Hermione pressed her ear against the solid frame of her door and listened intently. She couldn't hear Malfoy in the hall, but perversely that did very little to calm her nerves. She had seen how Malfoy operated over six years of school, and she was perfectly aware that if he thought something untoward was happening, there was no way he was going to just give up without a fight. The fact that he had gone so quiet made her think that he was definitely up to something and the words 'biding his time' kept flashing across her mind at a worryingly repetitive rate.
Turning around and tipping her head against the door, Hermione sighed. She couldn't help feeling slightly guilty; if she had used Muffliato right from the start, then she could have avoided this entire situation. But she hated that spell so much, she justified. It was underhand and devious. Plus, she and the other Gryffindor boys and girls had been causing exactly the same kind of noise from their dormitory, and the students in other dormitories had never said a word. No one ever heard a thing, so it wasn't unreasonable to assume that this would have been the case from the Head Girl's room.
Grinding her teeth, she contemplated the unfairness of it. She was causing the same amount of noise as she had been for the past year around less people, in quarters with thicker walls than the Gryffindor dormitories, and she was only using it for half of each journey, because she was able to come back through the old Gryffindor way – it was safe for her to travel that way back late at night. Arguably, she was causing less harm than she had before, and the sheer unfairness of having to share quarters with Malfoy meant that she was now running the risk of ruining the whole thing for everyone involved.
If only she still had the Time Turner, she could have gone back and told herself to cast Muffliato every single night because Malfoy was the kind of ferret who got his teeth into prey and didn't let go until he hit the jugular. Breathing in deeply, she told herself to stop being pathetic. Regrets were a waste of time, and additional they implied remorse for past actions. Hermione was not remorseful, she had no intention of giving up her midnight excursions, and she was perfectly sure that none of the others wanted to either. Therefore, she would not spend time thinking about how she might have covered her tracks better in the past, and she would focus instead on how she could make this better in the future.
Moving over to her wardrobe, and pushing all her normal clothes over to one side, she tapped her wand against the hidden compartment at the back of it, watching as the wood pulled itself apart to reveal the chamber inside. Musing as she fished around the different materials, she wondered what she could do. If she started casting Muffliato from now, she couldn't help feeling that Malfoy would take that as an admission of her guilt, and that he had caught her doing something wrong and she was now trying to hide her tracks.
Pushing taffeta to one side, and feeling cool silk across her fingers, she held the material up to the light, and wondered if she had any accessories that would work with it. The more she thought about it, she knew that Malfoy hadn't been fooled by her little act from last night. It was simply too convenient that she would just happen to be out in the corridor on the night after he had accused her of doing something wrong, and that she would be able to try to convince him that he was imagining the entire thing. Plus, she had to admit; the noises did seem very loud. She was sure that they had never been that loud in the Gryffindor rooms – maybe they had soundproofing spells.
Releasing her hair from the ties that had held it in place all day, she began re-pinning it into soft coils that clustered around the base of her neck, thinking as she did so that at least the entire adventure had been good for teaching her how to style her hair in minutes. Draping a string of small pearls around her neck, she turned to the mirror, and began lining her eyes. Maybe she could erase Malfoy's memory and then just start using Muffliato. He would never know what had happened, and she would be able to carry on with him none the wiser.
Slipping the coral silk over her head, holding it carefully so as not to smudge her lipstick, she rearranged the dress so that it sat properly against her curves. Something just didn't feel right about doing that to Malfoy. She wasn't entirely sure why, he wouldn't have hesitated to do much worse to her. She tugged at the dress once more and turned to the mirror. Malfoy might have done worse to her, but she was better than that. Plus, on an entirely practical level, it could unravel so easily. If Malfoy had mentioned this to anyone else, then they might ask him about it, and if he had no memory of it, that was bound to set alarm bells ringing.
Sweeping back a lock of hair from her face, and running back to the door to press her ear against it one last time, she thought that she would think about this tomorrow. Her thoughts were whirling around in circles, and she wasn't getting anywhere productive. Far better to go and enjoy herself, and deal with this later. Surely, she thought, that was so different to her normal line of thinking that it counted as a form of courage, and wasn't that what being a Gryffindor was about? Seizing the moment, enjoying life, all that jazz?
Scooping up a pair of glittering slippers from the bottom of the compartment in her wardrobe, she turned them over and resisted the urge to curse. She had worn through the soles of yet another pair. Sighing heavily, she pointed her wand at them, and patched them over. She would repair them properly tomorrow, while she thought about how best to deal with Malfoy.
She flourished her wand and cast a spell on her bedroom door to secure it, and then spun around and cast the spell on her wall. Although she had seen it dozens of time now, she never failed to thrill a little when the wall being crumpling upwards, the bricks of the wall slotting into each other, until the passage lay before her, the steps gleaming in the candlelight. It had been such hard work finding the spell to extend the existing passage that ran from the Gryffindor dormitories to the Head Girl's room, and it had been a horrid fortnight. Now, every day that she opened the wall and saw that the staircase was still there, she was relieved.
Tapping over the threshold of the wall, she pattered down the stairs, knowing that the wall would be folding back down for the evening in a few seconds. She would return back through the existing corridor into the Gryffindor dormitories – this staircase was far too steep to be running up every night, especially with how tired she was by the end of the night. She kept an old black robe in the girls' dormitory, and wore it over her dress as she slid through the shadows of the school, knowing that if she was ever challenged, her status as Head Girl was more than enough to protect her. Then, every morning, she would just leave slightly before Malfoy, the robe tucked neatly in her bag, to be returned to the Gryffindor tower. It worked perfectly.
