Thanks for all who reviewed my first chapter; it was really nice to hear what you thought 

So, here's number two! Suggestions welcome. I think I might have to change the rating to M soon.

Chapter Two - Heat

The next morning, rain was lashing at the castle in torrents, and the ceiling of the Great Hall was grey and mutinous, bearing down upon the students as they ate their breakfast like a bad omen. Halloween was looming ever closer and the Great Hall was already lined with grotesque grinning pumpkins, some of which cackled occasionally when they felt necessary. Ron and Harry were tucking into an enormous cooked breakfast, with everything from bacon to hash browns that morning, and neither one of them noticed how little Hermione was eating. She sat looking fairly subdued and detached, pushing a piece of bacon around her place absently, her eyes darting around the Hall.

After scooping some more baked beans onto his (already full) plate, Ron noticed Hermione's barren plate next to him, and offered her a bulging ladle of beans. "Come on, Hermione! You've hardly eaten a thing!" He said, pouring the beans onto her plate, in spite of her lack of response.

"I'm not very hungry this morning," Hermione replied, her voice sounding far away. Ron and Harry raised their eyebrows at each other, it wasn't like Hermione to not eat breakfast, and it certainly wasn't like her to be so quiet in the morning – she was usually such a nauseating morning lark.

Hermione's thoughts, however, were not with the food on the table; they were far more engaged with the identity of the mystery man she had encountered in the Library the night before. She scanned the room slowly with her eyes, letting them linger over the occasional boy she thought might be a possibility. Could it have been Terry Boot? He was fairly well muscled…but he didn't strike her as the type to accost a girl spontaneously in a dark corner of the Library. She looked over at the Hufflepuff table and saw Ernie talking earnestly to Hannah Abbott and snorted with laughter, there was no way that the pompous Hufflepuff boy would make such a brazen move. As she allowed her eyes to wander further around the Hall, she began to look over near the Slytherin table. There's no way it could have been a Slytherin she thought to herself, and was about to disregard the table altogether, when she felt the familiar prickle of hairs at the back of her neck again. Puzzled, she looked over at the Slytherins, and her heart almost stopped when she locked eyes with a most unexpected person.

Draco Malfoy was staring intently over at her from his place at the Slytherin table, his grey eyes completely focused on her face. As she looked back at him, she felt almost hypnotised by the intensity of his gaze, and was quite bemused. Her heart rate was suddenly significantly faster as she looked back at him, completely taken aback by his attention. Why in heavens name was Draco Malfoy staring over at her? But as quickly as she had noticed him looking over at her, he suddenly wasn't anymore, and was engaged in conversation with Parkinson, who quite clearly was vying for his attention, as usual. She shuddered lightly, the ferret's brain must have short circuited for a second when he was looking over at me Hermione told herself, unable to think of any other reasonable explanation as to why her worst enemy was looking so intently at her. Truthfully, the whole thing had made her a little nervous, truthfully, Malfoy made her a little nervous. However, she could not and would not consider the possibility that it was Malfoy arms that had been around her the night before. The possibility was too far-fetched to entertain.

Draco wiped a drop of sweat from his forehead as he pruned his Krappleberry bush ferociously in his Herbology lesson, slicing off branches with vigour. In spite of the cruel weather, the greenhouse seemed excessively hot on that particular day, and the warmth tempted Draco's mind to drift from Herbology to…other things. He loosened the collar on his school shirt and cut one branch particularly vigorously, resisting the thoughts that threatened to invade his mind and his senses. But he slowly began to lose the battle with his thoughts, and his mind began to drift on its own accord, to the place it had been dwelling for a good long time. Furious with himself for wanting to think of her in such a way, Draco tried to paint her in an unflattering way in his mind, forcing himself to recall the days when her teeth had been unattractively prominent, and her hair wild and frizzy. But as he thought of her as she had been, his mind naturally wandered to how much she had changed…and lingered over the new, soft curves of her body, the tamed curls that fell just above her breasts, her luscious pink pout and her light, intelligent hazel eyes, that had penetrated him so intensely that morning at breakfast.

In spite of himself, Draco could feel himself at the beginning of arousal, and his trousers felt uncomfortably tight. What was remarkable about his new-found attraction to Granger was that he still hated her with every inch of his being…and yet still wanted to possess her completely. He detested the filthy nature of her ancestry, and despised her know-it-all character and her clear, slightly posh accent, which rang in his ears every time he heard it. Oh yes, Draco certainly hated Granger. And this fact only aroused him further. And as he recalled the puzzled expression on her face when she had looked back at him that morning, and the light flush that had crept onto her cheeks, he couldn't help but wonder if she knew…he wondered if she knew it had been him that night in the Library.

