Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy

Disclaimer: If this were all mine, you really think it would be a children's book?
Notes: I suck so hard! It took forever to finish this! But it's twenty pages and all so I hope you're happy. Also, this was made to satisfy my D/Hr-ness. There were attempts at realism (or fictionism for that matter) but it is no dissertation about the D/Hr relationship. I hope you enjoy and reviews will be appreciated!!!

heHermione did not understand why the tears flowed. She did not care for him on any level, conscious, subconscious or unconscious. She reasoned this to herself but her eyes kept welling up anyway. So she gave in and bawled freely as she ran away from him and towards the closed door. She opened it and Hermione could not have thought of a worse situation, for behind the threshold was Harry Potter, with glasses on unfortunately enabling him to see everything with a clear vision but a rather murky concept.

“Hermione, are you all right? Malfoy, what did you do to her?!” he bellowed without bothering to straighten his facts. Hermione liked to call this trait “Ronnifisis”

“I did nothing to her,” he said matter-of-factly. He adjusted the blanket tighter around his waist.

“Then why are you naked?” Harry demanded.

“I was anticipating your arrival. Care for a quick romp on the pumpkin patch?” Malfoy teased.

Hermione would have laughed if it weren’t for the fact that she was choking on her sobs. Harry noticed and put a protective, albeit unnecessary, arm around her.

“That’s disgusting! Keep your filthy hands away from me and Hermione!” Harry bellowed.

Malfoy only smirked wider. “Ahhh, but wouldn’t you like to know how I got into sta state?”

“I don’t want to know what goes on in that sick head of yours, Malfoy,” Harry spat.

“Well, this sick head isn’t responsible for the nakedness. Why don’t you ask your nubile friend’s sick head?” he answered maliciously.

“I am not nubile!” Hermione piped up with more force than she thought she could handle.

“Yes you are, my beautiful nubile Gryffindor,” Malfoy stated with a challenging glint in his silver eyes.

Ginny who had been watching the festivities from behind them sauntered in with a sugar quill in her mouth and both hands at her waist. “Sheesh, I haven’t felt sexual tension this thick since the last time Harry and Ron had a fight. Tell us Hermione, have you been dipping your tail in the snake pit?”

“Ginny, please,” Hermione answered, her cheeks beginning to flush. The redhead could not help but giggle at her friend’s tinted cheeks.

“Alright, what is going on here?” Harry asked strongly, his arm loosened its grip around Hermione’s shoulder.

Malfoy gave it to him sght ght out. “She broke the bowl covering my, ahem, the Malfoy family jewels and then we proceeded to snog by the bed. She has very soft lips, you know, I’m quite shocked neither of you ever tried it with her.” He finished with a smug look on his face as if to say “I win! I win!”

Harry dropped his arm to the side.

“It was an accident Harry,” Hermione reasoned. She was overcome with a need to excuse herself for her behaviour.

“Which part?”

Hermione would never forget the look Harry gave her just then. His eyes darkened with hidden tears as if he was seeing the most beautiful crystal statuette breaking into pieces in front of him. The shards of glass entered her skin and pierced the bleeding crevices of her heart with a dull ache to remind her of their presence.

“Harry, you have to believe me, it’s not what you think,” she explained. She reached out to touch his cheek but he swiftly deflected it.

“I don’t really care,” he muttered softly, as if his voice could not find its way out from the lumps on his throat.

He turned away from her and ran past Ginny, disappearing over the horizon of the Hogwarts lawn.

Ginny wrapped comforting arms around Hermione’s neck. “It’s okay, he’s just shocked. He’s not thinking right now.”

Of course he isn’t, Hermione thought. But it was understandable. If Harry were caught in the same predicament, she might’ve reacted even worse. She understood that. And she knew, in her heart, that things were going to fix itself. That was just the way it was between her and Harry.

And him. Blond naked Adonis, of course he would act like a prat. It was understandable, he was Malfoy. If you look for prat in the dictionary it would have his portrait next to the word.

But she; Hermione Granger, brightest witch of her age, how could she have let him kiss her? How could she have been led to believe, even for a moment, that there was something there, something deeper, something she could share with him? All because he looked at her like she was beautiful.

And nobody else ever did, the cold harsh voice, a mirror of hen, cn, chided her. And he probably knew it. And exploited it. How very Slytherin.

Hermione spied a look at him from behind the curtain of Ginny’s flaming hair. There he was, standing there without a care in the world, hands on his hips and wearing that dastardly white blanket around his w as as if it were a sultan’s sarong.

But his head hung low. And she could not read him. Not that she cared to.

“Ginny, let’s go back to the castle,” she murmured quietly, as if she did not want him to hear it.

The smaller girl nodded and began to lead the way. But not before turning her head and giving Malfoy her infamous “Eye of Shame” she inherited from a long line of Weasley women. Hermione couldn’t help but grin.

“Did you just give me the eye of shame?” Malfoy voiced from behind, not without a hint of amusement. Hermione did not dare look back at him.

