Note 1: We've reached Silencio length now. In word count, I mean.

Note 2: Yes, Draco can enter the girls' dormitories. It was mentioned in one of the early chapters. He considered it a perk where it's really only because it's the Heads' and Deputies' duties to sort out any problems that might be - anywhere. Sometimes getting a hold of the girls might just be too difficult, you know?

Note 3: I'm sick of people telling me to make my chapters longer. It would only make me update less frequently. Here's to the few of you who keep bugging me about it: Wait with reading until there's 2-3-4 chapters ready for you. That way you have MORE to read. Brilliant, eh? Pretty much the same end-result and all. Really, you should have thought of it instead of being such bitches.

Note 4: It's my boyfriend's birthday today and he requested a Bracelet spin-off fic. It's NC-17 and is not relevant to this story, but solely uses it for its own purposes. You can find it at http(colon, fwd slash, fwd slash)community(dot)livejournal(dot)com(fwd slash)kittyfics(fwd slash) and affnet under my username there.


Hermione leaned back against the pillow she had propped up against the headboard, her injured leg stretched before her, and the healthy one bent, her foot tucked under her knee. Crookshanks was on her lap, looking lethargic – in a positively evil way.

She grinned at the cat and gave it an impromptu hug, resulting in a highly affronted look.

"Don't give me that, you incorrigible puss," she lightly scolded. "I know you're not as bad as all that."

Draco's back stiffened slightly and then he slowly turned in his seat to look at her. "Don't tell me you actually have conversations with the animal!"

"Of course not," Hermione sniffed. "He doesn't talk, silly." Draco seemed to relax a bit and he was turning back as she said, "But he understands me. Don't you, Crooks?"

Draco turned back around. "And they call you the brightest witch?" he incredulously asked. "He's a stupid fur ball, who only understands killing, eating, and mating. Well, unless you took care of that last thing."

Hermione gasped in mock horror, covering the cat's ears. "Don't say these things in front of him!" she admonished. "He's very sensitive about that." She managed not to wince as Crookshanks made his displeasure of having his ears squashed known by clawing her arm.

Draco stared at her in exasperation.

She sighed and rolled her eyes. Apparently Malfoy didn't really have much understanding for the concept of pets and how they were supposed to be subject to anthropomorphism and coddled like babies.

"You know," she mused after a few minutes had gone by and Draco had resumed his homework. "There should be talking animals."

"What?" he asked, frowning at her. "Just what did Madam Pomfrey give you for your leg?"

She stuck her tongue out at him. "I'm serious!" she said. "With all this magic and talking paintings and ghosts and a bloody Whomping Willow, there should be talking animals!"

"You've lost your marbles, haven't you?" Draco scoffed. "Animals are already sentient beings in their own right and you want to give them people-qualities so… what? You can chat to your cat about tuna?"

She sighed. "You really are no fun."

"This isn't supposed to be fun, Granger," he reminded her.

"I know," she said on an exhale. "You want me to miserable forever and ever."

"It's not working very well, though, is it?" he mumbled.

"I think you know exactly how well it's working," she quietly responded.

He sighed and rubbed his forehead. "Just do as you're told and you'll be fine."

Hermione didn't bother to argue. Draco wasn't exactly known for his ability to see reason. Instead, she decided to pet Crookshanks and frown at the animal for not wanting to purr at her when it had been so ready to purr at Draco just for looking at it before.

"Can I go to my Head Meeting tomorrow?" she abruptly asked.

Draco blinked at the change of subject. "What?"

"I need your permission to go see Theo."

"Oh…" he muttered, his throat suddenly feeling oddly thick. "Yeah… Go…"

"Can I talk to him?" she pressed.

"Yes."

"Look at him?"

"What the hell is this? Yes, of course you can look at him!" He frowned in annoyance. Couldn't she just let it go already? He found that he was very unwilling to talk about Theo right now. Hermione smirked slightly, and Draco realized he had allowed her to bait him.

"Well, excuse me, but I seem to recall that I need specific permission for every aspect," she smugly informed him.

He supposed he had to let her know. "The, ah… the order doesn't stand anymore," he said. "You're free to…"—he cleared his throat. Damn, he must be coming down with something—"do… whatever you wish with him. Only him, mind you. The rest of Hogwarts is still off-limits."

