A/N: If Harry Potter were mine, I assure you that you wouldn't've been forced to read those half-assed bits of 'romance' splattered throughout Books 6 & 7.

And Jo can take that crapilogue of hers and shove it where the sun doesn't shine. :)

Also, this is rather different from my usual writing style--more florid than I generally prefer--but it just sort of came out that way. Oh well.

There was no card, so she didn't know who they were from, but she had received a full dozen of dusky red roses that morning.

Stepping back and posting her hands on her hips, she looked at them critically, head cocked slightly to one side, studying them where they sat in the centre of her chest-of-drawers, atop the handkerchief she'd transfigured into a lace doily for effect.

Perhaps roses really were her favourite flower after all. She'd always previously claimed lilies as her flower of choice; roses just seemed too cliché, too customary. Everyone liked roses.

But, Hermione thought, leaning close to catch their faint fragrance once more, perhaps that was alright. After all, she needn't tell anyone about this sort of thing. It was private. And surely her reason for liking them must be different from everyone else's.

She loved their scent, yes, and the smooth velvet of the petals also; but really it was the colour that she loved. So full, so rich, so very red. And so many words existed to describe that radiant, most beautiful of shades--scarlet, crimson, vermilion, burgundy, cerise, countless more--all adding their graces to the luxuriant tint of rose petals.

Fitting that she should find it so captivating, especially since it was her house colour, she thought with satisfaction.

She smiled lovingly at the newly-blossoming flowers, brushing a tender hand over the ruddy living silk of the petals, soft as a lover's caress, then bent to draw in one final lungful of their delicate scent before turning and catching up her satchel of books. The rather vexing question of who had sent her the roses was pondered throughout the day, though regardless of this uncertainty, she found that she could not dislodge the pleased (and slightly smug) smile from its seemingly fixed position on her countenance.

They were his favourite flower, he supposed.

They had a winding, subtle grace and a dignified splendour to them that he could easily appreciate; they were a truly elegant species, the finest of which were brought about by taking excruciatingly particular care concerning their breeding. This inspired in a subconscious and more fanciful facet of Draco's mind a peculiar and disjointed but undeniable sense that he held some sort of kinship with these bluebloods of the garden. All he would admit to himself, however, was that they reminded him of himself somehow, and, proud and impenitent narcissist that he was, that perhaps that was why he was so very fond of them.

Or perhaps instead that fondness could be traced back to his childhood. Narcissa Malfoy had always found a certain charm to the paradoxical plants, and thus the gardens of Malfoy Manor had been fairly bursting with roses by mid-May each year. There were the tender memories of early childhood as well to provide that curious association, days when it was still permissible to clamber onto his mother's narrow and bony but accommodating lap and curl his small fingers into the lace of her collar, pillowing his cheek against her breast or else burying his face into the crook of her neck, all the while breathing in great lungfuls of the sweet, musky scent of rose blossoms with which she had perfumed herself.

It had been years since she had last worn that perfume, Draco thought with a brief pang of regret. The rumours of the Dark Lord's return, the intensity of the trials and the constant raids performed by the Ministry had taken their toll on both the Lady and the gardens, largely unexpected hardships striking hard against both; for in recent years, his father had had little patience for such frivolous things as gardeners. The plants had grown wild and tangled of late, and the majority of the expertly cultivated and highly regarded roses had wasted away and died. The rest had grown coarse and ragged, forced to fend for themselves, though they did yet possess a certain inborn splendour and majesty that no circumstances, no matter how dismal, could entirely eradicate. Likewise, even in these current times of trial, the Malfoys had retained their carefully crafted and flawlessly presented demeanour: in the eyes of the public they remained proud, the perfect examples (or so they themselves believed) of pureblooded nobility in the Wizarding World.

But in Malfoy Manor, no longer were the hedges painstakingly trimmed, no longer were the roses carefully cultured, and no longer did the Lady wear her perfume.