Draco waited until the tapping that he knew so well died away, and then pressed his wand against the lock on Granger's door, whispering 'Alohomora'. The door didn't budge, and he had to admit that he wasn't particularly surprised. If Granger was going to the trouble of elaborate lies to cover up whatever it was she was doing, then he would have been amazed if she'd trusted to a basic spell to safeguard the entire thing.
Looking around, just to make sure that she wasn't lurking behind him again, he told himself that he only had one choice, and that the idea had only just occurred to him, and he had not been turning the idea over in his head for an entire afternoon. Aiming his wand very carefully at the handle of the door, and the lock beneath it, he muttered 'Confringo' and watched as it exploded off. Yes, there was residual damage in the form of the majority of the door lying across the corridor, but he could deal with that later.
Stepping eagerly into Granger's room, his jaw dropped as he saw the wall in front of him sliding down a 2 foot gap in the wall. As he tried to make sense of what he had just seen – he was sure that he had seen a staircase behind the wall, but how was that even possible? – a Gryffindor tapestry dropped down over the wall, with an air of 'show's over, nothing to see here'.
Draco pointed his wand at the wall and muttered a few spells, but did nothing other than fray the edge of the tapestry slightly. Putting his wand away, he consoled himself with the idea that he had definitely made some progress. A wall opened in Granger's room, Granger disappears, the wall closes up. She was most certainly up to something, and now he had a vague idea of how she was doing something wrong, it would be so much easier to find out exactly what it was that she was doing wrong.
Turning away from the wall, Draco cast his eye around the rest of the room, taking a mental inventory.
A still photo of Granger and two older people. He assumed this was a Muggle picture, and those were her parents (wrinkling his nose mentally as he did so).
A moving photo of Granger, Weasley and Potter, beaming out at him. Idiots.
The door of Granger's wardrobe hanging open slightly. Struck with a faint sense of the illicit nature of what he was doing, and reminded of when he was a little boy and used to climb inside his mother's wardrobe to press his cheek against the soft furs she had, Draco pulled the door wider open. Nothing as remotely interesting as furs in here, just school uniforms and Muggle clothes.
As he moved to push the doors back to how he had found them, Draco paused. Something wasn't right. Some of the clothes weren't hanging quite right: Granger was such a neat-freak that her wardrobe looked like a clothes rail in a shop, but on one side, all the clothes were bunched together, like someone had pushed them to one side to reach past them, and then hadn't pushed them back.
Reaching his hand through the cotton skirts, Draco pushed forward, expecting to hit the cool wood at the back of the cabinet. Instead, his hand continued forward until he nearly overbalanced. Reaching around, shoulder deep in the wardrobe, he grasped at slippery material, dragging it forward into the light.
Draco pulled back, his face contorted in confusion. It was a ballgown. Slinky, and prettily pale pink, with small beaded straps that would have crossed over across the back, which he now realised would have been left totally bare by how low the dress was cut at the back. Dropping it to the floor, he reached forward again and dragged out another one.
This one was frothy with petticoats – emerald green satin glistened under the bedroom lights, as he held it up, so that the white lace of the underskirts was obscured. Reaching forward, he grabbed more and more of them. It seemed never ending: dress after dress. Where the hell had Granger gotten all of these? And more importantly, why did she have them?
He stood in the middle of the fabrics: smooth silk intertwined with lustrous satin, rustling taffetas, floating chiffons and gleaming jewels. There was no point in putting all of this back. He was going to stay right here in Granger's room, and she was going to explain this to him, whether she wanted to or not.
He repaired the door, setting it right on its hinges, and closing it quietly, sealing himself in the room. He would never be able to work out how to follow Granger, so she would just have to tell him everything, and he had the element of surprise on his side, so it should be quite easy. Draco smirked, but knew that his anger about being woken had abated quite substantially. What was the point of impotent fury when there was something that piqued his interest quite as much as this? Plus, depending on how juicy the secret was that Granger was keeping, the possibilities could be endless. He settled himself down in Granger's desk chair, facing the door, wand at the ready. This was going to be great fun.
Hermione stepped onto the crystal path that led down to where they all congregated each night. She could already see the soft lights up ahead of her, and hear the laughter of her friends. Disregarding any lingering thoughts of Malfoy, she hurried along the path, holding her dress up to one side so as not to step on the fluttering hem. She would deal with Malfoy tomorrow. After all, he only had unfounded suspicions, that he had gotten from the other side of her bedroom door. As far as he knew, she was pure as the driven snow. She could deal with him tomorrow.
AN: So I hope you enjoyed that chapter! As always, please please please, please x infinity, do review. It makes it so much easier to write the next chapter, and it's so great to get feedback as I'm going along. In other news, Rifts and Romance is still up for grabs if anyone wants it? If you go to my author page, you'll be able to find it on there. I will give support as much as the new author wants, and if someone is reading this who had toyed with the idea of starting a story, but has never quite gotten round to it, then please let me know – this could be perfect for you! I don't want it to be left unfinished – it looks unhappy. Anyway, as always, thanks for reading, it is massively appreciated. Love from petitesorciere xxx