Draco Malfoy was in a noticeably good mood when he arrived at Honeydukes.
He spotted her the moment he walked in.
Hermione Granger. Standing alone in a corner of the shop, peering at a tray of suspiciously crimson lollipops with a look of deep uncertainty.
"Those are Blood-flavoured Lollipops," Draco said, strolling over. "You probably won't want those. They're rather popular with vampires."
She turned, and the smile reached her eyes immediately. She was nothing like the careful, slightly reserved version of herself she'd been around him in the castle lately. "Draco! Thank goodness you're back. I've been wandering around in here for so long I'm going a bit cross-eyed."
---
The path from Hogwarts to Hogsmeade took an hour on foot, and could feel twice as long or half as long depending entirely on the company.
Long, if you walked it in silence — stumbling along the muddy road through the morning mist, wondering when the distant, rumoured-about village would finally appear.
Short, if someone happened to be discussing the precise chemistry of Shrinking Solutions and how to neutralise their toxicity, or the comparative abilities of the Ashwinder, the Chameleon Ghoul, and the Swedish Short-Snout, or whether Professor Trelawney was a genuine Seer or an elaborate fraud.
"I still think Lavender is completely overreacting about the rabbit," Hermione said, tugging absently at his sleeve as they walked. "Professor Trelawney said 'what she feared would happen on October sixteenth' — but the problems are obvious: first, Lavender only heard the news that day, which doesn't mean the rabbit died that day; second, fearing a rabbit might die is an extraordinary stretch — it was perfectly young and healthy; and third, even granting that she feared it might die, she never feared it would be taken by a fox specifically—"
"I follow your reasoning," Draco said, steering her unhurriedly around a puddle she hadn't noticed. "On the grounds of timing, cause of death, and manner of death, it's a very imprecise so-called prophecy."
"You agree?" She looked up at him, entirely trusting him to manage where they were going. A large Thestral crossed the path ahead; he guided her past it without drawing attention to it.
"Your analysis is perfectly sound," he said. "Your roommate seems to be working quite hard to make reality fit a story she wants to believe."
"Exactly." A trace of relief warmed her voice. She was brushing past the Thestral's trailing black tail without any awareness of it. "Everyone else just thinks I have no heart."
"No heart?" Draco very nearly choked. "Who on earth said that? You spend half your time looking after every struggling soul in the castle."
"Ron said it. He felt sorry for Lavender and said I didn't care about other people's pets." Her voice went slightly small.
Draco considered this.
Ron's exact words had, in fact, been: *"You and Draco are exactly alike — neither of you cares about other people's pets! You'd make a perfect pair—"* followed by a hasty, breathless amendment of *"—of study partners!"*
He was not going to share this information.
"Don't let it bother you," he said. "He was offended for months after I had his rat handed over to the Aurors. You can't weigh your judgement against someone who considers a rat's feelings a moral absolute." He glanced sideways at her, and something in her expression settled — the slight tightness around her eyes easing. "You have the right of it. The truth is frequently unpopular."
"I suppose that's true." She cheered up, and tugged his sleeve again. "Right, you were going to explain the alternative neutralisation method — the one that works without adjusting the base ingredients—"
"Ah, yes." The corner of his mouth twitched. "Speaking purely from a toxicological standpoint, the simplest solution is to eat a Dung Bomb."
Hermione stared at him.
"That's — actually correct," she said slowly, working through it. "That would neutralise the acidity entirely—"
"Effective if inelegant," he agreed.
She burst out laughing.
They were approaching the gates of Hogsmeade. Draco slowed slightly.
"You were a bit nervous earlier, weren't you?" he said, more curious than accusatory.
"I wasn't nervous," Hermione said, a little too quickly.
He raised an eyebrow.
"...A little, perhaps," she admitted, carefully not looking at him. "I've never been to Hogsmeade before. I didn't know what to expect—"
"There's nothing to worry about," he said simply. "I'll show you around. You won't get lost."
She looked up at him. "I thought you didn't like crowds. You always looked pained when I dragged you around Muggle shopping streets in the summer."
"I generally don't," he said, with a slight shrug. "Today's an exception." He stopped, and with a small, deliberate smile at her puzzled face, turned and pushed the cast-iron gate open. "Welcome to the only entirely wizarding village in Britain."
Hermione stepped through and stopped.
