A/N: Thank you so so so much to all the reviewers, and especially to those who asked for more. Y'all were right, there was a whole little story here.

Seven Months After the Battle of Hogwarts

Draco had grown used to the mediocre dinners at the Leaky Cauldron after the second week. By the end of the third, he had bribed Tom to have one of the kitchen elves bring it up to his room so he didn't have to eat at the bar every night. That had improved the food immensely. He didn't mind that the food was sometimes cold and required a warming charm, or that often it was the same dinner two nights in a row, but a line had to be drawn somewhere. That line was the obviously unwashed glass his pumpkin juice had arrived in. A trip down to the bar was necessary.

Neville had convinced them to go out, even though he had been to the Leaky Cauldron three times already this week, and his reason was fairly transparent. The friends he brought with him were more excuses than companions. After an hour or so, he always ended up moving them from a table to the bar and flirting awkwardly with Hannah Abbott. Hermione thought it was sweet, but Ginny found it obnoxious. It was usually only the two of them that joined him anyway. Harry, still paranoid about press, stayed close to the Burrow or Grimmauld Place. Ron had come a few times, but he always ended up drunk and sad, and it didn't matter which came first, that didn't make for a nice evening.

Ginny had been the first Weasley to really wake up from her grief. Even by her own admission, she wasn't sure why. Hermione had a private theory that Ginny, due primarily to her experiences in her first year at school, had a strange relationship with death. She had never feared it the way a person should. The only other person Hermione knew to have such an intimate, reckless relationship with death was Harry. Hermione thought it might be one of the things that had brought the two of them together.

So, the three Gryffindors sat at one corner of the U-shaped bar on this Thursday night. Neville was ineffectively hiding the blush that appeared every time business was slow and Hannah moved to hang out near them. The four of them chatted and joked and reminisced about the Triwizard Tournament (avoiding much mention of Cedric), and the early days of the D.A. (avoiding much mention of any of their dead friends.)

Ginny was vividly describing the enormous gambling ring the twins had run during the tournament. She even managed to get through saying Fred's name a few times without hesitating, and her audience did their best not to flinch or reach out in comfort. She was in the middle of a particularly exciting detail, something about Seamus Finnegan and a spell that made fake coins explode when a *CRASH* was heard. Everyone looked up and over to the other side of the bar. A few customers raised their wands. Then the sound duplicated itself, and half of a glass of goblin wine was suddenly on Ginny's shoes.

Hermione and Draco were the only two people not concerned with the broken dishes of which each of them had been the cause. Their eyes were locked over the bar, and instead of the usual thrill that went up her spine when they made eye (or really any kind of) contact, she felt stuck. For the first time in a long time, she was faced with a problem other than grief or trauma, and she had no idea how to solve it.

Draco found himself silently asking her what to do next before he realized that would only work if they were in one of their daydreams, and they were very clearly not and that was the problem.

Physically seeing him now, in real life, all the parts of him that she knew very, very well now tangible, made the fact that they hadn't actually met since the Battle feel all the more strange and painful.

"Hermione!" Ginny's hand was on her shoulder. She had been lightly shaking her for at least a minute. "Are you okay?" Ginny's sweet freckled face was looking at her with levity and concern. "Do you need another drink or is that your way of telling us you've had enough? Do you want to go back home?" Hermione shook her head and inwardly released a breath, grateful that Ginny wasn't mentioning the giant elephant of Draco Malfoy that was now in the room, when Neville did instead.

He leaned in to the two girls, whispering and pointing to the wet floor in front of Draco that Hannah was now headed towards with her wand and a dustpan. "Haven't seen him since Hogwarts." Neville said, and they both knew to what occasion he was referring. "What do you reckon he's been up to then, now his parents are gone and the manor's still being excavated?"

Hermione whipped around to look at Neville, surprised by these things Malfoy hadn't told her, then attempted to cover herself with gossipy interest. "Ooh, I don't know." She added vaguely, reminding herself of Lavender Brown or even Luna.

