Apricity – Chapter Thirteen
Draco glanced to the left, into the alcove again.
Memories flooded his mind—memories that he was supposed to have forgotten, that he knew he'd never been able to—and he wondered if she'd remembered, too.
Fourth Year.
The Yule Ball.
Now that everything was different, he saw how wrong it was that he'd kissed her out of the blue. He hadn't even asked her. He'd just pinned her against the wall and taken what he wanted, even if he hadn't realized he wanted it. Swept up in hormones and anger, he'd reached into the void and ripped out the darkest parts of himself. What if he'd caused her to cry the way she had in Paris? What if he was just as bad as the man?
What if Draco was a monster?
He felt his heart sinking so low that it plummeted to the core of the Earth his father believed was his. He gazed into the shadows until his vision blurred and the lantern light looked foggy. His shoulders began to slump a bit. Draco liked to think he had changed, but what if that didn't matter?
Am I no better than the men who hurt her? Am I no better than the attacker, or than Weaselbee?
"I wasn't thinking we would actually snog." Her voice pulled him out of his somber reverie, and he looked down at her. She looked miffed. "Don't look so sad at the thought."
"I'm not sad at the thought," he murmured. I'm just worried I hurt you before anyone else ever did.
"It's not as if it would be far outside of your realm of experience," she said with a harsh breath. "Like I said earlier—I know you were all over this castle with witches when we were younger."
"You're right," he said. "I was."
"And look—" She walked into the alcove, each step she took ringing inside his heart. "—if we would have stood right here, under the lantern, but just outside the circle of light, then he would have seen us but not vividly. We could easily have made it look real."
He ambled in after her, hands still loosely in his pockets. He tilted his head to the side, his fringe falling across his eyes as she positioned herself with her back to the wall.
"See how the light barely hits me?" She held her hands up. "Voila."
He did see how the light hit her. She looked like she was glowing.
"You're saying this like you think it's gonna happen," he said.
She blinked. "Well, I mean—it's not as if this was the last night we ever do rounds. It's only December."
"And you're hoping to get revenge by the end of the year?" He chuckled, but he felt the mirth didn't quite reach his eyes.
"Hopefully, if the plan goes well. It doesn't have to be on this floor in particular, just any alcove we see." She gasped, her eyes widening with excitement. "Ooh! We could use a Disillusionment charm while we do rounds so that when we find him, he won't see us, and we can figure out which alcove to hide in. We can wait until he comes by, and then quickly . . . Like, get into position. Does that make sense?"
Draco scoffed. She had spent all this time coming up with a plan that involved him, while avoiding him? For weeks?
"You're willing to violate my parole, break school rules, and fake snogging in the corridors just to prove to him that you're a wanted witch?"
"Yes."
"But you're not willing to let me just walk up to him and punch him in the face?"
"I—" She looked off to the right in thought. "Yes. I mean—no. I'd rather do it this way, without violence. It works out better for you this way, and it's going to have a more lasting impact. It's more . . ."
"Painful?"
Another wince. "Yes."
"You should have been in Slytherin, Granger."
"Just—will you come here?" she snapped, waving him over. "We're going to practice this."
Draco sauntered over, his heart rattling in his chest like it was trying to escape a cage. He looked her up and down, stopping a foot or so away. "I haven't agreed to anything."
"I know, but—but I'm pretty sure you will. I mean . . . I'm not the sort to beg, but I will if I have to. Malfoy, I know it's petty and it's not very Gryffindor of me, but I desperately need this. I need to prove . . . Nevermind. Help me do this, okay? If you help me do this—if we plan it in advance and carry it out—then I'll never ask you to do rounds with me again. And—and I'll tell Minerva that you've been coming with me so you can get credit for it and not violate parole."
Draco arched one brow. The fact that she thought the Weaselbee was someone who deserved to have anything proven to him was laughable.
"You need my consent," he said.
"Of course I do!" she cried, giving him a look that could wither roses. Then, the fire faded from her eyes and showed him the Winter in her soul. Her voice lowered, as did her gaze. "Of course I do."
"All right," he said, straightening his spine and pulling his hands out of his pockets. He saw her eyes track the movements of his arms, scanning the tattoos that adorned them like she always did. He never knew if it was because she liked them before, but after their earlier conversation, he knew different.
He just didn't know what it meant.