…And yet, Draco reminded himself, beauty and grace were not all that there was to roses…

He'd been up well before the Mudblood, and had found the roses waiting for her there on the side table in their common room, fairly oozing with a sickeningly uncharacteristic sense of sycophancy. His lip had twisted in an involuntary curl, and he had had to remind himself that of course they were a much lesser form of the flower than what he had been accustomed to at home, and thus of course they would not be possess the same aristocratic nobility…although anyone who would use dark red roses in such an abhorrently offhanded manner…

His hand darted out almost reflexively as he neared the table, snatching up the blessedly simple card from beside the delicate crystal vase, and he flipped it open and flicked detached grey eyes across the tastelessly banal writing ('To Hermione: a small token of my esteem for your great beauty. Love, an Admirer') before shifting his attention to his reflection, which gazed half-carelessly back at him from the looking-glass on the wall above the table.

So, Draco thought as he brushed a hand through his hair and straightened his already perfectly straight tie, were they from Potter or the Weasel? He didn't believe either was really the type to send flowers. The former would probably think it too brazen to do so, even if he had been intelligent enough to actually be interested in a girl who might be a sensible match for him, so it wasn't Potter. The latter was very unlikely to think of such a genteel token of esteem, even if he could afford them. Which he couldn't. So the Weasel was out as well.

Then who...?

His eyes were pulled inexorably downwards until they rested on the roses once more, and for a long moment he simply stared at them almost meditatively. At long last he raised his hand and, after a minute waver of hesitance lasting no longer than a heartbeat, slowly drew a finger across one sumptuous petal with a great deal more gentleness than anyone who knew him at all well would have expected.

Intoxicating, Draco thought as his hand dropped back down to his side, the creamy texture coupled with that delicate, deliciously sweet scent and robed, so fittingly, in a deep shade of scarlet, a colour that was customarily a warning of danger…that danger, of course, being the thorns.

The thorns were dull brown or green, sharp, spiny, and unremarkable when seen alongside the silk and satin attire of their more fortunate sisters the petals. They were not beautiful in any sense of the word; they were harsh, and painful, and bitter; they often went overlooked.

But the thorns, Draco thought, really were the best part--his favourite part, in fact: they reminded one that such things were best handled with care, that beauty always had its penalties and perils.

Muffled though it was by the wall between them, Draco's sharp ears still caught the faint sound of movement coming from the room directly before him: the Mudblood was awake.

Reminded of the note he still held in his off hand, the tall blonde smirked, eyes glittering with a faint suggestion of malice, then he tore the card in two. Half a dozen smooth, unhurried strides brought him before the greedily crackling fire that was eternally flickering in the common room's fireplace; it nearly seemed to reach out with eager yellow tongues for the note as he tossed it in.

He watched with a satisfied smirk as the paper withered beneath the fire's insistent caress, its pure ivory form crumpling as if in pain as the flame's taint spread over it, consuming it completely and pitilessly.

Donning his cloak, Draco swept silently out of the room, headed for the Great Hall and breakfast, equally unrepentant.

It had been Krum, she had discovered without much real surprise. She knew Harry or Ron wouldn't send her such things—they were either oblivious, or weren't thoughtful enough and quite honestly couldn't afford them—and who else was there, after all, who would send her such a genteel gift? McLaggen was the only other boy who had ever shown even vaguely romantic interest in her, and he was even more hopeless than Ron when it came to girls (though Ron and Harry's collective cluelessness might very well have given him a run for his money).

She had thought Viktor had given up on her quite a while ago, however, but it appeared that she was at least partially wrong in that assumption; the roses were a testament to that.

Dobby had been the one to pass along the information that the Bulgarian Seeker had sent her the flowers, wasn't that kind and thoughtful of him, and weren't they quite pretty? Asking the house elf about why she had been sent the roses in the first place only earned her a hangdog look and a rather regretful, "Dobby is sorry, but he doesn't know, miss!"

Simply knowing who had sent them didn't really do her all that much good. How should she respond? Was she even supposed to? She had thought that this matter had been settled a long while ago…

She did wonder about there not being a card--it didn't really seem Krum's style not to send anything at all to give her at least a hint that it had been him--but she had dismissed it as having been dropped or mislaid somewhere along the way. Perhaps it would show up in due time, perhaps not; it didn't really matter to her either way.

Just outside the entrance to the suite, she paused, suddenly and irrationally hesitant, and she wondered a bit at the momentary feeling of dread that had descended upon her. Was something wrong? Had something happened to Harry? That was usually what this sort of feeling meant…but no, she had seen Harry go up to bed not ten minutes ago, and the charmed coin in her pocket that would warn her if he were in danger was completely and unquestionably cool, without a trace of the intense, frenzied heat that would pulse through it if it had been activated.

