Twenty

Day: 1439; Hour: 23

Seamus, Justin, Lavender, Lavender's boyfriend Harold, and herself. There had been two fresh faces, just barely seventeen, that Seamus had charmed into joining but who had backed out somewhere around the time Hermione and Seamus had trespassed into Lupin's new office. Hermione got the impression they hadn't known this wasn't exactly a legit mission from the Order, but more a personal one.

It took them until two in the morning, when everyone at Grimmauld had left the house or for bed, for them to get into Lupin's office. It had only taken a minute to find the sheets of parchment on his desk, stamped with the seal of Azkaban and signed by several different interrogators, that outlined the places housing Death Eaters. There were nearly two dozen places listed and just five of them, and it didn't take anyone intelligent to know that there had to be more than just twenty-one hideouts and residencies. Death Eaters had numbered in the hundreds, most of them wealthy and not keen on sharing much but a passion for power and murder. But even if Ron, or any of the missing, were not in a single one of them, the possibility wasn't going to stop them from looking anyway.

Hermione is a thorough person, and so they plan for three hours in her bedroom with enough locking and silencing charms to look suspicious if anyone tried to break them. They have a whole pouch of Portkeys to various safe houses, maps and ten pages of planning that they stare at her strangely when she uses a chess board to figure them out.

Everything is the very best that it can be for the situation, and there is a determined excitement in the room as they realize this. They have no idea what they will be facing, and there is not enough of them by even half, and so there is also fear that creeps along the knots of their spines but it is something they are used to. But it still makes them jump and Lavender let out a sound like an injured cat when the doorknob rattles.

They eye the bronze knob with trepidation, no one moving or even breathing, as if the silencing charms hadn't been put in place at all. There is a pause at the other side of the door, and then the rattle again, harder and almost angry.

"Who could that be? Everyone's in bed, silencing charms are up... They are up, right?" Lavender's whispering proves her doubt.

"Lupin?"

"Maybe we shouldn't answer it."

"We're definitely not answering it."

"What if something happened though? Or they need us?" Hermione asks this but makes no attempt to move, and there is silence again until something smacks into the door.

"Shit."

"Hide!" Lavender suddenly reverted back to an eight year-old caught by her parents as she jumped up and searched the room frantically. Hermione hadn't even seen her act like that when it was Death Eaters on the other side of the door.

"The stuff!" Justin yells, grabbing the pouch of Portkeys and flinging it into his suitcase, slamming the top down and sits on it for good measure.

Harold proved useless as he knocks over the chess pieces like the game would give them away, Lavender shoving the maps into the waistband of her pants and covering them with her shirt. Justin, for all his realization that they needed to hide the evidence, simply stands in the middle of the room with his hands in the air at his shoulders. Hermione shoves the plans, markers, and list into her pillowcase.

It is probably comical, the look of innocence they plaster onto their expressions when Harold opens the door. Hermione's breathing stops again when the door pulls back, and she recognizes the shoulder, the arm, the long fingers. She can just see half his face when Harold stops from opening the rest of the way. There's a red dash of coloring across his cheekbone and he's out of breath for some reason she can only guess at. He hasn't moved his eyes off Harold, and Hermione curses under her breath when the vein at his temple appears. There is only one positive event that causes that, and this certainly isn't that.

That idea gives her pause, and she glances over toward the rest of her partners in crime to see if they are reading the truth all over her. It isn't exactly normal for a man to show up at a woman's door in the middle of the night, and when Lavender shifts and Justin drops his hands, she's convinced they know. Then, suddenly, she wonders if it matters.

Draco doesn't speak for a solid minute, not even after Harold asks him what he needs. The anger pulsing off his stance is frightening. Hermione had never seen him in such a state when he wasn't on a mission or when her own anger wasn't dulling the sharpness of his. It isn't until Harold slouches back and the door opens wider that Draco's eyes find Lavender then Justin's. He breathes out, hard, and his shoulders are slow to relax. The hand clenched around his wand loosens its death grip, and then he looks at her.

Hermione's hit with the revelation of just why he was so angry, and there is an ache of feeling at the pit of her stomach that she doesn't dare call excitement. Draco is assessing her, and she almost laughs at the idea of her and Harold, but the current situation is too volatile for such a reaction. She doesn't think she has ever witnessed a man get that jealous over her, and it thrills her to the point that she imagines she would be snogging the hell out of him if the room was empty.

