Disclaimer: My name isn't Jo, though it starts with a "J", so I don't own much. Except maybe some explicit material...

"What is that?"

Draco saunters into the common room shared by Head Girl Hermione Granger and his friend Theo Nott.

Slytherin house on the whole had been shocked to find out one of their own had been made Head Boy in the current post-war climate. McGonagall, for all her prim countenance and straight-laced sensibilities, has proven to at least be more fair-minded toward the houses than her predecessors.

Theo looks up at him, surprised to find him there and looking possibly a bit guilty. He is grasping what appears to be a magazine in his hand and hiding it partially behind his body as Draco approaches. "Nothing. Just some muggle nonsense. You wouldn't be interested."

Draco doesn't even pause as he slips his arm around Theo's back and snags the glossy parchment from his friend. He's been working on his reflexes recently. It's his eighth year and by Merlin he is not going to let Potter take the snitch from him again.

"What could possibly be so-"

He finds himself staring down at a buxom blonde wearing nothing but a strip of fabric across her breasts and another tiny triangle covering her sex. His eyes are wide when he looks back up at Theo who now looks amused if anything and tries to snag the item back. "Give it here, you prude."

His hackles rise and he stiffens, momentarily forgetting the magazine but still managing to hold tightly enough that Theo can't swipe it back. "I'm no such thing. I've been with girls..."

Nott crosses his arms and raises an eyebrow in that calculating and haughty way he has. "You've been with one girl and you were so ashamed that first time you wouldn't go home for the hols in case your mother could somehow tell."

Draco tries to relax his stance and look casual. "Just because you'll chase anything in a skirt... I'm not... I'm just incredibly discerning," he finally lands on and studies his perfectly manicured nails.

Theo waves off his protests and tries for the magazine yet again. "Whatever, Drake, just give it here before Granger comes back."

Draco's eyes go wide. "This is Granger's? What in the fuck is she doing with something like this?"

"Probably confiscated it from some muggleborn wizard, killjoy that she is. I just thought it was a shame no one was enjoying it. It might accidently end up in my room," he winks

Draco looks back down and starts flipping through the pages. Each time he turns he is confronted with a gorgeous woman with her most intimate parts barely covered. Of course witches and wizards wear undergarments. They share a physique with muggles after all so it follows their needs would be similar. Witches have supportive items to give their breasts a standard perky shape and wizards have small clothes under their robes, but what he sees here is like something else entirely.

His first time with a girl, he had pulled Pansy Parkinson's top over her head to reveal a strange white contraption with wide straps over her shoulder. It had taken him two full minutes of trying to undo the line of six hooks on her back before resorting to his wand. Oddly, Alohomora had worked on the garment as if a lock on a door.

These images are nothing like that. The second page immediately catches his eye. A beautiful brunette with warm honey-colored eyes is wearing an emerald green brassiere with black lace trim. The cups are cut so low that the material is spilled over with the swell of her breasts. She pouts at the camera, running a hand into her luxuriously curled hair. The color and length remind him quite a bit of the Head Girl actually. Not to mention those captivating eyes. He could easily imagine if that green was a gift, a Slytherin nod just for him, her gazing at him longingly with her plump lips, parted and wet...

Draco turns the page quickly as he feels arousal settle in and remembers himself. After about six pages, Theo finds his opportunity as rips the magazine out of the hands of a nearly shell-shocked Draco.

"Hey!"

Theo is nonplussed and steps away, heading as if to his private room and grins. "Finders keepers, Malfoy. I'll see you for dinner. I have a date with-"

"There it is!" Theo had been backing slowly into his own room, eyeing Draco in victory, and hadn't noticed the witch with whom he shares the dorm had emerged from her own chamber. "I've been looking everywhere for that."

Stepping to Theo, she swipes the magazine from him happily, completely oblivious to his look of surprise and disappointment.

Draco slips into his familiar smirk, pretending the usual confidence and swagger he always portrays, and gestures toward the magazine. "Going straight to the Headmistress with that are you, Granger? Always the little swot."

