As the song ended, the hall erupted in applause.
"I heard we missed the tango," Hermione said, sinking gratefully into one of the ornate chairs along the wall and taking a long sip of Butterbeer. She watched the couples still on the floor with idle contentment. "That's a slight shame, isn't it?"
They had danced through what felt like every mood the evening had to offer — waltzes, reels, something melancholy, something that had nearly sent her off her feet. She had probably made up for every dance she hadn't danced in the first fifteen years of her life, with interest.
"I don't feel the least bit regretful," said the boy beside her, leaning back in his chair with his eyes on her. He would quite happily have missed several more dances and stayed behind that tapestry a little longer.
Hermione caught something in his tone and felt her face grow warm.
She said nothing and did not look at him. Instead she turned her attention to the room.
Harry and Ron had reappeared at a table far from the dance floor, whispering intently. At the judges' table, Madame Maxime sat alone looking deeply displeased, Hagrid absent from the chair beside her. On the floor, Ginny was still dancing with Neville, though her steps had grown somewhat unpredictable. Fred and Angelina were beside them, dancing with magnificent abandon.
George, unusually, was not with his brother — he was moving through the crowd with purpose, following Ludo Bagman. He passed Harry and Ron's former partners — who were sitting with a group of Beauxbatons boys — then disappeared into a cluster of Durmstrang students...
"Who are you looking at?" Draco said sharply, cutting through her thoughts, a flash of suspicion on his face.
"No one in particular." She glanced at him uncomfortably. He was watching her with the focused intensity of a Keeper in front of goal. "Honestly, Draco. Must you always stare at me like that?"
"Fine. I'll look at something else." He transferred his glare to a Beauxbatons boy who had been working up the nerve to approach Hermione, and successfully drove him back two paces.
"That expression," Hermione said, observing his thunderous look with barely concealed amusement, "reminds me of a childhood friend of mine."
"I'm so glad you had a childhood friend," he said, with the clipped tone of someone who was not glad at all. "How is it I've never heard of him?"
"He was a golden retriever," she said, finishing her Butterbeer contentedly. "Very possessive about his food bowl — light blue ceramic, I remember it clearly — and he waged a constant war against the squirrels in our backyard who got too close to it."
"I simply cannot think why he would do that," Draco said, lips pressed together, as he slid his own untouched glass into her hand and set her empty one aside.
Hermione sipped the second Butterbeer with great satisfaction.
Draco put down the empty glass, observed her smug expression, and felt fairly certain she was mocking him. He turned to survey the dance floor in search of a change of subject. "What are they even doing now?"
It was approaching midnight, and the formality had long since dissolved. Nobody was following any particular steps — they moved freely, joyfully, exactly as they pleased.
The Weird Sisters had shifted into something driving and high-energy, and even the staff had abandoned their composure. Professor McGonagall's hat had gone askew; she stood in the corner of the floor beaming and clapping along. Madam Pomfrey and Madam Pince were dancing together, each serving as the other's partner. Professor Flitwick had made his way to the centre of the floor and was performing something remarkable that involved one hand on the ground and one in the air, drawing a ring of astonished cheers from the students nearby.
"I think they're improvising. Like jazz." Hermione watched the floor with growing interest. "I'd wager you've never danced like that in your life."
"They're not dancing, they're flailing," Draco said, staring at the crowd with the expression of a man watching a small disaster unfold. "What exactly are they hoping to achieve?"
Hermione laughed. There was something endearing about the way he clearly wanted to join in and absolutely would not. She grabbed his hand. "Come on. Let's go and flail."
"This is complete madness..." he said, with all the disapproval of someone who was already allowing himself to be pulled to his feet.
"It's a once-in-a-year night — forget your dignity, Draco Malfoy!" Hermione swung into the music, eyes bright, pulling him in. "Nobody is paying the slightest attention to you right now! You told me to relax when I danced, remember? Now it's your turn. Give me your body and actually move!"
And so it happened that Harry Potter, sneaking glances through the crowd at Cho Chang and Cedric Diggory, inadvertently witnessed something that stopped him entirely.
Draco Malfoy — the most image-conscious, controlled, and fastidiously composed Slytherin in fourth year — was laughing like an absolute idiot while he and Hermione swayed together to something that could only loosely be called dancing.
"He must be very drunk," Harry murmured, forgetting entirely to look back at Cho.
"Clearly." Ron craned his neck for a better view. "Reckon we could borrow Colin's camera? For documentation. He'll be so mortified tomorrow he'll throw himself into the Black Lake."
"Leave him alone," Harry said. "Now — where were we? England's giants."
