Appearances Can Be Deceiving

Chapter 4: Passion

DISCLAIMER:I own nothing but the plot, and i might not even own that. who can tell in this crazy world of ours.

A/N: Ok, I admit, the whole names thing gets confusing (Draco being Harry) but it'll be fine just as long as you remember Harry is having a nice long sleep in the Room of Requirement

When Ron attempted to say goodbye the next morning, Draco merely grunted and rolled over in Harry's bed. Eventually giving up, Ron stalked out, muttering under his breath – something about "that moody git".

Draco eventually got up around 4pm. Without bothering to put any clothes on, or even a robe over the tight black cotton boxers he had worn to sleep in, he just drifted down to the empty common room. He thought it would probably be wise to take a look around so that he didn't make another mistake like the night before.

"Morning, Harry."

He turned round from the window he was looking out of, to see Hermione standing before him in a deep green satin negligee.

"Hermione?" He knew he looked – and sounded – totally incredulous, but he couldn't help it. As his eyes moved over her slim body, from her dark blonde, wavy hair; to the way the strappy negligee hugged her curves; to where it fell, just above her knees; ending at the long, shapely legs that were visible; he had to admit something to himself. Granger was hot!

"Oh, relax, Harry!" Hermione laughed, looking amused and rather flattered at the same time. "Come on, you've seen me in a towel before! Why are you looking so shocked at my nightdress?"

A towel? thought Draco, still trying to get over the shock of actually finding Granger attractive, maybe this won't be so bad after all.

"No reason," he eventually managed to stammer out, "you just kinda caught me by surprise, that's all. Why aren't you dressed?"

"Erm...cos it's the holidays and it's just you and me left from the whole of Gryffindor house," she said slowly, as though this should be obvious to him. She continued chirpily, "in fact, there are only two other students left in the whole school – that evil cow, Toni, and Elaine, that sweet Hufflepuff girl in our Herbology class. Actually..." Hermione paused, looking Draco up and down, "...why aren't you dressed, Harry?"

"It took you this long to notice?" Draco actually felt kind of hurt – until he remembered that he looked like Potter, so of course he wasn't as physically attractive as usual.

"I think I would have noticed earlier if you hadn't looked so shocked at the sight of me in my nightdress. I'm sorry, but the look on your face..." she stifled a laugh, "...I swear, you looked like you'd never seen me before or something."

Now was as good a time as any to start the ball rolling, so Draco took a deep breath and took the plunge, "well, I don't know if I've actually told you this before Gra...Hermione, but you do have a pretty nice body."

"O...K then..." She replied, blushing slightly, "no, I can't say I remember any conversation I've had with you where my physical attractiveness was mentioned."

And that, in Draco's opinion, was precisely the problem. Potter and Granger may have been best friends for the past seven years, but there was a total lack of passion between them. Of course, this made his job a hell of a lot harder.

So he would just have to create some.

"Oh well," he shrugged and turned away, "I'd better go get dressed."

And with that, he just walked back up the stairs.

Hermione's jaw dropped. What the hell had just happened? Had she really just had a conversation with Harry about her body? And since when did Harry sleep in boxers? He always slept in varying sets of ugly pyjamas.

Draco returned to the common room ten minutes later, wearing baggy jeans and a plain black t-shirt, to find Hermione sitting in front of the fire, still in her negligee, reading a book.

He stood right in front of her, towering over her. He could see right down her nightie. He quickly wiped the leer off his face as she looked up at him and said, "what?".

"It's the holidays, Granger. Why are you reading?"

A look of surprise flashed across her face. "Did you just call me Granger?" she asked, bewildered.

"Guess I did," came the nonchalant reply, "sorry about that."

"Why did you call me Granger? Only Malfoy calls me Granger. That or Mudblood." Her lip curled. "Wonder if Ferret boy's having a nice time at home these holidays, you know, with Voldermort gone. Old Malfoy has lost his favourite hobby and mini Malfoy's lost a shot at his future career as a supreme kiss-ass."

"I don't know why I called you Granger, it just sort of slipped out, and whatever Draco's doing at the moment isn't really any of your business." He felt anger coursing through him at the comments Granger had made. She may have a great chest but she was still a Mudblood. He shouldn't let himself forget that fact. He was better than her.

"Excuse me?" She looked truly shocked, "what? I seem to remember you and Ron sitting in front of this very fire thinking up various ways to off Malfoy and now you're defending him? What's going on?"

"Nothing. I just think you shouldn't talk about stuff you know nothing about." He said to her, trying to repress the rage he was feeling and speak calmly. "I'm going out," he continued before she could say anything more. "Don't wait up."

"But, Harry, where are you going?" she cried after his retreating back. Ignorong the question, he just climbed through the portrait hole, leaving a very confused Hermione behind.

By eleven o'clock that evening, Harry still hadn't returned. Far from being worried though, Hermione was extremely pissed off with him. She and Ron had put up with a lot of shit from Harry over the years, because when he wasn't being all moody and brooding he was a great best friend. But the way he'd talked to her that afternoon had seemed different. He'd sounded different. He'd sounded...

Like Malfoy.

She couldn't be bothered waiting for him anymore so, after taking a long, hot shower, she changed into a pair of cotton pyjama bottoms and a satin chemise top and dragged herself into bed.

It seemed that she'd only been asleep for two minutes when she was woken by the sound of smashing glass and raised voices.

