And here it is, the next Blaise/Hermione installment! These fics will be coming out approximately every 2 weeks, so there'll be a bit of space between each chapter. Thank you for all the feedback so far - I'm glad there are other Blaise/Hermione fanatics out there too ;)

Written for Hogwarts Flying Lessons #2: Write about a misunderstanding. With a bad landing, you should quickly jump to your feet, mount your broom and try again!

Prompt: 6. (plot) someone bullying a member of your pairing

Extra prompt: (dialogue) "Don't give me that look."/"Why?"/"You and I both know what happens when you give me that look and now is not the time."

WC: 2,007

"What I don't get," Harry muttered for what seemed the hundredth time, "is why Malfoy always disappears off the map. How does he go off-grounds?"

Hermione and Ron simultaneously sighed.

There were some mornings when Harry talked of nothing, and then the mornings when he talked of nothing but his suspicions concerning Draco Malfoy. It seemed today's morning was of the all-too-consistent latter.

Hermione followed Harry's stare to the Slytherin table, where Malfoy was. Beside him sat Pansy Parkinson, who was trying to engage him in conversation. She was clearly failing.

"His family is on Voldemort's side." Harry glared ahead stonily. "It has to connect to that."

She and Ron shared a mutual look of exasperation. As Ron cleared his throat awkwardly and leaned over to tap Harry's untouched plate of food, Hermione's gaze gradually slid back to the Slytherin table.

Malfoy's face did seem paler than normal, and he, like Harry, was not eating. He in fact seemed totally unaware of the activity around him, the way Pansy Parkinson was trying to feed him, or that Blaise Zabini was showing him some book -

Hermione stopped chewing and blinked. Blaise. Leaning forward, she thought she could make out some worry in his posture as he eyed Draco…

Without warning, his dark eyes were quite suddenly on hers.

Blaise raised an eyebrow as Hermione coughed in surprise. His signature smirk surfaced, as if he was amused to find her watching him. She found the urge to yell across the Great Hall that she'd been watching Malfoy, not him, definitely not him.

Scowling, Hermione dropped the eye contact, though the prickling on her arms made her feel as if Zabini was still smirking at her as she speared some bacon.

Ron was still trying to convince Harry to drop the Malfoy subject. He had begun a desperate one-sided discussion about Quidditch, when something behind Hermione caught his eye and he stopped talking. "Oh Merlin, she's coming."

There was only one she in Ron's mind. Hermione tensed but said coldly, "You should be happy to see her, Ronald, not scared."

As Lavender's "Won-Won!" pierced their ears and Ron moaned quietly into his food, Hermione set down her fork. "I'm going to the library," she announced stiffly. Turning exclusively to Harry, she said, "See you," and slung her bag over her shoulder.

The corridors outside the Great Hall were empty throughout the Entrance Hall and first floor. Hermione was just thinking about how hopefully this meant that the library would empty as well when she bumped into someone at the foot of the Grand Staircase.

"Watch it," the person said roughly.

Apologizing, Hermione made to move forward, but a large hand clamped around her arm before she could get any further.

Surprised, Hermione looked up quickly to see Vincent Crabbe glaring down at her. The expression on his face was alarmingly ferocious as he sneered, "You're alone, aren't you?"

Hermione didn't quite know what to say, but she noticed Gregory Goyle making his way up the last of the stairs from the Slytherin dungeons behind Crabbe.

"You were one of them," Crabbe continued with a snarl. Hermione could feel his fingers digging into her skin through two layers of cloth and sucked in her breath.

"Sorry?"

Goyle, who had reached them, cleared his throat. "Maybe you shouldn't be so hard, Vincent," he said uncertainly. "You might break her arm."

"Shut up!" For the first time, Hermione noticed the flames of anger behind Crabbe's hard, glinting glare. She temporarily stopped her struggles, realizing that Crabbe really was angry at her - but for what? She couldn't remember recently or ever insulting him in a way that would make him actually furious -

"You're just like that because your father isn't in Azkaban," Crabbe spat to his friend. "Just 'cause your pop wasn't there -"

Hermione's thoughts raced. Was this about Azkaban? Then Crabbe's father must have been one of the Death Eaters at the Department of Mysteries who had been captured.

Crabbe turned back to her. Hermione winced at the sight of his vengeful expression. Her hand flew to her pocket; if she didn't fight back soon, she wasn't sure what he would do to her. She had just only touched her wand when an achingly familiar voice rang down the corridor, breaking the tension in the air.

"Precisely what is happening here?"

As Crabbe's beefy hand slackened on her wrist as he and Goyle spun around, Hermione took that chance to wrestle her arm away even as she thought with relief, It's Blaise.

And indeed it was. Even as Crabbe whipped back to her with a roar of dismay, hand outstretched as if he wished to grab her again, Hermione looked at Blaise, feeling both relieved and increasingly, inexplicably uncomfortable with every step he took toward them.

"Vincent," Blaise said warningly, and Crabbe paused mid-lunge. "What's happening?"

"Stay outta this," Crabbe growled. "I was teaching the mudblood a lesson."

There was a pause, then Blaise tilted his head. "Is that so? Excellent."

Excellent.

The strange knot of emotions that had surfaced at the sound of Blaise's voice suddenly twisted, slithering to the pit of her stomach. For a moment, Hermione felt numb as she processed his words, that infuriatingly calm look on his face - and then the knot exploded and fire raged through her veins, fire so strong that Hermione couldn't think properly.

