Hermione tugged her hair loose at the same exact moment a letter slipped underneath her door. She watched in the mirror as it fluttered through the air and gracefully landed on the bureau before her. In mere seconds, her anticipation turned into a sinking sense of impending doom.

Inked across the front of the envelope was a single word: Granger.

"You've got to be kidding me," she muttered. Hermione untangled her fingers from her hair and reached for her wine glass with a long, weary sigh. She hadn't even touched her merlot, and the sight of that infuriatingly neat script had her already contemplating if she should down the entire glass right then and there. Gods, he drove her absolutely mad!

He couldn't be bothered to even use her full name… Didn't even have the common decency to contact her at a reasonable hour! And what was his complaint this time? To berate her over the detention she had every right to give his unruly students? To chastise her for marking down grades when she found several Slytherins using No-Qualm Quick-Quiz Quills in her midterm exams? A few weeks ago, he even had the gall to send her a scathing letter to inform her that her reading assignment was 'abysmally gargantuan and downright sadistic' and had, allegedly, put his precious quidditch players 'into a sleep that rivaled a bludger-induced coma,' which not only made them miss practice (heaven forbid), but also had them 'flying sideways for days on end,' like she bloody cared! And she had no misgivings about writing him back to let him know that, maybe, if his brutish star players started using their cobweb-ridden brains, they'd actually win a match!

Hermione huffed and tossed her head. The criticism was never-ending. For a brief moment, she considered picking up that blasted letter and tossing it straight into the rubbish bin, or ripping it up and using it as kindling for the fire she had planned to cast in the hearth, but in the end, her curiosity won out. Perhaps she was a bit sadistic after all.

Hermione lifted her gaze to her reflection and pursed her lips, wondering what monstrosity she must have committed in order to earn her a late-night grievance from him… But as she flashed through her recent memory, nothing came to mind.

In fact, she hadn't even seen him today. He wasn't prowling through the corridors, nor did he take his usual seat between herself and Professor Flitwick at the staff table—something she was really quite pleased about. Rather than enduring his roaming glares and taciturn coolness, she had pleasant conversation and was able to enjoy her treacle tart in peace. It was the single upside to an otherwise miserable day.

And now this.

She glared at the creme-colored parchment as she twirled the stem of her glass between her thumb and forefingers, listening to the wine as it splashed rhythmically against the sides of the glass. She didn't usually drink on weekdays. More accurately, she didn't usually drink, but tonight was a special occasion. An exception.

No, she thought as she frowned at the letter, it was now more like a necessity.

Hermione closed her eyes and sighed in resignation. She brought her glass to her lips and ignored the guilt that bloomed in her stomach as she started and finished her more-than-generous pour in a few large gulps. As her empty glass clinked onto the bureau, her cheeks were already blazing with heat.

Hermione flipped the letter over and glowered at the sight of the emerald green wax seal. Those three dreadful initials: DLM, centered in the middle of an ouroboros. She brought it close to her face and glared at it. A dragon ouroboros. Her fingertip grazed the pair of little waxen wings and traced the scaly loop around his initials. She rolled her eyes at the extravagance of such an inconsequential thing—a menial little stamp. Hermione could almost picture the little sense of pride he probably had whilst dribbling the little pool of molten hot wax onto her letter, branding his claim across the back of it…

She opened her eyes, unsure when she even closed them. Her finger had stalled on the parchment, and her mouth felt suddenly dry and thick. She logically concluded it must have been from her wine, and quite illogically, poured herself one more substantial glass. She sipped on it slowly and returned her glare to the irritatingly high-quality parchment and that ostentatious little stamp.

Of course Draco Malfoy would have his own custom seal. Of course Draco Malfoy would honor his namesake in such a stupidly ornate way. Of course Draco Malfoy would attempt to rebrand himself with an ancient symbol of rebirth, when all she could focus on was his penchant for destruction.

Hermione ripped into the seal and snatched the letter within. Her stomach twisted into a knot and her skin, already flushed from the alcohol, began to tingle. He had forgone the greeting and instead scrawled a single line across the note.

My classroom. Now.

Hermione spared a glance at the clock on her bookshelf and frowned at the time. Half past ten. On a school night, at that.

"Prick," she muttered, tossing back the rest of her wine. She grimaced at the burn in the back of her throat and, in a roundabout way, cursed Malfoy for making her stoop to such a devastating low. If she hadn't been so rudely summoned, she could have curled up in bed and appreciated her single glass of wine in long, leisurely sips. And if he hadn't always been such a terror, she wouldn't have felt the need to attain a buzz merely to tolerate him for a few spare minutes.

And that's all she would give him, she nodded to herself in earnest, a few spare minutes. Just enough for her to throw whatever insults he had prepared right back into his smug, pointy face. She smiled to herself at the thought. Hermione slid back into her black pumps and reached for her wand.

