Draco slammed Ron back against the wall, hard. 'One more smart word out of you,' he snarled, 'and trust me, Weasley, eternity with Satan and all his hellish minions will be nothing compared to five minutes with me and the pointy end of my wand.'
'Let him go.' It was Hermione's voice. Draco turned and saw her standing in the doorway. She was very pale but seemed composed. She was clutching her robes tightly around her, as if she were cold. Draco immediately wondered just how long she had been standing there. 'He doesn't know anything.'
'How do you know that?' Draco asked, and gave her a hard look — but it seemed to be the real Hermione, not the pajamad imposter. She had the same tear tracks under her eyes, the same tangled hair, the same clothes.
'Because I do,' she said tiredly. Her eyes glanced over Ron, who looked quickly away. 'We need to go talk to Harry now — that's what's important.'
'And the girl…?'
Hermione shook her head. 'She got away. She ran too fast for me to catch her, and then she turned a corner and she just…disappeared. If I didn't know better, I'd think she had an invisibility cloak.'
'So she's gone. Wonderful,' said Draco, and added, in a low voice, 'assuming of course, that it even was a she.' Ron flinched but didn't look at him. With a shrug of disgust, Draco released his grip on Ron and stepped back. He looked the other boy up and down once, as if taking his measure. Then he smiled. 'You saved my life,' he said. 'And because of that, I won't hurt you. Not now. But if you come near me again…if you come near Harry again…'
'That's for Harry to say!' Ron burst out suddenly, and just as quickly subsided, as if he were sorry he'd spoken.
'I can't speak for Harry,' Draco said. 'Actually, sod that. I can speak for Harry. One of those fun side effects of lying to someone and stabbing them in the back, is that usually, afterwards, they're not too eager for your company. But if you want to give it a try, by all means — '
'Draco,' Hermione said from the doorway. 'Please don't.' She held her cloak even more tightly around herself. 'We need to go.'
Out of the corner of his eye Draco saw Ron wince. As if he had finally truly felt the way she was looking at him, or not looking at him — but then perhaps it had just been her use of that one word, we. A we that obviously didn't include him. Draco felt a savage satisfaction. Good, he thought.
'Later, Weasley,' he said, and gave him his most arrogant smile, the charm of which, he felt fairly certain, would be wasted on such stony soil.
Ron, drooping against the wall, kept his eyes on his shoes as Hermione and Draco walked out of the room.
Once in the corridor, Draco fell into step beside Hermione, who was walking quickly and purposefully, her arms crossed. He gave her another hard look. 'It really is you, isn't it?'
She looked at him with somber eyes. 'Of course it's me.'
'Prove it.'
'I could tell you more about my dream,' she said. 'You were wearing vinyl in it.''
'Vinyl?' Draco echoed, slightly appalled.
She nodded. 'Vinyl trousers.'
'This sounds like a nightmare.'
They were at the stairs that curved up to the Gryffindor Tower now.
Hermione led the way. 'Not exactly,' she said over her shoulder as they ascended.
'Well, you weren't the one who had to suffer the slimy touch of vinyl against your skin, now were you?'
'I think you might have been wearing glitter makeup as well,' she added thoughtfully.
'Tell me any more about this dream, Granger, I'll leave you here to fend for yourself.'
Hermione made a face at him. They were at the portrait of the Fat Lady now. Draco scooted behind Hermione in hopes of going unspotted, but the Fat Lady seemed to be asleep anyway. Hermione took a deep breath.
'Mundungus,' she said, and the portrait swung wide. Draco looked at her, but she gestured that she should go first; with a deep breath, he stepped through the portrait hole.
'How dare you?' Rhiannon gasped, staggering back against the wall, clutching the tattered remnants of her garments about her with trembling hands. The ragged strips of damp cloth did nothing to obscure the heaving, womanly curves of her bosom. Tristan feasted his eyes on the moist orbs as he advanced, his wand outstretched stiffly before him. It was, he thought grimly, not the only stiff thing in the room. He dragged his mind back to the matter at hand. 'How dare you approach me thus?'
she cried.
'You scorned to speak with me otherwise,' he growled. 'But I will force you to listen!'
'You abandoned me years ago,' she snarled, her eyes flashing like furious emeralds. 'I never thought you would return.'
'But now I have!' he cried.
'And now I am married to Montague!' she replied, with a heave of her honey-colored breasts. 'And he is a good man, a fine man.'
'But you do not love him,' Tristan snarled, advancing upon her, and pressing her back against the stone wall with his firmly muscled arms. She writhed within his grip, but could not escape. 'Not as you loved me!'
'I love you no longer,' she spat. 'I hate you, I despise you, nay — I loathe you!'
'And yet you cannot keep yourself from wanting me,' he breathed, and plunged his lips against hers. She struggled, but it only brought her lush, ripe feminine frame into more insistent erotic contact with his rock-hard masculinity. His wand clattered to the ground between them, unheeded, but he no longer needed it to keep her at bay. She had begun to return his insistent kisses, panting desperately against his rather thick neck, 'Oh, Tristan! Oh, Tristan! Oh! Oh! Oh!'
'My flower,' he whispered into her hair. 'My angel, my flame-haired vixen…!'
Ginny looked up from Passionate Trousers and frowned. The fire in the grate had died down again, and there was no longer enough light to continue reading. She was reluctant to light the candles in the wall sconces, not wanting to attract anyone else downstairs. She preferred the common room empty at this late hour of the night; she had only come down because she had been unable to sleep, and was afraid that reading in the dormitory would have woken Elizabeth or Ashley.
With a sigh, she got up, took her wand from the small table next to the couch, and poked the end of it at the grate. 'Incendio,' she whispered, and the fire roared up in the grate with a loud crackle that almost obscured the sound of the portrait door swinging open. Almost, but not quite.
Ginny looked up in surprise. Who could be coming into the tower at this late hour of the night? She did not get up from where she was sitting, knowing that the couch in front of her hid her from view — not even when she saw who it was stepping through the portrait hole, and had to cover her mouth with a hand to choke off a cry of surprise.
It was Draco Malfoy. He ducked into the common room, straightened up, and looked around. Through the high bright glow of the fire he seemed outlined in gold, his pale hair turned the color of candlelight. He looked tired, and less immaculate than usual — his hair was too fine to tangle, but it was rumpled around his head, and his clothes looked as if he had slept in them. He hesitated for a moment, glancing around- even now he appeared to be looking down his elegant nose, as if mentally ticking off all the ways the Gryffindor common room was inferior to its Slytherin counterpart. Then he turned, and held out his hand, and Hermione stepped into the room beside him.
Ginny blinked in astonishment. Hermione? And Draco? What were they doing? The obvious answer presented itself, but she rejected it, a little too firmly. Hermione wouldn't do that to Harry, and furthermore, neither would Draco. Of that, Ginny was positive beyond all other doubts. He would slice off his own left hand,
