He looked at her across the hall while he ate his toast. Come to think of it, it was taking her longer to get over his shameless exploitation of her than it had the other girls. She was staring listlessly into her cereal bowl, spooning up milk and letting it trickle back in while Potter and Weasley were engaged in conversation next to her, not noticing her.

Quite a nice accomplishment, if Draco said so himself.

Smiling to himself, he stood up and left the Great Hall, heading outside to the Quidditch pitch. Quidditch season was coming up, and his team needed a new Beater. He hoped he could find a good one. Last year Slytherin had lost a match to Gryffindor because a Beater had accidentally sent a Bludger flying at Draco instead of Potter and had knocked him off his broom when he was just feet away from the Snitch. Suffice to say, that person was no longer on the team. Since Draco had been picked as Captain last year, everyone had agreed with him that the Beater in question had to go.

And now he needed someone new.

He went in the changing room quickly to pick up the balls and some spare brooms for those who didn't have their own. Lifting up the brooms, he saw something that made him smile.

It was the sock Granger had so desperately been searching for the other week.

Draco put it in his pocket. He would have to give it back to her when he next saw her.

Grinning, he went and stood on the pitch, leaning against his broom in an intentional bad boy pose, and watched as the hopefuls started to assemble in front of him. A fair few had turned up, which was hardly surprising, since Beater was the most sought after position on the Slytherin team. There was just something about being able to hurt someone seriously, and intentionally no less, and not get so much as a detention for it...

If it weren't for Potter, Draco might have liked to be a Beater himself. As it was... well, he couldn't have Potter thinking he was afraid to compete with him, now could he?

"Right," Draco said, picking up a bat and turning to the potential Beaters. "What we're going to do here is simple. I'm going to fly around up there, and you are going to take turns to get on your broomsticks and try to hit me with the Bludger." He kicked the box open. "Whoever does best is on the team. If you didn't get all that, you might as well leave now, because if you want to be on my team you listen to what I say and then you do it, no questions asked." He glared at them all, glad to see that most of them were looking at him with a sort of awed respect. "Okay," he said, throwing a bat to the closest person. "Let's get started."

He released one of the Bludgers from the box, then mounted his broom and flew up after it. The fifth-year he had given the bat to got on one of the school brooms Draco had brought outside and also flew up into the air, drawing alongside the Bludger and batting it toward Draco with all his might.

Draco dodged it easily. He sighed. He had been afraid it would be like this.

He let the boy attempt it a couple more times before he called for the next person to have their turn. It was a second-year girl, and she managed to get herself knocked off her broom by the Bludger about ten seconds after she'd taken off.

This was going to be tedious.

After the third person hadn't managed to get the Bludger within ten feet of him either, he decided it was safe to let his mind wander a little.

In between dodging the few Bludgers which might actually have hit him otherwise, Draco tried to decide what to say to Granger when he returned her sock. He wanted to get the biggest reaction possible. That certainly meant her face going as red as a tomato, and maybe a scathing insult as well. He would have liked some tears, too, but he realized that achieving that with just a sock would be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible. If it had been her bra that he had found, maybe, especially if he returned it in a public location and with a suitable sarcastic remark, but sadly that wasn't the case.

So, what to say?

A simple "Here's your sock" was not going to cut it. Not "Just thought I'd give this back", either. "I found something of yours, thought you might like it back" was certainly too mild...

Draco furrowed his eyebrows, deep in thought.

Unfortunately this prevented him from reacting quickly enough to the Bludger some fourth-year had hit at him.

The last thing he thought before he abruptly lost consciousness was "I found your sock in my underwear drawer..."

TBC