Stepping closer, until the toes of their shoes were only one inch apart, he entered her personal space. She seemed even shorter up close, the way the top of her head barely reached above his shoulder. If he leaned forward, her hair buns would graze his chin. The light from the lantern only lit the area to the right of them, with faint light that barely glossed her side.
"What do you want me to do?" he asked.
"Huh?" He saw her shoulders jump, as though she hadn't expected him to ask the question. "Oh, here . . . Let me just put my feet like this, and . . . Bend my knee a bit . . . And maybe my hand here? No, here. Yeah, here. And then . . ."
Draco, who hadn't moved an inch, merely looked down his nose at her as she arranged herself in multiple positions, moving infinitesimally until she was in one that she liked. Seeing her from this distance, he could see parts of her face that he hadn't noticed before, even underneath the dim lighting.
He could see the way her nostrils flared a bit when she was frustrated, and the animated way her brows moved when something didn't work—like she was shocked it wasn't working for her because she was who she was. She didn't seem to want to touch him, which he understood, but he had to be realistic with her.
"This looks fake."
"No, it doesn't. It looks—"
"I can tell you right now it looks fake. Fake as Hell."
"How am I supposed to make it look real, then?" she cried, her hands held up in front her shoulders like he was aiming a wand at her.
Draco pursed his lips, scrutinizing her as he tried to figure out how to show her without showing her. He'd been in this situation thousands of times, with witches pushed up against walls, but never with one that he was scared to break.
He'd seen what she looked like when she fell apart, and he didn't want to be the cause of it.
"Can I touch you?" he asked, swallowing against the somewhat nervous way his throat bobbed. He lifted his hands in slow, small increments.
"Yes, for this, but . . ." she said, and in the pause after her words, he felt it. He knew she knew he'd been in the memory, and she knew that he knew she was trying to ignore it. They both knew that she was expecting him to follow along and figure out what was okay and wasn't okay, even though she didn't want to talk about any of it. ". . . Nothing untoward."
"What's your definition of 'untoward'?"
"You know." A one-shoulder shrug.
Draco's face slackened into a deadpan expression, and then he sighed. He racked his brain for what he could do to make the situation look real so that when or if this plot was to be carried out, it would look authentic.
Inside, his heart continued to beat in random patterns and his stomach had coiled into a tight knot that reminded him of the day he'd had to give his first speech in front of his First Year Defense Against the Dark Arts class. He could feel the storm whipping up, like rumbling clouds of thunder and grey, promising a hurricane with an unknown outcome.
And then Granger tilted her head back. It was so she could look into his eyes, or perhaps it was because it was awkward just staring at his bare chest above the neckline of his shirt. Whatever it was, it made Draco feel something like a shock to his system. It rolled up his spine, into his chest, and down into his stomach, where it shifted into something completely different.
Something he recognized.
His left forearm slammed against the wall above her head. The right one slipped around her waist, dragging her up onto the tips of her toes and pressing her firm against his body. She was warm in spite of how cold her hand had been earlier, and the juxtaposition of that and those cold palms pressing flat to his chest sent a chill through him. Before she saw it in his face, he dipped his mouth towards her left ear, effectively trapping her head between his raised arm and his lips.
"Like this?" he said, and his voice came out in a hoarse whisper. His hand was flat on her lower back, and he could feel the bumps of her spine through the fabric of her top.
"This is—this is f-fine."
Granger shifted, his arm keeping her from lowering back to the flats of her feet. Draco pulled his head back far enough to look her in the eyes.
"You're as rigid as a board," he said.
"I'm not," she said, but she was.
"If you want it to look real when we do it, you're gonna have to relax," he said, trying to keep his voice calm in spite of the rapid beating of his heart. He hoped she couldn't feel it slamming against his bones.
"I know that," she whispered, and he saw a flicker of something familiar in her eyes. Something he'd felt when he was a passenger inside her mind, walking her memory like a nightmare.
Fear.
"This is because it's me," he said, "and you don't trust me. Which is fine—you don't need to trust me to fake a snog session. But I have no intention of hurting you."
Her hands were still flat against his chest, pushing as though she wanted to shove him away. He didn't move, hoping that she would say the words if she wanted him to.
"I—I know that," she said, sounding breathless. Her gaze was focused on his neck now. "I'm just—sorry."
"Do not apologize to me," he said, biting the words out. "If you want me to move back, I will."
His hand slid along her back as he began to move, but she made a sound of protest. One of her hands clenched in his shirt while the other slid up to his shoulder and curved over the top of it. Still without looking at him, she spoke.