He knocks his palm into the door, pushing it past Harold's grip and steps into the room. Harold steps back and Draco kicks the door shut behind him, eyes still locked with hers, and if her breathing is unsteady she would never admit to it. There is a predatory quality to the way he looks at her, but not in the way she is used to. It is a calculation in his eyes and a sneer on his mouth that makes her think he knows something more than just what he plans on doing to her that's going to make her do all those things he likes for her to do.

"Three Gryffindors and two of their friends, warded up with silencing and locking charms in the dead of the night. You've earned a fail in stealth and full marks in suspicion. I almost wonder how you ever made it through sneaking around Hogwarts, Granger. When are you planning to leave?"

"We don't know what you're-" Lavender starts, but Seamus cuts her off, charging through any weak excuses that wouldn't save them anyway.

"That isn't any of your business, Malfoy."

"I believe it is. An unauthorized mission just looks like you're trying to go hide somewhere. Being that I've stumbled upon this, I don't want to be seen as helping to aid deserters by not reporting it."

"Draco," Hermione whispers, and she doesn't yell because there is something in his face that she recognizes but isn't sure about. A lie.

His eyes meet hers again and holds them, even when Seamus takes up screaming out the offense he feels. "They wouldn't think that, Malfoy! You're much better at helping people in than helping them get out, isn't that right? Like we would come this far just to leave now-"

He wouldn't report her. He would try to convince her to stay, he would try to force her to stay, and if he took her wand and bound her it might have worked. But eventually he would just grow angry and tell her to go. At least, she thinks so.

"We're not deserters, or going rogue... Okay, we're going rogue a little bit, but it's nothing Lupin wouldn't approve of. We just don't have the time, Malfoy, and Lupin would make us wait until we-"

And the way he had looked when the door opened, all red in the face and out of breath like he had been exerting himself. He hadn't been at the house earlier that night. He even still had his cloak on. Draco had come for a purpose... her, but for what, she didn't know.

"Seamus, put down your wand," Lavender sighs and plops down on the bed, the maps crunching under her though it isn't heard over the yelling.

"We're just trying to help her friend out." Harold shrugs, obviously not filled with all that Gryffindor bravado that made the chest puff up with indignation at a word like 'deserter'.

"Weasley, I know."

"You can't make me stay." Hermione tells him this with a quiet steel in the now silent room.

Then Draco is back, emerging from the man with the emotions and stance she couldn't understand. His left eyebrow raised, his shoulder hitting the frame of the door as his leg crossed the other. His fingers twirled his wand, and the corner of his mouth lifted up into a smirk that didn't hold much behind it. He was playing a game, and she knew it, covering up for the fact that he was so unsure about something.

"I could, if I wanted. But if you want to rush off toward post-death glory, Granger, I'm not going to stop you."

"Then why the fuck are you still here?" Seamus snapped, his face still shining with the sweat of his anger.

"Because it would be a shame to miss you dying in front of me. It might make this whole war a bit more tolerable."

"What?"

"I already know about your lack of brains, Finnigan, so there's no point in proving it so often." Draco rose to his full height, blew the fringe from his eyes and sighed in resignation. "I'm going with you."

Day: 1440; Hour: 1

Hermione wasn't going to plead with him. He ignored her when she brought up the fact that he had just been released from St. Mungo's less than 36 hours ago. He looked bored when she pointed out his injuries. He glared when she brought up the possible consequences, and he grabbed her wrist almost hard enough to bruise when she went to test-poke his shoulder. After much bickering, two almost-to-blows arguments between Draco and Seamus, and many angry glares shared between Hermione and Draco, they were finally on their way.

Hermione knew by now that when Draco set his mind to something, there wasn't much hope in convincing him to do, or think, otherwise. Besides, he was skilled, willing and another person to add to the very short list. At the same time that she felt safer with him here, she was also nervous about his injuries. She couldn't know the extent of them, or how badly he shouldn't be doing this until he showed the weakness of them, and that was a very hard thing to expect of Draco Malfoy.

"I'm telling you, this is a bad idea. We're now in one of the most underused safe houses with Malfoy, and no one knows where we are. It's like the perfect setup for him getting away with murder. Not that I wouldn't be able to kill him first, but it's the point of it, Hermione. Have you lost your fucking mind?"

"First of all, Seamus, do not speak to me like that. Second, if Draco hasn't proved himself to you yet, then he's certainly proved his opinion of you being thickheaded." Hermione snaps, and she would feel bad about it later, but she had reached the end of her patience a long time ago.

