Chapter 12: Arson

Malfoy knew something that Hermione did not, but she was going to find out.

If it were anyone else, even one of her closest friends, she'd be brainstorming for ways to ease him into revealing the information she needed. Hermione had become quite skilled in this maneuver back in school, when Harry used to keep secrets from her like it was his job. There were several ways to go about it, and the simplest one was to convince the person not only that they wanted to tell her, but also that telling her had been their idea. If that didn't work, a more difficult back-up was to get the information in such a way that they didn't even know they'd given it to her.

She was not generally in the business of tricking her friends, and such methods were a last resort, but she believed that it was always for the greater good when she achieved her goal.

And who would refute me?

Hermione was of the opinion that everyone had at least one talent or special skill, even if they weren't sure what it was or how to develop it, and hers was processing information.

Everyone knows that I know best.

Put simply, she could understand most things better than most people; therefore, it was only logical that she should be privy to important facts.

They've told me so many times that I could not possibly forget. I do not forget.

Before going home, she stopped at a café in Diagon Alley to collect her thoughts. She ordered a coffee, sat in the sun, and pulled out her notebook. At the top of the first blank page, she wrote down a few of her knowns: Malfoy and Goyle had formed some kind of partnership or agreement, which meant that they must have shared a common goal. To reach that goal, they must have needed some kind of Dark or illegal object from Borgin & Burkes.

She would start at the beginning: what needs did Malfoy and Goyle have in common? Hermione loved charts and graphs, so she drew a Venn Diagram and wrote their names at the top. She could only come up with two things Goyle needed, since she didn't know him very well: money and external brainpower. Malfoy didn't need either of those things. She was stuck already, and Goyle's words kept playing over and over again in her mind: "I can't afford…"

At the bottom of the page, Hermione scrawled her conclusions: Malfoy and Goyle could have been buying absolutely anything, for any reason, after which one or both of them may or may not have planned to depart for an unknown location. Then, she scribbled viciously across the rest of the page, slammed her notebook shut, and downed the rest of her lukewarm coffee in one gulp. She noticed two businessmen looking at her like she was crazy from a few tables away, and she huffed indignantly, as though this were a ridiculous thing to think.

Sadly, she really couldn't blame anybody for thinking she was off-balance lately. It wasn't a completely inaccurate way to describe the situation, but that didn't mean it was her fault. Maybe it was Malfoy's fault, but she was beginning to doubt that, which meant that she must have had some kind of long-dormant crazy gene hidden somewhere in her DNA. Hermione did have a few spacey aunts on her mum's side, so she probably got it from them. Dementia didn't just spring out of nowhere: the seeds had to be planted and watered with loving care, and some kind of lunatic gardener had to come by periodically and weed out all the sanity. Malfoy was definitely her gardener, but that didn't mean he'd planted the seeds.

Even worse, Hermione had apparently lost the ability to make good analogies in her head, a skill which had always pleased her greatly. Now she was mixing metaphors left and right, like Faulkner in a blender. To top it all off, the businessmen were still staring and whispering to each other like a couple of killer bees at a board meeting! She made like a tree and Apparated back to her flat.

Malfoy was still there, which was marginally better than the alternative. She'd expected him to be asleep, but instead he was sitting on her couch and looking out the window.

"I can't wait until we get out of here," he said, without bothering to look at her.

"I didn't know we had plans to go somewhere."

"You can't possibly have thought we were going to stay here. Why would we do that?"

"We have nowhere else to go."

"We could go anywhere, once this is over."

, but how different would it really be?

She studied the back of his head. It wasn't the worst idea she'd ever heard, but the idea itself wasn't the problem: it was that "we" again. Theoretically, after this was done (which she couldn't even begin to think about yet), they could each go anywhere separately, but he seemed to be planning to go together. She wasn't about to clarify, but it sounded like he actually wanted to be with her, and not even because he needed her. It was a nice change.

"Like where?" she asked, after a long pause.

and what could be safer than rock bottom?

"I told you: anywhere. Don't you ever listen?"

