It had been a few days since Hermione had focused her attention on bedding Malfoy, but for all his talk, he hadn't given in once. There'd been a few steamy moments against cold stone walls, or perched on empty classroom desks, but it never went any further. She was beginning to wonder if Draco was avoiding sex. Valentine's Day was approaching and she knew it would be the perfect time to try and push Malfoy into sleeping with her, she couldn't continue with this much longer, the more time she spent talking to Malfoy or making out with him, the more she actually liked who he was. She was learning to look past his arrogant, self-righteous nature and like the person who was funny, intelligent and wasn't afraid to tell her if she was mistaken. She had to win this challenge - soon.
Sitting in the Great Hall with her friends was exhausting; she had to explain several times where she had been recently, and why she spent less and less time with them. She couldn't really blame them, they were her best friends, and the last couple of day's she had avoided them at every corner, hoping they wouldn't notice the blush she wore every time she saw Malfoy, and trying to push down the guilt that was taking over her body when she realised she was abandoning them for Draco Malfoy, even if it was due to completing a dare. Ginny was the only one of her friends that had any inkling of where, and what Hermione was doing, smirking and winking at her, every time she caught her eye. Despite all this trouble, Hermione was still determined to complete the challenge; sometimes she had to despise her need to always come out on top.
When Malfoy walked in, she had to fight her own newly formed habit of following him with her eyes, and stared down at her breakfast intently, bringing up the topic of Quidditch so that Harry, Ron and Ginny would be occupied debating their favourite sport. She heard catches of "But the Tutshill Tornados were crushed in the last game, I don't even think winning the next match will put them through to the finals," and Ron's boastful interruption "Yeah well, they were playing the Cannons, of course we were going to win," but Hermione's focus was over on the other side of the Hall, and she glanced over easily finding the mess of blonde hair. However she was reluctant to see that Hestia and Flora Carrow were both fawning over Malfoy, and he was grinning at both of them, whilst basking in their obvious adoration. Flora was stroking Malfoy's shoulders whilst leaning low to whisper in his ear as Hestia pushed to sit close to him on the bench, touching his hand and laughing at something he'd said. There was no part of Hermione that thought it was rational to be so infuriated by the scene, but she knew that she was. Her skin crawled and she felt the grip on her fork tighten, as she looked away from the Slytherin table she stabbed at her food ferociously and her friends turned to look at her, Ron smiled apologetically.
"It's okay Hermione, Puddlemere United are obviously going to reach the European Cup semi-finals, and they've been playing excellently recently, so I wouldn't get too mad over the two hundred and sixty to ten defeat, it was a fluke match…" she could only smile at Ron, acting as though Puddlemere's recent defeat was exactly why she was hacking at her breakfast.
Hermione was trying to justify Malfoy's actions by the fact that they weren't a couple and the only thing they shared was a common room, reminding herself that their relationship was meant to be purely physical for the sake of winning this challenge, and he had no obligation to act as though she was the only person he could be hooking up with. However many times Hermione played this argument over in her head she couldn't ignore the nagging fury over what she'd witnessed and the pain that was twisting at her stomach when she thought about it. Maybe a long-needed trip to the Library would clear her head; it was the one room throughout Hogwarts that wasn't filled with the babble of talking students.
Draco's P.O.V
He wasn't going to let that bushy haired, know-it-all Granger get to him. He didn't know where her sudden change of heart had appeared from, but it was working at driving him crazy. Any advances he'd made on her before were all-talk, he couldn't dispute the fact that she was crazy hot, in that bossy, school girl, probably-hiding-some-really-kinky-thoughts-in-her- brain kind of way; but now he had the chance to sleep with her, it dawned on him that Gryffindor's and Slytherin's were never going to get along, and if he slept with her, he'd want her more than he'd care to admit. Possibly in a way that didn't depend on sex and that was dangerous. If she'd decided to befriend any other Slytherin it wouldn't make a difference, many of them didn't have such prejudiced parents who centred their ideology on pure-blood supremacy. Brining home Granger would be a sure fire way to get himself disowned from the whole family. Of course, she had decided to pursue a different, kinder Slytherin, but even so, Draco hadn't been able to sit back and watch that happen, something in him had snapped at the idea of her and Becket becoming close. He hadn't actually expected her to start being nice to him once her offered to sleep with her, it had just been a chance he'd gotten to flirt with her whilst warning her away from Becket – purely to keep himself content really - expecting no more than a quick rebuff and for her to then ignore him for the next few weeks.
It hadn't gone down that way, and the closer Granger tried to get to him, and the more he knew how funny and witty she was beyond her serious and know-it-all personality that she exuded to almost everyone, he was beginning to actually like her. It was easy to see why Potter and Weasley had maintained a friendship with her throughout seven years, something that had once eluded him.
