A/N: This is a longer chapter than usual. Thank you all so much for your continued support—it truly means a lot. If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving a comment or review, and don't forget to drop some Power Stones!
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On a cold, grey morning in mid-December, Deputy Headmistress Professor Minerva McGonagall decided to add a particular kind of warmth to the season.
As the lesson was drawing to a close, she stepped up to the front of the room, cleared her throat, and made her announcement.
Hogwarts was to hold a Yule Ball.
"This is a traditional event of the Triwizard Tournament. The Ball is open to fourth years and above—though younger students may be invited as partners—" Professor McGonagall surveyed the room with her usual measured calm.
From somewhere behind Hermione came a high-pitched, immediately recognisable laugh. Lavender Brown. Her other dormitory-mate, Parvati Patil, was clearly struggling equally hard to contain herself, and both of them had turned to look, with some significance, in the direction of Harry's table.
Harry and Ron were sitting in uncomfortable silence, having just been scolded for duelling each other with trick wands. Professor McGonagall had described the behaviour as unbecoming of their age.
*Oh, those two.* Hermione shook her head, and glanced sideways—quietly—at the boy beside her, who was still absorbed in his book. She felt a private, guilty flicker of smugness. Draco would never make such a scene.
He was, as far as she could tell, the least interested student in the room. He hadn't looked up. He turned a page. Whatever was on it was apparently more absorbing than the announcement of a Ball.
*Doesn't he like that sort of thing?* She thought. He had always seemed vaguely exhausted by crowds. He probably wouldn't enjoy the noise and press of a dance.
"Formal robes are expected. The Ball will be held in the Great Hall on Christmas evening, beginning at eight o'clock and ending at midnight—" Professor McGonagall continued, ignoring the suppressed excitement rippling through the class. She ended on a single, weighty note: "Do not embarrass Hogwarts in front of students from other schools."
Hermione rested her chin on her hand and studied the boy's expressionless profile.
The small, tentative thing that had begun quietly kindling in her chest—something to do with the Ball, something she hadn't quite named—went carefully, sensibly out.
She let out a breath, pulled her books together, closed the ink bottle, and tucked away her quills.
What she didn't know was that her study partner wasn't reading at all.
He was thinking about the Yule Ball. About a specific memory of it that he could never forget.
The memory of fireworks, and what had happened underneath them, made it impossible to look up at her.
"You will each need to find a suitable dance partner," Professor McGonagall was saying, raising her voice over the gathering noise. "Every house will receive instruction in the basics. Gryffindor's first session is immediately after this lesson, and I strongly suggest every student attend."
*A dance partner.*
Draco finally looked up. He glanced sideways at the girl beside him.
She was rolling up her parchment with the relaxed efficiency of someone who had already moved on, apparently undisturbed by any of Professor McGonagall's words.
Should he ask her now—before anyone else had thought of it?
"Hermione, will you—" he began.
"Draco, do you think Professor Snape will actually teach you all to dance?" she asked, at almost the same moment, in the wondering tone of someone who has just had an interesting thought. She tucked *Intermediate Transfiguration* into her bag. "He'll hate every second of it, won't he?"
His intended sentence dissolved quietly.
"Yes," he said, after a moment. "He'll do it properly—he wouldn't leave it undone—but he'll look as though he's swallowed something unpleasant. Crabbe and Goyle might actually cry."
She laughed at that, bright and unguarded, and looked at him.
He managed a faint smile. His fingers tightened on his book. Under her easy, unsuspecting gaze, the words he'd been preparing simply weren't there anymore.
The bell rang.
She stood, slung her bag over her shoulder, and said cheerfully, "I'd better go—the Gryffindor session's about to start. See you later, Draco."
"Shall I—" He caught himself half-standing. "I could carry your bag over—"
"I'm perfectly fine on my own." She was already moving. "See you later."
"...Right. See you later."
He sat back down and watched her go.
