Ginny looked again at the note in front of her on the kitchen table

We need to talk. Expect me at 8. Get rid of Potter.

DM

It could sound more ominous. It could also say Tell No One or Reducto After Reading but as unexpected life events went receiving mysterious owls from Malfoy was fairly high on her list. She was tempted to leave it around and see what interpretation Harry's Auror senses made of it. Rampant paranoia with a hint of jealousy were her guesses but she wasn't cruel enough to find out, also she was dying of curiousity and it would be easier to get answers if Malfoy wasn't in a cell somewhere. She hoped Ron's idea was right and that she was going to have a front-row seat for the most unexpected romance since Professor Sprout and the lead singer of The Weird Sisters had that fling.

Hermione was panicking. She had to get this done. She had to hand it in. She'd been sure she'd handed it in already but it was lost or she hadn't. Her parents would be so disappointed if she didn't finish this. That's why she was in the stupid basement at this hour with a plan to photocopy everything she needed from these books and work all night. But the photocopier wouldn't work. Every time she tried to press the start button it disappeared and just plain plastic greeted her finger. She couldn't make it stay where it was supposed to be. She wasn't sure she had enough credits either and the machine only took Muggle money, all she had were galleons. She'd tried to put them in the slot but she'd realised they were chocolate at the last minute. She had to finish this or Harry would be killed and Ron would never forgive her. So she pressed and pressed and pressed the blank plastic moulding on the photocopier that split-seconds before had been the start button.

Then suddenly he was there, right behind her.

"It won't work and I have to finish this. It's important" she said with tears in her eyes and a tremble in her voice.

"Let me try" he said. Not a question: an imperative.

"What are you even doing here? This is a Muggle University."

"I'm always around really. I have the answer." He put his hands out to rest on the machine on either side of hers. She was still frantically pushing at the disappearing start button. He gently picked up her hand and moved it aside, briefly interlacing his fingers with hers. He pressed the button, which remained in place.

"How did you do that?" she said turning her face towards his. He was much closer than she'd thought.

"Magic" he said "I have magic in my hands." And with that he reached towards the card reader on the wall behind the machine bumping her slightly closer to him as he did so. He stretched his fingers over it and suddenly she had ten thousand credits, which didn't make any sense as the cards only held two hundred. Hermione didn't worry about that much though because Malfoy was dragging the tip of his nose up the side of her neck and it felt delicious.

"You shouldn't do that" she said shakily "I have to finish and you are distracting me."

"You finished it all already Granger" Draco whispered nuzzling into her hair near her ear "it's time for this now." He placed feather-light kisses from the smooth skin behind her ear in an arc through to her jaw. He stopped and rested his nose against her cheek, his forehead on the side of hers, one of his magic hands cupped her jaw on the other side of her face. Her eyes were lightly closed, she knew something important was happening.

"I want to be loved by you. Just you and nobody else but you" he said softly and she felt he was telling her the greatest secret in the universe.

"But..." she objected.

"We don't have time for this Granger" he said in an urgent but gentle voice.

"Granger, you have to come back Granger."

Hermione felt a rush of adrenaline and opened her eyes. He was crouching at the end of her desk, looking at her intently, his hand on her outstretched arm, circling her wrist.

"How did you get over there?" she asked and at the croaky sound of her own voice she knew she had been asleep. Her cheek was damp and she looked down at a pool of drool that was mortifyingly on her desk. She'd been dreaming. Oh God she'd been dreaming! She felt some huge revelation slipping away from her as the seconds passed and Malfoy looked at her with concern. There was something else as well when she wiped her cheek and looked at him, there was something in the look he was giving her that wasn't concern and wasn't the delight at finding her at a disadvantage that she was expecting to see on his face. He remained crouched at the edge of her desk and they looked at each other in silence for what felt like a long time.

"Are you ok?" he said eventually but his voice didn't sound quite right, it was gentler than it usually was. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"I was dreaming" she replied. She wanted to tell him that she wasn't alright because he didn't have magic hands and he didn't want her to love him, in fact what he'd said was just an old song lyric that was bouncing around her brain and she felt bereft and devastated to be awake.

She opened her mouth to speak.

"Oh please do I have to watch the goo-goo eyes you two are making?" said Cut-Out Cormac. This shattered the spell they were both under. Malfoy stood and cleared his throat while Hermione shuffled the papers on her desk.

