"I know you're watching me," Draco murmured, and Hermione smiled guiltily, her head propped on her hand. "And it's stopping me sleeping."

"Is that really a problem?" Hermione poked him in an interesting place, and Draco cracked an eye open.

"Don't do that if you don't mean it."

"I mean it," she giggled as the covers rustled and Draco's strong arms encircled her waist. They pressed together, and just as Hermione began losing herself in the embrace, she noticed that the light hitting her eyelids was far too bright.

She pushed back at Draco's shoulders, mumbling into his mouth. "Draco, Draco, look how late it is! We need to go!"

"Why?" Draco kept kissing her, his lips against her mouth, her cheeks, her eyes, nuzzling into her neck. "It's Saturday. No classes."

"Harry…Ron…they'll wonder where I am," she whispered.

"Let them wonder. They aren't going to be able to make you feel this way."

Hermione sighed voluptuously and wriggled closer to him, even while she was knowing that she had to pull away from him again. "Surely in the interests of a quiet life, I should just make sure that Harry and Ron aren't worrying about me any more than they already are?" Not waiting for a response, she twisted out from underneath Draco and stood up, wrapping a sheet deftly around her as she did so.

Draco watched her, trying to focus on what she had said rather than on the creamy shoulders rising above the cherry-red sheets. Her lips were bruised from the passion of last night, and her eyes looked wide and dreamy. "Stay with me."

"Stop tempting me," she smiled and nimbly wriggled her knickers up her legs without exposing anything. Draco watched her, and gently took her hand and pulled her closer. Sitting upright, he settled her against his chest, gently smoothing her hair down.

"Would it be that bad if they did know?"

Hermione quieted in his arms. "I thought you didn't want anyone to know?"

"I thought neither of us wanted to tell anyone. But this seems to be going slightly beyond what we originally thought. I never thought this would be happening, I never imagined that I would feel this way about anyone. I mean, you're currently in bed with a man who's the epitome of self-obsession. But he cares more about what you think right now then about what anyone has thought of him for his entire life."

"He also has the unnerving habit of referring to himself in the third person."

"Stop that." Draco poked her in an interesting place, and she twisted back to look at him with a smirk on her face.

"Don't do that unless you mean it."

"I'm trying to tell you that I mean it, but you're picking holes in my grammar instead."

"I know you mean it, I know…I just…I don't know."

"Don't know about me?" Draco raised an eyebrow sardonically, but Hermione could have sworn she saw a momentary quaver.

"No, of course I know about you. I just don't know what it would accomplish to let everyone else know about us."

"Why do we care what they think?"

"Because I don't want to lose my friends, and honestly Draco, that's exactly what's going to happen."

"I don't have friends, I have acquaintances and honestly Hermione, even if they were my friends, I couldn't care less what they think of me."

"Says the boy who spends ages trying to portray the perfect image."

"Boy? Oh please Hermione. I'm not a kid. And neither are you, why do you care what people think of you?"

Hermione tore herself away from him and began pulling on clothes. "Because I like my friends, and I don't want to see them upset!"

Draco pulled himself out of bed and began dressing himself angrily, trying to force his limbs through the tangle of his clothes. "And what about what you want? Does that not come into it at all?"

"Well, every so often people do this thing called self-sacrifice, where they put their friends before themselves…it's the right thing to do!" Hermione did up the last button on her shirt and stared at Draco with her hands on her hips. She didn't feel any less vulnerable now that she had her clothes on. If anything, she felt more exposed than ever, covered in the trappings of something that made her so totally different to Draco.

"Why do you care so much about the right thing to do? Does that make us the wrong thing?"

"Well, you've got to admit that there is something taboo about this whole situation!"

"Taboo? Oh for Merlin's sake Hermione! Taboos are for weak people, people who are too afraid of themselves to actually do what they want! And I never thought you were that kind of person! I thought Gryffindors were meant to be brave! So why don't you grow up, realise what it is that you want, and take control and have it, rather than simpering along with societal norms and pretending that your happy with playing the martyr!"

