Archive of Our Own

The first Monday in September should have been a holiday, in Hermione’s opinion. For eleven year olds, it was their first, delicious taste of freedom. For parents, it was also their first, delicious taste of freedom. For Hermione, though, and her fellow non-traditional eighth years, it was a sort of going back. She thought ahead to her birthday in just two weeks and some, and felt very old and very weary to be going back to school. 

Nineteen, she reasoned, was old enough to be out in the world, not back at your old boarding school. She thought to Vincent Crabbe, who would have been the oldest in their year, his birthday just two days before her own. Hermione shook her head, willing the thought of the fiendfyre, in the room of requirement where Crabbe had died, out of her head. In, hold, out, hold. Her breath steadied, and had just found equilibrium when—

“Oy, ‘Mione!” called Ginny, bounding down the platform at her. 

Hermione opened her eyes, suddenly taking in where she was again. The train let out a high-pitched whistle signalling its imminent departure. 

“Ginny,” Hemione smiled. “I was waiting for you.”

Ginny tossed her long, glossy braid over her shoulder with an air of impatience, “Nearly didn’t. Mum was having a hard time letting me go, and it’s not like I don’t understand, but everyone has to move on eventually.”

Hermione’s heart clenched in her chest, “Right. Well, let’s find a carriage. I was standing here so long, I wonder if there will be any free compartments.” 

Ginny turned, and said over her shoulder as they boarded. “I saw Neville and Luna getting on up front. I heard it was a tough decision,” she rolled her eyes, “but I wasn’t seen fit to make prefect again this year, so I’ll be in with you lot.” 

Hermione thought back to her childish desire to be head girl, and strangely, felt peace that she’d never had the honor. An Order of Merlin, first class, was far more impressive on her resume than being head girl. 

Not that she even knew what she wanted a resume for, anyhow. Harry and Ron had known, as well as nearly all of her other Gryffindor classmates. She understood Neville coming back as he wanted to finish his coursework with Madam Sprout. But Hermione’s motivations? It just seemed like a given that she would return and finish her coursework. 

It was just what Hermione would do. 

Ginny slid open a compartment door. “Oh, sorry–” she bit out, before starting to close the door again. 

From the other side, Neville called out, “No, it’s alright.”

Ginny had already started backing away when the door slid open fully from the inside.

Draco Malfoy stood. Or half-stood, one hand on the doorframe, the other braced on the edge of the compartment. His hair was longer than she remembered. It was still the most gorgeous pale champagne blonde, swept back but falling loose at the temples, and he looked, if not ill, then recently unwell. Too pale, cheekbones sharper than they’d been the year before, like someone who’d had too many headaches and too few breakfasts.

“There’s room,” he said, eyes flicking over Hermione, then to Ginny. “If you don’t mind sitting close.”

He sounded tired, but not cruel. He didn’t sound like he used to sound when he was trying to be clever in front of Pansy or any of the other Slytherins. 

Ginny hesitated, but Luna was already waving them in. “It’s good company,” she said serenely, as if that solved everything. “Neville brought biscuits.”

Neville, in the corner by the window, offered a small smile and lifted a half-eaten ginger biscuit in proof. The corner of his mouth was dusted with sugar.

Hermione looked at Draco again. He was still standing, though slightly slouched, as if unsure whether to leave or offer his seat or vanish altogether.

“Thanks,” Hermione said quietly, stepping past him.

She caught it then, just the faintest change in his expression. Nothing dramatic, and not surprise, or even discomfort. Just a little shift of something behind his eyes. 

Hermione slid into the seat beside Luna, Ginny squeezing in beside her. Draco took the last open space by the door on Neville’s side, sitting down slowl.

No one said anything for a minute. The train began to move.

And then Luna, with all the grace of a diplomat at a tea party, passed Draco a biscuit. “For your headache,” she said. “Sugar helps.”

He blinked, but he took it and then bit into it with surprising obedience.

Hermione looked down at her hands, folded neatly in her lap, and thought of Crabbe again. Thought of the way the smoke had clung to the stones in the Room of Requirement, and what sound a wand made when it hit the floor.

Draco brushed a crumb from his knee, then straightened his spine against the wall as the train picked up speed. He looked, for a moment, like he might simply say nothing and let the moment pass in its quiet neutrality, but then he cleared his throat softly and glanced to Luna, then Neville.

“Thank you, by the way,” he said. “The other compartments were full. Or loud. This one seemed… tolerable.”

“Tolerable,” Luna repeated, not offended. “High praise.”

Draco dipped his head in a faint nod. “I’ve had a headache since about yesterday, and I thought I might actually hex someone if I heard another first-year try to transfigure their cat.”

“You didn’t,” Neville said mildly, “hex anyone?”

“Surprisingly, no.”

Hermione glanced over at him. His voice still had that slightly clipped formality, but it wasn’t as barbed as usual. He sounded like someone learning how to speak in a new language they used to be fluent in.

“I’m grateful,” he added, glancing toward Neville again. “For the seat.”

Neville nodded. “Of course.”

A pause, and then: “How was your summer?” Draco asked, voice low but even, eyes drifting to Hermione and Ginny across from him.

Ginny stiffened. “I stayed home,” she said shortly. “With what’s left of my family.”

Luna, unfazed, reached up to adjust her trunk on the shelf. 

Hermione felt the air shift, not dramatically, but enough. She answered before Draco could go quiet with rejection.

“I was here,” she said. “Neville and I helped Professor Sprout with the greenhouses, and Luna warded the south wing. We finished the summer by repairing most of the North Tower stairs.”

“She argued with a gargoyle,” Neville added, offering a biscuit to Hermione. 

Hermione rolled her eyes and took it. “The gargoyle was wrong.”

Draco’s mouth twitched. It might have been a smile. “Of course it was.”

Ginny’s glare didn’t fade entirely, but her shoulders eased. She leaned her head against Hermione’s shoulder and muttered, “Sorry,” though it wasn’t clear who she meant it for.

Draco nodded once, not meeting her eyes. “It’s fair.”

The train rounded a curve, and the light shifted across the floor. Outside, the countryside unfurled in green hills, and gold-dusted fields, and that faint shimmer of end-of-summer magic curling along the hedgerows. For a moment, the compartment was quiet again.

Moments later, the door slid open again, and this time it was Blaise Zabini, looking effortlessly polished despite the chaos clinging to him like static. His sleeves were rolled to the elbow, his tie undone, and he was holding a chocolate frog variety box.

“There you are,” he said to Draco, as if they were mid-conversation and this was just the next line. “You disappeared.”

“I relocated,” Draco replied.

“I noticed. We all noticed. Pansy’s halfway through rewriting your will.”

Neville raised an eyebrow.

Blaise leaned against the doorframe, ignoring the way it groaned under his weight. “They’ve packed into one compartment like it’s still fourth year. Pansy’s sprawled across the seats like Cleopatra, Millicent’s hexing the luggage rack because it won’t stop singing, and Theo keeps trying to light his sleeves on fire.”

“They're enchanted to be flame-retardant,” Draco explained to the others, without moving.

“Yes, well. He’s still trying.” Blaise scanned the compartment and gave a small, appraising nod. “This is nicer. Less screaming. More snacks.”

“Help yourself,” Luna said, passing him a biscuit without looking up from her magazine.

Blaise blinked, took it, and gave her the sort of cautious smile one usually reserved for sphinxes. “Thanks. Zabini,” he added after a moment, mostly to be polite.

“Luna Lovegood,” she replied serenely. “I remember you from last year. You’re more beautiful than before. 

He looked at her, blinked again, then took a bite of the biscuit.

Hermione tried not to laugh. She failed.

Blaise turned his attention to her, then Ginny. “Granger. Weasley.”

“Zabini,” Hermione said, dry as anything.

“I wasn’t expecting to find Draco in a Gryffindor pile,” Blaise said, glancing down at his friend with an arched brow. “Though I suppose you lot always did collect strays.”

“That’s rich coming from someone who just abandoned six of his fellow Slytherins to the madness,” Draco muttered.

Blaise smirked. “Survival.”

Neville held out the biscuit tin, and Blaise, surprisingly, took another. “I’m staying,” he said, settling beside the door. “They can duel for the armrest without me.”

No one objected. 

It was surreal, really, how quiet the rest of the trip was. Hermione found herself seated across from Blaise Zabini and next to Draco Malfoy, with Luna reading aloud from a tea leaf glossary and Neville dozing lightly against the window, and somehow, it all held. No arguments. No blood spilled. Just the vague absurdity of it all, and even more surreal was the realization that so many Slytherins had returned at all. Daphne Greengrass, Millicent Bulstrode, Tracey Davis, Theo Nott, Pansy Parkinson—they were coming back, too. 

The train pulled into Hogsmeade Station just as the last of the light turned amber on the trees. Deputy Headmaster Flitwick was waiting for the first years, pacing up and down the platform, peering at a list he kept losing his place on while the eleven-year-olds stared wide-eyed. Headmistress McGonagall stood nearby in full tartan and full authority, arms folded, gaze like steel. Hagrid waved enthusiastically from beside the boats.

But it was Professor Sinistra who found the eighth years, gathering them with a kind smile and the sort of calm, competent energy that had gotten half of them through Astronomy alive.

“You’re welcome to attend the Sorting,” she said, voice low and even. “The Great Hall is open to you. But I understand—you’ve come back as adults, not children. Your attendance is entirely optional.”

No one went.

Instead, they followed her down the slope behind the castle, past the boathouse and along the lake path, the group loosely clustered, all of them keeping pace without quite walking together. The air was cooler here, edged with the first hints of fal. Someone’s trunk squeaked on the gravel. Someone else muttered that their shoes weren’t broken in yet.

And then, around a bend in the path, the cottages came into view.

They were small, mismatched, clearly conjured in a hurry and not reviewed by any competent architectural authority. One leaned slightly to the left. Another had window boxes so overgrown they blocked the view. There was ivy where there shouldn’t be ivy. And above one cheerful little stone cottage, a string of enchanted laundry flapped in loose formation—towels, robes, what appeared to be a star-chart patterned dressing gown.

“Well,” said Daphne dryly, somewhere behind Hermione, “this feels like a trap.”

“It’s adorable,” Tracey whispered back.

Hermione looked at the cottages again, at the crooked roofs, the sloping path, the chimney smoke curling soft into the dusk.

“It’s perfect,” she said to herself. And it was, but not because it was tidy or grand, or really even well designed. Simply put, it was theirs. 

Hermione let out a breath, and glanced at her fellow adult students, and for the first time since she had left Grimmauld Place that morning, she felt something a little bit like peace. 

Hermione woke before the sun had fully cleared the treetops. Her cottage was quiet, warm from the charm she’d cast the night before. The kettle in her kitchenette gave a reluctant puff of steam when she touched her wand to it. She dressed quickly, tied her hair back with a blue ribbon that didn’t match anything she wore, and stepped outside with a slice of toast in her hand.

Her cottage—number ten—sat just uphill from Malfoy’s, which was something she was trying not to think about too hard. It was smaller than she’d imagined adult life would be, but more elegant than she’d expected from anything Hogwarts-adjacent. The inside was well appointed: a tall walnut bookcase dividing off the bed, a cast-iron stove with brass knobs, a velvet-backed reading chair beside a stone hearth. The sheets were crisp, the towels thick, and the water pressure, miraculously perfect. 

It didn’t feel like Hogwarts, but it didn’t feel like real life either. 

The path from the cottages to the castle was still silver with dew. She could see the Meeting House windows aglow with a low, enchanted light, and beyond it, the roofs of the other cottages on the other side: Padma’s, Ernie’s, Nott’s. It felt strange and almost holy, this silence. Like waking in a place not entirely of the world.

Neville caught up just before the tree line, blazer unbuttoned, one shoelace dragging. “Meant to be out earlier,” he said, a bit breathless. “Overslept.”

Hermione smiled faintly. “You’ll settle into the rhythm.”

“I already like it better than last year.”

She nodded. “That wouldn’t take much.”

The path narrowed as they approached the gates. The castle loomed above them, familiar and somehow different. It felt less like home and more like a monument. They crossed the courtyard quietly, and had just stepped under the archway when a voice rang out behind them—

“Miss Granger. Mr. Longbottom.”

Hermione stopped. “Good morning, Professor.”

“Welcome back to Hogwarts.” McGonagall’s voice was level, her accent clipped at the ends, vowels round and stern. “I won’t detain you long. You’ll find your timetables at breakfast. I simply wished to speak with you before the day begins.”

Neville straightened slightly. “Is something wrong?”

“Not yet.” McGonagall glanced toward the drive, where the other eighth years were walking in. “I’ve spoken to each of the returning Slytherins. They’ve been advised in no uncertain terms that their presence here is conditional. One misstep, and I will remove them myself.”

Hermione’s fingers curled into her sleeve.

Neville frowned. “They haven’t done anything.”

McGonagall’s lips pressed together. “Be that as it may, they know the expectations. It’s best they hear them plainly.”

“Tracey Davis wasn’t even here,” Hermione said, her voice quieter than she meant it to be—but steady. “Neither was Daphne Greengrass.”

McGonagall looked at her for a long moment. Not unkind, but unmoved.

“And yet,” she said, “they wear the same colours.”

With that, she inclined her head and turned back toward the Entrance Hall.

Neville exhaled, sharp through his nose. “That wasn’t fair.”

“No,” Hermione said. “It wasn’t.”

They stood for a moment longer in the stone hush of morning, the castle behind them breathing heat through old stones, and the lake in the distance still silver under the sky.

The first proper study session happened almost by accident.