Ginny smugly faced him again. “Yes; and here’s another one for the rest of the night.”

There was only a light snort in response and try as she might, she did not hear it as contemptuous.

Hermione tugged at her friend’s sleeve. “Alright, that’s enough for today. We don’t want to deplete the “Eye of Shame” reservoir.”

“Oh please, with the way he’s acting I’m going to deplete the arse-whipping of shame reservoir on him,” Ginny jibed with a flip of her hair.

Malfoy was silent behind them. Mayhap he was actually taking Ginny’s threats seriously. (As he should, for such a tiny woman she could whack in a punch.)

Hermione and Ginny were already out the door and on the serenity of green grass when Malfoy called out to them. “I’ll take care of the avinnelids then.”

“Sure, do that,” Ginny haughtily replied.

As they neared the castle Ginny hooked her arms around Hermione’s and pulled them closer together, their hips bumping each other’s with every step. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“What was there to say?”

“You vile, loathsome, evil, inbred, stinking, ugly, deceitful, pasty-faced genetic anomaly? Seriously, I could think of a thousand things,” the redhead narrated, flailing her hand as if she were giving a lecture on the effects of Wolfsbane.

“I just wasn’t in the mood,” came Hermione’s dispassionate reply.

It was then that Ginny stopped so suddenlyt sht she had to pull Hermione back like a spring to keep their paces together.

“Hermioneis iis isn’t like you. What happened back there?” she asked, concern written on her expression.

Hermione gave a sigh. She was never more thankful for Ginny than she was now. “He looked at me, Gin, like I was special and beautiful. I didn’t know I was missing that. So I let myself believe it for a moment. Which is really rather stupid, because then he morphs back into Malfoy monster, evil raw sushi of the underworld, snogging the enemy and telling their best friend about it in the crudest fashion possible.”

“He looked at you like you were special and beautiful?” Ginny repeated with a glazed look.

“Did you miss the whole part about the evil raw sushi?”

“I like sushi!”

“I don’t! It’s raw and non-sterile! And pale!”

“Pale suits him,”

“Whose side are you on?”

“The sushi’s; it’s quite unfair how you portray them in a negative light. It’s healthy and tasty at the same time, you know,” Ginny pronounced with a nod of her head as if that settled it.

“It was an allegory!” Hermione cried frustrated.

“A very bad allegory, might I add,” the redhead told her off joshing.

“I don’t think you’re grasping the gravity of the situation, here. I just snogged Malfoy and we’re talking about the merits of sushi!”

“So you snogged Malfoy, who cares? It’s not like he’s You-Know-Who. He’s just another teenaged boy. Honestly, you’d think you caused the second coming the way you’re fretting about,” Ginny dismissed her qualms.

“Harry thought it was a big deal,” Hermione muttered without resentment.

“Harry’s a big baby. Sorry about him being there, by the way, he was getting his squeaky voice, demanding to know where you were. I didn’t think Malfoy would greet us au natural,” Ginny explained sheepishly.

“It’s okay. Things would work out between us, eventually,” and although she knew it would there was still fear in her voice.

“Of course it would. You should worry about Ron. But then again, he’d get over it. It’s not like you actually want to kiss Malfoy again!” Ginny finished with a chuckle, so loud she did not notice the girl beside her said nothing at all and just looked at her feet to hide the guilt in her eyes.

Dinner that night would’ve been intolerable if not for Ginny who sat by her side at the very end of the Gryffindor table. Harry and Ron were giving her the cold shoulder. Everyone else seemed to treat her the same way, and Hermione concluded that the Malfoy incident was confined to the four of them. And Malfoy of course. A minor detail she definitely should not have forgotten.

It was that time between the main course and dessert, and what a lovely dessert it would’ve been, when a distinctly blond head bobbed all the way from the Slytherin table right to the very end of the Gryffindor table, where two girls, a redhead and a brownhead sat with shaking hands and unresponsive postures.

“Hello, Granger. Lovely seeing you again,” he said rather amicably. His voice clashed with the threatening demeanors of Crabbe, Goyle and Pansy who flanked his sides.

“Don’t you have to go shag a cousin around this time, Malfoy?” came Ginny’s biting words. Hoots and hollers came from the Gryffindor table.

“Nice attitude you got there. Is it from your mother’s or your father’s side? Oh wait, there’s no difference,” Malfoy threw back with a triumphant grin.

Ginny just rolled her eyes at him as if he was an insipid student. “I already used the inbred insult; you can’t throw the same insult back. It’s the rules.”

He scrunched his nose as if he considered the thought. “Since when?”

“Since the beginning of time; everyone knows about it, right? Right?” said Ginny looking from Crabbe to Goyle. Malfoy turned to see them nodding vigorously at which point he both jabbed their ribs with his elbows.

“See, they have the frontal lobes of a peanut and they get it,” Ginny explained with a serenity in her voice that annoyed Malfoy to no end.

