Hope summer's going well for all…this story's been practically writing itself lately, which is nice…perhaps you will like:) Also, if you had not noticed, I have proceeded to rewrite chapters 1 through 6, so hopefully they have still retained the feel of the story. Let me know!

-hg-

Dinner was shaping up to be rather like breakfast, in that Harry and Ron were closely examining me, as we all once again immersed ourselves in eating. However, Ron made no further comments about me "turning pink", despite the fact that my cheeks began to smolder quite furiously when I heard Seamus Finnegan prattle on about skinny-dipping from several seats away. Skinny-dipping, from what I'd heard, was the rather scandalous practice of swimming in the nude, with either friends or lovers, neither of which I cared to picture naked in a water-hole with Seamus. However, care for it or not, the mention did ever-so-helpfully bring up the nearly pornographic image of Draco Malfoy that had poisoned my thoughts since that morning.

I shuddered and began to hack away at my chicken with a touch more relish than was probably necessary.

"Hermione…"

What I neglected to realize was that after a few seconds I had successfully cut through the meat, and was now sawing vigorously and screechily into the plate itself. A fact that was obviously quite apparent to my peers, judging by the tense, cringing postures abundant around me.

"Hermione!" Ron repeated, laying a firm hand across my wrist with the effect of halting the offensive noise. My cheeks caught fire again, with the rapidity of a spark to gunpowder. I dragged my eyes from the poor, mutilated remains of my food up to a pair of surprisingly stern brown ones.

I wanted to snap back at him, to say something that would make him forget the psychotic treatment I had just administered to the poultry lying defeated on my plate. But that plan wasn't entirely successful. In fact, all that happened was that my mouth quivered pathetically. It was actually very strange. My throat was suddenly missing the ability of vocalization.

"Hermione, you have got to snap out of it," Ron said in a low voice that seemed tailored to my ears only. A split-second glance over at Harry confirmed that it was indeed only Ron staging this intervention of sorts. "It's only the first day, I know you're not used to things yet, but…" He exhaled softly. "Don't let him get to you, okay?"

I was absolutely staggered. Never, ever, ever, had Ron Weasley showcased such matured concern for my well-being. This wasn't a Ron arguing hotly with me, with the veiled intent of looking out for me. This wasn't cautious advice, using Harry as the mouthpiece for the both of them. This was entirely new, and entirely strange. Not to mention, awfully correct, as well…

Obviously, by this point I was gaping openly, almost unseeingly at him. He looked somewhat expectant, and I had a vague thought that perhaps I should say something in response….but there was the oddest feeling of warmth blanketing my right forearm, and when I realized that his hand was still resting there, I just about lost all capacity for rational thought. It wasn't necessarily bad, oh, no, it wasn't, but the inside of my head was beginning to feel funny because I hadn't the slightest clue what I was doing, and the air in the Hall began to feel very close and I couldn't think right, was my arm sweating beneath his skin, oh, I hoped not…

I chose the least intelligent course of action possible, of course, and turned towards Harry, my mouth going dry and eliminating once and for all the chance that I would be able to speak.

Harry swept his gaze from me to a strangely tense-looking Ron, and then he quirked an eyebrow. His face was rapidly infused with an expression of amusement that I found privately to be quite alarming. Er…

"Are you…holding hands?" So bloody casual, too.

Harry may as well have knocked me in the forehead with his goblet, because I fancied I heard a sort of clang reverberate through my skull, and my every muscle simultaneously froze. Why would he ask that? I'm fairly certain a sweet little wheezing sound escaped my lips, my lungs obviously not dealing well with the shock of Harry springing bizarre questions like that on me…

A sound very similar to my own issued from across the table, and Ron's hand flew from my arm like a reflex, like I was the searing-hot coil on the stovetop that he'd just happened to touch. That was certainly a likely scenario, seeing as how I was feeling an immense flush of heat in that spot where his hand had been.

I bit my lip to prevent myself from making any further noises, and glanced swiftly, surreptitiously at Ron.

Merlin, was he ever pink.

- - - -

The start of the year was going quite beautifully, then. In my humble opinion, I firmly believed that every resident of Hogwarts in possession of a Y chromosome was in fact certifiably insane.

Honestly…what had just happened with Ron?

I had been drifting through the halls towards my dormitory with very little conscious effort, so I was entirely startled upon coming face-to-face with a painting of a rather dashing young wizard. Ah, the portrait to my dormitory. The one I hadn't seen last night. Yes, right.

"Have you got the password, beautiful?" He winked a brilliantly blue eye at me, and tossed a curtain of impossibly lustrous black hair behind a set of very broad shoulders. Oh, I didn't just go weak-kneed, oh no. My kneecaps effing melted.

"P-perhaps," I stammered; I did know the password, didn't I? Oh, Merlin, I'm an idiot. A bloody painting calls me beautiful, quite casually, might I add, and I lose the capacity to function normally? I mean, I have to appreciate compliments when I can get them, considering the rarity with which this occurs, but I was being inexcusably ridiculous.

The young man appraised me with interest, stirring rather unwelcome flames in my cheeks for what could only have been the seventy-fifth time that day. I was failing terrifically at not noticing the way that his sumptuous navy tunic strained across a very obviously well-muscled chest, or the fact that he had simply gorgeous, strong-looking hands that were probably very good at…

HERMIONE GRANGER, SNAP OUT OF IT!

I just could not stand myself. It was perhaps the first time in my entire life that I was being positively swept away by a male's good looks.

Of course, it bloody well had to be a painting, didn't it?

It was likely a very good thing that I remembered the password just then, else Malfoy might've left the next morning for class, only to find himself stepping into a puddle of Lust-Liquified Hermione.

