A/N: Thank you all so much for your reviews, favorites and follows! I am really glad you liked the last chapter - especially the relationship between Rodolphus and Rabastan :) You can follow me on tumblr (nauticalparamour) where I post sneak peaks, story updates and answer questions.

Please let me know what you thought of chapter ten and be on the lookout for chapter eleven soon!

December 1967

Try as she might to deny it, Hermione was...disappointed when Rodolphus didn't darken her reading nook in the library the first full day of break. He'd seemed determined to spend time with her and a small part of her wondered if he'd decided to take Rabastan's worries to heart. When he didn't appear the second day, Hermione was forced to acknowledge how much she'd wanted to spend time with Rodolphus. There was no longer a point in acting put upon whenever he tried to speak to her.

Making a plan for the third day of break, Hermione decided to get bundled up and have a walk around the grounds. She couldn't just hole up in the library the whole entire break anyways - Ron and Harry would be scolding her for studying too much anyway.

A thick blanket of snow covered the grounds courtesy an overnight storm, and Hermione almost felt bad about leaving tracks in the pristine landscape. While she walked and listened to the crunching of her footsteps, Hermione wondered what Rodolphus might have been up to the last few days. There were hardly any Slytherins who had remained behind and she never really saw him socialize outside of his small group of friends.

Hermione walked for about an hour until her nose was pink and her cheeks were stinging from the wind, unable to admit that she was scouring the grounds for sight of Rodolphus. He'd found her last time that she was on a walk around the Black Lake, so it was only logical for her to go back. Finally, though, she had to face the facts that he wouldn't be coming out. Returning to the castle, she decided to go to the kitchens to get a hot cocoa to warm up her bones. The house elves didn't know her yet, didn't know about her habit of leaving oddly knitted clothes around the common room to free them, and would have no reason to turn away a half-frozen student.

After tickling the painting of the pear, she was greeted warmly by a gaggle of elves, who were excited to have someone to dote on. The next thing she knew she had a hot cup of cocoa in her hands, with a mountain of mini marshmallows on top. Being surrounded by dozens of the squeaky little creatures suddenly had her feeling very alone. It turned out the self-imposed solitude that she had so craved at the beginning of break now seemed suffocating, overwhelming. She was overwhelmed by homesickness, remembering that she was just an odd transplant in this alternate time. So focused on not getting attached to this time, not making any changes had made her life incredibly lonely.

Maybe Dumbledore had been right. Maybe it was best for her to forget things for a while, to just be a teenager. Maybe she needed to let the adults take care of things for once.

Mind made up to stop feeling so sorry for herself all the time. Hermione left the kitchens with a new sense of purpose, only to run directly into the arms of Rodolphus Lestrange. He smiled, wrapping his arms around her middle and keeping her upright. "Whoa, easy there, Hermione," he teased, before looking around. "Where did you just come from?"

She blushed, pointing over her shoulder at the painting. "You can get into the kitchens through there. The house elves were just babying me," she explained.

"Really?" he asked, his eyebrows raising in surprise. "How did you ever find that out? I've been here for seven years and I never had a clue it was there."

"I read about it, in Hogwarts, A History," she explained, her words coming out disjointed as she tried to think of a good lie on the spot. She couldn't very well tell him how she'd really found it.

"That thing?" Rodolphus asked, looking at her with a mixture of awe and "Salazar, I didn't think that anyone actually read that."

Hermione bristled at the slightly disparaging way that he talked about her favorite book, but at the same time, it wasn't as if Harry and Ron liked it either, despite all of the wonderful information that was in it. "Maybe you should read it," she snarked back. "I've only been here half a year and already I found the kitchens."

Rodolphus laughed at her observation, before nodding in agreement. "Maybe you're onto something," he conceded. Then a smile worked its way across his face as he thought of something. "Say, I bet I know of somewhere really cool in the castle that you haven't found yet. Have you heard of the Come and Go Room?" he asked, looking just about as eager as a puppy to show her.

Fighting a smile of her own, Hermione shook her head, even though she knew exactly what he meant. Having knowledge of the Room of Requirement would really be too difficult for her to explain away. "Lead the way, Lestrange," she encouraged.

Falling into step next to him, she found her eyes being drawn to his expressive face again and again while her feet retraced the familiar path to the Room of Requirement. He looked carefree and happy. His face was not perfect - his teeth slightly crooked and a small silvery scar on the outside of his brow - but he was utterly handsome. No sense in denying that at this point. "So where have you been the last two days?" she asked, unbidden. "I thought you were going to look for me," she added, hoping that she didn't sound too put out.

She watched as that familiar smirk tugged at the corner of his lips. "Miss me, Hermione?" he asked, before turning serious once again. "It seemed like you maybe wanted some time to yourself, so I didn't want to impose. But since we ran into each other…" he trailed off.