Looking at her watch to see that it was 2.30 in the morning, she climbed out of bed to see what was going on down in the common room, and yell at whoever it was that had interrupted her sleep. Although she wasn't sorry the dream was over. It was an extremely weird one involving Harry and Draco Malfoy.

"You BASTARD!" A scream floated up the stairs, followed by a voice. Harry's voice.

"What the hell is your problem?" He replied calmly, "what were you expecting? Hearts and flowers and breakfast in bed?"

By this time Hermione had reached the common room. She surveyed the scene in front of her: the broken vase on the floor by the wall, which it had obviously been thrown into, judging by the water marks on the brick above it; Harry standing a foot away from it, wearing nothing but yet another tight pair of boxers, this time white ones. He was staring at...

"Toni?" Hermione was astonished to see the Slytherin. Especially to see her without a top on – only her bra.

"Oh, look, here comes Granger come to gawp. What happened, Harry? Did you get bored with the Mudblood and come looking for something a bit more exciting?"

"Excuse me...I hate to interrupt but what the hell is going on here?" Hermione demanded, kind of hurt. Not at the mudblood comment, but at the fact that Harry didn't immediately jump to her defence.

"Not much." replied Harry, with a small smile on his face, as though a Slytherin sixth year wasn't standing in front of him in her bra, right after throwing a glass vase at him.

"I'll tell you what's going on, Granger", yelled Toni, slipping her shirt back on and starting to do the buttons up with hands that shook with rage. "This PIECE OF SHIT convinced me to sleep with him, then told me that I was the worst shag he'd ever had. That's rich coming from him." She gave a bitter laugh. "He was as bad as Draco, and for all his boasting, Draco is pretty bad."

"Wait a minute." Harry suddenly started to look angry, "I haven't had any complaints before. And what I said was true, you are a lousy lay."

With that, Toni stared at him for a moment, thoughts flitting across her face, until an evil little smile started to appear.

"Fine." she said, much more calmly than she had said anything else that night.

And, just like that, she left.

"I should probably be careful around that one from now on," Draco said, sounding pleased, "she has a tendency to curse people."

"What the HELL just went on here?" Hermione rounded on him. "Did you honestly sleep with Toni?"

"Not you too! I can't take this any more! I'm going to bed." He rolled his eyes and turned towards the stairs.

Of course this meant that Granger couldn't see his smile when she shouted after him "Don't you dare walk away from me, Harry Potter!"

Bingo he thought triumphantly, there's our passion.

Pasting a look of annoyance over his face, he turned to look at Hermione, noticing – though he didn't want to – that although she had her legs covered up, she still looked pretty good.

"What?" he said, looking her slowly up and down, "you going to tell me to stay away from her Hermione? I'm a big boy. I can handle myself over one silly little witch. Why do you care anyway? It's not like you're my girlfriend or anything. I'm single, I'm eighteen. I can do what I want. And that includes her." He fixed his gaze on her eyes and started walking slowly across the room towards her.

Hermione looked, and felt, a bit nervous at this. Suddenly her anger wasn't that important anymore. All she could focus on was his body. His abs, though not perfect, were still reasonably well defined. The grooves of his hips, however, were perfect – she had always had a weakness for those hip grooves (as the poster of Travis Fimmel on her bedroom wall attested to). Her eyes were drawn by a will of their own, to the thin line of dark hair starting just below his belly button, leading the way down...down...until it disappeared at the waistband of his white boxers (incidentally, they were the same ones on her poster).

Are you an idiot Hermione? That's Harry you're looking at like that! a voice screamed in her head. And you're mad at him, remember!

Wrenching her gaze away from Harry's body, blushing harder than ever, she looked back up into his face.

A small smile graced his lips. Those oh-so-soft lips of his. He'd seen her looking at his body. But he didn't look mad or freaked out, the way she must look after staring at her best friend's body. He looked...well she couldn't really describe how he looked, she'd never seen an expression like that on Harry's face before. But as he sauntered towards her with a confidence he'd never shown before, his eyes dropped to her body the way hers had dropped to his.

The atmosphere was electric. He stopped in front of her, so close a deep breath would have caused their bodies to touch. He could feel the heat from her body on his naked chest. There was definitely passion now.

Draco raised his eyes from Hermione's cleavage. He could feel the tension in her body. She wanted to close that distance between them, he could tell. That didn't surprise him. What did surprise him, however, was the fact that he, too, wanted to close the distance. To touch her skin. To taste her lips. But she had to come to him. She had to make the first move.

"Harry," she whispered looking up into his eyes, her warm breath tickling his neck – he was at least half a foot taller than her. "What's..." her voice faltered. She tried again; "I...don't...what's?..."

His hands were almost burning with the need to touch her, he couldn't rip his eyes from hers.

Screw this, he thought.

He grabbed her arms, pulling her roughly against his body and kissed her. Hard. She moaned against his lips and tilted her head back farther, deepening the kiss. He had let go of her arms by this time, allowing her to wrap them around his neck, while he placed his on the small of her back, in order to get her as close to him as possible.

What the hell am I doing? This is Harry! I can't be kissing Harry!

With a strangled cry, Hermione broke her lips away from his, and pushed at Draco's chest, hard enough that he stumbled. Glancing at him once, she ran for her bedroom.

A/N Please R/R, let me know what you think - even if you hated it so bad that you want to hunt me down with an axe and kill me so I will never again write such crap. Or you could tell me if you liked it too.