Hermione watched him, his shoulders rising up and down with the anger of what he had just said, and felt a similar flush of heat rush through her cheeks. Without stopping to even consider her actions, she shoved hard at him, sending him flying onto his back on the bed. Before he had time to collect himself, she had thrown herself at him, kneeling over him and pinning him to the bed. She bent down, kissing him fiercely, biting at his lip, tugging at his hair. Pausing for a minute, she growled down at him, "Don't you dare call me a coward."

"Then stop acting like one," he snarled back. He sat up, so that she was in his lap, her legs crossed around his back, and her fingers laced around the back of her neck. Pulling her closer to him, he kissed her back just as angrily as she had kissed him.

"Fine, come on then." She pushed even closer to him, and he stood up, still holding her legs around his waist as he walked towards the door. Suddenly, they pulled apart, and he looked up into her face, stuck with the impossibility of having her and struck with the impossibility of letting her go. Gently, he let her legs go, let her stand up in front of him.

"I'm sorry." He stroked a finger down the side of her face, and pushed a strand of hair out of her face where it had gotten tangled in her eyelashes. "We'll do what you want. We don't have to tell anyone."

"Yes, we do." She smiled up at him, all her ferocity gone now. "Draco, neither of us believes this is a spell. It might have started out this way, but now we both know that it's more than that."

"So, what are we going to do?"

"We're going to go down there together?"

"You asking me or telling me?"

"We're going to go down there together." Hermione smiled at him, straightened her shirt and slid her hand into his.

Draco pushed her hair back with his free hand, while she smoothed down his tie with her free hand. Then, interlinked, they walked through the wall out of the Room of Requirements.

Hermione felt her heart rise further up in her throat the closer they got to the Dining Hall. "Draco?"

"Scared?"

"Nope."

"Apprehensive?"

"That's a better word." She clutched a little tighter at his hand.

"Granger, come on. What's the worst that they can do?" Draco smirked down at her, and she was so simultaneously irritated and happy that she couldn't do anything but walk in to the Dining Hall next to him.

There wasn't a huge dramatic hush, which was what Hermione had been expecting. Instead, they went virtually unobserved. Hermione led Draco up the aisles between the tables towards where Harry and Ron were sitting.

"Hermione!" Ron looked happy to see her until he noticed who she was with. "Malfoy, can we help you?"

Hermione held up their interlinked hands sheepishly. "Ron, I may not have been totally honest when I said that I wasn't in love with Draco."

She watched his colour fade, until his freckles looked incredibly bright against his white skin. "Ron, please say something. Please."

"But, it's the spell," Harry cut in. "You said this yourself, it's just a spell."

"We don't think it is." Draco replied.

"Not asking for your input here Malfoy,"

"My input would be fairly important here Weasley." Draco hissed back.

"Stop." Hermione turned to him. "That is not going to help matters."

"Suppose not." He stood quietly, settling for staring balefully at Harry and Ron.

"Hermione, look, it's just confusing for you at the moment because of this spell, but like you said, it will wear off. Please, don't start doing something like this." Harry stood up, and tried to gently pull Hermione away from Draco.

She held onto Draco, while smiling sweetly at Harry. "Harry, I promise you, I'm not confused. I promise you that I know exactly what I'm doing, and," she broke off for a minute to scowl at Harry who was still trying to pull her away "I promise you that if you don't stop trying to shepherd me around, I will get very angry."

"See what you've done to her!" Ron turned to Draco angrily, his voice beginning to attract glances.

"I haven't done anything to her except treat her as something beyond a talking textbook!"

"You clearly have done something to her! Hermione never does stuff like this!"

"The three of you can stop talking about me like I'm not here. And I suggest that we maybe go somewhere a little more private."

Ron stood up angrily. "Where's that apple? You know, the one that he did wrong so that you've ended up like this."

"Professor Flitwick's class, he wanted to keep hold of it, but Ron, really this is not due to the spell, it's…"

But Hermione was wasting her time, Ron was already storming down through the aisles. She turned to Harry, and widened her eyes pleadingly. "Harry, please can we just go somewhere else."

"Hermione, really, what do you want me to say?" Harry looked at Draco with loathing. "That prick has been responsible for pretty much every single thing that's been wrong with Hogwarts since we've started."

"Please Harry, please."

