yasinovel Chapter 211 211: Straps, Buckles, and Bruise Ointment
Chapter 211 211: Straps, Buckles, and Bruise Ointment
Hermione Granger—standing in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom—was deeply troubled.
It wasn't that there was anything wrong with the Rococo-style gilded wooden mirror itself; she simply loved its shell patterns, the drooping and scrolling floral foliage, and the flower basket motifs adorning its frame.
The lifelike little cherubs carved at the top of the mirror seemed to have come to life in her imagination.
In the warm glow of the wall lamp, they wore smiles as pure as lilies and offered her their earnest counsel.
"Let him come in and help you," the little angel on the left whispered.
"There's no other choice, is there?" the little angel on the right whispered.
"He probably doesn't know much about this sort of thing either," the girl murmured back, her cheeks flushed.
She whispered to the two little angels, "Boys don't usually deal with dress lacings. Besides—"
Moreover, she didn't think asking him for help right now was a very rational idea.
Think about what he had seen three-quarters of an hour ago...
Although he had been somewhat vague, playing on puns and wordplay, she was fairly certain he had seen through her.
Oh, Merlin. This was so embarrassing!
The only consolation—something rather than nothing—was that the area below her ribs was still safe; he hadn't seen everything, and she didn't have to feel even more mortified than she already was.
Hermione sighed and buried her face in her hands again.
She recalled that he had eventually acknowledged her "persuasiveness"—but she was now unsure whether that success had depended on her kissing skills.
Having him see even just the top half was enough to make any girl nearly sixteen years old want to die of shame and indignation.
If she were a babbling infant, she might not have been aware of other people's gazes—after all, her mother had bathed her when she was little.
But being fifteen or sixteen meant rapid development. It meant that certain things were growing at an almost absurd speed.
According to her roommate Lavender's candid assessment, Hermione Granger was one of the slender witches; however, Lavender had also pointed out that since starting her fourth year, Hermione had changed her blouse size more frequently than her peers.
"That's not a bad thing—I'm actually a little envious." Sometimes, Lavender would stare at her intently while she was changing clothes and say, "I wish I could only gain weight in the right places, instead of all over."
"I think you have a lovely figure—isn't that what matters most?" Hermione had asked.
"But a lot of girls think being thin is more important than being healthy," Lavender said, pinching her own flesh. "I really hate my good appetite."
"We're still growing at this age, so having a healthy appetite is more important than almost anything else," Hermione said. "You still need to grow taller, don't you?"
"But I've noticed I haven't been growing much taller lately—just fuller every day," Lavender said with a bitter face. "My mother is full-figured too, so I suppose I really am her daughter. But if this keeps up, no one will want to date me!"
"I don't think that's true at all. Some boys specifically prefer curvy girls," Hermione said evenly, glancing at her. "I happen to know Ron is one of them—his sister told me so herself."
Lavender suddenly dropped the mask of misery from her face.
She turned her head away, no longer studying Hermione's clothes, and abruptly became very interested in the mirror—examining the almost entirely faded acne scars on her own face.
She said in a carefully casual tone, "Oh, really? I never would have guessed."
Hermione smiled slightly at her reflection in the mirror, then frowned.
Yes, she had comforted Lavender to some degree; but she didn't think it had been the right thing to do.
A girl's worth or charm shouldn't be measured against such absurd and superficial standards.
A thoughtful mind and an independent spirit remained, in her opinion, the things that truly mattered.
And yet most boys seemed to find it very hard to resist the allure of precisely those superficial things.
It seemed even her boyfriend was not entirely immune.
Even though he was the kind of smart, perceptive boy she had believed him to be—someone who valued brains over appearances, who never seemed particularly interested in other girls—Hermione had to admit that he maintained a decidedly enthusiastic desire to explore every part of her.
Thinking of this, she couldn't help but collapse onto the soft bed and bury her face in the pillow.
Then she noticed that there seemed to be a faint trace of his scent on the pillow—fresh, clean, and dangerously appealing.
