Chapter 14

A/N: Hello readers! We're nearing the end... Which is depressing. There's only 16 chapters in this story. *sigh* I'll be sad to see it go.

For those of you who read my other stories, yes, I have update three times in one day! Exciting, no?

As always, a huge thanks to GreekGirl for finding time to fix my mistakes even though she's swamped with work. Also thanks to everyone who took the time to review! It never fails to brighten my day to hear your thoughts on my stories.

~Frosty

Hermione rolled in her sleep and hugged the pillow she usually clutched tightly while she slept closer. Her eyes snapped open when the pillow didn't shift when she pulled it, but hugged her back, moving her instead. That was not normal pillow behaviour...

Jumping back and sitting bolt upright, Hermione reached out and flipped the bedside lamp on.

"Malfoy, what the hell are you doing in my bed?" She screeched, watching with satisfaction as he jolted awake and looked around for the cause of the commotion.

"Well, until a second ago, I was sleeping and now I'm watching you get all frazzled – which I'm not actually opposed to, I find it bloody arousing."

She let out a frustrated scream and levitated him off the bed, setting him on the floor. Had he been perfectly healthy, she would have just shoved him onto the floor, but she didn't want to injure him and keep him in her care longer; at the rate they were going, her sanity wouldn't survive the prolonged exposure to the Slytherin.

"You're going soft, I don't even have bruises."

"I don't want to extend your stay," she snipped.

Malfoy grabbed the edge of the bed to lever himself to his feet and crossed his arms. "I think you're lying. If you hate me so much then why did you stop the tossing and whimpering that woke me up the second I got into bed with you?"

"My mom used to get into bed with me when I was little and having nightmares. It wasn't you, it was just that someone was there." She was trying to convince herself as much as him.

"You mumbled 'Malfoy' in your sleep."

Hermione blushed and looked down, she'd long been aware that in times of extreme stress she was prone to talking in her sleep. It hadn't been an issue since she'd been living alone, but while she was in school, she'd gotten into the habit of just silencing her bed.

"I'm sure it was followed by curses."

"Actually, it was followed by snuggling. It seems that you can literally recognise me in your sleep."

Wiping a hand across her tired eyes, Hermione sighed. He was supposed to be making sure she was getting enough sleep – or something like that, according to his agreement with her boss, but this entire thing was just depriving the both of them of much needed rest.

Suddenly, she realized that he actually had been keeping his word to make sure she got enough sleep by coming into her room and comforting her when she'd been having a nightmare. That was almost sweet of him – if he hadn't used it as an excuse to get into her bed, then she'd have been touched.

"Just... go to bed Malfoy." She sighed.

He smirked at her and got right back in her bed.

"What's with you and sleeping with me?" She asked, getting frustrated with his perseverance. There really wasn't a point in trying to tell him to get back in his own bed, so she figured that she might as well try and get some answers out of him while he was there. Maybe she could just keep talking until he went away? Personal questions always seemed to make him close off and leave...

"I sleep better when you're there, and Malfoys want the best in everything, even sleep." He said simply, climbing into the bed with her and once again pulling her close.

Hermione sighed in contentment, hoping he would think it was a sound of exasperation.

Right before she fell asleep, she was pretty sure she heard him whisper into her hair. "You're not fooling anyone Granger."

For someone who once claimed to be afraid of her hair getting into his mouth and suffocating him, he was awfully fond of pressing his face into it.

She was fooling someone though; she was very nearly fooling herself into thinking that he just might like her too. He certainly wasn't acting like he only wanted to get into her pants – she couldn't see him going around and snuggling with all his conquests, it would completely ruin his reputation.

He was still there in her bed when she woke up the next morning. Hermione took advantage of his lack of movement to cast her diagnostic spells. Despite his refusal to stay bedridden like he'd been told to, Malfoy was healing well and would be able to go home soon.

The blonde shifted in his sleep and reached an arm across the bed to the space she'd vacated, trying to pull her closer again. The prat was even pushy while he was sleeping! It was kind of adorable...

Shaking her head, Hermione left him to his rest. She nearly jumped out of her skin in fright when she heard a loud bang from the kitchen.

It was possible that something had just fallen over in there, but Moody's motto of 'constant vigilance' was ingrained in her after the war. Wand out, she stalked across the room and flung open the door to the kitchen, startling the intruder on the other side.

"Pansy is sorry!" The elf wailed, looking at the wand pointed at her with horror.

Hermione immediately lowered her wand with a sigh. "Pansy, what are you doing here?"

"Master Draco sended for me. He said that he no wanted to worry about you killing yourself cooking or the both of you with poisoned food." The elf looked at her like it was desperately seeking her approval.