It was late afternoon, the air honey-gold and still warm enough to sit outside, and someone had charmed the little chalkboard outside the Meeting House to read:

ASTRONOMY & POTIONS – GROUP REVIEW – IF YOU’RE LOST, SO ARE WE.

Hermione had brought her books purely out of habit. She hadn’t expected anyone else to show up with more than a half-hearted set of notes or a half-drunk cup of tea, but within an hour there were five of them: Padma, Michael, Susan, Ernie, and Hermione herself, all on the porch with parchment spread across their knees, quills tapping, the occasional groan of frustration breaking the rhythm of their revision.

The porch creaked companionably beneath them. The kettle inside boiled itself every so often, and someone, probably Susan, had smuggled out a plate of jammy dodgers that kept vanishing faster than anyone admitted.

Hermione sat cross-legged on a cushion that had definitely once belonged to the Ravenclaw common room. She was explaining the difference between mutagenic and restorative base essences when she caught a flicker of motion from the path beyond the greenhouse.

Slytherins.

Malfoy, Parkinson, Nott, Bulstrode, and Greengrass were all walking together, slow and self-contained. None of them glanced toward the study group. Not once.

Hermione watched them pass.

It wasn’t avoidance, exactly, but maybe just distance. It definitely was deliberate though, like they’d worked out the perimeter of where they were allowed to exist and decided not to test it.

Padma nudged her. “You were saying something about powdered moonstone?”

Hermione blinked, then nodded. “Yes—if you’re using it in a mutagenic infusion, it has to be crushed fresh. The stabilizing charm only holds for forty-eight hours.”

Michael groaned. “Of course it does. Everything involving moonstone is a nightmare.”

They laughed. The moment moved on, but Hermione’s eyes drifted back, once, to the path beyond the greenhouse.

The sun was lower now. The cottages cast long shadows. Across the green, Zabini was leaning against the rail of his front porch, arms folded, expression unreadable. Tracey Davis stood beside him, barefoot and braiding her hair. When they caught sight of the Slytherin group headed toward them, Tracey gave a short wave. Blaise lifted two fingers in a lazy sort of salute.

Theo Nott wandered up first, hands deep in his pockets, saying something low that made Tracey laugh and roll her eyes. Pansy followed not far behind, hair swept up like she hadn’t touched it all day and wasn’t going to start now. She had a teacup in hand, held like a cigarette. Daphne Greengrass pulled Millicent along, who was moving like she’d been dragged but had chosen not to fight it. And then Malfoy, hands in his jacket pockets, collar turned up, gaze down. He said nothing, but when Blaise shifted to give him space on the steps, he took it.

No one on either porch said anything loud enough to carry.

They didn’t disappear inside, didn’t stalk off toward the trees or turn their backs to the rest of the village. Just stood or sat or leaned, half-shadowed by the slope of the roof and the warm light bleeding through the windows behind them. 

Hermione watched the group from the Meeting House steps, biscuit forgotten in her hand. Padma followed her gaze, then muttered, “That’s a whole lot of neutral expression in one place.”

“They look like a painting,” Susan said. “One of those ones with a Latin title and three different interpretations.”

Michael snorted. “They look like they’re about to perform a very fashionable coup.”

No one said it aloud, but it was the first time all seven Slytherins had been seen together since the Sorting was skipped. 

Hermione shifted in her seat, drowning in her feeling of unease that the line between us and them was still so clearly drawn, even here, even now.

She rose after a few minutes and dusted off her skirt. “I’m heading back,” she said.

“Don’t forget we’ve got Astronomy tomorrow,” Ernie called after her. “Padma’s threatening us with a charting quiz.”

“I am not!” Padma protested. “...Though maybe I should.”

Hermione smiled and waved as she crossed the green. She didn’t look back toward Zabini’s cottage, but she could feel it behind her

Hermione noticed the missing quill while she was buttering toast.

It wasn’t urgent, exactly, it wasn’t like she didn’t have others, but it was her best one. The ashwood one with the soft grip she liked, a little worn down from years of use. She remembered having it out during the review session the day before and realized she must have left it at the Meeting House.

It was still early. The sun was just starting to warm the roof tiles, and most of the other cottages were quiet. She pulled on a jumper, left her tea steeping on the counter, and stepped outside.

The grass was damp, the air cool, and the path felt more like someone’s backyard than school grounds. A few cushions were still on the porch where they’d sat yesterday. The biscuit tin was gone, but someone had left a spoon tucked into a chipped mug by the railing. Hermione didn’t see her quill.

She walked around the side of the Meeting House, just in case it had rolled off the porch. No quill, but there was something else.

A few burnt-out firestones arranged in a loose circle, a scorched stick or two in the grass, and a small pile of cups in a metal pail, rinsed but not dried. She hadn’t realized anyone had stayed out after she left.

A blanket was still there too, half-draped over one of the chairs someone had dragged out. And near the edge of it, just barely visible in the grass, was a closed leather planner.

Hermione frowned, picked it up, turned it over. Black, neat, initials on the corner: D.L.M.

Of course. Malfoy’s. She brushed some ash off the spine with her thumb. The leather had picked up a some moisture from the grass, but it wasn’t ruined. Still, she hesitated.

She didn’t want to just knock and hand him a soggy planner.

Back in her cottage, she wiped the planner clean, laid it flat near the hearth while she finished her tea, and then wrapped it in the only clean towel she had left—white, with little embroidered flowers in the corners. One of a set she had embroidered with an elderly aunt when Hermione was very small.

She tugged on her boots, tucked the bundle under her arm, and walked down the path toward Malfoy’s cottage.

It was early, but not obscenely so. Smoke curled gently from his chimney. The curtains were open. He was likely awake. Likely already being irritatingly productive.

She knocked once, firmly.

The door opened almost immediately, and there he was.

It wasn’t that he was disheveled, or sleepy looking, but he was undone. He was barefoot, but already dressed in an open-collared white shirt that looked like it had been conjured directly from an editorial. The sleeves were rolled neatly to the elbows, and the top few buttons were undone in a way that was surely accidental, like she had interrupted him getting dressed, except that she could see the faint, unfair line of his pecs and the soft dip between his collarbones, and no part of her believed it was anything but intentional. His hair looked like it had been styled and then artfully tousled by the gods.

Draco blinked at her, then at the parcel in her hands.

“Oh,” he said, voice still warm from sleep, but sharper now. Alert. “Good morning.”

“I found your planner,” Hermione said, holding it out. “You left it in the grass behind the Meeting House.”

He looked down at the towel like it might catch fire. “You wrapped it?”

“It was damp,” she said. “I didn’t want the pages to curl.”

Slowly, he reached out to take it. His fingers grazed the embroidery.

“This is yours?”

“Yes,” she said. “It was just the cleanest thing nearby.”

He looked at the parcel that they were both still holding.

Then: “It’s embroidered.”

She raised an eyebrow, and pushed it into his hands. “Yes. With flowers. I was ten.”

Still, he held it like she’d handed him her wand, her will, and a list of security questions.

“I’ll return it,” he said, with strange gravity.

“It’s a towel, Malfoy.”

“Still.”

There was a beat of silence, in which she absolutely did not look at his chest again.

She cleared her throat. “Well. I hope you… enjoy your planner.”

He smiled, small and lopsided and completely off-brand. “You too.”

She turned before he could make it weirder, and walked back to her cottage with that dangerous awareness that someone was still watching her go. Behind her, Malfoy stood in his doorway, holding a planner wrapped in a ratty tea towel like it might start whispering prophecies at any moment.

The first time Malfoy bowed to let her pass, she thought he was mocking her.

It was the next morning, just outside the Transfiguration corridor. She turned the corner and nearly ran into him, and instead of offering his usual dry insult or pretending she didn’t exist, he stepped back, inclined his head slightly, and gestured her forward with an open palm.

“Granger,” he said, voice low and pleasant. “After you.”

She blinked. “Right. Thanks?”

And then she walked past him, suspiciously aware of the way his gaze stayed fixed, politely, somewhere above her shoulder.

When she got to her seat in the classroom, she waited a full minute for someone to bring it up. No one did. Not even Padma, who noticed everything . Hermione chalked it up to Malfoy being strange and possibly sleep-deprived. Or cursed. She considered telling someone to check.

But then he did it again the next day.

Same corridor. Different class. Exact same bow.

And not a sarcastic bow either. No dramatic flourish, no eyeroll. It was subtle. Formal. Like they were back in the eighteenth century and she was a duchess on her way to morning tea. He even murmured something that sounded suspiciously like "Miss Granger."

By the third day, Hermione was actively avoiding that hallway just to test if it was the hallway. It was not the hallway.

Because when she crossed the courtyard, late for Astronomy review, he spotted her from across the flagstones and stepped aside . Not just stepped, he pivoted, with one hand loosely at his chest and the other gesturing her forward like some kind of enchanted footman.

She stopped in her tracks.

“Okay,” she said flatly. “What.”

Malfoy blinked. “Is something wrong?”

“You keep doing—” she flailed vaguely in his direction, “—that.”

“I don’t follow.”

“You’re bowing at me.”

He tilted his head. “I am being courteous.”

“Since when?”

He didn’t answer. Just gave a slight smile, half amusement, half something else, and turned on his heel, leaving her standing there like she’d just tried to interrogate a very polite ghost.

She watched him walk away, expression blank, the wind catching the hem of his cloak just enough to make him look deliberately cinematic .

Ginny found her still standing there two minutes later.

“You look like someone just proposed marriage by interpretive dance,” she said.

Hermione rubbed her temples. “Honestly? That might make more sense.”

Draco had a headache before he even boarded the train.

He told himself it was the noise—platforms, trunks, nerves—but it was probably the meeting with McGonagall. The way she’d looked at him when she said “One mistake and it’s over, Mr. Malfoy” like he didn’t already know.

He found a quiet compartment near the back of the train. Lovegood and Longbottom were in it. That was surprising enough. That they looked up, blinked, and then offered him a seat and a biscuit without a single sneer or sideways comment was… unsettling.

He took the seat. He didn’t take the biscuit. At least, he didn’t at first.

They didn’t talk much. Luna hummed something off-key and flipped through a deck of cards that may or may not have been tarot. Longbottom had a pile of plants wrapped in tissue paper, which he carefully tucked into the overhead shelf with the reverence of someone stowing away children.

The train hadn’t left yet when the door slid open again and Ginny Weasley stepped in like she owned the place. She looked from Luna to Neville to him, and for a moment he thought she’d tell him to get out.

But then plopped down across from him.

And behind her, Granger.

She didn’t say anything. Just stepped inside, offered a small nod in his direction, and slid into the seat beside him like it didn’t mean anything, like they were classmates. Like last year hadn’t happened.

She wore light stain jeans and a soft white T-shirt and a pair of leather loafers. Her hair was tied back, though a few strands had come loose in the humidity. She looked tan and healthy. Strong in the way someone gets when they’ve been building things. She looked, he hated the thought, radiant.

He turned to look out the window.

Blaise appeared about twenty minutes later, rolled his eyes when he saw the company, and joined anyway. He took the empty spot beside Ginny, muttering something under his breath that made her snort. They played Gobstones, the two of them, competitively, chaotically, while Luna offered commentary like she was narrating a match from behind the veil.

Longbottom drifted off after a while, head tipped back, snoring lightly. Hermione didn’t speak. She just opened a book, drew one leg up underneath her, and started to read.

Draco didn’t move. He didn’t speak, either.

He just sat beside her, shoulders not quite brushing, the pages of her book turning softly every few minutes, and stared out the window as the world pulled itself backward, slowly, and then faster and faster. 

It was the quietest start to a school year he’d ever had, and somehow, the strangest, which was saying something because there were years where he had been press-ganged into a terrorist organization and forced to plot the death of one of the school administrators. 

For Draco, for all the Slytherins, really, Pansy was a kind of homing beacon. She’d kill herself before admitting that she mothered her fellow Slytherins, but she’d kill anyone who messed with one of hers. So, it wasn’t surprising that as soon as he was finished unpacking, he wandered across the path to Pansy’s. 

By the time Draco reached her cottage, the door was already ajar. He knew he didn’t have to knock, so he pushed it open and stepped inside.

Tracey was sitting on the floor, knees pulled up to her chest, a cushion under her. Daphne perched on the arm of the settee, flipping absently through a stack of fashion magazines that Pansy had considered important enough to pack. Theo and Blaise sat at the table in the corner with two glasses of wine between them and untouched plates of something that might’ve been pasta.

Millicent stood by the hearth, arms folded. She hadn’t taken off her boots.

Pansy was barefoot in the kitchen, pulling a cork from a second bottle of wine. The first was nearly empty on the floor between Daphne and Tracey. 

Draco closed the door behind him and hung his cloak on the hook beside Theo’s. 

Pansy handed him a glass without speaking with a gentle ghost of her fingers on his hand. He took it and sat on one side of the settee, sighing as he sunk in. There was music playing, one of those jazz standards Theo liked and Blaise pretended not to. Someone had lit a taper candle on the table. The lights had been dimmed.

No one mentioned McGonagall right away, but eventually, Daphne did. Her voice was thin. “She looked at me like I was supposed to apologize just for being here.”

Tracey let out a small, humorless sound. “I wasn’t even here last year. I was in bloody Malta. My mum made me leave.”

“She said we were on a short leash,” Daphne added. “Like we’re animals.”

“She didn’t mean you,” Theo murmured.

“She meant all of us,” Millicent snapped.

“She meant me ,” Pansy said, suddenly.

The room stilled. 