She breathed it in deeply, and a slow, helpless smile spread across her face.
At that moment, she realised with some despair that she was no different from everyone else.
She was just as fixated on certain physical qualities as he was; neither of them could claim the higher ground.
Immediately afterwards, Hermione began to despise herself for losing her mind so completely.
In such a critical moment—how could she allow herself to be seduced by his scent?
Wake up, Hermione Granger!
Because of his scent, she had been losing her head and following his trail like a puppy, forgetting entirely to pay attention to what his hands were doing while he worked in silence!
He had treated the bathrobe like a peanut shell—and she was the kernel inside, who only fully appreciated how exposed she was after the fact.
She remembered the instant his eyes had lit up.
Sharp, focused, and riveted, as though he had been stunned—as though he were witnessing something miraculous, as though he could see right through her.
She had felt as if at any second he might reach out and take hold of her—to hold her, or to strip away every last layer.
Hoping that "the light had been dim enough at the time" was probably just wishful thinking.
He had almost certainly seen clearly. How else to explain how rapidly he had begun to breathe?
Was he doing all of this intentionally, or unintentionally?
In any case, he was surely feeling very pleased with himself at this moment.
She thought resentfully, twisting the lace ribbon in her hand with frustrated fingers, then pressed her face deeper into the pillow, abandoning all attempts at self-treatment.
Time ticked on, second by second.
There was no point in lying here like this.
The two little angels said nothing more, but watched her with soft, patient eyes.
She glanced at them helplessly. Their golden gazes reminded her plainly: you have no other choice. You have to call him. Dawdling will do no good.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the bedroom door, the boy in the sitting room was undergoing his own internal battle.
It had taken Draco the better part of half an hour to calm himself down—both physically and mentally.
He had quite lost his usual elegance and composure, clumsily lifting the clothes from the silent doorknob—still sheathed in their transparent dust bag—without once daring to look at what was inside. He had hurried them through the bedroom door with all due haste.
She had rushed out a breathless "thank you."
He had said, even more flustered, "You're welcome."
He had carefully passed the still-warm, dry clothes through the trembling crack of the door, not daring to look at her—his gaze fixed on the dull grey sky beyond the window and the rivulets of rain streaking across the glass.
She had busied herself with soft rustling sounds, quickly gathered her clothes, and shut the bedroom door again.
He had stared blankly at that closed door, wanting to return to the sofa, but finding the very thought of that spot made his face burn.
In truth, he couldn't move his feet at all. He had no desire to be far from her—even with the door between them, he wanted to be as close to her as possible.
He had probably gone mad.
This was not a sensible state of affairs.
She had clearly sacrificed a great deal to "persuade" him and had then fled in such obvious alarm; while he—across both his lifetimes combined—had never experienced anything that could truly be called soul-stirring in quite the same way.
It was less thrilling than it was devastating.
Draco Malfoy couldn't make sense of himself. Why had he spent so much time on everything else, when this was clearly the most breathtaking discovery of all?
This was plainly the crown he had deserved all along, and yet his imagination had been blocked for so long by a thin layer of fabric.
Stop. Don't think about it anymore. You can't be so greedy.
"Don't frighten her. She's terrified—can't you see?" he told himself.
She had even clumsily walked into the table, he recalled.
Quite a commotion, that. She had probably bruised herself.
Sigh. She could be so impulsive sometimes, couldn't she?
Why was he worrying about her bruised legs when he had far more pressing matters to torment himself with?
Just as Draco was in the midst of this particular torment, the bedroom door opened again.
The girl's rosy face appeared, her thick hair falling in two loose waves on either side of her cheeks.
Her gaze skipped away from him, and she said, "Draco, I think I need your help."
"Of course. What kind of help?" He tried to speak naturally, reminding himself firmly not to think about clouds.
"I need you to promise first—that you won't do anything excessive while you're helping me," she said seriously, her expression as wary and ready as a rabbit poised to bolt.
"I promise." Draco raised an eyebrow slightly, and agreed with little hesitation.