“But peanutse noe no frontal lobes?” Crabbe piped up as he scratched his head in thought.

“My point exactly dear,” Ginny answered, still with her “one plus one equals two” voice.

Goyle snorted loudly enough to get her attention before he spoke. “At least we’re not called the queen whore of Hogwarts.”

Ginny gave him her dearest smile. “There you go, that’s how it works! By the way, I’m only the princess whore of Hogwarts, Pansy’s queen, aren’t you dear?”

Pansy gave a piercing shriek followed by numerous expletives in six languages. Hermione never knew Pansy to be a such a linguist, perhaps there was something more to the girl.

Malfoy exploded with mirth. “You’re pretty good at this!”

But Ginny did not take kindly to the compliment. Her eyes darkened as she looked at him. “I still don’t like you.”

Malfoy straightened up at this, seemingly remembering where he was and the situation they were in. “I don’t like you either. I didn’t come here for you, anyhow.”

“She doesn’t want you here, so you might as well leave.”

Malfoy ignored her imperative. He instead turned and kneeled beside Hermione’s chair and mouthed gently so that no one would hear, “Last time I checked, you had your own voice. You definitely did when you broke my heart.”

Hermione laughed out loud at his revelation. Did he think she was that stupid? Such frivolous and fictitious announcements only deserve mockery and harrying. And she was about to give him that too, except when she turned she caught his eye and once more she felt beautiful. If someone had only made her feel used to it before she might not have been so mesmerized. And she might not have leaned in as he raised his head.

“Hermione!” Harry’s hissing voice came from behind her. Her head snapped up in attention.

Harry walked up to her, grabbed her arm and lifted her from her seat, in what she thought was a way to distance her from Malfoy. But then, with the same force that he manhandled her, he threw her at the blond. She felt the wind taken out of her and Malfoy caught her deftly with both arms, hugging her close to his chest.

Harry looked on with disdain. “You want her, you can have her. I don’t have traitors for friends.”

Hermione never knew what it was like for a heart to break until that moment. “Harry, please don’t do this.”

Harry looked back at her and she knew he was holding bais tis tears, the way his cheeks tensed and his nose crumpled. “You were going to kiss him. How could you?”

She could not take it, her nearest and dearest. Why couldn’t Harry trust her? What possessed her to lean in for one meaningless kiss? She could not tell which heart broke more, hers or his. She wrestled her way out of Malfoy’s arms, still protectively locked around her. The crowd that had formed around them without her notice parted like the red sea as she made her way to the entrance hall, running and not stopping to breathe until she was in safe haven of her bedroom.

She wished nothing more than for it all to be a bad and rather elaborate dream but her wishes were put to naught when Harry and Ron passed her desk during Potions and risked to sit at the very front of the class, just to avoid her.

And as if things weren’t terrible as they were, Draco Malfoy took the seat next to her.

“Good morning,” he greeted with a sly smile. Could possibly be taken as an innocent smile, but Hermione knew nothing of the sort existed on the planet.

“Please don’t talk to me. You bring me nothing but bad luck,” she said in reply. She looked back at her notes.

He honored her wish for a time. As Professor Snape entered the room though, he leaned in and whispered near her ear, his warm breath letting her in on a secret. “He’s in love with you, you know? That’s why he’s so angry.”

Hermione turned as if to see the confirmation in his eyes but he had already averted his attention to Professor Snape who was dictating away in front of the class.

And given enough time to think about it, Hermione felt she did not want to know whether what he said was a truth or a taunt.

But whatever it was made her notice every little detail. About how every quarter of an hour Harry would surreptitiously glance at her only to pull his head back on the other direction once she noticed. And every time such happened she would instinctively look at Malfoy and he would give her a knowing smirk and a kissy face while Harry made a gurgling sound in the background. How it all grated on her nerves.

And that night at dinner, it finally got to her. Without preamble, she rose up from her chair and walked outside to the lake. She sat on the cold, dewy grass, hugging her knees to her chest and reveling in the soft breeze coming in from the forest. She needed some quiet time alone to think.

Not that Malfoy would ever understand such a complicated concept.

“Girl loves boy, boy ignores heirl irl moves on, boy finally gets his head out of his arse and notices girl, question is, is it too late?” the condescending air of his tone broke through the silence.

“You know everything, don’t you?” Hermione sniffed sarcastically.

He took the spot beside her, a mere handprint away. She could smell him. He smelled like rain. “If I did, I wouldn’t be asking you a question, would I?”

She turned to him expecting a sniveling gaze and was taken aback by imploring eyes.

“Is it too late?” he repeated the question.

There was nothing to be lost or gained with the answer and thus she said simply, “A year too late.”

Hermione gazed out towards the lake once more, wanting nothing more than to have a deep long sleep. Malfoy stayed quiet beside her.

“Why are you being so horrid?” she asked aloud, not really expecting an answer.

“What?” he said, taking a break from picking the grass beside him.

“Why are you being so mean?” she asked again.