There was the other issue, of course: even if he wanted to be with her, she didn't know if she would voluntarily choose to be around him. She still thought he was annoying, really for real, even after all these weeks of constant contact. On the other hand, wasn't anyone annoying under those circumstances? Also, being irritating was far from the worst flaw someone could have. For example, they could be boring or needy or dim-witted, and Malfoy was none of those things. He had a whole host of dangerous and terrible flaws, but at least he was interesting and smart.

He turned to look at her when she didn't respond. "Now that we're friends, you should cook me dinner," he said. "You cook for your other friends."

"In that case, you should think of something friendly to do for me," she pointed out. "There has to be something."

quid pro quo

"I do plenty for you. I keep you entertained, for one. You probably don't want to talk about the other things I do for you," he said meaningfully, and she tried not to blush. "And so I'm not going to. Isn't that thoughtful of me?"

"What do you want for dinner?" she asked, changing the subject. She had to make dinner anyway, so it might as well be for both of them. The main reason she never cooked for him was because he was usually asleep at dinner time.

"I like surprises," he said.

She went to the kitchen and tied on her apron, and he sat at the table.

"I saw Pansy Parkinson today," she said, once she'd gathered her ingredients and placed a pot of water on the stove.

"That's unfortunate."

"Yes, it was. She's engaged," she said, dragging raw chicken through the flour.

"And you want to know who'd marry her," he surmised. "I don't blame you. I found it strange myself, but I can't really talk. I found somebody who wanted to marry me, and I don't even have fake boobs."

She grinned, since he couldn't see her face anyway. It was funny. "I thought it was just her nose that was magically enhanced."

"She spent a year abroad and came back with a whole new body, and everyone had to act like she'd always looked like that. She even got two inches taller."

"Interesting," she said, vindicated. She didn't have a ring or a dead bird wrapped around her neck, but at least she still had all the same parts she was born with. She dropped some butter into a skillet and watched it melt. "Who's she marrying?"

"I can't remember his name, but he was one of Blaise Zabini's initial backers. They met at some corporate function, which I only remember because it was a rather comical situation. Pansy got Goyle to bring her as his date specifically so that she could upgrade to an aging rich bloke, and her future husband is in his sixties."

"Well, I'm sure they'll be very happy together."

"If by 'they,' you mean Pansy and her galleons."

No one spoke again until she'd finished cooking, and Hermione kept herself busy thinking about how she would bring up her next subject. She knew it probably wouldn't help to ask him about Goyle and Mr. Borgin, but she was going to try anyway. She set two plates of food on the table, sat across from him, and held her fork above her food until he'd taken a bite.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" he asked. "It's good. You know it is."

"It's polite to wait for guests to eat first." She shrugged and began to cut her chicken.

"Except I'm not a guest," he pointed out. "I live here, and it would be more polite if you would acknowledge that."

"That's not what I meant."

"What are you really waiting for, then?" He ate quickly in small bites, and it didn't look like he chewed much before he swallowed them. Conversely, Hermione was concentrating on chewing each bite twenty-six times, or twenty-three or whatever the recommendation was, so as not to get a stomach ache.

"Goyle is convinced that you're alive. He says he's quite certain."

"Oh, you talked to Goyle? How's he doing?"

"He's very upset, mostly with you. How does he know you're alive?"

"He doesn't. He just thinks so. I guess I can see why he'd think that, but I can promise you he doesn't have any proof. He's just mad because I can't help him anymore."

"Help him with what?" She clenched her fingers around her silverware, thinking about sharp things and dull things.

"Why can't you let this go? My association with Goyle has come to an end, and he'll get over it soon enough. It's almost ironic - he's the only person with enough scraps of information about my habits and desires to figure out what happened to me, if he were smart enough. If you and Goyle were switched, you'd find me."

Hermione rearranged her food, stabbing her chicken a few times for good measure, but it didn't stop her from getting more annoyed. "What's that supposed to mean? Stop avoiding the issue. What were you and Goyle buying? What were you planning to do?"