"What do you think he's doing here?" Ginny asked innocently.

Hannah was back at their end of the bar with an answer. "Oh, he's been staying upstairs for the last few months. Lost his home and all. I didn't want to let him but Tom said he was good for the money and that's all there is to it. He's actually not bad as a guest…" She said sweetly.

Neville leaned in towards her, more confident than usual, "Not surprising, actually. He changed sides, at the end. Fought for us." Hannah looked to Hermione and Ginny for confirmation, which they gave with a smile and an awkward nod, respectively.

Hannah smiled, gave a small, "oh" and looked back at Draco, who was now standing a few steps away from his original spot and looking rather like he didn't know what to do with himself. Hannah hollered to him, "Would you like some pumpkin juice down here, or would you like me to send an elf up with some?"

Draco looked at her, baffled for another second, before he nodded, his aristocratic manner recovered. "Down here would be fine. Make it a butterbeer, though." Draco sat at the stool nearest to him and Hannah nodded and prepared his drink, looking at him softly as she slid the glass across the bar to him. "Apologies for the glass. Please put it on my bill."

She shook her head. "It happens. We all get startled from time to time." She patted the bar once, then turned to help another customer.

Draco counted sixty very slow seconds before he let himself look over at Hermione. Staying here was a bold choice, maybe she was rubbing off on him with all that courage and nerve, but he couldn't help it. She was somehow different here in reality. More vibrant, or something. Like her colors were brighter. He couldn't stop watching her lips as she laughed. When she glanced over at him, giving him her shining, happy, whiskey-brown eyes, he felt as if he'd caught the snitch. He watched as the Weasley girl continued her apparently amusing story and Hermione nodded along, chuckling when it was called for and glancing at him sporadically. Though it was far more obvious for him, silent and alone, he was unable to tear himself away and sat, holding a full glass, staring back.

Hermione had never had any interest in Legilimency. It was one of the few forms of magic that she didn't wholly understand, and the potential uses of it alarmed her, but right at this moment she wanted nothing more than to silently talk to Malfoy. It was too surreal, sitting a few feet away from him. She counted in her head how many steps it would take for her to get off of her stool and walk to him. It was so few. How were they pretending they didn't see each other, touch each other, at least once a week?! She had read about his parents, but how had he not told her he was staying here! Where she'd been more than a few times in the last few weeks! Checking in with herself, she realized she was not paying any attention to Ginny, she was fully freaking out, and she was quite a bit turned on. Hell.

"Ahem." Draco cleared his throat more loudly than was necessary and stood up. Hermione watched as he put more currency than was necessary for one pint and a tip onto the bar.

Hannah looked up from the end of the bar where she was talking with another customer and nodded to him. "Need anything else tonight?"

Draco thought this might be the most awkward thing he would ever do.

Hermione watched him and saw only grace and cool carefulness.

"No, Thank you. I'll be in my room, number FIVE, all night." With that, he headed towards the stairs.

Draco walked up the stairs towards his room, telling himself that she was smart, the brightest witch of their age or whatever, and she would get his obvious and not at all uncomfortable (or potentially unsafe) hint.

Hannah walked back to the group of friends and shrugged. "Weird that he said that so loud. I know his room number." She gave a little breathy laugh and Neville bit his lip. "I suppose we're all still recovering in our ways." Hannah's sad smile emanated thoughtfulness and compassion. Hermione grinned at Neville, silently encouraging him in his gentle pursuit of the beautiful girl. "Ah, Tom!" She had caught the eye of the aging proprietor coming out of the back room.

"Alright Hannah, you can take off. I've got it from here." The gruff man looked around the fairly empty bar and gave her a pat on the back.

Hannah started taking off her apron and looked at Neville bashfully. "Erm, Neville?" The boy looked eagerly at her. Hermione thought if she told him the worst news in the world he would be happy just to hear her speak. "I live a few blocks up the Alley, would you walk me home?" It was surprising that Neville didn't jump up and down right there. Ginny and Hermione winked at each other.

