In terms of unobtrusive shelter, the Quidditch equipment shed was almost perfectly suited to their needs. It was relatively nearby, and though it was commonly referred to as a shed, in reality it was more of a dug-out, sunk over halfway into a low, sloping hillside so that it was mostly underground and really only noticeable from a certain angle of approach. The thick, low-lying mist that swathed the grounds offered further concealment; it was extremely unlikely that anyone would notice the entrance unless they were actively seeking it, as Draco and Hermione were.

"Almost as good as a D-his-illusionment charm," Hermione murmured from between violently chattering teeth, as Draco shouldered open the door.

The interior was small, dark, musty, and slightly less cold than outdoors. Weak, watery winter light filtered in through chinks in the structure's single outward-facing wall, but at least the wind couldn't reach them here. The rest of the rough walls were lined with racks of battered school-property broomsticks; dusty shelves were crammed with bottles and jars of wood oil, blackened polishing cloths, and assorted school-owned protective gear, goggles and gloves and such, which had seen better days. In the 1960's, by the look of the stuff. Dusty boxes containing the various balls utilized in the game were stacked in the corners. There was a narrow aisle down the center of all this clutter that would afford just enough room for the two of them to sit side-by-side on the packed-earth floor with their backs against a low-hung rack of brooms.

Draco pushed Hermione in ahead of him. Without his support, she stumbled; her legs too weak, too shaky, to support her. Grasping at the equipment shelves to either side, she lowered herself to her knees, then folded into a sitting position on the floor. Draco, for his part, hung back to deal with the door – barring it with a broomstick he'd seized from a nearby rack, then further blocking it by wedging wooden crates of Quaffles and Bludgers in front of it. Only when the crates were stacked chest-high did he turn toward her – and virtually collapse.

His back against the boxes, he slid down them to the floor, landing hard enough to make his teeth rattle – if they hadn't been already, that is. He was breathing now in shallow, rapid pants. She realized, somewhat detachedly, that she was as well. She could hardly feel her hands or feet anymore; the stabbing, pins-and-needles cold was receding from her extremities, to be replaced by a dully aching numbness. This should have been a relief, but she knew better. She had read about the symptoms of hypothermia at some point, although she couldn't place exactly where or when, or even why, at the moment. Her thought processes were slowing down – her mind becoming as numb as her body. She was groggy; her brain ever more hopelessly clouded with each passing moment. Merlin, she was in trouble.

They both were.

Draco was sitting with his knees pulled up, elbows resting on them. Now he ran both hands through his straggly, half-dry, silver-white hair, shoving it out of his face – even in its current sorry state, it looked softer than corn-silk. This done, he wrapped his arms tightly around himself and folded over forward, so that his head rested, face down, on his updrawn knees. His whole body, she saw, was shaking now – and hard.

Why had he put himself in this position for her? Why?

She tried to ask, even though she was finding it inordinately difficult to form even single words, much less string multiples together.

"M-Muh-hal-foy. Why… why d-did-"

He looked up; those eerie, pale eyes of his like mercury in the dim light.

"Had my… reasons. G-Granger."

They stared at each other for a long time in silence. Despite everything, he looked… defiant. She glared at him, frustrated with his refusal to reveal a motive. But after a moment or two, even this began to pass. She was having no better luck holding onto her anger than she was in keeping track of her scattered thoughts. And after all, whatever his initial reasoning had been, they were in this, now, together.

His lips, she noticed, were blue.

Something had to be done.

She raised both her hands to her temples and, with some difficulty, clenched her fingers hard in the riot of wet, bedraggled curls there. It was a gesture she sometimes made when she had to think her way through particularly difficult problems or scenarios. It was as if her body was reminding her mind to concentrate, concentrate.

"Malfoy, we have… to w-arm… up."

"C-hant concentrate… enough for… wand… wandless magic," he gritted out. "Al-already tried."

"Malfoy. We're d-hye-ing. We're both dying."

His eyes, locked on hers, never wavered. He said nothing.

A heartbeat passed. Then another, and another. Finally, slowly, almost dreamily – everything was taking on a lethargic, dream-like, almost surreal quality now – she said, "there's anuh-nother way. A m-Muggle way." She looked around the little storage area with dazed, barely-focused eyes. "We'll need… um… b-blankets."