"I keep trying to tell you, it doesn't matter. If you want to know so bad, you can figure it out. It's a matter of outsmarting Goyle at this point, and don't tell me you can't do that. Clearly, he said too much to you, which doesn't surprise me at all."

"He said you betrayed him." If Malfoy's emotions made sense, maybe she could have come up with a way to make him angry, but they didn't. As long as he was calm, he could turn everything neatly back around to her.

"I didn't. Maybe it would count as betrayal if I'd planned to end up here without telling him, but this was just a happy accident."

'Happy' wasn't exactly the word for this accident, in Hermione's opinion. "So your betrayal was leaving him?"

"No, my betrayal was leaving without him. Maybe they're no different, but I think it's a useful distinction. Look at me, giving you hints. Isn't that generous?"

"Leaving without him," she repeated, thinking carefully. "So, you both wanted to leave? Were you going to leave together?"

"No, because this happened," he explained. "Nothing that didn't happen was ever going to happen. The window of time has passed when that would have been possible."

"What could you buy at Borgin & Burkes to help you with that?" she asked for what felt like the hundredth time, trying to keep the desperation out of her voice. "Where were you going to go?"

"Nowhere that would have worked out as well as this. Maybe we've all learned a valuable lesson here, Granger: money can't buy happiness." He gave her a condescending smile between bites, and she felt like jamming her fork down his throat.

"I'm not sure if I've learned anything, but I think I should have by now, and it wouldn't have been that." She tried to think of something she'd learned, but all she could come up with was 'never help a dying person,' and that didn't sound right. 'Don't talk to strangers,' maybe? Malfoy wasn't a stranger, but she'd thought he was in the beginning and talked to him anyway. Kindergarten had failed her.

"Why'd you make two plates if you're not going to eat anything?" he asked.

"I thought I was hungry, but I'm not anymore."

"Does this mean you're giving up trying to figure out this big secret that you think is so important?"

"No." She was just taking a break. Things were starting to fit together, and thinking about it too hard would burn her out, as though she wasn't burnt out enough already.

"Well, that's good. As I've told you before, I'm a fan of your unrelenting bullheadedness."

"Thank you," she said, gritting her teeth. "I can't say I enjoy your inability to answer direct questions, though."

"I don't remember you asking me any of those. Most of the questions you ask are indirect."

"Fine, here's one: what were you and Goyle buying at Borgin & Burkes?" she asked, once more for the road.

He seemed to think about it for a second, chewing his food for once. "All right, that one was pretty direct."

"Well, my point's proven," she said, cursing herself for getting her hopes up.

"Yes, I suppose you were right."

"I don't want to be right. I want you to answer." She poked her chicken again, which was already full of holes at that point.

"You should eat your food," he said, indicating her plate with his fork. "Also, I noticed you got new plates. They're unpleasant."

She couldn't discern a whole lot of emotion on his face; he seemed to look oddly serene most of the time, and she kept wondering if he did it on purpose to be ironic. He did like irony, which she supposed was something they had in common. She took an extremely large bite of her chicken and chewed it before answering. "Well, I like it, and I don't care what you think."

"Yes, you do. You already think your plate is uglier than you did ten minutes ago."

She took another substantial mouthful, ground it up, and swallowed it. He was right, of course – she couldn't even look at the plate anymore. "No, I still like it," she lied.

Having finished the majority of his food, he poked the remaining egg noodles around to form different patterns. "I'm trying to cover up the worst parts of this design, but I don't think it's working."

"I know what you're doing. You want to see if you can make me break another set of plates."

His hand stilled, and he grinned up at her. "You can't blame me for trying."

Her fork came down hard on her last piece of meat, and she jammed it into her mouth uncomfortably and finished the whole thing. "I can blame you for a lot of things."

"And I don't really mind, as long as you know not all of them are my fault."

"Some of them are."

"Yes, that's true, but maybe not the ones you think." He finished the last of his pasta and pushed his plate away. "I like eating breakfast with you better than dinner."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Dinner has finality to it, or something deep and wise like that. Pretend I said something meaningful, would you, Granger?"

Lie for you again, why not?