---
Gryffindor's dance instruction was, by most measures, a disaster.
Professor McGonagall taught with great seriousness for approximately ten minutes—nearly reducing Ron Weasley, Hermione's temporary practice partner, to tears in the process—before telling them to practise freely.
Most of the fourth years seemed more comfortable standing at the edge of the floor watching. The boys whistled. The girls whispered.
Hermione stood next to Lavender Brown like a post, with her arms folded, wishing Ginny were allowed at the session.
Lavender was advising Parvati on strategy. Her approach was systematic, thorough, and, in Hermione's private opinion, excruciating.
"First: laugh clearly whenever he walks past—it gets his attention without being obvious. Second: bring up the Ball in conversation, but casually—something safe, like what to wear—it plants the idea. Third, and most important: eye contact. Sustained. With encouragement in it." Lavender ticked them off on her fingers. "If you do all three, you won't need to wait."
"But what if I accidentally attract the wrong person?" Parvati said, covering a laugh.
"That's why you move in groups! The combined laughter alone will make the cowardly ones keep walking." Lavender paused. "Parvati, I have a feeling about this. The Gryffindor champion is going to ask you. I'd bet on it."
"Hermione—" Parvati leaned across Lavender, still giggling. "You're friendly with Harry, aren't you? Which of Lavender's tactics do you think actually works?"
Hermione thought about Harry's expression when Professor McGonagall had reminded him he would need to open the Ball with a dance. It had looked rather like the expression of someone told they must walk a plank.
"More signals," she said diplomatically. "Definitely more signals."
---
The next day, the castle had been transformed.
Icicles—enchanted never to melt—hung from the marble banisters. The Christmas trees shimmered with holly berries and golden ornaments, and a mechanical owl somewhere in the upper branches sang whenever students walked beneath it. The armour in the corridors had been similarly bewitched, attempting carols for anyone who passed.
This last detail was what caught Hermione's attention at the end of the fourth-floor corridor. She had stopped to listen, head tilted, bag over one shoulder, genuinely trying to work out whether the suit beside the tapestry knew the whole of *O Come All Ye Faithful* or only the first verse.
"Hermione." Draco came around the corner, saw her standing motionless in front of an empty helmet, and stopped. "What are you doing?"
"Listening. I want to know if it can finish the song."
"—" His ears went slightly pink. "Come away from there." He reached out and caught her wrist, pulling her along toward the far end of the corridor. "Let's go."
"Why? It's just a carol—" She looked back and caught a glimpse of Peeves's grinning face where the helmet's visor should have been.
"It gets significantly worse after the first verse," Draco said, pulling her faster. "Those armours only know half the original lyrics. Peeves fills in the rest."
"Oh," said Hermione.
"Look who I've found!" Peeves announced delightedly, abandoning all pretence at the helmet. He swooped out into the corridor in full visibility, singing at the top of his voice:
*"The little bookworm, chasing the viper! The cunning little viper, flicking its tongue to reach her—!"*
"I think I understand what you mean," Hermione said softly. Her cheeks had gone warm.
Draco said nothing. He walked faster.
Peeves's singing grew louder and, with each verse, considerably less appropriate for a school corridor.
Draco stopped walking. He turned around, placed both hands firmly over Hermione's ears from behind, and in this encircling position, pushed her forward.
The world went quiet. Hermione blinked. She could still hear her own thoughts, and the muffled, irate tones of Draco shouting something at Peeves about the Bloody Baron, but nothing else. She couldn't hear the lyrics.
"Thank you," she said, when they were far enough away for him to let go.
He dropped his hands immediately, ears now distinctly red. "Stay away from those armours in future."
"I will." She looked at his flushed face and tried to make sense of him. "What was it you wanted to say to me earlier? Before Peeves."
"It's not important," he said, too quickly. "Another time. I—I have to go."
He turned and walked away. His posture was remarkably stiff for someone of his usual elegance.