Shaking her head at her own paranoia, she stepped into the scarlet-and-jade common room and froze halfway through slipping her robe off her shoulders. She had intended to sit by the fire to read and relax for a while; that idea was quickly abandoned, however, as her eyes settled on the lean figure sprawled in the deep green armchair before the hearth.

He did not look up as she entered, gave no indication that he was even aware of her presence, his eyes hooded as he stared pensively at the flames twisting in their erratic dance, their irregular movements casting liquid shadows across his impassive, aristocratically handsome face.

Malfoy? Handsome? Since when had she ever thought of him as anything but an arrogant prick? Hermione finished removing her robe, hanging it on the waiting peg by the door, and shook her head again, a bit harder this time, just barely holding back both a gag and a snort of laughter. She must have been a great deal more worried about Harry than she'd thought, she obviously wasn't thinking clearly.

Swallowing hard, she tried to make her way across the back of the room to the hallway without making a sound, though the noise of the door swinging to had doubtless been loud enough to alert him to her presence. She made it about halfway--she had nearly reached the side table where she'd found the roses that morning--when, unexpectedly, he spoke:

"Do you know what dark red roses mean?"

Hermione stopped at the table's edge, caught off-balance by the question, and taken aback that he had voluntarily spoken to her without the sole intent of hurling an insult. Their current living situation being somewhat awkward, each had made a point of avoiding, or at least ignoring, the other, so conversation was not commonplace--it was nonexistent, in fact--and it was unfamiliar ground that the usually-confident Head Girl had no idea how to navigate.

Bemused by this sudden, inexplicable violation of their unwritten rules, it failed to register correctly that he'd asked her a question; after a protracted space of continued silence, Draco spoke again, this time with a noticeable edge of impatience underlining his words.

"Did you fail to hear the question, or do you actually not know something for once, Mudblood? I asked if you knew the meaning of dark red roses."

There was the usual insult and the familiar condescending tone. They were back on regular terms: now she knew what to do.

Almost reflexively her eyes narrowed and she scowled at the unresponsive back of Malfoy's chair. "Of course I do," she spat quietly, a great deal more venom in her tone than she had anticipated; she was irritated to note that it gave false ring to her words.

Apparently Draco noticed it as well. He snorted, still not turning to look at her. "Somehow I doubt that."

There was a moment of silence, during which Hermione stood there clenching and unclenching her fists; at last, Malfoy rose and, after a slow, sinuous stretch that rippled up his back and displayed the sleek, corded muscles of his arms, turned halfway to meet her glare with a cool stare of his own. "Do you even know who sent them?"

Seeing his slight smirk, Hermione felt a momentary flicker of suspicion: he had done something with the card, but she had nothing to back up that claim, and both of them knew it.

"It's just as well," the pale boy went on, his tone indifferent but his eyes sharp and shrewd as they carefully gauged her reaction. "Shouldn't flowers speak for themselves, after all?"

Her temper flared a bit at his superior tone, and she gave a brief growl of irritation before continuing on her way to her room. Whatever game he was playing, she wasn't interested in—

Before she could complete that thought, before she'd taken more than two strides, she was brought up short: Draco was suddenly standing directly in front of her, expression still set in the ever-present arrogant smirk, deliberately blocking her way. Startled, she took an involuntary step backwards. She hadn't even seen him move.

"Mourning, Granger," he said in a piercing whisper that was actually nearer to a hiss. "Dark crimson roses mean mourning." A sinister smile gradually twisted along his lips, and Hermione couldn't repress the sudden shiver that ran down her spine as his eyes, cold and grey as tempered steel, bored into hers. "Unfortunately you aren't dead yet, and since you seemed to be in high spirits today, I would doubt that anyone you're close to has recently passed away." His lips pulled back to form a small but thoroughly nasty half-grin. "It is…difficult for some to understand the implications of certain things…though, dirty as your blood may be, I hadn't expected a swot like you to dismiss the deeper significance of anything."