Why the hell had that been so hard to say? He supposed he might still be wary about Theo's judegment when it came to a certain Muggleborn witch. Yes, that was sure to be it.

"Just remember," he hurried to add. "I can still feel you. I will know what you're doing, so don't do anything rash."

Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Why?"

"Why not do anything rash? Really, you should be able to figure that one out for yourself."

"No," she irritably snapped. She was so easy to annoy that it almost wasn't funny. Almost. "Why am I suddenly allowed to do whatever I want with Theo?"

He raised an eyebrow. "This is what you want, isn't it? Aren't you happy?"

"I'm ecstatic," she drily replied, "but you aren't interested in making me happy. So why?"

He shrugged. "It would make Theo happy."

"It would have made Theo happier if you had never tried to sabotage him in the first place," she pointed out. Then realization hit. "You're feeling guilty!"

"Am not!" Draco indignantly replied.

"Are too!" Hermione insisted.

Draco scowled. "Not!"

"Too!" She challenged his glare and then her eyes widened. "Were you the one to leave that note, too?"

"What note?" he asked with what seemed to be genuine confusion.

"The note telling Harry that I was at the Hospital Wing," she clarified. "Was that you?"

He wrinkled his nose. "Why the hell would I be giving Potter notes? He'd figure out soon enough that you didn't come back. Besides, I hadn't even thought about him, and even if I had… I wouldn't have cared."

Hermione pursed her lips while she thought about this. It sounded true enough. Malfoy wasn't prone to alleviating Harry's fears.

"Then who did?" she asked.

"How would I know?" he asked with a sigh. "Honestly, Granger…"

"Well, who knew that I was in the Hospital Wing?"

He shrugged. "Any number of people, I suppose. Crabbe and his mates. And Pansy."

Hermione snorted. "Yes, because they… wait, you told Pansy?" She was immediately distracted by this new information. Why would he tell Pansy, of all people, that he had helped her if he didn't want anyone to know?

Again Draco looked confused. "Why on earth would I tell Pansy?"

This time Hermione was the one to shrug. She didn't actually know why, which was why she had asked. "Because she's your girlfriend?" she ventured.

"Not anymore. Oh, don't look so surprised, not even Pansy would stand for her boyfriend publicly snogging someone else and it didn't make it better that it was you!"

As soon as the words were out, Draco cursed his own bluntness. Not because he was afraid of wounding Hermione's feelings, but because, well, there were some things you should never say aloud. Saying them aloud made them real.

There was an awkward silence where Hermione looked away and Draco swallowed. Neither of them had really openly acknowledged what had happened after the Quidditch match. Not since they had had their brief discussion. Whenever Draco made a barb about Hermione's snogging habits, he took care to mentally not include himself in her conquests. It was constantly there, but it was as if they had an unspoken agreement to not put it into words. To not make it real.

"I, uh… I'm sorry?" Hermione finally said.

Was that an admission of guilt? Draco glanced at her.

"About you two breaking up, I mean," she added. "Do not try and blame me for the… the incident again."

The incident. That was certainly one name for it.

"Whatever, Granger," he murmured.

"I have another question for you!" Hermione said in an obvious attempt to change the subject. He just shot her a weary glance and she took that as a go-ahead. "Why don't you want to take off the ring?"

Draco groaned, filing this day away as another bad one.

"Well?" she demanded.

He had a few options. He could order her to shut up about it, which would make her suspicious, or he could give her some vague or misleading answer… or he could tell her the truth.

He immediately discarded the first and the last option. He never wanted her to know how addicted he was to sensing her blasted feelings.

"Crooks got your tongue again?" she persisted.

"Merlin, you're the most annoying witch I ever met!" he growled. "I just don't want to waste the time in which I can order you about, that's all. I only have a few weeks to do it; I want to get the most from it."

"I don't believe you," she bluntly stated.

"Well, I honestly don't care what you believe. It's the truth."

She shook her head. "There are plenty of times where you wear it and don't give me orders. It wouldn't make a lick of difference if you took it off."

Perhaps she needed a truth. "Wouldn't it, Granger?" he calmly asked. "So it doesn't make a difference that my orders don't have any effect while I don't wear it?"

She stared at him, her lips slightly parted. He decided not to look at her lips and instead focused on her eyes, which were slightly dazed with realization.

"Of course," she breathed.

"And now that you know, I certainly can't take it off," he said, not at all displeased with that conclusion.

