I'm running around, flailing, like a headless chicken. Kupo is now eating solids and doing...stuff. He's like a little person already. X_X

It was Maz' birthday (again) on the 10th and I should be posting a 17k words faux one-shot Rose/Scorpius in celebration of that on affnet and LJ soonish (tonight or tomorrow). So, um, there are some links in my profile or click "my homepage" to get to my LJ where I will post up links, if you're interested in reading that. I won't post it on ffnet. It's rated a hard R for being smutless smut. (don't ask)

And, again, I'm really sorry if you asked me a question or sent me a PM and I didn't get back to you. I read them and then mean to respond when I have time, but get totally distracted and whoops, six months passed. Time is warped in my universe.


Hermione gulped, staring up at Draco. No, this really could never be good. Well, maybe a little good, but it was always vastly outweighed by the bad. It certainly never ended well. "No!" she exclaimed, taking a quick step backwards, before he could act on it. "No! No, no, no! And don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about!"

He shrugged, looking rather resigned, and shoved his hands into his pockets. "You're saying you don't want me to kiss you. It's a pretty sensible stance; I'm not going to challenge it."

"Then why would you even…." She could hardly even say it.

"Who said I intended to?"

"Oh, you intended to! You always intend to!"

He looked at her rather pensively for a second. "You know, I'm surprised that you aren't pretending nothing happened just now."

Hermione felt her cheeks heat again. "Well, that's not working, is it? That nothing keeps happening because you… make it."

"And you let it."

"Through no fault of my own!"

"Last time was entirely your own fault!"

Her cheeks were practically burning now. "Yes, well, I was out of it. Otherwise it obviously wouldn't have happened." She crossed her arms again. She wasn't showing any extra skin in these clothes, but she couldn't help but feel at a disadvantage, exposed, by wearing her pyjama.

"You're such a hypocrite, Granger," he said with a sigh. "Just admit that you want it to happen too. It will make it easier to deal with. Acknowledgment doesn't have to mean acting on it, you know."

Hermione gaped a little at Draco's blunt statements before remembering herself and scowling instead.

She hated it when he made sense.


This discussion really shouldn't be turning him on, Draco mused. But it did. It reminded him of everything that had happened between them and everything that could happen. And she looked adorable in what he could only assume were nightclothes. She was all rumpled and disheveled and considering the Hermione-shaped print on the bed right between the open book and the unconscious cat, he had probably interrupted a pretty cozy scene. He also liked how she seemed to become easily embarrassed today. Flaming cheeks suited her.

He had really badly wanted to kiss her. Never mind every reason he shouldn't. And, now, it was hard not to try and do it again, even though she was clearly saying no. She would probably slap him again if he tried.

It was sort of twisted that this wasn't less of a turn-on.

He really had it bad.

She opened her mouth, clearly to argue his statement, but then seemed to think better of it. Interestingly enough, she didn't even deny it. He'd sort of thought she would. "You're annoying," she said instead.

He found it hard not to laugh.

Apparently, Hermione took offense at his amusement. "And you're an egocentric, vain, inconsiderate, manipulative, rude…"

Draco sort of tuned out as the list seemed to go on and on and there didn't seem to be anything new on it. He already knew this and she knew he knew, so, really, she was just venting.

When she finally stopped to catch her breath, he decided to shrug and say, "You're not all that, either."

That seemed to bring her up short. "What?"

Oh, so she wasn't used to being criticized? True, it might be an odd thing for him to say, considering that he'd been trying to kiss her only moments earlier, but what the hell. "You're annoying too. And more than occasionally a bit of a bitch. Your two favorite acts are innocent and high-and-mighty. You think that just because you're smart, you're better than everyone else. The mention of it is getting tired, but your hair is a disastrous mess. I've kissed prettier girls than you. And nicer ones. Sometimes, they were even both at once."

He knew he'd listed potion ingredients before with greater passion than this, but it wasn't really that he wanted to cuss her out. He just wanted to remind her that he wasn't the only imperfect person in this room. Imperfections didn't matter. They didn't change anything.

He half expected her to yell at him again, but she didn't. She just stood staring at him, no doubt trying to work out why he'd been trying to kiss her when he felt this way. Well, she had a much longer list of grievances against him and she usually responded, didn't she? And she'd come on to him before as well. So what was so strange about it?

Finally she frowned and blinked in what still looked like confusion. "I see," she muttered, turning away from him. "Look, I need to work on these schedules, so if you could just leave…."

Her back was very straight. Too straight.

She didn't care what he thought, did she? That would be a first. "You're done yelling at me, then?" he asked.