He took a deep breath and lowered his head, as if ashamed of the answer. “Being nice didn’t work; I figured I’d just go back to my old self.”

“You were being nice?” she asked with a snort.

“I never said anything bad to you for the past two years, have I?” he answered.

“That’s not being nice,” she told him, her eyes boring into him as if she was imparting a great lesson.

He leaned closer as well. “Well would you’ve taken it well if I suddenly came up to you and offered you a chocolate frog?”

She only smiled in acknowledgment of his point. After a few moments of silence she piped up once more, “Do you like it better? Now that, you’re, well, you again?”

“Not really. It gets old with age,” he admitted sheepishly, “But then what’s the point if it doe cha change things?”

He looked at her meaningfully.

“It makes you a decent person?”

“And your point is?” he answered with a wink.

She giggled. Ron would’ve had a heart attack if he heard her.

“I’m not a good guy Granger. Not to say that I’m evil. Just saying I’ll never be like Potter,” Malfoy explained, to himself or to her she couldn’t tell.

“There can only be one Harry Potter,” she voiced, more for lack of something to say than to regal her friend.

“Thank Merlin. I don’t think I can stand two Harry Potters!”

Hermione let out an unmindful guffaw.

“Never thought I could do that,” he said with a strange look in his eyes, as if he were studying her.

“Do what?”

“Make you laugh.”

“It’s quite easy to do that. I have a very low tickle threshold.”

“Is that so?”

“We’re not that close.”

“Wasn’t even thinking it.”

Hermione could not resist cracking a smile. When he wasn’t sneering, or plotting ways to get her, Harry and Ron in trouble, he’s rather tolerable. Good lord, she had become Malfoy tolerant.

“I was just a boy. Everything I knew I learned from my father. When he was sent to Azkaban, and mother got so ill because of the news she barely took notice of me, I was finally able to think for myself. I’m not a carbon copy of him, you know. I have my own mind. And given the chance, I can do things right. And I could get better, with time,” he said. He sounded like a little boy meekly offering her a biscuit.

Hermione took a deep breath. He was so quick to forget. But then again, he had nothing to forgive. “I’m glad that you’re trying. I just don’t understand, why me? Of all people? Honestly, Malfoy, your mind takes disconcerting turns.”

“I don’t know! I’ve paid so much attention to you, Granger, out of hatred of course. Don’t look at me like that, you know I hated you. Even after I’ve become more open with the idea of bloodlines, I still hated you. But then one day I found myself wanting set that bushy head of yours on fire, one minute and imagining running my hands through it the next. It was really quite maddening. At first I thought it was the oysters, I heard they gave nasty deliriums, but then I figured I actually fancied you. I was sick for days and barfing all over the place that they had to barf proof all of the Slytherin dungeons!” Malfoy was on his feet when he finished, his hand gesticulating as if he were giving Hermione orders to go to war.

Hermione looked up at him from where she still sat. “Wow, Malfoy, that sounds really romantic. Imagine, you got very, very ill and were expunging foul, nasty liquid because you realised you fancied me. Really, I’m extremely flattered.”

“Well, what would you have done if you found out you fancied me?”

“Hurl myself down the staircases. All right, so you have a point.”

Malfoy sat down once more, huffas ias if he’d just finished a marathon. “I didn’t plan for any of this. I wasn’t even planning on telling you anything, I thought I’d just let it pass. But then yesterday afternoon happened, and well, I saw an opening and I took it.”

“Oh honestly, Malfoy, the bowl was an accident. I do not lift men’s bowls to pass time.”

“Not that, you dolt,” he shushed her irately.

“What then?”

“There was a moment when you were looking at me, and your barrier was down. You never looked at me like I was a real person, always like I was beetle dung. Part of the reasons I hated you, by the way, but that’s another subject entirely. The point is, you didn’t look like you hated me so much. And I thought it would be fine if I kissed you.” Hermione was very aware that with every word he said he leaned closer and closer until she could feel his breath on her nose, mixed with the air that she inhaled so appreciably.

“I was probably just projecting, Malfoy,” she said clearly but she could feel her neck crane upwards, wanting to feel his breath on her lips.

But he wouldn’t give her that. He jumped back, as if her words had burned him.

“I made it all up in my head, then?” he asked with the look of someone who woke up in an unfamiliar bed.

She gave him a nod that couldn’t decide whether it was a yes or a no.

He bit his lip, his hands fidgeting in indecision of what to do next. “There’s nothing I can do to…”

“Too much history,” she said simply. It said everything.

“That’s fair, I suppose. I best get back to the castle,” he announced too quickly to be convincing.

Malfoy stood up, so disoriented that it took him a while to figure out which way the castle was.

Hermione watched him walk three paces away before he turned back to tell her something. And yet no word came out of his mouth.

Malfoy bit his lip, looked down and flicked his hands in a way that told Hermione he was still thinking of what to say. He raised his head when he seemed to have made up his mind but what he said was something she did not quite understand.

“Granger, look out!”