Today's absurdity had given him quite enough to savour for the time being; he had no intention of doing anything further to unsettle her.
He didn't want to frighten or upset her.
"I didn't want to trouble you, but I genuinely can't manage it by myself. My mum helped me this morning." She chose her words carefully, and the more she spoke, the deeper her blush became.
"I'm not quite sure what you mean," Draco said, puzzled.
"Do you—do you know what dress lacings are?" Hermione looked fixedly at the carpet pattern—she was fairly certain she had seen a very similar one at a nineteenth-century Ottoman antiques exhibition—and did not dare look up at him.
"Lacings?" Even though Draco had steeled himself, the unfamiliar word still left him looking genuinely perplexed.
"This dress is terribly inconvenient," Hermione said, drawing a deep breath and looking up into his questioning grey eyes with the air of someone who had made a firm decision. "I mean—I need someone to lace the back of my dress for me."
"Oh. All right." He blinked, not quite grasping what that entailed.
Was she talking about tying a bow?
It wasn't until Draco walked into the bedroom and stood before the full-length mirror that he truly understood the predicament she was in.
At first, he was simply wondering why she was anxiously clutching her neckline and refusing—at every cost—to turn her back to him, watching him nervously as she retreated into the room.
Then, as they came to stand before the full-length mirror, his reflection quite mercilessly betrayed the truth—a ten-inch gap ran the full length of her back, revealing a stretch of smooth, pale skin.
The dense rows of eyelets on either side of the opening made it plain what the laces were for.
Looking past her shoulder and into the mirror, Draco went rather still.
Hermione, unaware that the mirror had given everything away, was still trying to gauge whether he knew anything about dress lacings. "It's not as straightforward as you might think. If you're not sure, I can find someone else—"
"Not at all. I think I can manage," he said softly, his eyes unblinking, as though afraid of shattering a dream.
He did his utmost to keep his voice calm, concealing the upheaval within. "How complicated could it be? Probably a bit simpler than brewing Wolfsbane Potion."
"Considerably simpler, yes," she said softly, and seemed to relax a fraction.
"Turn around, then." He glanced at her briefly and cleared his throat into his fist. "Let me see what we're working with."
This statement was, admittedly, somewhat ambiguous.
Hearing it, Hermione was immediately reminded of his earlier claim that he would "examine" her—the very thing that had led to the bathrobe disaster.
She looked at him with unmistakable alarm.
But his gaze was elsewhere—he wasn't looking at her the way someone would if they intended mischief or an excessive "examination."
"Don't tease me," Hermione said solemnly, her chin lifted, as though none of it troubled her in the least.
With a quietly trembling heart, she slowly turned around.
There was nothing else for it. Taking a deep breath, she faced the mirror—the two little angels beaming serenely at her from the carved frame—and in the glass was his face, hazy and handsome, like something from a dream too beautiful to be entirely real.
He didn't move. He was looking at her back with a grave, searching expression, his pale face unmistakably flushed.
"Where is it?" he asked suddenly, breaking the silence.
"At my back," she said, confused. Could he not see an opening that long?
"The ribbon," he quickly clarified. "I meant the lace ribbon."
Through the mirror she could see that his eyes were fixed steadily on her back.
"On the bed." Her clipped reply seemed to pull him sharply back to attention.
A slight movement of air, and the boy in the mirror was gone.
Hermione shifted her gaze from the mirror and tried to follow him from the corner of her eye.
Draco walked to the bedside, glanced at the slightly rumpled sheets and the pillow that a certain girl had clearly been making use of, and paused for just a moment.
For a fleeting instant, Hermione thought she heard him swallow—a sound that sent an inexplicable chill down her spine—but it was probably just her imagination.
He leant forward slightly and picked up the long, faintly crumpled gauze ribbon.
She could see him holding it between his long, pale fingers, drawing his hand slowly from one end to the other, working out the creases as he went.