It must have been the rage that was roiling in her stomach, or maybe it was the alcohol, lighting up her skin, but it wasn't until the last stretch of the third floor corridor when Hermione realized she had forgotten her robe. The wind howled through the hall and a dusting of snow slipped through the cracks of the window panes. She flicked her wand, but her warming charm burned her. She muttered for a shield, but it fizzled out like static. She tapped her wand against her hand. Once. Twice. A third time, but the sparks of magic flared red in warning, and the tip of her wand went dark. So instead, she picked up her pace.

When she reached his classroom, she didn't even bother to knock. Hermione threw open the large oak door and narrowed her gaze at the figure standing before the chalkboard. She paused for barely a second before stalking down the middle aisle, determined to make this meeting short and sweet and right to the point. Her heels snapped against the hardwood floors and echoed across the vaulted ceiling. Something about that sound carried her further, made her hips swing a bit more wildly. His back was to her, but his voice carried.

No, it did more than that.

It commanded.

"Granger." Not a question, not a greeting, but a cold, hard fact. "By all means, come in," he drawled, throwing his hand out to the side in a wide, sarcastic welcome gesture. He didn't even bother to turn. Instead, he continued to scribble onto the chalkboard and sighed, like she was the one interrupting him. Merlin, it made her vision go red.

Hermione fixed her glare at the center of his back, right between his shoulder blades. With every step forward, she imagined a dagger sinking into his muscled back, hitting that obscenely broad imaginary target which she plastered between his shoulders… And strangely enough, that made her smile… caused her skin to hum with delight.

She was already halfway down the aisle, propelled forward by the double-dose of liquid courage coursing through her veins. Tonight, she was in control. Tonight, she was going to set things right.

When he dropped his hand from the board, she readied her wand. When he rolled back his shoulders, she narrowed her eyes. And as he tilted his head and cracked his neck, she took her cue and bared her teeth. But when he swiveled on his heels… It was her step that faltered.

He turned so fast, she didn't have time to react. Instead of glaring at his back, her stare smacked against the front of his chest, hard enough to make her stumble—shocking enough to make her screech to a halt. Her hand fell onto the surface of one of the desks and she feebly attempted to steady herself.

After all these months, she had become an expert in avoiding him; speaking strictly through their notes, sparing glares through her peripherals, staying as far away as possible from the third floor corridor… and yet, in a matter of seconds, all of her resolve seemed to crumble to bits.

He stood at the front of his classroom, wringing his chalk-stained hands. His hair was long and combed neatly to the side, his mouth was curved into that soft, sulking scowl, and—

Her cheeks went pink and her pupils, they went wide as saucers…

Because, well… because he was wearing a double-breasted suit.

She would have laughed if she had any air left in her lungs. It was wholly ridiculous. It was completely outrageous. It was exactly the kind of over-the-top extravagance she should have expected from Draco Malfoy… And it was midnight black.

Midnight black with thin gold pinstripes, tailored by a seamstress who must have appreciated his body almost as much as Hermione did right at that very moment. Clean sleek lines. His tall, lean build… Gods, it was a marvelous sight. And when she let the vertical stripes direct her eye to the most dangerous of places, she finally admitted that he must have been the most handsome man she'd ever seen.

He stood there, as calm and mesmerizing as the endless night sky, but the fabric was rumbling, pulsing, drawing her in like a swirling black hole, and the gold of the pinstripes glittered down his body like the tails of shooting stars. Her eyes danced across the buttons, three on each side, slotted through the fabric, decorating the length of his abdomen. They were as dark and dull as wheels of licorice, but at their center, they glinted—as if the seamstress had melted down galleons and spun them into thread.

Even the cut of his jacket… Merlin, it was perfect. His body was perfect. His shoulders were impressively broad, accentuated by the notched lapel that was splayed flat around his collar and pressed across his chest. The way the fabric nipped in at his waist and layed snug along his trim, narrow hips… the fit of those trousers on his long, muscled legs…

No other suit would ever do him justice. Not after she'd seen him in this one.

But as she scanned back up, she realized there was just one problem with it… Underneath, he was wearing a crisp black button-down, and much to Hermione's surprise, no tie.

She found that absurd.

He always wore a tie—he should have been wearing a tie. He had even buttoned his collared shirt all the way up, like he was intent on wearing one. So where was his tie? And on what planet would one wear an expensive, exquisitely tailored double-breasted suit without a tie…? Seeing him without one felt like a damn near sin.

Black. No, better yet, gold. He should have been wearing a matching gold tie.

Merlin, the things she'd do to see a deep gold tie knotted up around the base of his neck—how badly she wanted to watch his ring-adorned fingers tighten it up, how desperately she ached to use her own hands to press it smooth against his firm chest, to tuck it down underneath the front of his jacket and feel the warmth of his body trapped beneath the thick woolen fabric.

That was exactly what he was missing. It was precisely what she needed. A silky gold tie in contrast to the heavy, black jacket. Yes, that'd look… Hermione frowned, her mind was racing—searching for any other word, really… Any other word at all, but her brain had short circuited and quite severely failed her. It slipped out through her lips like he had dosed her with veritaserum.

"Fantastic," she choked, staring at his neck like she intended to drag him closer by the points of his collar and latch her lips onto the smooth stretch of skin below his ear. When she wet her lips, she caught the way his jaw tensed.

