Disclaimer: It all belongs to JK!
**
"Hermione" whispered Harry thickly.
He tried to lift his head so that he could see her more clearly but the movement sent stabbing raw pain across his shoulder blades. He lay his head down against the floor in defeat.
"Wake up Hermione" he whispered, snaking one hand into the curls spread across his chest.
Suddenly her head moved, she was lifting her head, she was alive, she was kissing him…
**
"Harry Potter, don't ever scare me like that again" she gasped and pressed her lips to his. He was alive! Joy surged through her at the simple sound of his voice calling her name. She would never take that for granted again. That's what she had been doing, she recognized ruefully, even as she bent her head to kiss him. She had been taking him for granted. Over the summer so much had changed. Harry had changed. He'd grown up. She'd grown with him, closer to him, and this had been in her mind all along.
So when she heard his voice, believed that he was not lost to her, she had lost it.
She clasped her hands to the side of his head, desperate to prove to herself that this was not a dream.
And, Sweet Merlin, he was kissing her back.
His hands were around her waist, his mouth insistent on hers. His tongue pressed gently against her mouth and she parted her lips. She could feel herself beginning to merge with him, a hot current joining them wherever she could feel his body pressed against his.
Gradually the kiss came to an end, and immediately she wanted it back. But rationality was beginning to seep back into her brain where previously there had only been Harry. Just him. But now she could feel the sharp edges of his glasses pressing into her face. She pulled back as shame flushed through her.
"Blame it on the concussion" she said hastily.
**
Harry looked up at her in shock. Hermione had just kissed him. Other details began to nag at his brain but he pushed them aside and concentrated solely on this. Hermione had kissed him.
'You kissed her back' whispered an irritating internal voice.
The truth was that, for the first time in five years, Harry had been forced to contemplate a life without her. When he'd awoken to see her sprawled across him, fear had run through him like a cold chill. To see her alive again had sent every coherent thought out of his mind. If she hadn't kissed him first, he knew with absolute certainty that he would have kissed her instead.
He looked up at her blushing face. She was embarrassed. He wasn't.
"Hermione" he said gently. Her eyes were fixed firmly on her own hands, which she was clenching in her lap, having withdrawn from his body. "Look at me." He tried to sit up, to make eye contact with her, and in that instant became aware of his right leg being caught between two shelves. The sensation was mildly painful, but largely he felt numb. Hermione, alerted by his discomfort, looked up.
"Oh Harry" she gasped. "Does it hurt?"
"I'm fine" he winced, irritated that this small matter was interfering with his speech.
"Harry!" she rebuked. "You are not fine!"
"No seriously" he said, casually wiggling his leg "it's- ah, fine. Now, about what just happened…"
"Harry this looks serious. I need to you to hold still while I look at your leg. Do you have your wand?"
**
Hermione busied herself with Harry's injuries which both took her mind off the pain across her head and the embarrassment at what had just occurred.
She slid one hand down his leg, and he jumped. She could see that his leg was caught at an awkward angle against fallen debris. She was afraid to try and move it in case she caused the balance to tip further weight onto his limb.
"Harry?" she asked, without taking her gaze from the predicament. "Do you have your wand, mine must have got lost somewhere…Harry?" She looked up at him when he didn't reply. His gaze was fixed to her hand, where it rested lightly against his thigh.
"Harry!" she said, moving her hand away. "Wand?"
**
Harry briefly considered making a somewhat dirty joke, but then decided she wouldn't be best impressed. Besides that, the pain in his ankle was starting to break through the cotton wool numbness of before. He could almost feel the blood surging around his leg, and every pumped heartbeat produced a stab of pain in his ankle.
He traced his belt line and found nothing.
"I left it on the table" he said, frustrated.
"Ok" said Hermione, taking this in her stride. "Then we need to get help as soon as possible, because I can't move this ankle without magic."
Her face looked pale, Harry thought, and there was a trickle of blood running down the side of her face. She still looked beautiful. He couldn't believe that all his feelings and pre-conceptions were changing so rapidly. It was like he was trapped here with a suddenly different Hermione. When this girl touched him he felt tremors of electricity.
He looked around him, suddenly mildly uncomfortable with the change in himself. His own feelings scared him slightly. He thought that he could smell smoke, and the air around them was certainly thick with dust.
"What do you think happened?" he asked Hermione.
"I don't know" she said fearfully. "Everything just started toppling around us." Her face grew even whiter.
"Harry, can you smell smoke?" she asked quietly.
"Yes" he affirmed, taking in the sudden danger of their situation. "Can you see a way out?" he questioned, levering himself painfully and awkwardly onto both elbows.
Hermione crawled around the small pen in which they were trapped. "I don't think so Harry" she said. "There are small gaps in the rubble, but nothing big enough to get through."
"Hermione" said Harry, his heart starting to beat faster. "You need to make a hole big enough to escape, wait" he said as she opened her mouth to argue "and then you can go and find help. Hermione? Do you understand?"