Hermione noticed, somewhat unsettlingly, that the soft sounds his fingers made against the gauze were oddly charged—even a little dangerous. Before she could examine why she felt this way, however, he was already walking towards her again through the flickering candlelight.
He moved with his usual graceful posture, though his steps were a fraction quicker than normal, and in an instant he was back behind her.
So she could see his face in the mirror once more.
His eyes gleamed, fixed intently on her back. He wasn't smiling—there was something more intent than that in his expression, something that made her stomach tighten.
Relax. Hermione tried with everything she had to convince herself.
He was only going to lace her dress. That was all.
He moved closer and closer.
She heard him take a slow, deliberate breath. Then he bent down to examine how the lacings were arranged.
Now she could no longer see his face in the mirror.
But she could, strangely, still sense him with uncanny precision.
His breath brushed against her skin, so close she could feel the warmth of it.
"I didn't know you had a small mole here," he said softly, his breath warming the area around it, his nose grazing it for just a moment. "It's a soft brown. Quite lovely."
"Ah… thank you… for saying so," Hermione managed.
At one point, as his lips moved around the words, they seemed to brush against the mole itself, and she trembled almost imperceptibly.
She tried very hard not to let her thoughts wander.
It was probably just his breath. Not his lips.
She was almost certainly overthinking this.
His voice was very serious, wasn't it?
He seemed to be thoroughly studying the relationship between the eyelets and the laces.
She was quite certain he was observing her with meticulous attention, given the warmth of his breath against her skin.
She could feel the rise and fall of it clearly—its intensity, its pace, its heat.
It was as though it were trying to have a gentle conversation with the fine, barely-visible down along her back, getting quietly acquainted.
He was studying this far too slowly, Hermione thought with growing impatience.
So slowly that the air seemed to crystallise, or else something was about to catch fire.
"Draco—" she said anxiously, her voice slightly unsteady. "Have you worked it out yet?"
"Almost," Draco murmured, knowing perfectly well that he was lying, and entirely unbothered by this.
He was having considerable difficulty focusing on the eyelets and laces.
What was the point of studying them so carefully? They were perfectly straightforward.
He couldn't quite believe his luck. Within the space of a single afternoon, he had been granted the beginning and the end of the same extraordinary sight—fulfilling what was surely the ultimate fantasy any boy could dream of.
No one could be expected to resist.
Draco Malfoy—being a true Malfoy—was constitutionally incapable of letting such an opportunity pass without making the most of it.
Besides, what small reserve of self-control he possessed had not yet fully reconstituted itself; he was still adrift in the warm, fig-scented haze that had settled over their afternoon.
Yes, he could guarantee he wouldn't do anything excessive.
But he could look. Openly, thoroughly, and entirely without apology.
A second, a minute, an hour, an entire afternoon.
Study her. Observe her. Breathe her in.
Let the warmth of his breath coax that exquisite flush to bloom and deepen. Pink on white—what a canvas, what a natural palette.
As he watched, Draco's composure grew increasingly precarious.
He had absolutely no intention of fastening those laces. Not yet.
A voice inside him wanted to loosen the remaining laces instead, to take a proper look.
If he were to manoeuvre the freshly laundered silk gently to the floor, would she be furious?
If it came to that, she certainly shouldn't remain standing in front of the mirror—she would only grow embarrassed. She would be far better placed somewhere more comfortable—the bed, say—where he could take a long, unhurried look at—
The shape of clouds.
He was deep in this particular line of thought, gripping the lace ribbon tightly, when he found himself unable to stop tilting his face close to inhale her scent.
Merlin. Her scent was faintly tart and sweet at once.
He could have starved just from breathing her in.
Though they had eaten a great deal at lunch, he felt impossibly hungry.
Hermione was growing very nervous.
She felt the temperature of the room climbing, despite the Muggle air conditioning unit in the corner.
The suite was so quiet she could hear her own heartbeat. She couldn't see him, but she could hear his breathing—each breath closer, heavier, and warmer than the last.
"Draco—" she said softly.
