Next morning
It was probably the booze and the sugar, but Hermione had a rather restless night. At dawn, she woke up hot, bothered, tangled in her sheets and blushingly recalling snippets from an adventurous and erotic dream:
She was in the library (not so surprising a setting since she was in there so much).
She was bent forward at the hips over the table she always worked at. Her bare legs were spread and tied to two table legs: one with a green tie; the other red and gold.
Her arms were held behind her naked back, clasped at the wrists by one of her lover's hands. His other hand was gripped in her hair, pulling her head back and exposing her throat.
Draco Malfoy, tall, nude and glorious, surged in and out of the core of her body. His cock glistened in the patterned moonlight from the wetness created by her own body. Sweat beaded his shoulders and chest. He lowered his head and ran his tongue along the groove between her shoulder blades.
She shivered and moaned his name, then her body went taut.
He whispered words in her ear, and her body trembled. Throat exposed, she cried out into the night and orgasmed hard against him. He soon joined her.
Draco released her, lowering her upper body gently to the table. He kissed each vertebra of her back, his hair brushing against her heated skin. She lay there for a bit, catching her breath, while he regretfully pulled free of her body.
Hermione pulled herself up on wobbly arms and Draco helped her sit up. With her legs dangling over the table's edge, he brushed back the hair from her face and kissed her with incredible tenderness.
"Told you you'd like it rough," he murmured, and she laughed.
As her recollection of the dream faded away, Hermione was struck by a few things:
How she smiled at him. There was complete trust in her eyes. There'd better be trust – she let him tie her to a table, after all.
No matter how rough he became, he didn't hurt her. And afterwards, she was sure she'd never felt more loved and cared for.
Draco was... of a good size. Although, she told herself, it was just a dream. How would she know what he looked like naked, anyway?
Dream Hermione would have ended up with bruises on her hips where they met the table. Just like the unexplained bruises that turned up on her own hips a few weeks ago.
"Mysterious things that go bump in the night," she murmured to herself, and put her hands on her cheeks in an effort to cool them down. Facing Draco at breakfast this morning would be fun!
Oh, well. Un-knotting herself from her bedsheets, she swung herself out of bed and prepared to face the day.
A few days later
"There you are!"
The part affectionate, part annoyed and part relieved voice came from Blaise, who spied Hermione emerging from the Owlery. "We were supposed to meet for tutoring yesterday evening but you never showed!"
He fell into step alongside Hermione, who noted that he carried a few Muggle Studies tomes on him. She kept her sigh to herself.
"You couldn't have looked that hard," she said mildly, heading to the Reading Room. Might as well do Blaise's tutoring now. "I was in the Library, same as usual."
"No, you weren't."
Hermione scoffed. "Stop taking the piss" – but her words faltered when she saw Blaise's earnest expression. She slowed her pace, then stopped. "You're not joking?"
Blaise vigorously shook his head. "You weren't at your normal table. I searched every nook, cranny and floor. Then I went back to your table to see if you'd appeared, but nope. Made rather a hash of my essay on Muggle Inventors who were Definitely not Wizards, and I really need your help to make up some ground. Please?"
"Uh, sure," Hermione murmured, opening the doors to the Reading Room.
She was in the Library last night. She knew that.
So why couldn't Blaise find her?
That sounds familiar.
She needed to talk to Luna.
Hermione found Luna in the greenhouses with Neville, helping him pot baby mandrakes, grown from seeds. Both wore earmuffs, and Hermione didn't have any with her, so it took some time to get Luna's attention from her wild waving through and tapping on the glasshouse window.
"Hello, Hermione!" the dreamy girl said happily, exiting the glasshouse and closing the door against the noise of hundreds of shrieking baby mandrakes. "Want to help? I can find another pair of earmuffs for you."
"I would love to, but another time," Hermione said, mostly regretfully. She also didn't want to interrupt what Neville most likely thought was a date. What Luna thought of the activity was anyone's guess.
"Do you remember during our girls' night in when you mentioned you looked for me one evening in the Library but couldn't find me?"
Luna sat down on the grass and started plaiting a daisy chain, deep in thought. Hermione sat down next to her. Luna was not one to be hurried.
"Yes," she eventually said.
Nothing else was forthcoming, so Hermione prodded: "Yes, you remember telling me, or yes, you didn't find me in the Library?"
"Both," Luna said matter-of-factly.
"You checked my usual table, right?"
"The out-of-the-way one by the stained-glass windows? Yes." Luna leaned behind her to pick some more daisies.
"Did you search elsewhere in the Library? I might have nipped off to look for a book or something."
"Of course!" Luna's daisy chain was starting to double back on itself. "I checked all the bookshelf rows and even on the other floor just to be sure, but Hermione Granger was missing."
Hermione was starting to feel very odd. "Maybe I went to the toilet?"
"Maybe, but if you did you were gone a while."
Don't panic, thought Hermione. There's bound to be a rational explanation for why two people, independently of each other, couldn't locate me on completely random dates and times when I was in the Library.
She made to get up, but just before she did, Luna placed the daisy chain crown on her Hermione's head. "Daisies are known to provide protection, happiness and clarity," she said. "They look lovely on you."
Hermione smiled gratefully. People who didn't know Luna wrote her off as a kook, but Hermione knew very well that she was a formidable ally. As long as she didn't try to make sense of Luna's life philosophies.
Now standing and brushing the grass from her skirt, Hermione called out to Luna, whose hand was on the greenhouse door: "Did you happen to see Malfoy when you looked for me that evening?"
Luna contemplated the sky for a moment, then shook her head. "Not that I can recall."
Hermione headed back to the castle, the daisy crown forgotten. Guess she should ask Draco if he's had the same experience.
Hermione saw Draco crossing the courtyard, so she quickly waylaid him. He seemed to be looking at the top of her head oddly.
"Hey, I know you're busy, but I have a quick question to ask you," she announced confidently.
A small, funny smile played on Draco's face, but he said "Sure," amiably enough.
"This is going to sound silly," Hermione began, "but two people who don't seem to have any eyesight defects, so far as I know, have looked for me in the Library after dinner but couldn't find me. Weird, huh?"
Draco stood stock still. "What are you getting at?" he asked carefully.
"Uh, well, I wanted to know if you've struck the same problem? Not finding me in the Library, I mean."
Draco blinked, then shook his head. "Not at all," he replied. "You're always at the out-of-the-way table by the stained-glass windows."
Hermione smiled, somewhat relieved. "That's what I thought," she said. "Well, I won't keep you."
Draco smiled. "See you later, Artemis," he replied, and strode off into the castle.
Artemis? thought Hermione, confounded. Then Parvati ambled up. "Loving the daisy chain crown," she gushed. "It might catch on!"
Hermione gingerly felt the top of her hair. Luna's bloody daisy chain, by Beltane! Still, if connoisseur of fashion Parvati Patil loved it, maybe she might leave it on. For a bit.
Draco was supposed to change for Quidditch practice, but he found himself locked in one of the Boys' toilets, shivering uncontrollably.
She knows.
Does she?
Surely if she knew, she'd flay him into tiny pieces and flush him down this very toilet, probably.
So, she probably doesn't know everything.
But what does she know?
A/N: Artemisia is a plant genus with over 200 species belonging to the daisy family. The Greeks dedicated the oxeye daisy to the goddess Artemis.