Blood sticks, sweat drips. Break the lock if it don't fit.
A kick in the teeth is good for some. A kiss with a fist is better than none.
— Florence and the Machine.

It's the last day of the year and the students are milling about waiting for the Thestral-drawn carriages to take them down to the Hogwarts Express.

There's the general hubbub of chat as friends part ways for the summer:

See you soon mate...Merlin's pants, exam results in two weeks...Write to me this summer or I'll get Rubin to peck your ear off...I doubt I'll see any vampires... He's involved in bloody everything! Well, I guess he is The-Boy-Who-Lived. Yeah, but he isn't The-Boy-Who's-Involved-In-Everything, is he? ...Hey, er, Hermione, where's your trunk?

Hermione Granger, who is stood with the Weasleys, turns at the sound of her name, away from the mixed swearing and hoots of laughter behind her. Ron's second-hand trunk has fallen open, spilling literally everything everywhere and the twins – kind, loving elder brothers that they are – are not helping him stuff robes and books and smashed ink bottles back into his trunk, they are merely showing him how funny it was.

Harry has returned from saying goodbye to Professor Lupin. (Hermione suspects there was a bit of begging him not to go in there too.) She looks at Harry, who looks slightly sad.

'Sorry, what was that Harry?'

Harry gestures to the trunk-free area around Hermione. 'Your trunk. Is not here.'

Hermione casts around and notices the lack of trunk. There's a sudden, swooping despair as she looks around more frantically. Harry makes himself useless and notices Ron's trunk is falling apart and goes and helps him instead.

The despair turns into cold fear that has a bit to do with there are thousands of students and any one of them could have thought it funny to steal a dork's suitcase, a bit to do with the train will be boarding in about ten minutes and lot to do with the fact that all her books are gone.

Hermione extracts her wand from her sleeve. Thank god, thank GOD she didn't pack it.

'Accio trunk.' She whispers hopefully, trying to sound confident in this new spell she only learned a few weeks ago. The trunk does not come. More desperately with a small note of hysteria in her voice, 'Accio trunk!' The trunk still does not come, however, her wand gives a violent tug to her left, straining through the stone arches of the school court yard and into a seemingly deserted corridor – everyone is outside. It's a long shot, to follow her wand because this isn't what a Summoning Charm is supposed to do, but it's better than standing here panicking and listening to Ron saying 'I think we can save the Every Flavour Beans, only about three-quarters of them are on the ground...'

She catches Harry's eye among the Weasley clan and makes a sort of wild I-need-to-find-my-trunk gesture towards the castle and he smiles and nods and goes back to picking up grey and purple and gold jellybeans off of the ground.

Hermione follows her wand. Once inside she tries one more 'Accio trunk.' and she is propelled forwards by her wand, which has her stumbling around a corner in an attempt to fulfil its bidding. And there it is, on the floor: her trunk. And there a person is, eating an apple: sitting on her trunk. Glowering, her right-hand knuckles tingling, Hermione points her wand more obviously at the sneering trunk-thief. 'You took my trunk?'

Draco Malfoy, who is sprawling across her trunk with the curve of his spine just touching the wall, bites into the green skin of an apple and chews lazily. 'Well observed, Granger.'

She walks towards him, wand held aloft. 'Why are you sitting on my trunk, Malfoy?'

Infuriatingly at his own leisure, Draco pockets his apple, gets to his feet and squares up to her wand tip. He raises his eyebrows at her. And before she even thinks she needs to stop him, he's snatched her wand out of her hand, grabbed her wrist and twisted her arm behind her back in one swift movement. She gasps in pain and shock as he pulls her arm the wrong way, pulling her against him, 'Ow! Malfoy, what're you doing? Let go, give me back my wand! Ow! That hurts, get off of me!'

Malfoy puts his nose to her cheek and hisses, 'You punched me in the face.'

Hermione can just about make their eyes meet in her peripheral vision. She struggles but he's taller and physically stronger than she is. 'And what?' she pants, scornful. 'Is this your revenge Malfoy? Stealing my trunk then attacking me?'