The tension of not knowing amplified her awareness of everything. She noticed she had been gripping her skirt with three fingers—her middle, ring, and little—the only part of herself she could manage to control at that moment.
She was beginning to regret asking him for help.
Perhaps he didn't understand dress lacings at all and was simply pretending.
Perhaps those little angels had an ulterior motive—they only wanted to see her make a fool of herself—which was why they had suggested she ask him.
Hermione let out a quiet breath, letting her free index finger and thumb idle along a strand of hair by her cheek, feigning indifference.
"If you really can't manage it, that's fine. I can ask one of the Muggle chambermaids—"
These words jerked the boy abruptly out of his reverie.
Draco understood at once that he could no longer use "careful study" as a pretext for delay.
She was perceptive, and she was getting suspicious.
He straightened up quickly, attempting to meet her gaze in the mirror, only to find she wasn't looking at him—her eyes were downcast, her face flushed, and she looked incredibly lovely.
"I've worked it out." He corrected himself immediately, and seized the opportunity to lean close and breathe in the fragrance of her neck. The warmth in his chest blazed sharply brighter. "Don't worry—I've got it in hand," he murmured again, close to her ear.
Hermione glanced up at the mirror before she could stop herself—he was smiling back at her in the reflection—and the breath went straight out of her.
What had he just said?
Perhaps it was the rainy weather, but the air felt particularly close.
She could feel the strands of hair near her ear stirring in the warmth of his words, grazing her flushed cheek.
The next second, she heard him tighten the gauze ribbon in his hands.
She had never realised a sound like that could do something to a person.
For a moment she thought she heard something tear—as though he were about to rend the gauze dress she was holding together with sheer force of will.
This absurd association tightened something in her chest and did her nerves absolutely no good.
"Very well." Hermione did her utmost to drive the thought away and loosen the tension gathering inside her.
She stared at her own rapidly blinking reflection in the mirror and refused to look at him again. "Then—thank you for the trouble."
"No trouble whatsoever. In fact, I'd be more than happy to." Draco turned back to the lacing and offered this rather peculiar remark to the air, his long, pale fingers beginning to move.
From the bottom, upward. Unhurriedly. With tremendous care.
In the process, certain more sensitive patches of skin were inevitably grazed by his cool fingertips—one such graze prompted a soft, involuntary sound from somewhere in her throat, which she tried immediately to suppress before he noticed.
What she didn't realise was that he had already noticed, because the patch of skin in question had bloomed a vivid, luminous pink—the kind of pink a person could look at for an unreasonable length of time.
He couldn't resist wanting to breathe it in again.
"It's a little… itchy," Hermione said quietly.
She wanted to remind him that she was not a mindless doll to be manipulated at his leisure.
"I'm sorry." Between careful breaths, Draco excavated his most innocent tone from wherever he kept it, hiding behind her as he worked at the fastenings, concealing the fervour on his face and the trembling in his chest. He said haltingly, "The eyelets… are rather intricate… hard to avoid touching… terribly fiddly…"
The warmth of his breath seemed to have its own intentions entirely.
As he spoke, a wisp of his hair came loose and swept across the skin above the topmost unfastened eyelet, grazing that spot with impunity and incidentally rattling her composure.
"Oh… I see…" Hermione said, briefly convinced.
She suppressed the strange sensation and decided to let it go.
Because at this moment, an impenetrable fog was spreading through her—composed not of water but of something charged, restless and electric.
That subtle, almost imperceptible contact—the fluctuating distance between them—was like a magnetic field that had lost its equilibrium, its poles confused. Gravity and repulsion merged into one, shifting constantly, drawing her close and pulling her back, making her heart contract one second and threatening to burst the next.
She had never imagined that the lacings of her dress could be such a dangerous thing.
Ever since she had asked for his help, something had been hurtling steadily towards getting out of hand.
She felt terribly confused—constantly wanting to escape from him, yet constantly wanting to be closer.
He could stir something in her with nothing but his breath.
