Past Life Story Eleven: The Fearful Granger
Time: Fourth Year, First Task of the Triwizard Tournament
Location: Near the Spectators' Barrier
"We've prepared a big pile of tissues for you to cry on, Potter!" Draco said, loud enough to ensure the pale, dark-haired boy heard every word, then swept past him with Crabbe and Goyle in tow.
It was a cold November afternoon. Draco was heading to the arena as a spectator.
He didn't know what the First Task involved, but he was reasonably certain it wouldn't be pleasant for anyone facing it.
"With everyone watching, Dumbledore can't exactly shield his favourite boy, can he?" He smiled pleasantly at Crabbe and Goyle, who were busy demolishing their chocolate cakes and nodded along without much attention.
Then he saw the dragons.
A Swedish Short-Snout. A Welsh Green. A Chinese Fireball. And a Hungarian Horntail.
"Oh, Merlin," he said loudly, covering for the genuine shock climbing up his throat. "Potter's going to faint."
That was when Granger walked past and glared at him.
She actually glared. As arrogant as ever.
He was about to say something cutting, but she'd already looked away and kept moving—agitated, quick-stepping—heading straight for the competitors' tent at the back of the enclosure.
Cedric Diggory was already on the field. The crowd's attention was entirely on him.
Amid Crabbe and Goyle's exclamations over Diggory's Transfiguration, Draco squinted instead at the small shadow slipping through the gap in the tent canvas.
What was she doing, going to Potter now? Giving him some last-minute coaching? He leaned on the second-floor barrier railing and thought with quiet satisfaction: *Too late, Granger. Far too late.*
The crowd gasped. Diggory succeeded.
Fleur Delacour of Beauxbatons stepped out next.
A small Gryffindor boy was trying to squeeze in beside him with a camera. Draco turned and fixed him with a look. "Move. Don't stand next to me."
The boy pouted and relocated to another section of the railing. Crabbe and Goyle shifted instinctively, opening up space on either side.
Good. Draco approved of the space.
He hated crowds pressing against him. He stared toward the tent, satisfied.
When Viktor Krum of Durmstrang emerged, the small shadow finally bolted back out in a panic.
He watched her sprint back to the stands. He could hear her taking the stairs.
He turned his head casually—and found her eyes.
She'd never looked at him quite like that before. Her brown eyes held something unguarded and flickering. Something urgent.
They met his for a fraction of a second—unsuspecting, unguarded—and he saw something that looked, unmistakably, like deep worry.
Then he understood. She wasn't looking at him at all. She was still frantic about Potter, and his face happened to be in the way.
He was annoyed.
Before he could examine why, Ludo Bagman's voice rolled across the entire enclosure: "Mr. Harry Potter, please take the field!"
She stopped dead.
Then, like someone sleepwalking, she rushed into the small gap directly beside him, grabbed the railing, and fixed her gaze on the arena.
He stared at her in disbelief. She'd just—squeezed in next to him. Without a word, without acknowledgement, as if he were a lamppost.
He turned sideways automatically to make room. Then turned his head to look at her profile.
Her face was slightly flushed from the cold and from running, and there was something almost feline about the set of it—focused, intent, unaware of anything but what she was watching. This was not a common opportunity. He took it.
He studied her. Looking for something he could use against her later.
He noticed that her cheeks were very smooth.
*Like panna cotta,* he thought involuntarily—then gave himself a sharp mental shake. He must have eaten an inadequate breakfast. The cold was getting to him.
A gust of wind went through. She was right beside him, and her long, untamed hair swept across his robes.
He watched the strands move. He thought, with something that was not entirely malice, about pulling a handful, just to see if she'd finally notice he was standing there.
He should say something harsh. Drive her off. They had no business standing this close.
But her eyelashes were very long, he noticed. They fluttered faintly, like something trying to take flight.
He didn't move. He didn't speak. He fixed his eyes firmly on Potter instead.
*Focus,* he told himself. *Every second of this is material. Every stumble, every close call—it's all ammunition for afterwards. Don't waste it staring at her.*
A perfectly reasonable decision. He settled into it.