Seamus stood, affronted, his Phoenix band hanging limply from a finger as he stares at her. Lavender scratches her temple in a moment of awkwardness, clearly unsure of what side she should take and probably storing the information away to fill in the gossip mongrels that Hermione had defended Draco Malfoy. Again.

Hermione distracts herself from any apologetic feelings by tying the orange band around her arm and humming inside her head. Harold, for his part, remained sitting on the couch with a grin that Hermione had always found incredibly creepy. Lavender's boyfriend didn't seem to have any awareness of vibes, Draco had told her several weeks ago. The entire room could be bursting with a dozen emotions, or everyone can be stilled in anger or awkwardness, and it was like the man had no concept. He just... kept smiling, staring at Lavender, or both for full effect.

"I'm guessing someone forgot to get all the layouts." Draco drawls this in a way that lets them know he had realized their incompetency a long time ago.

"What layouts? For the buildings?" Draco doesn't answer Justin, who had also learned by now that the blond didn't respond to questions with obvious answers, so he jumps to explanation instead. "We grabbed all the ones that were there."

Draco stuck his tongue against his cheek and lifted his chin toward Hermione. "I need you to show me what all your little symbols mean."

Hermione followed his retreating back into the kitchen and paused awkwardly behind him when he stops at the table. She has no idea why she feels awkward at all, but there it is. Her emotions have spun like tornadoes the whole war, but especially over the last several days. At St. Mungo's she had been so happy and relieved to see him alive, so sidetracked by Harry's life, Ron's status, and Neville's death, that she didn't have time to think. The last time she had really been alone with him without his eyes dopey and voice slurred from pain medication, she had thought it would be the last time she would see him alive again.

Now here he was, in fairly good health, fully alert, completely alive, and here. Here for no apparent reason, though one she could guess at but didn't allow herself to because she could not handle being wrong about it. Perhaps she couldn't handle being right about it either. But she wanted to touch him. She wanted to validate the beat of his heart, the warmth of his skin, his breath. That is the reason for her awkwardness - her desire to grab him, or hug him, and her complete lack of knowing if she has the right to now. She needed something to connect her to the world again, because ever since she had woken up to Justin's frantic cries after the death of Voldemort, she has been floating like she had before Draco had dragged her back down to land over a year ago.

He looks over his shoulder, eyebrows raised at her lack of presence at his side, and he pauses. Something skidded past the tired look in his eyes, and it is the first time she has seen him so weary. It almost scares her. She realizes that her body is sagging with the weight of her emotions, and she wonders when it is she began to feel comfortable with him seeing her weakened. She straightens herself out, shaking herself from her thoughts of him, and of everything that has happened the past several days. It isn't time for this yet.

"Granger," it comes out softer than he should be allowed to say it, and it makes her heart pound hard for two beats after.

His eyes flick up, over her head, and his face hardens again, the tired look vanishing from his eyes. She wonders why he allowed her to see it at all. Justin walks past her and to the table, knocking his fist against the worn wood as he looks down at the papers spread out. It takes him a moment but he is not Harold, and when he looks over at her he's almost nervous.

"Alright, let's go then." Draco pulls the papers into one pile, rolling his neck and shooting a glare at Justin. "Are you ready?"

"Yes. I just have to put on my-"

"Then do that."

Justin shot him a glare and Hermione a smile, leaving the kitchen to collect whatever he needed to put on. Seamus was yelling something at Harold about a smile and Lavender was shrieking back in her boyfriend's defense. Draco turns fully toward her, all reserve and emotions as stark as a field of winter.

"I didn't tell you-"

"No, you were too busy with your pity party to remember that time is vital. Isn't that why you went behind the Order's back to do this in the first place?"

Hermione's head pulls back in surprise, and she truly hopes that she looks more angry than offended. "I am fully aware-"

"Then stop standing around like a pile of flesh and move your ass, Granger."

She stays bitterly angry with him and he keeps providing good reasons for it. It isn't until they get back to the safe house, exhausted after a thorough search of an empty building and a half-destroyed house, that she realizes he has been doing it on purpose. Not once had she been overpowered by any emotion but anger, and that bone-deep tired she had felt in the kitchen had been replaced by a determined fury that had him smirking at her when he thought she didn't see him.

Day: 1440; Hour: 19

She stands in front of his door for three minutes. She doesn't know how many times she has lifted and lowered her arm from the knocking position, or from grabbing for the handle, but it is enough times that her shoulder is beginning to feel sore. She is not a coward, but she would have never gone through with either one, and she knows this even when the door is opening in front of her.