“She hates me,” Pansy said, calmly, like she was reading it off the bottom of her wine glass. “Because I tried to protect the younger students. Because I said the thing we were all thinking—just give them Potter, and maybe we won’t all die.”

Draco looked at her, but she didn’t look back.

“She’ll never forgive that,” Pansy added. “Slytherin children aren’t worth anything to her, she’s proven that time and time again, and Slytherin children are never going to mean anything to her. So now we keep our heads down, get our education, and live our lives.”

Outside, the wind shifted, just enough to rattle the latch on the cottage door.

Pansy sat back in her chair, every line of her posture composed, and took another slow sip of wine.

“I can live with that,” she said.

Draco hadn’t spoken yet. He swirled the wine in his glass, trying to feel something other than what he felt.

“I will make sure you are all safe. No matter who the aggressor is, Gryffindor or whatever,” he said, finally. “It’s not you, Parks, it’s me.”

Millicent turned. “You can’t , Draco. Violate your parole, and it’s Azkaban for you. And for what?”

Draco slumped in his seat and sipped his wine again. 

"Do you think the Gryffindors that came back for eighth year are going to make this hell for us?" asked Tracey, poking at a roll.

Pansy sighed. "I think it's just Granger and Longbottom back this year."

"And say what you want about Granger--" Theo added

(Draco did have a lot to say)

"--but she was never rude to any of us. Longbottom was too busy being afraid of the professors to be a bully."

"Just keep your head down, and your nose clean," shrugged Pansy. "We'll be fine."

Defense was held in one of the smaller classrooms this year with new desks, fresh paint, still smelling like varnish and cleansing potions. The war had left marks even magic couldn’t buff out quickly.

Draco arrived early. 

He took a seat beside Theo and behind Pansy, who hadn’t stopped pretending she didn’t care. Blaise had angled his chair just slightly away from the rest of the room, legs crossed, gaze blank.

The Ravenclaw seventh and eighth years trickled in slowly. Draco thanked his stars that Defense wasn’t with Gryffindor at least. 

One of the Ravenclaw boys, Cornfoot, looked over at Draco and muttered, “Interesting they’re letting ex-Death Eaters into Defense.”

Draco didn’t flinch. He uncapped his ink bottle, and levitated his quill to test the point. He didn’t even glance in the boy’s direction. Beside him, Theo didn’t move either.

Professor Ahmad walked in not long after, silencing the room with a nod. She was younger than most of the staff, sharp-eyed, robes crisp. No one knew much about her, which was probably on purpose.

“Today, we begin with ward dissolution,” she said, her voice low and precise. “Theory first. Practical after.”

Draco wrote notes. Cleanly. Carefully. He did not speak unless spoken to.

When the names were read out and Macmillan’s landed beside his, Draco didn’t react. He just moved to the other side of the desk, adjusting his stance slightly so their wands wouldn’t cross.

Ernie didn’t offer a greeting. Neither did Draco.

They nodded, once, in mutual acknowledgment that this was happening.

“On my count,” Draco said quietly, eyes on the practice ward between them.

Ernie gave a clipped nod.

They worked without speaking. The ward resisted at first, as they all did, but between the two of them it buckled in under a minute. Macmillan’s counter-hex was a beat slow. Draco didn’t comment.

When it was over, they stepped back. Ernie straightened his cuffs. Draco reset the spellwork for the next group.

Nothing passed between them but the exercise, but that, apparently, was enough.

He packed up at the bell, nodded once to Theo, and filed out with the other Slytherins.

No one said anything to him on the way out. Not exactly. But someone bumped his shoulder a little harder than necessary. A book dropped behind him. A mutter of “should’ve been put in Azkaban” trailed after him like dust.

Draco straightened his sleeves, fixed his collar, and kept walking.

He’d expected worse.

The walk back from the castle was long enough to settle into silence. The fall leaves were blazing overhead in orange and yellow. 

Hermione was ahead of them on the path, maybe twenty paces or so, her bag slung over one shoulder, her hair frizzing slightly in the damp air. She moved like someone with somewhere to be, even if that somewhere was just her own front door.

Draco kept his hands in his pockets and walked a little slower than usual.

Pansy was reading a folded note from Sinistra like it might bite. Theo trailed slightly behind, chewing the end of his thumbnail and muttering about quiz schedules.

They passed the old apple tree near the edge of the village before Draco said, low and too casually, “What do you think of Granger?”

Pansy didn’t look up. “Academically?”

Theo made a soft pfft sound. “Please.”

“No,” Draco said. “I mean—generally.”

“She’s competent,” Theo offered. “Organised. Probably irons her socks.”

“She’s pretty,” Draco said, like he was trying to toss it off, but it landed too cleanly.

That earned him a glance from Pansy. One eyebrow lifted, then she looked back at her note.

“She’s clean,” she said. “Like emotionally. Like someone who drinks water and follows a skincare routine.”

“I mean it,” Draco added. “She looks good.”

“She always looked good,” Theo said. “You just hated her then.”

Draco ignored him. “There’s something... I don’t know. She’s sort of radiant.”

“Oh my God,” Pansy muttered.

“She is!”

“She’s not for you,” Pansy said. “Which is probably why you’re interested.”

“She hates me less than I expected,” Draco went on. “Which is surprisingly attractive.”

“She doesn’t think about you,” Pansy replied. “Which is probably more attractive.”

Draco frowned.

Ahead of them, Hermione stopped to adjust the strap of her bag. A strand of hair stuck to her neck. She shook it off with the air of someone who didn’t know they were being watched.

“She looks different,” Draco said.

Theo shrugged. “She looks like she owns a planner for fun.”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Draco sighed.

“I find it deeply threatening,” Theo added.

Pansy sighed and rolled the letter between her fingers. “You two are exhausting.”

“I was just asking a question,” Draco said, which made Pansy laugh out loud.

“You never just ask a question,” she said. “You plant a question like it’s a seed and then walk around waiting for it to bloom into a girlfriend.”

Draco opened his mouth, then closed it again.

“She’s fine,” Pansy said, letting it drop. “She’s stable. She probably has a five-year plan. And a budget spreadsheet.”

“She’s also just a girl walking home,” Theo said. “Try to be normal about it.”

They reached the fork in the path, her cottage to the left, theirs to the right. Hermione glanced back over her shoulder and gave a small nod. Not warm, but not cold either. Polite.

Draco nodded back.

She kept walking.

“Radiant,” Pansy muttered.

“Shut up,” Draco said.

Draco woke up with a dry mouth and a headache that felt like it had been charmed directly into his frontal lobe.

Arithmancy. First thing.

He groaned, flopped one arm over his face, and promised himself he’d never drink with Theo again. Or Blaise. Or Pansy. Or at all, really, but especially not when he had to be in class before the sun finished rising.

Firewhisky.

Right. The bonfire. Blaise’s bad influence. Theo’s “just one more toast” . Pansy’s running commentary on constellations and hypocrisy. The vague memory of singing. Loudly. Off-key.

He groaned and dragged a pillow over his face.

Then came the knock. He froze. Another knock. Light. Measured.

His entire body went cold.

Aurors, his brain supplied, unhelpfully. They’ve finally come to drag you back. Or it’s McGonagall with a contract for your immediate execution. Or—

He rolled out of bed, half-panicked, shirt clinging to one side of his chest, tie askew, and stumbled to the window.

Not an Auror. Worse.

Hermione Granger stood on his front step, holding something in her arms. She was in full uniform, all buttoned, tied, pressed, and looking disgustingly functional for what had to be not even seven-fifteen.

He reeled back from the window.

“Shit.”

He had thirty seconds, max.

He splashed water on his face. Dragged fingers through his hair, aargh, too flat. Ruffled it. Overcorrected. Ruffled again. Buttoned two buttons, left the rest open. Jammed his school jumper over it like he hadn’t been entirely horizontal three minutes ago. Picked up a book. Dropped it. Picked a different one.

Another knock.

He opened the door. She stood there in full uniform, hair pulled back but already frizzing at the edges, cheeks faintly pink from the morning air. In her hands, she held something small and soft and folded.

“I found your planner,” she said. “You left it in the grass behind the Meeting House.”

It was wrapped. In white cotton. A tea towel, he thought, embroidered at the corners with crooked flowers in faded thread.

She had taken one of his possessions, wrapped it in something of hers, something handmade, something sentimental , and brought it to his door in the pale light of dawn .

His breath caught. Not metaphorically. Literally. Actually.

“You wrapped it,” he said, though the words barely made it past his throat.

“It was damp,” she replied, casual, like she hadn’t just invoked half a dozen layers of intention. “I didn’t want the pages to curl.”

He didn’t take it immediately. He couldn’t bear it. He could only look at it, then at her and then back to the cloth. 

“This is yours?”

“Yes,” she said, tone still light. “It was just the cleanest thing nearby.”

The towel had clearly been hers for years—washed a hundred times, softened with age, worn at the edges. He could still see the uneven stitching in the petals. Not decorative. Not mass-produced. Not meaningless.

A childhood towel.

And she had used it to deliver something of his. Folded it, wrapped it, and held it out to him like a vow.

He took it carefully, both hands. His fingers brushed hers.

The warmth of the cloth. The quiet of the hour. The air between them.

“It’s embroidered,” he said, stupidly, because his mind was still catching up with the gravity of what she’d done.

“I was ten,” she said, brows lifting. “It’s just a towel.”

He didn’t correct her.

He couldn’t.

“I’ll return it,” he said instead, solemn.

She huffed a laugh. “You really don’t need to.”

“Still,” he said again, and in his bones, he meant it.

She looked at him for a moment longer, then nodded. “Well—I hope you enjoy your planner.”

He almost told her she’d made it his favorite possession. Instead, he smiled. Small, he hoped, but it probably came out lopsided. 

“You too.”

She tilted her head at that, like maybe she hadn’t heard him properly, but didn’t ask. Just turned and walked back into the morning.

He didn’t close the door. Just stood there, watching her disappear into the soft gold haze between the trees. Then he stepped inside and locked it behind him.

He set the cloth wrapped parcel on the table, looked at it a moment, and then unwrapped it like it might shatter. He ran a thumb along the stitching.

And, with more care than he’d used for anything in years, opened his returned planner and wrote:

Wednesday, September 12
Hermione Granger initiated courtship.
( 07:14. Front doorstep. Embroidered towel. Unmistakable. )

Then he closed the book, and sat there in the stillness for a quarter of an hour, trying to remember how to breathe.

He didn’t eat breakfast.

He tried. Made tea. Toasted bread. Stared at both like they were dangerous ingredients. Eventually gave up and sat back down at his desk, the cloth still folded on top of his planner like a reliquary.

At 7:57, he took out his stationery.

He selected the cream parchment with the silver edging, formal, but not alarming, and his favorite self-inking quill. The one his grandmother had given him on his fifteenth birthday with a firm reminder that a gentleman never scribbles. He uncapped it. Took a breath.

Then, carefully, began to write.

My Dearest Mother,

I hope this finds you well. Please pass along my regards to father and the dahlias in the conservatory.

I write with some urgency regarding a development this morning of a personal and potentially significant nature.

Hermione Granger (yes, that Hermione Granger) has, as of approximately 07:14 this morning, returned one of my personal belongings (my academic planner) wrapped in a childhood tea towel, hand-embroidered with floral motifs . The item was presented directly, with eye contact, on my front step, at dawn .

The implications are unmistakable.

I trust you will understand the gravity of this gesture. I have, naturally, responded with restraint.

(So far.)

To be perfectly clear: I did not initiate this.

She selected the towel. She wrapped the item. She delivered it. I did not imagine it. I’ve included a sketch of the embroidery for reference.

Do you believe I should write to her parents?

I understand she may not be entirely fluent in tradition, being Muggleborn, but surely even Muggles have some equivalent of this gesture. It did not feel accidental.

Your thoughts on next steps would be appreciated. I am not unopposed to the possibility, but I’d prefer to avoid scandal. Or surprise bonding rites. Or, God forbid, public discussion.

Please advise.

With love,
Your son,
D.L.M.

P.S. I am wearing a shirt. I was wearing a shirt at the time. Yes, it was open. No, I don’t believe that influenced her decision.

He folded it, sealed it, and skittered down to the owlery to send it off with the faster of the two owls that he had brought with him to Hogwarts. 

Then he sat back at his table and stared at the folded towel, and whispered, with both reverence and disbelief, “She gave me flowers.”

He was doing his best to focus.

Millicent was halfway through a surprisingly technical breakdown of the Holyhead Harpies’ new starting line-up, and Draco was nodding at intervals, pretending he hadn’t just written a letter to his mother about a girl.

“She’s good on a broom,” Millicent was saying. “But she’s inconsistent on her left side. Too many bludgers last season. They’ve moved her to sweep because they can’t trust her under pressure.”

“Mm,” Draco murmured, slicing a piece of apple he had no intention of eating.

Millicent sat across from him, broad-shouldered and calmly disheveled, her sleeves rolled high and collar open, wand stuck behind her ear like a carpenter’s pencil. Her hair was pinned up in a knot that was either deliberately messy or hadn’t been touched since breakfast—he couldn’t tell which. She looked like someone who could carry two people out of a burning building and then give a precise tactical account of how the fire had started. She was eating with one hand and annotating the Harpies’ playbook in the margins of The Prophet with the other.

He was at the far end of the Slytherin table, back to the wall, eyes carefully not drifting toward the Gryffindor table—or more specifically, to where Granger sat, surrounded by people who hadn’t just had their entire courtship trajectory launched without warning.

He was fine. Everything was under control, then the owl arrived.