The Hogsmeade sign swung gently above the gate — wrought iron, cut in the shape of a howling wolf. Beyond it, a cobblestone lane curved through rows of Gothic houses, grey-walled and white-roofed, their pointed spires and stepped gables huddled together companionably, their shop windows throwing colourful light onto the street. Students moved in clusters of two and three, spilling in and out of doorways, clutching paper bags of sweets and oddly-shaped packages.
"The architecture is completely different from Diagon Alley," Hermione said, tilting her head back to take in the narrow chimneys and the crow-stepped gables.
"Similar in function — a commercial centre for the wizarding community — but built in a distinctly Scottish style rather than English," Draco said, following her gaze. "Quite different from where I grew up, actually."
"Where do you live?" she asked, curious. "I know you have the London property—"
"That's just a town house. The family seat is in Wiltshire," he said, with the easy pride of someone describing something they've never thought to doubt. "A manor house. If you ever saw it—"
He stopped.
He had looked at her face. Her clear, open, entirely innocent expression.
She had been to Malfoy Manor once, in another life. She had left it bleeding on the drawing room floor, barely alive. A girl like a living English rose, nearly destroyed on that pale marble.
"What's wrong with it?" she asked.
"Nothing," Draco said. The word came out flat. "It's just a house."
She looked at him for a moment — sensing the change — and then said, with the gentle confidence of someone who has decided to be kind: "However old it is, it's still your home. My parents have a friend who's always complaining about the upkeep on his Georgian townhouse, but he'd never actually give it up. I imagine a manor house has that same quality — it's yours, whatever state it's in." She paused, glancing at him. "It must be beautiful, though."
Draco looked at her — at the earnest sincerity of her face — and gave her the most genuine smile he had managed all morning.
"Perhaps," he said. Then, more briskly: "I need to stop in and see Sirius for a few minutes. Is there somewhere you'd like to go first? I can take you there before I go."
"Honeydukes," she said immediately.
He took her there, installed her in front of the shelf of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans — seven hundred varieties, with the full list posted on a board above the shelf — and told her he'd be back shortly.
"Take your time," he said. "There's a great deal to look at."
She had nodded, and he had left.
That had been some time ago.
---
She had memorised the Bertie Bott's flavour board. She had examined every Chocolate Frog variety. She had stood in front of the lollipop quill pens for longer than she could justify. She had wandered the aisles without any real purpose, picking things up and setting them down.
She was waiting for him to come back, she realised.
And when his voice finally arrived — that unhurried, slightly drawling tone that somehow managed to convey both arrogance and good humour — she felt something in her chest loosen that she hadn't noticed was tightened.
*Those are Blood-flavoured Lollipops.*
She turned, and there he was. A faint smile on his face. Better than he'd looked when he left.
She didn't know why she was so certain of this. She simply was.
"Let me show you what's actually worth buying," he said, and they set off toward the main shelves.
Honeydukes had filled considerably since they'd arrived. Hogwarts students were only part of the crowd; there were plenty of ordinary wizarding shoppers as well, and the narrow aisles had become something of a bottleneck.
Draco had clearly navigated this before. He moved through the shop with purpose, keeping her close without making a thing of it — his arms partially around her, maintaining a careful, almost formal distance even while ensuring she wasn't jostled. It was, she thought, slightly medieval in its courtesy, and also oddly steadying.
He knew the shop as though he'd memorised it, which given the letters he'd apparently been sending them via post order, he probably had. He guided her from shelf to shelf, leaning in slightly to be heard over the noise:
Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans in every configuration, an entire wall of chocolate products, Liquorice Wands, Jelly Slugs, Acid Pops, Pepper Imps, Drooble's Best Blowing Gum, Fizzing Whizbees, Cauldron Cakes, Pumpkin Pasties, Fudge Flies, and a row of novelty lollipops shaped like quill pens—
"Too many," Hermione said, after they'd made the full circuit. She turned to him with the look of someone who had been given unlimited options and found it paralysing. "They're all interesting, I can't possibly choose—"
She had to raise her voice; the noise level had climbed. She leaned toward him to be heard. "What do boys actually like? I want to bring things back for Harry and the others—"
He leaned in. "For Harry and the others?"
A new wave of customers forced their way in from the entrance, and the crowd compressed. Several students pushed forward without looking — the momentum carried through the row of people — and the careful distance he'd maintained collapsed.