Crabbe was spitting out, "...had to teach her, she deserves it," to no one in particular when Hermione straightened herself and snapped loudly,

"Five points from Slytherin for misconduct in the halls." Her voice echoed through the corridor, and Blaise turned to her. She stared at him for a cold moment that seemed to last far too long, before whipping around to the Grand Staircase.

She stalked up the stairs with alarming ferocity. Her hand was still gripping her wand, and as she barreled into the second-floor corridor, Hermione briefly wondered whether she could hex that neutral expression off of Blaise's face, along with her acute awareness of him ten feet, then twenty, behind her.

"Granger."

Hermione flinched. Her feet stopped of their own accord, and she felt herself whipping around even as she screamed at herself to keep walking.

Blaise was walking to her, calm, hands in his pockets, certain. "Don't give me that look."

"Why?"

He shrugged and had the nerve to smirk. "You and I both know what happens when you give me that look and now is not the time. Pince'll return the favor to you."

"I'm not going to yell at you," she said bitingly, loathing him even more for knowing she'd been planning to, and spun around to storm into the library. Blaise followed, his eyes locked on her as she yanked out books and paper.

"Have they ever approached you like that? Vincent and Greg, I mean."

She glowered. "Stop bothering me."

"I am asking a simple question."

Slamming her quills onto the desk, Hermione refused to look up in fear that she would see treacherously familiar sparks of amusement in his eyes. "No. They haven't. Although that's not your business," she added scathingly.

"Hold out your arm."

Hermione's head jerked up. "Excuse me?"

Blaise was holding out a hand expectantly. "If you give me your arm, I'll leave you alone afterward."

Glaring, Hermione didn't move. "What are you planning to do with it?" she barked suspiciously.

He finally glanced up and she found his dark eyes startlingly unreadable. "Nothing."

She hesitated, and in that moment, in a single fluid motion, Blaise reached across the table and grabbed her hand. While one hand was used to hold her arm still, he used the other to shove the fabric of her sleeves up against her protests. The golden light filtering in from the windows of the library landed on her bare arm.

For a moment, they both stared down. Small bruises were already forming where Crabbe's fingers had dug in her skin.

Hermione flinched then yanked her arm backward. "Alright, go," she demanded, pulling her sleeve down.

He stood. But his eyes were still annoyingly unreadable, and Hermione found herself wondering what he was thinking. Just minutes ago, he had seemed perfectly happy to support Crabbe. But he was here now, looking at her arm as if it pained him, not her.

A highly conflicted look slipped out of the cracks of his expressionless mask, and as Blaise leaned forward, Hermione found herself conscious of the way his eyes seemed to be tracing and capturing her face, and how alarmingly tall he was when she sat and he stood.

Blaise opened his mouth, and then words rushed out, like a wave crashing forward all at once. "There are ways to deal with Vincent, Draco, all of them, that you don't know anything of. So don't accuse me of not helping you back there when I was simply doing what they would understand."

Hermione frowned up at him. "I didn't accuse you of anything."

"You're angry. Not the most subtle person, Granger." The ghost of a smirk surfaced on Blaise's face, and she caught onto it in selfish, sudden relief - as close to a smile that she could get from him.

But the words that came out of her mouth were harsh. "And shouldn't I be?" Hermione demanded, speaking just as quickly as he had. "It's not your reasoning that matters. It makes some sense now that you're explaining it to me now, but I don't see you admitting that you were supporting the wrong thing."

"I was helping you by making Vincent believe he'd done enough already!" Blaise, oddly, was looking anywhere but at her. And if she didn't know any better, she would've said that he was blushing. "If I'd told him to stop or whatever you wanted me to say or do, then he'd go after you again. It's how he thinks, how we think."

Shaking his head, he looked uncharacteristically strained as he finished and raked a hand through his hair. "Well. I did promise I'd leave."

Hermione bit her lip as he turned without another word.

She had never taken Blaise as one to really pay attention to the people around him. The months they'd spent working on their Arithmancy final, he had always appeared to her as confident and calculating; somehow that hadn't extended to "understanding". But not only did it seem that he was utterly understanding of his fellow Slytherins, but it was also evident that he knew her.

He'd known she was angry, followed her here, and explained himself. He hadn't needed to; in all technicalities, should it have mattered to either of them that Hermione understood what he'd actually been doing, and that Blaise knew she knew? A Gryffindor understanding the way that a Slytherin worked; should it have mattered?

Not at all.

Hermione instinctively stood. "Blaise."

Blaise stopped walking and spun around. Already, he had wiped his face clean; she couldn't make out any of the troubled expressions on his face that she knew had been there seconds ago.

"Do you have some time?" Hermione racked her mind desperately for something to say. "I need, er, help."

Blaise frowned. "With what?"

Flushing pink, Hermione straightened; she might as well try to look dignified even though she knew she was being terribly embarrassing. "I, er, need help on this Charms assignment. Do you have time?"

He was looking at her searchingly, and Hermione had to force herself to meet his steady gaze.

Finally, after what seemed ages, Blaise cracked a smirk. It spread across his face slowly, but it took only the first sight of his upturned mouth for Hermione to suddenly feel warm inside.

"Hermione Granger, asking for help?." Blaise took a step back, and he was close enough that Hermione could hear every syllable as he spoke, his voice filling her with that same sense of relief and (not entirely unwelcome) discomfort she'd felt back in the hallway.

"I suppose I can stay, to see whatever other unnatural phenomenons you can come up with."

And, offering a small grin at her affronted expression, Blaise settled in the seat beside hers at the table without another word or gesture of discomfort - where they eventually sat, a girl and a boy under the guise of homework, for the remainder of that golden morning.