Ginny Weasley was curled on the squashy sofa in front of the Gryffindor common room fire, absently stroking Crookshanks and keeping one eye fixed on the portrait hole.
"Want a canary cream?" George strolled over with a grin, holding out the tin to his little sister.
"Absolutely not," Ginny said flatly. "Everyone knows there's something off about those biscuits."
As if on cue, a student in the far corner of the room suddenly erupted in feathers from head to toe. The crowd that had gathered around him dissolved into laughter, Fred's the loudest of all.
"Who are you waiting for, Ginny?" George asked, his interest piqued. "Harry?"
"Hermione," Ginny said. "Honestly — who else disappears to the library first thing on a holiday morning and doesn't come back for hours?"
"Ah." George chuckled to himself, recalling the Slytherin boy he'd spotted earlier that morning — Marauder's Map in hand — making straight for the library at a very purposeful pace. "You might be waiting a while longer, then."
Ginny wrinkled her nose and turned her attention to Crookshanks, rubbing his chubby cheeks. "Who on earth did she go to see, abandoning us all?"
Crookshanks blinked his great yellow eyes at her, deeply unimpressed, and let out a slow, unhelpful meow.
By the time the half-Kneazle had grown tired of the attention and stalked off along the wall, Hermione still hadn't returned. The common room had long since emptied — the excitement of the canary creams spent, the students scattered like seeds to every corner of the castle by the wind of the holidays.
When the portrait hole finally swung open, a girl with flushed cheeks and a slightly dazed expression drifted through against the current of departing students, nearly walking straight into Ginny, who had leapt to her feet the moment she spotted her.
"Hermione! Someone's invited me to the ball — I'm going!"
"Who?" Hermione asked, still looking a little elsewhere.
"Neville Longbottom." Ginny blushed faintly. "He was worried about not having a partner, and I was in the same boat, so it worked out rather well."
"Given up on Harry, then?" Hermione said, coming back to herself.
"It's nothing to do with giving up!" Ginny said, with the brisk certainty of someone who has had this conversation with herself several times already. "He hasn't the faintest idea, and besides, he's already found his own partner and is now busy sorting out one for Ron. If that's how things are, why shouldn't I go with someone else? Liking someone doesn't mean shutting yourself away."
"I think that's exactly right," Hermione said, settling onto the sofa. "Go and enjoy yourself. Honestly, Harry never seemed particularly enthusiastic about the whole thing — the look on his face when he was trying to find a partner was identical to the one he wears when Professor Trelawney sets a Divination essay."
Ginny laughed until Hermione smiled. "You're right. Forget it — Mum's bought me a new dress, and I plan to dance all night. I just hope Neville doesn't tread on my feet."
"I'm sure he'll manage," Hermione said, though her voice had drifted somewhere else entirely.
Ginny watched her for a moment. "There was something you wanted to ask me, wasn't there? You started to say something."
"Oh — no, never mind, it's nothing—"
"Something is definitely wrong." Ginny leaned forward, studying her with narrowed eyes. "Hermione, your face is an abnormal shade of red. Your lips are a very strange shade of red. And your collar is all wrinkled." She sat up straighter. "Where exactly have you been?"
She peered more closely at Hermione's slightly swollen lips, her flushed expression, and her hair — which had been neatly tied back that morning and was now distinctly less so.
"Oh my," Ginny said, with the composed air of someone arriving at an obvious conclusion. "You haven't just been kissing someone, have you?"
Hermione's eyes went wide.
"How — how did you know?" she stammered.
"Percy and Penelope," Ginny said matter-of-factly. "I've caught them outside empty classrooms looking exactly like you do now more times than I care to count. Just look at you — flushed, completely lovesick, eyes going in three directions at once. Guilty as Crookshanks the morning after he tore up your Spellbook."
Oh — the Dictionary of Ancient Runes — the culprit responsible for everything. Hermione buried her face in her hands and let out a long, muffled groan.
"Was it Malfoy or Krum?" Ginny asked, grinning.
"Ginny, stop—" Hermione peeked at her through her fingers, then buried her face again with an extended, agonised hum.
"I knew it was Malfoy. That forehead kiss — I said from the start there was something not right about him." Ginny observed her thoroughly guilty expression with great satisfaction. "Let us congratulate Mr Draco Malfoy on finally getting somewhere with Miss Hermione Granger, properly, without having to be sneaky about it."
"Ginny, keep your voice down!" Hermione grabbed a cushion and pressed it firmly over her face.
"What are you shy about? If you've done it, own it. Now — where did this happen? If it was an empty classroom, that's tremendously unoriginal."