"It's not you. It's me." She took a deep breath, which he felt brushing the hollow of his throat. "It's me. I think I just need to get used to you being here."
"We don't have to do this tonight. We can go back to the dorm and—"
"No!" she cried, voice shrill. "No. I want to do this. I need to be able to do this."
Oh.
Somehow, Draco had a feeling that this situation was about more than practicing to brass the Weasel off.
"Okay." Draco pulled his head back, ducking down a little until he caught her gaze with his own. Now, it was her looking down her nose at him. "You're in control, Granger. Got it?"
She nodded. "Yes."
"Yeah?"
"Yes."
"Good girl." Her eyes widened a fraction, never leaving his face as he stood upright again. He kept his arm on the wall and his hand against her back. "You're in control."
"I-I'll just get comfortable with you," she said. He could feel her body trembling. "I'll touch you now, okay?"
"Do whatever you'd like," he said, tone soft as a whisper.
Still on tip-toe, Granger lifted her hand from his shoulder and reached up for his face. He tried not to flinch when her fingertips brushed his cheekbone. Because in reality, Draco hadn't been touched like this since his mother died. Which wasn't exactly what he wanted to think about right now.
She trailed her fingers down the side of his neck, raising sparks in his flesh along the way down to the outer edge of the furthest rose on his neck. He could tell she was struggling to keep her breathing even, and he made sure not to move lest she spring up like a wild Hippogriff and fly away.
Even though his skin was sensitive, he forced himself to remain as still as a statue as her fingers traced every petal and link in the chains that were etched into his skin. Across his collarbones and down into the center of his chest, where she traced everything she could see.
Witches had touched him before, but something felt different about this. It was there, lurking in the storm that waged within him. Something he couldn't name that was more than Granger.
Draco was powerless to stop the shudder that rippled through his body.
Her eyes snapped up to his.
"Sorry," he said, one corner of his mouth twitching upward.
Wariness passed over her face. "Stop it."
"Stop what?"
"Looking at me like that. Stop."
"Like what?' he asked, perplexed.
"Like that. Like you—like you see me, or something. I don't like it."
"So you can touch me, but I can't look at you?"
She frowned, lines furrowing their way into her brow as she lowered her glare to his chest again.
"Why would you want to?"
Draco opened his mouth to reply but realized that he didn't know what to say. Everything he wanted to say was too earth-shattering. Too confusing. The words that were bouncing around his head were out of control, flung from the left side of the Quidditch pitch. If he uttered them, he knew it would change things between them when he didn't even understand what they meant.
He wanted to tell her that she was beautiful.
"If you want me to stop looking at you," he said under his breath as he scanned her face, "then stop touching me."
She said nothing, looking only curious as her hand went back up again, along his pulse where she felt his stuttering heartbeat for a lingering moment. Then it was on the move, fingers traveling the length of his jaw and brushing his earlobe. His eyelids fluttered shut in spite of himself, and her fingers sunk into his hair.
Shite.
His stomach twisted tighter and tighter, the storm swirling like a raging sea in his body. Her fingernails were scraping along his scalp in a way that no one had done before—not even Pansy—and his mind went as blank as a slate. She scratched up to the top of his head, sifting through the platinum strands of his hair, and back down to the base of the right side of his skull.
"Holy—fuck," he whispered, his eyes rolling up into his head as he nuzzled into her touch.
"Holy?" She paused, her fingers tangled fully. "You know Judeo-Christian expletives? They're Muggle."
"It's a fucking word in the English language, and I took Muggle Studies," he said, the words rushing out on a breath. "Just keep doing that—whatever you were doing—keep—yeah."
She resumed scratching her fingers along his scalp in long, wide circular patterns. Draco was a puddle. He was turning into a puddle. He'd never felt anything so . . . Nice, or so—just so soothing.
So good.
His fingernails dug into her back a bit as he tried to keep control of himself—tried to remember that this wasn't just any other witch. This was Granger. This was a witch that had been through something he could never understand, even if he'd been present in her memory of it. She was the strongest witch he knew, yet in front of him in this moment, she was a stammering mess.
He knew this whole situation was embarrassing, planning to trick an ex-wizard into finding them in a compromising position, but he knew it wasn't only about that. He wondered if there was something about him that made her feel as if he was the one she could trust to ease her into whatever it was that she was trying to ease herself into.