It was Narcissa’s. He knew before it even cleared the rafters. Pale plumage, silent wings, silver seal. It dropped the letter directly into his lap and then, horrifyingly , settled itself on the bench beside him.

Millicent blinked. “That’s not unsettling at all.”

He broke the seal, unfolded the parchment, and just as his eyes caught the first line, Millicent reached across the table and plucked the letter from his hands.

He blinked. “Millie—”

She’d already cleared her throat. “If it’s from your mother and delivered by a death owl, I think we all deserve to know.”

“It is not a death owl.”

The owl blinked slowly beside him.

She smoothed the page, turned slightly so her voice wouldn't carry, and began to read aloud—quietly but not particularly discreetly.

“ My dearest son,

I received your letter and have read it carefully.

There is no ambiguity in the gesture you describe. To offer a personal belonging, wrapped in sentimental fabric, presented by hand and in the early light—it is not a mistake. It is not a misunderstanding. It is a declaration. Whether she meant it that way or not is irrelevant. —--- has always struck me as–” Millicent paused here, looked up, raised an eyebrow, then continued—omitting the name that followed.

“ She has always struck me as precise and proud, but I underestimated the depth of her instinct. There is something to be said for a girl who does not ask permission to begin something meaningful.

If you intend to receive it—receive it properly.

In three days, return the cloth, with something of yours enclosed. Something that carries weight but not magic. Thoughtfulness, not extravagance. If you do this foolishly, it will be worse than if you do nothing at all.

You are not courting a headline. You are not courting attention.

You are courting .

Behave like it.

With love,
Mother
P.S. Fix your tie. I could feel it from Wiltshire.”

Millicent refolded the letter with slow, deliberate care and returned it to his plate like a napkin.

“Oh my fucking christ,” she said, tone even, looking at the letter like it might explode. 

Draco didn’t respond.

The owl blinked again and took off, as if it had somewhere far more important to be.

Millicent reached for another piece of bread. “Three days,” she said, shaking her head. “You better make them count. You’re so fucked.”

Draco glanced at the towel, still folded, invisible, and tucked beside the planner in his bag.

He had never, in his life, wished more for a guidebook.

It began, as these things often did, with timing.

He heard her before he saw her; sharp footsteps, sensible pace, the quiet rustle of parchment in a bag likely organized by subject and alphabetical tab. She came around the corner just as he reached the top of the Transfiguration corridor, and he adjusted his posture without thinking.

Not slouched. Not stiff. Absolutely poised. 

She almost ran into him.

And instead of stepping back with a muttered apology or one of his old, reflexive barbs, he inclined his head slightly, stepped to the side, and extended one hand in the space between them. Not touching. Not quite ceremonial. But deliberate.

“Granger,” he said, evenly. “After you.”

She blinked at him. Not rudely—just startled.

“Right. Thanks?”

She passed.

He kept his eyes fixed just above her shoulder, resisting the urge to look back. Every detail mattered—the angle of his head, the precise lift of his hand, the cadence of her name. It wasn’t just politeness. It was acknowledgment. Respect. A courtship formality so old it had nearly fallen out of fashion.

Nearly.

When he took his seat in class, he didn’t glance her way. Didn’t need to. She was unsettled, he could feel it. Not alarmed, not angry, just aware. That was good. That was what day one was for.

Day two, same hallway. Different hour.

He caught her watching him before she turned the corner. Her pace slowed. She hesitated. He did not.

Same bow. Same hand. A little sharper, a touch more elegant. “Miss Granger,” he murmured, barely loud enough for anyone else to hear.

She gave him a look like he’d offered to carry her through a rainstorm, then walked past without speaking.

Progress.

By day three, he had taken the long route just to cross the courtyard when he saw her heading in from the greenhouses. He didn’t expect it to be convenient. Courtship rarely was.

He stepped across her path, pivoted lightly, one hand over his chest, the other gesturing her through. Not exaggerated. Not mocking. True.

She stopped cold.

“Okay,” she said flatly. “What.”

He blinked. “Is something wrong?”

“You keep doing—” she gestured in a vague, circular motion toward him, “— that .”

He raised an eyebrow, pleasantly. “I’m not sure I follow.”

“You’re bowing at me.”

“I am being courteous.”

“Since when? ”

He didn’t answer. Just let a small smile curl at the corner of his mouth, part amusement, part intention. She wasn’t ready to understand, and he wasn’t going to rush it. Not after she’d wrapped his planner in a towel embroidered with flowers and delivered it to him with her own hands.

So he inclined his head again, just slightly.

Then turned on his heel and walked away, cloak catching the wind just enough to satisfy the part of him that enjoyed stagecraft.

He did not look back. He didn’t have to. Because he knew she was watching, and wondering.

And that was exactly the point.

It was late, and the Meeting House had mostly emptied out. Someone had spelled the lanterns to dim themselves at half-eight, and now the common space flickered in warm gold and soft blue. A fire burned low in the grate. Theo was stretched out on the old blue velvet settee with his legs dangling off one armrest, quill tucked behind one ear, lazily annotating his Astronomy chart.

Draco sat in the armchair nearest the window, ankles crossed, reading something he’d clearly already read before. His posture was too careful. Back straight, expression arranged into that passive, thoughtful look he used whenever he wanted to appear detached and scholarly. The kind of look that screamed I’m not thinking about her, while doing absolutely nothing else.

Theo didn’t look up from his parchment.

“Alright,” he said casually, “how many owls has your mother sent this week?”

Draco didn’t glance over. “Three.”

“Liar.”

A pause.

“Five,” Draco admitted. “And one note forwarded from her social secretary.”

Theo nodded, as if this confirmed a theory. “Five since Wednesday.”

Another beat passed. Then— “You’re smug.”

Draco blinked. “I’m not smug.”

“You’re radiating smug. It’s coming off you in waves. Like after you got that write up in Witch Weekley and pretended not to care for an entire press cycle.”

“I don’t care about write ups,” Draco said, flipping a page with exaggerated dignity.

“Sure,” Theo said. “And you definitely haven’t been rehearsing how to say Miss Granger in different tones depending on the corridor.”

Draco didn’t answer, pointed. 

Theo stretched his arms overhead, groaning slightly. “Is this going to be a slow burn sort of disaster, or should we brace for a full implosion by end of term?”

“She brought me something,” Draco said, very evenly, like it justified everything.

Theo stared at him. “She returned your planner. ”

“In an embroidered towel.”

“You sound like you’re describing a holy relic.”

Draco looked over finally, and there it was—the tiny lift of one corner of his mouth, the smug, secretive softness of someone who’d already decided this meant everything .

Theo narrowed his eyes. “Merlin’s balls. You think this is mutual.”

“It is mutual,” Draco said, just a little too fast. “She made a gesture.”

Theo sighed, dropped his parchment on his chest, and covered his eyes with one forearm.

“You’re going to get hexed.”

“Or married,” Draco said serenely, and returned to his book.

Theo didn’t move. “I’m getting Pansy.”

Draco’s head snapped up, eyes wide. “Gods, no. Don’t get Mother .”

“She’s not your mother.”

“She might as well be,” Draco muttered. “She already controls the lighting in my room and three-quarters of my wardrobe.”

Theo peeled one eye open. “You deserve it.”

“I really don’t.”

“You started bowing.”

“It was one bow.”

“Draco, you’ve bowed at her three times this week and offered her the path to Astronomy like she was the Dowager Queen of the Moon.”

“She wrapped my planner in an heirloom tea towel !”

“That is not a thing.”

“It is a thing!”

Theo sat up with a groan. “Pansy is going to eat you alive.”

Draco waved a hand. “I’ll tell her at the right moment.”

“You’re going to crack like a second-year in front of her and we both know it.”

There was a beat of silence.

Draco turned a page, expression carefully composed. “She’s going to be delighted for me.”

Theo snorted. “She’s going to put you through the fucking cruciatus of etiquette.”

Draco sighed. “Fine. But let’s wait until tomorrow.”

“No promises,” Theo said, already reaching for his bag. “But I’ll give you a head start.”

Draco woke before the sun, which was frankly unnecessary.

There was no alarm. No charm. Just the overfunctioning machinery of his own mind, helpfully dragging him out of sleep at half-six because apparently today was important .

He lay there for a moment, staring at the ceiling, trying to remember if he’d always been this dramatic or if it was a post-war development. Probably both.

The cottage was cold. His feet hit the floor and immediately regretted it. He showered. Shaved. Stared at his wardrobe like it was some sort of exam. Eventually settled on charcoal wool and rolled sleeves, which said serious but not unhinged , or so he hoped.

The towel was waiting on his desk, right where he’d left it: folded neatly, small white corners embroidered with uneven little flowers. The kind of thing no one gave you unless they loved you or had absolutely no idea what it meant.

He still wasn’t convinced it wasn’t both.

He picked it up. Smoothed the edges.

Inside: one black knight, unenchanted, carved stone, slightly scuffed from actual use. She’d seen him play with it. He was sure of that. The piece had a decent amount of character—clever angle to the ears, a bit of a lean. Possibly the most expressive object he owned.

He tucked the note underneath.

I always play black. Would you like to play this evening?

It was impossible to read without sounding smug. He’d tested it aloud. Three times.

He rewrapped the towel, folding the corners with the same care she had used. The final result looked… innocuous. Small. Completely deranged, if you knew what was inside it.

At 7:12, he stood.

At 7:14, he crossed the green with the kind of purposeful stride that might’ve implied war meeting , not returning dish towel.

At exactly 7:15, he knocked on her door.

And then he waited.

Because courtship, apparently, required precision. And nerves. And— Merlin help him —a sense of pageantry.

She hadn’t meant to sleep in, really, but Friday was the only morning she didn’t have class until eleven, and the weather had been particularly persuasive: cool, grey, faintly misty. The sort of morning that whispered not yet every time she rolled over, so she stayed in bed. She drifted in and out of half-dreams, and one of them had something to do with an exam she hadn’t studied for and Draco Malfoy wearing a cravat.

She was still trying to make sense of that when the knock came.

Not urgent. Just a soft, clear knock—three taps. Firm and measured.

She blinked, sat up, and squinted toward the clock.

7:15.

What kind of unhinged person knocks at seven-fifteen on a Friday—

She swung her legs out of bed, tugged on her dressing gown (navy blue, threadbare, one pocket slightly torn), and shuffled to the door, hair escaping from a plait, socks slipping on the floor. She didn’t check the mirror. 

The sight of Draco Malfoy on her doorstep felt entirely disproportionate to the hour. He looked absurdly awake. Pressed shirt. Sleeves rolled. Hair combed and behaving. He was holding something, was that her tea towel?

“Granger,” he said, entirely too composed for someone on a social call at sunrise. “Good morning.”

She stared at him. “What.”

He hesitated just long enough for it to be noticeable. “I—came to return this.”

He held the parcel out to her. She reached for it instinctively. It was light. Familiar. It was her towel.

“Oh,” she said, and stifled a yawn. “Right.”

“It was very kind of you,” he added, and she realized, belatedly, that he sounded serious. Not performatively grateful. Not smirking. Formal. 

She blinked at the towel. “Okay. You didn’t have to—”

“There’s something inside,” he said, quickly, before she could hand it back or drop it on the table. “Not enchanted, don’t worry. Just—open it later.”

She squinted at him. He did not waver. It was, somehow, the same tone he’d used when offering her the right of way all week. Bow-adjacent. Gentleman-adjacent. Something -adjacent.

“Are you alright?” she asked, adjusting her dressing gown. “You’ve been—bowing. A lot.”

“I’m well, thank you,” he said, like that answered anything.

“Right,” she said slowly.

They stared at each other for a beat. She became aware, with painful clarity, that she was standing there in penguin print pajamas and socks with little daisies on them. He, on the other hand, looked like he’d just emerged from a catalogue labeled Elegant Brooding for the Slightly Deranged.

“Right,” she said again. “Well. Thanks for the towel.”

He inclined his head. “My pleasure.”

And then, with terrifying composure, he turned and walked back down the path, leaving her standing barefoot in the doorway holding what now felt very much like a bomb disguised as laundry.

She closed the door slowly, the towel still in her hands.

It was soft from age, familiar from use, and she wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about seeing it in his hands. She set it on the kitchen table without unwrapping it and crossed to the counter, filling the kettle by feel, lighting the hob with a flick of her wand.

It was early. Too early to be thinking about anything but tea and toast and maybe putting on actual trousers. But there it sat—folded, careful, unmistakably returned with intention.

She didn’t open it right away.

She washed her face first. Pulled her dressing gown tighter. Tied her hair up with an elastic she found looped around the base of her toothbrush. By the time she poured her tea, the towel was still there, right where she’d left it, like it was waiting for her to stop pretending it wasn’t the most intriguing object in the cottage.

She sat down, tucked one leg under the other, and unwrapped it.

The folds were precise. Each corner tucked cleanly under the next. He’d done it carefully, almost exactly the way she had. Her fingers moved more slowly now, unpeeling the layers, until something solid and unfamiliar slipped free.

A small black chess piece. It rolled once, and came to rest in the center of the table with a faint knock. A knight. Unenchanted. Heavy and black, a little scuffed at the base, and worn by time, not polished for show.

She blinked. A moment later, a small slip of parchment slipped loose and fluttered down beside it. She picked it up.

I always play black. Would you like to play this evening?

Hermione sat back in her chair. The steam from her tea curled gently past her face as she looked from the note to the piece, then back again.

And, despite herself, despite every reasonable protest she should have felt, she smiled. Not much, of course. Just a quiet twitch at the corner of her mouth. A warmth behind the eyes.

It was strange.

It was absurd .

It was so, so charming.