She crawled back over to kneel beside him. "I am not leaving" she said stubbornly, coughing a little as she stirred up more dust.
"Hermione!"
"No."
**
Harry was trapped. She could smell smoke and their small space seemed to be getting stuffier and warmer. Casting her mind back over the morning, Hermione could vaguely remember flashes of light sparking overhead before the ceiling had begun to fall. Flashes of light…or fire.
"I'm not going to let you martyr yourself Harry Potter" she said firmly, " We're both getting out of here." Or neither of us are, she added silently.
She settled herself down, cross-legged by his head, and devoted herself to finding a way out of their situation. She wouldn't lose him. She couldn't.
**
"What the hell was that Malfoy?" asked Ginny.
"Leave it Weasel, lets concentrate on getting out of here"
"I said, what the hell was that?" she repeated more emphatically.
"I don't want to fight with you right now" said Malfoy firmly, enraging her.
"Maybe I want to fight" she spat angrily.
"You want to fight Weasel?" he asked silkily, "felt like you wanted more than that…"
"In your dreams Malfoy?"
"Am I in yours?" he asked quickly.
Ginny felt completely wrong-footed. Their jibes at one another had never been sexual. She'd seen Malfoy do his sex-god routine with other girls, but never with her. He was relaxed, she noticed, fuming. He did this all the time. She never flirted, was never aggressive with boys. She liked them quiet, simple and brave, didn't she?
"I hope you're more adequate in real life than you are in my dreams" she raged.
Silence.
What had she said!? Had she just admitted to fantasizing about him? It was meant to be an insult, for Merlin's sake!
He was grinning. Damn him.
"Dreaming about little old me Weasley?" he smirked.
**
His heart was beating a little faster. Why? He'd been here before. The little Weasley was taking him over very familiar territory. Girls tried to out-manoeuvre him all the time. Some of them, especially the Slytherin girls, thought that they won when he gave them the time of day. Fools. But all of them were more sophisticated than this gauche little spitfire.
Her face blushed red, and she started to stammer a reply. The stain across her cheeks contrasted dramatically with the whiteness of her pallor and Draco was shocked.
"Never mind Weasley" he said "We've got more important things to think about than your crush. We need to get out of here."
Her face was getting even redder.
"A crush?" she yelled. "I would never- …I couldn't- …I would rather- …Screw you Malfoy" she
said
"You would rather screw me Weasel?" he asked lightly, trying not to think about the prospect himself.
**
Ginny was finding it difficult to think clearly. Damn Draco and his oh-so-worldly experience. She was rapidly losing any upper hand she may have managed to accrue with their kiss. It was so frustrating she wanted to scream. She was never going to win on the defence, she decided ruefully.
"You seemed quite happy yourself" she retorted finally. "Horrible as this experience has been, I now have something to tell the girls in the dormitory about men who brag about their equipment because they're insecure…We've often wondered."
That wiped the smirk off his face.
"Don't talk about what you don't understand little girl" he snarled.
"Touched a nerve?" she asked innocently, enjoying his expression.
"Look" he said, kneading his temples with one hand, "I'm having a very bad day, you're making it worse. Just please be quiet while I find a way to get out of your mess."
"You think you're a god don't you?" asked Ginny, amused. "Why don't you ask me for my help?"
"I don't need help from the likes of you" he sneered. "If I'd known you would be this much trouble I would have left you to die out there."
That was it. Ginny was dumfounded. Now, when she looked back, her fuzzy memory of the accident did include a firm grip on her arm. Draco had saved her life. He seemed to be realizing this fact too and the silence was pronounced between them. With his angry statement, and the truth of her debt, Ginny felt all her irritation with Malfoy leave her. She owed him. The silence was stretching out indefinitely and the atmosphere was awkward.
"I-I-I…I guess I should thank you" she said, shakily.
"Don't" said Malfoy curtly.
"You saved my life" said Ginny wonderingly. "Why?"
"I don't know" he said edgily, and she could see he was uncomfortable.
"Why do you do it Malfoy?" she asked "Why do you act like such an asshole all the time?"
**
What could he say to that? He didn't know why he had saved her. It was just instinct. It was an instinct that he knew, deep in his gut, that he had not inherited from his father. And, the circle was complete. Draco was once more comparing himself to his father.
The little Weasley was still looking at him. Her deep brown eyes were focused unwaveringly upon his. In that instant of her attention, he felt a strange desire to pour out his heart. To tell her that just because he acted like an asshole, didn't mean that he was; to explain about his father and his heritage; to make her understand.
She wouldn't of course. No one could. But in the pure simplicity of her eyes, he could see everything he'd ever wanted. Someone to believe in him.
"I guess I'm an asshole" he mumbled. "But you're a Weasel, so don't get any ideas!"
"You're doing it again" she laughed.
"What" he said defensively.
"Insulting me when I'm getting close to figuring you out Malfoy"
"You'll never understand me" he said confidently.
"Why don't you try me?" she said simply. "Its not like we're going anywhere."
**
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