If Draco Malfoy was known for his pale blond hair and delicate features, Blaise Zabini was known for his achingly handsome, dark look. It was a look Malfoy did not and could not have, and therefore some girls swooned more for Blaise than they did for Draco. Blaise knew this, and he thrived in it. Sometimes, although not always, the number of chocolates and love notes he received exceeded that of Draco. Not that either recognized this, of course.

Blaise never had trouble getting a girl he wanted, but he didn't want many girls. He enjoyed company now and then, but most of the time he stayed single just because it opened more doors for him.

He tapped his foot. The music was getting repetitious, and he was growing quite bored. The party was still at its heights, but with Draco already gone off carrying the unconscious Hermione Granger, he did not feel like doing anything.

Of course, he knew he had to do something. It would be humiliating to let Draco Malfoy win this little game, and knowing that the blond friend was already taking the first step, Blaise knew something had to be done on his behalf as well. His deep brown eyes wandered the room until he realized that Ginny Weasley, being a sixth year, would not have been invited to the party; it was a secret party only for the seventh years. Chuckling to himself, he exited room quietly, ignoring a Hufflepuff girl with a black ponytail who said, drunkenly, something along the lines of 'I love you.'

He decided it would be best to return to the dorms and slowly made his way to the Slytherin dungeons. However, as he stepped onto a new marble staircase, it moved and landed him at the entrance of a cave-like dead end.

"Oh, great," he cursed under his breath. He turned to descend the stairs to where he had come from. Then-

"Thank Merlin!"

He turned sharply to find, to his amused surprise, Ginny Weasley herself emerging from the corner. She looked as surprised as he was.

As he had admitted before, Blaise had considered, for quite some time, that Ginny Weasley was rather attractive. The expected red hair suited her well, and she had a very nice body thanks to her devotion to Quidditch. His eyes trailed over her slowly without thinking: the round breasts under the curved white blouse, nice legs under her school skirt…

Blaise blinked. It was unlike him to have lost himself for that long. His face regained his signature smirk (he insisted that Draco stole it from him…it was an eternal mystery).

"You are that glad to see me?" he said in a drone, referring to her cry of 'thank Merlin!'

She scoffed. "You wish, Zabini. I was stuck in this corner for hours," she said, "it landed me here and the stairs rolled away." She quickly stepped down on to the staircase, afraid it may move again. The two quickly descended it and returned to the familiar hallway.

"What were you doing up so late?" he asked casually.

The two were not very close; Ginny considered him an enemy since he hung out with Draco Malfoy. Therefore she was a bit taken back by his talking to her so much.

"It's none of your business," she said crossly.

"Out waiting for your brother and his friends to come back from the party?" he asked. He smiled a little as he saw her flinch; he had been right on the mark.

"Is it over?" she asked.

"No."

"Then why are you out?" She looked at him as if he were crazy; she would never leave a seventh-year party early.

"Because there wasn't anything interesting there that I liked," he said. He smirked a little, letting his eyes wander over her figures again. "It's much more interesting out here."

Ginny furrowed her brows. "What are you trying to get at, Zabini?" she asked warily.

He laughed a little, and, to her shock, leaned over and gave her a short, swift kiss on her cheek. She was too surprised to react in time, and in the meantime he whispered in her ear: "you are cute, Ginny Weasley," and strolled off.

She stood there, stunned, for quite sometime afterwards.

When Hermione finally made her way to the Great Hall, almost everyone was done eating. Still feeling sick to the stomach, Hermione sat next to Ginny, who was putting marmalade on her toast.

"Good morning," Ginny said. "I didn't see you last night. Where were you?"

"I fell asleep somewhere else," Hermione said slowly, carefully picking at the words, "I didn't make it back to my room."

"Oh," Ginny said. Hermione found it odd that Ginny did not question her further, as she did not know what was going on inside the redhead's brain. Ginny was only half there; the only half was busy contemplating exactly what had happened last night with Blaise Zabini.

Of course, she had kissed before, and so a peck on the cheek was nothing, but Blaise Zabini? That was just random.

Hermione found it hard not to look over at the Slytherin table. She saw Draco Malfoy, as relaxed as ever, having brunch with his usual circle of friends: Zabini, Crabbe, and Goyle. Pansy Parkinson, though, wasn't near him; she was off in a different corner, looking miserable as she tried to shove omelet into her mug for some reason.

When her eyes moved back from Parkinson to Malfoy, she almost yelped; he was staring back at her. When their eyes met he smirked a bit, and, to her surprise, gave her a swift wink. She felt temperature rush back into her cheeks; it seemed as if he remembered whatever was going on last night, and she felt so vulnerable. She quickly turned away from him, her heart thumping fast.