Hopping off the chair, Ginny announced "well, I think I'm off too. Thanks for inviting us out, Neville." Ginny gave her good friend a tight hug. It was easy to forget considering their personalities, Hermione thought, that he was a whole head taller than her. "Hermione, you coming home?"

Despite getting more practice than usual in the last six months, Hermione was terrible at lying to her friends. "Actually, I thought I'd do a bit of reading and I don't want to keep you up, so I'll stay here a bit." Ginny looked at her quizzically. Hermione tried to make her tone semi-serious when she added, "Just to get out of the house a bit, you know?" Ginny nodded almost solemnly. Hermione wasn't sure if she had convinced her, but it was good enough. "I'll be home later." She gave Ginny a big, half-sad smile to sell the lie and they hugged.

Hermione took out one of the many books in her charmed bag, hardly paying attention to its title. She watched all of her friends leave the bar and waited another five minutes, painfully watching the clock. Tom came over to ask if she wanted another drink and she barely heard him over the sound of her own brain, whirling and ticking.

It was probably the first time in his life Draco had wished he was a messy person. If he had had something to clean, or organize, he wouldn't have spent exactly 13 minutes sitting on an uncomfortable inn bed doing absolutely nothing except losing his mind.

Finally, Hermione jumped off of her stool, shoved the book in her bag and righted herself. As she walked up the stairs, she tried to remind herself that it was nonsense for her to be nervous. Standing in front of an unnecessarily large and oddly crooked door with an iron number 5 nailed to it, she licked her lips and took a deep breath. And knocked.

When a knock came from the door, Draco thought he might be imagining it, or that he had conjured the sound simply by thinking about it too hard. Then he feared it was an elf bringing him tea oh merlin, had he ordered tea? It occurred to him that he had said his room number loudly in a room full of strangers and it was very possible that he had put himself in danger. That's what you get for being bold, idiot. Finally, Draco realized that he should most definitely answer it, no matter what was on the other side.

The door opened creakily. Standing in stark reality, Draco and Hermione stared at each other.

"Granger." It was almost a question.

"Malfoy." It was practically a whimper.

Then Hermione reached out a hand. Despite all reason, she was suddenly unsure that they weren't in a daydream. Perhaps a particularly vivid and tedious one. Her hand landed on his abdomen, flat and solid and warm and existing. Draco inhaled sharply and she felt it on her hand.

Draco's brain didn't seem to be working the way it usually did, even in those damn dreams, but he was coming around to the fact that it wasn't fair that she was touching him and he was just standing here. He wanted to remedy this, but he had no idea where to put his hands. Everything seemed like a strange option (her shoulder?) or a wonderful option (the curve of her cheek?) or a too much too fast except how is that possible after all these months option.

Hermione was working purely on instinct, and that was not her forte. If only she had a book solely about him, and a little time in a library to understand exactly what the hell she should be doing. Instead, she took a step forward and he mirrored her movement, his eyes flashing with brief alarm at her decision. Alarm, but not repulsion. Keep going. She stepped all the way into the room, closing the loud door behind them. She briefly thought that the noise really ruined the tense silence they had going here. Better talk then.

"You're living here." Immediately Hermione regretted that beginning. It came out as though they were having tea or she was his judgmental aunt.

"You're living with the Weasleys." He shrugged. It was far too long an explanation to say that they needed her more than her own happily ignorant family did.

"I...your parents." She began as if to apologize, but couldn't bring herself to do it. The strange trajectory of his place in her life was the only thing flashing in her mind. She shook her head and looked at the floor. "You didn't say anything."

Draco opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out. Hermione's mouth opened in response. They stood there for a solid minute.

Someone in boots clomped down the hall, struggled drunkenly with keys, and slammed their door. The sound released Hermione. After a sigh that could have filled a balloon in one go, she let her head drop to her chest for a second before looking up at him, and it was just like the first time in the bar all over again. Her voice was quiet but comfortable. "I think I kind of forgot that you were… real."