For a moment she longed for him to simply wrap his arms around her, or for her to let herself lean back against him. He would catch her without hesitation—she was certain of it. And then she wanted to breathe him in again, consequences be damned.
She wasn't sure such thoughts were entirely proper.
Why was it that his least intentional touch left her feeling like a stone hollow that the tide had quietly come in to fill?
This was clearly all wrong.
Draco, meanwhile, was unusually composed.
He remained silent and worked quietly on by himself.
The lace ribbon wove and crossed and drew taut, moving from the bottom upward, slowly, gently, with exacting care.
As though he had found the purpose to which he intended to devote the rest of his days.
He was writing a poem in an alphabet only she could read—playing an instrument tuned to nothing but her.
Every careful movement made her tremble and feel light-headed.
"Is it tight enough down here?" Just then, he raised his head slightly, his captivating grey eyes finding hers in the mirror, catching her flustered gaze before she could look away. He held her there, steady and intent. "If it's too tight, you have to tell me."
She instinctively tightened her grip on her dress, pressed her knees together, and said dazedly, "Mmm."
A beat later, she realised he was talking about the lacings.
"The lacing fits perfectly," she added hastily, feeling slightly unsteady on her feet.
Good heavens. What had she been thinking? It seemed that ever since he had started playing his games of double meanings, her mind had been thoroughly corrupted. His words always carried a second meaning for her ears alone, while his expression remained one of perfect innocence.
As if she were the wicked one.
"Your shoulder blades are beautiful." He chuckled softly behind her, apparently satisfied both with her anatomy and his own handiwork.
With a quiet snap, he tightened a slightly loose section of lacing and continued his work with the same maddening effect.
Hermione was thoroughly exasperated. He seemed entirely oblivious—or perhaps perfectly aware—of the fleeting, unsettling thing his voice and fingers did to her.
She had to do something.
Perhaps she ought to employ Draco's own favoured tactic—the swift change of subject—to break this unbearably charged atmosphere before it consumed her entirely.
"Draco," she said, recovering her composure, "I've been meaning to ask—did you travel to Europe by aeroplane, or by some wizarding method?"
"Portkey," he said briefly.
"Can you use a Portkey across that kind of distance?" Hermione asked, concentrating hard on keeping her voice level as she pursued the topic.
"Of course—but you have to apply to the relevant Ministry of Magic in advance." Draco's voice came from behind her as he continued his work. "There are Portkeys made specifically for wizards travelling internationally."
"That's rather convenient," Hermione said, smoothing her skirt absently. "It just… whooshes you straight there?"
"Mm," Draco replied lazily, his fingers moving deftly.
There were hardly any empty eyelets left.
Finally, he no longer needed to stoop; he could straighten up and lower his head to quietly breathe in the scent of her hair.
He lingered over the memory of the white lace fabric his fingers had briefly grazed, and found himself imagining what it enclosed.
"Wait!" Hermione said suddenly, biting her lower lip, something sharp entering her eyes. "When exactly did you arrive in Avignon?"
"Only last night—I applied for the Portkey at the very last moment," Draco said. His thoughts drifted briefly to a pair of little cherries. Pink. Sweet, if he had to guess. Draco Malfoy had always had a particular weakness for anything sweet that Hermione Granger might offer—a genuine obsession with certain varieties in particular. He was regretting deeply that his fingers had been too nimble and that he had finished the lacing far too quickly.
"Those French Ministry officials are terribly slow," he added absently. "My grandfather had to put in a word."
"But you only contacted me this morning?!" Hermione raised her voice, staring at him in the mirror in disbelief.
"I wasn't even sure I'd be able to get away. I was still working out how to manage it. If it hadn't worked, I didn't want you to be disappointed." Draco shrugged guilelessly at the mirror.
"That isn't what I mean!" Hermione's whole body stiffened.
If the trembling before had been something else entirely, this trembling was pure indignation.
"So—you read everything I was writing this morning?" She fixed him with a glare, her tone sharp with outrage.