"Ever-Bashing Boomerang," I said gloomily, waving a feeble goodbye to the last decent manifestation of life that I would come in contact with until breakfast.

- - - -

"Budge up, Malfoy, I want the sofa," I grumbled in a very authoritative fashion. I needed to relax in front of the fire, and damn it, I wanted to sit on furniture this time!

Malfoy was sprawled elegantly across the toffee-colored object of my desire, and simply regarded me with the sort of sneering contempt that had stopped bothering me several years ago.

"That's not a very polite way to ask," he said coolly. "Sometimes it's terribly obvious the sort of background you've got, Granger."

"Oh, ouch," I snapped, storming around the sofa to glare at him. "I'm not kidding, Malfoy, move!"

Effing Merlin, I had no clue why I wanted to sit on the bloody couch so badly, but I was thoroughly willing to hex the Ice Prince's ears off if he didn't comply.

Malfoy smirked lazily up at me, looking too comfortable to be allowed. He crossed one leg over the other and sighed contentedly (and loudly) as he leaned back against the arm of the sofa.

"I was here first, Granger. You can have it when I'm finished." He was enjoying this exchange, I could tell.

There wasn't really much choice. I withdrew my wand from my robes, and pointed it at his neck.

"You're finished," I said coldly, pressing the wooden tip firmly into the soft spot between his jaw and his windpipe.

To my utter dismay, he grinned in a way that could only be described as feline. It had a quality that made me suddenly very aware of my heart's insistent rattling against my ribcage, and I had an intuitive desire to distance myself from Malfoy at that very moment, for fear of what might happen.

He absolutely called my bluff. His hand was on my wand now, slender white fingers gripping the wood, he was looking more catlike than ever, and I knew, somehow I knew, that something bad was about to happen.

He jerked my wand very suddenly, irresistibly, catching me off-guard…oh, I should have known…I fell onto him with all the grace of a tranquilized heifer.

My faulty mouth tried to shriek "Malfoy!", but, as the description "faulty" would suggest, it was not successful in this endeavor. In fact, my vocal cords felt as though they were stuck together like so much overcooked pasta.

It was one of those rare instances where I wished that I could shut off all of the nerves in my body, so I wouldn't have had to feel the shape of Draco Malfoy beneath me, too real, too there, too much…too him. It didn't seem to matter much that he was fully clothed, because a dripping-wet, towel-clad version of him was occupying my mind with exquisite, entirely unnerving detail.

I held my breath, trying not to sense his limbs under mine. There was a knee against my lower thigh, a fact I noticed with a burst of agitation that nearly fried my brain.

I realized with complete, consuming horror that I was wearing a skirt.

My body was not responding to the panic from which my mind was reeling; I was dead weight, I couldn't move, thank Merlin I'd landed on my hands so that my face hadn't smashed into Malfoy's as well as the rest of me had…but my elbows weren't feeling particularly steely, it was only a matter of time before they could no longer support my weight (which, at the moment, felt immense).

Up until this point, I had, for the most part, avoided actually looking at Malfoy. I felt a strangling sensation that I assumed was due to my asphyxiating horror, when in fact, the Slytherin beneath me had actually just jerked roughly on my tie.

"Getoffofme," I blurted breathlessly, unable to smack his hand away for fear of toppling face-first onto the smirking blond.

"Oh?" A voice should not be permitted to sound that silky-smooth, that self-satisfied. "It would appear, Granger, that you are the one on top of me."

His expression attained a wolf-like quality, as the knee that, until then, had rested casually against my thigh, ground against me with startling force.

Oh, Merlin, he was going to violate me. It was the most horrible feeling in the world, because just at the same time as terror bubbled up in my throat like bile, there was this awful, primal feeling searing through me. No boy had ever done anything remotely that sexual to old Hermione Granger…but no. I gulped down a breath, trying to rid myself of this odd sensation that would have me surrender, that would pull my hands out from under me so that my face would fall vigorously down to his…the very thought of it was so unwelcome, but so fixed. I felt insane.

I looked down at him, down at the face I had so loathed for six years, and realized with a crazy, heated, hateful excitement that his mouth was very close to mine, his breath once again stirred across my lips, and for a very blank moment I was entirely fixated on bringing them together. However, some small vestige of my normal self must've remained, because I held back, just staring at him, at cold, flickering eyes with a darkness painted behind them that didn't take much thought to decipher.

Merlin, Merlin, Merlin, he was feeling something of what I was. Oh, the thought was so terrifying that I could hardly swallow, my throat closing up convulsively.

My blood roared through my veins; I thought I could almost hear it rushing, and I could certainly hear my heartbeat, thrumming like the crazed bass line of a Weird Sisters' single. My skin prickled hotly, adding to my supreme discomfort.

Maybe it was instinct. Maybe I realized just how much trouble I would be in if I didn't move. Maybe my fear finally stirred my sluggish limbs. Whatever it was, I finally, reflexively shoved myself backward from Malfoy, ignoring the bruising force with which that action forced his scavenging knee into my flesh.

"I hate you!" I shrieked, hurriedly disentangling my limbs from his, smacking heavily at the offending knee. There was not a shred of common sense lingering in my weary brain by this point, and I was vaguely aware that I sounded like a spoiled thirteen-year-old yelling at her parents. "You're just a bloody ferret, and I hate you!"

And I almost just kissed you.

I was standing over him once again, no longer knowing where I was, knowing only where I was not anymore; I was no longer sprawled across Draco Malfoy, and I no longer felt panicked, only scorched and tired.

I glared down at him, feeling every inch of my skin uncomfortably hot against my clothing, ready to go collapse into bed, if not for one very irksome detail. A detail which, consequently, had Malfoy looking very pleased with himself and not at all upset at my outburst.

The wanker was twirling my wand between his fingers.