"Literally," Hermione said with a matching smirk of her own. "You are right, though. I did think that I wanted time to myself, but after two days in the library all by myself, I realized that I...I wanted you to come find me, like you promised," she admitted, her cheeks turning a bit pink at the reveal. It seemed too dangerous to admit, too close to flirting for her comfort.

Luckily, they were distracted by their arrival at the portrait of Barnabas the Barmy teaching the trolls to dance ballet. Rodolphus was explaining the way in which you could get into the room. "Most people think this is just a...Room of Lost Things, but us Slytherins know better. It can be anything you set your mind to, if you walk in front of this door three things while thinking of it."

"Sharing house secrets with a Gryffindor, Rodolphus?" she asked, amused that he was willing to share them with her. "What would the rest of your housemates say?"

"I'd probably be disowned," he deadpanned, before reaching for the door handle. "But you seem like the kind of witch who can keep a secret. Promise you won't go tattling on me?"

"Who would I tell, anyway? Bellatrix?" she asked, eagerly following him into the Room, wondering just what he would have conjured up.

The room seemed to be some sort of informal parlor, with huge, comfortable looking couches in blue silk on either side of a coffee table, set with a a tea service that she knew would be empty. At one end of the room, there was a window that spanned almost the full length of the room, showcasing the flurries of snow outside. At the other end, there was a massive fireplace complete with roaring fire. On the mantle was a large portrait of some young lordling astride his horse, dark auburn hair tied at the nape of his neck.

"Where are we?" she asked, enjoying the warmth that the fire gave off. She slipped into one of the couches, sighing at how plush it seemed. Leaning over, she looked into the teapot even though she knew that it would remain disappointingly empty.

Rodolphus took a seat next to her, sitting far closer than was necessary, his leg nearly pressed against hers. "This is the library at my home, where I spend most of my time," he explained, leaning back, looking utterly at home in the surroundings.

"A library without any books?" Hermione asked sounding utterly aghast, wondering how that was possible. She couldn't imagine anything as disappointing as that would be.

He laughed, pushing his hands through his hair in a tell of embarrassment. "Well, I didn't really focus on them when I was coming in here. I don't pay much attention to them at all, if I'm honest," he told her. "So you like books then?"

Hermione bit her lower lip, trying not to snap at him that it was about the most obvious question she'd ever been asked before. "You could say that. I don't spend all my time in the library because I have to," she said, waving him off. Her eyes returned to the painting, able to pick out features that resembled Rodolphus, most noticeably the shade of blue in his eyes. "Ancestor of yours?" she queried.

"Yeah, that's like my great grandfather six or seven times," he explained. "First to come over to England from France. Radalf Lestrange."

"You look similar," Hermione said with a smile, before reaching over to ruffle his hair slightly. "He must be where you get the reddish color of your hair from."

Rodolphus looked utterly aghast to be told that he had even a hint of red in his hair. "I do not have red hair, Granger!" he said, pulling away from her and looking at her with shock clear in his eyes.

Hermione was unable to hold back her life. "It's not a bad thing, Rodolphus," she chided him. "And it's not as if you're ginger. I bet everyone would say that you have brown hair. But in certain lights...you can see a bit of red, that's all," she explained, thinking that it was too funny that he should be so vain about something like a hair color.

His affronted look melted away into something slightly more flirtatious. "Been spending a lot of time daydreaming over the color of my hair, have you Hermione?" he prodded, leaning his body towards hers.

She swallowed thickly, suddenly feeling all the humor being replaced by a queer sort of fluttering in her belly. "No," she insisted, her cheeks going bright red, even though she knew that she was telling the truth. She certainly didn't make it a habit to think about Rodolphus's hair.

He dropped the teasing lilt to his voice, too, suddenly sounding far more breathless. "It's alright, if you have," he assured her. "I've spent my fair share of time thinking about your hair - how it's the same color of toffee that I love...wondering what it would feel like to run my fingers through it. Is it soft, I wonder?" he asked, his voice dropping an octave.

Rodolphus reached a hand out, but Hermione was too distracted by the shape of his lips to do anything. His fingers slipped into her hair, until his hand was cupping the back of her head. He pulled her forward while simultaneously leaning into her, their lips meeting as if by some magnetic force. Hermione felt her eyes slip shut as she took a moment to enjoy the softness of his lips, the way that the two of them fit together perfectly. He pressed against her more firmly, catching her lower lip between the two of his. The fluttering in her belly seemed to only grow wilder, until she realized it was the rapid pace of her heart, threatening to beat right out of her chest.

But then, he was pulling away, letting her free and the reality of the situation was sinking back in with startling clarity. It was one thing to be friends with Rodolphus Lestrange - a dubious prospect in it's own right - but it was entirely something else to kiss him. Standing on shaky legs, like a fawn learning to walk, Hermione stared at the young man with wide eyes. Pressing a hand to her lips, she couldn't imagine doing anything but fleeing the room.