"That's actually how I found you."
And then, finally, Draco grasped what she was angry about.
While he had been pleasantly distracted by the white lace fabric, she had caught him neatly, finding the evidence she needed to convict him.
He had originally meant to keep this to himself; but now there was no choice except to keep walking down this particular road.
His gaze moved about briefly as he assembled his defence. "Without all that commentary you kept providing about Café Oscars, Dante, and the Palais des Papes, how on earth would I have found you so easily?"
Finding his one and only girl among millions of Muggles was no small feat, after all.
Honestly, at one point he had even considered placing a Tracking Charm on her again.
"And Shakespeare—I was talking to myself about Shakespeare last night!" Hermione recalled this suddenly, which resolved another mystery: why Draco Malfoy, who had clearly known nothing about Shakespeare, had nevertheless actively encouraged her to read him.
"You may have mentioned it once or twice," Draco said, tying the final knot in her lacing with a neat flourish. He stepped round to her side, tilted his head, and regarded her with undisguised smugness. "There. How is that?"
"Perfect! But that is not the point!" Hermione had no desire to think about the lacing at all; she was both humiliated and furious.
From last night through to this morning, she had been confiding her every thought to that treacherous enchanted ring—saying all manner of things.
"How much of it did you actually hear?" Hermione turned to face him, her brown eyes alight with righteous fire.
"Hear? Do you mean—the words, or—" He looked entirely unruffled, the picture of a unicorn that had wandered into civilisation and genuinely could not fathom why anyone would be cross with it.
His eyes were clear and bright—innocent, flawless, and impossible to resist. Hermione had never been able to hold out against his gaze.
The word "hear" encompassed such a great deal, Draco reflected. Words, confessions, desires. He smiled at her like a cat who had made a very satisfying meal of the canary.
Hermione's mouth fell open—as if she were only now truly seeing, for the first time, what a roguish and incorrigible scoundrel he was beneath that cold, aristocratic exterior.
Merlin—give her back that aloof, unfeeling Slytherin! This version, with his teasing and his games and his completely unrepentant grin, was genuinely infuriating!
Her expression cycled through several changes before she finally said, "Words. What you heard in words."
"Oh, those?" Draco said slowly, his smirk widening with supreme self-satisfaction. "How you think about me every few minutes. How you want to kiss me a thousand times over. I had absolutely no idea you missed me so much you couldn't sleep."
Merlin above—he had, in truth, wanted to contact her the instant the ring lit up.
But from the moment he arrived in Avignon, it had been burning almost constantly, flashing one message after another.
At first, Draco had thought something was wrong with it.
Logically speaking—knowing they couldn't communicate—why would she be speaking to him at all?
Then, after studying it more carefully, he had noticed something off.
She was talking to herself.
Merlin. An absolute gift.
Who could possibly refuse the chance to discover exactly what Hermione Granger was truly thinking, in a way that left her completely oblivious and unsuspecting?
Draco Malfoy certainly couldn't.
So he had exercised great restraint and said nothing at all, allowing the ardent, private thoughts that Hermione usually kept locked away to continue flowing freely—and in so doing had gathered an extraordinary wealth of Hermione Granger's innermost feelings.
She had mentioned kissing him in nearly every third sentence.
He had had no idea she missed him so acutely—needed him, longed for him—with such remarkable consistency.
To know this had made a certain cunning Slytherin very, very happy, and quite determined to see her as soon as possible.
To satisfy Hermione Granger's hidden, quietly burning desires was a responsibility Draco Malfoy would always be extremely glad to undertake.
"You utterly impossible wretch!" Hermione glared at him, then turned her face sharply away, suddenly not wanting to speak to him at all. "I'll never—"
"I'm sorry. I won't do it again." Draco softened his voice and moved closer. "Don't be angry."
Alas.
The atmosphere, which had been so pleasant—so beautifully charged—had been entirely dismantled by that cursed enchanted ring, Draco thought, not without genuine regret.
"There will be a next time?" Her voice shot upward again, eyes going wide.