"The library—" Hermione's voice was barely audible from behind the cushion.
"The library!" Ginny's eyes lit up with delight. "The most hallowed ground in the hearts of every bookworm at Hogwarts. Isn't that what you once described to me as the ideal—"
Hermione shoved her face further under the cushion.
"How was it?" Ginny whispered, leaning close. "His kissing, I mean."
"Not bad... actually, rather good... from what I could tell..." The words floated out from beneath the cushion.
"Light and brief, or—?"
"The other kind," Hermione said, from somewhere in the depths of the sofa cushions. She was still, frankly, a little weak at the knees. She hadn't entirely recovered.
"Interesting. You know, everyone always says he's too cold — that he wouldn't know the first thing about being gentle, and they'd have to teach him—"
"He absolutely knows what he's doing!" Hermione's head emerged from behind the cushion, eyes flashing.
She then saw Ginny's perfectly composed face and the very obvious I-knew-it expression sitting on it.
"Quite satisfied, I'd say?"
"I thought it was rather good," Hermione muttered. The kiss still made her thoughts go sideways when it crept back into her mind.
Her first kiss. His lips on hers. She had liked it enormously, and that was precisely what was making everything so muddled.
Why had no one ever told her it could feel like that? The irresistible pull to lean closer, the dizzy, flooding joy, the tremor that moved through every part of her, and the strange, unsettling sense of no longer being entirely her own.
He had held her as if she were something he intended to keep. Gentle and forceful all at once. Careful, and then not careful at all.
"Setting aside the question of technique," Ginny said, in the tone of someone making a formal declaration, "I rather think you'd have been satisfied regardless." She fixed Hermione with a look. "But the real question is — do you still think he sees you as a sister? Just a friend? A study partner? A casual acquaintance? Who was it who said they were perfectly content with the status quo?"
Hermione's face burned. "I didn't expect this either. Plans never go as planned." She hugged the cushion and said quietly, "I only realised this morning, when he kissed me, that he might not think of me as a sister at all."
"The truth comes out at last!" Ginny sat back with a triumphant air. "I was right from the very beginning. He never had sisterly feelings for you. Not for a single day."
She delivered her verdict with the gravity of a Wizengamot judge:
"Hermione Granger, who believed herself to be hopelessly in unrequited love, is nothing more than a stubborn little fool who couldn't see what was right in front of her. Case closed."
Hermione pursed her lips, unable to suppress a small, helpless smile. A warm bubble of happiness rose quietly in her chest.
"Did he actually say anything?" Ginny pressed. "Confess his feelings properly?"
"No — we never even got that far. He just kissed me without any warning; it was all very sudden." Hermione blushed beneath Ginny's meaningful look.
"Right, too busy kissing to bother talking," Ginny said cheerfully.
"Ginny." Hermione's brief happiness began to crack at the edges, and the anxiety underneath surfaced. "I'm genuinely a little confused."
"Why? You like him, and now it seems he likes you too — what is there to be confused about?"
"Of course I'm glad. But what if it was just a momentary impulse on his part? What if it wasn't? How am I supposed to act around him now?" Hermione picked at the edge of the cushion. "He has this way of throwing me completely off-balance without even trying. The kiss was the same — it was so sudden, just like when he told me I was like a sister to him. I wasn't ready. I didn't know what to do with myself. So I ran."
"Oh, Hermione—" Ginny said, looking at her.
"For a long time I've been telling myself he's just a friend," Hermione continued slowly. "I got used to that — to keeping a careful kind of balance between us. It wasn't easy, but I managed. And now that balance has been completely upended, and I don't know what anything means anymore. I'm not unhappy that he kissed me. But I feel like the ground has shifted and I can't find my footing." She looked at her hands. "He unsettles me so easily. One look, one gesture, and all my good sense evaporates."
"Right — so we're not going to let that smug Malfoy lead us around by the nose," Ginny said with brisk firmness. "We have our own minds. Our own choices." She gave Hermione a decided nod. "I'm on your side entirely. But whether you fancy him or not, whether he fancies you or not — you come first. Give your brain a few days' rest. Think it through properly. Nobody's expecting any grand decisions just yet."
And so, for the next several days, Hermione remained in the Gryffindor common room.
She didn't dare go to the library — Draco could always locate her with the Marauder's Map, the cunning Slytherin — and she didn't dare eat in the Great Hall either. He would materialise across the table wearing that cool expression, and then, the moment their eyes met, he would break into a slow, insufferably smug smile, as though he were about to cross the room and speak to her at any moment.
Speaking to him in front of everyone was absolutely out of the question. What would he say? What would she say?