An epiphany rolled over him and softened his heart.
If she didn't want to talk about it yet, he'd take this.
Draco relaxed and his head tipped forward, his forehead resting on her shoulder. She stiffened up at first, but his hand sliding around to her other side, fully ensconcing her in a one-armed embrace seemed to assuage her.
The tension left her body in waves as she lowered back to the soles of her feet. His palm smoothed into the dip of her waistline, his other hand curling into a fist against the wall.
And he held her.
"It's all right," he murmured, as if it were second nature to comfort her. He couldn't stop seeing the hotel room with its red décor and ugly wallpaper. He closed his eyes and saw her curled up on the floor, sobbing. "It's all right."
After a second where he thought she might tell him to move away, he felt her tugging on his shoulder. She pulled him forward the last inch, until there was no distance between the wall, her body, and his own. She turned her face to the side, facing outward, and rested her head on his chest.
"Tighter," she whispered, and her voice squeaked.
He obliged, tightening his arm around her. She let out another tremulous breath and sagged against him.
Holding her the way he'd wanted to when he saw her in the hotel room, he tried his best to bat away the thoughts of What am I doing? and Have I gone mental? He'd never been the comforting, soothing type. He'd never been the sort of guy who liked to sit with witches while they cried.
But there was something about Granger that had rent his heart in two when he heard her sob that first "I can't," and that made him want to shed his skin for her. And even though the embrace was for her sake, Draco couldn't help but feel his own emotions rising to the surface.
The last person to hold him was his mother.
After a few minutes of silence, Granger spoke.
"Interesting that we're in this alcove again, only this time, you're a much different person."
"Hm," he said, humming into the top of her shoulder where he'd bent his back to drop his head. He straightened up and looked down at her. "I suppose I am."
She had a shy yet open expression on her face. "Do you regret it?"
He raised his chin a bit. "Didn't you tell me to forget it ever happened?"
"I know what I said, Malfoy." She didn't look away. "Do you regret it?"
"Some parts," he said, his eyes narrowing. "I should have asked for your consent first."
"Yes, you should have," she said, and it was her turn to lift her chin. Her hand slid out of his hair and fell to her side, but the other remained on his shoulder, her thumb brushing the base of his neck.
The coil inside of Draco's stomach loosened a bit, his curiosity piqued.
"Are you saying you would have said yes?"
"Not necessarily. But that's the point—how are you ever going to know if you don't ask?" Her upper lip curled and she glowered at the stone floor in the shadows. "You men and your inability to understand that most women will say yes if they like you, and if they don't, then you could always find a girl who does. There's no reason to take what isn't yours when there are people who would be happy to be yours, provided you're not a complete nutter. Maybe if men weren't so bloody forceful, thinking with their pricks all the time, then women wouldn't think they wanted to hurt them."
As her ranting progressed, Draco noticed her getting more agitated as she went. Her body stiffened up again, and her teeth began to clench. Her fingers dug into his flesh, and he'd bet all of his galleons that her hand was in a fist at her side. In her eyes, he saw her anger burning brighter than the lantern.
Something about her was still glowing.
He leaned forward before he could stop himself, his lips brushing against her ear. She stopped in the middle of her sentence.
"And do you?" he asked, glancing off to the left towards the darkness deeper in the alcove.
"Do I wh-what?" Her breathing hitched.
"Do you think think that I want to hurt you?"
"I don't . . . I don't know." She said it like an epiphany of her own.
Draco inhaled, deep within his chest, and then said, "If I would have asked you back then, what would you have said?"
"Does it matter?" Her breath tickled his neck. "It was Fourth Year."
"Granger." He straightened again, pulling back to look at her. He needed the wall for support, so he let go of his hold on her waist and reached up to trace the swirls of her edges along her hairline. He could feel the hair product there, the smooth crispness fascinating him. "I asked you a question."
"I-I mean, if y-you had kissed my neck, or—or something, it would have been different. A kiss on the lips was too much."
"So, if I'd have asked you if I could kiss you, you would have said no?"
"No," she said, and then he felt her body go rigid once more. "I mean—that's a lie. That's a—it's a lie."
Draco's heart skipped a beat. "If I said to you, Granger, can I kiss you? If I looked you dead in the eyes and asked you that, would you have said yes or no?"
"Back then, I would have said no."
"Back then?"
She nodded.
"And what about now?"