In hind sight though, it was easily comprehensible but Hermione still needed to ask “What?” And then it was too late as she felt something slippery and rubbery wrap itself around her left ankle and jerk her forward towards the lake. Malfoy flung himself to her, grabbing both her wrists as he desperately tugged her arms but the force was too strong for both of them and they were both helplessly pulled beneath the cold and dark waters of the lake.

Hermione held what little breath she was able to take in desperately. Malfoy still clung to her hand as the creature pulled them farther down. She didn’t think she could take much more and was resigned to death when she felt herself being tossed inside some sort of small cavern, she bar barely able to kneel inside. She reached up with her hand and she felt the comforting feel of dryness. It was an air pocket.

She could feel her lungs burst as she inhaled deeply, never appreciating air more than she did now. Tears ran down her cheek with so much relief. At that moment Malfoy came up beside her, breathing as frantically as she had.

“Are you all right?” she asked as soon as he had take notice of her.

“For now. Are you?” he asked in return.

“I think so. Was that the giant squid?” she asked incredulously.

“Yes,” he replied.

“But, it’s not a harmful creature. I mean, surely if it were, Dumbledore would never let it live in our lake,” she tried to reason.

“It goes barmy once every seven years and would pull a student down here and stuff him inside this little hellhole. He usually just picks Slytherins, Dumbledore wouldn’t know of it. We’re pretty sure it was Riddle who pissed it off,” he said resentfully.

“But I’m a Gryffindor!”

“Maybe he meant to take me,” he mumbled with an apologetic sigh.

Hermione didn’t have it in her heart to blame him.

“Do you think we can swim up now?” she asked.

“No. He’s still out there. Still barmy, at least until morning. He’ll try to strangle us if we escape and I don’t think we can perform magic properly in our condition,” he explained to her. “And I’m quite certain you don’t want to hurt the giant squid,” he said with a bit of mocking.

Hermione ignored the comment, because it was true.

“What are we going to do? I don’t think I can last the night like this, it’s getting really cold.” Her teeth knocked together as she felt the icy fingers of the waters crawling up her spine.

Malfoy closed the space between them and wrapped his arms around and pulled her near. The warmth he gave her silenced any resistance she had.

“Thankfully, the Slytherins are a very intelligent lot, unlike some houses I could think of,” he started.

“Hey!”

“I was talking about Hufflepuff,” he clarified.

“As long as we’re clear,” Hermione huffed appreciatively.

“One of ours lived to tell the tale some thirty years ago, a bloke named Irv Hansen and shared the secret to surviving the mad squid. It’s included in the First Year Slytherin Survival Manual,” he told her with pride in his eyes.

“You have a survival manual?”

“Seven hundred pages of it. Apparently we’re very much hated in Hogwarts.”

“What are we going to do then?”

Despite the numbing cold, Hermione did not miss it when Malfoy lowered his hands from the small of her back, surreptitiously resting it on the gentle rise of her arse. She let him.

“You’ll need to hold your breath for a while. Can you do that?” he asked her.

She nodded with a hint of doubt.

“Whatever you do, don’t let go of my hand? I’ll pull you along if I have to,” he said, looking intently at her as if to let her know he meant what he said.

She could only give him another nod.

“All right, on three?”

She took in a nervous breath.

“One, two, three.”

Malfoy plunged down first, his hand holding hers and she followed him. Beneath the water Hermione could see nothing and only had his hand to guide her. The walls of rock around them grazed her arm, the scratches getting in deeper as each eternal second passed. Though she could not see it, she could feel the walls close in. It felt as if it sucked the breath from inside her. She hated how she did not know when it will end. Her lungs were palpitating and she did not know if she could last longer. She gripped Malfoy’s hand tighter as if to signal an emergency. It was dark and yet she could still tell that she was blacking out. She wanted to scream and knowing she could not only agitated her more.

She was starting to feel that she was toeing the line of insanity when Malfoy tugged hard and in a moment she was above surface once more. The sensation of breathing after having air taken away from you for so long was overwhelming that she could not help but fling her arms around Malfoy as she sobbed into his shoulder.

“It’s all right, Granger, we’re alive,” he said with an attempt at a soothing voice that only came out to sound threatening. He patted her head as if she were Chihuahua.

She pulled back, feet still treading the water. “I’m sorry.” She wiped the tears from her eyes with embarrassment using the back of her hand.

“No worries,” he answered.

They were inside a rather spacious cave. The ceilings glistened with built up limestone, forming carved cones, each beautiful and unique. Hermione didn’t know where the light came from but it lit the entire cave into splendor. A palace made for magical creatures no human could ever possess. The Slytherins were lucky to have this secret.

Malfoy grabbed her hand as they swam to the rocky surface. He climbed up first, trousers dripping with weighty lake water, and then pulled her up with him. They both collapsed on the floor in exhaustion. The pure cool air comforted them.

“Thank you for coming in after me,” she said, when her breathing was relatively normal.