"What was that, Granger?"

The sound of his voice had her crashing back to earth. When she blinked, she realized she was two rows closer.

Her eyes slid up to his and her cheeks began to burn. She blinked again, but the brief second of clarity had come and gone. She was hopelessly, desperately lost in the depths of his eyes. His irises were so impossibly dark that she almost mistook them to be black. Fantastic, she repeated within her mind. And with that thought, she nearly gave in.

Draco turned back to the board to place his piece of chalk onto the sill and she watched his neck flex. He moved so quickly and gracefully that she almost missed the tendrils of black ink peeking over the top of his collar. A short string of crooked, hastily inked numbers. She bet he had it memorized… and for a fleeting second, she wondered if she'd get the chance to memorize it too.

"Have you been drinking?"

Yes.

She admitted it so quickly in her head, but swallowed it back and scoffed instead. Even she noticed how poor of a response that was, so she tore her gaze away and settled her sight on a much safer subject: his mahogany desk.

The anger it sparked doused whatever else had been flooding through her veins, and she let the anger consume her. Because, really, it was unfathomable. Draco Malfoy, former Death Eater, standing before her as the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. He was entirely uncredentialed—completely ill-suited for the position. Anyone who had half a mind could see it. In all her years, she hadn't seen him do any defense against the dark arts. How was he teaching young children about magical ethics and how to defend themselves, when really, he had never done any such thing? It was preposterous. It was infuriating.

He was more akin to a dark arts aficionado, the evidence was all about his desk. It was abhorrently neat, she noticed, with a criminal amount of little dark arts relics. A bloodstained deck of tarot cards, a fountain pen with a barrel carved of bone, a drippy old candlestick that burned with a tongue of ice blue fire. And on the edge of his desk was the most cursed item of all: a golden nameplate.

Professor Malfoy

The palms of her hands felt uncharacteristically damp, and suddenly, her lips were aching to call him by the title she had thus-far adamantly refused to use.

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched as he pulled open the top drawer and withdrew a little pearlescent vial.

"I'll take that as a yes," Draco muttered. He sauntered around to the front of his desk and leaned against it. When he crossed his arms, the fabric of his suit strained across his biceps and across his chest. When he hooked one ankle in front of the other, his pant leg rode up ever so slightly. He wasn't wearing socks, and for some reason, she couldn't stop staring at his pale white ankles and designer dragonhide loafers. It was an expensive, pretentious look… something she hated to admit that she quite liked. He cleared his throat, and Hermione's gaze roved back up his body and settled again on where his tie should have been. "Come here."

Gods, yes.

His voice was so smooth and deep, she started towards him immediately. Her stomach was fluttering, her hands were trembling. Her body was aching to get closer to him. As she reached the front row, she breathed in his cologne and her eyes fell shut as she inhaled his scent. It was deep and rich and far too dangerous. Darkness enveloped her, and for a second, his scent brought her elsewhere—to the middle of the Forbidden Forest. In the spring, when it smells of fresh-fallen rain and cedarwood… when the air is heavy with fog and crackling with mystical enchantments. The draw of it terrified her. She opened her eyes and slowed to a stop.

When he frowned at her, it was like a flicker of sobriety flashed through her mind, and her eyes went wide. His scent had sent her spinning. She was licking her lips, imagining the taste of his skin, wondering how his suit would feel underneath her palms and… it was all so wrong. She needed to say something, and fast. She lifted his crumpled up letter and gulped.

"Can I help you, Malfoy?" It was supposed to be sharp, nasty, and cold, but underneath his gaze, she stuttered. Her voice was shaky and slow, not yet slurred, but it was getting there. She watched his eyebrows lift in surprise. He tilted his head and looked at her.

Like, really looked at her.

Appraised might've been a more fitting term. His stare bore into her with a heat that could have burned a hole straight through her chest. She tugged at the hem of her pencil skirt, and his eyes followed her trembling hands as she smoothed the fabric that clung to her thighs. He stared at her legs as he spoke.

"Drink this."

Hermione watched the liquid and wrinkled her nose. She knew exactly what it was, she could already taste the wash of lavender coating her tongue as it shimmered in its vial. She shook her head.

Why would she want to sober up when she felt so impossibly good? Her lips were numb, her skin was warm, and there was something about the way he was staring at her that made the deep-seated pain in her heart feel so inconsequential. His eyes were fixed on her ankles and he was straightening the collar of his shirt. Color was blooming on his cheekbones, spreading down the smooth, pale column of his neck. He gulped and her stomach knotted. It was a sight she never knew she needed, a sight that made her want so much more… and if she drank from the vial, what excuse would she have to stay?

He flicked the glass and the iridescent glimmer caught her eye. She watched as the potion splashed and swirled like liquified moonstone. She wanted to do anything but drink from that godforsaken vial.

Hermione lifted her chin defiantly. "And if I refuse?"

Malfoy narrowed his eyes. There was a brief pause, like she could see the internal battle raging behind those dark, turbulent eyes. As quickly as it came, the expression passed. Instead, there was a challenge in the look he gave her.

"Then I'll have to catch up."