He paused outside her door, and she turned to him. "Friday?"

"At ten."

Her mouth fell open. "In the evening?"

He lifted a brow and deadpanned, "Do you have an early exam in the morning, Granger?"

And it was so familiar, and so dramatic, and so normal… Her lips twitched, and she had to tilt her chin away to keep from smiling at him.

She pushed open her bedroom door and saw him step back in the corner of her eye, giving her a wide berth of space to enter her room unimpeded. Casting one last glance at him, she asked, "Are you expected to join them now? The Notts?"

"Yes."

She paused, and said, "You should mess your hair."

His eyes, which had been solidly fixed on her knees, snapped up.

"If you've been 'dealing with your Mudblood.'" His eye twitched, as if she'd hissed it at him. "In your sex dungeon," she clarified. The corner of her mouth pulled upwards.

He stared at her for a moment and then nodded at the ground, running a hand through his hair absently. Smoothing it — the exact opposite of what was necessary.

She gave an exasperated sigh and found herself stepping forward, reaching up, and dragging her fingers through his fringe, pulling it forward over his eyes, separating the oily strands and rustling the top where she could reach.

Suddenly his head jerked back, his body following, stumbling to the opposite wall.

She jumped, pulling her hand back as if she'd burned him.

"Sorry," he gasped, as if he'd been the one touching without permission, and then he was racing through the hall and down the stairs before she could blink.

She read the revised Hogwarts: A History from front to back that night to keep herself from thinking about it.

~*~

Friday evening arrived, and with it, a green silk slip, a pair of low black heels, and a thin gold choker necklace that she could only assume was meant to be a collar of sorts.

A concubine, to be paraded around, gawked at and leered over.

At a quarter past ten, he knocked on her door. He didn't look at her when she opened it. He didn't respond to her comment about being fashionably late.

She cleared her throat and extended the gold necklace. "It won't close. I assume you need to do something?"

He finally looked up at her. He'd washed his hair, and his skin was back to pale white instead of grey. But he was in his Death Eater boots and trousers. They were both in uniform tonight.

Taking the necklace from her extended fingers, he played with the clasp while she turned around and lifted her hair off her shoulders. Once fastened, the gold shrunk to her neck, and she gasped at the feeling of confinement.

She turned around. "Do these have magical properties?" she asked, fingering the edge of the thin gold.

He jerked his gaze from her neck to her eyes, a tinge of pink in his cheeks. "It's a class system, barring certain collars from certain rooms."