He didn’t say anything, neither did he look at her. He simply got up and walked away. Hermione noticed that he was headed towards a candle. An everlasting candle, it was their source of light.

“Someone had an idea to put this here. Clever, really. But this, even cleverer.” He was referring to a large wool blanket that he pulled out from behind a rock.

He walked back to her, sat near her spot and wrapped the blanket around them.

“I don’t think they ever thought two people would have to take refuge here,” he explained as he wiggled nearer, leaving no space between them.

Hermione only smiled. She was quite certain he was cunning enough to plan all this, but he sure wasn’t complaining about the turn of events. And Hermione had an inkling she didn’t think it too bad either. He was warm, and they were in a place that was barely real by definition.

“I have to apologize,” he spoke once more with a boyish amusement on his face that gave Hermione the tingles, “We haven’t devised a way to make everlasting hot chocolate.”

Hermione laughed, the way she would laugh at Ron’s or Harry’s jokes, sincere, free and pure. It made her feel light-headed.

“I’m really thankful you’re here, Malfoy. I mean it,” she said, looking straight up at him.

“I know. You’re never disingenuous about anything you say. And you never do anything without giving it all of your heart,” he said the last part to himself.

He closed his eyes and rested his forehead on hers, his damp fringe tickled her temples.

Hermione couldn’t tell whether it was the smell of wool that surrounded them, or the shimmer of the light cast on his cheek or the feel of his fingers tracing circles on her knee. Whichever it was, it made her kiss him, and not stop.

Malfoy was nonetheless surprised, it took him a moment or two to answer to the gentle askance of her tongue on his lips. He opened up to her and she lost no time to explore him, her soft tongue sliding across his, coaxing him to play with her.

He prodded her to wrap her arms around his neck as he pulled her up and settled her in the niche between his legs, left hand on her thigh and the other securely holding her by the small of her back. The blanket loosened around them but neither felt the loss.

They would switch between intense and desperate snogging, their hands grabbing at each other frantically and gentle, light kissing, his hand teasingly caressing her thigh and hers curling his hair. But each kiss led them farther and farther, led her hand lower and lower and led his hand deeper and deeper. She kept thinking that they should stop somewhere, somewhere, but she couldn’t tell quite where.

He pushed back her skirt, his fingers lightly playing on the band of her knickers by her hips. She thought they should stop, but all she could feel was warmth. His incredible warmth. And with every centimeter that the satin cloth of her knickers left her, she felt warmer.

His finger crawled towards her centre, playing painfully slowly with her brown curls, waiting for her to utter a word, to reject him once more. She couldn’t, she wouldn’t.

“Please,” she asked him with a voice she never knew she had.

He indulged her wish, his index finger sliding gracefully between her, sampling her already wet folds. No one, not even her, had ever touched her like that down there before. And the sensation was purely heaven.

She let out a satisfied groan into his ear that made the hair on his neck stand on end. He continued to rub her clit, her wetness increasing with every single movement of his hand. He planted kisses down her neck until he reached the buttons of her blouse.

“Granger,” he whispered, the unfamiliar term felt oddly intimate, “help me out here a bit.”

He cocked his head to the direction of her blouse. She unbuttoned them for him, down to the very last and took them off. She took her bra off next, exposing her taut nipples into the night air. She was giving him permission to take all of her.

She felt contentment in the way he ogled at her naked breasts. She never quite understood the fascination for men. They were just breasts. Just breasts that reduced haughty Malfoy to a bumbling fool.

“Granger, wow, they’re so round,” he babbled.

“Course they are, it’d be pretty odd if they were triangular or recta- oh my Merlin.”

All taunting left Hermione’s brain as Malfoy plunged his head down on one of her tits, licking her nipples and around her areola before suckling on all the flesh he could fit into his mouth. She didn’t know breasts could do that. She was definitely never going to think of them as ‘just breasts.’

His index finger found its way inside her, teasing around her walls. Hermione could implode from all the sensations he gave her.

“Oh please, faster, so near, so near,” she mumbled mindlessly. She didn’t completely know what was ‘so near’. But she knew it had to be something spectacular the way it was playing on her senses.

He inserted another finger inside her, stretching her in a way that shocked her and gave her more pleasure. He pumped his fingers inside her faster and faster with every passing moment as his tongue continued to lave her breasts. Her juices dripped down his fingers and painted the skin between the cheeks of her arse. The anxious turmoil in her lower belly increased to an almost unbearable high. He turned his thumb and pushed her nub forcefully. In one moment she called his name as she felt an explosion from within her as she shook uncontrollably in his arms, her muscles clenching around his fingers as he thrust inside her for every last wave.

“That was incredible. What the hell was it?” was all she could weakly say.

“Awww, my baby’s first orgasm,” he teased lightly.

She blushed at her naiveté. A strange concept considering she was sitting on Malfoy’s lap topless, with only her skirt, socks and shoes on and her knickers down her ankles, with Malfoy’s fingers still inside her. The picture of it aroused her once more.