They were halfway across the green, Ginny balancing two apples and a broom over one shoulder, when Hermione cleared her throat.

“I’m not coming to practice tonight,” she said, too casually.

Ginny glanced over. “You don’t usually come to practice.”

“I came last week.”

“You came to mock Corner’s technique and eat half a treacle tart.”

“Well, I’m not coming to do that either.”

Ginny arched an eyebrow. “Okay. What are you doing instead?”

Hermione hesitated for half a second too long. “Playing chess.”

Ginny stopped walking. “With who ?”

Hermione kept her gaze fixed ahead. “Draco Malfoy.”

There was a beat of silence, then Ginny barked out a laugh. “I’m sorry— what ?”

Hermione glanced sideways. “You heard me.”

“I just wasn’t sure I’d understood .”

“I’m playing chess,” Hermione said, louder this time, “with Draco Malfoy. This evening. In the Meeting House, I think. Possibly near a window. Possibly with tea. It’s not a big deal.”

Ginny stared. “He invited you to play?”

“He returned my towel.”

Ginny blinked. “What?”

Hermione sighed. “Long story. Not important.”

“Oh no. That’s very important. That sounds like at least three levels of metaphor.”

“It was just a towel!”

“Was it?”

Hermione didn’t answer. Mostly because she didn’t have a good one.

Ginny slowed her pace, eyes narrowing. “So this chess game. It’s a date?”

“It’s a game.”

“A game game or a we’re-calling-it-a-game-so-no-one-panics game?”

Hermione rubbed her temple. “If I say I don’t know, will you let me go in peace?”

Ginny grinned. “Absolutely not. I’m going to get hit with a bludger tonight because I’m not paying attention and thinking about what you’re wearing. And how long it takes him to offer you a biscuit. And whether he lets you win.”

“I’m going to win,” Hermione said flatly.

“Even better.”

They reached the edge of the green, the path splitting, Ginny toward the pitch, Hermione toward the cottages.

Ginny bumped her shoulder as she turned. “Let me know if you need rescuing.”

“I won’t.”

“You might .”

“I won’t,” Hermione repeated, but softer now, less sure, and then she walked on, the stone knight tucked in her pocket, still warm from her body heat all day. 

Her evening so far had been quiet.

She’d made pasta. Nothing elaborate, just something warm, with garlic and too much cracked pepper, something to do with her hands. She ate slowly, reading through her Charms notes between bites, the cottage lit gold with low lamplight and the kettle humming faintly in the background.

It wasn’t until she was rinsing the dishes, stacking them neatly on the rack to dry, that it hit her.

He never said a time.

She froze. The teacup in her hand dripped once into the sink.

No time.

No place.

He had said this evening.

She dried her hands slowly, as if that might help the panic settle, and replayed it in her head. The towel. The knight. The note.

Would you like to play this evening?

That was it.

She’d assumed the Meeting House. Naturally. It had the chess sets, after all. The porch was comfortable, the lamplight soft. It made sense. It was logical. But he hadn’t said that. Maybe he meant the great hall? Or one of their cottages? His cottage?

Gods. Had she been meant to respond?

Was this some elaborate Slytherin flirtation trap where silence meant yes and not showing up meant declaration of war ?

She looked at the clock.

6:43.

Too early to casually show up somewhere and pretend she just happened to be there.

Too late to write a note without seeming neurotic.

She stared at the black knight on the shelf beside her books. It stared back, utterly useless and completely smug.

“Why wouldn’t you just write a time,” she muttered aloud, pulling her dressing gown tighter around her.

The sky was dimming outside her window, the first stars starting to show. The kind of evening perfect for a walk. Or a duel. Or a date. Or a game of chess that might be all three and none at once.

At 7:15 p.m.—twelve hours, almost to the minute, since she’d opened the towel—Hermione left her cottage and wandered toward the Meeting House, attempting to project an air of casual indifference.

It was, of course, a performance.

She’d changed outfits three times. First into something too formal (a blouse with buttons all the way up), then something too relaxed (a top she realized had a jam stain down the front), and finally landed on a soft grey jumper and a clean pair of dark jeans, with a pair of ankle boots she rarely wore because they made a very particularly loud sound on the stones in the caster. 

Her hair was down. Not styled, exactly, more tended to.

She wasn’t sure what she was hoping to look like, exactly—capable? effortless? someone who hadn’t spent the last thirty minutes pacing the length of her tiny cottage trying to decode a ten-word note?—but she could at least pretend it hadn’t mattered.

The Meeting House was lit when she arrived. Not brightly, with a few soft lamps flickering behind the windows. The porch glowed faintly, shadows moving inside. She climbed the steps slowly, half-hoping she’d get there first, half-hoping he’d already be inside.

It wasn’t empty.

Draco Malfoy, seated at the chess table nearest the window, back straight, one hand resting lightly on the table, the board already set.

Hannah Abbott and Ernie Macmillan were at the far end, bustling around the larger shared kitchen. Ernie was stoking the fire under the copper kettle, while Hannah sliced something that looked suspiciously like rhubarb. They were laughing quietly over something, content, domestic, utterly at ease in a way that made Hermione feel instantly self-conscious.

Hannah glanced up first, and then Ernie followed. Both of them went still when they saw her walk in. Not rudely, but long enough to register that she wasn’t headed for them, but for Draco.

He was seated at the small chess table near the front window, back straight, one ankle resting casually over the opposite knee. Not in uniform, or in robes.

He wore dark trousers, well-fitted, pressed, and a charcoal jumper layered over a soft white shirt. The sleeves of the jumper had been pushed up to his forearms, and the shirt cuffs rolled neatly once, exposing wrists and a wristwatch and the faint ridge of tendon just above his palm. His hair was, of course, perfect: pushed back off his forehead, parted slightly on one side, like he’d run his hands through it just enough for it to look deliberate.

There was a book folded open beside him, spine-down. His wand rested across the top of the chessboard. The pieces were already in place.

When he looked up and saw her, he stood without hesitation.

Hannah shot her a look, surprised. Ernie blinked like he wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t imagining the entire thing.

Hermione kept walking towards Draco, her boots clicking softly on the floor. Her face was politely composed. She felt, with sharp clarity, the weight of every eye in the room, even as Draco nodded once, respectfully, and said, in that maddeningly level voice of his:

“Miss Granger.” He said her name in a low murmur, and gestured for her to sit. 

She reached into her bag and drew out the knight. It was still warm from sitting by the window in her cottage, though she imagined that was just her. Or nerves. Or the fact that she’d picked it up and set it down at least ten times before leaving.

She placed it gently on the board between them, not tossed, not handed over, but returned . Her fingers brushed the carved stone one last time before she let go.

Draco’s gaze flicked to it, then back to her.

“I believe this is yours,” she said.

His mouth twitched, just slightly. “I thought you might keep it.”

She arched an eyebrow. “What would I do with a single knight?”

“Hold onto it,” he said, lightly. “Display it on a shelf. Make other suitors nervous.”

“I don’t have other suitors.”

“You might,” he said. “After tonight.”

Hermione huffed a quiet laugh. “You’re not seriously suggesting that a game of chess with you is going to launch a wave of romantic competition.”

“No,” Draco said. “I’m suggesting that playing chess with me, looking like that , might.”

She blinked at him, and then, slowly, against her better judgment, she smiled.

He reached for the white pawn in front of her queen, and tapped it.

“You open,” he said simply.

Hermione narrowed her eyes.

“This is still a game,” she reminded him.

Draco tilted his head.

“Of course,” he said smoothly. “Just one with slightly higher stakes.”

She nudged the pawn forward two squares.

“Then I hope you’re ready to lose.”

She lost the first game in twenty-three moves.

It started well enough—at least, she thought it had. She advanced her pawns steadily, castled early, kept her eyes on the center of the board like every book said she should. But somewhere between move twelve and fifteen, things began to quietly unravel.

He never looked smug. Never gloated. He just played like someone who had learned the game young and played it often, who didn’t waste movements or blink at risk. His knight maneuvered like it was dancing, his queen waited in perfect, predatory stillness. There was no flashiness to it. No cruelty.

By the time he took her bishop with a rook she’d forgotten about, she knew it was over.

She stared at the board for a moment after the final move, arms crossed, brow furrowed.

“Well,” she said at last. “That was embarrassing .”

Draco sat back in his chair, not triumphant—just pleased. “You’re not bad.”

“I’m terrible.”

“No,” he said. “Just—hopeful.”

She gave him a look.

“You play like someone who believes in fairness,” he clarified. “That everything can be reasoned with. You’re very principled.”

“Is that your diplomatic way of saying I walked into every single one of your traps?”

“No,” he said. “My diplomatic way of saying that your optimism is charming but entirely unsuited to warfare.”

She snorted.

“I’m used to playing with Ron,” she admitted. “Which is less chess and more organized spite.”

“That explains the queen sacrifice.”

Hermione groaned and dropped her head briefly into her hands. “Don’t say it out loud.”

Draco smiled, wider this time, but not unkindly. “Would you like to play again?”

She peeked at him between her fingers. “Only if you promise not to write home about it.”

He held up one hand. “No letters to Mother. Not unless you take more than three pieces.”

“Five,” she wheedled.

“Four and a pawn.”

Hermione lifted her head, reached forward, and began resetting the board. “I’m going to destroy you.”

“I look forward to it,” he smiled again.

He beat her again.

Not quite as ruthlessly this time, she had managed to keep her queen for most of the match and even had a brief, shining moment where it looked like she might regain control of the center, but somewhere around move twenty-nine, she saw the shape of her own defeat forming two turns ahead.

Draco didn’t gloat. He didn’t have to. The way he moved his rook, smooth, inevitable, was victory enough.

She sighed and leaned back in her chair, glancing down at her watch. It was later than she thought.

“Well,” she said, stretching her arms over her head with a grimace, “that’s two straight losses. I hope your ego is sufficiently fed.”

Draco tilted his head. “You improved.”

“I lasted five more moves.”

“Six,” he corrected. “And I didn’t see that knight feint coming.”

Hermione gave him a flat look. “You countered it in three seconds.”

“I was impressed for two of them.”

She rolled her eyes, but the corners of her mouth curved up all the same.

Behind them, the kitchen had long since gone dark. Ernie and Hannah must’ve left an hour ago, and now the Meeting House was lit only by the low lamps along the walls and the fire that had shrunk to a soft glow in the hearth.

Draco stood, slowly, and glanced toward the windows.

“I’ll walk you back,” he said.

“You don’t have to,” she said lightly, standing as well and smoothing out the front of her jumber. “I can manage thirty metres.”

“I know you can,” he said, quiet now. “But I’d still like to.”

She looked up at him, and for a moment there was no cleverness between them, and only the hush of a room at the end of a long day, and the strange comfort of being seen and not looked through.

“Alright,” she said finally. “If you insist.”

“I do,” he murmured, and held the door for her like a man with all the time in the world.

The walk back was quiet, and very short. They didn’t speak much, and somehow that felt correct, like whatever thread had been drawn between them didn’t need words to hold. The path was soft beneath their feet, the trees above rustling gently with early autumn wind. The cottage lights were warm against the deepening sky.

Draco didn’t walk too close. He kept his hands in his coat pockets, his gaze mostly forward. Once or twice he glanced sideways at her, quick, unreadable flicks of his eyes, but he didn’t fill the silence, didn’t press for more.

When they reached her door, Hermione paused with her hand on the latch.

“Thanks,” she said, turning back to him. “For the game. Both games.”

Draco inclined his head. “You improved.”

She gave a dry little huff. “That’s what you say to a first-year who doesn’t fall off their broom.”

He didn’t argue.

She opened the door, and paused in the opening. Draco glanced around her, and pointed his wand at her table. He shot a silent spell at it. 

In its wake, a glass vase appeared, narrow, elegant, catching the lamplight in thin silver threads. Inside it, pale lavender asters bloomed, their heads nodding slightly in the breeze. They were soft and unassuming, delicate without being showy.

Hermione turned to look at them, then turned back to him.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

But he was already walking away. Not quickly, and not intentionally dramatically, although he did look it with hands in his pockets, his coat catching on the wind. He didn’t look back.

She stood in the doorway for a long moment, watching the flowers, then reached out, touched one gently with the back of her knuckle, and went inside.

Asters. How lovely.

September 15th
Hogsmeade Village – Temporary Residence

Mother,

You’ll be pleased to know that I’ve taken your advice and remained both measured and respectful in all interactions. No dramatic overtures. No public spectacles. I am being—if you can believe it—gentlemanly.

We played two games of chess tonight. She lost both, though she showed remarkable improvement between them. She does not play defensively, which surprised me at first, but in hindsight… of course she doesn’t. She plays like someone who assumes logic will save her. Like someone who thinks good faith is a strategy.

I walked her back to her cottage. We didn’t touch. I didn’t linger.

At her door, I conjured a vase—glass—and placed asters inside. Lavender ones. I remembered my lessons: they mean elegance and patience, and they are also the flower of the month of September.. I imagine she’ll look it up. Or perhaps she won’t need to. She’s frighteningly clever when she isn’t trying to be.

She thanked me. I didn’t stay to hear more.

I will not ask for advice, only that you think kindly of this, whatever it becomes.

Your son,
Draco

P.S. Please do not send anything enchanted, embroidered, or scented. I am trying to go slowly.
P.P.S. If you must send something, books are acceptable. She respects books.

Last P.S. It is her birthday in a few days. Any advice on the appropriate gift?

Draco knew the next step.

He had known it the moment she returned his knight with a shy, embarrassed smile, the moment she sat across from him again and again, letting him beat her at chess and pretending it mattered. It was written in every flicker of her glance when she thought he wasn't looking. It was woven into the asters still standing—miraculously—on her windowsill.