When he chuckles softly into her ear, Hermione is unnerved by how sinister it sounds, how seductive. 'No, no, I just wanted to tell you Granger —" He yanks on her arm a little and she grits her teeth against the pain. "—That I quite liked it."

There's silence between them, Hermione digests his confession and he breathes in the smell of her skin, and earthy brown look at steely grey and seem stuck between a place of hate and a place of sympathy. You poor boy, you poor pathetic boy, Hermione wants to say. Instead what comes out of her mouth: 'What do you mean, "You liked it"? Are you a masochist as well as a heartless bastard?'

Malfoy tsks as he releases her arm and spins her around to face him, his back to the courtyard and the students, her back to the wall. She doesn't like that, it feels like he has the upper hand. Part of her thinks he might have. She says 'Give me my wand, Malfoy.' at the same time that he says 'Tut tut, language, Granger.'

Then he kisses her.

It's so abrupt and random and unexplainable that Hermione doesn't react at all. She stands there, watching Draco push her back against the wall, wind his hands deep into her hair, close his mouth on hers like it was happening to another person.

She wonders if her punch killed a few of his brain cells, sent him crazy. That is the only logical explanation because this is the epitome of illogical. She doesn't react but she lets him carry on for a bit, mainly because of the humiliating moan that escapes from his throat when he uses his mouth to open hers — he will hate himself for that sound, she hopes, this boy who laughed when his father sentenced an innocent creature to death.

His tongue, which tastes of malice and apples and pureblood supremacy, glides clumsily across her teeth. They're only thirteen after all. He licks at the roof of her mouth, making her shudder. Enough, Hermione thinks. That's enough. She bites down hard. His blood, hot and thick like syrup, fills her mouth before he pulls away, letting loose a quiet swear.

'I hate you.' She snarls in his somewhat flushed face.

'Was it that bad?' It sounds like his tongue is already swelling. The trail of blood that trickles from the corner of his mouth is dark crimson against his pallid skin, and Hermione wants to smear it all over his face so he has to explain to his slimy friends how it happened. She has a sudden flash of the look on Pansy Parkinson's face when he tells her he had his tongue down a Mudblood's throat.

'I loathe you.'

'Yes.' He nods. He sticks his tongue out— ah yes, there's angry red teeth marks— and tastes the blood on his chin. 'Yes, I'm alright with that too.'

Hermione is torn between asking for her wand and knocking his lights out, and their knees brush as Draco goes in for another kiss and it's at that moment that they both hear a call across the courtyard. 'Oi Draco, where the hell are you? The carriages are here!' Blaise Zabini's voice. Maybe. Ron and Harry haven't come looking for her yet, so that means Ron's trunk is still the disaster of the day. Even though she's having a disaster of her own right here, and it's one she never imagined.

But she can't ponder it because Draco has rested his forehead against hers and it's so intimate, so friendly, that Hermione's breath catches in her throat and chokes her.

'Well, Granger,' He takes her face in his hands, his ring cold against her earlobe. 'It's been quite a party but I'm afraid that I must now love you and leave you.' His smile is horrifically beautiful in its arrogance. 'Have a nice summer, Mudblood.' And he dabs his bleeding tongue gently with the hem of his robes and shoves her wand back into her limp hands. She watches as he vaults through one of the stone arches and swaggers away to join his cohorts.

Hermione Granger slides her wand back up her sleeve, picks up her trunk from the ground and begins to wheel it back to her friends so they can embark a carriage, get on the train and go home. She'll say the Slytherins took her trunk for a laugh and Harry and Ron will offer to jinx them, and Neville might sit with them, or Ginny, and once they've been left alone they'll talk of Sirius and Pettigrew. Ron will try not to complain about his hand-me-down trunk and Harry with have that lost look he gets in his eyes at the thought of returning to The Dursleys.

She wants to brush her teeth; lips still warm and the taste of copper and Draco Malfoy lingering in her mouth, she wonders if she'll ever eat an apple again, or be able to look in the mirror.