The Third Task was in a week and all Hermione could think about were pale gray eyes and cold fingers on her cheek. Harry nudged her in the side. "Look, I'm trying my best but if you don't take notes we'll all fail," he whispered with a panicked look in his eye. History of Magic was his worst subject. Hermione shook herself from her memories and began writing: The International Warlock Convention of 1467...she hadn't seen Draco in person in ages. Only four times since the ball at Christmas. And it was June already, time for testing. Both of them had a lot of studying to do, and to top it off Hermione was spending her spare time running drills with Harry to help in the maze. She thought it sounded safer than dragons, but you could never be surprised with Dumbledore around what crazy magical things were going to pop up.

Since that night, when they agreed they could never be together, they had spent nearly every hour writing to each other. She had laughed and cried as she learned all about her red-letter love interest. He had been a pampered child, given every wizarding toy imaginable (and several that she had to have described to her in great detail to understand); his mother was in a wine club with her friends, which was basically a meeting of all female Death Eaters, but it was hilarious to watch them get drunk; he spent his winter holiday at a cabin in the snowy forest, which sounded lovely, and he promised to take her there one day, perhaps when his parents were dead and they were seventy years old.

She knew his boggart was his father, and that as a baby he had seen Muggle corpses at scenes like the World Cup before his eyes were hastily hidden by his mother. She knew he had trouble sleeping, and was more frightened than possibly anyone by the prospect of You-Know-Who returning. She often stayed up writing to him when he was awoken by nightmares of his Aunt Bellatrix's fiendish howling as she regaled them with stories from her past. She knew, too, that he admired Harry and hoped beyond hope that he could do something, anything to make the world peaceful again.

On the occasions when they had met up...oh, my. Once, he had packed her a picnic, which they shared in their bathroom (jinxed to be locked and muffled) before exploring the concept of kissing each other some more. That tended to be the ending of their every meeting. But before things got intimate physically, they would talk, share, cry, hold each other: all the things they should have been able to do publicly but couldn't.

Physically, Hermione found it hard to keep herself under control, but Draco showed amazing restraint. He always asked her before taking a step into further intimate behavior, which usually meant-Hermione blushed bright red under her tanned skin-feeling under her shirt. On their last visit, her shirt had finally come off. Whoops. She had been inspired into this action by Draco's removal of his own white button up. He was strong for a boy of fourteen, with almost-defined muscles that she loved to run her fingers across. His chest was warm, unlike most of him, and his cheeked flushed pink every time she touched him there. He had brushed kisses along her neck and before she had had time to finish a murmur of "May I?" she was lifting her shirt up and over her head, and unclasping her bra. She knew she could stand to lose a few pounds bunched up on top of her jeans, and her breasts were smallish and uneven, and she was scared when he had stepped away from her, leaving only the tips to his fingers on her side.

"You, my darling, are the most lovely, most sensual, most alluring sin I have ever committed," he had said to her as he studied her body. His eyes moved back to hers and he locked her in a kissing embrace, his hands exploring the skin of her back and stomach, moving up, up...

Harry nudged her again. Goblins agree to exchange of resources, followed by betrayal and massacre... "Let's work on defensive spells tonight."

"That sounds fine," she whispered, hardly trusting her voice not to quiver.

"You okay, Hermione?" he asked after a pause. "It's just, usually you seem more...anxious this time of year."

"Oh, yes, Harry, I've just been trying to, er, relax more," she said, "Like Ron." On the other side of Harry, Ron was dozing into an empty notebook. Harry looked at her with apprehension.

"You want your study habits to be more like Ron's? Is that what I'm hearing?" He was smiling, and with his shaggy black hair he looked like a playful stray puppy.

Professor Bins muttered "Hush, Perkins, this is important," and continued his drone.

After a long night of hexing Harry in the Gryffindor common room, and then unhexing him several times before he could defend himself, Hermione settled in to bed. If he couldn't beat a fourth year, she wasn't sure what chance he stood in the Final Task.

"Ew, Hermione, pull up your blouse, I can see your nipple!" Pavarti shrieked. They giggled as she nervously tugged her nightgown up. Idiots. If they couldn't tell the difference between a woman's nipple and a fading hickey, that just proved how fake their conquest stories were. "Bunch of pretend sluts," Draco had started calling them. She grimaced at how true she found it. Speaking of Draco, she pulled out her notebook.

How's my fallen angel tonight?

Can't sleep. Could use a midnight snack?

And I'll just bet I know what you're craving.

Pretzels ;)

Well, you know I can't tonight, I've got to finish that letter to the Ministry about Elvish Wages. Which you said you'd help with by the way! Plus, the pretend sluts already know I'm here. I've no excuse to leave.

Figured as much. It's the same every night.

We had last week.

Mm..last week.

Oh, Draco quit!

You're gorgeous, 'mione.

And you're delusional.

Draco sat up in bed, smiling in to his notebook. Delusional, was he? You're right, he scrawled, I must have imagined it. Too perfect.

Hardly. I miss you, she wrote.

Oh how he missed her as well. Hermione was the most splendid thing that had ever happened to him. He was sleeping more regularly, acing his classes, and except for the times that missing her made his gut cry out in misery, he was much less cynical. Perhaps they could be together after all. Perhaps he was still young enough to change the impression he left on people. Perhaps the Dark Lord would never return, and his followers would die out, and he could have half-blood children with bushy brown hair and chocolate eyes. Perhaps.

He loved hearing her talk about SPEW. It had started as a bit of a joke, but it really had him interested on a deeper level. Was it their oppression that made them crave servitude, in a blind Stockholm syndrome kind of mirage? Or would freeing them really make them worse off, starve them of their purpose in life? Was Dobby a simple outlier or the spark of a revolution? And darling Hermione was so enthralled by it, so empassioned. Her eyes glittered as she planned out meetings and protests. She had gained three members since the First Task, two Gryffindors and a Hufflepuff, making a sum total of fifteen. Exhilarated, she had organized a club meeting, spending hours making snacks, writing up agendas, making more pins in case they brought friends, and no one had shown up. Draco knew because he was waiting around the corner, ready to be in defiant attendance if anyone actually had turned up. He wanted people to see him there and join. As it was, no one came, and he snuck in quietly, him and Hermione eating all the snacks she had prepared and strategizing for the future of SPEW. She put on a brave face for him, but when he held her she let out tears of frustration.

What time is it? he asked. His father had denied him buying a watch last time they were in Diagon Alley, saying a watch was a luxury only men could have and Draco was not yet seventeen. As such, he was always asking her the time.

Nearly eleven.

Reckon I should sleep.

Yes, I reckon you should. Goodnight Draco.

Goodnight, darling. He shut his notebook and his eyes. Her handwriting swam through his mind, tight and jagged and small. He could almost taste her pink lips. He slid his knees up in bed to cover any evidence of his thoughts. That was it; he had to be with her. Openly. Every day. At the end of the Third Task, he was going to waltz right up and kiss her, and he would proudly hold her hand down every hall and he would make people accept it. If his parents refused to accept and protect her, he would move in with his disowned Aunt Andromeda. He knew she was in the Order back during the war, and maybe she could help him now. He ought to write to her. It had been, what? Thirteen years since he'd seen her? He hoped she would help, but would his mother do the same for her daughter Nymphadora? Draco wasn't sure she would. He fell asleep and dreamed he was living with Hermione in the kitchens with the elves. They were wearing handmade socks and Draco kept saying "We're free now Hermione! Look, we're free!"