Knowing Malfoy, Hermione thought that if they did sleep together, he would have spread the news instantly around the Hogwarts castle. However, for the rest of the day no one approached her or seemed to be talking about her. Of course, she was relieved, but it did make her even more afraid of what he could possibly be planning.

She was contemplating such thoughts while trying to concentrate on her Defense Against Dark Arts essay in the library. She had chosen to sit at one of the desks between shelves, as to avoid being spotted awkwardly by Harry or Malfoy. Hermione realized, however, that this was in vain when she saw the latter boy turning a corner into the passageway.

Hermione decided it was best to avoid him at all costs, so she pretended not to notice and leafed through a book at her desk. She knew her cheeks were flushed, but nothing could be done about that now.

To her surprised dismay, she felt him drag back the chair across from her and sit down. She expected him to say something, but he merely took out a parchment and a quill and started writing.

Several uncomfortable minutes (on Hermione's behalf, of course) passed, and she couldn't take it any longer. She bolted up and started packing.

"Leaving so soon?"

She glared at him. He looked ever so relaxed, but his eyes were still on his parchment. He seemed to be writing a letter of some sort.

"None of your business, Malfoy," she spat.

"Is that the way you should be speaking to the guy of your dreams?" he asked casually, finishing and signing his letter.

She flared up. "Excuse me? The guy of my dreams? You wish!"

He looked up from his letter with a feigned surprise. "You really don't remember, do you?"

"What the hell are you getting at, Malfoy?" she spat, her eyes flaming.

"I do clearly remember you confessing your undying lust for me last night, Granger," he said, looking quite amused as he folded up his letter.

"Undying lust?" cried Hermione. "Well, thanks for telling me that! Because you just proved that nothing happened last night."

"I wouldn't call it nothing." Draco was not to back down. "It was clearly something. Especially when you insisted that you pour firewhiskey on me and lick it…"

"I did not," exclaimed Hermione, her face bright red.

"Miss Granger!"

The librarian, Madame Pince, was at the end of the passageway, narrowing her eyes at the two. "This is a library, keep your voice down!"

"Yes, ma'am," said Hermione grudgingly, sitting back down. She picked up her things and shoved them into her heavy book bag.

"Don't think you're the only one who isn't happy about what happened," whispered Draco with a smirk. "If I hadn't been so amused by your pursuits, I wouldn't have laid a finger on you. You ought to feel grateful that you had the honor of being pleasured by me."

Hermione shot Draco an extremely hateful glare. He would have flinched if he had not been expecting it.

"You don't have any solid evidence to prove anything did happen," she said rather boldly. "I just know this is one of your nasty pranks. And either way, if I tell the authorities you are finished. As soon as I figure out what really happened, you are gone."

"Are you threatening me?" he asked amusedly. "I don't think you could walk around with your head up if you found out and told everyone what really happened. Perhaps I can repeat everything you said when you started stripping?"

"Shut the hell up, Malfoy." She glared at him, picked up her bag, and stormed away.

"I don't really understand how you can pull it off," mused Blaise, leaning back in his chair. The two friends were in their shared dorm room. "You are making her hate you even more."

"That's what I'm good at," grinned Draco. "Piss the girl off, then praise her."

"So what did happen last night?" asked Blaise curiously. "I saw you taking her off…you didn't really do it, did you?"

He stared at Blaise incredulously. "Do I really look like the type who would drug a mudblood so I can lay her? That's rape. That's low-class."

"Isn't that what she thinks, though?" laughed Blaise.

"No…I'm trying to get her to think she spread her own legs while drunk. She keeps on denying it, but I think she'll come to believe it."

"What makes you say that?"

"Well, she did wake up naked…" he grinned.

Blaise jumped. "You stripped her? Completely?"

Draco looked as if he thought nothing of it. "It was necessarily. She wasn't going to believe anything if she had any clothing intact."

Curiosity was apparent on Blaise's face. "How is she?"

"She's not too bad," said Draco. "I was rather impressed, actually."

"A prude, she is," shrugged Blaise with a grin. "She would freak out if her skirt was but an inch shorter than the school standards, though no one else really cares."

"Well, she does have a nice body," Draco droned. "But I barely touched the mudblood."

"Some will power."

Draco chuckled. You have no idea, he thought. Had she not been a mudblood, had she not been a friend of Potter's, he might have forgotten all about the low-class-ness of it all and had his way with her. He was a healthy boy of seventeen, after all.