On the field, Potter had raised his wand and shouted something. A moment later, he was sprinting through the rubble, trying to dodge the Hungarian Horntail.
What on earth was Potter doing? Was he trying to outrun a dragon on foot?
Then the girl beside him started screaming.
Not quiet screaming. Not polite audience anxiety. A full-throated, genuine, piercing shriek that cut straight through his eardrums.
"For Merlin's sake, Granger—are you made of a whistle?" He finally gave up and spoke to her.
She completely ignored him. She probably didn't hear him. The screaming continued.
On the field, the Hungarian Horntail was breathing fire at Potter, who was sheltering behind a large boulder. The boulder was shrinking. The crowd noise swelled.
Draco would have found this enormously entertaining—except that her screaming was drowning out everyone else, and his eardrums were suffering, and he couldn't focus on enjoying it properly.
He turned to complain again and found her with both hands over her face, fingers spread just wide enough to see through, her expression a perfect portrait of someone who desperately wants to look and desperately doesn't.
Her cheeks had gone red. She was scratching at them in her terror.
He watched her drag her own nails across that smooth face.
His hands moved before his brain did.
He grabbed her wrists and stopped her.
"Stop that," he said.
She seemed past hearing. The rock was almost gone; Potter was about to be fully exposed to the Horntail's fire. With her hands removed and her eyes forced open by sheer panic, she did the only thing left available to her—she turned and buried her face against his shoulder.
Draco went entirely still.
The crowd noise disappeared. Bagman's commentary faded. All he could hear was her—muffled against his robes, terrified, trembling—and the sound of that was doing something very strange to his chest.
He was holding her wrist. She was pressed against him, shaking. She fit against him with a naturalness that didn't make any sense.
His face was burning. He stared straight ahead and told himself absolutely nothing was happening.
"He's away!" Bagman's voice broke through. "Potter on his Firebolt—ladies and gentlemen, he can fly! He escaped at the last moment—did you see that, Mr. Krum?"
"He—he's all right," Draco said. His voice came out noticeably less steady than he'd intended. "Granger. He flew."
"Oh, thank Merlin." She seemed to finally dare look up. Her gaze found Potter immediately, following the figure circling above the enclosure, and her voice filled with a relief so genuine it was almost painful to hear. "I knew he could do it. I knew it—"
She hadn't looked at Draco once.
The unnamed, burning feeling in his head climbed higher.
"Yes," he said, in his coldest voice. "What a pity. You can breathe now."
"I wasn't scared at all!" she said, and turned—and finally registered who was standing directly beside her.
She stepped back as if singed.
"Malfoy? What—what are you doing?"
"I have no idea what I'm doing," he said, furious, putting his hands behind his back. "Some absolute fool rushed into my arms shaking like a leaf and now wants to know what I'm doing?"
"You grabbed my hands first! I thought—" Her face had gone scarlet. "Why did you grab my hands?"
"Because you were clawing at your own face! What were you doing—trying to give yourself permanent scars??" He was stung by her outrage when he was the one who had been stood against. "With what? Your own fingernails?"
"What business is it of yours?" she said sharply.
He looked her over. His eyes lingered for one moment on the red marks on her cheeks—still visible, unfortunately—and he gave her his most insufferable grin. "I think you were simply terrified. Tsk, Granger. You're a coward. What, afraid Potter was about to be roasted alive?"
"I am *not* scared! You're being completely unreasonable. If you can't speak properly, don't speak at all!"
"You can talk—your screaming sounded like a broken Sneakoscope!"
"You—" Her brown eyes were blazing. She looked very much like she was considering physical violence.
"Look at that!" Bagman shouted across the enclosure. "The youngest champion has retrieved the golden egg—and in the fastest time! Remarkable!"
"Oh—I missed it—" The girl whipped around and threw herself against the railing, staring out at the field. "That's *your* fault, Malfoy! I missed the whole thing!"
"How is that my fault? I missed it too!" The burning feeling in his head reached a peak. "You wasted it entirely!"
"A waste?" She turned on him, face flushed, voice rising. "Yes! Completely wasted! A total waste of time!"
Just then Weasley appeared, looking warily between them. "What happened, Hermione?"
