Genre: Friendship/Romance/Humour
Summary: Hermione's trapped in a confined room with the only person she's ever came close to hating.
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9:13pm
A person did not have to know Hermione Granger very well to understand foolish mistakes were things she just didn’t do. It was ridiculous, unethical even, to think of Hermione ever committing a blatant mistake. Especially when one puts into account the number of times she’s read Hogwarts: A History (five and a half times to be exact, making a point to refresh her memory each year). Meaning, she was quite acquainted with all of Hogwarts recorded quirks and tricks. And so when Hermione failed to jump one of the many vanishing steps Neville was always forgetting, no one could have been more surprised than she.
She was so surprised, in fact, that for four solid seconds Hermione did nothing but stare ahead at the corridor she was supposed to be going, her face frozen in mortification. Even the first-years had gotten used to these steps by now and she’d been at the school for over six years. She could blame it on her frazzled mental state, it had been a long night, but that didn’t change the teensy but not so teensy dilemma that she was horribly and hopelessly stuck.
She looked at her right leg, caught nice and secure in the step. Tired to pull only to achieve making her eyes water in pain.
The sound of voices from one of the adjacent halls had her freezing, torn between whether or not this was good or bad. Good because whoever it was may help. Bad because she was in the dungeons after hours, the furtherest place from her own common room, and the only likely people to find her were Filch, Snape or a Slytherin. And it was with this last thought she deftly decided it was bad. She had Harry’s invisibility cloak, of course, but if anyone walked to where she was stuck they’d run into her. Naturally, this would result in some kind of uproar because the only people on the grounds who knew about Harry’s cloak were Dumbledore, her, Ron and Hagrid. If anyone else found out, even if Harry was allowed to keep the cloak, everyone would know. Everyone would be on the lookout. And while she thought this might put an end his and Ron’s constant rule breaking, it didn’t change that the invisibility cloak had proved very useful for previous and more important occasions.
Therefore, as the voices faded into a pair of footsteps, Hermione concluded that its worth was far greater than her own reputation. She stuffed the cloak into her bag, leaving herself fully exposed to whoever rounded that corner.
The person who rounded that corner was probably worse than Filch, Snape and some random Slytherin combined. The torchlight caught on white blond hair, and she knew who it was instantly.
Malfoy was looking down as he walked, his face scrunched up in concentration over something. If he’d stayed lost in his own thoughts, perhaps he would have went by without seeing her. But alas, no god was on her side tonight because he did look up and he did see her, and the expression on his face would’ve undoubtedly been hilarious had she not been stuck as she was. His mouth had parted; his eyes were wide, and his eyebrows were raised so high they disappeared into his hairline.
And then Hermione, in an effort to get him to stop looking at her like he was, said the stupidest thing ever, the word sounding shrill and nervous.
“Hello.”
Malfoy blinked rapidly, at least twenty times.
“I don’t suppose you could give us a hand?”
More blinks. More staring.
“See, I’ve sort of gotten myself stuck, a strange predicament, I realise, but if you could just pull –”