"It doesn't matter, either way. Sure." She managed to cram the rest of her noodles into her mouth and get them down her throat. She stood up and started piling the dishes in the sink, to further the illusion of normality. She began to scrub the pan she'd used to grill the chicken, leaving his comments alone until the silence took the edge off them. "Usually, when one person cooks, it's the other person's job to do the dishes."

"I thought I was a guest."

"We've established that you aren't."

"Well, I don't know how to do dishes your way. Why don't you just use magic like a normal person?"

"Using your hands every so often is good for you, and it's not that hard. Come over here, and I'll show you." She continued scrubbing as she heard him push his chair away and move to join her at the sink. She handed him a plate and the sponge, and he took them reluctantly and looked at her with disdain. "The sponge already has soap on it. Just rub it over the plate until it's clean, and then rinse it in the hot water."

"This is gross," he said, pulling a face. He held the sponge between his thumb and forefinger like it was a dead bug, and she couldn't help but be offended.

"Do it anyway. I don't have any house-elves."

He began to poke the plate ineffectually with the sponge. Then, he stopped and shrugged at her. "See? I can't do it. I wasn't cut out for dish-washing, and neither were you."

"Everyone can wash dishes, Malfoy," she said sharply. "It's easy."

"No, I think other people should have to do this sort of thing."

"And I think you should try harder."

She turned on the hand spray and vigorously began to rinse a pot. He hadn't moved yet, so she turned to look at him accusingly. He dropped the plate on purpose, and it shattered at their feet. It didn't sound as nice when someone else was breaking things. She looked down at it in shock for a second, then back up at him, and he shrugged again as the heat shot up her spine.

"What is wrong with you?" she asked, practically growling. Anger was becoming comfortable for her; it had largely replaced fear in her spectrum of emotions, which felt wrong. Then again, she couldn't decide which was worse – at least anger tended to get things done.

"Plates are boring, and washing them is even worse," he said. "I'm trying to get all the boring things out of your life, and you don't even appreciate it!"

"Plates are normal, and washing is clean! Why can't you appreciate those things?" She banged the pot against the sides of the sink to emphasise her point, and it sloshed water onto the countertop and over her arm.

He leaned in close, and she realised the hand spray was still on, so she sprayed him in the face.

"Fuck, that's hot!"

He fell back against the counter in shock, throwing his hands up in random directions. She moved the spray down to his chest, soaking his clothing, and then he lunged forward and wrenched it out of her hand. Before she could take a step back, he grabbed the back of her neck like a kitten and hosed down her hair. She screamed and tried to get her nails into his skin, but he smacked her hands away.

The water filtered through her hair and ran down her face in warm streaks, in her eyes and nose and mouth and ears. She couldn't see or hear, and she could barely breathe. With his hand on the top of her spine, she felt like she was floating up to break the surface of a dark lake. Her hair was the seaweed, obviously, so this metaphor made quite a bit of sense – she congratulated herself for a second before resuming the fight, flailing her hands wildly in his general direction.

The water was streaming down her clothes and pooling around her feet on the floor. She lifted her hands and tried to push it out of her face, and then she tried to push against him. She could hear him laughing over her shrieks, and she finally managed to duck under his arms and turn the faucet off. He looked down at the sprayer in confusion, and she pushed him back against the counter, crunching over the glass pile, and held him by the shoulders.

"You do not have the right to break my dishes," she said, breathing heavily. She took one hand off him to throw a soggy curl out of her face. Her mascara was running painfully into her eyes now that they were open again, but she fought to maintain eye contact.

"You don't have the right to scald me," he said, shaking his hands indignantly, like a cat who'd stepped in a puddle. He spat some water into her sink and wiped at his nose with the back of his wrist.

"I didn't scald you. It wasn't that hot. You're going to replace that dish, and I am certainly not going to break the rest this time." Her hair was sticking to her neck uncomfortably, no matter how many times she tried to bat it away, and her shoes squelched whenever she shifted her weight.

He looked down at the broken dish in amusement, his hair dripping onto the floor. "Aren't you the one who has a wand?"