"Right," Ron said, turning back with great seriousness. "Slowly went extinct. A lot were killed by Aurors. There are still some abroad, though, mostly in the mountains."
At midnight, the Weird Sisters played their final chord, took their bow, and the Great Hall filled with the loudest applause of the evening. Then, gradually, everyone began making their way toward the entrance hall.
The walk from the Great Hall back to Gryffindor Tower remained somewhat hazy in Hermione's memory.
She was busy regretting that the evening had ended so soon. Busy turning over the particular warmth of dancing with him — the sure way he'd guided her, how easy it had been to follow. Busy wondering why, the moment they'd come back inside, he had wrapped himself back in that polished, restrained manner, as if the passionate kiss behind the tapestry had been something she'd imagined.
By the time she surfaced, they were standing before the portrait of the Fat Lady.
The corridor was nearly empty. The rest of Gryffindor had already filed through. The Fat Lady, fan in hand, gave an extravagant yawn and fixed Hermione with a pointed look. "Well? Last one. Are you going in or not?"
"Go on," Draco said, his voice quiet and easy. "This is as far as I can take you." He smiled — gentle, without pretence.
"Thank you," she said. Her cheeks were still warm, her eyes bright. "It was a wonderful evening."
He took her hand, lowered his head, and pressed a kiss to the back of it. "Goodnight," he said, and watched her step through.
---
Hermione's feet were dreadful, and she didn't care in the slightest. She kicked off her heels with relief and padded over to Ginny, who was sprawled on the sofa by the common room fire.
"Ginny — how was your night? I noticed you and Neville were on the floor the whole time."
"Not bad at all, actually. He only stood on my feet twice." Ginny gave her an approving nod. "He's been practising, apparently. Every evening in the dormitory."
"I heard! Harry mentioned it." Hermione dropped onto the sofa beside her, far too cheerful for someone whose feet had just endured three hours of heels. "He might genuinely be the most improved dancer in Gryffindor. I'm not sure I've put in as many hours as he has."
"You didn't need to." Ginny raised an eyebrow. "I watched you. You were completely at ease out there. Which is interesting, because —" she glanced sideways, "— that Slytherin of yours held you more or less captive for the entire evening. Didn't he let you sit down once?"
"Ginny, please." Hermione leaned back against the cushions and stared at the fire. "It was entirely my own choice to keep dancing. I never thought I'd actually enjoy it for its own sake — the feeling of it." She paused. "It's strange. You don't have to think. Someone else holds the rhythm, and you simply... follow."
"Hermione Granger," Ginny said, "who has never willingly relinquished control of anything, happily letting someone else dictate the pace." She grinned. "You weren't like this when we were practising."
"When we were practising, I was still learning!" Hermione's face was pink. "And he's very good at leading — there's no point in being difficult about it when someone genuinely knows what they're doing."
She felt a small twinge of guilt, because Ginny wasn't wrong. She did like to control things. It felt safer. It felt more reliable.
But with Draco — whose need for control was, if anything, stronger than her own — she had given way without thinking twice. Not entirely from sentiment, either. She trusted his judgment. She had this strange, settled certainty that he wouldn't mishandle anything she cared about. The thought made her smile at the crackling fire.
"...Your dance partner could not take his eyes off you," Ginny was saying, with evident satisfaction. "Everything I did was worth it."
"Ginny." Hermione smiled, leaning her head back. "Thank you. Truly. Tonight felt like something out of a dream."
"You're welcome. There's only one thing I want in return — tell me honestly: when you danced with Krum, did he get jealous?"
"Without question."
"Really?" Ginny looked sceptical. "I glanced over, and he seemed perfectly composed. I was half expecting him to make a scene."
"Believe me. He was jealous. Considerably so." Hermione held Ginny's gaze with a small, certain smile. "I have evidence."
She reached into the folds of her gown and produced a small, beautiful button — smooth, white mother-of-pearl.
Ginny stared at it. "...A button."
Hermione said nothing, only smiled.
It had been the second button of his white shirt. She'd pulled it loose without meaning to, in the dark behind the Slytherin tapestry, sometime during the point at which coherent thought had ceased to be available to her. He hadn't even noticed — he'd been rather too preoccupied to notice.
She found she liked having it. When he was composure itself, when the mask was back in place and that passionate, unguarded boy had apparently never existed, she had proof. He was not as untouchable as he seemed. She had shattered him, once, and the button was evidence.
"Hermione Granger," she said softly to herself, turning it in her fingers, "you've become quite peculiar."
"You have," Ginny agreed, watching her with amusement. "You're grinning at a button." She shifted on the sofa. "Several boys tried to ask you to dance tonight, by the way — from Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, even a couple from Durmstrang. Did you notice?"