She looked terrified—absolutely terrified—and then she said, "I wouldn't be against it. Er—well, because it's practice—but not on the—the lips. But I mean—oh, I don't—"
"Granger," he growled. She needed to give him a definitive answer because there was something about her—
She squeezed her eyes shut and then opened them, meeting his gaze with a directness that could only be a result of her House placement. "Yes. I think I—"
There it is.
Draco felt something cracking inside of him, splintering like glass and letting the storm of grey fill his entire body. It drove him to bend down, where he planted a kiss to the side of her bared throat that was way more heated than he meant it to be, yet nowhere near where he wanted it.
And he continued to kiss her skin, up and down, close to her jaw and then laid his lips over her pounding pulse. Her heard her trying to complete her sentence, starting words that fizzled into short breaths.
His right hand came up to cup the other side of her neck, fingers tickling the curly tuft of hair at the back of her scalp. His thumb pushed upward on her jaw, tilting her head so he could have better access as he tasted her flesh like it belonged to him. His tongue was soft, his lips gentle, but his teeth scraped with ferocity that had her panting harsh gasps into the sudden silence.
The storm swirled into an inferno of colors, so many that he couldn't name them all. His heart was singing, and he felt like he was floating. He could feel her heart singing, and he wondered if she could, too.
When his tongue found a sensitive spot near the junction of her shoulder and neck, Granger gasped. Rising up on tip-toe again, both of her hands moved. Her fingers fluttered along his tattooed skin, as if she had to feel them one more time, and then they went to the back of his head. Long fingernails massaged his scalp again, right in the depths of his hair, and he couldn't help it.
He moaned.
Draco pressed her so hard against the wall that she couldn't have stood flat on her feet if she wanted to. He intensified the press of his tongue and the caress of his lips. The breaths she was pushing into his ear turned to pants that bordered on whines.
"Yeah?" he practically snarled between kisses to her throat. "That's good?"
Her response came right as he sucked a bruise into her pulse point. His right knee found its way between her thighs. There were mere inches between his trackies and her center, and she wasn't stiffening up.
What did that mean?
"Ye—ah," she whispered, whimpering and arching her back until her chest was tight to his. Her trembling increased and he felt her trying to rub her thighs together—they pressed to either side of his leg.
Hermione Granger whimpering. Whimpering.
"Fuck," he groaned into her flesh, teeth grazing.
That was not something he had ever thought about desiring to hear, but now that he'd heard it, he didn't think he ever wanted to stop hearing it. He wanted to kiss her on the lips and taste every part of her mouth, but he wasn't going to. She'd said not to, and he wasn't going to ruin her again.
Whether this was practice for her or not, it wasn't practice for him.
It meant something, he just didn't know what.
The moment he pulled her earlobe into his mouth, she lost whatever faculties she'd maintained for the past five minutes. She tugged on his hair, sharp and hard, crying out louder than she probably meant to. It as loud enough that it snapped Draco out of the reverie he was in. He threw himself back from her, staggering a couple of steps.
"I'm sorry," he said, his voice hoarse. His stomach was slow to untwist, and the blood even slower to return to the rest of his body. "Forgive me. I got . . . Carried away."
"It's okay," she said, a hand covering her neck where his mouth had been. "I think you left a—a mark, though."
Draco pushed his fingers into his hair for a second, closing his eyes against the wild urge he had to grab her and snog her senseless against the wall. He shook his hair out, the choppy strands falling into his eyes again, and he let out his breath.
"That's a good thing, innit?"
"Stop it," she said, eyes wide and head ducking down.
"Huh? Stop what?" Panic bloomed in his chest and he took a step toward her. "Did I hurt you?"
"What? No! No, I . . . Stop saying 'good.'"
He started to ask her about it, but then nodded instead. Whatever her reasoning for her not wanting him to say the word, he would respect it. He felt awful for going too far, because though he hadn't kissed her on the lips, it had felt just as intimate.
"But thank you," she said, starting to walk back towards the hall. "I know you hate when I say it, but . . .I still don't care if you do. "
"And you're thanking me for. . . ?"
"Thank you for asking for my consent."
She rounded the corner and disappeared from sight. He almost followed after her but stopped himself in his tracks. He could feel it in the air—she wanted to be alone.
He would take her gratitude and walk back to the common room by himself.
The common room was dark and quiet when Draco returned to it.
