took advantage of me in my delirious state."
She knew when she was being baited and so did not rise to the occasion. "In other words, you don't remember anything other than that I came to see you?"
He hooked his thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans and rocked on the balls of his feet. "Not a thing," he said, cheerfully.
Too cheerfully.
Hermione wasn't convinced, but didn't want to press the issue. They had greater concerns. The sooner she got her personal life sorted, the more use she would be to Dumbledore and the Order.
"Has there been any word form Borgin?"
"There has, actually," he replied. "That' s why I braved Neville Longbottom' s infamously horrific 'morning face' in the third floor toilets, to ask where I could find you." He took out a tightly folded bit of parchment from his back jeans pocket and handed it to her.
The paper carried the warmth of his body. Hermione quickly banished the thought, and opened what she presumed was Borgin's reply note.
Three seconds later: "Malfoy, why am I reading the ingredients for bran muffins?"
"Oh," he said, sounding impatient. He snatched the paper out of her hands, took out his wand, murmured something and then shook the paper as if trying to jar the letters and words into a different sequence.
"Try it now."
The letters leapfrogged over each other, forming Borgin's hidden message to them. She blinked a few times at the exorbitant consultation quote by the so-called Fida Mia expert, but decided not to comment on that either.
"We'll meet outside the Cobblestone in an hour. Will you have any trouble getting away from Potty and the Weasel, Guardians of your Unquestionable Virtue?"
God, he was a prat. Hermione was not distracted from her inspection of the letter. "If my virtue was unquestionable, I wouldn't need guardians, would I?"
Draco snorted. "Touche."
She made a mistake of looking up and giving him a small, amused smile. So sue her, he had caught her off guard. It was hardly her fault that she was a pleasant human being on purpose.
He didn't like this little display of friendliness. He went from mildly annoyed to looking at her suspiciously. "Granger, I know what all this looks and feels like, but we' re not getting along."
She blinked at him, all long, curling eyelashes and mock innocence. Her newfound ability to unsettle him, and to be aware of it, was empowering. "We aren' t?"
He was so quick. He glanced quickly to check that they were no witnesses before grabbing her upper arm and pulling her roughly into the shadows under the main staircase. There was a an impressive amount of litter under the stairs: Droobles wrappers, empty Bertie Botts boxes that looked like they were from the seventies, a velvet hair scrunchie and a fifth year Muggle Studies essay by a William Hunt-Smith.
"No, we're not friends."
She plucked cobwebs from his hair and marvelled at the fact that she was no longer scared of him.
Even if he was a quite a bit bigger than she was.
"If you say so."
"When this is all over, I'll be grateful never to have to lay eyes on your again," he continued.
But she could almost feel his eyes raking over her face, drinking in details that he didn't permit himself to notice when they were in view of others. Her hand came up of its own accord, traitorous and yet more sincere than the rest of her, to settle lightly just above his hip. A couple of inches upwards and she'd be touching tattooed flesh, albeit under a layer of t-shirt.
She'd probably swoon from the effect of it, Hermione mused, like some sort of tightly corseted romance heroine with low blood sugar.
"Likewise," she countered, slightly breathless. The fabric of his t-shirt felt amazing, especially with the warmth and subtle hardness of his waist, beneath it. In better times, she would have to ask him what sort of fabric conditioner he used.
Was he recalling the night before? He may have been tight-lipped about what had transpired, but his eyes were writing novels.
Hermione somehow located her wits, which had been cowering in a small, warm corner of her stomach. Against all odds, she was beginning to understand him. It made sense, really.
Every time they had a 'moment', he reacted by becoming a bona fide basket case. It was a classic defence mechanism. And with her fear of him gone, all that was left was startling, blessed clarity.
"About last night, I wanted to see how you were," she explained, calmly.
"I don't