He hissed through his teeth lightly, lazily clipping off another branch from the bush, as he recalled the way her small body had felt against his, and he felt his erection grow ever more prominent as he remembered her husky whisper, her soft, feminine scent and her body pushing against his. He wondered whether Hermione would be in the Library again that night…he longed to feel her against him again, regardless of his general disdain for her, he simply couldn't help himself, and he certainly couldn't explain why. Just as he was allowing his thoughts to consume him, he was suddenly dragged back to reality.

"Draco, will you come and help me with my bush? I can't cut it properly, I don't think I'm strong enough," Pansy whined, batting her eyelashes irritatingly at Draco, not-so-subtly pushing together her cleavage as she did so.

Draco rolled his eyes and took the pruning shears from Pansy, and started on her bush, at least it was a distraction from the disturbing thoughts he had been having so often lately.

Hermione sat in a trance in her Transfiguration lesson that day, and for the first time in a long time she was unable to concentrate on what Professor McGonagall was telling them about cross-species transfiguration. Her mind seemed to be completely nebulous, and she could not focus her eyes on the black board which was covered in words that she could not quite distinguish. All she could think of was the mystery stranger the night before and, to her dismay, the look Malfoy had given her earlier on in the day. Furious with him for consuming her thoughts and distracting him from her work, she tried to recall the day where Professor Moody had turned him into a ferret, and reflected on how rodent-like his features still were, but her thoughts didn't seem to want to think of this. She couldn't help but notice that Malfoy, other than being the unpleasant-looking pale-faced brat he had been years before, had grown into a fairly handsome man. She acknowledged with some irritation the definition of his biceps, the attractive mysteriousness of his grey eyes and the Scandinavian hue of his hair, which he still wore slicked back as precisely as ever.

She sighed audibly, trying to change her thoughts, trying to forget Malfoy, and focus on the identity of her secret admirer, who claimed that she 'drove him crazy'. She felt a pleasant tingling in her lower abdomen as she thought of how he had felt behind her, and marvelled at the effect she had had on him as she had never considered herself to be attractive before.

She made up her mind to revisit the Library that night in the hope that her mystery man might hold her again, but as she announced this to Harry and Ron as they left the classroom with her, there was a cruel and unexpected twist of fate.

"I'll come with you to the library actually; you could help me with that potions essay on moonstones…" Ron suggested hopefully.

Hermione, whilst being very fond of Ron, seethed inwardly with irritation at his suggestion. But she couldn't very well tell him that she didn't want him to come with her in case she got the chance to have a rendezvous with her secret admirer, so she agreed, and they left for the Library together.

As they sat in the dimly lit Library pouring over books, Hermione found herself yet again unable to concentrate on her work. Every few minutes she would lay down her quill and allow her eyes to wander around the room, looking for any signs of movement in the gloom, any eyes watching her from the darkness between the bookshelves, but she saw none. She did not feel the delicious prickle on the back of her neck which indicated a presence; all she felt was…boredom. All she heard was the scratch of Ron's quill, which increasingly annoyed her as the minutes passed.

Suddenly, as she fell into yet another reverie, she heard Ron's voice, "Hermione…is something wrong?"

"Hmm?"

"You've just been sort of…distant recently. Is something going on?" He asked tentatively, surveying her curiously.

"No! No. I've just been…excessively tired, that's all." Hermione replied, summoning up a small smile in attempt to dissolve Ron's suspicions. She didn't, after all, want him to think that she didn't value his friendship anymore.

Ron seemed to accept this answer and smiled warmly back. "OK Hermione, well, I'm going to go back to the common room now…could I leave my essay with you to check?"

"Sure," Hermione replied, still smiling warmly at him as she took the essay from him, inwardly relieved that he was leaving.

"See you later." And with that, Ron left the Library, leaving Hermione alone…or almost alone. Hermione, convincing herself in her mind that she was really leaving her seat to look for a book, went to search the Library for her secret admirer. And as she walked between the bookshelves, peering through the shadows, she was not looking long before a familiar pair of arms were wrapped around her again from behind, a familiar smell enveloped her senses…and a familiar body pressed against hers.

"Hey…" She whispered huskily to the stranger, breathing in his scent greedily.

"Hey."