"Nothing. Let's go see Harry." She glared at Draco, raised her chin. "Move. You're in the way."
For the first time in recent memory, Draco had no reply.
He watched her go down the stairs with Weasley, quick and certain, heading for the competitors' tent. She did not look back once.
He stood at the railing with his hands behind his back, staring after her.
The strange burning feeling in his chest was still going—puzzled and fluctuating, looking for something it couldn't locate.
"What was she doing over here?" Pansy appeared at his elbow, suspicious. "That Mudblood."
Right. He was allergic to her. That was the only rational explanation for the trembling hands, the racing heart, the inexplicable warmth. An allergic reaction. Completely standard. Nothing else needed.
Her face didn't look anything like panna cotta. Absolutely not. He had no idea why he'd thought that.
Whether she'd been afraid or not was none of his concern whatsoever.
"Nothing," Draco said, watching the distant figure disappear into the tent. "We had our usual argument. That's all."
---
Past Life Story Twelve: The Spinning Granger
Time: Fourth Year
Location: An abandoned classroom on the eighth floor
A figure slipped quietly into an abandoned classroom on the eighth floor.
The room was small—two or three windows, limp curtains, broken furniture stacked in one corner. A few chairs sat crookedly in the middle of the floor.
She waved her wand. The chairs pressed themselves obediently against the walls. The door clicked shut behind her.
She hadn't noticed the pair of grey eyes watching her with quiet amusement from behind the curtain.
She took a breath, began to hum something in waltz time, arranged an imaginary partner in front of her—and started dancing.
The person behind the curtain slowly smiled.
Merlin's beard. She was catastrophically clumsy.
He had witnessed Granger be wrong about precisely nothing in the four years he'd known her. He had never expected to be treated to this. She slipped, recovered, twisted herself into genuinely bizarre positions, and once—magnificently—nearly fell over her own feet. It was the single most entertaining thing he had seen all term.
This was going to be a disaster for whoever had agreed to partner with her.
Some unfortunate boy had actually invited her. He allowed himself to feel smug about this for a moment. *What clueless person said yes?*
She hummed the third verse when she meant the second. Her feet and the tune stopped having any relationship with each other. The panic was visible in her face as the situation deteriorated.
She tripped.
Of course she tripped.
Everything physical eventually ended with Hermione Granger on the floor. It was practically a law of nature.
He watched her sit down amid the dust and the silence, and the smug satisfaction he'd been enjoying began to curdle slightly.
Her expression was set and frustrated. Her mouth went tight. Her eyes were going red.
*Don't,* he thought. *Don't you dare.*
He had never worked out how to handle girls crying. His toolkit ran almost entirely in the other direction.
She wasn't like the girls he knew—the ones who cried pointedly, in public, to achieve things. She preferred to hide it, to be by herself, to deal with it privately, like some small stubborn animal licking its wounds where no one could see.
Which meant that watching it was somehow considerably worse.
"I wasn't aware you were practising for the Yule Ball," he said, dropping down from behind the curtains in a lazy movement. "Or should I just cast Tarantallegra and let your feet sort themselves out?"
She startled, looked up—tried and failed to compose her face—and her tears were already there.
"Malfoy?" Her voice was thick. "What are you doing here?"
He looked at the tracks on her cheeks and shook his head. "What extraordinarily precious tears. Cry a bit longer and maybe your footwork will improve."
He genuinely had wanted to tell her to stop. That was simply not how his mouth worked.
The attempt at comfort, such as it was, clearly landed badly. She pulled her knees up, buried her face against them. "Go away, Malfoy."
He did not go away. Instead, he walked over and stopped directly in front of her.
"You're nowhere near ready," he said, looking down at her with a detached expression. "With footwork like that, who'd dare ask you a second time?"
"*Shut up,*" came from between her knees.
"Granger. Your dancing is genuinely terrible. I didn't think you were bad at things."
"I'm not bad at it," she said, head still down, voice muffled and irritable. "I simply haven't had enough practice. Would you *leave me alone?*"
"No. You look dreadful. Stand up." He reached down and pulled her upright—too quickly; she stumbled forward. He caught her by the arm before she could prove his point for him.