“Is it always like that?” she asked with a curiosity only Hermione Granger could display.

“I can always make it like that, natch, I can make it better,” he answered suggestively.

She reddened at the look he gave her. Pure, wanton, animalistic lust. He pulled his hand back from inside her, her walls depressing where he left. His fingers and hand were covered with her juices, sparkling in the candle light. He put out his tongue as he licked to the tip of his fingers before enclosing them in his mouth, devouring her juices hungrily.

“Should you be doing that?” she asked. She found the act vaguely disturbing and yet she could not stop watching him.

He took his fingers out from his mouth and used the same hand to pinch her nipples.

“This has a lot of nutritional value. Very good for the randy boy,” he answered with a mischievous smile. “But it tastes better when it’s fresher. You know, directly from the source.”

He couldn’t be suggesting what she thought he was. Wait, he’s Malfoy, of course he was suggesting what she thought he was. Hermione blushed profusely.

“But we can reserve that for some other time. I have other things in mind right now,” he said, his voice dropping down an octave lower.

He closed his mouth on hers, kissing her as if this were their last day on earth. He took her hand in his and guided it to his chest. She followed without resistance, knowing where he wanted it and yet letting him lead her. She reveled in the feel of his sturdy chest under her hands. She couldn’t wait to get see him with nothing on.

When their hands reached the metal buckle of his belt, she tore her mouth away from his. He looked at her questioningly.

“Malfoy, a little help here,” she mimicked his earlier request with a wide grin on her face.

He eagerly obliged. He quickly divulged of his belt and undid his button and his fly. She could clearly see the bulge of his erection on his black trousers. A hint of purple skin peeked from the waistband of his boxers.

He took her hand once more and helped her push down the obliterating cloth, revealing her full erection to him. She always thought the penises in anatomy books looked funny. They weren’t too funny when they were hard and wanted to be inside of her. They were intimidating.

“Malfoy, you’re really big, I don’t think you’d fit inside of me,” she voiced with absolute scare in her voice that stopped him from laughing out loud.

“It will, trust me,” he assured her with a gentleness that came instinctively.

He settled her on the floor as he rid of all his clothes, getting even harder at the sight of Hermione openly admiring every inch of his body. He took the blanket and set it neatly on the floor before he picked Hermione up and lay her down carefully at the very center. She let him remove her shoes and socks. He took time to smelr knr knickers, an act that made patches of red appear on her breasts. He left her skirt on and she had to agree, they felt sexy. He pushed her legs apart, licking his lips in appreciation of her still swollen V. He knelt down and settled himself between her parted legs.

“It will hurt a bit, but I’ll make it better. I promise,” he whispered. He kissed her nose, her cheeks, her forehead and her temples before descending on her mouth.

“We can either go about this quickly or slowly. If we do it quick wil will be painful, but it will be over faster. If we do it slow, there’s slightly less impact, but it’ll take a while,” he explained to her. It felt oddly natural to talk to her about this. It calmed him, the way he could communicate with her in such a raw state.

“Let’s go quickly then. I hated it when they put on the IV excruciatingly slowly, it only prolongs the pain. I suppose this’ll work the same way,” she answered, still managing to sound scholarly even when she was naked.

“The what?”

“Nothing. Muggle stuff,” she said with a smile as she pulled his head down to kiss him quickly. “Shall we do this?”

“You’re taking the romance out of this, you know,” he teased with raised eyebrows.

She rolled her eyes at him and pulled his head down once more. This time she kissed him passionately, her body arching up to meet his, her nipples touching his chest, her wet core rubbing against his stomach.

“Shall we do this?” she asked once more in a smoky voice.

“Mmm, definitely.”

He reached down between them, find her clit quickly and traced circles around it with his thumb. He wanted her wet and slick before he entered her. She arched up against his hand, her incoherent sounds were music to his ears.

He was so entranced at the sight of her in the midst of sexual pleasure that he did not notice that her left hand had made its way between them as well until she tentatively wrapped her hand around the base of his shaft.

“I want to know what it felt like,” she said with a meek smile.

He was hot and strapping in her hand. She began to stroke the quivering member and the moans that came from deep within his throat told him she was doing the right thing. And thus she was befuddled when he took her hand away.

“Did I do something wrong?” she asked worriedly.

“No, you’re perfect. I just need to last longer, and I won’t if you keep that up,” he explained to her.

Hermione nodded but was somewhat unconvinced. Malfoy smiled wickedly.

“Just the thought of you got me into this state. You can be eating a live chicken in a circus show and you can still make me come,” he whispered in her ear.

The comical image was bludgeoned to smithereens by the thought of her making him come.

He supported himself with his elbows, his eyes level with hers. The tip of his cbrusbrushed the slick folds of her V. He gave her a look to let her know he was going in and she bit her lip in anticipation.

He drove inside her, breaking against the resistance of her barrier. She expended a loud cry at the blow that made her feel as if she would break in two. This was not better. This was the worst she ever felt.