"No," Hermione said honestly. "I was rather busy."
"I gathered. It's a shame you were so thoroughly monopolised. Not a spare moment for anyone else." Ginny tilted her head curiously. "Though that's unlike you, isn't it? You normally hate being held to anything."
"It wasn't about freedom," Hermione said, stifling a yawn. "I just didn't want to make him jealous again."
She tucked the button away and stared at the fire, keeping to herself the precise reason why.
---
Meanwhile, deep below the lake, Draco Malfoy was lying awake on his four-poster bed with his hands behind his head, staring at the canopy.
He was exhausted. His mind, however, was having none of it.
The evening kept replaying — the long, disbelieving wait as she came down the stairs; the pride and pleasure of the first dance; then the dark turn of jealousy, the bitterness, the shattering relief of her explanation; and then the kiss, and everything after it. It had been four hours of dancing. It felt like six months of living.
He went back over her words now, slowly, savouring them.
*"Krum had nothing to do with this from the very beginning — it was you, from start to finish."*
*"I was looking at you sitting next to him! I was worried about the Black Lake — I kept studying your dark circles!"*
*"There's more than one Seeker in Quidditch! I knew the best Seeker in the world before I ever knew him — and that was you. Which of your matches have I missed?"*
He had been so consumed by jealousy at the time that the full weight of it hadn't landed. It was landing now.
These were not casual remarks. They were evidence. Proof of attention — careful, consistent attention — stretching back long before tonight. She had always been watching him. Only him.
Draco smiled slowly at the canopy.
He turned his thoughts to the kiss — and immediately felt the familiar internal conflict.
It had been extraordinary. It had been far too much. He had lost control entirely, and part of him would have cheerfully kept losing it indefinitely — the beast in him had opinions about that which were very difficult to argue with.
But she was fifteen. He would not rush this. He was not going to take advantage of her trust to pull her into something she wasn't ready for, no matter how loudly every instinct he possessed argued the opposite. He cared about her too much to be that stupid.
He locked the thought away — firmly — told the beast to behave itself, and tried again to sleep, still faintly smiling.
---
The Slytherins' reaction to Draco and Hermione attending the ball together was not what Draco had expected.
There was no mockery. If anything, there was a peculiar increase in deference — a quiet, collective respect he hadn't asked for.
"Of course there is," Blaise Zabini said, rolling his eyes. "You walked in with the best-looking girl in fourth year. They're not going to criticise that. The Gryffindor boys are furious, incidentally — their own house's girl, taken by the rival house. Meanwhile, our lot think it's the best thing to happen all term."
"I genuinely didn't expect that," Draco said.
"You're a hero as far as they're concerned." Pansy Parkinson leaned back on the common room sofa, fighting a losing battle with tiredness. "They've decided you outmanoeuvred Krum and claimed the partner he wanted. House rivalry, mostly — it's got nothing to do with Granger herself, and everything to do with the fact that a Hogwarts student won."
"She's not a prize," Draco said — though the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth somewhat undercut the sentiment.
"If you could actually convince the Gryffindor girl to defect to Slytherin, I wouldn't complain," Blaise said, clapping him on the shoulder. "I'd pay to see Potter's face."
"Such a waste," Pansy said, with genuine regret, fiddling with her perfectly set bob. "I had no idea she was hiding that under her hair. Why doesn't she do something about it ordinarily?"
---
Hermione Granger, having returned her appearance to its usual state, felt entirely comfortable about this.
"Using Sleekeazy's every single day is far too much trouble," she said practically to Draco, scratching Crookshanks behind the ears. The large ginger cat was draped across the armrest of the sofa in their corner of the library like a smug hearth rug, purring without reservation.
It was the last day of the Christmas holidays. Most students were buried somewhere in the stacks, frantically finishing holiday assignments. These two, having completed theirs well ahead of schedule, were reading for pleasure.
Draco lowered his copy of *New Principles of Numerology* and looked at her hair with the air of someone conducting a thorough assessment.
"Any hairstyle," he concluded, after a moment. "She's adorable regardless."
Hermione looked pleased — but pleased and satisfied are not the same thing, and she was too curious to leave it there.
"Which one made the most impression on you?" she asked, trying a different angle.
He paused. Then: "The way you put it up," he said, with careful meaning. "It reminds me of the *Lexicon of Magical Runes*."
Hermione coughed.
The *Lexicon of Magical Runes*. Their first kiss. She had been pinning her hair back. He was watching. She had not known, at the time, that he was watching.
She noticed the smile spreading across his face, the way his eyes had drifted briefly to her lips. She blinked, and instinctively raised her hand to cover her mouth.
Why had she asked? Why had she *asked*?
