"That won't be necessary." She turned back to the bookshelf, plucking out a volume at random and flipping through its pages. "We absolutely need to keep practicing. I'd say we're nowhere near as comfortable as we should be."

An uneasy shuffling behind her. Before he could speak, she silenced him with a snap of the book's spine.

"There's no need to fuss. I don't intend to draw suspicion on myself over a stupid mistake caused by one too many glasses of wine."

She spun on her heel and walked out of his sight, back to her piles of books. Nothing had changed between them. He'd made a mistake, and so had she. Now that they'd both acknowledged it, they could continue as they were.

A sound of careful footsteps up to the landing as she methodically collected her books into her arms. She whipped her head over her shoulder to glare at him.

Draco stood hovering near a shelf, watching her silently. A flicker in his expression before his throat bobbed. "Are you sure that's wise? To continue practicing?" he finally asked.

She stood straight and lifted a brow at him. "Why not? We both agreed that it was a mistake and that it won't happen again. Pretty straightforward, really."

He blinked at her, his left eye twitching.

"Let me know when you're ready to pick back up again, Malfoy." She pushed around him, carrying her books with her back upstairs.

She managed to make it behind the locked door of her bathroom before she began crying, running the tap to drown out her sobs.

~*~

The rest of her day was consumed by Occlumency. She tried advanced techniques, finding ways to softly tear pages out of her mental books and let them gather and bind into a new text, tucking it away on a back shelf in the Restricted Section of her mental library.

She severed pages: his darkened eyes, warm lips, and gifted tongue. A firm thigh between her legs, long fingers gripping her wrists — all sealed and tucked away.

Added to the new restricted book were the images of her red lips, tight curls, and lacy knickers. She didn't want to think about the costume that had made him forget who they both were.

There was an invitation to dinner at some point, a woman's voice spoken softly through the door. By the time she noticed the cold plate on her coffee table, six hours had passed, and the sky was black outside her window. Even the moonlight was too bright for the pressure behind her eyes, so she drank her Sleeping Draughts and fell asleep before she'd fully slipped between the covers.

Hermione woke up early on Sunday and spent the extra time meditating and Occluding. There was research to do, and she couldn't lose another day on silly distractions.

She ran into him twice that day, staring sullen and blank-faced at her in the halls on her way to the conservatory, and then again when she was just leaving her solitary dinner.