Light her hearth.

And he didn’t know how to do it.

It wasn’t the magic, of course. That part was simple. A flick of the wand, a murmur of igneus domum, and the fire would catch, steady and sure, fed by the quiet promise of the old spell. It was the invitation that rattled him—the permission that had to come from her. He could not light a hearth unasked, could not cross a threshold she did not open.

He watched her from his porch as Saturday slid into evening, the village wrapped in gold and grey. Hermione was curled into one of the battered armchairs outside her cottage, reading in the last light. A sweater was thrown over her knees. Her hair caught every stray thread of sun.

He had been sitting on his own steps for twenty minutes, pretending to polish his broom, heart hammering like a boy waiting to ask for a first dance.

You’re being ridiculous, he told himself. It’s H ermione Granger , not the Queen.

But it was Hermione Granger, and that was infinitely worse.

He rose before he could lose his nerve, crossing the small green. She glanced up, squinting against the light, and he almost faltered. Almost.

“Granger,” he said, pitching his voice low, easy.

She smiled at him, distracted, but genuine, and laid her ribbon bookmark across her page.

“Malfoy,” she greeted, sitting up straighter. “Finished terrorizing your broom, then?”

Draco stared at her, and although he tried to speak, nothing emerged.

“Malfoy,” she repeated. “Everything all right?”

“Yes.” No. “Fine. I just—” He paused. His tongue felt thick. “You look cold.”

Hermione raised her brows, glancing down at herself, then back up at him. “I’m fine,” she said slowly. “It’s not that chilly.”

Abort. Abort. Get out of this.

But he couldn’t. The words were already rising.

“Would you—” he cleared his throat, shifted his weight—“would you like me to light your hearth?”

She stared at him.

“Oh,” she replied. A beat. “What, now?”

He blinked. “Yes. If—if you’d like.”

Another pause.

“I mean… if you want to,” she said, looking visibly puzzled. “I guess? It’s just the usual charm, right? I’ve been doing it myself.”

He laughed. It came out strange and high.

“Yes, well. Tradition. It’s, you know.” Oh, God, what if she doesn’t know? “Old-fashioned,” he added weakly.

Hermione closed her book slowly, watching him. Her brows drew together—not suspicious, but uncertain. She knew enough now, he thought. Enough to guess it meant something. Enough to know it was not casual.

She chewed the inside of her cheek, thinking.

Please, he thought, with a desperation he barely recognized as his own. Please let me.

Finally, finally , she gave a little nod.

“I suppose it’s getting cold,” she answered lightly. “If you want to.”

Relief crashed through him so hard he thought he might sway. He stepped onto her porch—cautiously, reverently—and drew his wand.

The hearth inside was old, crooked with use, but the stones were clean. Draco murmured the spell under his breath, watching as the kindling caught with a soft bloom of gold, the flames rising up, steady and sure.

A hearth lit by his hand, under her roof.

An ancient promise.

He turned back to her, feeling strangely breathless.

“All done,” he said.

Hermione smiled again, smaller this time. “Thank you, Malfoy.”

He nodded, stepped back down into the gathering dusk before he could ruin it, before he could say something foolish, something true.

She watched him go. Again, he did not look back. 

Dinner at Pansy’s cottage was an unspoken tradition now. No formal invitations, of course, just the expectation that when the sun went down on Saturday, they would find their way to her door, carrying bottles, carrying gossip, carrying whatever scraps of news or disaster the week had offered up.

Draco arrived late, still riding the strange high of the evening. Hermione had accepted his fire. She had smiled at him. She had thanked him. It was happening faster than he had dared to hope— their understanding , settling itself neatly into place.

He slid into his usual seat between Blaise and Theo, accepted a glass of wine from Pansy without comment, and waited for the conversation to lull before making his announcement.

“I’ll be writing to her parents tomorrow,” he said, casually, like one might announce an appointment to have their robes taken in.

There was a beat of silence.

Pansy paused, knife poised mid-air over the roast beef she was carving. Theo blinked at him. Blaise shifted slowly in his chair, giving Draco a long, assessing look. Only Millie reacted with anything like enthusiasm, perking up and reaching for the wine.

“Oh, haven’t you heard?” she said, tipping the bottle toward her glass. “Her parents aren’t here. They’re in Australia.”

Draco frowned. “Australia?”

Millie nodded. “Memory charm. During the war. She wiped herself right out of their lives.”

He stared at her. “But—surely she undid it.”

Millie shrugged, sloshing wine. “Maybe. Still, last I heard, they stayed. New practice, new life. Can’t imagine they’d be thrilled to get a wizard post.”

Draco sat back, frowning.

“Well,” he said eventually. “If not her parents—then Potter, perhaps? He’s something like an honorary brother. Or maybe the littlest Weasley. She might be close enough.”

The silence this time was heavier. Shocked, and deeply concerned.

Tracey choked on her wine and coughed so hard Blaise leaned away.

“You’re going to what?” she wheezed, eyes watering. “Send a letter to Harry Potter asking for his blessing?”

Draco stiffened. “It’s traditional.”

“It’s madness ,” Blaise muttered, swirling his glass.

“I think it’s sweet,” Daphne offered, though even she looked uncertain now. “In an archaic, tragic sort of way.”

Pansy finally set down the carving knife, delicately wiped her fingers on a linen napkin, and leaned forward.

“Darling,” she said, voice mild, “have you considered that Granger might have no idea what you’re doing?”

Draco looked around, incredulous. “Of course she knows. She returned the cloth-wrapped item. She accepted flowers. She bowed. She let me light her—”

“She thought you were being nice ,” Millie interrupted, “You’ve been polite. Charming. A little weird, maybe, but it’s you, so.”

“She let me light her hearth, ” Draco said, a little desperately.

“Because it was cold,” Theo said gently. “And you offered. It’s not like she invited you into her bed.”

“That’s not until after the bracelet,” Draco muttered.

A moment of stunned quiet.

“I’m sorry, what bracelet?” Blaise asked, eyebrows sky-high.

Draco flushed. “The Malfoy courting bracelet. It was in the family vault. Mother sent it up last week when I told her—”

“Oh my God, ” Tracey said, setting her glass down with a thunk. “You’ve already told Narcissa ?”

“She sent a note with it,” Draco said defensively. “She was delighted.”

“You cannot give that girl a bracelet,” Pansy said flatly. “Not yet. Not until you’re sure she knows what it means. ”

“She does,” Draco insisted. “She’s clever. She’s read everything.”

“She was raised by muggle tooth doctors,” Blaise said. “Not dowager witches with fifteen-volume marriage manuals and a library full of enchanted gloves.”

“I think she likes me,” Draco said, more quietly.

No one said anything for a long moment.

Then Theo reached out, clapped a hand on Draco’s shoulder, and said, “She probably does. Which is why you should tell her. With your mouth. ”

Draco scowled. “I am telling her.”

“No,” Pansy said, folding her napkin precisely. “You’re trying to marry her via symbolism, darling. And she thinks you’re just being—well. Dramatic.”

“Worse,” said Daphne. “She probably thinks you pity her.”

That, finally, made him pause, because he remembered the way she’d tilted her head when he’d lit the fire, the polite, puzzled smile. The quiet thank you. Her hand on the doorframe, her body never fully turned toward him.

She thinks I’m just being kind.

He sat back, heart thudding.

“Well,” he said after a beat, steadying himself, “then I’ll just have to explain.”

“Oh no,” Blaise murmured. “Here we go.”

Sunday morning arrived sharp and merciless.

Draco woke with his mouth like sandpaper, his stomach uneasy from too much red wine and roast, and the unmistakable weight of public humiliation settling across his chest.

She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t—

He sat up, groaning. Rubbed a hand over his face. He needed confirmation. He needed to be sure. He needed to speak to someone who actually knew Granger , someone who could tell him, definitively, whether the girl he was halfway in love with was in fact halfway in love with him... or just thought he was being very polite.

Draco had made a fool of himself. Or, maybe not yet, not completely, but dangerously close. The bracelet still sat in its velvet box on his desk, untouched, unoffered. He could still recover this, if he moved quickly.

He needed answers. Clarification. A second opinion.

He needed Weasley.

Not the angry one, obviously. Or the loud one. Or the twin that was still alive, god forbid. The youngest. The sister. The one Hermione actually listened to.

Ginny.

He flung himself upright, shoved into yesterday’s jumper and coat, and stalked across the grounds toward the castle, boots grinding frost into the worn path. A few other students were about: Neville, trudging toward the greenhouse; Susan Bones, levitating a laundry basket from one cottage to another, but Draco ignored them all.

The staircases were already moving. A pair of fourth-year Ravenclaws gawked at him in the entrance hall. He gave them a look that made one of them trip on the hem of her robes.

The Fat Lady in her portraid raised an eyebrow as he approached.

“Oh, hello,” she said, voice syrupy with judgment. “Lost, are we?”

“I need to speak to Ginny Weasley.”

“She’s in bed, I expect.”

“Can you wake her?”

“I can,” said the Fat Lady, smiling cruelly. “Will I? Mm.”

Draco closed his eyes. Breathed. “Please. Tell her Draco Malfoy is here. It’s important.”

The portrait gave a theatrical sigh, then she disappeared from her frame.

He waited.

Two minutes passed. Then five.

Finally, Ginny appeared, barefoot, hair askew, wearing an oversized Cannons jumper and a look of supreme annoyance.

He waited, shifting on his feet, nausea rising unpleasantly as he thought through all the ways this could go wrong. Footsteps echoed up the stairwell a few minutes later, and Ginny appeared—barefoot, hair a mess, wearing a faded Cannons jumper that hung off one shoulder.

She stopped short when she saw him.

“Oh, hell no," she said. "You are not dragging me into your tragic crush saga before breakfast."

“It’s not—” he began, then closed his eyes. “Please. I just need five minutes.”

She stared at him, then jerked her head down the corridor.

“Fine. Not here. Alcove.”

She marched two doors down, dragging him into a little niche near the stairs—a shallow bay window cut deep into the stone, with heavy velvet drapes that could be half-pulled for privacy. Students passed occasionally, but none close enough to overhear.

Ginny crossed her arms, planted herself between him and the corridor, and leveled him with a look.

“Well?”

Draco swallowed.

“I need to know if Hermione is aware,” he said, low and strained. “That she’s being courted.”

There was a long pause.

Then Ginny barked out a laugh so loud a portrait three frames down muttered something about "commoners."

“She’s not.”

Draco stiffened. “She—she returned the cloth-wrapped item. She accepted flowers. She—”

“She thinks you’re trying to be less of a dick.”

“I bowed,” he said, with the air of a man presenting irrefutable evidence.

“She thinks you’re being overly formal because you’re scared of her judgment.”

“I lit her hearth, ” he said desperately.

Ginny’s mouth twitched.

“And she probably thinks you’re trying to work off your wartime guilt, Malfoy.”

He looked stricken.

Ginny took pity, a little .

“She likes you,” she said, more gently. “But she thinks you’re just... being polite. Or atoning. She has no idea you’re trying to court her.”

He sagged back against the cold stone wall, feeling utterly humiliated.

“Talk to her,” Ginny said firmly. “No heirlooms. No rituals. No grand gestures from the Fourteenth Century.”

“I already got the Malfoy courting bracelet from the vault,” he pouted. 

Ginny groaned, scrubbing her hands down her face. “Of course you were.”

“It’s tasteful,” Draco muttered defensively.

Ginny dropped her hands and gave him a look so withering it could have peeled paint.

“It’s a trap,” she said. “You hand that thing over without an explanation, and you’re going to find yourself betrothed to someone who thinks you’re trying to sell her life insurance.”

Draco pressed his palms against his face with a low groan.

Ginny leaned in, elbows braced on her knees, voice pitched low like she was explaining basic survival tactics to a concussed unicorn.

“Use your words, Malfoy. You know—sentences. Questions. Like a normal human being.”

He peeked at her through his fingers, utterly miserable. “She won’t laugh?”

Ginny’s face softened, just slightly, just enough.

“No,” she said. “She might kiss you though.”

His heart gave a lurch so violent he thought he might be sick.

“Unless,” she added, picking up her tea again with surgical cruelty, “you wait too long and she decides you’re just having a very slow, very posh breakdown.”

Draco groaned again, sliding down the wall until he was practically crouched on the stone floor like some tragic Victorian relic.

“I hate you,” he said into his hands.

“You’ll thank me at your wedding,” Ginny said, standing and stretching like a cat. “Or you’ll thank me when she hexes you for being an emotionally constipated disaster. Either way, I win.”

She slung her mug into the crook of her arm and sauntered back toward the Gryffindor common room, leaving Draco to stew in his humiliation, heart pounding so loud he thought the Fat Lady might hear it through the stone.

It was nearly dusk by the time she saw him.

The cottage lane was empty, quiet in that golden stretch between supper and stars, when even the owls were waiting for night to settle.

Hermione stood at her front window, arms crossed, pretending she wasn’t watching for him. That she hadn’t been watching for him. All day.

She told herself she was just tired . That she’d earned the stillness. She’d spent most of the morning helping Neville in the greenhouse, pulling invasive rootstock from the western plots and cataloguing the latest batch of bloom-sensitive mandrakes. It had been quiet, companionable work with soil under her nails, sunlight in her hair, and still, even then, even crouched elbow-deep in enchanted compost, her thoughts kept slipping sideways. Back to him.