To his surprise, the loo was unoccupied. He went into it for a shower, enjoying the way the warm water felt against his skin, having not realized that he was colder than he'd thought. Perhaps he'd been too distracted to notice it.
He sighed and pressed his forehead against the tiles on the wall, feeling the tension in his body easing bit by bit. His eyelids falling shut, his mind spun back to the alcove and the shadows.
To the feeling of his arms around her, holding her tight against him. To the way he wished he could have held her like that in Paris, and how he wished he could have been there to handle the situation with the Weaselbee before he'd ever Apparated away. To the way she'd rested her head against his chest and let herself be held by someone she'd once considered an enemy. To the way he could still feel her in his embrace, and the way he wanted to do it one more time.
Draco covered his face with one hand, feeling somewhat beleaguered.
How starved was he for affection that he was more interested in the thought of getting to hold her again than he was at the fact that he'd necked with her in a corridor?
When his shower was done, he stepped into his trackies, but chose not to put his shirt back on. He was going straight to bed, so there was no point. After pushing his fingers through his hair and messing it up the way he liked it, he used the loo.
As he lifted the lid up, he paused.
Why were there blue flecks under the rim?
Back in his room, he laid shirtless in bed in the dark, trying to figure out what could possibly have a blue color. Was it some sort of Muggle cleaning solution? Granger had an entire cupboard of those underneath the kitchenette sink, so he wouldn't be surprised if she hadn't cleaned the loo as well as she'd wanted to. Which made him feel a bit amused, when he thought about it.
Salazar's beard, how bad is she at cleaning?
Draco tossed and turned for a while, trying to quiet his spirit so he could drift off to the land of slumber. It was difficult when he could still feel the press of her body against his and hear the sounds she made ringing in his ears. He wondered if he would dream about her again.
Fuck. It was a nightmare trying to sleep when his mind was this full of consternation.
Lying on his stomach, he reached down underneath his bed, feeling for the small black satchel he kept there. He pulled it out, hoping there was something left in it. He rummaged through it, pulling out a small pipe made of onyx glass and the Muggle lighter Blaise had given him months ago. He reached in again and grabbed a small pouch from within.
Ah, there's nothing left, he thought, irritated. Guess I'll just scrape it.
Not wanting to charm the lights back on, Draco grabbed the small pin that he'd stolen from Pansy that Summer and went to sit in the window seat. Pulling his knees to his bare chest, he used the light of the moon and stars to guide him as he spent the next twenty minute scraping resin out of the bowl of the pipe. Once he had enough, he used the lighter to light it and began to smoke.
It tasted bloody awful, but he wasn't complaining. He was bone-tired, but his mind was way too alive to get to sleep without it. Gazing out the window at the far-off Quidditch Pitch, he wondered what his mother would say if she knew he was smoking Muggle marijuana just to get to sleep. What she would say if she knew that he'd kissed Hermione Granger's neck in an alcove.
What would his father say?
By the time the resin was gone, Draco was sufficiently high. It felt like the Earth was spinning slower and there was a pleasant feeling that had washed over his entire body. It was enough to lower his eyelids and infuse lethargy into his muscles.
Perfect.
He fell into bed after putting the paraphernalia away, and closed his eyes.
Knock, knock, knock.
Draco sighed and rolled back over. He hadn't realized that he'd fallen asleep. He glanced at the clock on his bedside table, the moonlight falling across it from the window.
Now, he knew she was not knocking on his door at two in the morning. What could she possibly need?
He swung his legs until his feet were flat on the floor. He rested his elbows on his thighs, his mind spinning from the deepness of his interrupted sleep. Rubbing his face with his hands, he struggled to wake fully.
Knock, knock, knock.
"I'm coming!" he snapped in annoyance, standing up and muttering to himself. "Can't even put on a fucking shirt. I'm so fucking Salazar-damned tired."
He ripped the door open and shouldered the doorframe with his arm outstretched to hold it open. It was dark as pitch in the hallway, but the light from his window cast blue into the shadows. Granger stood there, wearing oversized pyjama pants and a large dark shirt with long sleeves. She was swimming in the clothes, looking quite the sight with her curly hair sticking up in several directions and her arms wrapped around a fleece blanket.
Her gaze swept his destroyed hair, down to his naked torso, and then bounced back up to his face.
"Does your offer still stand?"
"Granger," he said, trying not to scowl through his yawn. He rubbed his eye. "What offer?"
She clutched her blanket closer.
"I had a nightmare."