"*What* are you doing?" She tried to pull free. Couldn't. She glared up at him with very large, very damp eyes.
"Practising. You need a real partner, not thin air." He took her hand. Her fingers were tear-damp and ink-stained. "Now."
She stared at him as if he'd said something in Mermish.
"I'm not going to murder you in an empty classroom." He adopted his most bored expression, ignoring the odd, faint current that had run up his hand at the contact—probably the ink. He was likely allergic to ink too, at this rate. "Just dance."
"*Get lost,* Malfoy! As if I'd—" Her free hand went for her wand.
He caught that hand too and placed it on his waist.
"You want to embarrass yourself at the Ball?" he said sharply. "You have to work with a real person. Not an imaginary one who doesn't judge you. I'm real, and I judge everyone." He placed his hand at her waist. "Keep humming your song."
She stared at him. Her mouth opened and closed.
"Go on," he said.
"Absolutely not," she said, flushing deeply.
He looked at her. She looked back, lifted her chin, and said, with a kind of reckless defiance, "Go ahead, then. Say it. Say whatever you were going to say about me."
Her eyes were still shining with the remnants of tears. And she was looking straight at him, not flinching, daring him.
The fire in his chest guttered and went quiet.
He wrinkled his nose. "I don't feel like arguing today. I'm in a good mood."
He started to whistle.
The slow, sad waltz she'd been humming—he gave it back to her, clear and steady.
The expression on her face was entirely worth it. He'd never seen her look so thoroughly wrong-footed.
*That's right,* he thought with satisfaction. *Look at me. I'm here. I've been here this entire time.*
He led her into the first turn.
It wasn't quite dancing. It was more like a sustained argument conducted through footwork—she was fighting him, not following, her jaw set, her attention split between his hand and her feet. She stepped on him twice.
"Feel the rhythm. Don't count it," he said.
"I *am* feeling it—"
"You are absolutely counting it. Stop."
"*Blow your whistle,*" she said, rudely.
He obeyed. He didn't know why. Possibly because her eyes still held that small, wet brightness that he preferred not to examine too closely.
He whistled and led her, and after two or three circuits of the dusty room, she stopped fighting him quite so hard. Her feet found the rhythm without her telling them to. Her shoulders dropped half an inch.
Granger's learning speed. He'd always known it was something unusual. Even here, even this—two or three rounds and she had it.
Maybe she'd never lacked the ability. Maybe she'd simply never had someone willing to be patient enough to start from the beginning.
He wasn't sure where that thought came from. He whistled and kept moving.
On the next turn, he guided her through a spin, and something shifted. Her hair lifted into the light—catching gold at the edges—and she laughed, startled out of it, a bright unguarded sound that she hadn't meant to make.
He heard himself chuckle. Quietly. He stopped the moment he heard it.
Something was very wrong.
He was dancing with Granger. He was laughing with her. He had sought her out, had pulled her up off the floor, had voluntarily placed his hand at her waist—and none of this had been coerced.
The Slytherins would think he'd been Confunded.
He thought of Granger at the Potions classroom, looking down at him. He thought of Lucius's voice: *Stay away from that sort. Don't bring shame to the Malfoy family.*
"Let's stop here."
He dropped her hands and stepped back.
She blinked, surprised. His gaze swept past her face and away, not daring to linger.
He had stopped whistling, but his pulse had not caught up.
He stared at his shoes. He tried to reassemble himself into something recognisable.
The wallpaper in this room was peeling. The floor was covered in dust. There was a dead spider in the far corner.
He focused on these facts.
"Don't tell anyone I did this," he said, narrowing his eyes, pulling his voice into its sharpest register. "You little Mudblood."
*She's a Mudblood.* He reminded himself of this with great deliberateness. *There. Distance. Good.*
She came back to earth with a visible snap, the surprise on her face hardening into something familiar.
"Don't tell anyone about this, either," she said, her voice gone crisp and merciless, "you twitching little weasel. Or I'll ask Professor Moody for a follow-up on your last transformation."
"You *ungrateful—*" He turned on her, shaking with indignation—
She was already waving her wand at the door, pulling it open, and leaving as if he were something she'd accidentally stepped in.