She coughed again, mortified, wishing the library floor would make an exception to the laws of physics.
"*Evanesco.*" Draco waved his wand with calm efficiency, patted her on the back, and said pleasantly, "Would you like some tea?"
"Please," she said, and retreated immediately behind *Advanced Guide to Transfiguration*.
He summoned two cups without comment.
They read in companionable quiet — the fire in the library hearth crackling gently, the occasional chime of porcelain as one of them set down a teacup. Now and then one glanced up; now and then they exchanged a few words; occasionally they simply looked at each other and smiled for no particular reason.
He had always found this sort of thing tedious. With her, somehow, it wasn't.
"How is Harry getting on with the golden egg?" he asked, once the quiet had settled properly.
Hermione abandoned her shyness at the mention of Harry's name and adopted an indignant expression instead. "I don't think he's touched it. He and Ron are still struggling with Professor McGonagall's essay."
"That is... less than ideal," Draco said, with admirable restraint.
He did know what lay at the bottom of the lake. He still hadn't worked out how to point Harry toward it without explaining why he knew.
"Cedric apparently gave him a hint at the ball," Hermione said, looking into her tea. "Though Harry seemed to think it was some kind of joke. If he doesn't make progress soon, I suspect he'll try something desperate."
"Courage alone won't be sufficient for the second task," Draco agreed, his expression thoughtful. An hour at the bottom of the Black Lake, with whatever was living in it — he had been there himself, in another life. Harry needed the Bubble-Head Charm at minimum.
"By the way —" Hermione hesitated, a faint colour in her cheeks. She was staring at her tea. "Do you remember Professors Snape and Karkaroff in the corridor that night?"
"I recall... something of the hallway, yes," Draco said, after a fractional pause. His ears went quietly pink. He adjusted his posture.
They had both, by unspoken agreement, avoided mentioning the tapestry incident directly. Even the slightest adjacency to the subject tended to produce this precise result in both of them.
"Harry and Ron overheard them talking in the grounds," Hermione pressed on, clearly determined to get through it. "In the rose garden. Snape and Karkaroff knew each other — seemed to have some history. Karkaroff said something about something 'becoming more obvious.' Sirius told us Karkaroff was a Death Eater." She paused. "Do you think it could be connected to... the Dark wizard?"
She saw his expression close down immediately, and wisely didn't say the name.
"Well done," he said. His voice had steadied. "You're right not to say it aloud — especially at Hogwarts. When he was at the height of his power, he placed a Tracking Charm on his own name. Anyone who spoke it could be located."
"But he's no longer a real threat," Hermione said, not quite convinced by his level of concern.
"He's not dead." Draco looked at her seriously. "As long as he isn't completely gone, he remains a danger. This isn't about fear — it's about not creating unnecessary risk. For yourself." He held her gaze. "I worry about this. More than you might think."
She studied him, uncertain. His concern seemed too vivid, too immediate — disproportionate to what a boy of his background and age should know or feel about something that had happened when he was an infant.
What experience could have given him that look?
He held her gaze steadily until, after a moment, she nodded. "All right. I'll be more careful."
"Thank you." He exhaled, very slightly. "As for what Karkaroff said — 'becoming more obvious' — I'd expect it refers to the Dark Mark. You know what that is?"
"I've read about it, though not in great detail."
"The Mark is dormant most of the time — a dull red on the skin. It burns and turns black when activated, which compels every Death Eater to Apparate immediately to the Dark Lord. But what Karkaroff described sounds different from an activation. When Voldemort's power grows — even slowly — the Mark becomes more defined, more visible. It's a sign that he's returning to strength." He paused. "Not a good sign."
Hermione looked at him for a long moment.
No book she'd ever read described it in these terms. This was specific — precise — the sort of detail that comes not from research but from proximity.
Would Lucius Malfoy really have told his son this much?
Before she could pursue the thought, the boy's composure had already settled back into place — gentle, calm, attentive. The shadow gone as if it had never been there. He was looking at her the way he always did when something had unsettled him and he wished to redirect attention.
It worked, unfortunately, almost every time.
She gathered herself. "Then why was he telling Professor Snape?"
"Because Snape was a Death Eater too," Draco said evenly.
The expression on her face was precisely what he'd expected.
"Does Dumbledore know?" she asked, after a long pause.
"He's always known. He was the one who offered Snape the position here, despite everything — the same as he did for Lupin, and Hagrid." He said it without inflection.
"Then I trust his judgement." Her voice steadied immediately. "He's not the sort of wizard who misjudges people."
"I hope you're right," Draco said quietly. "In this particular matter — believe me — no one is more invested in Dumbledore being right than I am."