"What time is it?" she asked.

"It's 8 o'clock Granger and I have to be somewhere. I didn't want you to sleep here all night; I know what hell you are to work with when your back is sore."

"Did you finish that analysis for Susan?"

"Yes, not all of us were in the Land of Nod. Some of us were doing our fair share. Go home and get some rest so you can be useful tomorrow. Oh and don't go anywhere without sorting out your bloody hair." Malfoy exited the office as if he were on fire and she was left staring after him wondering what had just happened to get him so annoyed, what was going on in her subconcious to make it come up with that and why, all of a sudden, did she want to cry?

Granger had once told him that the problem with apparition and flooing was that you didn't have any travel time to collect yourself between engagements. At the time he'd dismissed it as part of her vomit-worthy series of observations that he mentally called "Muggles: The Same but Different". These were imparted whenever Granger saw fit and in such a patronising tone that he felt she should use sock puppets to complete the effect (really Granger tell me again about how Muggle inventions could replace house elves, I don't think I understood it the 49 other times maybe if you had some cute animal friends to help you explain?). He assumed most Muggles would be just as put off as he was by her didactic speeches. As he stood outside Potter's door just two minutes after leaving his office he finally got her point about the immediacy of wizarding travel.

He knew he'd got himself into this socially awkward situation where he intended to ask an old enemy to conspire with him to get a better love-life for a third party so that they could all have a slightly easier time socially and that it would need all his charm and cunning to find a good outcome. Now he was trying to do that while also battling an extremely potent urge to shout " WHAT the FUCK was THAT?" at the night sky. He needed some breathing space and possibly a large piece of parchment to work out why his heart was beating out of his chest and his fingers were itching to fix Hermione's hair for her. Here's what had happened:

1) Granger had fallen asleep

2) Granger had made noises

3) He had woken Granger up when he needed to leave the Office.

Yes that's what had happened. That was all that had happened and there was no reason to be frustrated beyond words right now. Everything was fine. He turned to knock at the door.

That was bollocks. That was not all that happened and he knew it.

1) Granger had fallen asleep.

2) Granger had made noises. This is where the wheels came off the idea that nothing had really happened this evening. He needed to think through the whole thing again. He snorted. As if it he hadn't been replaying it on a loop in his head constantly since!

They'd started out as distressed noises. He knew them, they were the huffy noises she used to make in their first year when she was too stressed to sleep. They were high pitched and whiny. He used to sort them out by taking her, bodily if necessary, to the duelling rooms in the basement so they could hex the crap out of one another for fifteen minutes. It always relaxed them but this time she was asleep so he went to wake her up. One arm had been flung out over her desk, twitching slightly. Her hand was shaking so he'd held it and called her name. The noises had stopped. He'd felt silly holding hands with a sleeping Granger so he made to let her go and she whimpered. It was not a stressed whimper. It was a Granger-noise he'd never heard before and it sounded very, very good.

He crouched down at the her desk so his head was level with hers to see her face. She was smiling now. He had an almost uncontrollable urge to stroke her soft cheek which was turning pink as he watched. She made another fantastic noise. It was sort of a high-pitched and brief hum, it was a world away from the stress noise. He could only think of one set of Granger-noises he hadn't heard: sex noises. Granger was having a dirty dream and it was like every noise she made went straight to his groin. It was a very long time since he'd had a good shag. It took another fabulous minute and three more noises, one of which was this amazing little sigh-thing, for him to realise he was holding Granger's hand while she had a sex dream about that wanker Hardy, or worse he'd given her ideas about McLaggen! He had to stop this.

3) He had woken her up. He called her name and said wakey-up things, not too loud, part of him wanted her to stay asleep and make more noises another part of him wanted all of her attention right, bloody now. Then she'd woken up and said something that left him more conflicted and frustrated than he'd ever been in his life before and he had faced some big moral conundrums in his time. "How did you get over there?" Him. He. Malfoy. In her dream. The dream that had made her make those noises. He'd stayed crouched where he was, it took all of his willpower not to pull her puffy cheeks and drooping eyes towards him and snog the face off her. She looked, vulnerable and childlike and perfect to him in that moment. He couldn't believe he'd woken her up before he'd found out how far the dream would go. Why had he done that? What had possessed him? Oh yes that was back before the world had changed, before he knew he was her dream man. Should he just kiss her? What would happen to them if he did? A million-and-one scenarios had played out in his head in record time. She had been staring at him as if he had all the answers. Her look was so powerful that he wanted it to be true. Her look could make a Slytherin do something reckless. And just as she had almost pushed him to the point of no return The Cut-Out Cockroach had interrupted.