She needed to think it all through carefully. She needed to look back over every interaction — every glance, every lingering touch, every unguarded moment — and establish whether the shift from "he thinks of me as a sister" to "he kissed me in the library" was real, or whether the kiss was simply Draco Malfoy's formidable need for control expressing itself in a thoroughly inconvenient way.
But she couldn't think clearly. Every time she tried, her mind drifted back to that cedarwood-scented kiss — to his arms around her and the warmth of him — and she would find herself smiling like the most pathetic, love-struck student Hogwarts had ever produced.
She couldn't work out what she wanted. She couldn't work out what to say to him.
The truth was simpler and more embarrassing than all of her careful analysis: she desperately wanted to see him, thought about him constantly, relived that breathless, overwhelming kiss more times than she would ever admit — and was equally terrified of seeing him, in case he kissed her again without warning and she found herself, once more, entirely willing.
Ginny faithfully delivered three meals a day from the Great Hall on a large silver tray and ate with her in the common room without complaint. But even the most loyal of friends has limits.
On the fourth day, Ginny set the tray down on the table rather more firmly than usual and said, "Hermione. I've just seen Malfoy in the Great Hall. He looked at me as though I owed him a vault full of Galleons."
"Oh," Hermione said softly. "How did he seem otherwise?"
"Same as always — arrogant and aloof." Ginny rolled her eyes. "He's put a placard on the table in front of his seat. It says 'Not Available.' Quite literally. As in, a permanent state of being off the market. Several girls tried to sit nearby and he didn't even acknowledge them."
Hermione could not entirely suppress a small smile.
"Not available? Not temporarily unavailable?" She straightened slightly, realising she no longer needed to hunt through the past for evidence of his intentions. "That's not very subtle of him, is it?"
"Whether it's subtle or not is beside the point, and we both know you're extremely pleased about it." Ginny gave the corner of her mouth a pointed look. "A lot of girls think he's being dreadful — that he could at least acknowledge people rather than staring at the placard like it's a matter of principle."
"He can be quite poor at manners," Hermione conceded, thinking of the way he'd handled Krum. "It's not a good habit."
"Quite poor — only sometimes? You're being wilfully charitable." Ginny glanced at her but, with unusual restraint, let it pass. "How much longer are you planning to avoid him?"
"I haven't decided."
"Have you thought about it at all?" Ginny said, with the weary patience of someone who has watched the same person dither for four days. "I told you to take your time — not to barricade yourself in the common room indefinitely and refuse treatment."
"Then perhaps you should take your own advice and ask Harry to the ball," Hermione said pleasantly.
"Fine. Run, then." Ginny threw her hands up. "Run for as long as you like."
Hermione's self-imposed seclusion came to an end on the morning of the Hogsmeade weekend before Christmas.
A rather handsome eagle owl landed on the dormitory windowsill and tapped the glass with its beak, regarding Hermione with the same patient, expectant expression its owner often wore.
She opened the window and reached to stroke its feathers. Then she noticed the small roll of parchment tied to its leg — neat, familiar cursive — asking her to meet him at the Three Broomsticks to discuss the Yule Ball.
He had added one final line at the bottom with the precision of someone who knew exactly what he was doing:
"—You said you wouldn't hide from me. You have to keep your word."
Checkmate.
She had to go. Hermione Granger kept her promises — it was simply how she was made. And besides, the Yule Ball was only days away. They were still dance partners. She was going to have to face him eventually.
There was no way out.
Hogsmeade was dressed for Christmas: every cottage and shop dusted softly with snow, holly wreaths on every door, strings of enchanted candles glowing among the branches of the bare trees. Passersby carried precarious towers of gifts and decorations, their faces bright.
Hermione barely noticed any of it. A blush had crept onto her cheeks from the cold — and from something rather less meteorological — and deepened as she approached the Three Broomsticks and spotted Draco's tall, slender figure waiting quietly at the entrance. His platinum-blond hair caught the winter light against the snow.
He hadn't noticed her yet. His hands were in his pockets, his gaze lowered, resting on the sprig of mistletoe in the wreath above the door. There was something unguarded in the line of his profile — a faint, quiet vulnerability — that made Hermione forget her own anxiety altogether.
She found herself walking faster without meaning to.
He heard her footsteps and looked up. The moment his grey eyes found her, they softened, and a slow smile replaced whatever expression had been there before.
"You came." He looked at her. His ears had gone slightly pink at the tips.
She was wearing a black coat and a long Gryffindor scarf in gold and red. Her brown hair caught the sunlight, and the black beret she'd pulled down over her curls made her skin look startlingly fair.
