times.
He still remembers the first time they were together (and how could he forget, when the caretaker caught him afterwards and gave him the flogging of a lifetime. Sometimes, he wonders whether the experience has left him emotionally blocked, but really, that’s quite absurd.). They snuck out the night after their last NEWT exam. He had been elated, exhilarated, walking on air (though not literally. That had gotten old in third year.). He and Molly connected so well, completed each other so thoroughly, that this final step would surely join their souls forever.
They dealt with the disappointment well, he thinks whenever he remembers that first night. Molly assured him that as well as they knew each other already, they would have to get to know each other in a whole new way now. That they would soon learn how to please the other. And he’d nodded and kissed her and never told her that for him, it had been just as bad as for her.
He had resolved to try harder the next time, and the time after that, and the time after that. But the truth slowly sinks in that, as well as they balance each other in all other aspects of life, their different personalities make a fulfilling sex life nigh on impossible.
He wants to kiss her and love her and be tender with her. He craves the intimacy and gentleness he supposes other people find in lovemaking. She is fiery and fierce and loud, and much as he wants to please her, it inevitably shakes him out of the cocoon of warmth he needs. He would be able to deal with that, if only he knew he could give her what she needs. But he knows it’s too little.
Oh, she would never tell him. She always kisses his balding head, and strokes the back she scratched raw minutes earlier, and those are the moments when he suspects that she knows. She knows it wasn’t what he needed either, and so they lie next to each other, unfulfilled and closer than ever.
And inevitably, before they fall asleep, they whisper, “I love you.”
It’s never a lie.