Out of Time

Chapter 8

Draco wanders into the library with Pansy in tow, and Hermione doesn't even notice until Theo waves an arm to motion them over. Hermione chose a perfectly square table when she arrived tonight, allowing for equal sides. Now, she gets to be next to Draco, even if not on the same side. They're each flanked by their real and false paramours and Hermione feels much better about things than she did at lunch. If they could coordinate all four-person activities this way, it wouldn't be nearly as awkward.

Draco still angles his body language towards Pansy and she wants to yank him bodily from his chair and all the way up to the seventh floor, into the Come and Go Room.

Gods, this is stupid. Why are they doing this again? She tries to remember why it seemed so important. Instead, she keeps torturing herself by wearing lacy knickers no one sees and shoes no one appreciates.

Having mentally shoved herself into academic - or, at the very least, intellectual - concentration for almost an hour, Hermione grants herself some leeway. Head facing her book, she lets her mind wander over his broad back and shoulders, over his chest (his clavicles replay behind her closed eyelids a surprising amount of times, her hands roaming over them), and if she watches his fingers on his quill, she might combust.

She stares at her text instead, reading none of it.

A delightful flush spreads through her when this feels like the first week she'd approached Draco, after the first orgasm he ever gave her. It looped on repeat in her head. She couldn't think about anything else. Every lesson, every break. His hands were all she could think about then, big hands with strong fingers, and now is no different.

She hasn't written a single sentence since he sat down.

Right over there, nine rows back and four stacks of books to the right, is their hidden table. Right back there is where they could do anything they wanted, as long as they acted like regular students. Hermione's no idiot - they probably never succeeded with that. If they'd been in the open bit of the library, the jig would have been up. But the idea that they were hiding it and it worked, that they could do whatever they liked with no repercussions - it was addictive.

Because they can't hide it. And there would be repercussions. There have been, for Salazar's sake.

The dichotomy is maddening. It ruins the appeal of the table, an insult that seems almost personal.

Giving herself some looser leeway here too, Hermione lets herself daydream about those early meetings at their little hidden spot. She can pretend they're still doing whatever they like under everybody's noses, right over there.

* * *

He can smell her shampoo. It's lilac, always lilac, and it's so obvious to him. She keeps ruffling her hair with a hand, something he knows she does when she's thinking but also almost absently, as if trying to provoke herself to think. As if it's a call to concentration.

He'd taken the world's longest shower before coming down here. It's the primary reason they're late, and hadn't Pansy given him hell on the way over? Draco knows it's a mistake to rely on the shower to provide privacy, and he spent too long just standing there like a cretin with his forehead against the wall.

Every time he smelled his own shampoo, a musky evergreen sort of scent, he mentally contrasted it with hers. And now he's enveloped in hers. She fluffs her hair and it sends another wave towards him, her lilac deliberately sneaking up his nostrils.

He can't get hard here in the library.

But it's been a very, very long week and a half.

No. No floral temptations, no erectile activity. The bloody thing abandoned him for most of this year, so why can't it cooperate now? Even when 'cooperate' means a lack of involvement, for a change.