Merry Christmas Mr. Malfoy (Book 1)

Chapter 6 : Just Acquaintances

Just Acquaintances

The fire was still crackling merrily, tended to by House Elves during the night, when her eyes opened. Groggily, she slowly blinked before lifting her hands and wearily rubbing her eyes.

Trying to discern her surroundings, Hermione managed to partially sit up and stretch lazily, pulling out all of the kinks in her back. She was unusually sore for having slept in her bed the whole night.

Rubbing her shoulder, she continued to blink away the fog of sleep and was surprised to find herself in the Common Room.

The blanket fell from her chest to puddle in her lap as she fully sat up, managing to completely escape from the haze of sleep. Rubbing her eyes again, she stared around the Common Room.

'How did I...?'

That was right...she must have fallen asleep waiting for Draco last night. The last thing she clearly remembered was rereading the same sentence five times because she'd been too exhausted to understand it.

Looking down, finally noticing the blanket covering half of her body, she frowned.

'How did this...? I didn't have a blanket last night...did I? Did it fall on me?'

Her explanation made no sense; if it had fallen on her then why was it placed perfectly on top of her body, covering her from her toes to her shoulders? Or at least, it had been covering her shoulders until she'd decided to sit up.

'Did somebody place it here?'

Slowly, confusion began to cloud her senses. Her eyes looked around the room, finding the two mugs on the table but her book nowhere in sight.

'Where's my book? Did it fall somewhere?'

Leaning over the edge of the couch, she looked under the sofa, finding nothing but mothballs – 'I should clean there some time soon,'- before looking under the table.

Frowning, she found herself eyeing a pair of feet clad in white socks. Her eyes slowly made their way up a pair of long, lean legs until they reached a flat torso covered by a green turtleneck.

Noting the slide broadness of the chest in her search, she continued to lift her gaze until her mouth fell open.

'What the bloody hell is Malfoy doing sleeping in the Common Room?'

Gawking in surprise, her mind ran through thousands of scenarios depicting just why Draco was sleeping in the armchair instead of his bed. He must have come back drunk; that was the likeliest of all scenarios. He must have gotten drunk at the Hog's Head, stumbled back in, and passed out on the armchair.

Her nose twitched; he didn't smell like alcohol of any kind, which meant that her hypothesis was not plausible in any way or form. If he had indeed been drunk, he would still reek of alcohol.

But...why?

Looking around, searching for some kind of answer, her eyes fell on the blanket a second time.

'Did he...? No. No bloody way...no way it was...'

All thought processes stopped as she looked at the mugs on the coffee table. The two empty mugs.

That was right; she'd made a mug of hot chocolate for him last night but, since she'd fallen asleep before he'd gotten back, no one had drunk it. It had been filled to the brim.

It took her some time, quite some time actually, seeing as Hermione's brain never properly functioned in the morning and this was the unlikeliest of all scenarios, but she finally acknowledged that, perhaps, Draco had willingly slept in the armchair last night.