She draws a deep breath in and tastes the liquor in the air as he squints in the light of the hallway. Sometimes she gets so used to seeing him in front of her and in her head that she forgets how beautiful he is, and that is a shame. She blushes now, caught, and a brief look of amusement twists his mouth up at the sight of her. He throws his forearm up against the edge of the door and rests his shoulder on the frame, filling up the doorway.

"I would invite you in, but I'm not sure if you want to enter or if you were just planning on guarding my door all night."

"How did you know I was out here?" She matches his whisper.

"The shadow under the door. I figured it was either you or Finnegan about to attempt murdering me in my sleep."

"Oh," because he is really the only person in the world that could make her extensive vocabulary filter down to the basics at times.

He stands and stares at her long enough to make her shift on her feet, uncomfortable with the way she couldn't read his thoughts. She contemplates making up a lie and walking away, but he always sees through them anyway. He is still waiting for something though, and she hates that he has to make this difficult.

"Do you have any more?" She makes the motion of drinking, and knowing collided with curiosity on his features.

He steps back and to the side, opening the door for her, and has probably come to expect the look of paranoia she flashes over her shoulder. They had all gone to bed twenty minutes ago, so tired that the enthusiastic noises she had expected from Lavender and Harold's temporary room never came.

Draco closes the door behind her and moved past her toward the desk. She has to blink to adjust to the lighting, a lone lamp on the desk the only source of brightness in the room. She wonders if this was a Bad Idea that she came, if he is finished with this...this...relationship now that the war was almost over. She wonders if she looks clingy or needy because that is the last thing she wants to look like, and the thought keeps her blushing even after he was making his way back to her.

He comes to a stop a foot in front of her, the dark liquid swirling inside the glass he holds. She holds her hand out for it, and when he doesn't move to give it to her she looks up to find him staring down at her. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately.

There is something in the way he looks at her that tells her he is going through and discarding all the possible things to say as well, and the silence grows so thick she has trouble breathing. There are so many things she would like to tell him, and ask him, but that would be digging up a lot of the things she is pretty bent on trying to ignore. She just wants to stop thinking and wondering, and she imagines he feels the same. It was why they started this in the first place.

He moves then, fluidly and decidedly, reaching out to place the glass down on the dresser with one hand and to grab her hip with the other. She isn't sure if she moves at the same time or just after, but it feels as if she is stepping forward the moment he reaches out. Then her hands are clenched in his shirt, and she is pressing into him too hard to not be telling. He bends as she pulls and then she is kissing him, a collision of mouths and tongues that tells her she needed this more than she even thought she did.

"God," she breathes, reaching up to grasp his face, fingers sliding into the hair above his ears.

He humphs a breath against her mouth and reaches down to grab the back of her legs, hoisting her up and against him. Hermione cannot slow her hands, tracking the angles of his face, his neck, the dips of his shoulders. She squeezes and yanks, wrapping her legs so tightly around his hips that the muscles burn. She kisses him hard, teeth clinking, their tongues in a battle for dominance, for need, for something only the other could give.

His hands fold out, fingers spread as if to feel as much as possible against all of him, his hands seeking her waist, her bum, any exposed skin. He trusts her to hold on, reaching between them to unbutton her pants, and he slides a hand under the back of her shirt. His hand is cool against her skin, pressing into her back as the other grabs the hem of her shirt and yanks it up.

Hermione pants for air, gulping in the oxygen as she lifts her arms and they struggle her out of the fabric. He flings it somewhere over her head, and she grasps the material at his shoulders and yanks up, suddenly desperate for the feel of his skin against hers. He kisses the top of her breasts, her neck, her chin, and then her lips again, their whole bodies moving with the struggle for air and the ignorance of making it a priority over keeping their mouths on one another. If she was being clingy and needy now, he forces her not to care, to accept it as the only way to go about this.

She falls back into the bed before she even realizes that he had been walking them toward it, and she gasps in three breaths to make up for the oxygen that leaves her under the sudden crush of his body. He plants a hand into mattress at her shoulder and lifts himself up, pulling his shirt over his head as her hands greet each inch of skin as it is revealed to her.

He throws his shirt over his shoulder and looks down at her, bringing a pause to their frantic movements. His hair is shooting up in every direction from the static cling of his shirt, his cheeks flushed and his eyes dark. This is how she likes him best, exposed and out of control. She arches her hips up and against him and Draco groans, low and rough, one hand sinking into her hair to pull her mouth back to him as he sunk back down and against her. The other pushes under her, around her, the muscles in his arm contracting against her back as he pulls her up, crushing her chest to his. His hand squeezes her hip, wraps around the back of her head, and he devours her in a way that makes her think she has the ability to make him clingy and needy as well.