And that was why he wanted to scream, in a manly way of course. He had well and truly stunned himself with his own wand.

"Malfoy! Much as I enjoy watching you mutter to yourself and pace up and down in my garden in the dark one of two things is about to happen: Harry will come home or the kids will wake up. Do you want to come in at all or were you just planning on going insane on my lawn?"

Ginny Potter was framed in the doorway with the light behind her. Oh yes that was what he was supposed to be doing now.

"You need to get Granger a proper boyfriend" he said as he all but pushed past her into the house. Sometimes a reputation as a rude bastard was a good thing to have. No one questioned it when you were awful.

"Welcome Malfoy. Oh no you shouldn't have brought me such an elaborate gift" she replied sarcastically making a face of wonderment and gesturing as if she were holding something.

"I'm serious. That Hardy excrescence dumped her the other day in the most pratish manner possible. I'm actually losing respect for her by the minute and I'm sure other people are too. She's no good to me if everyone thinks less of her because she puts up with this shit."

"Ron and I are already working on it. We hadn't realised that Hermione's love-life was all about you at the time though. Don't you even know how to pretend to be concerned for others? I'm serious Malfoy you should get some classes in that 'Having a Soul for Beginners' or something."

"It is concern for her. If we fall out, we can't work together and neither of us can work with anyone else in the department. Our career trajectories will look like a failed Wronski Feint." Oh shit, that's actually true, he thought. "So is the plan to get her and The Weasel back together then?"

"No!" said Ginny as loudly as she could when trying not to wake up two small children. "And no one who is a friend to either of them would thank you for suggesting it!"

"Was it that bad?" Malfoy couldn't help but smirk. He didn't want to analyse why he was happy Granger's Great Love was a wash-out but he was certainly was happy about it.

"Awful! As soon as they started having sex they stopped being friends. They were vile to each other whenever they were vertical."

"You can have sex while vertical Mini-Weasel."

"I don't like thinking about my brothers having sex in any level of detail, particularly when it's with my best friend but thanks for the mental image Ferret."

Malfoy sniggered like a schoolboy.

"We have someone else in mind. He fits most of Hermione's criteria." Ginny continued ignoring the childishness completely, growing up in a house full of schoolboys made for excellent training in that department.

"She doesn't seem to have any standards so her criteria can't be too taxing" Malfoy claimed.

"Her criteria are clear, she likes them good-looking, successful at their jobs, good conversation is a plus but I think her track record would say looks are more important" Ginny said in a matter of fact tone.

"I thought you were supposed to be her friend!" Draco protested

"A minute ago you said she'd no standards at all" Ginny pointed out, still calm. "Besides I'd say it's a fairly accurate description of the women you date, why should Hermione be any different is it because she's a woman?"

"No it's because she's a much, much better person than I am who's nice to old people and babies and magical creatures but you're making her sound shallow and...and ridiculous. How will you find her a better boyfriend if that's what you think? This is, it's just...all wrong" Draco was spluttering he was so annoyed.

There was a wail from upstairs.

"I have to go now Malfoy. Ron and I are sorting this out, we know her best after all but you might want to ask yourself exactly why you care so much. Close the door as you leave"

She left a still spluttering Draco and disappeared up the stairs.

Ginny Potter stopped and did a victory dance on the landing when she heard the door slam. She hoped that was just enough torment but not too much because that was sooo much fun. Now for the much scarier Phase 2: Hermione.

A/N Why does Ginny do a victory dance every time I write her in any story? These are the questions I ask myself late at night when I can't sleep. I realised that I have not once in this story disclaimed ownership of Harry Potter. Consider it disclaimed everyone, consider it disclaimed.

Much more seriously I forgot to thank my beta whytejigsaw. Thanks petal *waves*. She writes excellent Sherlock fic. Go forth and read it.

Thanks so much to everyone who read, followed and reviewed. It was really lovely to come home from work to all of your alerts. Honestly it made my day, particularly the reviews. It was very nice of you.