---
Past Life Story Thirteen: The Mysterious Granger
Time: Fourth Year, before the Yule Ball
Location: Corridor outside the Great Hall; Library; Slytherin common room
After the dancing lesson, Draco spent the following days in a state of sustained irritation.
He regretted the moment of weakness. He had jumped out from behind that curtain and offered to help her, and in return she had threatened him with Professor Moody and a full-body Transfiguration. A fitting reward for sentimentality.
She really knew how to insult precisely. *Twitching all over.* The specific detail of it was deeply offensive. He hadn't even added a modifier to *Mudblood,* and she'd gone and prefaced hers with a full clinical description.
Next time, he was absolutely adding a modifier. For revenge.
He was furious. He was constantly thinking about her. He was probably ill.
*She is a Mudblood girl,* he told himself, for what felt like the thousand and first time. *You cannot keep thinking about her. It's completely illogical. Dancing with her ends in nothing but embarrassment.*
Let her go to the Ball uninvited. That would teach her something about how thoroughly unpopular she was.
Then, in a corridor outside the Great Hall, he heard Weasley's voice:
"Hermione—who are you going to the Ball with?"
"If I told you, you'd laugh," came Granger's voice.
Draco stopped walking.
Someone had invited her. Someone had actually invited her. Some inexplicable, misguided—
She'd *accepted.*
The irritation that he'd mostly managed to bank suddenly reignited.
"You're joking, Weasley!" He stepped forward, teeth set. "Someone actually invited—*her*? And she said yes? That—"
He inserted a prefix this time, as promised. She probably wouldn't like it. Good.
She turned—not toward him, but past him—and raised her hand to wave brightly at someone over his shoulder. "Hello, Professor Moody!"
He spun around.
Moody was at the staff table in the Great Hall, eating his stew. He hadn't moved.
"You're still a twitching little weasel, aren't you, Malfoy?" she said pleasantly, and walked away up the marble staircase with Harry and Ron.
He could hear them laughing.
He'd jumped. He'd actually jumped. He stood in the empty corridor, collected himself, and looked around to confirm there were no witnesses.
"Let's go," he said to Crabbe and Goyle, with great dignity.
"Who are you going to invite, Draco?" Crabbe asked, blinking his small eyes anxiously. "For the Ball? Have you decided?"
"No. Someone. It doesn't matter," Draco said impatiently. "Who's going to turn down a Malfoy?"
But.
*Who had invited Granger?*
Over the following days, he found himself—entirely against his will—listening to Weasley's tireless interrogations of Granger in corridors and at mealtimes. Weasley tried a different approach every time. She deflected every one with a mysterious expression that would not have looked out of place on the Sphinx.
He had to know. The not knowing was intolerable.
One afternoon in the library, he stationed himself on the other side of a bookshelf from where she was working. He watched through the gap in the books with patient attention.
She pulled a volume from the shelf.
Saw his eyes watching from between the remaining books.
Sent the entire row of books clattering to the floor.
"Merlin's—*Malfoy*! Why are you lurking like a ghost?"
"Are you going with Potter?" he asked, coming around the shelf and looking down at her where she was crouching to pick up the scattered books.
"What?" She looked up at him, confused.
"To the Ball," he said, putting his hands in his pockets.
"Obviously not."
"Longbottom, then?"
She said nothing. Her face went slightly pink. She stacked books without looking at him.
"It *is* him," Draco said. "You're going with Longbottom."
"It's not him," she said flatly, glancing up with wary eyes.
"So you've made the whole thing up. You don't have a partner at all." He tilted his head, examining her. "Thinking of spending the evening in here instead?"
"Someone invited me!" She stood up, put the last book back on the shelf with some force. "I've already accepted! It's settled!"
"Who?" He watched her carefully. "Why all the mystery? Who is it that you can't just say?"
"Why would I tell *you*?" She moved away from him like he carried a contagious disease. "What's it to you—Little Weasel?"
He sat in the armchair by the Slytherin common room fire that evening, chin in hand, staring at the flames.
*What was it to him?*
"Draco, take me to the Ball," Pansy said, dropping into the chair across from him.