Draco simply looked at her a moment longer. Then, slowly and obviously with difficulty, he dragged himself to his feet. Stepping carefully over her, he made his way to the rear of the shed. He was moving almost normally, but there was a certain sense of jerky un-coordination lurking just below the surface of his movements that told her it was only with great effort that he was projecting this outward sense of normalcy and control.

He seemed to know exactly where he was going, and it occurred to her that, having played school Quidditch for nearly as long as Harry, he probably did indeed know this room and its contents quite well. Reaching the back wall, he stretched up and pulled something – a bundle of some sort – from the very top shelf. He dropped it almost immediately to the floor – fabric, she saw, slipping from between his fingers, which were undoubtedly as stiff and numb as her own.

Then his legs buckled and he crashed sideways into the wall. Grabbing at a rack for support, he managed to slow his fall somewhat, but even so hit the floor on his hands and knees with a jarring force that Hermione knew had to be painful.

She began, automatically, to ask if he was all right – but the expression on his face stopped her, well, cold. That defiant look was back in his eyes; a look which said, as clearly as any words, that even the least outward display of sympathy or concern on her part would be… rather less than welcome.

I am NOT WEAK, those eyes seemed to say, and don't you DARE imply that I am.

"They're for equipment," he bit out. "N-not very good."

Hermione could see that for herself. There were about half a dozen wadded-up blankets there in shades of brown and grey; rough, scratchy material; dirty, moth-eaten and musty – clearly not intended for human use. They were also, quite possibly, the difference between life and death for her and Malfoy both.

Hermione thought they were absolutely beautiful.

"C'mon," she said, "we have to get… um… close. And… take off your wet clothes."

He stared at her incredulously. "What, and freeze faster? You're mental, Granger."

She shook her head in frustration. He was going to make her spell it out, then.

"N-no. Our clothes… are making us freeze faster. We have to… to get them off, all of them." She was staring straight down in her lap, now, unable to look at him as she explained. "And then we ha-have to… um… warm each other up… skin to… s-skin."

His breathing had become so shallow and rapid now that his every syllable was forced out as a short, ragged exhalation.

"You – shitting – me – Gran – ger?"

"There's no time… to debate this, Malfoy." And she peeled her sopping-wet shirt off over her head and flung it away into a far corner.

He stared at her in stark disbelief as she proceeded, with teeth-gritted difficulty, her coordination almost nil by now, to struggle out of her trousers as well. Then, with stiff fingers, she dragged the discarded invisibility cloak over to her, tucked it about herself under her arms, and reached behind herself to unclasp her bra.

She couldn't do it. Her fingers were like wood; she lacked the strength even to keep her arms twisted behind her body like that. In fact, the whole enterprise was making her feel rather lightheaded.

"Malfoy," she whispered, "you ha-have to help… m-me." Eyelids fluttering, she slumped suddenly, bonelessly, back against the rough, cold wall. She was gone in a swoon again.

"Granger!"

Less than half-conscious and unable to move, she was dimly aware of Draco scrambling over to her, swearing a blue streak the whole time, the rude words barely intelligible between the chattering of his teeth and his own shortness of breath. His hands were on her then, his fingers like ice; she shuddered violently as, not troubling himself about the clasp at all, he yanked her bra none too gently right up over her arms and head, tossing it carelessly over his shoulder to join the rest of her sad, sodden clothes.

She didn't really even register, at the moment, the fact that in so doing he caused the invisibility cloak to fall, pooling around her waist and leaving her upper body completely bare to his gaze.

He didn't even skip a beat, though. He pulled her toward him, holding her to his chest with one arm as he quickly and clumsily spread the tatty old blankets out on the floor. This done, he lowered her onto her back in the middle of the blanket-nest he'd created and then proceeded to hook his thumbs into the waistband of her panties and tug them over her hips, down her legs, and off. Tossing the invisibility cloak over her like a sheet, he hurriedly, shakily, stripped himself.

Slipping under the cloak beside her he gathered her up against him and wrapped first the cloak, then the equipment blankets, tightly around them; virtually cocooning them both. The silken fabric of the invisibility cloak went a long way toward mitigating the moldy, scratchy unpleasantness of the old blankets.