"Hermione, you're wasting your time. He's already made up his mind that he's not happy with this. Look, we don't need to care what he thinks." Draco tightened his hand around Hermione's.

"So what are you trying to do, take her away from us?"

"No, I'm trying to take care of her. It's something you don't really do Potter." Draco's pale cold face was rigid with disdain. "You're so caught up in her taking care of you, that you have ignored the fact that she might actually need someone to take care of her as well." He turned to Hermione "And that is not me trying to control you, or take you away from anyone, it is just me thinking that in every relationship people are meant to take care of each other. And it doesn't look like anyone's ever done that for you."

Hermione smiled up at Draco. "I'll take care of you too."

A frigid voice came from behind them. "Well, nauseatingly endearing though this is, I do have to wonder exactly what you're thinking Draco."

Hermione and Draco spun around, to see Blaise Zabini standing behind them. "Watch yourself Zabini."

"Honestly, you and the Mudblood? Taking advantage of some sort of taboo?"

Hermione turned to Draco, the pair of them smiling over the memories. A discernable spark flew between them, causing ripples of confusion through everyone gathered.

"Hermione, please stop looking at Malfoy like that." Harry said in a pained voice.

"Can't help it." Hermione murmured, not even bothering to look at Harry.

"Potter, I am not trying to screw her over. Trust me. I know it's hard to do, but trust me." Draco didn't look at Harry either, instead choosing to brush Hermione's hair back from her face.

"Get your filthy hands off her Malfoy!" Ron came running back up the hall, clutching an apple in one hand. The glossy, passionate red of the apple that haunted every single one of Hermione's remaining doubts about Draco. "Hermione, please just trust me that this is not real, you can do so much better!"

"No she can't!" Pansy Parkinson's shrill voice came from behind her and Draco. "She's a Mudblood! Draco is lowering himself just to go near her."

"Shut up Parkinson!" Draco, Harry and Ron shouted in unison. More and more people were looking now, and Hermione was wishing that the entire horrid scene would just be over. She wanted Draco; she needed Draco, why couldn't everyone else just understand that?

"Don't tell me to shut up! Draco, what the hell are you doing with her!"

"Get the hell away from her Malfoy!"

"Snap out of it Hermione, you don't want anything to do with him!"

"Don't tell me what I want, I know what I want and it's him!"

"Maybe I'm just taking care of her, something that you've never managed!"

The voices got louder and louder, the row escalating further and further. Nothing could interrupt anyone it seemed, until Ron shouted louder than all of them. "I know what can end the whole bloody thing!"

He raised the apple up high, and hurled it to the ground. Draco and Hermione watched the apple hurtle towards the ground as if in slow motion, its lustrous sheen seeming brighter and brighter the closer it came to oblivion. Then, with one sickening crunch, it shattered onto the floor, the crisp white flesh splattering across the tiled floor. The red glow that had lit the skin faded away, leaving a mundane green skin behind.

Hermione and Draco looked at each other. Their hands were still interlinked. "Do you feel different?" Draco asked Hermione anxiously.

"No." She smiled at him. "Not at all."

"Only one way to test it I suppose." Draco leaned down and kissed her without a thought for all the curious eyes on them. Hermione felt herself melt into him like every other time. She raised her hands, linking her hands around his neck. Pulling apart slightly, she whispered. "Not different at all."

He felt her breath on his lips and smiled. The apple had never cursed them to love each other, it had only shown them something that was meant to be, a deep and lingering feeling that should have been there all along but had never been allowed to flourish.

Smiling at each other, ignoring the hubbub of noise that was beginning to swell around them already, they held hands again. Together, Hermione and Draco walked out of the Hall, stepping over the remains of the forbidden fruit.

AN: Again, another very long wait. But I wanted to get this chapter finished, and I couldn't get it right for quite a while. Still, I hope you like it, I hope you thought the ending was worth it. I was going to have it ending with the apple breaking, but I don't like sad endings, so there we go. Anyway, I have a few more ideas buzzing around in my head, so hopefully there'll be something new up soon. In the meantime, I have a load more stories on my author page, so I hope you'll check them out. Thank you for reading, major loveage to all of you! Petitesorciere xxx