She is dizzy, hot, and all over him. She is the one to wrench her mouth away first, pulling in her breath so hard she wouldn't be surprised if they could hear it across the house. He is just as loud, untangling his hand from her hair to brace himself against the mattress, pushing up as her hands travel from his back to his chest. He kisses her neck, her collarbones, her breasts and down as he pulls back to grab the waist of her jeans, and she realizes that she's trembling.

He stands, leaving her cold as he yanks her pants and underwear off in one rushed pull. He looks down at her in a way that makes her stomach sink in and a smile to turn up her swollen lips, and he grins back wolfishly. She laughs then, because she feels absurd, but doesn't know why. The grin slowly falls away from his face as his eyes rake down her body, and she ignores the urge to cover herself or wiggle about in her insecurity - he had shown her time and times again that that is the last reaction he wants from her, and that she has nothing to feel insecure about with him, not in this. He bends to push his pants to the floor, and when he stands up again he is back to being that dark sort of predatory that frightens her a little and thrills her far more.

God, the amount of days and months she could spend just staring at him like this. Fully aroused in all possible ways, and every dip and contour of his muscles, his skin, his bones that she could spend years exploring but still not know enough of.

"Dra-" she breathes in a hushed tone, but still cuts herself off.

She feels the tip of her ears drag up at another creak in the hallway past the door, and now she knows why he was taking so damn long to get back to her. A door shuts and a light cough comes from the direction of the bathroom. She looks from the door back at Draco, the weariness making a slow creep back into his expression, and oh no. Oh no because she isn't going to go back to the awkward girl standing in front of his door with her arm raised and not knowing what to say. Because she is refusing to let him stand there in front of her like that, and her on his bed like this, and let anyone send her back to her room to take care of herself and wish it were him.

They were too fragile, the both of them. If she walked away now, she had no way of knowing if he would open the door for her again. He had proved he still wanted her, and she knew that in some way she would not think about, she needed him. So she stops thinking, and she stops being so afraid. He keeps staring at her cautiously, guardedly when she pushes herself up to her knees, and still doesn't seem to get it when she pushes up and kisses him again. His fingers wrap around her arm, and he kisses her back like he is unsure, and she does not like that at all. Since when had he cared if other people were outside the door?

Her breath is stuttered when she pulls back, and she feels something akin to rejection burning hot at the bottom of her stomach. Confusion morphs his face and his fingers squeeze tighter around her arm as she sinks back down. The action takes her attention away from trying to avoid his eyes and she looks back up at him, trying to remember where he threw her clothes. His head is cocked, his eyes dashing across the plains of her face, and he pulls her back up. He kisses her and she holds her breath, exhaling loudly when he pulls back to look at her. Another kiss, another pull back just as she begins to return it. Hermione's expression gives way to her surprise as comprehension hits that he is testing her. Besides the darkness of his eyes and his swollen mouth, he looks the same as when she has watched him form plans alone in the meeting room. Searching for all possibilities, focused and scrutinizing, with a raw sort of dedication.

What a stupid man. Or, perhaps, he had every reason to think she wanted to bolt the moment she heard one of her friends just outside the door. Hadn't that been what she had done every time she did? She would pick it all apart later, when she had the patience, but that was the last thing she had now.

She is forceful when she grabs the back of his neck and has him meet her halfway, stealing his mouth and pulling him down with her. He follows willingly though, breathing out harshly, and when a door opens and she's still kissing him he finally wraps his arms back around her again.

Day: 1441; Hour: 5

She still does not spend the night with him. It is not that she is ashamed of him, and she hopes he knows this. It is just that it is easier for people to not know, and she needs that. This thing between them has always been difficult with just them, let alone if everyone knew. She didn't want to face the whispers that trailed behind Lavender's feet, the accusation of her friends, or for anyone to make her feel like she was less of a person because she was "shagging Malfoy". And it wasn't just because it was him, but because of the whole shagging aspect. She wasn't even in a dedicated relationship with him. Draco was not her boyfriend, and she didn't even know if this whole thing would last from one day to the next.

If it was something solid that she could hold onto and fight for, then she would have. She would. But she didn't even really know how he felt about her, and while she would fight for him and the person he had become, she didn't think she had the room to fight for them, as something that was bound together no matter what anyone thought of it. Hell, her friends had a hard enough time just knowing they were friends.