Oh, right. Well, she would have thought of that eventually. Hermione pulled her wand out of her pocket and used it to repair the dish, and then she dried both of them off. Malfoy immediately began to fix his clothing, brushing it off with an air of superiority, as though he were above this. Hermione wasn't buying it for a second: he lived for physical altercations. She was too tired to do any more hand washing, so she used magic to clean the rest of the dishes in the sink.

"See how much better that is? Why didn't you do that to begin with?" he asked, gesturing to the dishes with one hand as he fixed his hair with the other.

"I told you, you need to use your hands sometimes. I think it's lazy to use magic to wash dishes."

"Well, it's pointless to rub that thing on them with the soap. I doubt that would even get anything clean."

He leaned back against the counter and inspected his nails. She caught her breath in the long silence, and it was oddly disappointing the way things had calmed down. She studied the area around her sink, and it no longer bore any signs of a struggle, which was too bad. It was more exciting a minute ago. Maybe it was pointless to wash dishes at all, if they were just going to get dirty again, and they'd all break eventually. Furthermore, it was pointless to end a fight if there wasn't a clear winner.

She picked up one of the clean plates from her drying rack and turned it over in her hands, noting the way the water droplets curved over the smooth surface. It was logical and right, gravity in action, molecular structure and particle motion. She spread out both hands and let it hit the ground, sending porcelain pieces out in waves. She smiled down at the wreckage: it was a much better reflection of the situation in her flat. There was no more denying it: she liked plates better when they were broken.

"You are so weird, Granger," Malfoy said. She smiled at him, and she couldn't tell whether he was impressed or disgusted. "I don't think I'll ever figure you out. Well, probably someday, but that means we've still got plenty of time."

She kicked some of the glass shards playfully, and he grabbed her shoulders and pushed her against the sink. She looked up at him expectantly, and he grabbed another plate from behind her and tossed it over his shoulder. It hit the ground with a happy crash.

"It's a good thing I'm here to help you break your dishes," he said, and then he kissed her.

Together, they crunched through the path of water and glass and backed up through the door and down the hall. He was going forward, and she was going backward. He was taking off her clothes before they even reached her bedroom, and she tore at his from the bed in retaliation. The sun had gone down, and in the darkness she felt things and stopped thinking.

When they were lying side by side an hour later, she noticed it was raining. Malfoy was already asleep, but she stayed awake a few more minutes to watch the drops roll down the window in parallel lines. She imagined herself breaking that window and jumping out and flying, but her eyes were too heavy.

Hermione was in a grey room, and she thought it was a rather nice change from the white one. It wasn't so sterile, and the doors were black with silver knobs. Redecorating didn't change the game, though, so she opened a black door and braced herself.

There was no one. The walls were darker, and there were more doors, and she opened one again. Nothing. She kept pulling knobs and throwing open doors until it was so dark she couldn't see anymore. It was getting warmer, too, like she was moving toward the hot, beating centre of some great and powerful beast. The doorknobs were burning her hands, but still she felt frantically along the walls and turned the handles and rushed forward until she found the one with tongues of flame curling beneath it. Her knees gave out, and the hallway grew longer and longer as she crawled forward on her elbows to the inferno, until she could just about touch it and -

There was a noise so loud it blew out her eardrums. She woke up, for real this time, and sat up in bed and stared at the closet door.

Dreams didn't break glass, and neither did real babies, and neither had either of them. There was only one thing that broke that kind of glass. She wrenched herself away from Malfoy's arms and stumbled out of bed, clutching the sheet and her wand. She still couldn't hear, so she didn't know he was following her until he squeezed her shoulder in front of the black closet door and turned her around to face him.

His lips were moving, but he could have been saying absolutely anything. He appeared to be repeating the same words again and again, pausing when she didn't respond, and the static slowly cleared in her brain.

"What's wrong with you? Can't you hear? Don't open that door!"

She tilted her head, trying to figure out what he meant. Everything was a door. She turned away and pulled open the one that led to her closet. There was nothing on the floor, and she had to open another door before she'd see it.