“Are you all right?” Malfoy asked from above her. Beads of sweat appeared on his forehead in his effort to keep still.

“No, that was painful! Is that what sex was all about? That was terrible; seriously I don’t get the hoopla of it all. There was nothing pleasurable about it!”

“Granger,” Malfoy interrupted her tirade.

“What is it, Malfoy?” she said his name with contempt.

Malfoy merely brushed it off and chose to answer her question by thrusting slowly inside of her.

“Oh,” Hermione mouthed without displeasure.

“Yes, there’s that,” he said with a smile as he began to pick up his pace, “And there’s this too.”

“Oh yes, that’s good,” she breathed, her eyelids closing in half-mast.

He went in and out of her even faster.

“This better?” he asked with ragged breaths.

“Oh so much better,” she screamed practically incapable of coherent thought.

Malfoy bent down and settled his head in the nook of her shoulders and bit into her flesh, wanting to control himself. Hermione wrapped her legs around him, wanting to take in as much of him as she could.

Hermione could feel it coming once more, building up in her lower belly and creeping down to her thighs. She wanted it so much. She wrapped her legs around him tighter and rocked against his thrusts. She was almost there.

She felt an explosion inside her and that brought about another, different explosion. She threw her head back as Malfoy froze on top of her, his cock thrusting inside her erratically as his essence filled her. It was pure bliss.

She had never felt so tired in her life, and yet she wanted nothing more than to do it again.

He slipped out of her and settled on the space beside her. She noticed the blood on his cock. She looked down between her and saw the little spots of blood on her inner thighs.

It hit her just then. She had just lost her virginity to Draco Malfoy.

Now if she had only thought of it that way, in the first place! She sat up so quickly that her head hurt.

“What’s wrong?” he asked as he sat up next to her.

“Malfoy, we just, you and me,” she mumbled.

“Yes. I thought that was the idea,” he answered looking rather lost.

“I wasn’t really thinking very well,” she said in non-choice words.

Malfoy huffed in disappointment, or arrogance, Hermione could not tell. He pulled Hermione down next to him and wrapped his arms around her rather tightly. “This here, Granger, it isn’t real. None of this is real; we could lie like this for now.”

Hermione set her mouth in moue and thought about what he said. She did not understand it completely, but somehow it made sense. “Should we call each other Draco and Hermione, then?”

“Now that would be insane,” he said. She could feel his grin on her hair.

“Malfoy, tomorrow…” but he immediately cut her off.

“Let’s just go to sleep,” he said simply.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Hermione couldn’t see the sun and yet she knew it was morning. Maybe it was the way his back was turned to her thr the way they were a foot apart, or the way her mouth no longer tasted of his kisses, either way she knew it was morning. She wished it would rain outside.

“It was a lovely dream. But we both know what’s real all too well. Our past is just too much to be ignored. I wish we could start from scratch, but I don’t think that’s possible.”

She didn’t know if he heard her. She didn’t know if she wanted him to.

Hermione walked around him, refusing to look at his face, to see him asleep, and peaceful. It wouldn’t do them any good. She gathered her clothes and placed them back in silence, glad that they were dry, not that it mattered. She wished so badly that she could have his hand to hold on the way back, but she knew even the idea was simply inane.

The trip back was surprisingly less turbulent, perhaps because it was easier to hold your breath when you wanted to hold it in forever.

She headed for her room quietly, thankful that neither Harry nor Ron was waiting for her. Quite possibly, her roommates Parvati and Lavender had not even noticed she was missing. For the first time in her life, she was glad of their general apathy towards her state of being. She was going to get away with everything scot-free

“Hermione?”

She should have counted on Ginny to be there.

“Hello, Ginny.”

“Did you just come in? I was here all night,” she asked, red hair sticking up like loose threads on a spool. She yawned dramatically to let her know how let she had stayed up.

“I really just want to rest right now,” Hermione answered, wishing she would understand.

“Okay then. I’m just glad you’re alright,” Ginny said with a sympathetic smile.

Hermione made a little wave and turned on her heels for the girls’ dorms. She was on the steps already when Ginny called out to her.

“It’s odd, you have a frown on your face but you look so beautiful. Glowing, really.”

Hermione just gave her an odd smile; she did not know how to respond to her.

She got to bed and went to sleep. There was nothing to think about. Except for him, and the way he filled her the way she wanted him to. Him.

It was a nice dream. But she knew what was real.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

There was pandemonium in the Great Hall when a certain blond hair bobbed all the way down to the Gryffindor table.

Hermione didn’t know what the chaos was all about really. After all, it was just another student talking to another student.

“Hello, Miss Granger. I don’t believe we’ve ever been introduced properly. My name’s Draco Malfoy, a prefect from the Slytherin house,” he said with a nervous tone masked by his all too smug smile.

“I’m Hermione Granger. Head Girl. I’m from Gryffindor. Shall I call you Draco?” she responded.

“No, please. I like the sound of Malfoy, better.”