Bad Habit

Go on, just say it:
You need me like a bad habit,
One that leaves you defenseless, dependent, and alone.
(Are you afraid to say what you want to? Tell me you want to.)

Draco Malfoy bursts into the library and sweeps down the Magical Creatures aisle where he knows she'll be waiting for him. "I just thought of something."

(It's the first thing he's said to her all week.)

"Oh?" She won't meet his eye. Her back is pressed up against one of the bookshelves; her gaze is locked on the text of the library book in her lap.

"Yeah - my father would kill me if he knew what we were up to."

"That's not something you thought about before?" she asks.

"It is." He sits down next to her without so much as a may I? "But I'm only just realizing . . . Hermione, he would actually kill me."

She raises her eyebrows and finally looks up. "Hermione," she says slowly. "You've never called me that."

He lifts one shoulder and lets it drop. "Once you're seeing someone, you use their given name."

A delicate snort falls from her lips. "Seeing someone?" she says, turning back to her book. "We're seeing each other?"

He licks his lips. "Aren't we?"

"We snog between the bookshelves twice a week, Malfoy."

It comes out sounding harsh, and he can't help but flash back to the first time he found her here. He'd just called it off with Pansy Parkinson after he caught her cheating on him again. Hermione had been hiding between the bookshelves crying - over what, he never found out - and after a few rounds of their usual verbal sparring they had just sort of fallen into each other.

"I don't think a bi-weekly snog quite constitutes as seeing each other," Hermione says.

"To be fair, there's not much more we can do," he says. "It'd be different if we shared a common room."

She closes the book and uses it to hit his shoulder. "Sleeping together does not constitute as seeing each other, either," she says, eyes narrowed.

"That wasn't what I was implying."

"Oh, please."

"It wasn't!" He looks mildly amused. "Did you just hit me with a book? How extremely stereotypical of you, Granger."

"Ah, back to surnames, are we?" She opens the book back to the page she was on and flings herself into the text.

"Apparently we aren't seeing each other, so yes, it's back to surnames."

She flips a page. "What do you want, Malfoy?"

"Well, now I'm hung up on the sleeping together comment, to be honest."

"I'm not going to have sex with you in the bloody Hogwarts library."

"I'm not asking you to." He waits for her to look up again. "I just meant that if we shared a common room, we'd be able to find more excuses to actually talk. I wouldn't have to stalk you to the library in order to see you."

"Maybe I'm not interested in talking to you."

He lets out a soft laugh. "You've made it pretty clear that you're interested in doing something to me."

She fixes him with a hard glare.

"I meant kissing," he says hastily. "I didn't mean - for crying out loud, Granger, I'm a virgin."

Her glare turns to an expression of shock. "You are?"

"I've done stuff," he says defensively. "But I'm not - I haven't found anyone worthy."

She smirks, but says nothing.

"Oh, come off it," he says, rolling his eyes, but his face is the palest shade of pink. "It's not as if you've shagged anyone."

"Haven't I?" she asks.

"You haven't."

She turns her eyes back to her book. "Viktor Krum," she says. "Fourth year."

His jaw actually drops. "What?"

She flips a page. "In this library."

"Hermione!"

"Back to first names, I see."

He looks at her with shock and disgust and begrudging respect in his eyes. "Granger," he says finally, when the silence has gone on a second too long.

(She's the only one who has ever made him speechless.)

"Do you need something, Malfoy?" she asks without looking up.

"Yeah," he says. "Why would you - for weeks you've been snogging me in the library, but if it's sex you're after, why haven't you - "

"Who says I'm after sex?" She says it nonchalantly, but her face is flushed.

"You just said - "

"Just because I was intimate with Viktor doesn't mean I'm some kind of addict." She turns a page harder than necessary.

"Addict," he says, and his trademark smirk is coming back, because he's about to reclaim the upper hand. "Seems like you're addicted to something."

"Oh, I can't wait to hear this punchline," she says sarcastically. "What am I addicted to? Books? Being a know-it-all?"

He inches closer until his shoulder is an inch from her own. "Not quite," he breathes, leaning as if he's reading over her shoulder.

(His breath hits her neck. She tenses.)

"I know what you're doing," she says.

"Doing? I'm not doing anything."

"Of course you aren't. Slytherins never are, are they."

He takes the cover of the book between two fingers and angles it his way. "I'm just trying to read," he says. "If you don't want to enjoy the company of a Slytherin, go back up to your common room."

"The only reason I'm not in my common room is because Ron and Lavender treat it like their private home," she says. "I never know what I might walk in on."

"Of course." His voice is low, barely above a whisper, and she redoubles her grip on the book and pulls it away from him. "Tense, aren't we?" he says, trailing his hand up her arm to her shoulder. "I can help with that."

"I don't need help."

He smirks. Her defenses are up, but it's not the first time they've played this game. "Fine." He takes his hands away; she pulls her book back into her lap.

It's silent between them for no more than ten seconds. "I thought you just said your father would kill you if we kept this up?" she asks. Her eyes don't leave the page.

"He might."

"Why risk it?"

"It isn't fun without a little risk."

She seems to accept it.

"Why've you never told me you weren't a virgin?" he asks.

She looks up. "You never asked."

"I assumed - "

"And it's not exactly something you share with your enemies."

He tilts his head "You consider us enemies?"

"Don't you?"