Hermione stood in the corridor and thought about his hands over her ears.
It was not the action of someone who simply saw her as a younger sister. No actual sibling would care that much.
She pressed her palms briefly against her own warm cheeks and walked on.
That evening in the Gryffindor common room, Ginny Weasley was already laughing.
"He covered your ears? Because Peeves was being inappropriate?" She pressed her hand over her mouth, shoulders shaking. "Merlin's—he actually made Draco Malfoy go red in the face?"
"He stuttered, a little, afterward," Hermione said, keeping her voice low.
"*Malfoy stuttered.*" Ginny repeated this with the reverent awe of someone receiving scripture. "Unbelievable. Levy said he was basically carved from marble. Apparently not."
"Ginny, don't—"
"What ordinary friend covers a girl's ears so Peeves can't corrupt her?" Ginny said, abandoning all pretence at restraint. "What friend does that? What friend charges into a library to intercept a Triwizard champion? What friend—"
"We're study partners," Hermione said, returning firmly to her Transfiguration essay. "I just don't understand what he's thinking. And I'd like to keep it that way, please."
Ginny gave her a long look. "You're being wilfully obtuse, you know."
"I'm being sensible."
"You're being a coward." Ginny grinned at Hermione's expression. "Okay, I'll stop. For now." She glanced across the common room toward Harry, who was being tormented by Ron and Dean over something to do with the Ball, and her grin faded a little. "I wish third years could come. It's so unfair."
"Professor McGonagall said we can invite younger students," Hermione reminded her. "Someone might ask you."
Ginny looked unconvinced. "Or not."
"Don't be down. You'll go."
"Easy for you to say." Ginny pulled her legs up onto the sofa. "You're probably going to be very sought-after now that the entire school knows Krum *and* Malfoy—"
"Nobody's confirmed anything about anyone," Hermione said crisply.
"—and I'm going to be sitting in the dormitory with my Ancient Runes homework," Ginny finished, with a dramatic sigh.
---
Three days after Professor McGonagall's announcement, Lavender was lying behind her bed curtains at seven in the morning delivering a full report to Parvati.
"Seamus asked me," came her voice, bright and mysterious. "Yesterday evening."
"Already! Lavender, that's incredible."
"He was the first one who asked," Lavender said, with the considered tone of someone who had thought this through. "That matters. I know my place—I'm not expecting to be a champion's partner—but he asked first, and that means something."
Parvati pressed her about the other boys she'd mentioned.
"It's fine. Seamus is sweet. I'm happy," Lavender said, in a voice that sounded quite genuine. Then, with warmth: "Parvati. I have a feeling about Gryffindor's champion. The way he looked at you in class last Tuesday—you're going to be fine."
Parvati's squeal was audible through two sets of curtains.
Hermione dressed quietly and slipped out of the dormitory.
She was firmly of the view that she had no particular interest in Yule Balls, or dance partners, or any of the associated drama. She was not a Lavender or a Parvati. She was not the sort of girl who smiled and waited to be selected like a book off a shelf, her value measured by whether someone deigned to pull her down.
She had actual thoughts, and actual ambitions, and she would rather spend an evening in the library than spend it being scrutinised.
Rolling her eyes very slightly at the enchanted holly on the staircase banister, she walked out into the sunlit courtyard—and nearly collided with a boy who had just dropped out of an oak tree directly in front of her.
"Draco!" She stepped back. "What are you doing up a tree?"
"Waiting for you," he said, quickly, as if he had decided to say it before he could think better of it.
"Waiting for me?" She stared at him. "For what?"
He straightened, tugged once at the back of his robe, and adopted an expression of studied casualness. "I have a question to ask you. Hermione—would I have the honour of inviting you to be my partner for the Yule Ball?"
"Oh—" She opened her mouth slightly.
She hadn't been expecting this. He had seemed so indifferent to the whole thing.
She looked at him. In the early morning light, his grey eyes were very clear. She could see the frost still caught in his platinum hair.
