Prompt from Sarena: "You're so fucking hot when you're mad."

Word count: 740

"And another thing! It's completely incomprehensible that they don't want to further the goals of international relations!"

Granger's voice had steadily climbed into a shout that was almost shrill. She had been pacing back and forth in front of Draco, one hand on her hip, the other one gesturing and slashing at the air in front of her. Her eyes were flashing with barely controlled ire, and her chest was rising up and down. He couldn't help but admire how her anger transformed her appearance: her cheeks were flushed, her lips were red, and her hair was a wild, riotous mess–exactly how he imagined her to look in the throes of passion.

The words popped unbidden out of his mouth. "You're sexy when you're angry."

The next moment, he deeply regretted being in such proximity with her this late at night. His mind had a tendency to wander and his verbal control very clearly vanished.

Mouth open in apparent readiness to launch into another tirade, she whirled to face him instead. She blinked owlishly at him, her lips still formed around an O of exclamation. "I—what?"

"I didn't say anything," Draco said immediately. In retrospect, that was the worst lie he could have come up with. In his defense, however, his lying skills went decidedly askew when he was around her.

"Yes, you did." Her hand had been gesticulating in that impassioned manner of hers all the reasons why she was disappointed by the International Assembly, but now he had piqued her interest in the worst way—by saying something that was so blatantly false. She advanced on him with an intent expression, obviously determined on forcing the truth out of him. He would have whimpered if he hadn't been so simultaneously turned on and terrified.

"Did you just say I'm sexy when I'm angry?" She made a sound that was somewhere between an amused laugh and scoff of disbelief.

He tried not to squirm in his seat. "Well, it's very late, and my eyesight is clearly going."

She paused in her approach, suddenly looking wary. "Malfoy—Draco, um, you're—you've never—" she broke off, shaking her head in a puzzled way. "That is, I'm seeing someone but we…"

Of course she was. She was always seeing someone. Embarrassment and disappointment warred in the pit of his stomach. "Good lord," he said, making a show of rolling his eyes to the ceiling. "Are you taking me seriously? I'm only just tired. I wanted to stop you before you went on a mad tirade for hours."

His tone was extra snippy because her comment—tinged with unbearable sympathy—hit too close to home. Why had he opened his big fat mouth? For the same reason he always volunteered to be paired up with her on these assignments when he couldn't touch her. Because he had no self-control whatsoever and was a glutton for punishment.

When he lifted his eyes to look at her, he saw that her cheeks were flushed and she bobbed her head too many times before tucking a few flyaway curls behind her ear. She seemed unaccountably flustered by his comment, clearly indicating just how unwelcome it was. "Right. I…sorry, yes. I lose control sometimes, I know." Her words were overlapping one another, they tumbled so quickly from her mouth. "Anyway. Maybe we could—pick this up tomorrow?"

For a moment, he didn't understand. This same horrifying conversation would continue tomorrow?

No; she meant work, of course. As always. She didn't look at him as she ducked her head down and began to stack up the file folders on the table. He let the front two legs of his chair thud back onto the ground and stood. For a moment, he watched her dainty profile and the efficient, brisk movements of her small, slim fingers before hurriedly jerking his eyes away.

"I'm off to bed then." His lame exit line was mostly directed at her back because she had hunched her shoulders up around her ears. It occurred to him that she was embarrassed, but he couldn't imagine the reason. He was the one who had blurted out how he felt about her, how he wished that they could—

Better not go down that route.

He nodded at her back, steeling his resolve and regaining control of himself. It was just a slip of the tongue. It wouldn't happen again.

Especially when it was so clear that she was unreservedly uninterested in him.