Threading both hands into her hair and groaning in frustration, Hermione forcibly held back a scream, she didn't want to worry the elf.

"Excuse me for a moment," she said with a big smile at the anxious creature. The elf nodded and went back to cooking what smelt like a delicious breakfast.

"Malfoy!" Hermione screeched at the top of her lungs. She was glad that she decided a while ago that it would be a good idea to silence the outer walls so none of the other people in the building could hear anything happening in her flat. Otherwise, she wouldn't be able to properly express her displeasure about the things Malfoy did.

Muffled swearing and a thump came from the other room, quickly followed by Malfoy, all dishevelled and with his wand out. "What's wrong?" He demanded, looking frantically around the room for the danger that had caused her yell.

She dragged him out of the kitchen and cast a silencing charm on the door so that Pansy wouldn't hear them. "Why. Is. There. A. House. Elf. Slaving. In. My. Kitchen?"

He visibly relaxed and shoved his wand in a pocket of his pyjama pants. "Is that all? I thought someone was murdering you in there..."

"You know how I feel about House Elves and yet there is one in my kitchen cooking!" Hermione shrilled, bringing herself up to her full height and glaring fiercely.

Draco had once seen one of those little dogs that rich Muggles seemed to keep in their purses, try to take on a much larger dog that only seemed to look down at the tiny fur-ball with a mixture of bewilderment and amusement. He now understood what that larger dog had felt.

"Are you even listening to me?" She yelled, poking him in the chest.

The blonde rubbed the sore spot and glared at her. So maybe she was slightly more dangerous than the purse dog had been, particularly since she was armed with her wand and a devious brain capable of shirt monsters and any number of evil things.

"I'm listening, I just don't really see the point of this conversation. Pansy likes helping, she was getting depressed at the Manor with no one to ask her for things. I know you're all for elf rights, but do you really want to stop her from doing what she loves just because you don't think it's right?"

Hermione turned her back on the blonde and peeked around the kitchen door at the elf happily humming as she prepared their food.

"Pansy, do you want to be freed?"

The elf turned surprisingly hard eyes on the Gryffindor. "Master Draco promised me before I comes here that no matter how many clothes yous give me, I won't be free. He also promised that no matter how much you yell at him, he's not going to free me."

Malfoy snickered at the expression on the brunette's face when she heard what the elf had to say. "Shall we sit down for breakfast since we're all awake?"

With a huff of irritation, Hermione sat down at the table and let Pansy set a plate piled with food in front of her. Malfoy got the same treatment after he sat down across from her.

"So what do you have planned for us today, Granger?"

Hermione finished chewing the bite of bacon in her mouth, glaring at him the entire time. "I'm going to spend an entire day being a vegetable and watching the telly because apparently, I'm not allowed to go into work and get something productive done."

He didn't answer her, seemingly satisfied that she wasn't planning on doing anything strenuous that day. Or maybe he was just happy that she wasn't going to be anything interesting while he was trapped in her flat and ordered to stay in bed.

Pansy took the plate from her when she tried to bring it over to the sink, causing Hermione to thank the elf with a sunny smile and then turn to try and burn Malfoy with her eyes. He just smirked at her and went back to eating his breakfast in smug silence.

Hermione huffed in irritation. Burning him with her eyes was only putting a strain on her poor face. He was completely scorch-mark free and she was risking wrinkles from maintain the squinty expression. Maybe burning him with her wand would be more effective... But then she had to worry about him retaliating with his wand as well.

She slammed the kitchen door behind her and threw herself onto the sofa. It was immature behaviour and she knew it, but it made her feel a little better to express her anger.

The tension in the shoulders and the irritation that had been making her feel like hexing someone had just started to ease and she was beginning to relax when Malfoy swaggered out of the kitchen and plopped down on the sofa beside her, much too close for her emotional comfort. He was probably doing it on purpose.

"You know there's plenty of other places for you to sit that don't involve invading my personal space." She snapped at him, trying to tug her poor feet out from under his butt. The prat had sat right on top of her legs. It really wouldn't have taken him much effort to move then, hell, it didn't seem to take him much effort to move her.

"Yes, but sitting over there wouldn't piss you off, so I prefer to sit here." He wiggled a little, trapping her left foot again just as she'd almost managed to free it.

Well, that proved her theory that he went far out of his way to get on her nerves. Maybe his parents didn't love him enough when he was a child so now he desperately craved attention. Who was she kidding? There was no way Lucius and Narcissa loved their child enough, look what they put him though. That still didn't give him an excuse to be a git all the time.

