Hermione woke to the smell of fresh linen and the feel of silk against her skin. She whimpered with pleasure and tried to burrow back into the dream. She didn't want it to end just yet. She didn't want to leave this dream place where there was warmth and everything was clean and there was no one screaming piteously for their mother without hope that she would ever answer.

"Miss 'Mione? Is you awake?"

She opened her eyes and looked around. She wasn't dreaming. She was laying in a huge four-poster bed with a cream linen comforter and blood red silk sheets. She peaked under the covers to see … and yes! She was naked!

"Miss 'Mione?" the little inquisitive voice came again.

Hermione put the covers down and stared at the creature. It was a house elf. She should have known. "Er—hello," she said. "This is going to sound really stupid—not to mention terribly cliché—but where am I?"

The house elf smiled and curtsied. Hermione still didn't think that this confirmed the beast as female. "You is a guest of the house of Zabini, Miss," the elf said. It was really very cute, in a pointy-nosed, bug-eyed sort of way. "Master said I was to see if you is awake."

"M—Master?" Hermione said. She was still a little groggy.

"Master Blaise, Miss." The elf gave her a strange look, as if to say 'who else?'

"Oh," she said. "Where is Master Blaise?"

The elf giggled. "You is not having to call Master Blaise 'Master', Miss 'Mione," the elf said. "Master Blaise is having tea with Mistress Lavinia in the parlor."

"Mistress Lavinia?" Hermione said.

"She is Master Blaise's mother, Miss," the elf said. It gave her another one of those looks, only this one said 'Don't you know anything?'

"Oh, I thought she was dead," Hermione said before she could think that this might not be considered very polite.

The elf clutched her fingers together in front of her mouth and stared at Hermione like she had just suggested that Mrs. Zabini was dancing naked down Main Street with a rubber chicken.

"Mistress Lavinia is not sick, Miss 'Mione," the elf said, tears brimming in her bulbous eyes.

Oh Lord, Hermione thought. "I didn't say that she was," she said. "I simply thought that she might have passed away from old age and—"

"Mistress Lavinia is not old, Miss 'Mione," the elf squeaked through tears that seemed to instantly double in size. "Mistress Lavinia is the most beautiful woman in the world."

"Okay," Hermione said. She wasn't about to disagree with the creature. It might decide it was necessary to prove it to her, and really, she wasn't in the mood. "I am sorry if I have insulted you or your Mistress, I just—"

"Miss 'Mione mustn't say sorry to Kinky," the elf said. "It is Kinky that must be sorry. Kinky misunderstood Miss 'Mione."

Hermione blinked at the elf. Kinky? She laughed. She couldn't help it. And once she started laughing, she just couldn't seem to stop. She pressed her face into the comforter and shook with silent mirth. The whole thing seemed to hit her at once, the whole fucked up situation. She was overjoyed that she was free, but she had nowhere to go. The Ministry had taken everything, so now here she was, in some grand mansion—the Zabini mansion, no less—being harassed by a house elf named Kinky of all things, who was alternately weeping and scolding her. It was just too much, and she either had to cry herself or laugh.

Oh yes, and she was naked.

"Kinky apologizes, Miss 'Mione," Kinky said, giving her soulful puppy-dog eyes.

Hermione snorted and giggled some more, then wiped her eyes and looked at the thing. It was looking very fretful; as soon as it got away from her, it would probably go and throw itself down the stairs or iron its hands. The whole lot of them were damn silly and irrational little buggers.

"Apology accepted," she said, still grinning like a lunatic. "So, Kinky …" she hiccupped, "where are my clothes?"

"Miss 'Mione's clothes are being laundered," the elf said meekly. She was wearing a tea towel like a toga and she nervously fingered the frayed edge.

"Er—alright. Then what am I supposed to wear?"

"My suggestion would be nothing, Granger," Draco said from the doorway. "You look amazing just like that."

The elf made a little peeping sound of distress and fidgeted with the tied corner of her tea towel.

Hermione clutched the red silk sheet to her chest and glared at him. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Nice to see you too, Granger," he said, smiling lazily and leaning one hip against the doorframe.

Hermione looked at him then. Really looked at him. He was lovely. It was a rather feminine word to use to describe a man, but it was the one that came to her mind first. He looked like an angel—the fallen kind. Ten years in prison had done little to banish his pale beauty. His hair was longer than she remembered, even though she could see that it had been recently cut, and it framed his face in uneven tendrils of platinum. Despite what prison had done to him, his face was still proud and at the same time sensual, with high cheekbones, that straight aristocratic nose that despite all of his childhood foolishness, had never been broken, and one of the prettiest mouths she had ever seen on a man.

She carefully crawled out of the bed, making sure to wrap the sheet around herself as she did. "Bring my clothes to me when they're finished then, Kinky," she said to the house elf, then dropped her eyes from Draco just long enough to give the beast a stern look. "And please do not throw yourself down the stairs or iron your hands."

"No, Miss 'Mione," said the elf obediently and scurried off. She gave Draco a wide berth as she passed, and Hermione had to wonder how many times he had kicked the thing since he'd come to stay here.