Back to the flowers, those delicate, pale asters he'd conjured with a flick of his wand and no explanation, left on her porch like an afterthought. Back to the memory of his voice, soft and uncertain, when he'd asked if he could light her hearth.

After the greenhouse, she’d dropped by Hannah Abbott’s, ostensibly to borrow a scone recipe she’d once mentioned in passing. Hannah had welcomed her with a smile, offered tea, asked if she’d seen that ridiculous Daily Prophet piece about Harry and Ron at the auror academy, made the right noises, taken the recipe with grateful hands.

And spent the whole time thinking about Draco Malfoy.

It was maddening .

Not just the fact of him, but the nature of him lately. Polite. Eccentric. Bewilderingly attentive. Like some old-world gentleman pulled from the footnotes of a history textbook and dropped, with exquisite posture, into their strange little post-war village.

He wasn’t pursuing her, not in any recognizable sense. There were no declarations. No flirtation. Just strange gifts and strange bows and strange, strange glances, like he was trying to say something he didn’t know how to shape with words.

And she was tired of pretending she didn’t feel it too. The pull of him. The heat that hummed under her skin whenever he looked at her too long.

So now she stood at her window, barefoot and furious with herself, arms wrapped tightly around her ribcage, trying not to count the minutes until he passed by on his way home from duelling practice.

And then, there he was.

When he finally appeared, walking up from the castle with his robe half undone, his hair damp, his collar open and skin flushed from exertion, Hermione's breath caught in her throat.

Draco Malfoy, striding up the lane from the castle, robes rumpled and half-clinging to his shoulders, hair mussed and damp from what was clearly a brutal round of duelling practice. His collar was open. His sleeves were pushed up. His wand arm hung loose, spent, his free hand dragging tiredly through his hair.

He looked— He looked— Ridiculous. And stupid. And absurdly, violently hot.

She was out the door before she had time to stop herself.

He looked up at the sound of her boots on the step and immediately—

Bowed.

Like a courtier. Like a poem.

He was flushed and sweating and slightly out of breath and still, somehow, managed to incline his whole upper body toward her like she was royalty and he hadn’t just spent the last hour getting hexed to hell by Blaise Zabini.

It broke something in her.

“Are you— what is wrong with you? ” she blurted.

His head snapped up.

“Sorry?”

“This! You! Bowing. Every time you pass me. Every time you walk into a room. What is that?”

He blinked, startled. “It’s—politeness?”

“Politeness?” she repeated, incredulous. “I’ve known you for almost ten years, Malfoy, and never once in all that time have you bowed to anyone.”

“I’m trying to do it right, ” he muttered, dragging a hand through his already-wrecked hair.

“Right?” she echoed. “Right what ?”

He looked flustered. Gorgeous. Entirely tragic.

And instead of explaining, he bowed again.

Hermione’s mouth dropped open.

“Oh my God, ” she hissed. “Are you messing with me? Is this some kind of joke?”

His eyes widened. “No!”

“All these weird little gestures—the bowing, the flowers, the hearth—”

“You started it!”

“I what? ”

“You wrapped my planner in a personal cloth and returned it at dawn!” he said, clearly losing the thread. “That’s—Granger, that’s a signal. ”

She stared at him like he had grown antlers.

“I was trying to keep it from getting moldy. It was raining. It’s a towel. I dried it!”

“It had your name stitched into it!”

She ran a hand down her face. “Because it’s mine.”

“You returned it in the light of dawn!”

“Because you needed it for class!”

He looked like he was going to be ill.

“I thought—” he began. “I thought we were… that you were… initiating."

“Initiating what! ?” she nearly shouted, hands flung wide. “Malfoy, I have no idea what you’re doing!”

“I’m courting you!”

The words rang out into the lane like he’d cast them with a Sonorus.

She froze.

So did he.

They stared at each other, horrified.

Hermione’s pulse slammed so hard behind her ribs she thought she might actually throw up.

“…you’re what ?” she said finally.

Draco, to his credit, looked like he wanted to crawl under a bench and expire.

“…courting you,” he repeated, much quieter. “Formally. According to pureblood tradition.”

She gaped at him. “I—what does that even mean ?”

He opened his mouth, closed it, and then made a helpless, sweeping gesture. “It means I like you. That I’m trying to be worthy of you. That I don’t want to just— flirt with you in corridors like a bloody teenager.”

“Oh,” she said faintly.

“I thought you knew,” he added. “You kept smiling at me.”

“I thought you were just being polite!”

He looked wrecked.

“I am being polite,” he said. “But I’m also being…” He stopped. Swallowed. “I’m also being serious. About you.”

Silence.

The wind rustled the leaves overhead.

Hermione stared at him. He looked absolutely undone, glowing with heat and embarrassment, hair clinging to his temples, robe twisted around his hips in the worst way.

She was going to die.

“I—okay,” she said slowly. “Alright. But you need to stop bowing at me.”

He blinked. “You don’t like the bowing?”

“I like the arms,” she said, helplessly, before she could stop herself. “Your arms. The bowing is confusing. The arms are—fine.”

His mouth twitched.

“Just call me Hermione.”

He straightened slowly, eyes bright with something she wasn’t ready to acknowledge.

“…Hermione,” he said softly.

She bit her lip. “Better.”

For a moment they just stood there, caught in a charged, impossible stillness.

Hermione swayed slightly, feeling the world tip around her—the low thrum of the lake beating at the shore behind her, the cooling scent of stone and earth rising from the lane, the impossible heat still radiating off his skin.

And Draco—

Draco looked like he was fighting some silent war with himself. His hands flexed at his sides. His throat worked. He opened his mouth, then shut it. Opened it again.

"I should—" he began, voice rough.

She blinked up at him.

"I should go," he said, almost tripping over the words. "Shower. I smell—" he grimaced, a sudden, faint pink flooding his already flushed cheeks—"like a stable boy."

Hermione laughed before she could stop herself, short, breathless, not nearly as composed as she would have liked.

“You do,” she said, still smiling, still tasting the lingering electricity between them. “You smell horrible. ”

He huffed a breath, something like a laugh, and backed away a step, then another.

"I'll see you tomorrow," he said, voice low and urgent, like it was a promise. A vow.

"Tomorrow," she echoed, feeling lightheaded.

He hesitated one more second, like he might say something else, might do something else,
then turned sharply and strode down the lane, head bent against the twilight, robes whipping around his boots.

Hermione watched him go until he disappeared around the corner, then she sat down hard on her porch steps, head in her hands, heart hammering so wildly she could feel it in her fingertips.

Tomorrow.

She didn’t know if she could survive tonight.

It was barely five minutes after Draco disappeared down the lane when Hermione realized she couldn't sit still.

She tried. She honestly tried—made it all the way through half a cup of tea and one page of her Herbology notes—but her body was practically vibrating with restless, frantic energy.

She had to do something.

She needed help.

And not from someone who would laugh at her—or worse, smother her with well-meaning, suffocating advice. Which ruled out Ginny. And Hannah. And absolutely every Hufflepuff and Gryffindor currently residing in the village.

There was really only one option.

Theodore Nott.

Theo, at least, had the decency to look vaguely surprised when he opened his cottage door and found her standing there, flushed and fidgeting, arms crossed so tightly it looked painful.

"Granger," he said, voice dry as bone. "To what do I owe the pleasure? Come to bask in my glory?"

She rolled her eyes. "I need to ask you something. About Malfoy."

His eyebrows shot up. He stepped aside instantly, waving her in with a little flourish that was both mocking and surprisingly welcoming.

"Well, well," he said, closing the door behind her. "Took you long enough."

She frowned. "What?"

Theo leaned against the kitchen counter, arms folded, smirking.

"It's not like you basically asked to have his babies by returning his planner at dawn, wrapped in your handmade embroidery."

Hermione flushed so hard she felt it down to her toes.

"I didn’t know!" she hissed.

Theo snorted. "Yeah, we clocked that about two weeks ago, sweetheart."

Hermione glared at him, trying not to let the mortification eat her alive.

"I want to fix it," she said stiffly. "I—I want to show him I'm... interested. Properly. Whatever ritual I’m supposed to do. I want to do it."

Theo blinked once and pushed off the counter, rubbing a hand through his hair like she’d just given him a puzzle he wasn’t sure he should solve.

"Alright," he said. "You want ritual? Fine. You’ve got a few options."

He ticked them off on his fingers.

"One, you can give him a lock of your hair. Little intense. Wouldn't recommend unless you're prepared to let him propose before breakfast."

Hermione made a choking noise.

"Two," Theo continued, utterly unbothered, "you can present him with something you made by hand. Something useful. Shows you’re willing to provide for the household."

Hermione stared at him. " Handmade ?"

Theo nodded seriously. "Bread, a shirt, a knitted hat—"

She cut him off, horrified. "What, like knit him a scarf ?"

Theo’s mouth twitched like he was trying very hard not to laugh.

"Sure," he said. "Knit him a scarf. Bonus points if it’s lumpy and tragic. He'll love it. He’ll think it’s some kind of soul-bonding relic and carry it into battle."

Hermione groaned, dragging her hands down her face.

"I'm terrible at knitting."

"Even better," Theo said, grinning now. "The worse it is, the more he’ll think you bled for it."

Hermione dropped into a chair, burying her head in her hands.

"This is a mistake," she muttered. "I'm going to knit him a scarf and he's going to think I'm asking him to—" she broke off, grimacing, "—to sign a bloody marriage contract."

Theo laughed, really properly laughed, warm and real.

"You’re not asking him to elope, sweetheart," he said, kicking the leg of her chair lightly. "You're asking him to consider eloping."

Hermione made a strangled noise, part laugh, part cough, and choked on absolutely nothing.

Theo smirked, utterly delighted with himself, and handed her a napkin like she might need it to mop up her dignity.

"You're insufferable," she muttered, dabbing at her mouth even though there was nothing there.

"And you," Theo said lazily, leaning back against the counter with a satisfied stretch, "are more gone than you realize."

She glared at him, cheeks burning, but didn’t deny it.

Couldn’t, really, because even through the panic, even through the mortification and the wild, runaway terror that she was about to utterly humiliate herself with yarn, some small, traitorous part of her was… not opposed.

Not really.

The thought of knitting something for him, however badly, didn’t feel repulsive. Or embarrassing. It felt—

It felt like something she wanted.

Hermione swallowed hard against the tightness in her throat and stared down at her hands.

"I don't know if I can do it," she said finally, voice low.

Theo snorted. "Sure you can. You rebuilt a whole government at nineteen. You can survive knitting a crap scarf for a bloke who looks at you like you hung the bloody moon."

She pressed her palms flat against the table, grounding herself.

"Okay," she said, exhaling sharply. "Okay. I'll—I'll try."

Theo tipped an invisible glass in her direction.

"To terrible scarves and even worse life choices."

Theo didn’t give her a choice.

Within ten minutes of their conversation, he was shoving a skein of deep green yarn into her hands (where he'd gotten it, she didn’t ask) and herding her out the door with the solemn promise that if she so much as thought about trying to do this alone, he would personally write Malfoy a sonnet about her incompetence.

Which was how Hermione found herself, not an hour later, sitting stiff-backed in Pansy Parkinson’s sitting room with a pair of battered knitting needles, a ball of yarn that kept rolling onto the floor, and three Slytherins watching her like it was the best entertainment they’d had in years.

Pansy clocked it immediately.

“Oh, this is rich,” she said, dropping into an armchair with a glass of wine. “You’re knitting him a courting scarf. ”

Hermione flushed violently. “It’s just a— gift. ”

Millicent snorted from the hearth, where she was lazily flipping through a magazine. “Yeah. And the moon is just a rock.”

Theo sprawled across the sofa, hands behind his head, grinning like a man who had orchestrated a coup.

“She's gone,” he announced to the room. “Fully, irretrievably gone.”

Pansy raised her glass in mock salute. “To poor life choices and desperate woolcraft.”

Hermione stabbed the needles together so hard they made a snapping sound.

"You're not helping," she muttered.

"We're supporting, " Pansy said sweetly. "By ensuring you never forget the exact magnitude of your humiliation."

Theo leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

"You're doing fine," he lied cheerfully. "Just—less stabbing. More looping. Less looking like you're trying to kill the yarn."

Millicent snickered. "Give her a break. She’s trying to condense a thousand years of unspoken magical courtship into one—and I’m being generous here— potentially wearable death trap. "

Hermione bit her lip, concentrating furiously as she tried to remember how to cast on.

The yarn slipped. The knot tangled. The needles clattered to the floor.

Theo made a noise like a wounded animal and slid dramatically off the sofa.

Pansy wiped fake tears from her eyes.

"You know," Millicent said conversationally, "there’s a tradition in some circles that the first offering must be unfinished. It symbolizes trust. Like, 'Here, finish this, and we’ll build a life together.'"

Hermione perked up.

"You're lying," she said immediately.

"Obviously," Millicent said, grinning.

Hermione threw a balled-up scrap of yarn at her, missing by several feet.

Pansy caught it midair with a lazy flick of her wand.

Theo grinned wider, absolutely basking in the chaos.

"Seriously," he said, lounging back again. "Just keep going. Doesn’t matter if it's perfect. He’s going to treat it like you handed him a sword forged in the fires of your soul."

Hermione grimaced at her tangled, pathetic little start.

"Merlin," she muttered. "He's going to think I'm dying or something. Like, 'Here, Malfoy, here's my tragic last will and testament in the form of a scarf.'"

Pansy sipped her wine, eyes gleaming.

"Or," Pansy said, "he’s going to think you’re going to strangle him with it."

Theo waggled his eyebrows.

Millicent clutched her chest theatrically, wheezing like she was about to faint.