"Don't look at it, Granger! I mean it!"

She lifted her wand, and he squeezed her shoulder hard.

"Don't look at it!"

She brushed off his hand impatiently and unsealed the floorboards.

"Stop!"

Out of her peripheral vision she could see his hand moving up like he was going to grab her again, but she lifted the boards into the air before he could do it, and they both froze. The boards hovered above the grave-shaped hole in the ground as time as she knew it slowed to a halt, and she didn't think it was ever going to start again. Unfortunately, it did.

There was their baby, lying on the floor in a pool of broken jar shards. She could just barely see it in the moonlight from the window, and she thought they were looking at each other for a second - Hermione Granger and the miniature, mostly-fresh Malfoy corpse - but then she remembered it didn't have eyes.

It didn't have eyes, that lucky little bastard. Well, she wasn't sure how this got in here, but it had to go. The static was rising in her ears again, and amid the fog of noise it almost sounded like there was another person in her bedroom, but that didn't make sense. The hand came down on her again, and she looked at it.

"We have to kill it," she explained, to no one in particular.

"It's already dead." She moved her eyes up the arm until she remembered whose it was.

"They didn't do a very good job the first time, then. If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself," she said. He was silent for a long time, his grip slowly tightening on her shoulder as he stared at the kid with shocked revulsion.

"What is wrong with us?" he asked at last. "This is the worst thing anyone's ever made, and we made it! You were right the whole time, Granger. We're crazy! We are absolute lunatics!" He paused to shake her for emphasis, and her legs weren't feeling overly strong just then, so she wobbled back and forth rather fluidly.

"Isn't this a fine time for a moment of clarity?" she asked bitterly. She was looking at the living Malfoy, but she could still feel the other one. "Why couldn't we have done the responsible thing and checked ourselves into St. Mungo's before we starting pulling teeth?"

"That's why I told you not to look. The only way this could ever have worked out would be if we never looked at it, especially me. I mean, it's my corpse! This is what my body will look like when it's dead, Granger! Well, if I were shrunk by a shaman or something, I guess. Also, it was only one tooth," he pointed out, absurdly.

"I'm going to kill it," she reiterated. She did regret looking, but at least it was dark. That meant that the image would either be less clear or less accurate in the nightmares that were sure to follow this incident.

"Before it kills us."

"It can't kill us," she argued. "It's already dead."

"That's what I was trying to tell you!"

"Well, then I guess we agree!"

"Yes, all three of us!" He finally took his hand off her shoulder, seemingly because he needed both hands to create a strong enough gesture for how he was feeling in that moment. She remembered now that he was naked.

"So, we're going to kill it," she repeated once more, uncertainly. Her mouth had been open so long that her teeth were starting to dry out, and now she had to concentrate on keeping her eyes awkwardly off his skin. They were drying out, too; she kept forgetting to blink.

"No, that's not what we agreed on, but also yes, and fucking do it already!" He paused, his eyes bulging as he viewed his remains. "Fuck!" he repeated, for good measure.

She turned and aimed her wand at the uninvited thing and settled on a spell for a powerful cleansing fire, and soon it was engulfed in a cloud of cold blue flames. They took over her whole closet but only burned the corpse, and the worst smell that Hermione had ever known filled the room. They watched it until it burned down into nothing. When the spots on her vision faded, she cast Reparo on the remaining glass shards, and they reassembled into a perfect jar. Of all the things that didn't make sense, fixing her jar topped the list, but it was the right thing to do. That was also why it felt so out of place,: if someone only did one right thing per day, it was bound to stand out.

She exhaled, and there was a silence so long that she'd grown certain she would never hear a noise again.

"What am I supposed to do now?" Malfoy asked, startling her.

"What were you going to do before?"

"I don't know."

"Then you're no worse off."

"I'm a lot worse off, Granger," he said. "There's less of me."

There's less of me, too, but I'm not complaining. It's easier to walk around this way.

"I'm sorry," she said. It seemed appropriate, but she didn't really know what it was for.

