"This isn't working." She was already halfway buttoned up when she turned to face him. His slacks still unbuttoned and his shirt open around his shoulder, which he gave no indication of closing anytime soon. Hermione rolled her eyes, continuing to do up her blouse. "We just finished. Give it a moment. Besides, I have to be-" "No, not this," Draco scoffs, gesturing to his open trousers. "This." She blinks carefully, watching his long fingers extend from his own chest to hers.

"I just don't understand. Why... why Malfoy?" She was scrubbing the dishes in front of her the muggle way, a habit she did when she was nervous, uncomfortable, or angry. And now, with her fiancé red in the face and not meeting her eye, she was all three. "He's..." From her peripheral she watched him run a shaking hand through his hair. "He's just everything I'm not. Everything I've always wanted to be."

He didn't mean to find it and it wasn't his fault it was there and really you couldn't blame him because the entire house was made of wood and wood naturally had holes and he didn't build the damned house and technically if he hadn't found it, someone else surely would have and what were the odds that she was in the next room anyway? And mostly all of that was right. For instance, he did not mean to find it. But he had anyway.

Hermione felt the pounding in her ears again. She would see him for the first time since the Great Hall, gaunt and stricken at the Slytherin table with his mother clutching his arm. She hadn't meant to look for him. Not in the corridors, not beneath the white sheets of the fallen, not on the way to the Chamber of Secrets with Ron, but she was a stupid girl.