So, I may have been reading Catching Fire when I wrote this chapter. I noticed a few Peeta-esque moments when I was editing.

Chapter 17
The next morning, Draco awoke to the smell of sizzling bacon and freshly brewed coffee. The space beside him was cold and empty, and he wondered if the smell had wafted in from somewhere else. Climbing out of bed, he left the room to investigate. His nose led him to the kitchen where he found Hermione dressed in one of his shirts as she cracked eggs into a glass bowl.

She had been humming softly to herself, but stopped when she sensed his presence. "I was worried that you hadn't been eating right...or at all lately," she excused, magicking a whisk to combine the eggs. "I hope you don't mind."

He advanced on her, smiling as he kissed her. "Not at all," he murmured, stealing one more kiss. "What time is it?"

"A bit after eight," she replied as she transferred the eggs to a fry pan on the stove. "You should have slept in. You looked pretty exhausted last night."

He wrapped his arms around her from behind and rested his chin on her shoulder as he yawned. "The bed got cold," he groused. "I had a nightmare too."

She set the eggs to cook on their own and turned in his arms. It was one of his nightmares that had woken her and refused to let her fall back to sleep. He rarely spoke of them, and Hermione was usually happy for that. She had enough of her own without adding his. "Do they happen a lot?" she asked.

He nodded briefly. "They usually go away when you're here though," he replied. "But this one I couldn't seem to shake. Do you think they'll ever go away completely?"

"No," she said, turning back to their breakfast. The downside to cooking with magic was that it was done too soon, taking with it the distraction she had hoped for. The burners shut themselves off and the foot plated itself. Hermione pulled out of his arms and took a seat at the small breakfast nook.

It was only after she shot him a questioning look that he joined her. "Did I say something wrong?" he wondered as she shoveled down her breakfast.

Slowly, she set her fork aside and swallowed. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "It's just the, um, nightmares. I can't handle my own sometimes. I don't like talking about them, but if it helps you, I'll listen."

"It was about you," was all he said. "About losing you."

Hermione moved to sit on the bench beside him and wrapped her arms around him as best she could. "I'm not going anywhere," she told him.

Draco held onto the arm wrapped around the front of his neck and pressed a kiss to the soft flesh. He wanted to point out that she had said that once before and then had broken things off with him. Because of her, he had spent a week drinking alone in his flat in hopes of forgetting that he ever cared for her. But she was back now, and maybe this time she would keep her promise.

"I'm sorry," he finally said. Her arms slackened and she pulled back. Brown eyes were intensely focused on him, filled with concern and curiosity. "I shouldn't have walked out that day. I should have stayed, should have listened to what you had to say. Instead, I ran like the coward I've always been. You were right when you said this is scary."

"I could have gone after you," she replied, kissing his cheek. "You're not the only coward here."

"Yeah, but you came back," he said bitterly. He knew he never would have gone back to her.

She picked up his fork and speared a chunk of scrambled eggs. Lifting the fork to his mouth, she waited patiently for him to open it and accept the offering. "I was afraid that if I didn't, I'd never see you again," she admitted. "I cried the other night over that...stupid raspberry lip gloss."

He took the fork from her and copied her actions. "Do you still have it?" he asked.

Swallowing, she nodded. "It was really all I had left of you," she confessed as her cheeks turned pink. Grabbing a strip of bacon, she chewed it slowly as she waited for him to say something.

"When did you realize it?" he wondered. "When did you realize that you'd gotten attached too?"

There was no hesitation when she answered, "It started the first time you woke up in my bed. You wore my lip gloss. I tried to ignore it because I knew I wasn't supposed to get attached, but that's when it started."

They continued to eat now from their own plates; hands clasped together on the table. Draco finished first and put down his fork. "I lied to you," he said suddenly.

Hermione choked as her last mouthful of breakfast went down wrong. "Excuse me?" she asked, coughing.

"It wasn't during the poker game," he told her. "I started caring about you that first night. I've never fed another woman dinner if I only intended to shag her. But after that lunch we had, I was gone. There was no way I couldn't get attached to you."

"But we had always hated each other," she replied, shocked by his confession.

Draco chuckled. "Believe me, I tried to suppress any positive feelings I had toward you," he said. "I thought if I could just shag you, I'd be proving to myself that I could have any woman. And after I did, I couldn't stop myself from wanting to see you again and again and again. You didn't slip something into my food when I wasn't looking, right?"

She shook her head. "I was too nervous to even think of doing such a thing," she replied. "We were supposed to be making other people jealous, you recall. I think we only managed to make one another jealous though."

"I remember being jealous, but you?" he wondered.

Hermione nodded. "The blonde at the bar," she said. By the look on his face, he seemed to be recalling that girl. He sat quietly beside her, his expression puzzled, as he continued to hold Hermione's hand. "You don't remember her?"

Draco shrugged. "I can't remember her name," he replied. "I remember that night. You were with Weasley, and it made me mad. She was boring and had this dull, dull voice. And I kept looking over at you until you left."

"What did you do then?" she wondered.

"Paid the tab and went home."

She quirked an eyebrow, incredulous to believe his account of that night. "So you didn't sleep with her?" Draco shook his head. "Didn't even kiss her?"

Draco shrugged. "Sure,once," he replied. He leaned in close and whispered, "It was something like this." Then he pressed his lips to her cheek. When he pulled back, his eyes seemed to ask her the same question.

She thought back on her brief relationship with Marcus. They had gotten close during the short weeks they'd spent together, but Marcus had always been cautious. Though never hesitant to kiss her, it was he who put the brakes on going farther. It had angered her at the time (was she not good enough for him?), but she felt relieved that she could honestly tell Draco that nothing happened.

Draco chuckled. "Seems like neither one of us was very good at the open aspect of our relationship," he said. "I'm glad though."

"Me too," Hermione replied, kissing him.