She bared her teeth at him in an angry sneer, glaring up at him in defiance as she snapped, "Mourning isn't their only meaning. Dark red roses can also signify unconscious beauty, though that's a more recent interpretation."

The unpleasant grin vanished, only to be exchanged for a purse-lipped look of genuine amusement. "And you honestly think that's what the sender had in mind when they sent you those flowers?"

Brown eyes narrowed even more in a fierce glower, but it was the only response Hermione could make: she was fully aware of the fact that Draco was correct--there was little chance that Krum would know anything about the meanings of flowers--though she would never willingly admit as much.

Her silence must have spoken for her, however, as she caught a subtle gleam of triumph in the Head Boy's pale eyes. With a marked deliberation, he turned his head to gaze into the mirror on his right, her left; without thinking, Hermione mimicked the action, only to find his eyes pinning her in place, his glance so sharp and harshly evaluating that she almost felt as if he was looking straight through her.

" 'Unconscious beauty' ?" he repeated in a flat, mocking tone, his gaze never leaving her reflected figure, and Hermione had never felt so unremarkable and drab, though at the same time she bristled at his judgment, hating herself for allowing his tone to affect her. "I fail see it."

Both her head and her eyes snapped forward at that, meeting his gaze directly; with a wordless snarl she started forward, thinking to go around him. She suddenly found herself jerked to a halt, his hands clamped painfully around her upper arms, long fingers digging cruelly into the tender flesh just above her elbows, rendering them immobile; she couldn't even reach for her wand.

"Let go, Malfoy," she hissed through clenched teeth, and made a weak attempt to twist one arm away, keeping her eyes focused on his chest; his fingers only tensed a bit in response, unmistakably an unverbalised no.

"Some meanings may change over time," Draco murmured after a moment, his voice low and compelling, "but others never do…some things simply cannot change—" his grip on her arms tightened a bit more, and Hermione determinedly resisted the urge to wince, "—regardless of how many generations pass. That is why, plain though they may be, the thorns are a rose's most excellent part. They are always present, and their meaning cannot be misunderstood: it is always a warning that no pleasure is without its price."

He squeezed once more, hard enough to be certain that he had left bruises--a prospect that he found oddly enticing--then loosened his grip, allowing his hands to trail down the warm, smooth skin of her arms, supple and silky as rose petals.

Intoxicating.

Hermione drew in a sharp breath, taken aback by the uncharacteristic softness of his touch. Alarmed, she shot a startled glance up at him, then immediately wished she hadn't: his expression was harsh, his nearly colourless eyes piercing, practically boring into her, but there was more conveyed by that stare than mere hatred and contempt. There was also something that burned coldly, a curious sort of hunger that caused terror and apprehension to begin twisting and pooling in her gut, along with a strange feeling that she had no real name for and no way of describing, other than as a peculiar sort of heat.

He was no longer touching her, but he did not move away, standing with perhaps a foot of space between them and regarding her with an obvious and chilling thoughtfulness.

Hermione suddenly found herself leaning towards him, and although her mind had the decency to be properly horrified--this was Malfoy, after all, the same presumptuous, spiteful little ferret who had gotten her friends and herself in trouble and placed them in terrible danger numerous times--her body seemed to be acting entirely on its own.

His hand shot up, catching her firmly by the chin, and he tilted her face sharply upwards, forcing her to look at him while he in turn stared down his nose at her, eyes narrowed as they scanned her face before settling on her lips.

Her mind was screaming at her desperately to get a hold of herself and move for heaven's sake, but the way he was looking at her--the intensity, the raw desire--Merlin, no one had ever looked at her that way before, and somehow she found that she couldn't pull away. Once again she didn't know what to do…

He held her there until her neck started to ache from the awkward angle, and just as she opened her mouth to repeat her previous demand, he released her roughly enough that she stumbled backward a few steps. One hand immediately went to her chin, rubbing it gingerly; the other went just as immediately to her wand, which she drew in a single fluid motion. Surprisingly she did not point it directly at him, merely holding it at the ready as she stared at him with a wide-eyed look of equal parts fear and fascination.

Draco watched, clearly amused, as she suddenly shoved her shoulders back, dropped her hand from her face, and stepped towards and around him, her paces slow but firm with a forced composure; the bone-white flare across the knuckles of the hand that clutched her wand gave her away, however, and the Head Boy's smirk was tinged with an unsettlingly malicious delight.