Hermione found herself with her arms around him, her face pressed to his shoulder, pinned there by the press of bodies on all sides. The breath went out of her.
*Oh no.*
Every careful effort of the past month — the deliberate bench-swapping, the sleeve-tugging rather than arm-taking, the handshakes — rendered entirely useless in approximately two seconds.
His neck was very close. He smelled clean and faintly warm, something like cedar and cold air, and it was doing something extremely unhelpful to her ability to think clearly.
In that compressed, ridiculous moment, she understood completely how Crookshanks felt about catnip.
"Oh — I'm sorry," she managed, not daring to lift her head to look at his face, and physically unable to move away given the crowd pressing from behind.
"I should have anticipated this," Draco said, sounding somewhat dazed himself.
His ears were warm. Her hair was against his cheek. Anyone would be a little thrown off, he reasoned. Anyone at all.
He was very aware that she had been keeping her distance from him lately — that she stiffened sometimes when he got too close — and the last thing he wanted was to make her feel she'd had no choice in the matter.
He did not pull her closer. He did, however, put one hand lightly at her back, a steadying pressure rather than an embrace, and said near her ear, "Let's move toward the corner — it'll be less crowded—"
"Yes," she said, muffled against his shoulder. "Let's do that."
He carved a path through the crowd with his back and elbows, and she kept her face buried and her fingers curled in the fabric at his back, and let him navigate. When they finally emerged into the slightly less-compressed corner by the vampire lollipops, there was room enough to stand apart again.
"You're safe," Draco said, and released her.
"Yes," Hermione said, to the lollipop display. Her face was considerably warmer than usual.
Neither of them commented on any of it.
"Since you can't choose," Draco said, in the tone of someone taking executive action, "I'll decide. Wait here."
He walked back into the crowd.
She watched him from the corner, tracking the bright head of platinum hair as he pushed to the counter, leaned across it, and said something to the round, bald shopkeeper that involved what appeared to be a very decisive quantity of coins. Mr. Honeyduke — if that was who he was — seemed extremely amenable to this approach and began packing bags at once.
Draco returned with an armful.
"Your beaded bag," he said. She held it open, and he loaded it with what seemed to be a thoroughly comprehensive assortment of the shop's best-sellers. Then he held out two smaller bags. "These are for you."
She looked at them. Fluffy Tooth Mints and an assortment of lollipop quill pens.
"How did you know I wanted these specifically—"
"You looked at them several times each," he said. "I guessed."
She opened her mouth. Closed it. She was fairly certain there was something she ought to say about this, about the fact that he had somehow tracked what she paused over in a crowded sweet shop while simultaneously navigating the crowd and keeping her from being flattened, but she couldn't locate it.
"Thank you, Draco," she said, instead.
He checked her expression — making sure she seemed alright — and finally gave a satisfied nod. "Right. Let's go find somewhere for lunch before all the seats are gone."
---
He led her to the Three Broomsticks.
They found a small, reasonably clean table in the corner, which given how quickly the pub was filling, constituted a minor victory. After ordering fish and chips, he handed her the drinks menu.
Hermione's gaze went immediately and involuntarily to *Butterbeer*, and then away again, to something more neutral.
She had been having an extraordinarily peculiar morning, emotionally speaking. Drinking actual beer with him at a small corner table felt inadvisable.
"Sparkling water," she said firmly.
Draco raised an eyebrow. He looked at the menu, then at her, then at the menu again.
"Are you certain?" he asked.
"Mmm," she said, already looking at the Hogsmeade map she'd picked up at the gate.
He went to the counter and came back with their food and two glasses — one of sparkling water, and one of Butterbeer, golden and topped with cream-coloured foam.
He set the Butterbeer in front of himself and the sparkling water in front of her.
She glanced at the Butterbeer. Looked at her map. Glanced at the Butterbeer again.
"Would you like to try mine?" he said.
"Is that — would you mind?"
"Go ahead," he said, pushing the glass toward her.
She took a careful sip.
Her eyes went wide.
"Oh," she said. "That's nothing like regular beer."
"The butter cuts the bitterness and the beer keeps it from being cloying," he said. "It's well-balanced."
She took another sip. Then, while he gave her a summary of the most worthwhile shops in the village — the quill shop on the high street, the bookshop, a brief and cautious description of the Shrieking Shack — she took several more small sips.