Draco had realised that he was getting uncomfortably close to Granger, and if it continued; well it would be bad - for everyone involved. So he'd decided that he needed to make her realise that they weren't anything special, she needed to have her previous notions of Draco Malfoy reasserted in a way that would make her not wish to spend anymore of her time with him. The twins had constantly flirted with Draco, always laughing at the things he said (even if they weren't at all funny), touching him and licking their lips, in what the presumed was a sensual manner. In all honesty a lot of the time he welcomed female attention, and it certainly wasn't lacking, but the only attention he ever got was from Slytherin girls. He found them to be selfish, petty, cold and narcissistic. He may give off these traits himself, but when in a relationship, and sometimes in the bedroom, Draco thought there had to be some element of romance or even just simply a lack of selfish demands when committed to another person. Draco was a strong believer that the worst traits of Slytherin were the most known and easily associated with his house. Both cunning and power were not things he held a high opinion of, even regarding his own personality. Such things as ambition, intelligence, and the leadership abilities of a Slytherin were something he thought more noteworthy.
Draco would admit that playing rough when it came to sex was something he took the liberty of doing often, but no girl he'd ever been with had dismissed the idea, and had seemed to enjoy it. Romance was needed when the people involved were serious, pure sex for fun, was more easy to play around with, but that didn't mean he was selfish, he would always take note of others.
He'd taken the opportunity this morning to flirt with the twins, letting them play with his hair and laugh at his jokes, making a show of staring at their breasts or lips, purely for Hermione. To make her think he didn't want her, he wasn't only interested in her, and she had to know that. He felt that tonight in the Common room was going to be an awkward affair. If she even turned up at all.
Hermione's P.O.V
Clutching her books to her chest, because her bag had recently broken under the immense pressure of the whole library, as Ginny liked to point out; Hermione hurried through the corridors with her head down. Hoping to avoid the eyes of Malfoy and go about her day without feeling the slow sinking in her stomach she related to drowning in quick sand.
It was going fairly well until walking from Charms to Ancient Runes when she passed Astoria Greengrass from two years below, pressed against the wall by a smirking Malfoy, hair falling into his face as he smirked at the girl who looked wide-eyed and adoringly up at him. Hermione grimaced and rushed past with her head down, trying to ignore the feeling that Draco had taken all her books and hit her in the stomach with them one by one.
Ancient Runes was devoid of any Slytherin's, most of them thought their time should be spent on more productive subjects, and Hermione's partner in this class was Luna Lovegood, whose father had been teaching her the subject from a young age, resulting in her working with Hermione's year. Luna had always been friendly with Hermione, and they both got along despite Hermione's aversion to Luna's beliefs in strange creatures and ability to slip in and out of daydreams.
Today when Luna sat next to Hermione and they began translating the text that was laid out on their desk, a bright pink blush had coloured her pale cheeks.
"Hello Hermione," she said, moving her long hair over shoulder so that she could look at the text without it falling on the desk and obscuring her view, "your head is surrounded by Jadni, did you know?" her dreamy voice held concern, and Hermione replied that she didn't know that, it was polite to go along with Luna's ideas, she was so kind it was impossible to put her down.
"Oh, well there are, are you sad, Hermione?" she inquired, and this surprised Hermione, but she put it easily down to Luna's instinctive nature, but tried to shrug off the idea Luna had, smiling whilst replying that she was fine.
Luna lacked any self-conscious thoughts, and when she felt something, she spoke about it, even though Hermione was used to Luna's quirky insight she was surprised by the question she asked.
"Hermione, will you be my date on Valentines?" she smiled serenely, not at all nervous by her question and waited calmly for Hermione's reply.
"Like, as in, like on a date, romantically?" she sputtered out shocked, but Luna only nodded.
"Yes… we don't have to start a relationship, but one date would be nice." She placed her wand behind her ear, and bit on her lip, "Y'know, I think this word may have been translated wrong, maybe I should look it up again…" Luna started rifling through her textbook; unaware of the shock Hermione was feeling. Luna had never really spoken of relationships, and she had never had one throughout her time at school, Hermione was now realising this could be due to the fact she was attracted to girls, of course unless stated otherwise, most people will assume you're heterosexual and she felt embarrassed that the idea had never occurred to her.
Today was probably not the best time to play with Hermione's emotions, she felt both angry and somewhat betrayed, and the idea of a date with Luna was wholly appealing. Looking past her quirks, Luna had a sweet and serene disposition that created an aura of ease around her, one that Hermione found calming and refreshing. Why on earth couldn't she give it a go, it was only a date.
"Yeah, I'd love to go on a date with you for Valentine's." she told Luna and the girl looked up with wide-eyed surprise and smiled happily.
"Brilliant, that's good; I was so worried for a moment. But, I thought you may need time to adjust to the idea, it's not very common here, but women are much more understanding than men…" she trailed off for a while and Hermione listened intently, wondering how this date could possibly plan out.