Manacled

Chapter 41

A/n: I do not own any of the characters or the plotline, It all belong to JK Rowling and SenLinYu.

Flashback 16

August 2002

Hermione pressed her lips together as she stared over at Draco, breathing raggedly.

"I'm too drunk. I can't apparate," she said. "I told you, I cry. I can't help it. I don't know how to hold it all in when I'm drunk."

She clamped her hands over her mouth and struggled not to burst into tears. They leaked out of her eyes and slid over her fingers.

Draco sighed.

"Why are you crying now?" he asked when she kept choking back tears.

"Because I'm lonely and I'm snogging you and you don't even really think I'm attractive," she admitted tearfully.

Draco looked at her for a moment and then tilted his head back and stared up at the ceiling for a full minute.

"Why do you think I was snogging you?" he finally asked in a tight voice.

The corner of Hermione's mouth twitched, and she looked away.

"Because I'm here," she said quietly.

"Why were you snogging me?" he asked, looking away from the ceiling to stare at her.

Hermione studied a knot in a floorboard and twisted a curl in her hands.

"Because you treat me like I'm me. My friends treat me like a colleague," she said in a bitter tone, "Harry and I got into a fight, and then he apologised for insulting me professionally. Like that was the part that hurt me. Somehow—you make me remember that underneath everything I've become in this war, the person I was before still exists."

She bit her lip as she tried not to start crying again. She snatched the bottle off the floor where it had been abandoned at some point and gulped more of the remaining firewhisky. There was less than an inch left, and she had a lingering hope that if she finished all of it, it would take her to a point of inebriation beyond feeling.

Malfoy looked away from her, and then leaned back and slung his arm over his eyes. When she had finished the bottle of Ogden's, she glanced over at him. His arm had slumped down; he was asleep.

She stared at him for a long time, studying his features in a way she had never permitted herself to in the past. Then, gradually, she found her eyelids closing. She should—she couldn't quite think, but she should do something. Get up? Or perhaps conjure a cot somewhere? Her sight grew dim. She fell asleep still staring at him.

She didn't know which of them moved but when they stirred the next morning, they were half entwined with each other. Somehow neither of them had fallen off the small couch. They'd slumped down, and burrowed into each other's arms. If Hermione's head hadn't felt on the verge of cracking open, she would have tried to rapidly remove herself, but instead she just lay trapped under Draco in a state of stunned horror.

His expression showed similar horror and almost-panic when he went from asleep to abruptly awake. He tried to pull his arm out from under her, and they wobbled precariously on the edge of the couch.

"If you make me fall off this couch, I will vomit on you," Hermione immediately told him. He stilled, and they stared at each other.

"Any ingenious solutions then, know-it-all?" he finally asked.

"Give me a minute," Hermione said, flushing deep scarlet and closing her eyes as she tried to think of a solution. She was resolutely ignoring Draco lying on top of her. Draco, who was shirtless. The air in the room was cold but his skin was warm, and his breath ghosting against her cheek was hot. His whole body was hard and pressed snugly against her; his arm under her back making her arch into him. There was something distinct and growing pressed into her thigh near her hip and after a moment's bewilderment, she felt it twitch faintly—oh god!