"You know, it won't do any good," he said. He was watching her with much the same look on his face as she was sure she had on hers, and he was probably thinking something similar as well.

"Why not?" she asked, moving toward him.

"She'll just bash herself with the nearest frying pan she comes across," he said with a smirk.

"So it is a female," Hermione said. She now stood before him in the open doorway with only the silk sheet to cover herself. "I wondered."

"I really don't know," he said, his grey eyes caressing her the way his hands did not yet dare to. "They all look rather androgynous to me."

She smiled and leaned in to him. "Yes, they do don't they?" she whispered against his lips.

He moved quickly, plunging his fingers into her loose tangled hair and slanting his mouth over hers. He kissed her fiercely, in a way that was almost a dare, with tongue and teeth and ten years of enforced chastity behind him. It was a kiss that pulled at things low in her body and demanded that she answer, and she did.

She dropped the sheet and it slithered to the floor between them. She then threaded her fingers through the hair at the base of his skull to pull him closer and went up on her tiptoes to deepen the kiss. He tasted like sweet brandy; dark, forbidden, and intoxicating, and she kissed him back with just as much passion as he was kissing her. When he caressed her tongue with his, she pushed back and grazed his full bottom lip with her teeth. When he nipped her lip with his teeth to get her to open wider, she did, and her fingers tightened in his hair. His arms came around her waist and pulled her tight against him and she heard someone moan. She thought it might have been her.

He broke the kiss just as she was beginning to think that she would have to do it herself or forego breathing. He trailed his mouth down her throat, pausing to nibble each point of her collarbone and flick his tongue into the hollow against her rapid pulse.

"What …did you do … to your hair?" she asked him as he was kissing his way down one breast. "It looks like you … hacked it off …with a dull butcher knife."

He chuckled against her breast, and the sound vibrated over her skin, making her tingle. "Granger, do you ever shut up?"

"Sorry, it's just I—"

Someone cleared her throat behind Hermione and they both went very still. "I'm so sorry to interrupt," a woman's accented voice said behind her. "But, Miss Granger, my son would like a word with you in the parlor, when you're not …too busy."

Son? Oh, Christ, Mrs. Zabini! Zabini's mother!

"Don't you dare laugh," she warned Draco as she knelt at his feet to gather the sheet around herself again before she faced the woman. "Don't you dare."

He sucked his bottom lip into his mouth and bit down on it, but he did not laugh. Not yet.

Reluctantly, Hermione turned, expecting to find some prim little old blue-haired Italian woman looking at her like she was the Whore of Babylon.

Mrs. Zabini didn't look a day over thirty, if that. She was tall and slim with hair as dark as midnight that fell to her waist in waves, and eyes as deep and black as Zabini's and just as intelligent. She looked like a dancer, was the first thing that Hermione thought. Like an Arabian belly-dancer. It was easy to see how she could have attracted eleven different husbands, most of whom were completely aware of her black-widow reputation, and lured them all to their deaths. Some of them likely would have slit their own wrists or cheerfully drank poison merely because she expressed a wish for them to do so.

And this beautiful creature was looking her over like she was a prize race-horse, or a choice cut of beef. "I can see why they like you," Lavinia Zabini said.

"They?" Hermione said. She jumped when Draco moved up behind her and pressed his mouth into the smooth bare curve of her shoulder.

Lavinia Zabini smiled, amused. "Yes. My son and, now it seems, Mr. Malfoy, have become quite fond of you. If this were not so, I can assure you, you would not be here."

What was she supposed to say to that? she wondered. "Mmm … Malfoy, do you mind?" she snapped. "That's distracting."

"Yes," Lavinia Zabini said. "Well, should I tell my son you will be along shortly? Or should I tell him that you would like him to wait …a few minutes."

"No," Hermione said, stepping away from Draco so he would stop doing that thing with her shoulder that was making all the blood in her head drain straight to her loins. "No—I'll hurry, I just—I need my clothes. The house-elf said—"

"I will send Kinky to your rooms with something of mine for the time being," she said. "I am afraid we will have to arrange for something later. You only have the two sets of clothes and robes that your Mr. Harry Potter had my son get for your hearings, and that just won't do, will it, my dear?"

"Er—no, of course not," Hermione said.

Lavinia Zabini nodded once, then turned gracefully on her heal and started to walk away.

"Mrs. Zabini—"

She paused and turned back. "Something else?"

"Thank you."

She smiled and it was beautiful. It was like being smiled upon by a goddess. "You are quite welcome, my dear," she said, and walked away.

"Wow," Hermione said when she was gone. "So that's Zabini's famous mother?"

"Mmm hmm," Draco said as he slid his hands up the curve of her bare back and made her tremble.

"Stop that," Hermione said. She started to walk back into her rooms and slam the door in his face, but he was standing on the sheet and she almost lost it again. "Give me that. I have to go get dressed—And my hair. It must look awful. I must look awful. I've been in prison for over a month. I probably look like a hundred different kinds of ragged. And will you please stop doing that?"

With a laugh, he dropped one last lingering kiss on the back of her neck between her shoulders and walked off.

"Smug bastard," she muttered as she went back in her rooms and close the door, but she was grinning as she said it.