"Yeah. All done."

She was too compliant by half. But then again, if he had somehow managed to do the unprecedented and hurt her feelings it was probably a good thing. Then they weren't likely to end up in compromising positions that would just complicate matters.

It was easier when there was no way it could happen.

She was still rigidly keeping her back to him, waiting for him to leave.

Damn it.

He couldn't make his feet move towards the door, but found himself walking up behind her instead. He put his hand on her arm and she yanked it away. Her cheeks were a different kind of red. This kind of red did odd squeezing things to his chest instead of the flutter he'd felt before.

"Hey…" he quietly said.

"I told you to leave," she said more sharply.

"Since when do you care what I say or think?" he asked, genuinely baffled.

"And since when do you make it a habit to constantly come on to someone you think of as a bint?" Her voice broke.

She really was hurt?

Since when did she listen to him at all? She knew he was a git.

He couldn't believe how much he hated this.

"I didn't say you were a bint…" he lamely replied. He had called her a bitch after all. And talked about prettier girls. Why that had seemed a good idea at the time, he failed to recall.

She bitterly laughed. "No, just worse than the usual. Slumming it with a minger, then? Trying to get in the knickers of the clever Muggleborn…. As long as the lights are out, who cares, right?"

But she knew how much he wanted her, how he'd fought to hold back. Why wasn't she being rational anymore? "You know that's not it. And your list was longer!"

"I didn't call you ugly!"

Why was that such a big of a deal? "But you have to admit you listed me as being pretty repulsive."

"But I haven't been going around trying to—to—"

"Except last time you came to my room you did."

"Theo had just turned me down; I thought you would be easy! Now I see why you weren't, of course, but at the time I had good reason to think you'd do it."

Draco tried to make sounds into words, but he didn't manage to get much. He'd known she'd come to his room because she was unhappy about Theo, but…. "You only tried to have sex with me because Theo turned you down for it first?" he quietly asked, not entirely certain why this hurt so much. He'd known she didn't really want him... hadn't he?

It was just… the thought of her trying to seduce Theo made him sick. The thought of her going straight to his room after made him even sicker.

"Yeah, I wasn't good enough for him either," she muttered, suddenly going over to the door and yanking it open, effectively throwing him out.

This time, he left.


Hermione slammed the door after Malfoy. How dare he! To come in here and act all attracted to her only to then tell her that she was ugly and…. She looked down herself, taking her less than flattering attire in. And what? Just not lie about it? Not inflate her ego by claiming that she'd look pretty no matter what she wore or what she did to her hair?

In an irrational fit of temper, she kicked her chair, feeling only a little satisfaction as it toppled over.

She knew, damn it. She had both eyes and a brain in her head. He didn't have to tell her he'd kissed prettier girls. She knew. She'd bloody seen it for that matter.

But wasn't it common courtesy not to point such things out?

She knew that prettiness wasn't her main priority. After all, she was the one to set the priorities. But that didn't mean she didn't want to feel pretty every once in a while. Especially with the blokes that generally tried to kiss her.

Was that too much to ask?

And, quite honestly, the way Malfoy had seemed attracted to her, she'd thought… she wasn't sure what she'd thought. Or, rather, she wasn't going to embarrass herself by thinking it again. Obviously she'd been wrong.

She shouldn't care, but sometimes she found that it just wasn't enough to be clever. She was not just a walking brain but a girl and sometimes she too had silly fantasies about being the belle of the ball.

Krum had made her feel that way, years ago. That was why she had gone too far with him. Not because she had been naïve enough to think it was true love or anything beyond what it was, but because nobody else had ever done that for her. Nobody else had ever seen her feminine side. Nobody else had ever made her feel beautiful.

The strange part was how much Draco's words had hurt. She was used to his abuse. Since this was coming from him, she should be able to just laugh it off.

But she'd been feeling sort of vulnerable and then he'd struck like the viper he was.

A shallow viper at that.

Inner beauty really didn't count with boys their age, did it? But then again, he'd also called her a bitch and high and mighty and…. Her eyes filled with tears. It seemed like there was no beauty anywhere in her as far as he was concerned.

It was just the shock, she told herself. She wasn't really hurt. She didn't care. She had just been blind-sided. He hadn't seemed prone to making these kinds of insults lately.

In fact, she'd thought he liked her. That he'd even liked her a little too well.

Guess not.


Another book slammed down hard on top of the one Draco was reading and he sighed. Someone was cross with him for a change. And they had chosen to single him out at the library. At least Madam Pince would come to his aid if it got too loud or any books were damaged.