By the time he had finished his overview of Hogsmeade, the glass was empty.
He looked at it. He looked at her.
"You like Butterbeer," he said, with an air of profound vindication.
She looked at the empty glass. Her expression cycled rapidly through several stages.
"I'm so sorry, I didn't realise I'd — I didn't mean to—" She sat up very straight, mortified. "I'll go and buy you another one—"
"No need." He picked up her untouched sparkling water and took a sip. "I find I quite like sparkling water."
"Draco—"
"You're welcome," he said pleasantly, and changed the subject. "Have you decided where to go next?"
She pressed her lips together, plainly embarrassed, and plainly also trying not to smile. "Zonko's. Harry and the others would like the full report."
"Zonko's it is."
---
They had barely reached the far end of the lane when a Dementor drifted around the corner ahead of them, robes trailing, face hidden in its hood.
Hermione grabbed his hand.
"It's alright," Draco said immediately, pulling her into Zonko's Joke Shop before the creature could drift any closer. His own face had gone slightly pale. "They patrol the village. The Ministry has them under control — they don't target ordinary witches and wizards."
"They're everywhere," Hermione murmured. The shop around them was full of delighted students buying Stink Pellets, Belch Powder, and Dungbombs, all of them completely unperturbed. She lowered her voice further. "The Ministry shouldn't be doing this. It's irresponsible."
"My father agrees with you, for what it's worth, but Minister Fudge is determined." Draco handed her a bar of chocolate; she broke a piece off and ate it automatically. "They want Pettigrew back badly enough to accept the risks. Whether that calculation is sound is another matter."
"Yes," Hermione said quietly. "Pettigrew."
She was looking at him with an expression he couldn't quite read — something heavier than the usual worry.
He glanced down at their hands. He hadn't let go of hers. He made an attempt to do so, to give her back her comfortable distance.
Her fingers tightened.
He stilled.
She was worried about him, he realised. She was thinking about Pettigrew and she was worried, specifically, about him.
He felt a strange, warm, complicated thing stir in his chest. The kind of feeling that was difficult to name without making it larger than it should be.
"Want to see something unexpected?" he asked.
She looked up. His expression had shifted — there was a glimmer of something conspiratorial in it. "What sort of unexpected?"
"Follow me."
He led her through the side streets, away from the patrolling Dementors, winding through the narrower lanes toward the far end of the village.
"This is the way to the Shrieking Shack," Hermione said, recognising it from the map.
"It's also the way to the most popular shop in Hogsmeade," he said. He rounded the last bend and stopped, gesturing ahead. "There."
The storefront blazed with colour. A sign reading *Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes* pulsed with enthusiastic, self-congratulatory light. The window display was a barely-contained explosion of rotating products, flashing novelties, jumping parcels, and one item that appeared to be trying to escape its packaging entirely.
Every shop on the lane looked distinctly dimmer in comparison.
"Fred and George did this?" Hermione stared.
"Just opened in Hogsmeade," Draco said, with a trace of satisfaction he didn't bother to hide. "I hear it's doing rather well."
She turned to him with delight and pulled him through the door.
The shop was, if anything, louder than Honeydukes. Fred was behind the counter simultaneously serving three customers, explaining a product demonstration to a fourth, and appearing to locate a fifth by sound alone. He somehow still managed to clock Draco as he came in and dispatch a swift, meaningful wink.
Hermione was already absorbed. The shelves went floor to ceiling in every direction — Skiving Snackboxes, Nosebleed Nougat, Patented Daydream Charms, a rack of spell-checking quills, an assortment of Muggle objects clearly in the process of being made very strange — and she moved through them with the focused delight of someone doing actual research.
George appeared from somewhere in the back and clapped Draco on the shoulder. "Well? Not bad, eh?"
"Better than I expected," Draco said.
"That's incredible," Hermione added, beaming at George.
George's gaze dropped briefly to their joined hands. He gave them a smile of such pointed cheerfulness that Draco had the distinct feeling of being seen through entirely.
Hermione noticed at the same moment and released his hand as though she had touched something hot. She turned very quickly toward the nearest display cabinet. "I'll just — look at these—"
"Don't go too far, and stay inside the shop," Draco said.
"I know, I'm not five years old," she said, pink-faced and not looking at him, and walked faster.