Anyone else would have heard Draco's huff as indignant, but she heard the relief and humility in it. "Not exactly who I was though, am I?"

Hermione almost looked at him with pity but fought against it. Nothing would be worse for him than pity. Showing him pity would be like telling me to calm down. That's when it dawned on her that she knew him, dream or reality. That made her smile, probably inappropriately.

Standing there, looking at her stupid, glowing, delicious smile, made Draco want to touch her everywhere, if only because it would make her smile more. Instead, he stayed where he was, useless. It was aggravating. Caught up in this thought, nearly forgetting her presence, he grunted loudly to release his frustration and yelled, "Why is this so difficult?!" She didn't even flinch.

Hermione giggled, then immediately showed her surprise at the reaction. "Of course, it's difficult!" He thought she sounded like she was in school again. That slightly shrill know-it-all voice that was never necessary in a dream. "There's too much history, sometimes I forget who we were at Hogwarts..." He wasn't sure she noticed that she was pacing as she spoke, and he leaned against the wall to watch her. "I don't even know what your life looks like, Malfoy, and you don't know mine..." He stifled a grin at her adorable lecturing. She looked like a professor. "…and we've been living in a dream world and the escape has been, I mean I don't know about you, but it's been the only completely happy thing in my life since…" He wasn't even listening anymore. She was getting warm as she continued. She peeled off her coat first, throwing it on the desk chair in the corner where it was quickly joined by the scarf that had been loosely draped over her. Draco gave up on hiding his smirk when she took off her outer robes. She was in muggle clothes underneath, predictably.

His voice was flat and humorous when he interrupted her. "Shut up, Granger."

She turned around and looked sharply at him, prepared to yell that she was simply trying to explain their situation. Instead she took in his trademark smirk and the way he was leaning his shoulders against the back wall and his flushed cheeks. "It's complicated." She said quietly, needing to summarize her thoughts succinctly. He nodded, too understanding.

Later, she would never admit that she ran those three three steps to reach him, but she did. As soon as she reached him his arms were uncrossed and in her hair and pulling her up to him. He had thought he had gotten used to kissing her, and maybe he had. But here in his room, in his arms, she felt different. It was like the Hermione he knew, multiplied. Like she had slipped him a potion or cast a spell and honestly, he wouldn't have cared if she had.

She had him fully pressed against the wall now, and she could have stayed here, leisurely wrapped around this boy who was finally, finally, real and in front of her. She touched every available part of him to which she thought she had grown accustomed. He was almost brand new today, hotter and firmer and paler than in either of their imaginations.

Hermione always felt amazing when she was running her hands along his body, but it was usually an escape; there was always in the back of her head that clock counting down to the end of the spell and the return to the Burrow and the darkness there. There was no clock here, and no escape. Amazingly, that fact felt good.

Although…maybe that was just his hands. Because they were everywhere. Was he gentler in their daydreams? It didn't matter. She thought of the sparklers her family lit on New Year's, and how she used to hold her hand as closely as she could to them, feeling tiny specks of fire bounce across her hand, not enough to burn but so hot and fast that it was just shy of. That was how Draco's hands felt in her hair, on her arms, on her breasts and waist and hips and back and bum and thighs and she had to have more.

Their mouths were refusing to part, one of them coming back to grab the other's lips if they tried to pull away. Hermione was well aware that by now, Draco would have liked to have been kissing her shoulders, biting her earlobe, sucking on the sensitive spots around her neck. She would have liked that too. And she would have liked to be doing the same, but neither of them was willing to give up on this other feeling. This wet, sweet, sinking into another person feeling.

Draco's mouth was stronger. He pulled away with enough time to say "Granger, is this…?" before his determined lips made their journey around her jawline.

Hermione's breathing was way past heavy, and his current teeth tongue lips combination just below her ear wasn't helping. With focus and framed with moans, she answered him. "Different?"

He groaned, "more intense?" She almost didn't have time to feel the absence of his lips.

