**tis glad you all liked teh post**
Forgot to update at like, the hours I was awake today and online (midnight - 4am), so I'm updating now before shopping!
There isn't really much to this chapter actually... but it's something! And a bit of a cliffie (depending on how you think of it).
And I was out of chapter ideas, but trust me, this isn't the worst one (there's one that's totally random and kinda funny in a weird and messed up way coming up).
Enjoy

Chapter 13
Out of the Closet

“What happened?” Ginny whispered as she and Hermione headed towards Gryffindor Tower minutes after their scene.

“You see Gin, in the plan we’re supposed to...”

“You know what I mean!” Ginny cut in indignantly.

Hermione sighed. “Look... I think there’s more to this idea than what meets the eye.”

Ginny’s eyebrow rose. They went up the last flight of stairs and stopped their conversation when they reached the Fat Lady.

“Buckbeak,” Hermione said after a moment’s thought - the password had changed to Hagrid’s hippogriff’s old name just the day before. The door swung open, and the two passed through the portrait hole.

“So, you were saying...”

“Not here,” Hermione whispered when she saw clutters of students in the common room.

The two passed through silently and ran up the stairs. They were quiet on the walk down the hall, and even when they stepped into Hermione’s room. Ginny shut the door and spun around to face Hermione.

“What happened?” she asked.

“What with exactly?” Hermione asked back in a parroting tone.

“With you making it bloody obvious that we staged that!”

“Oh, that...” Hermione’s cheeks burned. Ginny started to smirk.

“Ooh, what’s the story behind this one?”

“We kind of snogged...”

Ginny gapped. A few incoherent noises came from her mouth as she attempted to say... something. Hermione listened for a few minutes, but when Ginny didn’t stop, she slapped her friend across the face. Ginny was shocked momentarily.

“Thanks,” she said in a sarcastic tone, moaning and rubbing the cheek Hermione struck.

“You would’ve blabbered on if I didn’t,” Hermione retorted.

“Oh yeah... you snogged him?!” Ginny squealed suddenly and recoiled when Hermione’s hand rose, which was really just to signal a ‘shush’.

“What don’t you get about it? I’ve said ‘I snogged Malfoy’ two times already! Well now three, but…”

“WHY?!” Ginny cut in loudly.

“BECAUSE!” Hermione yelled back. She brought her voice back down and said, “Because one thing led to another – we didn’t plan anything, it just happened. We fixed up each other’s robes to make it appear like… you know what I mean. He zoned out while looking at me, I snapped him out of it. It became to quiet, so I asked him small things like ‘is it the closet?’. It came to ‘ever been in a closet with a girl?’ and ‘would you like a better reason for being here?’ and we kind of started snogging…”

Ginny started pacing; her habit when she’s either nervous or deep in thought.

“What happened after? You took awhile to come out, but then you two disappeared and it took me forever to find you!”

“Five minutes isn’t forever, Gin!” Hermione cut in. “And I just pulled Malfoy aside to ask if we should just put this all behind us.”

Ginny snapped her attention to Hermione. “What’d he say?”

“He... he said ok,” Hermione said after a moment. “In a nod...”

Ginny sighed and sat on her bed. “What else did he say?”

“That’s all he said, I swear!” Hermione exclaimed.

“You stink at lying, you know that, right?”

Hermione stuck her tongue out at Ginny and sat down on the bed across from her. She looked down at her feet.

“It’s not what he said...”

“You just have to make this difficult,” Ginny snapped. “What’d he do?”

“It’s not what he ‘did’ either.”

“What else is there? How did he look? That’s a redundant question to... wait a minute...”

“Exactly!” Hermione cut in. “Anyways, before he said ‘ok’, deep, I mean deep, in his eyes, there was a flicker of hurt or... brokenness.”

Ginny’s eyes slowly widened. Her mouth moved, but no words came out. She stood up and started pacing again. After a few moments, she spun around on the spot and turned to Hermione, a look of shocked realization on her face.

“What...?” Hermione asked cautiously.

“Malfoy suggested this charade, right?”

“Obviously!” Hermione scoffed.

“He came up with all these ideas...?”

“Yeah.”

“He never likes to help people unless there’s a gain for him...”

Hermione’s eyes widened when she realized what Ginny was getting at.

“You mean...”

“Yes, Hermione. He might just have feelings for you.”