Hermione sighed and turned back to the telly, determined to ignore him. By refusing to acknowledge his efforts to annoy her, she would annoy him instead of vice versa – or that's what she hoped would happen. It was possible that he'd just escalate his behaviour until she silenced and bound him and left him on the porch for the garbage man. Briefly, she wondered if they'd take him as-is or if she'd have to bag him first.

He lasted a whole five minutes of sitting on her feet in silence before he became frustrated with her lack of response. That was when the crunching started. He relinquished her feet when he rose from the sofa to get a bag of crisps from the kitchen.

When he returned with the crinkly bag of crunchy snacks, her feet were firmly tucked under her bottom, safe from Malfoy. He scowled at her for ruining that bit of his fun, but it freed the cushion right beside her so he could sit even closer.

With a smirk, Malfoy settled even closer to the Gryffindor than before and opened the crinkly bag. "Want one?" He offered, whacking he arm with the snack.

Hermione snatched the bag from him and threw it across the room, not caring that the crisps fell out to sprinkle across the floor as the bag made a graceful arc over her living room. Once its arc was complete, it crunched against the wall and dumped in a messy pile of crumbs. It didn't take much effort to cast a quick spell and clean up the chips, so she wasn't concerned about the mess.

"Why are you doing this to me?" She demanded.

He raised an eyebrow. "Offering you snacks? You know Pansy is going to have to clean that up now."

She wasn't even going to address his nonchalant acceptance of the fact that he could make a huge mess and then expect the elf to clean it up for him. "No! You're here. You insist on tormenting me with your presence and on top of that, doing everything you can to make me uncomfortable. You may enjoy these little games, but they're only adding to my stress, which was reaching pretty impressive levels even before you were here!"

The smirk he'd been wearing almost constantly since they'd set foot back in her flat faded and he sighed. He seemed to be contemplating something very hard, that intense look was back in his eyes.

"What would you say if I told you I love you?" He asked.

Hermione snorted. "I'd tell you you're about as likely to love me as Luna is to eat something normal for once." She pictured the purple tentacles from the previous day and then the orange slime that kept trying to crawl away... "I once saw her eat a sandwich with enough dirigible plum jelly on it that the quarters kept floating away. She had to tether them down until she was ready to eat them.

"You're not changing the subject. Who are you to tell me who I can and can't love?" Draco demanded.

"I am a MUDBLOOD! In case you don't remember, you've made your feelings on people like me abundantly clear."

"I haven't been treating you like someone inferior, and I don't feel that way about Muggleborns anymore."

Hermione raised her eyebrows at him. He'd been ordering her around and attempting to get her to bend to his will since day one. How was that not treating her like someone inferior? Sure he'd stopped with the slurs, but that was hardly enough.

"I stand by my earlier statement; there's no way you love me. Maybe you want to shag me, but you don't love me." She insisted.

He was starting to get angry with her adamant refusal to believe that he could love her. If he didn't know better, he might think that she assumed he wasn't capable of love, but he had a feeling this had more to do with her insecurities than with his capabilities.

It was obvious that she wasn't going to accept his hypothetical situation as anything other than a joke. He sighed again. "This whole conversation is why you're not ready to hear what Snape told me."

Hermione hated not knowing things, she was frustrated with his refusal to give her the answers she wanted and confused by the direction he'd taken their conversation. Was he trying to mock her? Had he somehow realized that her feelings towards him were a little more than the hate she did her best to present?

Abruptly, Hermione stood up and stormed out of the room, refusing to let him just mock her anymore. She slammed her bedroom door behind her. Sitting there and trying to relax was an effort in futility if he was going to sit with her and mock her. If he was going to do that, then she'd just get her relaxing done in her room. Alone. With the door locked.

"Granger, we're not finished with this conversation!" Malfoy yelled from the other side of the door. He banged on it, but the spells Hermione had cast kept him firmly on the other side.

That is, until he blasted a hole in the wall beside the door and climbed into the room. She really should have learned from the past and reinforced all the walls as well.

"You have to stop doing that!" Hermione yelled at him. She'd taken the protection spells off the walls when he'd left, not thinking she was going to need them again. Normal houseguests didn't feel the need to blast holes in the wall to get into rooms she was trying to keep them out of.

"Then you have to stop walking away from me while I'm talking to you!"

"You were talking nonsense!"

"No, I was asking you a serious question," he insisted, talking to her like a child, which he should have known was a bad idea.

"You weren't! You were just mocking me because I love you," Hermione said. Her eyes widened and she covered her mouth with her hands, shocked at what she'd revealed. Draco wasn't the type to love, he was the type to shag and leave. She berated herself for revealing her feelings, knowing that she probably wasn't going to like whatever answer he had for her.

Raising her eyes to his, she waited for him to move, to speak, to do something.