"Amazing." She concluded with a not-at-all-satisfied-yet sigh. Draco answered with a growl as he pulled his mouth away from her shoulder, where she had just felt his smile. People would never believe her if she told them how much Draco Malfoy smiled.

He pulled his shirt off and watched her eyes take him in all over again. Now that he knew what she felt like in reality he never wanted to settle for that damn spell again. Don't say that you don't know what will happen he chided himself. But this was so much more. He had to be closer and feel her skin on his and memorize it just in case. So, he looked at her with an eyebrow cocked, encouraging her to follow his lead. Her sweater came off easily, and she was wearing only a bra underneath. His eyes popped open wide and it made her giggle. People would never believe him if he betrayed how often she giggled.

He kneeled in front of her and his hands and mouth were on her stomach, waist, and ribs before she had begun taking her trousers off, but she wasn't deterred. As he patiently tracked his mouth up towards her breasts, her nipples hardening at the mere thought of his hot tongue on them, his hands supported her as she peeled the pants off. She expected the moan that came when she ran her fingers through and gripped onto his hair, but she hadn't known his hair would be even softer and whiter than she had known it to be. She held tightly onto his him and relaxed- laughing, sighing, and moaning as he lowered her to the ground and his hardworking mouth and hands went everywhere.

Draco's lips were chapped and he needed water and really, really, really needed something else he had been thinking about since he had broken that glass downstairs, but here she was, still catching her breath, sprawled naked on the probably centuries-old wooden floor. If it wasn't crude he would have taken a photo from where he sat near her feet. He really couldn't decide if he was grateful for the six months that it was like this but not like this or if he should steal a time turner, go back to May, and get those six months back and make sure it was like this the whole time, every time, constantly.

"Malfoy?" She had propped herself up on her elbows to look at him. Her dark cheeks were still flushed and her curling mass of hair was absolutely unkempt. He realized she usually tamed it in their dreams, they both did. He liked her better like this, totally undone by him. Earned arrogance. He smirked.

"Malfoy." The repetition of his name got his attention. When she said, "I need you." in a deep voice that he liked to think only he had ever heard, his own need came back to his attention. When he ran his hands up her body and picked her up, it increased. He set her on the bed and Hermione laughed and looked up at him, biting her lower lip, and he thought he might just keel over. Instead, he pushed the hair out of her face and kissed her, grateful that the unstoppable blooming fireworks hadn't faded since the last time their lips had touched.

With the impossible knowledge of having done this dozens of times and never having done it before, he sunk himself into her and their sounds and skin and selves mingled. A few times, actually. And it was far, far better than any dream had ever been.

Hermione didn't go to the Burrow that night. Her body could barely bring itself to roll away from the equally exhausted man next to her, nevermind apparating anywhere. When she woke up next to Draco Malfoy, she tried to remember if they had ever done this part, the waking up together part, before. She had seen him sleeping before though, so she knew to steal a long look at the sleepy-little-boy-face the man who had been through so much wore.

Soon enough the dehydration set in. Then the hunger. Then the hell of an explanation she would have to have for Ginny, and therefore the need to get home. Hermione rolled out of bed, carefully pulling her pants and sweater on, putting everything else but her coat in her charmed bag and finding her wand. She looked at Draco. His sleeping body had quickly recovered the space she had been taking up in the bed. Only slightly afraid that she was crossing a strange line, she walked over and pulled his hair out of his face, kissing his forehead sweetly. His eyes opened, just barely.

"Go back to sleep." His eyes questioned her. "Tonight. 10. Downstairs. Okay?" He nodded and closed his eyes again. She kissed his lips and felt the soft pressure he returned. Hermione opened the creaky door, annoyed again at the loud sound.

She turned to close it and saw him half sitting up in the bed, quilts falling off of his bare chest, his eyes only half open. "Granger. Tonight." Hermione worried, however briefly, that he didn't want to see her tonight. That he had taken his fill of her in reality, maybe even in their dreams as well. "Real or Dream?"

Hermione's smile could break battle lines and house orphans and nurse grief. "Real."

That's it for this one. Pretty please let me know what you think!