glittered in her strawberry hair. Her eyes looked huge in the dim light, as dark and glossy green as leaves under water. 'I want an explanation.'
'An explanation?' Draco's voice was a thin steel dagger. Hermione could see the dark patches on the knees of his jeans, the elbows of his Quidditch robes, where he had landed in the snow. The melting snow in his hair washed pale strands into his eyes; he pushed them back with an impatient hand on which the Malfoy seal ring glittered like a malevolent eye. 'Blaise, darling,' He spit the word out as if it were an insult. 'You came running after me to demand an explanation?' He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her gently back against the wall, pinioning her there with his arms. 'You should know better.'
Hermione had to give Blaise credit, she didn't back down. She raised her chin, poised and furious-looking. 'As if it's not bad enough that you're always goggling at Harry Potter's girlfriend, now this,' she spat. 'What is it with you and the Gryffindors?'
'You're jealous,' said Draco. 'Isn't that cute.' He didn't look as if he thought it was cute. His expression was calm, even disinterested, but his eyes were thunderous. His hands where they rested on the wall were clenched into fists. Hermione wondered how much that had to do with Blaise, and how much that had to do with his summary ejection from the Quidditch pitch.
'It's my prerogative to be jealous,' said Blaise icily. 'I'm your girlfriend.
Don't you dare try to tell me I can't be jealous.' She reached up and pushed his arms away, matching him glare for glare. 'What's going on with you, Draco?' Her voice was icy silk. 'I want to know.'
'There is nothing going on with me,' Draco said flatly.
'Then what were you doing?'
'What did it look like?'
'It looked like you were having a — a fit, over some Gryffindor, just because the little idiot couldn't hang on to her broom. And you let Harry Potter throw you off the pitch. Since when do we listen to him?'
Draco shrugged. 'So I was being sportsmanlike. We can't keep on playing when the opposing team is falling off their broomsticks.'
'Draco, we're Slytherins. We keep playing even if the other team gets struck by lightning and turned into a brave little pile of ashes.'
'Yes, and how well has that strategy worked for us in the past? Blaise, we've lost the past five Quidditch cups to Gryffindor, and you know it.
And half the reason is that the professors and the other teams can't stand us, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff will lose matches deliberately to Gryffindor just to make sure we don't get the cup-'
'And you think if you play all nice-nice that might change?'
Draco folded his arms and leaned back against the wall, looking fed up.
'Yes, I do.'
Blaise stopped to ponder this for a moment. There was a sharp scarlet flush in her pale cheeks, but Hermione could sense that her anger was fading. She was, after all, a Slytherin, cold-blooded at the core and driven by practicality over passion. 'You've changed,' she said finally, raising her green eyes to Draco. 'I don't know if I like it.'
'We all change,' he said. He unfolded his arms, and stood looking at her, his head cocked to the side. Every line of his body expressed tension and a just-under-the-surface anger, but his mouth was smiling. It was a cool, tense smile, radiating the promise of things which might or might not be pleasant, but which one couldn't help wanting anyway. 'You've changed since we played together when we were five. Haven't you?'
'Maybe.' The Slytherin girl arched her head back, a small smile playing on her mouth. Her hands were on her hips, her shoulders back, her chest thrust forward. The provocative pose could have been copied from the pages of Teen Witch Weekly, but on Blaise it didn't look silly. 'Do you like it?'
'That depends.' Draco reached out and gently touched her hair. 'Are you still angry at me?'
Blaise lowered her eyelashes. 'I don't know.'
'It's pretty simple really,' said Draco, and lightly touched her face, running his knuckles along the curve of her cheek, over her lips, down to her collarbone. 'Either you are,' he said, and dropped his hands to her waist, pulling her closer, 'or you aren't.'
In answer, she raised her face, eyes closed and lips parted, and he kissed her. It was a slow, controlled, unhurried kiss; plainly he had kissed her this way before. Just as plainly she liked it; she went pliant under his hands, and her arms slid around his waist.
Hermione felt herself flush scarlet. Now she felt as if she were spying on something that was none of her business; even worse, she remembered what it was like to be kissed by Draco like that. She had never much minded his relationship with Blaise before, now she found that she did mind it, very much, and was ashamed of herself for minding.
She screwed her eyes shut. When she opened them again Blaise and Draco had separated, although not by far; Blaise was smiling up at him, and in the darkness of the corridor, his pale hair and her scarlet shone out like beacons. They could have been Ginny and Draco. But Ginny would never have smiled at him like that.
'I guess you aren't,' Draco said, in a voice that made even Hermione feel a little wobbly around the knees. Oh dear. 'Angry any more, that is.'
'Not now, but if I ever catch you so much as kissing another girl, Draco Malfoy-' Blaise said, her voice breathy.
Draco cut her off with a laugh, short and mirthless. 'That won't happen.'
Blaise looked at him languidly. Under her dark lashes, her eyes showed green as a cat's. Somehow she had managed to allow her Quidditch robes to slip off one shoulder, showing the strap of her lavender camisole beneath. Hermione had no idea how she'd done that without even seeming to move. It was a feat of engineering. 'Sometimes I think I don't know you at all,' she said.
'Sometimes I think the same thing.'
He let Blaise go, and she stepped away from him, straightening her clothes. 'I think we're done here, Draco,' she said, and added: 'I'll be in the common room if you want me,' managing to make even that sound like an invitation to a round of unsavory but pleasurable activities. Drat the girl. Hermione watched her as she walked away, the sway of her hips mesmerizing under the dark green robes she wore. How did she walk like that? It wasn't at all fair. Blaise disappeared down the corridor in a swirl of green and scarlet, and as she did so Hermione glanced back down and saw Draco looking up at her.
Their eyes met, and she felt herself flush again. He stood where he was, not moving, the torchlight flaring and fading on his fair hair. Under his eyes were dark bruised shadows, and his mouth looked bruised as well, possibly from kissing. He had lost the thinness he had acquired over the summer, and she could see the slender musculature of shoulders and arms outlined under his clothes as he took another step back, tipping his head up to look at her, and the unsteady light played its shadows over his face and hair. For a moment, she saw another face superimposed over his.
'Draco,' she said.
He smiled. The smile did not translate to his eyes. There was something else in them, something shadowy and despairing and primal. 'What?'
'Do you love her?' she said. It wasn't what she had meant to say at all.
'What do you think?'
'I think you don't know.'
'Then you give me too much credit,' he said. 'In the meantime — if I give you something, will you give it to Ginny for me?'
She shook her head. 'Give it to her yourself.'
'You don't have to tell her it came from me.'
'Draco.' The word came out as half a wail, half an accusation. 'Why are you acting like this?'
'I'm not acting,' he said. 'This is the way I am.'
He raised his chin further, as arrogant and proud as she had ever seen him, and the torchlight flared on his bright hair and then vanished, as if a shadow had come between them and the light. In the half-darkness she saw his cool-water eyes on her, his chest still rising and falling quickly from rage and perhaps kissing, and she knew
