When Draco returned to the common room that night, he found Hermione in front of the fire, sheets of parchment spread out across the floor. He scowled, causing her to glance up at him briefly before turning back to her work. "Studying to try to get ahead of me, Granger?"

"Actually, I'm working on the patrol schedules for the prefects if you'd like to participate in any way," she replied coldly, not looking up at him.

Draco scoffed at the notion. "Help you? As if." He began to climb the stairs towards his room.

"Thank goodness, I thought I'd have to suffer through even more time with your miserable ass," she snarled after him. Draco stopped dead in his tracks. Perhaps working on the schedules was a good idea. After all, the Mudblood preferred if he didn't… And when had he ever obeyed her wishes?

"Actually," he said, ambling back over to her and sliding onto a couch. "Making schedules sounds quite fun."

Hermione rolled her eyes, but mentally patted herself on the back. Sure, she didn't actually want him around, but at least she could trick him into helping her. Two could play at that game, Malfoy.

Throwing him a cold stare, she passed him two sheets of parchment. "Make sure that the Hufflepuff prefect schedules don't overlap with the Ravenclaw's." With that command, she turned back to the other pieces around her and scrawled something on one of them.

Draco was filled with disgust. Granger had the nerve to tell him what to do? Absolutely not. "And why the hell shouldn't it overlap? There needs to be multiple prefects patrolling at once, one person couldn't cover the whole school alone, you idiot."

Hermione rolled her eyes, but didn't look up at him. "The Slytherin prefects and the Ravenclaw's will overlap. I'm not the idiot, you're the one who can't manage a simple transfiguration."

With that comment, Draco leaned forward and threw the schedules to the floor. "And who's the one who's lost her touch in Potions?" He retorted menacingly.

She met his eyes, hers fiercely shining. "At least I can make a potion without cheating."

Draco snarled. How dare she accuse him of cheating? Changing around the ingredients did not qualify as cheating! "At least my lover's not off snogging plants!"

The girl gave a humorless laugh. "At least I actually know what love is! You're so cold you can't even feel love!" Their faces were less than half a foot away from each other, causing Draco's gaze to travel instinctively from hers eyes to her lips. For a muggle born, they weren't all that disgusting looking. He would have expected them to be chapped or at least covered in lip gloss like the gross kind that Pansy seemed to like… But no, her lips were smooth and barren. Draco flung away this meaningless detail and reclined on the couch, his expression inexplicably smug.

Hermione was confused. Why did he suddenly look as though he had won the argument?

"You think you're in love with the Weasel? Please."

At this, Hermione's anger returned. "How dare you judge my relationship!"

Suddenly, Draco's face was mere inches from her own. Her anger was mixed with surprise, which she desperately tried to hide from her expression. She resisted the urge to slide backwards and away from him. She had to hold her ground.

"Does he make your heart beat so fast you think it might explode?"

She sat there, utterly dumbfounded.

"When you kiss, do you ache for it to continue forever?"

Hermione swallowed hard, trying to assure herself that Malfoy had no idea what he was talking about.

"Do you want to fuck him until you pass out from exhaustion?"

Her break hitched.

"Do you trust him with your life?"

At this, she moved her face away from his. He was getting dangerously close to her, and it was actually scaring her. He chuckled, seeing this reaction on her face.

"Like I said, Mudblood," he continued in a whisper. "You don't know the first thing about love."

Hermione dared to blink, and he was gone. Draco had gone up to his dormitory without another word, quite pleased with himself. He had actually managed to scare her, something he had honestly never thought he could do. As he got changed into his sleeping clothes, he pushed away a thought from his mind. He wasn't sure where all of that had come from, because he could honestly say that he had never felt that way about anyone. That was the sort of thing that girls would tell him when he was atop them, sending them spiraling into endless orgasms. But did he really believe any of that? Of course not. True love did not exist, only excitement in the spur of a moment.

Yet the thought that he pushed away was the small trickle of hope that one day he might find all of that in a woman. That they might do more than engage or simply excite him. The thought was gone before he even had time to contemplate it.