There followed a long, long time of simply lying still; pressed hard against one another, in nearly identical states of hazy semi-consciousness as their bodies, wrapped in layer upon layer of heavy fabric that was, however distasteful, at least undeniably warm, ever so slowly began to approach normalcy once again. It might have been an hour – it might have been a day. She would never know with anything approaching certainty.

The first thing Hermione really noticed was her shivers subsiding – not entirely, mind, but at least she longer felt as if she was being shaken apart. Her breathing eased a little too, and these two things, combined, allowed much of the tension to ebb from her body. She relaxed more fully against Draco, her body greedily seeking heat from every inch of his skin that touched her own.

She would never, later, be able to pinpoint exactly when things had… changed. When it had stopped being merely about using each other as vital sources of warmth, and had become somehow… more. And if she had trouble pinpointing the when, she could certainly never explain to herself, with any clarity whatsoever, the why of the matter. What on earth could have possessed her – Hermione Granger, pure as the driven snow, golden girl of the Light, practically engaged to the Boy Who Lived – to lose herself in the arms of the enemy?

And really, there was no rationalizing it. She was in a state of extreme duress. In the midst of a battle that had raged on for days already; sleep-deprived, physically and emotionally exhausted, and only just recovering from a – very – near death experience, she was looking for comfort, and she found it in the arms of her rescuer. The arms of a Death Eater.

And why would Draco, who wore Voldemort's insignia branded into his left forearm, why would he allow himself to consort with the enemy either? Why on earth "sully" himself with a girl he supposedly viewed as inherently dirty; inferior; practically sub-human?

Why, indeed? It was destined to remain as much a mystery as the reason he had risked his own life to save hers in the first place.

But all of this reflection was for a later date. Hermione wasn't wondering about any of it in that moment. All she knew right then was that she'd been drowning and he'd saved her; she'd been freezing and he was warming her. There was strength and security – however illusory, however fleeting – in the arms wrapped so tightly around her, and she responded to it.

If forced to put her finger on the moment in which huddling for warmth became something more intimate, she supposed it was when she turned in his arms to face him. They had spooning until then; his stomach to her back, but as the time had passed, blood slowly returning to her frozen extremities and causing them to tingle distractingly, she had become restless; tossing lightly within his arms and finally turning over completely – no easy feat with the blankets still wrapped so tightly about them both – to face him.

His arms, which had temporarily loosened their grip to allow her some freedom of movement while she shifted, tightened again. One of his hands was splayed out low on her back; the other between her shoulder blades. This latter hand he now moved up to her head, twining his fingers through her tumult of hair and holding her pressed against his shoulder, her face nestled into the hollow of his throat.

And even so, nothing more might have come from it, except that now Hermione, still greedy for his warmth, wrapped her own arms around him right back, and then proceeded to sling a leg over his hip as well, hooking him closer still, virtually molding her body to his.

It was this that galvanized Draco, finally, into action. He seemed to shudder all down the length of his body, crushing her to him until she could barely breathe. The hand that had been resting against her back dragged lower, cupping her bottom, squeezing; yanking her hips against his almost bruisingly hard. She gasped in shock and his lips crashed into hers – searchingly, hungrily. And before she fully comprehended even what he was doing, let alone her response to it, she was kissing him back, and hard.

His lips, she noticed, on some strangely detached and analytical level, were still cool – but his mouth was hot. His hands too, were warm now, moving restlessly against her bare skin. And she'd been so cold, and so close to death, and now, suddenly, she was so very warm, and alive, and tingly right down to her toes, and that was all that really mattered to her in that moment; any niggling little thoughts of right or wrong were swept away by the tide of it.

It felt right, Merlin help her. It felt… almost preordained, somehow.

Her fingers were tangling in his soft, pale hair – it felt like damp, rumpled silk; so different from the tangled mass of her own at the moment. She pushed her tongue into the warmth of his mouth, craving it. And then she became conscious of a new heat; he was… growing… pressed hard against her stomach.

He drank in her surprised "mmph!" never missing a beat, then ripped his lips from hers and dragged them, slowly, over her chin and down her throat, dropping decadently hot kisses as he went. Hermione, in a warm, delicious haze, some of her inborn curiosity now returning to her, slid a hand in between them and grasped the source of the heat that was pressing against her body – wrenching a shuddery groan from him as she did so.