"Honestly, Draco, I'm not particularly interested in the Ball," she said, quickly. "And I'm not much of a dancer—"
"I can teach you." He tilted his head, watching her eyes carefully. "If you need it."
"I hadn't really been thinking about finding a partner at all," she said.
Which was true. Two minutes ago, it had been entirely true.
"So you don't have one yet." The faintest smile crossed his face, easy and quiet. "Then why don't you come with me?"
"Are you—are you certain? This isn't some sort of—" She frowned at him, genuinely uncertain what to make of it. "Why are you asking me?"
*Does he think of me as a little sister? Is this just easy friendliness, and he doesn't want me to be without a partner? Would he be so careless with something like this?*
She considered, briefly, what it would actually mean—going to the Yule Ball with Draco. Standing next to him in the Great Hall, in formal robes, while everyone watched. Draco, who somehow commanded every room he entered without appearing to try.
She was, fundamentally, a bookworm. And proud of it. But bookworms were not generally considered decorative in ballrooms.
"Of course I'm serious," Draco said, a slight edge of impatience in his voice. "You silly girl."
His hands, hidden behind his back, were gripping the back of his robe with some force.
*Say yes. What are you waiting for? Who else are we waiting for?*
He saw movement in the courtyard behind her—Viktor Krum, passing with his usual cloud of Bulgarian-scarfed admirers, not looking in their direction.
Draco knew, from a life he was trying very hard to prevent from repeating itself, exactly what Krum was doing at Hogwarts. He knew where it led.
He was not going to let it.
"Of course, if you'd rather go with someone else, I completely understand," he said, in the tone of someone very much not understanding. He looked down at the grass with an expression of patient, injured resignation. "I'll just go alone."
"Draco," she said, with something that was very close to fond exasperation, "don't be theatrical. You could have any partner you wanted and you know it. I've already heard from Ginny that half the girls in the school are engineering 'chance encounters' with you."
"But not you." He looked up, direct and steady. "I want to invite you."
She looked at him.
He was watching her with an openness he didn't often allow himself, waiting.
She smiled. She couldn't help it.
He saw it.
His gaze dropped to her lips for just a moment, and then he glanced deliberately away, at the frost on the oak above them, his expression carefully settled into something neutral.
*Invite her. Just get her to say yes. She's already smiling—one more push—*
"Hermione," he said, a different light coming into his eyes—wicked and deliberate—"are you *afraid* to be my partner? I thought Gryffindors were supposed to have courage. Or is that all bluster?"
"*How dare you—*" She drew herself up, eyes flashing. "Of course I'm not afraid! I'll go with you! *Fine!* I agree!"
He smiled. It was a slow, quiet, thoroughly satisfied smile.
"Wonderful," he said lazily. "Shall I arrange some additional practice sessions—"
"I said *fine,*" she snapped, already walking away, ears burning, absolutely not smiling. "I don't need your help."
She turned the corner before she let herself laugh.
*How had she agreed so easily? Where was her resolve from five minutes ago?*
She shook her head at herself, helpless, and kept walking, and couldn't quite suppress the warmth that had settled somewhere in the middle of her chest.
---
The news of the Krum and Malfoy incident in the library—which followed not long afterward—spread through the castle with the speed and enthusiasm usually reserved for actual disasters.
The Weasley twins were at Draco's elbow within the afternoon.
"We want you to know," Fred said earnestly, "that this is purely in the spirit of education and entertainment."
"How reassuring," Draco said.
"The betting's well underway," George said, producing a thick sheaf of parchment. "Krum's the current favourite—he's a Triwizard champion, internationally famous, absurdly good-looking. The odds on him are one to two."
"And on me?"
"One to ten," Fred said cheerfully. "You're a dark horse. No one quite believes you'll manage it."
"Harry and Ron both put money on you, though," George added. "There are a few loyal souls."
"I'm deeply moved," Draco said.