"Isn't it customary for the boy to ask?"
"Some girls ask first! What's wrong with that?" Pansy waved a hand. "I was going to ask Blaise, but he went and invited Fleur Delacour this morning. Said she was the prettiest girl he'd ever seen. *Shallow.*"
"He's not your boyfriend, Pansy. You were asking Krum and Diggory for autographs last week and calling them handsome." Draco shrugged. "Though for what it's worth—I just passed her in the corridor and she'd already said yes to Roger Davies from Ravenclaw. If you want Blaise's attention, you might have your chance in about thirty seconds."
"I'm not chasing him! He has to understand that I don't need him!" Pansy said, urgent and indignant. "You don't have a partner either—just take me! Consider it a favour!"
"Why should I do something so exhausting?"
"Because," Pansy said, with the directness that was her one genuinely useful quality, "if you ask any other Slytherin girl, she'll think you're serious. She'll cling. She might try a love potion. I won't."
Draco conceded this was accurate.
The common room door opened. Blaise walked in and scanned the room.
"He's here," Draco said.
"Fine," Pansy said quickly. "Fine. Help me, please."
He rolled his eyes, extended his hand, and said, in the most bored voice he owned: "Pansy Parkinson, would you be so kind as to be my partner for the Yule Ball, so that Blaise Zabini can be furious about it."
"*Yes,*" she said, with triumph, and slapped his palm.
The girls in the corner gasped. Blaise stopped walking and stared.
Pansy launched into battle.
Draco leaned back, watched the common room's great domed windows where the lake moved slowly in the darkness beyond the glass, and returned to the only question that had been occupying him in any real way for the past fortnight.
*Who was Granger's mysterious dance partner?*
---
Past Life Story Fourteen: Granger's Tears
Time: Fourth Year, the night of the Yule Ball, after Hermione and Ron's argument
Location: The staircase off the Great Hall entrance
"You danced the opening with a Durmstrang champion and every girl in the school envied you tonight," he said, standing in the cold corridor with the fire still burning in his chest, looking at the girl with the red nose on the steps. "What more could there possibly be to want?"
She let out a sob. Proper tears—bright and running—catching the moonlight.
He was almost certain they were scalding, just from looking at them.
"Are those tears worth so little? They're not even a decent colour." He leaned against the wall, taking stock of her. "What happened? Did Krum do something? Or was it Potter and Weasley?"
"Move, Malfoy. Don't even think about using this for ammunition." She looked down, her skirts pooling around her on the steps—blue, he noticed. He'd noticed approximately eight hundred times that evening, and had been irritated with himself each time.
He looked around. The corridor was empty except for a few Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students who paid them no attention.
He sat down.
He looked at her without trying to stop himself, and noticed her cheeks were flushed in a way that was not entirely from crying.
"Granger." He looked at the empty bottles arranged rather neatly beside her. "Are you *drunk?*"
"What's it to you? Stay away from me, you little—hopping—weasel—" She turned to look at him, eyes glassy and slightly unfocused, and then grinned—a slow, threatening grin. "If you bother me again, I'll turn you into one. I've already mastered the spell."
He flushed before he could stop it.
"You—" He pulled himself up, going for a proper cutting comeback—*little Mudblood*, perfectly calibrated, exactly right—
And then he looked at her eyes.
Her eyes were brilliant tonight. Like the very best hazelnut chocolate from Honeydukes, lit from the inside.
He hadn't been able to find a single flaw with her all evening. He'd tried, with genuine effort, throughout the entire Ball. He'd watched her dance with Krum and catalogued every possible objection. He'd found none. She had been—he was not going to use the word—she had been entirely without fault.
She'd had him so distracted all night that he'd barely danced himself.
He lowered his gaze to the floor. Her shoes were beside her, heels up, and she was barefoot.
"Granger, the ground is filthy."
"My feet hurt," she said simply, and hiccuped.
"The shoes don't fit?"
"They fit. I twisted my ankle."
He reached over, lifted the hem of her skirt just enough, took her foot in his hand, and examined it.
"*Malfoy!*" She grabbed for her wand—it wasn't where she expected it to be. "Let go—what are you—"
"Hold still."