She huffs and rolls her eyes. "When you've broken into a goblin bank you can judge my capacity for rule following. Anyway, why would I take it to anyone; it's mine."

Both boys feel their jaws hang open and they slowly turn from the witch in question to look at each other. Mentally they are scrambling over one another to get close to this suddenly exceptionally intriguing girl.

Unfortunately, before either of them can even speak, she is heading back to her bedroom and shutting the door behind her. They hear the tumblers click indicating she has locked her door.

Draco and Theo both let out a breath, Theo's paired with a low whistle. "Well that was unexpected."

Draco nods toward the door and questions, "You don't think she's...? I mean right now do you think she's in there...?"

The smile is slow to start and then Nott is just shaking his head in awed bemusement. "That little lioness surprises me at every turn. I know I've always had a "No Gryffindor" policy but I might have to make an exception."

XXXXX

In the following days, Draco watches Hermione a lot.

More than usual.

More than he would have admitted.

Truthfully he's been watching her since term began. She came back from the summer, from the war, with an astounding presence. Suddenly she was more than the pretty-in-a-mousy-way she had been in years past. She held her head high but not with the put-on haughtiness of her youth. She wore a smile like she knew a secret and confidence like an accessory.

He started watching her in classes first, when everyone was busy and no one paid him any attention. Then it was in the Great Hall. She sat with more people. Always with Potter and Weasley of course but their little social network seemed to grow. The she-Weasel plops down next to her one day; that annoying Brown girl across from her on another. Looney Lovegood strolls over from Ravenclaw. Then it's Finnegan and Thomas and the surviving Creevey

And they aren't there for Potter. They speak to him, sure, but they sit next to Granger, engage with Granger. They laugh and nudge and lightly touch her and he knows he's jealous when Finnegan throws an arm over her shoulder and she laughs but she doesn't shove him away.

She would assuredly shove Draco away, he knows.

He pouts a bit, when no one is looking. He feels stupid over the whole thing. Why is he even looking? Why bother? Isn't she shagging the Weasel anyway?

No apparently, he found out during their second week, she is not. Not anymore at least. He doesn't like to think that maybe she had. Currently, the red-headed tosser is wrapped up with Hannah Abbot, Draco learns from Tracey Davis.

Not that he was asking. Not that he cared. Just always smart to know what's happening around you, he had told Tracey with a shrug.

Now he's really watching. And so, it seems, is Theo. They catch each other looking more often than he likes. Draco wants to tell Theo to find another witch to ogle; he wants to stake a claim. But what would be the point in that? Theo has a much better shot anyway, his history with her less tainted than Draco's.

When Granger walks into the common room it's always "Hi, Theo" with a big grin and then a cool "Malfoy" barely acknowledging the blond in the room.

A full week after the incident with the magazine, he's in the common room again, drinking some contraband Fire Whiskey with Theo and Greg, when Granger glides into the room having just come from dinner.

"Evening, boys." She only addresses him that friendly when he's within a group.

In her hands she has what looks like her post from the day. A Quibbler sits on the bottom, poking out from underneath a hand-written envelope he recognizes as her mother's handwriting (again, he's been watching her a lot) and then a glossy magazine between. He can't make out the entire cover but there is definitely a woman on the front and, from what he can tell, she's not entirely decent.

He's staring with wide eyes when he feels Theo nudge him, giving him the "eye" to straighten up and stop being so obvious.

"Join us for a drink, Granger?" Theo lifts a glass in her direction, obviously attempting to distract her from noticing Draco's stare.

Draco slips back into his usual swagger and scoffs. "Why are you offering it to her? She'll probably turn us in for having it."

She glares at Draco and cocks her head. "Why are you always so confrontational? Still upset to be on the losing side?"

It's a low blow and they both know it. He lost a war he never wanted to fight and paid a high price when the ministry halved his fortune and restricted his father to house arrest, tainting the dignity of his family name.

Theo jumps in quickly to diffuse the tension he is all too familiar with between them. "Ignore this prick and drink with us. Come on, live a little."