"If I could bet on you myself, I would," Fred said.
"Don't strain yourself."
"That's the spirit," George said admiringly. "See? That's the attitude of a one-in-ten shot. Good luck, Malfoy."
Draco watched them go.
---
"You invited a *Muggle,*" Pansy said that evening in the Slytherin common room, in the tone of someone confirming a terminal diagnosis.
"Muggle-born witch," Draco said. "There's a meaningful distinction."
"Merlin's—" Pansy stared at him. "Draco. Have you been Confunded? How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Four."
"He's fine," Blaise said, stirring his tea. "He's just gone mad voluntarily. Which is, somehow, worse."
"Think about your father," Pansy said, dropping her voice. "He'll find out. You know what that means."
"Pansy." Blaise set down his cup. "Draco. Think for a moment. Balls are formal occasions. Standing next to someone publicly, in front of other houses, is a statement. Choosing her sends a very particular message to your family."
Draco looked at the fire.
"I understand what you mean," he said, quietly. "And I understand what the statement is." He leaned back in the armchair. "I'm not just passing time with her, Blaise. I actually like her. Very much."
The teacup slipped out of Pansy's hand.
It hit the hearthstone with a sharp crack and broke into several pieces.
"That was my favourite blue-and-white porcelain cup," she said, in a hollow voice.
"I'll replace it," Draco said.
"You *Slytherin traitor,*" she said. "You pure-blood traitor. You—"
Draco let her wind down. He looked back at the fire. The blue-and-white fragments lay on the hearthstone. He'd send her a new one.
He was thinking about the girl who had walked away from an oak tree this morning, not looking back, her ears pink.
---
The rumour about Pansy's outburst reached the Gryffindor table by breakfast.
Hermione heard it from Lavender, who had heard it from someone's older sister in Slytherin, who had apparently been three feet away when the cup broke.
She looked across the two long tables separating Gryffindor from Slytherin.
Draco was sitting alone. Pansy had gone. He had an expression like a closed door—neutral, still, unreadable—and was drinking something without appearing to taste it, his eyes on the Prophet folded beside his bowl.
His collar was buttoned perfectly. His platinum hair was immaculate. He looked, from this distance, like something sculpted rather than alive.
Hermione told herself not to look at him.
She ate a bread roll. She looked at her pumpkin juice. She looked at the enchanted ceiling, which was pale grey with cloud.
A girl in a Ravenclaw scarf approached the Slytherin table and spoke to him in a low voice, blushing.
Hermione's hand tightened on her juice glass.
Without looking up from his newspaper, Draco said one word. The girl covered her face and walked quickly away.
Hermione breathed out.
She was not going to examine that feeling too closely. She looked back at her breakfast and applied herself to it with great attention.
---
That afternoon in Potions, Draco sat next to Theodore Nott and discovered he was completely incapable of concentrating.
The morning's rejections had not improved his mood. Every girl who approached him left him more irritated than the last, not because of the asking but because none of them were the right person, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to remember that he had already solved this problem by being decisive under an oak tree.
Hermione, apparently, had decided to partner with Lavender Brown for the lesson rather than sit beside him.
He stared at the back of her head for the better part of an hour.
"Draco," said Theodore, in a pained voice. "Please, just let me do the brewing. You sit there. You watch her. Don't touch the cauldron."
Draco did not dignify this with a response. He watched her. She didn't look back once.
On her side of the table, Lavender was providing Hermione with a detailed running commentary on everything she had observed in the past week, including—and she delivered this with the gravity of scientific data—the precise number of times a certain Slytherin student had turned to look across the room in a single class period.
"Seventeen," Lavender said. "I counted."
"Lavender—"
"I'm not discussing dance partners. I'm discussing observable phenomena." Lavender tilted her head. "Why aren't you sitting with him today?"
Hermione stirred her potion and said nothing.
