A/N: No, in the words of that old guy in 'Monty Python', I'm not dead yet. Yes, it has taken me about...give or take seven months to update...but you know how it is. Anyway, I whipped up another delicious, orangey serving of it for you guys. Enjoy it, as they say, and review it.
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Chapter II
Draco, why do you torture me so?
She always saw herself as innocent. Oblivious to death, oblivious to violence- oblivious to just about anything that didn't have to do with her schoolwork. But when the war started, she couldn't continue to wonder around in her clean and pure world- she had to face the real one. And the real one wasn't innocent at all.
Somehow, the pressures of the real world had brought her into this very much disturbing scenario. Draco Malfoy was tied up and unconscious in the middle of her apartment floor.
Hermione hastily unzipped her black leather jacket, eyes darting across the room. Recent events had made her much more vigilant. The room was empty of intruders, thus the room was safe. Hermione chuckled to herself in an almost sinister tone. A cold and empty room with a man tied up, unconscious in the corner was what was now considered safe to her. Oh, the irony.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror; baffled at how unlike herself she looked at the moment. Half-dressed in black leather, boots strapped to her knee cap, hair akimbo. All she needed was a pair of handcuffs and a whip. She looked like a sadomasochistic disaster.
When they had first started whatever you would call their sick and twisted relationship, she, somewhere in the watery depths of her mind, had a hunch he was into the kink. I mean, after all, he seemed to be lingering towards the darker side of the spectrum when it came to just about everything else. Imagine her surprise when she found out he was actually a gentle lover.
Well, to be more precise, the entire way he carried himself was surprising. The way he fooled people; I mean literally made them look like complete babbling idiots, made her O.W.L scores look dismissible. It was like a mystery with him. You didn't know if you were going to get the 'Death Eater Malfoy' side of him or the 'Hermione, I love you and I'll never leave you' side of him. He always hungered for control and feared vulnerability, so he rarely showed the second side of him. He was a multi-faceted man, some might say. But she knew him.
She pitched her boots to the side of the bed and tossed her black robe over her head in a very hurried manner, tripping over loosely scattered and misplaced objects on her floor of her flat. Merlin, she was starting to lose her organization skills. He had really rubbed off on her. It was scary sometimes, even after all this time she would find herself cursing and sneering like she herself was the spawn of Lucius Malfoy. It was oddly comforting. It made her feel like she still had a piece of him with her. Draco, that is.
He was starting to stir.
Heart pounding in chest, she buttoned the top button of her blouse and stuck her wand in her pocket. She had to get out of here now; recently the Order hadn't stood for lateness and if Draco woke up now he would certainly demand to know what was going on and why he was bound in the corner, she was assured to be exactly that. Late. Hesitating, she drew out a quill and a ripped piece of parchment.
000
He thought he smelled oranges.
He also thought he wouldn't be waking up, bound and stuffed into the corner of a small and dark room. Apparently he was wrong there, considering he was in a small and dark room, bound. But, he had been right about the oranges. The entire floor was littered with orange peels. His own breath was reeking of it as well.
It was after this observation that the fact of his being bound in the corner of a foreign room really hit him.
"Hello?"
The room was too dark for his comfort, save for the faint, orange light squeezing it's way through the window from the streetlamp below.
Streetlamp. That meant civilization.
He was inching his way over towards the window when he realized there was a small, torn piece of parchment lying in the middle of his lap. Displaying some very tactful skill in balancing, he scooted his bottom along the carpet towards the window while holding the parchment between his knees, both done so in a very hasty fashion. Slowly, the orange light crept onto the parchment, revealing a message in drippy, black ink.
Draco,
Yes, you are bound in my flat. I'll come back for you, don't worry.
-Hermione
P.S. - We're raiding your house tonight.
"Lovely," he murmured under his breath.
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She never liked riding on broomsticks. It was something about the way the wind hit her face so hard it hurt. Not to mention the fact that she did not particularly enjoy dangling one hundred feet up in the air. The night sky was a dark blue tonight, illuminated by the large crescent moon lingering above her. Her knuckles were clammy and white, clutching the end of her broomstick far more tightly than necessary.
She hadn't always been like this when it came to the art of riding a broomstick. Her phobia didn't really come full circle until she fell off one about three years ago. Draco had insisted they go for a fly, and her, at the time being quite alright with broomsticks, agreed. He, of course, had never flown with a passenger, and had no idea how to control the broomstick correctly in order to not pitch the other person off the end. It took a full three seconds of her hurdling through the air before he realized she was gone. Of course he panicked and raced towards the ground, met her halfway, and caught her heroically. Needless to say, she wasn't pleased. She held to him so tightly from then on, and now she didn't have anything to cling to except the wood.
Harry could tell she was distracted. Ron, being as daft as he was when it came to studying people, had no clue. But Harry did. And it was bothering her. She glanced over her shoulder at him during the entire span of their ride, only stopping when they were on Draco Malfoy's lawn.
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A/N: Next time we'll catch up with Harry and Ron (groan). I know, I would love to write about Malfoy and Hermione all day, but we have to have a back story! At least you have the raiding of the Malfoy Manor to look forward to?
Spark