He found the joint, assessed it with practiced hands—he knew this from Quidditch, from years of minor pitch injuries—applied careful pressure, and with a small, definitive click, set it back into place.
She stared at her foot. Then at him. "You know how to do that?"
"Obviously."
"...Thank you," she said, very quietly, and looked up at him with eyes that were still somewhat damp.
"Krum," he said, before he could stop himself. "For all his reputation—he didn't notice you'd hurt yourself."
She raised an eyebrow.
"When he was dancing with you," he said, with what he recognised was a deeply unreasonable sourness, "he wasn't paying attention. He let you hurt yourself."
"I don't need to be *managed.*"
"No, you need a partner who actually watches what you're doing," he said, with an expression he was aware looked extremely self-satisfied and extremely foolish simultaneously.
"What are you talking about?" She looked at him blankly—then picked up the nearest bottle and tilted it toward her mouth.
He caught it. Empty.
"You're drunk."
"I'm perfectly fine."
"You're having a calm conversation with a Malfoy and appear to be enjoying it. That is the definition of impaired judgment."
She considered this—then, very suddenly, reached out and grabbed his tie.
Pulled it toward her. Until she was looking at his face from about four inches away.
He stopped breathing.
"You know," she said, thoughtfully, with the frank confidence of someone who has consumed several butterbeers and lost track of social convention, "if you didn't talk so much—you'd actually be quite tolerable. Those eyes are rather pretty."
"When have I ever been—" he started, purely from reflex, and then stopped, because something in what she'd said had arrived in his brain on a delay and he wasn't sure how to process it.
He looked at her. She was looking at him with a kind of serious, slightly baffled attention, as if she were working through a particularly knotty Arithmancy problem.
"Rather pretty," she repeated, not backing down, her eyes moving slowly over his face.
His lips did something involuntary. He swallowed.
The fireworks outside had started. He could hear them distantly—each explosion a little closer, a little louder—and the coloured light moved through the high windows above them.
She was still holding his tie.
She was looking at him as if she genuinely didn't know what to make of him, but wasn't in any hurry to look away.
And then—unhurriedly, without much preamble, as if she'd simply made a decision—she leaned forward and kissed him.
He hadn't ever thought particularly hard about what a first kiss would be like. It had always seemed like an abstraction, something theoretical that applied to other people in other situations.
The fireworks outside bloomed one after another, each burst arriving like a knock on a door he hadn't known was there.
She smelled like butterbeer and something underneath it that was just—*her*—and her lips were soft, and warm, and nothing like the word he'd spent four years calling her.
It lasted a moment. Then she drew back.
They sat facing each other on the staircase, a foot apart, and neither of them said anything.
The fireworks continued outside.
"Granger," he finally managed, in a voice he didn't quite recognise. "What was that."
She stared at him. Blinked. Looked, suddenly, as if she'd woken up mid-conversation.
She let go of his tie.
She picked up her shoes from the floor. She stood up, barefoot, and walked quickly up the stairs without looking back.
Draco sat on the step alone. He turned his head and looked at the last of the fireworks fading above the darkened grounds.
He sat there for quite some time.
---
The next day, she walked up to the shelf in the library where he was looking for a book. She looked at the titles beside his face. She would not look at his face.
She paused. "Malfoy. Did you see me at all last night?"
So it hadn't been a dream.
"No," he said, crossing his arms, deploying the look he'd calibrated in the dormitory mirror. "Having some sort of vivid dream, were you, Granger?"
He was absolutely never admitting what had happened. He would take it to his grave.
"*Get lost,*" she said, her face flooding red, and turned sharply away.
He caught it—the moment she turned—the small, quiet exhale of relief.
He stared at the shelf.
*Relief.*
She was *relieved.*
She had kissed him—had *kissed him*—and was now standing three feet away breathing out with relief that it might not have been real.
The infuriated outrage that came over him had nowhere to go. He couldn't say anything. He couldn't tell anyone. He couldn't even be properly angry in front of her without explaining why.
He put the dictionary back on the shelf. It made a satisfying noise.
*Utterly irresponsible,* he thought, with great feeling. *Completely and utterly irresponsible.*