Slowly, he crouched down onto the floor and lifted up a piece of the wooden surface, unseen because it was exactly under his bed

Slowly, he crouched down onto the floor and lifted up a piece of the wooden surface, unseen because it was exactly under his bed. Underneath was a bottle filled with a clear liquid.

"Besides, I won't drink as much as the other night, so it can't be that bad" he said quietly before taking a deep swig from the strong drink, enjoying the feeling of warmth spreading in his chest.


Chapter Seven

When Hermione got to the class room, Malfoy still wasn't there. Slughorn was sitting at his desk, sorting through papers and occasionally stirring a potion that was bubbling away in a miniature cauldron on his desk. He seemed distracted and didn't look up as she entered the room, so she decided to sit down.

As she heard footsteps behind here, she didn't turn but stared straight ahead, not daring to meet his eye. Was he going to give her that strange, hostile look again? She should be used to it by now, having received for the past 5 years, but somehow, this was different. It made her feel even more helpless then usually because he had been the only one able to see the truth. With those looks, he was denying his own observing nature.

Slughorn turned his back towards them and started speaking, rummaging in his papers.

"Glad to have you here, you two. This really is unnecessary, but as it is, I am going to have to ask the both of you to just clean up a little here. But watch what you're doing" he added sharply. "No messes here."

Hermione sighed while she could hear Malfoy scoff behind here. She was imagining his face, how his lips would pull upward into a sneer, and his eyes would lose some of their silver spark for a split second. Disconcerted, she shook her head to clear it from those thoughts.

"Miss Granger, I will ask you to clean the top shelves of this mantelpiece here, using this duster here. Be careful not to knock any of the glasses over, or you might experience a…nasty surprise. However, I am sure I can trust you with that. You on the other hand will do something else. I have here" he removed a stack of paper from a drawer that had been neatly organised and scattered them on the floor "some files that need to be sorted. I believe that you should be able to file them alphabetically. You will be released once you're done and are free to go. But until then…" He trailed off, then glanced at his watch and almost jumped. "I have to go." With that, he hurriedly left the room.

"Brilliant." Hermione could hear Draco mutter behind her. She didn't know why she was referring to him as "Draco" in her mind, but she didn't really find much wrong with it. After all, that was his name.

"Stupid…arrogant…Why…" He was quietly mumbling, cursing under his breath while he got up from his chair and stood next to the stack on the floor. Hermione didn't like seeing him in this mood; it made him irritable and difficult to talk to.

He stood there for a while, staring at the papers before sitting back down again, crossing his arms before his chest and looking away, his expression stern. She thought about saying something, but knew that it would only make matters worse. Looking up at the mantelpiece, she realised that it was far too high for her. How did Slughorn expect her to clean that if she couldn't even reach it?

She sighed in desperation, then got a chair and placed it as closely to the piece of furniture as possible. Testing if it was stable, she carefully climbed onto it and held onto the mantelpiece in order not to lose her balance. She stretched up her right hand and got onto the tip of her toes, but could only just reach the top; there were still a few centimetres missing to make her clean the shelf with ease. She slowly lowered her hand and turned her head to the side, breathing in deeply, only to realise that Malfoy was staring at her.

"You might want to watch that, someone as clumsy as you might actually fall and then there's the mess. Another bruise wouldn't quite suit you I believe" he added sarcastically, but Hermione stiffened. Any allusion to that still made her feel uncomfortable, especially coming from him. He had been so close to finding out the truth.

Draco was watching her reaction intently from his seat, keeping his face even. The way she tensed still didn't seem quite right to him, but he wasn't in the mood to care. She had laughed him in the face once; he wouldn't let that happen again.

He turned his attention back to the scattered files on the floor but was unable to get himself to move. This task was far below him, and there was no way he was getting down on his knees or picking them up to sort them out. That man could just go to hell.

Hermione had turned back to the shelf, carefully removing glasses filled with liquids, potions and other strange objects and placing them onto desks, trying hard not to spill or drop anything. As she grabbed the last jar, she did not see that its outside was smeared with a clear liquid that had been oozing from a crack, and that made the smooth surface slippery; the container escaped her grasp.

Before she had time to utter a sound, the realisation that the glass would hit the ground and smash struck her, and she bit her lips as she watched it getting closer and closer to the floor. Time suddenly seemed to stop as the jar stopped, mere millimetres away from the ground, and Hermione could not think of a reason. She hesitantly looked around, and there it was: Draco had gotten up and drawn his wand in a flash, which was now pointed at the jar; she had not heard him utter a word. He slowly lowered it to the ground, closing the space between it and the ground, before looking up.

Hermione was standing on the chair, eyes wide, but breathed a sigh of relief as she saw that nothing had gone wrong.

"Thank you so much." She exhaled, then closed her eyes and slowly sunk onto the chair, trying not to lose her balance. Malfoy simply snorted and looked away, considering if he should make a nasty comment. After all, he had helped her, and that was the strangest thing, because he had no idea why.

A pained gasp made him look up again, and he saw that the young girl was staring at her hands, palms turned upwards as he saw them gradually turning red, burning away her skin. He was up from his chair in a smooth motion and instinctively reached out for her hands, but she turned them away from him and he growled.