In the next room over, Hermione laid awake, staring at the top of her four poster bed. She couldn't help but go over Draco's words again and again. Though she was sure that he himself had never experienced love (he couldn't have, could he?), she now began to question her own relationship. Sure, her and Ron told each other they loved each other often and almost without thought. But did he really make her heart race? Not really. Maybe that was because she had known him for so long, maybe the heart racing thing didn't really happen after such a long time.

"When you kiss, do you ache for it to continue forever?"

Hermione kept going over this line in her head. Ron's kisses made her blush or smile, but it was more often than not that she was blushing. Had she ever felt that intense desire to snog him endlessly? Though she hated to admit it to herself, she didn't think so. She didn't have much experience, but Ron's kisses were always wet and sloppy.

As for the third line… They had never done it together. Hermione had told Ron that she wasn't ready for that yet. Was that her, trying to keep from admitting that she didn't want that from him?

Hermione stopped herself forcefully, shaking her head to clear it. She needed to stop. She couldn't be doubting her relationship just because it wasn't up to Malfoy's standards. As if Malfoy had ever trusted any partner with his life. He had a new girl every week, if not everyday. All this talk about knowing what love is was rubbish.

Even though she tried everything to persuade her mind otherwise, she still fell asleep with a tiny bit of doubt.

~A WEEK LATER~

Hermione wanted to smother herself with a pillow. All she wanted was to get some work done or even sleep, but Malfoy couldn't allow that. Every night for a week, he brought over a new girl to have extremely noise and long sex with. It was like he had paid them to be extra loud and disturb her.

Groaning loudly into her hands, she had half a mind to go and bang on his door and yell at him to stop. Yet she didn't want him to think that he was actually getting to her. Although he probably suspected that he was; every morning, she looked even more sleep deprived than the night before.

Malfoy hadn't brought up their little conversation about love again. It was almost as if he wanted her to think about it for herself, to decide whether or not she found truth in his words.

At the moment, however, Hermione couldn't take it anymore. She hadn't slept in a week and he had now upped the ante- instead of one girl, he was now doing two at once. Whipping out her wand, she marched down the hall and cast a silencing charm on Draco's door. Sure enough, the noises stopped. She had almost made it back to her room when she heard his door whip open. Glancing behind her, she saw Malfoy step out into the hallway, completely naked and covering his junk with a pillow. His mouth kept opening and closing like he was trying to talk but no sound was coming out.

She simply smiled smugly and cocked an eyebrow at him. She couldn't help but notice the chiseled abs on his exposed chest, how the messy nature of his hair made him look… Well, not disgusting. Maybe even downright handsome.

Sending these thoughts away, Hermione returned to her own room without another glance back. If he was making this a game, she had just been dealt in.

The next morning, Hermione hadn't even woken up yet when there came a pounding on her door. Smiling to herself because she had just experienced the best sleep of her life, she slowly ambled over to the door. Opening it, she took pride in seeing the pissed expression on Draco's face.

"What the fuck, you stupid bitch?! Who do you think you are, putting a silencing spell on me all night?!" He yelled, spit spraying into her face.

Narrowing her eyes, she leaned against her doorframe. "And who do you think you are, sleeping with a different girl every night? Some kind of sex god?"

Draco crossed his arms and cocked an eyebrow. "What can I say? No girl can resist me."

Hermione scoffed, disgusted. "I know one."

With that, she slammed the door in his face.

Scowling, Draco returned to his own room. It was turning into an all out war. And if she wasn't going to give up her title, he would have to switch tactics. Draco Malfoy did not lose.

~THAT AFTERNOON~

His eyes scanned the hall for the Ravenclaw. He had spent all of that afternoon working on his plan, since it was Sunday. Now he just needed the right person to carry it out.

Just then, he spotted her. Julia Soresay was ambling down the hall with a small group of friends, chatting seriously about a homework assignment. "Soresay," he called out. She looked up and met his eye.

"What, Malfoy?" She replied without emotion.

"A word?"

Julia followed Draco into the nearest empty classroom, telling her friends that she would catch up with them later. Draco closed the door of the classroom and turned to the girl, who was waiting expectantly.

"I have a job for you, and I'm willing to pay handsomely."

Julia raised an eyebrow. "I'm listening."

Suspense! The heat is really building in the story... I don't know about you guys but I'm getting excited!-E