He offers the glass again and she rolls her eyes but moves forward and drops the mail on the coffee table, snagging the glass as she does. Both Draco and Theo stare down at the magazine in question, noticing the letter slid away to reveal a portion of the woman's nearly bare breasts.

Her shudder and rather vocal, "Blech," draws both of them back to attention. "That is just awful. I'll drink with you when you have something better."

"We're fresh out of fruit juice with tiny umbrellas. Join us when you can handle a real drink." Draco is aware his tone is more than challenging, way past banter, and heading into the realm of cruel.

He earns another glare before she stomps to her room and comes back a moment later with a bottle of her own. She sets it down hard between them and takes off the cap. Draco swears he can smell it from where he sits. "What in Merlin's Pointy Hat is this?"

"Scotch. It was a gift from my father to congratulate me on making Head Girl." The bottle is an opaque black with silver writing.

Theo throws back what's left of his drink and leans forward, offering his glass. "I'm game."

Hermione pours four tumbles with barely two fingers of the stuff and passes them around. She hands them carefully to Theo and even Greg. To Draco, she sets it down in front of him, he assumes to assure they don't so much as brush fingertips.

Theo starts to throw it back but Granger stops him quickly. "No! No, this is a sipping liquor. Savor it. Let it warm your throat and fill your breath," she mimes by tracing her hand down her slender neck. She takes a sip and the three boys stare at her, transfixed and nearly panting as she closes her eyes and licks her lips. She inhales softly and then opens her eyes to find them staring. "What?"

They all three look down at their own glasses and take a slow sip. Draco is the first to speak. "It tastes like the inside of a Floo."

Granger laughs and he feels an odd warmth that he made it happen.

"The level of smoke is one of the most notable aspects of scotch flavor. The first time I tried it I told my father it tasted like someone stamped out a campfire in my esophagus."

"I like it." Greg is smacking his lips and looks at Granger with something like respect. "I'm going to hang around up here more often."

She laughs again and there's that jealousy, coming out to play. Draco has to school the frown threatening to tighten his mouth as he watches Greg fucking Goyle, who a year ago would have held her under crucio at the end of his wand, grinning at her and drinking her muggle drink.

Then again, people in glass houses and all that... Maybe bringing up Greg's former loyalties, even within the privacy of his mind, is counter-productive to accepting his own shifting attitudes and affections.

"Well with that, I'm off to bed." She rises and stretches a kink from her back. Grabbing the bottle she heads toward her room and walks in, her door shutting behind her.

"Oi," Greg calls and starts to grab at the post she left behind.

Both Theo and Draco shush him violently and wave their hands in a frantic way for him to quiet himself immediately. He looks at them in question and Theo leans over the table, flicking the letter the rest of the way off the magazine cover.

It's comical, how wide Goyle's eyes suddenly expand on his pudgy face. "What is that...?" This time the cover is a red head wearing a blue nightie with a dangerously low scoop in the front and devastatingly short skirt on the top of perfect milky thighs.

Theo hooks his thumb back toward her door and mouths, "it's hers. Granger."

"Cor..."

In a near repeat of the previous Friday night, Hermione emerges once again and makes for the table. She grins and bends down to grab it. "Forgot my post. My mum will be cross if I don't respond back."

She doesn't seem to notice their silence and is once again shut away in her room, locking the door audibly, when Greg breathes out and looks at his friends with his still-saucer eyes.

Theo snorts and takes a sip of his scotch. "Sure, writing her mum... I'm sure that's what she's doing in the privacy of her room right now."

Draco nearly chokes on his drink at the mental image.

A/N Hi! So I was pondering, purebloods are so old world in their sensibilities... What might some of our favorite Eighth year boys think of muggle sexual culture? Draco is so often painted as being the Don Juan and Hermione the virginal goody-two-shoes. But individual culture taken into account, I think it's quite likely she would be more versed by this point in their lives.

It was going to be a fluffy little one shot but it got a bit out of hand so as of now it's a 3-part. Hope you are enjoying and would love reviews!