He looks at her thoughtfully. "I thought we'd made at least a little headway. I don't usually snog my enemies. I don't usually spend hours of my life talking to them behind bookshelves."

"What, so you'd consider us friends?"

"Maybe not friends. But closer to friends than enemies."

"Talk to me when the word 'mudblood' is no longer in your vocabulary," she snaps.

He raises his eyebrows. "Calm down," he says. "You really are tense."

She closes the book. "Look, I've got exams to study for. Are we doing this or not?"

"Not if you don't want to." His smirk is gone. Something about her is different today. "It's always been only if you want to."

"Doesn't seem like it."

"There's a difference between seduction and rape, Hermione. But if you aren't in the mood, I can just go back to the common room and deal with Pansy hanging all over - "

She looks frustrated. "I have so many things on my mind besides how your ex-girlfriend feels about you," she says, but she doesn't reopen the book.

"Okay." He waits, but she doesn't elaborate. "Like what?"

"Like exams. Grades. Figuring out what I want to do after Hogwarts. I'm failing Potions - "

"You're not failing," he says. "You're second best in the class."

"Exactly." Her eyes are brimming with tears. "I'm failing Potions, I'm falling behind in History of Magic, I can't go to the common room because Ron's in there with her, and on top of that there are Death Eaters - "

"It seems," he says over her, shifting his eyes around in case Madame Pince is coming to shush them, "that all your problems come back to Weasley."

She closes her eyes. "I'm not in the mood for this."

"Of course not. You're too tense." He touches her shoulder. "I really can help."

She shakes him off. "I don't want your bloody seduction."

"I meant I can help you study."

She opens her eyes. "Study?"

"Yes." He turns away to rummage in his bag. "Look. O on the last Potions essay." He hands her the parchment; sure enough, there is an Outstanding scrawled across the top in Slughorn's messy writing. "I know my stuff. Let me help."

She swallows. "You mean it?"

His laugh is soft, but not unpleasant. "Of course I mean it."

"You want to meet me in the library and actually study?"

"Well." He takes the essay back and shoves it in his bag. "Among other things."

She arches her eyebrows.

"I meant have dinner with you," he says, raising his hands in a quick surrender. "I don't know where your mind went."

A laugh tumbles from her lips; from the look of surprise on her face, she hadn't meant to let it slip. "Dinner," she says quietly. "Is that you asking me out?"

"To be honest, I thought we were already going out."

She rolls her eyes. "Snogging in the library is not the same as seeing each other, Malfoy. For the last time."

"Draco," he corrects. "If I'm asking you out, then you call me Draco."

"Draco." She grimaces and shakes her head. "Can't do it. Sorry."

"Fine, Granger."

She looks at him thoughtfully. "You want to take me to dinner," she says. "You'd be seen with me in public. You know that, right?"

"I do."

"Your father might find out."

"And again I say: it's no fun without the risk."

"Fair point." She bites her lip. "I need you to tell me something."

"How I got the O on the Potions essay? I'm paying off Slughorn."

"I need you to tell me this isn't about Pansy."

"What, seeing you?"

"Yes."

He doesn't say anything for a moment, and it's because he genuinely doesn't know the answer. "I need you to tell me this isn't about Weasley."

She blinks. "It isn't."

"Yeah," he says. "Neither is mine."

(He can tell he hasn't convinced her any more than she's convinced him.)

"You certainly live up to your first impression," she says, and he can't tell whether that's good or bad, but she says it with the hint of a smile, so he decides he's won.

"Go on, just say it," he says, tracing his hand gently up her arm. This time, she lets him trail his fingers up past her shoulder to cup her chin. "You need me like a bad habit, Granger."

She smirks. "Actually, I believe you're the one who comes to find me twice a week."

He leans down, hovering over her until their lips are an inch apart, but he doesn't close the distance between them.

The book slips off her lap.

"What are you waiting for?" she breathes.

He smirks. "I'm seducing you."

"By not kissing me?"

His other hand winds around the small of her back. With one quick motion, he pulls her toward him. Her breathing hitches. "Just making sure you really want to."

She lets her eyes flutter shut.

"Go on," he whispers. "Ask for it. Or are you ashamed to tell me you want to?"

He can feel her heart thudding. "I'm not quite as dependent as you think I am," she says.

He releases her chin and moves his hand around to cup the back of her neck. "Nobody said you were dependent."

(He realizes this isn't about Pansy after all.)

"Draco," she breathes, and then corrects herself. "Malfoy - "

"Won-Won," says a girlish voice from the next shelf over in a loud whisper. "Won-Won, come on!"

"I'm coming," says a masculine voice, and hand in hand, Ron Weasley and Lavender Brown hurtle around the corner of Draco's aisle.

Hermione's eyes fly open.

It's three seconds of silence.

"Oh," says Ron.

With a sharp intake of breath, Hermione leans into Draco and kisses him hard.

(When Ron and Lavender slink away, whispering behind their hands, Hermione pulls back and says, "Same time on Tuesday" and walks away, and Draco Malfoy stares at the book she's left behind and decides he almost definitely loves Pansy, anyway.)

The working title for this was "I Can't Believe I'm Writing A Dramione."

[Guess Who?: Someone in Harry's year]

[2015 New Years Resolution Challenge: Least Favorite Character - Draco Malfoy]

[Twelve Days of Christmas Style Challenge: 9 lyrics - "Go on just say it. You need me like a bad habit."- Taking Back Sunday, "One Eighty by Summer" ]