She shook her head. "I'm not like that," she softly said. "I promised to do this for a month and I'm not about to go looking for loopholes. I brought this onto myself, and I have to live with whatever happens."

He gaped at her. "Are you completely out of your mind? Or are you just striving for martyrdom? This bet is about loopholes!"

A faint smile tugged at her lips. "Not to me it's not. It's about allowing someone to bait me into a stupid bet and then accepting the consequences."

In an instant he realized that they were both playing a game… but it wasn't the same game. They didn't play by the same rules. It should have been obvious from the beginning, but it hadn't been. Not to him. He hadn't believed that she wasn't secretly doing what he would have done. Now it was suddenly clear to him that she hadn't been lying or pretending; she really just did want to honor her part of the bargain.

This made him strangely uncomfortable.

Abruptly he stood and gathered his things. He felt as if he might suffocate. He couldn't stay another second.

"Be sure to tell Theo that I did as promised when you see him tomorrow," he muttered, before he strode from the room.


When Hermione was letting herself into the Heads' office the next day, she was feeling strangely apprehensive. She hadn't seen or spoken to Theo, for good reasons, since he had seen her with Draco, and she didn't know how he was going to act towards her. She didn't even know if he would be here, although she suspected he would be. He took his duties seriously.

She really hoped that he didn't hate her.

The door closed behind her with a soft click and she looked up to see that Theo was already there, seated at his desk. He didn't look up when she entered.

She took this as a bad sign.

Hesitantly, she made her way to her own desk where there were some parchments pertaining to the delaying and possible cancellation of Hogsmeade weekend due to security reasons. It seemed, however, that Professor McGonagall was fairly optimistic that they would be able to pull it off in a couple of weeks, yet she admonished the head students not to get anyone's hopes up.

Really, really fascinating.

So fascinating that Hermione spent a good ten minutes staring at it.

Theo's smooth, deep voice finally broke the silence. "Interesting tactics, Granger. I doubt it will be successful, though."

Hermione's entire body flinched at his voice, and she whipped around to stare at the Slytherin.

"Huh?"

He looked over at her, his face completely void of feeling, same as it had been the first weeks she had known him. Her stomach twisted in a knot.

"The unpleasantness won't go away from you staring at that piece of parchment and I know that you're not that slow a reader."

"I'm sorry," she blurted out.

"That you do not read slowly? That hardly warrants an apology." He had deliberately misunderstood.

"No," she murmured. "I'm sorry… about…" Her voice trailed off, but he wasn't about to make it easy on her – he just looked at her with his damned expressionless face. "I'm sorry for what you saw," she finally said.

This time he did not pretend to misunderstand. "Are you sorry that I saw or that it happened? You didn't look very sorry to me."

"I'm sorry that it happened!" she quickly assured him. When he didn't respond, she decided to try to explain. "H-he had made me drink firewhiskey and I was tired – no, exhausted – and unhappy and th-then he was… well… sort of nice? It felt good and I forgot who he was and why I was there in the first place." She realized she was blabbering and wringing her hands and abruptly shut up and hid the hands behind her back.

"I never figured you were one to give in to superficial shows of… affection… from just about anyone that easily. It makes me wonder what made you accept my kiss. Not that it really matters at this time."

"I'm not like that," she whispered, a lump forming in her throat as he continued to be not angry, and not even really cold, but merely indifferent towards her. "You have to believe me, I'm really not like that."

Now was the time for his eyes to turn gentle, for his voice to reassure her.

"But you are," he replied, just as emotionless as before. "You cannot deny your actions. Nor is there any reason for you to do so. There was never really anything between us. You showed that so adequately. One kiss doesn't mean anything."

His words hurt and Hermione's vision grew blurry.

He was treating her as if she were a stranger.

She had really lost him both as a friend and as… more, hadn't she?

"Of course not," she whispered so low that she wasn't even sure he heard her, but she had to turn away rapidly before her tears spilled over and he realized how pathetic she was.

He didn't seem to be done, however.

"I miscalculated," he said. "I should have known right from when you insisted on wearing that bracelet. You want to wear it. You should have just said so; it would have saved everyone a lot of trouble."

She whirled back round to face him. "What?"

He looked her straight in the eye. "I said: You want to wear the bracelet."


Next chapter... not so good for the quotes. But here's a small revelation:

She blinked. "Malfoy is broke?"