Hermione dropped her head onto the nearest cushion and groaned so loudly it rattled the windowpanes.

"Why are you being so kind to me?" she muttered into the upholstery. " If this is what you call kind."

There was a beat—a long, suspiciously thoughtful beat, then Theo drawled, "Because it’s fun watching someone else be as disastrous about him as he’s been about you."

Pansy tipped her glass in Hermione’s general direction without looking up from her nails.

"And because," she added, cool and offhand, "if you’re actually going to stay, you might as well know what you’re getting into."

Millicent snorted. "We’re just saving ourselves the trouble later."

Hermione lifted her head just enough to glare at them, but the weight behind their teasing wasn’t cruel—it wasn’t even really teasing, not in the way she was used to.

Hermione huffed out a breath, half-annoyed, half-smiling.

"You’re all terrible," she said.

Theo smirked. "You’re welcome. If we were going to really be terrible, we would have invited—”

“ Blaise ,” Pansy and Millicent cackled together. 

“Blaise,” continued Theo, “is going to have a fucking field day with this one, sweetheart.”

Hermione woke slowly, the light gray and watery against her eyelids, the cottage heavy with the kind of quiet that only settled after a night spent burning too much candle wax and laughing a little too hard.

The first thing she became aware of was the ache in her hands. The second was the weight of the wool across her lap.

The scarf.

She blinked herself into full consciousness and realized she was curled on Pansy’s settee, her legs tucked up awkwardly beneath her, the half-finished monstrosity of green yarn still tangled between her fingers. Her wand lay discarded on the low table, a puddle of low-level charm residue still clinging to the tips of the needles.

Across from her, Theo snored softly in the armchair, arms crossed over his chest like he had fallen asleep mid-heckle and simply surrendered to gravity. Beyond him, through the open bedroom door, she could just make out the blur of Pansy and Millicent tangled together atop the covers, Pansy’s sharp little elbows sticking out at aggressive angles, Millicent dead to the world beside her, snoring like a dragon.

The cottage smelled of burnt toast, spilt wine, and the faint, lingering crackle of magic.

Hermione shifted carefully, the scarf sliding from her lap to the floor. It was even worse in daylight, all lumpy and uneven, the ends curling up on themselves like dying leaves. The last two rows were barely holding together, finished sometime before sunrise with fingers that had long since stopped cooperating.

It was hideous, and perfect.

She sat there for a long moment, staring at it, a strange weight growing behind her ribs.

It had been a long time since she had made something with her hands, something that wasn’t a project, a policy, a spell. The scarf wasn’t about survival, or victory, or proving herself worthy of a place no one had ever planned to give her.

Just a stupid, horrible, beautiful scarf, stitched together with half-learned charms and sheer bloody-minded determination.

It didn’t matter that it was a disaster. It mattered that it was hers. It mattered that it was for him.

Hermione tucked the knitting needles into her satchel, as she stood stiffly, uncurling her sore limbs. Theo muttered something incoherent in his sleep and turned his face deeper into the chair. In the other room, Pansy kicked once, violently, without waking.

The whole house smelled like a battlefield after a celebration.

The little group of cottages was a foggy blur of gray when Hermione shoved open Pansy's front door and marched out into the morning. The air was damp and miserable, the kind of damp that got into your hair and your shoes and made your soul feel slightly moldy.

The scarf, her pathetic little offering, was crumpled under her arm like a contraband item. She hadn't even tried to charm it better. At a certain point, dignity was a lost cause.

She was still in yesterday’s clothes, sleeves wrinkled, trousers creased from hours of sitting and knitting, and occasional swearing. She pulled her wand and cast a teeth-cleaning charm as she crossed the lane, immediately regretting it when her mouth went unnaturally slick and minty in that way she hated. It was much better done manually, but she'd already committed.

She had class at nine. Plenty of time to make a fool of herself first.

Malfoy's cottage sat a little back from the others, smug in that special way only things belonging to Draco Malfoy could be: better-looking, better-maintained, and deeply, personally offensive about it.

Hermione climbed the front steps, knocked three sharp times, and waited.

There was a low thump from inside. A crash. A muffled curse.

Malfoy's door swung open with a creak and a thud, like even the hinges were reluctant at this hour.

Hermione froze, scarf pressed to her chest.

He looked— Oh, bloody hell.

He looked unfair. 

Barefoot, hair wrecked, wearing a thin grey t-shirt that clung to his shoulders like it had personal grievances to air with her. His eyes were still heavy with sleep, his mouth soft, the sharp planes of his face somehow even more distracting in the dim, cold light.

Hermione, champion of wit and self-control, stood there and thought, very intelligently, Oh my.

She gave herself exactly one second to absorb the disaster before stuffing it into some dark corner of her mind to deal with later.

He blinked at her, looking dazed and confused and like he might be hallucinating the whole situation.

Hermione, dragging her brain upright by the scruff of its neck, cleared her throat.

"You said you'd see me tomorrow," she said, managing to keep her voice steady despite the screaming in her brain. She lifted the sad, crumpled scarf a few inches in the air like it was evidence in a criminal trial. "Congratulations. It's tomorrow."

His mouth twitched, that almost-smile he probably didn’t know he had surfacing just enough to be lethal. Without a word, he stepped back and opened the door wider, standing there like a personal affront to reasonable behavior.

Without a word, Malfoy stepped back and opened the door wider, like he had already resigned himself to whatever lunacy she was about to inflict on his morning.

Hermione stomped inside, clutching the crumpled scarf under one arm like a declaration of war.

The cottage was warm and slightly messy, which was a minor outrage in itself. A book lay facedown on the arm of the sofa. A half-empty tea mug sat abandoned on a side table. His boots were lined up with military precision near the hearth, because of course they were, but still—there was just enough casual disarray to suggest he was, horrifyingly, human.

Hermione hovered awkwardly near the doorway, not quite sure what to do with herself now that she had stormed in with righteous purpose and no real plan for what came next.

Malfoy closed the door behind her, raking a hand through his disaster of a hair situation. His t-shirt tugged up slightly with the motion, flashing an indecent glimpse of narrow waist and hip bone that Hermione refused— refused —to notice. She refused to notice his arms too. 

He looked at her, tired and confused and stupidly beautiful, and for one horrific second she considered just throwing the scarf at him and bolting back into the mist.

Instead, she cleared her throat and said, far too briskly, "I made you something."

There was a beat of silence so profound it was practically a living thing.

Malfoy's eyebrows rose slowly, his whole face struggling not to look alarmed.

"You—made—" he started, then seemed to think better of it. "Right. Yes. Of course you did."

Hermione scowled at him, because that was safer than examining whatever suicidal instinct had driven her to knit a man a scarf and deliver it before sunrise like some feral Victorian ghost.

She looked at the scarf for a moment, and then tossed it at him, clumsily, with all the grace of a pigeon hurling itself at a window.

"Here," she said, and immediately regretted every life choice that had led her to this moment.

He caught it automatically, the way one might catch a live grenade.

There was a long, unbearable pause while Malfoy looked down at the scarf: a lumpen, lopsided thing in varying shades of green, and then back up at her, expression unreadable.

Hermione braced herself for mockery, accompanied by laughter. Or, possibly, spontaneous human combustion.

Instead, very slowly, very carefully, Malfoy brought the scarf up to his chest like he was afraid it might fall apart if he moved too quickly.

"You made this," he said, voice low, as if confirming it for himself.

Hermione lifted her chin, defensive and deeply, profoundly humiliated.

"Obviously."

This was fine. She was fine. Everything was hideous and fine.

Malfoy looked down at the scarf for another agonizing beat. Then, with an expression of great seriousness, as if donning a priceless ceremonial robe, he lifted it over his head and looped it once around his neck.

The scarf barely made it. One side hung about an inch longer than the other; the knitting curled like it was trying to escape its own existence. It was too short by at least a third. 

Hermione bit the inside of her cheek so hard she tasted blood.

Malfoy adjusted the sad little thing at his throat, smoothing it down with a flourish like he was modeling for Witch Weekly. He turned toward her, eyebrows raised, waiting.

"Well?" he said. "How do I look?"

Hermione opened her mouth, intending something neutral like Fine or Passable or At least you won't freeze to death in that eyesore.

What came out instead was a strangled wheezing noise that sounded, frankly, like the dying gasps of a goose.

Malfoy’s mouth twitched, dangerously close to a real grin, but he kept his voice maddeningly, infuriatingly earnest.

"I feel," he said, tugging the scarf snug like he was demonstrating its structural integrity, " deeply honored. "

Hermione made another wheezing noise, louder this time.

"Truly," he went on, adjusting the horrifically uneven ends with a solemnity that was surely illegal under international law, "this is the finest garment I have ever received."

"You’re a menace," Hermione muttered, cheeks burning, trying to look anywhere but directly at him wearing that thing.

Malfoy smiled fully now, crooked and delighted, the sleepy disarray of his hair making him look even more insufferably pleased with himself.

"And you," he said, voice low and amused and maybe, maybe a little wrecked underneath, "are in so much trouble, Granger."

She narrowed her eyes, heart hammering, hands stubbornly shoved in her pockets. 

"So," she said, tilting her chin up, trying for dry but landing somewhere closer to desperate bravado, "Do you accept me?"

Malfoy’s eyebrows lifted slightly, the corner of his mouth twitching again.

"Ah," he said, dragging out the word like he was savoring it. "So you did figure out the next ritual."

Hermione scowled, heat prickling down the back of her neck. "I'll have to ask you to owl your mother for a manual."

"She already sent it," he said blandly, smoothing the sad little scarf with both hands. "Along with the Malfoy courting bracelet."

Hermione choked.

"Of course she did," she muttered. "Naturally."

Malfoy leaned in slightly, enough that she could smell the faint lingering trace of whatever soap he used. It was something clean and expensive and wildly unfair how good it smelled.

"I think you’re getting a little bit ahead of yourself," Hermione said, stepping back half a pace, heart hammering dangerously in her throat.

He tilted his head with a a lazy, infuriating glint in his eyes. "Oh?"

Hermione stabbed a finger at his chest, "We haven't even kissed yet."

The smile that broke across Malfoy’s face was slow, devastating, and absolutely shameless.

"Granger," he said, stepping into her space like it was the most natural thing in the world, "I’m wearing your declaration of intent."

She stared at him, hand entwined with his, pulse hammering so loudly in her ears she could barely hear her own thoughts.

He caught her hand before she could retreat any further, fingers threading through hers firmly anchoring them together. He leaned in, and whispered:  "You really think I’m going to let you leave without fixing that?"

Malfoy stood there like some ridiculous fever dream: barefoot, hair flattened on one side from sleep, her disastrous scarf looped proudly around his neck as though it were an Order of Merlin and not a war crime against wool, and somehow, impossibly, still looking at her like she was something precious, and wanted. 

Hermione stared at him, then at the scarf, then back at him.

For one wild second, she considered punching him. Just one good, solid jab to that smug, perfect mouth to buy herself a little time.

Instead, she stepped forward. She moved without thinking, stepping forward fast enough that she nearly stumbled, grabbing a fistful of his t-shirt like a drowning woman reaching for anything solid. He bent at the same time, misjudging her entirely, and they collided with a sharp, graceless thud, her forehead against his mouth, his chin knocking awkwardly against the top of her head.

Hermione recoiled immediately, gasping, one hand flying up to rub at the spot.

"Ow," she hissed under her breath, wincing. "You great, useless—"

Malfoy staggered back half a step, rubbing his nose with the heel of his hand, blinking at her like she’d thrown a quaffle at him.

They stared at each other, stunned and vibrating with the force of everything they hadn’t said, and then, slowly, helplessly, he started to laugh.

It wasn't elegant, or cruel, but rough and low and genuinely, stupidly delighted.

"You absolute idior," he said, breathless, smiling at her like she was a hoped-for birthday present.

Hermione felt her cheeks flame as she scowled at him, pointing a furious finger in his direction. "You moved."

"You assaulted me," he said, rubbing his mouth, eyes dancing.

"You leaned into it—" she argued back

"I thought you were hugging me!"

She made a frustrated, strangled noise, somewhere between a growl and a groan, and lunged again before he could say anything else.

This time he didn’t move, and didn’t flinch.

Hermione rose up onto her toes, slower and more carefully, and kissed him.

It was better the second time, even though her heart was still hammering against her ribs, even though her hands were shaking where they bunched in the fabric of his shirt. It was awkward, yes, but it was warm too, and clumsy and real and certain in a way that no carefully rehearsed moment could ever have been.

Malfoy’s hands came up cautiously, settling at her waist tentatively, as though he still half-expected her to change her mind and hit him after all. His mouth was soft against hers, hesitant at first, then firmer when she didn’t pull away.

When they broke apart, it was with a breathless kind of reluctance, like neither of them wanted to admit that air was, in fact, necessary.

Hermione dropped back onto her heels, breathing hard, forehead resting lightly against his chest. His heart thudded against her cheek, as wild and uneven as her own.

They stood there like idiots, wrapped in mist and exhaustion and the terrible, stupid weight of wanting.

"Better," Malfoy said eventually, voice rough but smug.

"Marginally," Hermione muttered, wiping at her mouth with the sleeve of her jumper, refusing to meet his eyes.

He nudged the top of her head lightly with the tip of his nose, a touch so absurdly intimate it made her toes curl in her boots.

"Don’t worry," he murmured, as if he had any right to sound that fond. "You’ll improve with practice."

Hermione smacked him lightly in the chest, and felt him laugh like a man who had no idea how he got here but wasn’t complaining, and thought that at this rate, surviving each other might count as a victory.