"We don't have time for such stupid games, so don't be an idiot and give me your hands."

"No, that's not it" Hermione muttered through gritted teeth. "If you touch my hands, this will happen to you too. Could you go and…get some help?"

She looked into his dark grey eyes, which were sombre and serious. She turned away.

"Alright. I'll be back in a bit. Just…don't move, alright?"

Hermione bit her lip and tried hard not to look at him, tears forming in her eyes. The concern in his voice made her feel dizzy, and in a way sad. Why couldn't he always be like that?

She heard him walk away, then curse lowly, shaking the door violently. Slughorn had locked them in.

The young Slytherin was pacing in front of the door, fuming, but stopped dead in his tracks as he heard Hermione gasp once again. Her hands had gotten worse, as hard as she was trying to wipe them on a cloth she had found.

He was standing next to her in a few big steps, leaning towards her and eyeing the palms of her hands carefully, then looking at her face. Her eyes were glistening with restrained tears that she was trying to hold back in vain.

"There has to be something that can be done here" he whispered.

"I'm…not sure. Not against this specifically, because I don't know what was in the jar, but I know what we can do against the pain and stop the liquid from burning my hands any more. No matter how much I try to wipe it off, it won't stop. I'll have to see Mrs Pomfrey later on."

"Once we get out of here" he muttered darkly. "So then, what can we do?"

The fact that he had said "we" was stranger than anything else, and caused a strange feeling to flash through Hermione's chest, making her heart flutter. There never had been a "we" before with him. How much actually came from him, and how much was born out of this situation that forced them to work together?

"This won't be very difficult, but I'm not saying that you have to do this" she said quietly, but he simply shook his head, signalling to her that he didn't care about any of that.

"What we need is a cooling paste, since spells usually don't work with that kind of burn. I can do most of it, but you'd have to put it on my hands, if you don't mind doing that…" She trailed off, not sure if he was willing to do that.

He scowled, and she was sure that meant. She tried to get up slowly without using her hands. "It's fine if you don't want to help me, I under-…" she broke off mid-word as a new wave of pain shot through her hands and she had to suck in air.

"Just tell me what I have to do!"

Hermione instructed him to get a few ingredients that were labelled properly in the cupboard and to mix them all together with grease to make a thick paste out of it. He worked quickly and efficiently and the young girl couldn't help but stare at the quick movements his hands were making, wondering where he had learned that. She had never seen him work like that in class.

He seemed intent on his task, his face in a slight frown as he was putting together the necessary ingredients. She tried to help him at one point, but her hands wouldn't move and she almost dropped something, causing her to give up and sit down against the wall, her cheek pressed against the cool and soothing stone.

"Here it is. Now let me do this…" He was kneeling before her, his body leaned in so closely that she could smell his skin and feel the warmth radiating off it.

"Be careful not to touch my skin directly, you can apply the paste quite thickly on it" she said softly.

She stretched out her hand, and Draco dipped his fingers into the bowl he had used to mix the ingredients and carefully applied the soothing balm. At first, it burned, and she had to grit her teeth and close her eyes tightly. As she opened them, he was looking up at her questioningly, but she simply nodded, and he proceeded.

"Thank you" she whispered, almost inaudibly, but he ignored that and kept on rubbing both the palms and the upside of her hands until the burning had ceased and made place to comforting numbness.

When he was sure her hands were both completely covered and had stopped hurting, he stopped, but instead of letting go simply sat there, staring at her hands, so delicate and small in his. Hermione was incapable of moving, caught in the moment, almost unable to breathe.

She was looking at their hands as well, looking at his lean fingers and his strong hands, tracing their contours with her eyes and following up his arms until they disappeared under his sleeves.

Tearing her gaze away from him, she slowly removed her hands from his and edged away against the wall, suddenly uncomfortable in their closeness.

"We should…I should finish up now, or we'll never get done with this" she said, more loudly then she had intended. They both flinched at the sudden, unexpected noise and Malfoy in turn moved away from her, standing up.

"You're right, but there is no way I'll let a clumsy mudblood step onto this chair again" he said, his tone mocking, but not bitingly sarcastic. She looked up at him, wondering what he meant, and he scoffed.

"You don't think I'm letting you do this again, or what? Besides, I will definitely not get down on my knees and sort those out" he pointed over his shoulder where the papers were still lying on the floor. "A book freak is probably more suited for that."

Hermione stared at him for a second before her lips stretched into a small grin. He was offering to take over her job while recreating the distance between them they were both so comfortable with. It wasn't that they hadn't been comfortable before, but it was the kind of comfort that bewildered them, not understanding how they could feel that way with the other.

"I agree. I don't see how an illiterate git like you could ever do something as simple as sorting out papers. I should probably just bandage these" she added, looking at her hands that were thickly covered and had started throbbing numbly.

"Here, take this" he simply said, pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket and throwing it at her. "Oh wait, I'm an idiot" he said, picking it up from the desk it had landed on and carefully tying it around one of her hands; her eyes never left his face. He then scratched his head, almost apologetically. "That's the only one I've got" he explained, but Hermione was too stunned to reply. He looked up, and their eyes met.

His face was only inches away from hers.


Hopefully this chapter was enough to please you all for two months ;)

Will update as soon as I can!