"I'm here," Hermione said, stealing a glance up at him before looking quickly away.
Draco smiled and said nothing. He pulled open the tavern door and held it for her.
A cluster of younger girls were already seated near the entrance, heads bent together in whispered conversation. They looked up when Draco walked in, and immediately broke into a flurry of muffled laughter and nudging.
Hermione knew the tactic well enough from Lavender's enthusiastic tutorials — it was a common gambit, designed to pique curiosity, to make a boy glance over at least once.
Draco didn't glance over. He gave a brief nod to Madam Rosmerta behind the counter and walked straight into the depths of the tavern without a moment's hesitation. The girls deflated visibly.
Hermione tucked her smile into her scarf and followed him through the warm, noisy crowd to a reserved table in the far corner by the fireplace, half-hidden behind an enormous Christmas tree strung with enchanted snowflakes, sprigs of holly, and clusters of mistletoe berries. It screened the table from the rest of the room almost completely.
"Is this all right?" he asked, turning to her.
"It's fine," she said, taking the seat across from him.
The tavern was warm and close, the fire roaring cheerfully enough to make the blizzard outside seem like a rumour. Hermione unwound her scarf, exposing her neck to the heat.
"I've already ordered butterbeers," Draco said, his gaze briefly crossing the pale stretch of her neck before he held out the menu. "Would you like anything else?"
"I'm not hungry, thank you." She ignored the menu and focused carefully on the grain of the tabletop. "This is fine for now."
"Order whenever you like," he said easily, and set the menu aside.
A moment later, Madam Rosmerta arrived with two foaming butterbeers, her expression radiating the particular warmth of someone who has drawn her own conclusions and is very pleased with them.
"Lovely spot, isn't it?" she said, setting the mugs down with a knowing look. "I had four or five couples after this table today — turned them all away. Someone booked it in advance."
"We're not—" Hermione began.
"Thank you, Madam Rosmerta," Draco said simultaneously, smooth as anything. "I trust the booking fee was satisfactory?"
"More than satisfactory, dear. I never can resist a generous guest." Madam Rosmerta collected the Reserved placard from the table with a chuckle, humming something cheerful and entirely pointed, and swept away.
The silence she left behind was, if anything, rather more charged than before. Hermione stared at the foam on her butterbeer and tried not to think about what Madam Rosmerta had been imagining, or about why Draco had made no effort whatsoever to correct her.
Neither of them reached for their mugs.
"You're remarkably difficult to pin down, Hermione Granger." Draco broke the silence at last, looking at her steadily through the curls of steam rising from his butterbeer. "Now that it's the holidays, you've abandoned the library, you're skipping meals in the Great Hall — what exactly does the Gryffindor common room have to offer that's so irresistible?"
"I simply wanted to enjoy my holiday!" she said, colouring immediately. "There's no rule that says I have to go to the library, or eat in the Great Hall."
"No rule at all," Draco agreed pleasantly. "And I'm sure the food Ginny Weasley has been carrying to you three times a day is entirely unrelated to anything."
Hermione went a deeper shade of red. He was watching the colour climb her face with an expression she found deeply irritating.
"Students are perfectly entitled to eat in the common room," she said, her voice rising by a full step. "It doesn't violate a single school rule. I have every right to eat wherever I choose, with whoever I choose."
Draco regarded her — the set of her chin, the warning in her eyes, the very slight threat of a Stunning Spell hanging in the air between them — and made the sensible decision.
"Naturally," he said, in a tone of absolute reasonableness. "I respect your right to eat with anyone, anywhere, at any time."
Hermione gave a small, defiant sniff.
"In any case," he said, his manner shifting to something almost businesslike, "I asked you here to talk about dancing. We should practise before the ball."
"I have been practising — with my dormmates, and with Ginny," she said, chin still up.
"I don't doubt it. But we'll still need to practise together." He chose his words with some care. "The lead sets the direction; the partner follows. At minimum, we need to establish signals — when to start, how to transition between steps, who moves forward, who moves back, when to turn. Those things don't come automatically, even if both dancers are perfectly competent on their own."
Her chin came down a fraction. "That's a fair point."
"And the ball will involve more than dancing in formation," he continued, looking at her steadily. "There are the moments of contact — hands joined, hands released. The rhythm needs to be shared. We ought to have that understanding between us." He paused. "Shouldn't we?"
"I suppose we should," Hermione said, fidgeting with her butterbeer glass and not quite meeting his eyes.
After all — they had kissed. Their ease with each other in close quarters was no longer a hypothetical question.