But there had been a look in his eyes that, if she hadn't been so worn out, would have cost her sleep that night. She almost wanted to tell everyone, if only to make sure that he never looked at her like that again. She was just scared of so many things, like him calling it off because it looked like she was too serious about it, telling her friends because it mattered enough for them to know. She was scared of how it would feel when he left her and they all knew. The pity, the jokes, the feeling of inadequacy. She would have her own emotions to deal with then, and she did not need them to add to those.

She had never been one for taking the easy road though, despite her excuses, and she knew that it was shame that filled her when she walked away from his bedroom. She had been the one to establish leaving after sex, and he had been the one to change it. It has been her that has always been afraid of people finding out, and him that accepted it. She counted her mistakes like the bruises he left along her skin, and she felt like a coward. There were just so many hard things here, she did not want to add another.

Day: 1441; Hour: 10

Hermione gasps so hard she chokes on it, yanking Lavender toward her with enough force to throw them both back against the wall. Seamus had the wand of the Death Eater in his hand before the green smoke of the Killing Curse had evaporated from where Lavender's shoulder had been. Draco had him bound not a second later as Justin dug through his pockets for the pouch that held the Ministry Portkeys. Hermione clung to Lavender's shoulders a bit longer than she should have during a mission, and if Lavender's shoulders were shaking beneath her sweaty palms she wasn't going to point it out.

"Are you okay?" Hermione looks at Lavender as she pulled away, nodding but visibly shaken.

"Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit." Harold places a hand on her shoulder but Lavender pulls away from it, shaking out her arms, feeling the flow of blood that means she is alive.

"Should we interrogate him?" Seamus nods toward the boy, and Draco shakes his head, eyes darting all around them.

"He's too young. He won't know anything."

Seamus ignores this and is looking toward the rest of them, but when they don't answer he rolls his eyes. "I guess I'll take your word for it, seeing as how you have some real inside information as to how the Death Eaters work."

"Well, if you want," Draco begins in a drawl, but his voice turns hard, "I can free him and let him take you with him so you can get some insider information for yourself-"

"Guys," Hermione cuts off the next big blowout, watching Harold shake the boy hard enough to look like a lifeless doll in the hands of an excited three year-old.

"Do you know where Ron Weasley is? Sandra Colack, Peter Hemmings?"

"Send him to the Ministry. He won't talk until he's under Veritaserum."

Draco is probably right, judging by the look of defiance the boy stared back at them with. They also tried for fifteen minutes on one of the other young Death Eaters they had found in the house, and that had proved a complete waste of time. Justin pushed the Portkey into the hollow of the boy's throat, standing up as he vanished to the Ministry.

That was the fourth they had sent back, and after another round of searching the house, the last they would find (or that would find them). Hermione tries to tell herself it wasn't pointless, because they still caught four Death Eaters, low in rank or not. It doesn't make her feel less frustrated or anxious.

Day: 1441; Hour: 17

"How did you know?" Hermione waits for him to look up at her in confusion before she grabs the bag of crackers out of his hand.

Confusion turns into a glare as he reaches forward and grabs her wrist, just in time for her to switch hands. "Know what?"

He moves back to his side of the couch, grabbing the remote in case she decides to make a go for that as well. They both had trouble sleeping all the time. He was out of liquor, a new sleeping method for him, and she was out of her mind with thinking.

"What I was planning to do. With Ron."

"Please. You're as predictable as the taste of pumpkin juice."

She pauses in her dig for a cracker, glares at him, then finally rips the bag more for better access. "Are you calling me boring?"

He snorts, flipping the channel to those exercise infomercials he loved so much. "Hardly."

"Good," she sniffs, munches on a cracker.

"You knew Potter was fine. The entire world knew Potter was fine. Once I found out about Weasley, I knew exactly what you would be doing. Rushing off into peril with your happy-to-die ex-Gryffindors, going to fight the good fight."

She snorted this time, her mouth dry from the crackers and she eyes his drink. "Hypocrite. You're fighting the good fight as well. And you're here to go 'rush off into peril' with us."

"Well, someone has to survive to tell the story to future generations. A lesson to future Gryffindors, showing them the proof in history of how stupid their House is. Though, knowing you lot, they would likely weep tears of joy at the bravery of it all."

"Right," she rolls her eyes and sucks her tongue off the roof of her mouth.

He is an ex-Slytherin, and proves the traits of his own House when he waits until she has forgotten and grown comfortable, ripping the bag of crackers out of her hand with a smirk. He looks completely surprised when she tackles him.