Prompt from kgosigadirebone: "Is that my shirt?"

Word count: 1520

Draco's eyes almost bugged out of his head when he opened the Head dorm room to find a half-naked Hermione Granger dashing about in a mad flurry.

In the half a second that it took him to keep from swallowing his tongue, he quickly realised that she wasn't naked, per se. She was perfectly dressed on top, but her legs from the mid-thigh down was completely bared. She wasn't even wearing socks or shoes.

Even though she had buttoned up the too-big dress shirt right up to the collar, she gripped the lapels of the shirt still tighter together when she caught sight of him. Her eyes were larger than he had ever seen them, and she made a high-pitched sound like a strangled mouse. "W-what are you doing back so soon? I thought you were at practice!"

He had never realised how provocative a male dress shirt on a petite girl could be, but now he could never not know this. Through the fine fabric, he could make out the shape of her body clearly delineated by the light thrown in through the windows. It was a shape he had never had occasion to see, not with Hermione Granger always wearing more clothes than the situation demanded. He had begun to think that she didn't have a body under the lumpy sweaters she favoured when not in class.

"Can you—stop staring?" she said almost hysterically, swatting at him across the distance.

Draco cleared his throat. Several times. With effort, he managed to avert his eyes. Who knew Granger had such nice looking, silky-smooth legs? "Is that my shirt?" he asked and was embarrassed to find that his question came out like a croak rather than his usual debonair drawl.

She probably didn't notice since she was too busy trying to shield the bottom half of herself with the sofa. It also wasn't a good time to notice how the shirt ended only an inch above her knees. With her half-squatting behind the sofa with nary a regard for concealing her rear, he could see quite far up the back of her thigh and he had to conceal a groan under the guise of a cough.

"Yes, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to go into your room—but all my clothes are gone!" The hand not wrinkling his lapels to death gestured angrily in the air. In her irritation, her fuzzy curls kept falling over her face and she kept pushing it behind her shoulder. "I just don't understand it! Do you know anything about this?"

Draco couldn't quite help the chuckle that slipped out, but he managed to school his features back into deadpan nonchalance when she glared at him. "All your clothes? Even the ones you wear to bed?" Did prudish little Granger sleep in the nude?

That was—interesting.

She turned an annoyed look on him. "The moment I changed out of my—the moment my clothes went into the laundry basket, they immediately disappeared. Summoning didn't work, so I—I went into your room to have a look, but it seems that it's just me." Ire made her draw herself taller and aim a suspicious glare at him. "Was this your doing, Draco Malfoy?"

Draco snorted. "And just how was I supposed to go into your room? All Hogwarts knows that boys can't just enter the girls' dorms. Surely, you're not implying that I wanted anything in your room." His voice went up on a slightly derisive note and she flushed in response.

He couldn't help but let his eyes trail down once more. Having stopped huddling down like a cornered animal, her shirt was now pulled across her chest. Possibly, she had no idea that she had pulled on one of his summer shirts, one made up in lightweight voile that was semi-sheer. Under dress robes for sitting in class on hot days, it was hard to fault its mild transparency. In the privacy of a secluded room, on a girl without undergarments, it was pure provocation.

Heavens have mercy. He did not need to know that he could make out the pucker of her nipples through the fabric.

"It's clear what's happened here," he said, shoving any unwanted thoughts to the back of his mind and jerking himself back to the present. "How many times have I told you to just leave the house-elves alone? How many times have your friends and the professors told you? Now you've got the house-elves rising in revolt against you."

She half-rose from her crouch, looking disconcerted. "What do you mean?"

"It takes really extreme circumstances for them to revolt against doing your laundry, which is clearly what's happened here."

"Can they do that?" she asked, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. "I thought they were incapable of rebellion."

He nodded knowingly. "The only time I've seen this happen was when my father forbade them from cleaning the library after a precious artifact went missing. This is why I told you to just leave them alone. This is why everyone just leaves them to it."

She cocked her head to the side disbelievingly. Her mouth opened to launch into more questions, but he forestalled her with a gesture at her half-dressed figure. "So, what do you plan to do here? Wear this to class?"

At his words, she turned her back on him and started to cast spells on the throw on the couch, clearly what she had been about before he came in the room. All to no avail. She growled in frustration. "None of the fabrics or sheets or blankets even transfigure!" She sounded on the verge of tears.

He rolled his eyes. "Naturally not. Don't you think that the castle has more sense than to allow its furniture and things to be transfigured at will by its inhabitants?"

Her lips were pressed down in a flat line as though bracing herself from falling apart. She nodded a few times before peering back up at him through her lashes. "I know, I just thought I'd give it a go. I—even tried transfiguring your shirt, but it didn't work. I mean, I would have returned it!" she said hurriedly to forestall any comments he would have made. "I'm going to be so late."

"My clothes have spells against enchantment woven into their fabric." He found his lips lifting in a familiar smirk. "And they come when summoned by its owner."

When he raised his wand, he was amused to find her eyes widening in horror. She ducked immediately so that she was crouched behind the sofa, with only two eyes glaring out at him. "Don't you dare, Draco Malfoy!"

He lowered his wand. "Relax, Granger," he said. "Keep the shirt. It looks better on you anyway." Another wave of his wand and one of his robes came flying out of the Head Boy's room into his hand. He tossed it in her direction and she caught it one-handed, though most of it covered her head. "Here. I'll go and speak to the house-elves."

"You will?" The cloak muffled her voice but couldn't quite smother the surprise in her tone as she pulled it off her head. She looked even more rumpled, even more like she had just arisen from bed in a state of debauched dishevelment. Where her coiffure had always been more than a bit crude, now, with the context of her semi-nudity, it seemed appropriate and even alluring.

He sought for brusqueness. "I'm not a complete monster. Despite wanting to 'keep the house-elves in a state of subjugation, suppression, and slavery.'"

She nodded, her expression softening as his sour pointedness completely passed her over. Her eyes were huge brown pansies in her face, awash with surprised gratitude. "That's—that's very kind of you. I would appreciate that very much, thank you."

"Anything to please."

His reward for civility was the really quite pretty smile of relief she beamed at him across the room as she quickly pulled on his cloak. He watched for a moment in silence and, when the hem of his shirt rose alarmingly high on a long expanse of silky smooth thigh, he turned and abruptly left the room.

The door closed with a loud click behind him. For a moment, he stood there with his back against the door.

That—hadn't gone anywhere like how he had intended.

A famous prank on Hermione Granger? Check. Embarrass the most prudish know-it-all Hogwarts had ever known? Check again. Strike her where it hurt, in her idiotic crusade that went against all notions of Pureblood ideals? Double check.

Then what had happened?

A flash of leg, some shadowy hints of nudity, and he had completely lost his nerve.

Well, that just wouldn't do at all.

Draco pushed off the door and raked back his hair. He took a deep breath and straightened his own robes. So he had discovered the fact that the most annoying girl in the world didn't look heinous under her clothes—or in his clothes, for that matter. That didn't mean anything.

Nothing at all.

And he would do well to remember that.