She was still slightly cross. He had no right to answer for her in the library, to put his arm around her in front of everyone, to glare at Krum as if Krum had committed some personal offence. He was high-handed and controlling and he didn't trust her judgment, and she was—
She was still entirely in love with him.
She knew it. It was profoundly inconvenient.
"You know," Lavender said, watching the Slytherin table from beneath her eyelashes, "there have been four more girls over there this morning. The more unavailable he seems, the more persistent they get. It's very strange."
"It's not strange," Hermione said, with the detached accuracy of someone reluctantly deploying expertise. "Scarcity increases perceived value. It's a documented psychological effect."
"That's a very cold way of describing it," Lavender said cheerfully. "The warm version is: he's lovely and everyone wants him and you should hold on tight before someone clever figures out how to get past that face he makes."
Hermione said nothing. She looked at her cauldron. She thought about the oak tree, and the morning light, and the deliberate way he had looked at her and said, *I want to invite you.*
"I'm not going to lose my head over a dance," she said, firmly.
Lavender gave her a look of affectionate scepticism and patted her arm.
---
"Ginny," Hermione said, later that evening, dropping onto the sofa beside her in the common room. "I've done something slightly impulsive."
Ginny looked up from her Charms essay.
"I agreed to go to the Ball with Draco," Hermione said.
Ginny put down her quill.
"He provoked me," Hermione added, in her own defence. "He called me a coward."
"He called you a coward." Ginny stared at her. Then, slowly, she began to smile. "And you agreed because of that."
"I am *not* a coward."
"No," Ginny agreed. "You really aren't." She looked at Hermione with the warmth of someone who has just had a very satisfying suspicion confirmed. "Hermione. I've been saying this for weeks. Just have some confidence, all right?"
Hermione looked at her hands. "He said I was like a little sister."
"He also charged across a library to physically remove you from a Triwizard champion," Ginny said. "Those two things are not compatible. You misunderstood him." She reached over and gave Hermione's arm a firm, encouraging shake. "Trust yourself. You're the brightest witch of your age—you can work this out."
Hermione was quiet for a moment.
"I need to learn to dance properly," she said at last.
"Yes, you do," Ginny agreed immediately. "That's my department. I'm borrowing you the entire afternoon before the Ball. Don't argue."
"I wasn't going to," Hermione said.
Ginny smiled. "Good. Then we have a plan."
Outside, snow had begun to fall again over the castle grounds, fine and quiet, and the enchanted owls in the Christmas trees blinked their golden eyes in the soft dark.
---
The news of the library confrontation continued to circulate for days, generating approximately the same volume of whispered commentary as a minor earthquake. Somewhere in the middle of it all, the Weasley twins produced a rankings parchment showing the most coveted dance partners in the school, updated in real time under what appeared to be a shared information-linking charm.
Krum held number one with calm inevitability. Cedric Diggory held two. Harry Potter—visibly horrified by his own placement—was at three.
Draco was seventh, which considering he was from an opposing house and had publicly antagonised a Triwizard champion, Ginny considered remarkable.
"Look—he's still climbing," Ginny said, waving the parchment at Hermione over breakfast. "He went up two places since yesterday."
"How do you even have that?" Hermione asked.
"Fred gave it to me. He said to tell you your odds improved significantly after the library." Ginny looked at Hermione's expression. "Don't panic—no one's betting on you, they're betting on him. Or rather, on whether he manages to keep you as his partner before the Ball actually starts. The odds are interesting."
"I'm aware of what the odds are," Hermione said, with dignity.
She was not going to look at the Slytherin table.
She was absolutely not going to look at the Slytherin table.
She looked at the Slytherin table.
He was sitting alone again, reading. A younger Hufflepuff girl was hovering about five feet away, working up the courage to approach. She watched the girl take one step forward, then stop, then take one step back.
She felt an emotion she chose not to label, ate her toast, and looked firmly at the enchanted ceiling.
It started snowing in the Great Hall sometime around the second course.