Disclaimer: I would like some of whatever drug gives you the idea that J.K. wrote this.

(a/n: Ah, my dear readers! Welcome once more to the dark den of my internets…it is cold in here. Perhaps you should have brought a sweater.

Anyhow, my plans for this fic have as usual taken strange and irritating turns. My original concept was to have each chapter take place in real time (like an episode of 24, get it?) but in about five seconds I realized I do not posess whatever writing ability would allow one to accomplish such a format. So instead the "hours" will serve only to inform you of how long they've been sitting around together. Though that'll probably stop being workable as well and I will look quite foolish.

Ah well. The best laid plans of mice and men…often involve flipcharts.

Hmm. I think I've mixed my metaphors again.)

Hour Two: Entrapment
No one said he was going to be here.

We stared at each other for about a year and a half without saying a single word, just him looking at me and me looking at him and both of us trying to work out just what the hell we were doing in the same room.

"I…I've got detention here." The words came out funny, like they didn't want to come out at all. The way he'd been looking at me made it hard to think. The short moment of pure shock, no guards, no glares, the first expression of genuine emotion I'd ever seen on that haughty idiot face of his. It made him look different. Not good or anything, just…different.

He flicked his disturbingly blond hair like a twelve-old-girl and gave me a look meant to indicate that I was wasting his precious time.

Which meant he was just as confused as I was.

"That miserable prune McGonagall gave me one as well."

"Her office is upstairs."

"Severus's is a floor down."

"Hmm."

Complete silence.

"I'm leaving."

"Don't let me keep you."

I glared at him. I couldn't help it. Glaring at Malfoy is a given. I can't look at him and not glare.

But this time, it was partially to see if…

Ah.

His hand suddenly tightened around the part of his tie he'd been fiddling with while he talked.

Just for a second, his breathing seemed to stop.

I stared at him until he looked away, which wasn't long, feeling even more confused than before.

"It's…er…warm in here…isn't it…" He was staring at a spot some six feet to the side of my head as he spoke, his left hand pulling uncomfortably at his shirttail, his right clenched into a bone-crunching fist drained of all color.

And I could have sworn he was blushing.

OoOoOo

No one said he was going to be here. I wasn't prepared.

His eyes bored into mine for what felt like a century with an intensity I couldn't match to save my life

Stop.

Bloody.

Staring at me like that.

But he didn't stop. He just went on looking at me like I was the first person he'd ever laid eyes on, saying words I couldn't hear, being answered with sentences I didn't even notice were coming out of my mouth.

"I'm leaving."

Thank god. I'd have done anything to get him out of that room and put a few thick castle walls worth of distance between us while he was still so endearingly oblivious to the fact that I hadn't breathed at any point in the last two minutes.

There was no reason for him to know that my stomach was currently engaged in monumental warfare with my heart, which was pulsing painfully in my chest in a thoroughly nauseating way. He didn't need to know, he didn't want to know, and I sure as hell wasn't going to let him find out.

"Don't let me keep you." I found myself regretting the words instantly, as they prompted a second round of Harry Potter's Patented Death Glare.

Part of the problem with being looked at by Potter is the realization that you've never actually been looked at properly in your life. Not really looked at, looked at by eyes that seem to swallow the whole of your skin and muscles and blood and bones until there's nothing to stare at but your soul. Stupid as it sounds, that's exactly what it felt like.

And there's nothing worse than having someone see you for exactly what you are and knowing how much they hate what they're looking at.

"It's…er…warm in here…isn't it…" Not really much of an excuse, but at this point I was lucky to be forming words at all.

Somehow I get the terrible feeling he knows exactly what he's doing.

OoOoOo

"Look, Potter—"

"Er, Malfoy—"

"—no one said you were going to be here," they finished in unison.

There they were. No getting around it; both had spent too many long moments frozen to the floor, motionless in complete confusion, arguments or attacks postponed and the farthest thing from either of their minds.

Of course you'd never get them to admit that that meant anything, and it was possible that even they were unaware that it did.

The powerful urge to look at something, anything else surged through the room. Harry looked at the floor. Draco looked at the ceiling. More long silent seconds passed.

"There's no way they'd give us detention together. You're in the wrong place."

"And you aren't? Last I checked this wasn't Severus's office."

"It's not McGonagall's either."

They were each more likely to swallow their wands than admit to the other they'd gotten lost.

Harry glared experimentally at Draco once again, but he was already staring fixedly at his shoes, not to be taken in.

"Have you got some sort of problem with looking people in the eyes, Malfoy?" Harry asked moodily, blaming his irritation on the simple fact that he was within a hundred yards of Draco Malfoy.

"Not people. Just you."

There was a silence as loud as a commercial jet taking off in your eardrum and a pause as long as a line at the DMV.

Draco's hand flew to his mouth as he realized what he'd just said and then back down again as he realized how stupid that made him look.

Harry tried to make a sentence in response, but only ended up with a mouth full of blood and a sore tongue as the words "What the hell is that meant to mean?" got caught some where in the vicinity of his teeth.

Draco wanted to throw up. Or die. Or possibly both.

"Er." Pause. Harry got no further.

"Um." Pause. Draco couldn't come up with another word.

"I think I'll just…go now."

"…right…"

Harry sighed and turned away with a strange and unexplained reluctance he pushed instantly aside and immediately tried to forget he'd felt at all, and Draco suddenly found the ceiling tiles to be the single most fascinating thing he'd ever seen.

He turned the doorknob.

He twisted it to the right.

He twisted to the left.

"Malfoy," Harry said slowly and without turning around, "why is this door locked?"

(a further a/n: I know what you're thinking.

"Did I just read an entire chapter of nothing but two people in a locked room staring at each other?"

Yes. Yes you did.)