She bit on her lip, chewing it gently – an unconscious gesture she often made when assimilating new information. She had never touched a man… um… there before – not, at any rate, skin-to-skin. It was… almost indescribable. Soft and hard all at once, like satin over steel. And above all, warm. Beautifully, brilliantly, blazingly warm. And she wanted that warmth – wanted it for herself, to incorporate it into her own being. Barely understanding what she was doing, operating largely on instinct now, she squeezed.

"Ughhn –!" His whole body went taut. The expression on his face and the sound that was wrenched out of him were almost of pain. Almost… but not exactly. Then his hand closed over her wrist, pulling her hand away, and at the same time he rolled her decisively onto her back, releasing her wrist and catching her slim thighs in his hands, spreading them as far as the cocoon of blankets would allow and insinuating himself gracefully, easily, between them.

She stared up at him, pulse racing now, breathing hard – their eyes caught and held for a long, long time in silence, the quick, harsh bursts of their breath the only sound. His face was unreadable in the gloom, his starlight-colored fringe, almost dry now, falling forward – nearly, though not quite, brushing her skin; his eyes, the color of rainclouds, smoldering.

She felt her breath catch as he shifted, never breaking eye contact, aligning their bodies with perfect precision – with practiced skill – and she realized, really understood, what it was that they were about to do.

And then, just as that understanding, that acceptance, caused a spark of liquid heat to ignite deep within her own body, he plunged into her, eyes still locked on hers, claiming and filling her with one driving thrust.

A ragged cry was ripped from her as her whole body arched like a bow, pushing back against him, inadvertently deepening the penetration and sealing, locking them together. Surprise flashed in his pale eyes and with a muttered oath he clamped a hand over her mouth; over the entirety of her lower face. Then he went very, very still, allowing her to adjust as she stared up at him in shock, tears now leaking from the corners of her eyes to streak down her temples and lose themselves in her already damp hair.

"Shhhh."

He offered no apology per se, instead waiting until it was clear that she wouldn't scream again, compromising the secret of their location should anyone be close enough to hear, then dragged his hand away from her mouth; over to her cheek, cupping it for a moment, and then up to her temple, smoothing her hair away from her face – a curiously gentle gesture.

"I didn't know," he said simply, quietly. "Do you want to stop?"

She said nothing for a moment; didn't trust herself to speak. She was trembling from head to foot, but not with cold; not anymore. Just with… sensation. She tried to get her breathing under control; wetted her lips; swallowed. Then, slowly, ever so slightly, still never taking her eyes from his, she shook her head.

Come what may, she didn't want to stop. What point was there in stopping now, when they'd already come this far, when she'd already handed her virginity to a Death Eater whose motives she knew nothing about? And anyway, though there was pain there, there was something else too, beneath it – a hint, a promise, of something exquisitely, inarticulately good, if she were willing to see this through.

And perhaps most simply, most basically of all, there was the warmth of it; the delicious, throbbing heat of him deep inside her body. She didn't want to give that up – the very thought of it made her feel bereft somehow.

"You're sure." He was asking her a question, but it came out as a statement. She bit her lip – nodded. For better or for worse, she was sure.

He lowered his head so that his mouth moved against hers when next he spoke. "Stop worrying your lip, Granger." And then he kissed her again, pulling her swollen lower lip into his mouth, saving her from herself. At the same time he withdrew from her almost completely, causing her to whimper plaintively at the loss of heat, of… fulfillment… then, after holding himself perfectly still for a heartbeat or two, slid home once more – wrenching a sobbing little groan from her as she arched instinctively to meet him yet again.

Then they were moving together, in a rocking rhythm that was beyond anything she'd ever imagined, and yet came as naturally to her now as breathing; meeting him thrust for thrust, striving with him toward the common goal of blissful, sweet release, Hermione now wrapping her legs high up around his waist, causing him to groan as he tore his lips from hers and buried his face in the soft place where her shoulder met her neck, licking and sucking her; bruising her, marking her. They came together, her orgasm crashing over her like a tsunami of pleasure and pain as he spent himself with a series of quick, hard thrusts deep, deep inside of her, leaving her gasping, shaking like a leaf in its wake. And warm, so warm, from the tips of her fingers to the tip of her nose to the tips of her toes – warm all over, but nowhere more so than where the liquid fire of his seed was spreading, deep in the core of her.