Waking up was never an easy task for Ms. Adrienne Zabini. Especially when she had not received enough sleep during the night to keep her going through the day. The dark skinned girl slowly started to come to consciousness, feeling that her headache was still there. She realized that she was no longer lying on her brother's lap, however, her head wasn't on the cold leather sofa. Instead it was lying on something soft that carried the faintest scent of citrus. She inhaled softly, burrowing into the fabric under her head.

"I take it you like the smell of my jumper, Zabini," Draco Malfoy's voice drawled from beside her.

Adrienne slowly opened one of her dark eyes and looked up at him. On his lap was a Defense Against the Dark Arts book from fifth year from the looks of the notes in the margins. His grey eyes were looking down at the book before him, and there was a confused or frustrated, she was unable to identify the actual emotion, look etched on his face. Adrienne sat up slowly and stretched. Her hand went to the jumper beside her and she handed it to him. "Wash it for me; don't want your droll on my jumper."

Adrienne made a face and then looked towards the dying fire. "You didn't sleep well last night, did you?"

So this vein of conversation was not dead. Adrienne sighed heavily and looked at him from the corner of her eye. She saw that he had not looked away from the words on the page while speaking to her. The expression, the one that she couldn't name, was off his face and had been replaced with his usual mask. "No," Adrienne answered honestly. She saw no reason to lie to him about it at this point, she'd just fallen asleep on his jumper.

A silence fell between them. Adrienne placed the jumper on her lap and folded her hands on top of it. She listened to the crackling of the dying fire. Her thoughts started to travel to the task that she had been assigned. While it wasn't one that was particularly difficult, not in comparison to the one that the boy beside her had received, however it was still a task assigned to her by the Dark Lord. No one wanted to fail the Dark Lord, no matter how trivial the task. Slughorn seemed like it would be easy enough to get him to like her. It was apparent to her that he already liked her, or at least something about her. Her family linage, perhaps. She was a pureblood after all. He had asked about her mother; was it possible that he had taught her when she mother, Kya Turay? Adrienne absentmindedly started to play with the fabric of the jumper in her lap. It would be easier if she knew what exactly it was that Slughorn found so interesting about her. She understood what he liked about Potter, he was the bleeding Boy Who Lived, she could even see the desire to have Belby in the group. However, what did he want from her?

"Adrienne," Draco said to her quietly, pulling her from her thoughts. "What do you know about Vanishing Cabinets?"

Adrienne was taken aback by his question. They hadn't talked about that since last year in their Defense Against the Dark Arts class. However, Adrienne, possibly the brightest witch in Slytherin House, remembered, she always remembered. "They were used a lot in the First Wizarding War. There has to be two of them in order for them to work properly. When connected, then they create a link. It's like Apparition without the threat of splinching."

"Give me an example," Draco said not looking up from the book.

"Okay, say the Dark Lord is breaking into Granger's house," she saw the corner of his lips twitch upward. "If she has a Vanishing Cabinet in her home, and say Weasley has one as well, and they are paired together, Granger can leave her home and appear in the Vanishing Cabinet at Weasley's, if there is a threat to her safety. It's a magical tunnel of sorts." Adrienne closed her eyes. "If the pairing is broken then the user with fall into Limbo until the Cabinets are repaired or they will die there."

"Is that all?" he asked her calmly.

Adrienne shrugged in a noncommittal way. "I'm sure that there is more to them."

Draco closed the book and tossed it on to the table before them. The blond Slytherin closed his eyes, bringing his fingers to the bridge of his nose. He exhaled, pushing all the air from his lungs. "Are you hungry?" he questioned, glancing at her.

As if on que, her stomach muscles tensed in an almost painful manner. The dark haired girl chanced a look at the clock in the common room. She'd slept all afternoon and into the evening hours, it was now nearing 6:30. Adrienne flushed, she'd been a sleep for at least five hours. Had he sat there the entire time?

"Did you eat?" she questioned.

"I've been here with you," he told her with a shrug.

"You didn't have to stay with me," she told him. "I can assure you that I am completely safe in the common room. The worst that would have happened was I might have gotten cold."

"A thank you would have sufficed, Adrienne," he told her. He stood slowly, after a long moment of silence. "I am heading to the kitchens. You may join me if you like. If not, you should go to your room and go back to sleep. Your choice."

Adrienne watched him as he exited the common room. She then turned her attention back to the jumper on her lap, carefully plucking a loose string from the collar. She sat a moment longer, feeling the chill of the dungeon air brushing over her skin. She tugged the jumper over her head and stood, stretching as she did. She then made her way towards the exit.

She was glad for the extra jumper as she stepped into the dungeons and strolled down the corridor. Ahead of her, she could hear the faint sounds of footsteps. She pulled her hands into the sleeves of Draco's jumper and continued down the corridor at a quicker pace.

"No need to run," Draco drawled lazily when she finally caught up to him on the stairs leading up from the dungeons and to the basement.

Despite the basement only being one floor above the dungeons, it was significantly warmer there. In fact, there were even some spaces where light filtered into the windows.

"Don't wrinkle my jumper," Draco said lazily as they walked towards the end of the hall.