He spoke just as she reached the mouth of the hallway, and at his low, half-rasping tone, she froze as instantly and absolutely as if he'd Petrified her:

"Just so you know, Granger, this was your warning…" Pace measured and expression utterly unruffled, he made his way back to the chair before the fire. "So. What price are you willing to pay for a little pleasure?"

Without another word he disappeared back into the deep jade armchair's shadowy embrace; finally free of his scrutiny, Hermione fled down the hallway to her room.

Draco's smirk widened into a full grin as the sound of a door slamming echoed down the hallway. She would come to him in the end, of course; that much he knew from her interesting, but still rather predictable, reactions throughout this little encounter. Besides…the lure he had put forth was nothing less than himself, and if Draco had never been sincere about anything else in his life, he was at least sincere in his certainty that he was simply too tempting to resist.

Upon gaining the safety of her room, the Head Girl swung the door violently closed, not caring that the resounding slam had undoubtedly been heard by the Head Boy lounging before the fireplace in the common room. Leaning back against the door, she put her head in her hands, as if that physical act might somehow help her to get a handle on her wildly reeling emotions. How was it that he always managed to get her so riled up, and seemingly with so little effort? Though admittedly this time the situation had been decidedly different…had he…had he actually—?

No, that was absurd. She must've been imagining things; the mere idea that he wanted her was preposterous…but why would she imagine something like that?

She hated him. He was a spoiled, manipulative, narrow-minded bastard, and she absolutely hated him. Whatever else she might have felt (had it really been only mere moments ago? the skin on her arms where he'd touched her was still tingling faintly) was purely visceral, she knew that much.

With a deep sigh she pushed away from the door; lighting a lamp with a quick flick of her wand, she took a single step farther into the room and gasped.

At first glance, she thought that there was blood spilled all over the floor. Her hands flew to her mouth, breath catching in her throat in horror, her whole body going cold, but in the next instant she relaxed; what she had at first glance taken to be blood was in reality only blood-red petals: the roses she'd placed on her chest-of-drawers that morning had all suddenly, inexplicably died, spilling their crimson petals all over the floor.

Hermione was far too rational to believe in omens; this however, was almost enough to make her wonder.

Almost.

Crossing the room, she knelt and began scooping them up, piling them high in one hand. Such a waste. They had been so lovely…

Draco must have done something to them while she had been out, she thought darkly, or perhaps before she'd risen that morning; he had already been at breakfast when she'd gone down. That was the only possible explanation for so many roses so obviously just beginning their first bloom to fade away so abruptly. And the petals hadn't even been withered--only the stems of the roses had shriveled, as if all moisture had been suddenly and inexplicably drawn out of them. The petals themselves were still soft, tiny individual bits of close-cropped velveteen; they had wilted a bit, which made them somewhat harder to pick up, though the task still didn't take more than a few minutes.

Now, what to do with them? Simply dumping them into the waste bin seemed a terribly unfitting end for something that had once been so stately and beautiful, but she couldn't keep them either--she had no reason to, and Hermione had a marked aversion to clutter. Unless an object held some particular or powerful meaning, she got rid of it.

Nonetheless…

Briefly at a loss, she glanced about the room, then on impulse rose and stepped towards the large bay window on the far side of the room; a quick flick of her wand and the lock clicked open, the casement window slowly swinging wide. Settling herself on her knees in the midst of the mass of thick red-and-gold cushions congregated on the window seat, she cupped both hands around the petals to prevent any sudden rushes of air from scattering them again; glancing down, she noticed belatedly that the moonlight and darkness of night had leeched most of the colour out of them, turning the deep crimson to the colour of dried, crusted blood. She slowly loosened the cage of her hands, allowing the thin, limp petals to whisper through her fingers and escape into the shadows below, leaving her hands empty, starkly pale and tinged an odd shade of blue by the argent glow of the waning moon.

The night's warm breath whispered across her skin, tugging at the ends of her hair, drawing strands across her face like a veil as she leaned forward slightly, eyes locked on the fluttering scarlet spots; and though it wasn't cold, she still shivered slightly as she watched the petals drift downwards and melt away into the darkness.