And now that she considered it properly, it had never really been hypothetical. She had always, without quite noticing, drifted closer to him. And he had always let her — had always been closer than necessary, never indifferent, never distant from her the way he was with everyone else.
He never looked at anyone the way he looked at her. He never moved toward anyone the way he moved toward her.
Had he always intended this?
"So — shall we find somewhere to practise?" Draco said, turning his wand between his fingers with a perfectly unreadable expression — though somewhere underneath it, he had made a private note to borrow a leaf from the Weasley boy's approach and try showing a little vulnerability. His prey was clever and sharp-eyed. He would tread carefully. "I'll be the first to admit my footwork may not be up to your standard."
"All right," Hermione said, slightly dazed. "We should at least be comfortable together."
She lifted her butterbeer and took a generous sip.
The warm, rich, creamy flavour of it hit all at once — butter and malt and something faintly sweet — chasing the cold from her bones and easing the last of her tension in a single breath. Hermione sighed quietly, content, and smiled.
Draco watched her. She always did this after the first sip — gave herself over to it entirely, unguarded and pleased. A ring of white foam had settled quite visibly on her upper lip, and she seemed entirely unbothered.
She was like that about everything, he thought. She felt things openly and freely, without apology.
He couldn't help but smile. The anxious knot that had been sitting in his chest for days loosened, just slightly — because at least she was here, in front of him, and the foam on her lip was considerably more pressing than anything else.
He reached into the small box on the table, pulled out a square of tissue, leaned forward without thinking, and wiped her lips clean — the way he had done a dozen times without either of them making anything of it.
Hermione had no time to move back. His hand was already there, unhurried and matter-of-fact, tracing the shape of her lips through the thin tissue — and the warmth of his fingers, even through that small barrier, sent her memory directly and involuntarily back to the library.
She remembered exactly what those fingers had done then. She remembered everything.
A small, involuntary sound escaped her.
She gripped her mug. Wild, entirely undisciplined thoughts began presenting themselves one after another: Did he think about that kiss the way she did? Did he want to — right now —
Yes. Desperately.
The sound she'd made had completely dismantled every item on Draco's carefully prepared list of neutral conversation topics.
Since the kiss in the library, the thought of her had not given him a moment's rest. He had wanted to find her immediately, to see her face, to know what she was thinking — whether she'd liked it, or whether it had frightened her off entirely. He'd gone through rather a lot of parchment before producing a letter he was satisfied with.
His plan had been measured and considered: a quiet, familiar setting, her favourite butterbeer, a sensible discussion about dancing. If she seemed at ease, perhaps something more honest. If she still seemed flustered, then simply conversation — any conversation — as long as she stopped disappearing.
He had not accounted for that sound.
It was exactly the sound she had made in the library, and it did exactly the same thing to him now as it had done then.
He set the crumpled tissue down on the table. Took a breath. Noticed that her lower lip was pressed between her teeth — the very spot he'd bitten, gently, at the end of their last kiss — and her eyes, when they met his, were wide and hazy and completely unguarded.
The list of conversation topics was abandoned without ceremony.
He leaned forward, cupped her chin in one hand, and kissed her.
That's it, he thought, the tension in him dissolving the moment their lips met. His other hand found the nape of her neck through her hair, cradling her head, and he kissed her properly — tasting the warm, faint sweetness of butterbeer on her lips, and beneath it, her.
Hermione's breath came short and fast.
What — what were they doing? How had this happened again?
But his lips were already on hers, and her lips, apparently with opinions of their own, had parted slightly — welcoming him, not pushing him away.
In an instant, every complicated, carefully arranged thought collapsed and scattered beyond retrieval.
She simply closed her eyes.
He was not cold. He was not indifferent. He was like the fire blazing in the grate behind them — consuming and complete, pressing warmly and insistently against something that had very much wanted to be found. He kissed her with a patience that did not feel patient at all, and a tenderness that felt inexorable.
Hermione's hands gripped the edge of the table. She was, once again, entirely lost in him.
His scent — cedarwood, clean and warm — drifted to her, and her grip tightened.
That. His lips. That kiss that left her without a single defence. She surrendered to it gladly, and felt, somewhere underneath the breathless dizzy warmth, a small and thoroughly smug satisfaction.
The cold, aloof boy that Hogwarts whispered about was kissing her — here, in the Three Broomsticks, behind a Christmas tree — with no coldness to speak of at all.
Two-faced, she thought, with helpless sweetness.
Every girl who had ever called him unfeeling or cold or impossible to read was wrong. Entirely, completely wrong.
He knew exactly what he was doing.