"No, tell me what I'm supposed to do."

"Why don't you figure it out for yourself? I don't even know what I'm supposed to do, and that's a bigger priority for me."

"Do you want me to stay here or not?" he asked.

"I don't know," she admitted. She looked at him in the meagre light, and his face wasn't serene for once. He was conflicted and maybe even angry, and it upset her more than she might've thought, but she didn't know what else to say. He glanced at the jar and then back at her.

"I don't think that's good enough, at this point," he said, like he was scolding her. "I'm going to count that one."

"As what?"

"Get out." Now he was definitely angry, and the situation was slipping out of control. The only thing she could hang onto was her sheet, transparent and useless, but she couldn't very well hang onto him. Not with her hands, anyway.

"I didn't tell you to get out," she said desperately. "I said I didn't know."

"Well, maybe you'll figure it out, now that you've reached the magic number."

She opened her mouth to argue, but he stepped forward and kissed her out of nowhere, just when she thought she couldn't get any more confused. She tried to trap him in her arms, but then he let go. She stood as still as possible, like a statue of a goddess in some ancient temple with the sheet draped across her breasts. Time was speeding up to make up for that moment when it had frozen, and she was determined to slow it back down again. If she didn't even breathe, maybe this moment could last just a few extra seconds. Sixty-one would be fine. She wasn't asking for much.

He gathered his clothing off the ground and put it on and walked through the bedroom and the hallway and the living room. She followed him a few paces back. He stopped in front of the door and touched the knob without issue, since Hermione had foolishly allowed him to touch everything. He lingered there, and she clutched the sheet tighter around her body.

"You told me to leave, and I have to do what you say," he said, before an expectant pause. "And you can say it whenever you're ready, as long as it's soon," he concluded, still without turning around.

Her fists were clenched so tightly that her nails dug into her palms. It was on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn't form the words. She was the one thinking in dead languages now. Meaningless syllables flowed through her brain, backwards words and strings of consonants without vowels, runes and numbers and exclamation points.

Her thoughts were louder and louder, but he couldn't hear them, and he opened the door and walked out and closed it behind him. She waited about five minutes in silence, staring at this other door. Like a pot of water, it took about that long for Hermione to reach a full, rolling boil.

"Say what?" she screamed, to her empty flat. "What do you want me to say?"

She'd run out of words, but she hadn't run out of screams, so she kept going until her vision darkened and she had to stop and breathe. She fell sideways onto her couch, and it smelled like Malfoy. Until then, she hadn't even realised that she knew anything about his personal odours. He smelled like a delusional psycho with a contagious case of anarchy fever, mixed with her shampoo. Hermione could buy separate shampoo for freeloading roommates all day, it seemed, and they would still continue to use hers.

She'd rarely been alone in the past month, and she wasn't used to it anymore, and everything had happened so fast. More importantly - or maybe it didn't matter at all, one of the two - what was Malfoy going to say when they asked where he'd been? Would he lie for her? Could he lie? What if they gave him Veritaserum? Did Hermione even care if anybody knew anymore?

Yes, she did, but only her other two remaining friends. All the strangers in the world could think whatever they wanted. She was dimly aware that she wouldn't feel that way in the morning, when she was better at thinking again, but it wouldn't compute now. She didn't know what time it was, but she was more worried about what would happen if she stayed alone in her flat for another minute. It seemed likely that she'd disappear completely.

She'd just wink out of existence, and everyone would say, 'Where is Hermione? She never finished that research, and I need more advice to ignore!'

Well, not quite. Some people would say that, and others would say: 'Where is Miss Granger? She said she'd decide the watching-paint-dry case by Monday, and we haven't even looked at the listening-to-grass-grow files yet!'

Or: 'Where's that bird from The Golden Trio? She said she'd speak at our grand opening, and it'll be bad for business if she doesn't show up.'

With two: 'Where's our sister?'

And just one: 'Where's Granger? She hasn't said it yet.'

Good questions, all around. Where was Hermione, indeed. Well, she was about to be in Harry and Ginny's living room, most likely waking the baby.