George gave Draco a long look. "You can't talk to girls like that," he said kindly. "Nobody enjoys being managed. You're being overprotective."
"She just encountered a Dementor and she's unsettled," Draco said. "I think—"
"Fred will keep an eye on her," George said. He said something to his brother in a low voice.
Fred, currently handing over a bag to a customer, caught Draco's eye across the shop and gave him a solemn nod of assurance.
Draco gave up arguing and let George drag him upstairs.
The second floor was freshly done — new shelves, a proper workroom for product development, staff quarters above. It smelled of sawdust and something that might have been experimental potion. Several worktables were covered with materials from various sources: a tarnished dagger from the Grimmauld Place collection, crystal phials of unidentified liquids, dried creature components, a large pile of battered silver boxes.
Several official-looking certificates hung on the wall — Ministry of Magic stamps visible on each.
"Invention registration and patents sorted?" Draco asked.
"All done, eventually." George made a face. "The Muggle-worthy Excuse Office is on the second floor, and the Whimsical Devices Patent Office is on the seventh. As long as you avoid anyone you'd rather not meet in the lifts, you're fine. We usually use a Glamour Charm, just in case."
Draco smiled. He drifted to the corner and lifted the cloth from a large iron cage.
Inside: piles of unconscious Cornish Pixies.
"How many have you got in here?" He dropped the cloth.
"They're for venom research — Skiving Snackboxes," George said cheerfully.
"Right." Draco moved on, glancing at a rack of prototype wands and a pile of unusual hats with the caution of someone who has learned not to touch things in experimental workshops.
"The wands are a work in progress — they give the user a minor Stunning jinx," George said. "The hats are Cursed Hat prototypes — the purely comedic kind—"
"Keep working on those hats," Draco said, with more conviction than he usually brought to assessments. "They have a market."
"GEORGE." Fred's voice carried up from below with considerable urgency.
George grinned at Draco. "Looks like you're on your own." He pelted back down the stairs.
Draco looked around the workshop for another moment. Two people were not enough — the shop would need more staff as it grew. He would bring it up properly with George another time.
He walked down the stairs and immediately found Hermione.
She had entirely recovered from the Dementor encounter and was crouched in front of a cage of miniature fluffy creatures — pink and purple, each about the size of his fist — that rolled around emitting tiny, indignant shrieks.
"Puffskeins," Fred said, from behind the counter. "Miniature ones. Just came in today. You can touch them, they're perfectly harmless."
"They're wonderful," Hermione said, with great feeling, extending a finger. The nearest Puffskein rolled toward it and nudged it with what appeared to be affection.
"I'd give you one, if you like—"
"I already have Crookshanks," she said, regretfully. "He'd eat them."
"Fair enough." Fred considered. "Could you pick out a couple for my sister? She loves these."
Hermione immediately set about the task with focused enthusiasm, assessing each Puffskein with the seriousness one might bring to a more consequential decision.
A group of girls had descended on George in the other corner, demanding the full range of the shop's beauty and romance products with great energy. George's face suggested he had not been entirely prepared for this demographic.
"Fred," he called, "I need—"
"Busy," Fred said, not looking up.
"Oh, he's—" George stopped, changed tack. "All under control."
Fred finished with a customer, straightened up, and said cheerfully to Hermione, "I'll leave you to it, then — we're swamped."
"Of course, go on." She looked genuinely puzzled as to why the shopkeeper had been keeping her company over a cage of Puffskeins to begin with.
"What are you doing?"
The voice came from behind her, slightly above her, with the easy warmth she'd been listening for all morning.
She looked up. Draco had come downstairs at some point, without her noticing. He was standing over her shoulder with a look of mild, benevolent curiosity.
"Picking out Puffskeins for Ginny," she said, brightening. "Come and help — George said I should choose the nicest ones—"
"Yes, ma'am," Draco said, with a small, genuine smile, and crouched down beside her.
Behind them, Fred's introductory patter to the group of girls drifted across the shop: "...our premium product in this line — up to twenty-four hours depending on the weight of the young man in question and the general allure of the young lady—"
Draco did not look up from the Puffskeins. He selected two of the most energetically spherical ones and held them out.
"These two," he said.
"Those are good ones," Hermione agreed.
Outside the window, the lane was darkening toward late afternoon. The lights in the surrounding shops began to glow warmer. She had not noticed the time passing at all.