The two Slytherins came to a stop in front of a large painting of a silver fruit bowl. Draco reached out and tickled the pear. The green fruit squirmed, giggling, under his fingers before turning into a doorknob. Draco took an awkward step back with his hands in his pockets and the door swung open.

Adrienne had always liked the kitchens. There were four tables lined up in the room, she'd always assumed they were directly under the tables in the Great Hall. The elves were always milling about, talking to one another or cleaning. However, they all stopped what they were doing and turned their large eyes towards the door.

"Mistress and Mister!" one of the elves exclaimed bowing to them both. "What can the elves do for you?"

Adrienne turned her gaze to Draco, who said nothing. "I know dinner only ended a while ago, but we'd like something to eat." Adrienne's tone was a little awkward. She was never really sure how to address the elves at Hogwarts. At home, she could talk to the elves however she liked, they were her family's elves. True all elves were elves, and they were all to be treated as such, but they weren't her elves. So any statement that she said to the elves came out as a sort of pushy request.

"Oh, of course! Sit, sit, sit," the elf said gesturing towards the tables.

Almost out of instinct, the two walked to the table closest to the wall, the one directly under their house table and closest to the fireplace. She settled into the seat, placing her elbows on the edge of the table tucking her hands under her chin. Several elves came towards them, carrying trays of silverware, plates, meats, fruits, vegetables, desserts, and drinks. They placed the trays in front of them and then scurried away.

Adrienne poured herself a glass of pumpkin juice and then tilted the bottle over Draco's glass as well, he nodded to let her know to stop. They were quiet as they ate, not needing to hold a conversation. Or not having anything of mutual interest to discuss. In all actuality the latter wasn't true. They had at least two things that they could have been discussing. One of them being the tasks that were assigned to them by the Dark Lord, however she doubted that he would want to discuss that. The area also wasn't very secure. They had no idea where the loyalties of the house elves stood. The second would be their engagement. However, after the discussion they had last night, it didn't seem like he wanted to discuss that either. So she opted for remaining silent until he started the conversation.

"Why didn't you sleep well?" he questioned finally as she poked at her chocolate cake. Adrienne looked over at him blankly, as if she didn't hear what he has said to her. "Why didn't you sleep well?" he

questioned again.

Adrienne shrugged, not really knowing how to answer his question. She just knew that she hadn't been able to sleep. "Dunno."

He watched her as she scraped the icing off her cake with the fork before eating it. This habit of hers had always confused and amused him, to say the least. He had never seen her actually eat the icing while it was on the cake, she always ate them separately. It was so odd to him, however he never thought to ask her about it.

"Why?" he asked gesturing to the plate with one of his long fingers. She looked down at the plate with a confused look in her eyes. "The cake and the icing."

Adrienne looked down at the plate as if she were noticing this for the first time. "Oh, I don't know. I have always done it," she said with a soft shrug as she continued to eat her icing separately from the cake. Draco continued to watch her with an arched eyebrow. After a few moments, she sighed and scooped the icing on to the cake and then scooped the piece of cake, taking a bit of the two of them together.

The girl scrunched her nose. "It's too sweet together."

"It's the exact same as it is separately," he told her.

Too that, she shrugged as she started in on the cake. "It's messy together, you know? This way it's separate and cleaner." Draco snorted. "What?"

Draco shook his head and said nothing, instead sipped n his pumpkin juice. He watched her from the side of his eye, separating the icing from the cake in her peculiar way. After a moment, he turned his attention to the cake on his plate. He wasn't going to eat it. Instead, he pushed it around on his plate with his fork watching it break apart.

"Draco," she called to him. "Are you ready to head back to the common room?"

Draco turned his eyes towards the clock in the kitchens, seeing that it was nearing seven thirty. He had not realized that it had been an hour. He nodded to her. He needed to get her back to the common room because he required the rest of the night to get to work on his task. His was not as straight forward as her and required much more effort on his behalf.

The two Slytherins stood from the table and the remaining house elves bowed to them, before starting to clear the food off the table. Adrienne looked a little torn, as if she wanted to thank the elves, but Draco led her out of the room before she could say anything. In silence, they continued towards the common room. Adrienne clasped her hands behind her back as they walked at an even pace towards the common room.

Once there, Adrienne muttered the password and then turned her eyes towards Draco. "You're not coming tonight either?" she questioned as the common room started to slip into view.

"No, I'm not," he confirmed. "However," he continued as he reached into his robes and took his wand out. With a gentle arch shaped flick of his wand, he muttered, "Accio book." The Defense Against the Dark Arts book that he had been reading when she woke up flew into his hand. "I do need this. Goodnight, Adrienne."

The raven haired girl stood awkwardly, one foot inside the common room and the other outside in the corridor. "I," she stopped and nodded, not wanting to pry. "Right, goodnight, Draco."


A/N: Hey! Thank you for reading another chapter of Intertwined. I'm still having a lot of fun rewriting it and I hope you're still loving it. This is like 98 percent new chapter. Actually the past few chapters were also fairly new. A lot of little edits make a new chapter, right? Anyway, let me know what you think! Please, please leave a review.