"Well, hello there, Potter," he said upon establishing the identity of the blighter. "How may I help you?" He carefully extricated his homework.

"You wouldn't by any chance be into pain?" Potter coldly asked.

Draco raised an eyebrow. "That's sort of a personal question, isn't it? Sorry, I don't swing your way."

Harry coldly smiled. "Don't believe for one second that I wouldn't be getting off on tying you up and hurting you."

Draco winced. Not a very pleasant imagery, that. The tying and the hurting notwithstanding. "Did I do something, or is this just you coming out?"

Harry leaned in over the table. "You're damn right you did something. You upset Hermione. You know her, right? Really smart, very strong convictions? She told me I couldn't get even for the whole enslaving deal, but this… this is something different."

The bottom fell out of Draco's stomach. He had upset her badly enough that her friends knew?

But then again, he hadn't actually escaped unscathed. He was still smarting from her little revelation that on top of having just wanted to use him to forget her problems with Theo—which was fine, really, at least the attraction was still true in that scenario—she had wanted to use him as a substitute for Theo when the other boy had turned her down only minutes before.

"So what did you do to her in her room?" Potter was asking. "If it was bad, so help me…."

Draco gave a darkly amused smile. What did he think he'd done? There were limits to what he could ever do to her without ending up having a very important part of himself hexed off. "Relax. I just insulted her. She'll get over it."

"What did you say to her?" Potter demanded.

Draco considered lying. Or baiting him. But then again, considering the rather homoerotic fantasies that Potter seemed to be having, he was probably better off just answering the question. "I don't recall my exact words, but something to the effect of her not being pretty," he calmly replied.

"What?"

"Oh, and I also called her a bitch."

"And why would she care what you think? And… she's upset you don't think she's pretty?" Harry frowned, looking unconvinced that Draco was telling the truth.

Draco rolled his eyes and got up, collecting his books. "As for the first part: Surprised me too. For the second part: She's a girl. About time you figured that out if you haven't already. No girl likes to think she's not attractive. Even if it's a plonker telling her so." He was mumbling the last bit as he was leaving, feeling rather irritated. It was a damn nuisance that he always had to study in his room if he didn't want to be disturbed.

And he most certainly did not have the urge to go seek Granger out and assure her of her attractiveness.

She was being stupid for believing his rubbish anyway. Had she not been there the times he'd kissed her?

This annoyance he felt was not with himself. It was with everyone else. Especially her.

She shouldn't let him upset her. It made no sense to let him upset her.

Damn it.


"I cannot believe this!" Tracey Davis stared at Draco with wide eyes.

"Believe it."

"Why are you doing this?"

"You know very well why I'm doing it. Blaise is mad at me."

She smirked at that, seeming rather happy with that fact. Bitch. Wasn't there a time where she had blended in with the wallpaper? He sorely missed those times.

"Oh, yeah," she said, clearly relishing his misfortune.

Bitch.

"So, are you going to do it or not?" he asked, his patience wearing thin.

She crossed her arms. "I'm thinking not. I'm not a whore."

Draco wearily rubbed his temple. "I never said you had to sleep with him."

"You said you'd pay me to at least give Blaise a small chance? I don't know if you noticed, but with him that usually involves sex. The boy has an appetite."

"Then tell him that you don't want to muddle it up with sex!" Draco exclaimed. "How hard can it be?"

She snorted and then narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "You don't even have the money. Blaise told me that you're broke."

"Oh, he told you that, did he?" Draco scowled. "I'm not that broke. I have options."

"Like what?"

"Like none of your business. It's not like Blaise doesn't have to be creative as well in putting money aside so his mother won't realize what he's doing before he's gone."

"Before he—huh?"

"You know, when he—" Draco stopped himself. "Shit, you don't know, do you?"

"No. Tell me."

"Not my story to tell."

"Tell me!"

He seized the opportunity. "Will you do this then?"

She bared her teeth at him. "Fine."

The good thing about Slytherins was that you could always bring them around if you had the right incentive. In Draco's opinion it was really much easier than dealing with Gryffindors.


Hermione rolled her eyes. "Adding to the list now? That's lovely, Malfoy. Really. Done yet?" She tried to go around him, but he didn't budge and she was still a bit hesitant in getting too close to him.

"Potter sought me out and chatted me up," he conversationally said. "You know, I think that boy's dating the wrong Weasley. But other than that, he said you were upset by what I said to you."

Hermione felt her face burn with embarrassment. She was going to hex Harry for this. "I was angry about what you said."

"No, I think you were upset."

She came up with a few new choice names for him in her head. "I was annoyed."