"There won't be a next time," the Slytherin said placatingly. "At least let me settle my debts before you're angry with me again, yes?"
He was not discouraged. Looking at her flushed face and her bright, sparkling eyes, he couldn't help but think of all the longing he had heard in her voice.
Those desires she carried for him—he felt thoroughly obliged to satisfy them, given how desperately she had been searching for him.
Perhaps if he did, she wouldn't be quite so cross.
"What debt?" Hermione demanded, determined to understand what she had missed even while furious.
"I believe I still owe you a proper kiss," the boy in front of her said slyly, the ghost of a smirk at the corner of his mouth. "One that you initiate yourself doesn't count. Does it?"
"You—you're dreaming! Stay exactly where you are!" Hermione said furiously, stepping back with great caution.
"All right. But don't step back—" Draco said lazily. "Trust me."
"I will never trust you again!" In her fury, Hermione took two or three rapid steps back, caught the edge of the bed with her heel, and sat down on it rather hard.
Her face went brilliant red.
"I did warn you," Draco said, the picture of innocence, and took two unhurried steps forward.
"You promised you wouldn't do anything excessive." Hermione felt deeply embarrassed, looked up at him with her sternest expression, and blinked rapidly.
She should stand up and leave right now. Shouldn't she?
But he was too close. If she stood up now, her lips would end up directly in front of his, and she would have no choice but to let him collect on that debt immediately.
She gripped the sheets with anxious hands, trying to think of any other solution available to her.
Thinking was quite possibly the most difficult thing in the world at this particular moment, given the captivating quality of his eyes and the total serenity of his smile—as though he held her entirely in the palm of his hand.
A perfect smile curved his face as he looked down at her, eyes narrowing slightly, as though he were hatching something.
He spoke slowly, entirely at ease: "Yes—I promised I wouldn't do anything excessive except help you."
"Good! Thank you for your help! The helping is over now." Hermione said with considerable difficulty, watching him slowly crouch down to her level, smiling, his grey eyes gleaming like pale gemstones and making her deeply uneasy.
"Draco, you—"
She meant to say something withering.
But his breath was already close to hers—warm, pleasant—and she couldn't quite find the anger in herself to follow through.
And then there was him—the infuriatingly perfect him—the one who made coherent thought impossible, who was also drawing steadily closer.
"No—the helping isn't quite finished." Draco chuckled, his gaze dropping from hers, and his hands moved to the hem of her skirt. "I won't do anything excessive. But I do want to help you with one more thing."
Everything happened very fast.
Before Hermione could manage even a single syllable of protest, or lift her hands from the sheets to push him back, he had taken hold of her leg without the slightest resistance.
In an instant, every possible scenario that might follow rushed into her mind like a wave.
His platinum-blond hair caught the candlelight brilliantly, blazing white.
Her thoughts evaporated. Reason floated away somewhere above her head.
"You—" Her breath stopped. Everything except her heartbeat seemed to have frozen entirely.
"Don't move." He had a firm, steady hold of her—like a flame precisely catching the edge of a moth's wing.
Hermione turned scarlet and stammered, "What—what are you doing?"
Her hands were twisting the sheets into knots behind her.
It occurred to her suddenly that when he had pulled the bathrobe more tightly around himself earlier that afternoon, it might have been entirely involuntary—perhaps he had been just as unsteady as she felt right now.
"Mm. Bruised, as I thought." Draco frowned slightly, examining a dark bruise some eight inches above her knee.
His fingers carefully skirted the injured area; then he drew a small round tin from his pocket.
"What are you going to do?" Hermione asked uneasily, drawing her legs together with great caution.
"Treat your bruise—you did walk into the table, remember?" He looked up at her, smiled with a certain private amusement, and unscrewed the lid of the bruise ointment with great enthusiasm.
"Otherwise—what exactly did you think I was going to do?" He studied her flushed face and asked with perfect innocence: "Hermione Granger—what other possible reason could I have for lifting your skirt?"