Hermione Granger was conflicted.
She knew that Draco's position on giants was supported by a substantial body of evidence. She still couldn't bring herself to smile at him.
It didn't help that Hagrid's chair at the staff table remained empty, and that a certain large, familiar figure had been conspicuously absent from the Hogwarts grounds.
If she reconciled with Draco too easily, would it mean she was condoning his harsh judgement of Hagrid? Would it mean surrendering to him, and betraying a friend who had always been kind to her? Even if the other giants were genuinely dangerous, she didn't believe his assessment of Hagrid was entirely fair.
And his manner — that particular, effortless pure-blood certainty — had always scraped at something in her.
"I've never seen Draco so deferential to anyone," Ron said. "You have no idea how much he gets ribbed for it. The other day I walked past the Slytherin table and heard Zabini call him a coward without principles — joking, probably — but still." He paused. "That's got to sting."
"*He* has no principles? What about mine?" Hermione said sharply. "You're taking his side?"
"Of course I'm on your side," Ron said. "But you haven't actually told me what you're arguing about."
"It's an ideological disagreement." She wrinkled her nose, recalling Ron's own barely-concealed unease about giants. "Don't pry. It's between us."
"Obviously it is," Ron muttered. "You two have your own special way of arguing that leaves everyone else standing well clear."
"Then worry about Harry!" Hermione turned to him with some force and took a long sip of Butterbeer. "Why was Bagman at the Three Broomsticks today, getting on so well with a group of goblins who didn't look very friendly at all? And then pulling Harry aside for a private conversation — what's he playing at?"
"He offered to help me with the golden egg," Harry said, appearing at her shoulder.
"He shouldn't have done that!" Hermione whipped around, looking genuinely alarmed. "He's one of the judges! Have you worked it out yourself — haven't you?"
Harry opened his mouth. He did not immediately speak.
---
Later that afternoon, a tall, lean figure moved quickly down the snow-dusted streets of Hogsmeade. Draco had visited several shops already without finding her.
*She might be at the Three Broomsticks. She always orders Butterbeer.*
He wondered idly whether the foam would still end up on her lips.
He pushed open the door and found Madam Rosmerta absent-mindedly wiping down the bar. He glanced around — no Hermione. But through the mirror behind the bar, he caught a reflection: Rita Skeeter, banana-yellow robes, leaning across a small table toward her portly photographer, her voice low: "...Maxime... yes, she's also... yes, a half-giant..."
Her Quick-Quotes Quill was scribbling at speed.
Draco considered for a moment. Then he walked over and sat down opposite her, nodding at the photographer. "Would you mind giving us a moment?"
"Bozo — go sit next door." Skeeter waved him off without looking. The man picked up his drink and wandered away with a shrug.
"And what can I do for you?" She tapped the table with long, pink-lacquered nails and gave him a smile that didn't reach her eyes.
"I told you not to write about Harry Potter's friends," Draco said flatly.
"By Merlin!" She threw up her hands. "You mentioned Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger, and I've kept to that! Harry Potter has *countless* friends. Half the school claims to know him personally. Was I supposed to clear every article through you indefinitely?"
Draco frowned.
"As it happens," she continued, with the stiff smile of someone reporting a grievance, "Hermione Granger made rather a fool of me recently. If it weren't for your little arrangement, I'd have written three columns about her by now."
"You're welcome to try," Draco said, without inflection. "If you've forgotten the terms of our agreement."
"I haven't forgotten. But don't push your luck." She clicked her tongue. "I'm not made of patience."
A wizard who could out-argue Hermione had yet to be born, Draco reflected. A peculiar surge of pride moved through him, followed by an equally peculiar pity for Rita Skeeter.
"Couldn't you find something more interesting?" he said, softening his tone slightly. "Barty Crouch, for instance. Surely there's more to say about him than about Hogwarts students."
"I'd love to! But he's been shut away on sick leave for weeks, completely inaccessible." She sighed with genuine irritation.
Draco filed that away instantly. *Sick leave. Or something else entirely.* He'd need to pass this to Dumbledore.
Rita Skeeter, oblivious to his thoughts, was already gathering her things. "Fine. I'll leave it alone for now. Don't suppose you'd tell me what I *should* write about next week?"
"Ludo Bagman," Draco said, very casually. "I saw him on the street just now, being very friendly with a group of goblins."
Her eyes lit up. She snapped her crocodile-skin bag shut and stood, beckoning Bozo with a raised finger, and swept out of the pub without another word.
Draco watched her go and allowed himself a moment of quiet distaste. Dealing with Rita Skeeter was a thoroughly unpleasant business.
He was on the verge of leaving when the door opened and Hermione walked in.
She crossed directly to the table beside him, picked up a book she had apparently left behind, and turned to go without a glance.
"Hermione." He was on his feet before he'd consciously decided to move. "Could we sit for a few minutes?"
"I don't think we have anything to say." She kept walking.
"I'm sorry." He followed her. "I was arrogant. I never meant to imply that Muggle-born wizards are lesser — you know that. You've always been, in my eyes, the finest witch I've ever met."
She stopped.
She didn't turn around. She didn't speak.
"You won't even look at me now?" he said, quietly. "After everything?"
"I saw you," she said at last, turning. Her voice was cold and controlled, but there was something underneath it. "Sitting across from Rita Skeeter. Talking comfortably, for quite some time. I had no idea you two were acquainted."
"I know her. That's a long way from being friends."
"Not friends? You seemed to agree with her report on Hagrid well enough — I thought you must be kindred spirits!" Her expression shifted suddenly, suspicion flaring in her eyes. "That article wasn't — you didn't have anything to do with it —"
"No." He cut her off, sharper than he intended. "I was telling her to keep your name *out* of the paper."
"As if you have any authority over what she writes!"
"I gave her a reason she couldn't easily dismiss," he said, and held her gaze.
She stared at him. The flush on her cheeks deepened.
*Merlin, she's infuriating. She's also extraordinarily beautiful when she's angry.*
"If you're so powerful," she said, drawing herself up, "why can't you make her leave Hagrid alone?"
"I can protect a small number of people," Draco said, with deliberate patience. "I can't monitor every article she publishes about every person at Hogwarts. I chose to spend that protection on you." He held her gaze. "That's all."
"Hagrid is my friend! He isn't *irrelevant*!" Her brown eyes were blazing. "This is exactly what I mean — you stand at the top of your little hierarchy and decide who matters and who doesn't, and you don't even see that you're doing it—"
"You're being completely irrational—" he started.
"Yes, I am irrational! And you are selfish and arrogant and you still haven't understood what you actually did wrong!"
She turned and walked out. He stared at the door.
---
A few days later, in Charms, Draco manoeuvred himself beside her during Banishing Charm practice.
"That's not what I meant," he said, under the noise of cushions being launched across the room.
"So what did you mean?" Hermione asked, without looking at him, directing a cushion neatly into its target box.
"I can't deny that giants and werewolves are genuinely dangerous. I can't deny that I know Skeeter. But I didn't ask her to write a word about Hagrid, and I still believe your instinct to trust everyone equally is going to get you hurt one day." His cushion sailed after hers, landing lightly on top of it. "What I need you to understand is this: my views on certain creatures have nothing to do with my views on you. I respect you. I have always respected you. I have never once looked down on you."
"How can you say it has nothing to do with me?" She Banished another cushion, hard. "In certain ways, I'm no different from those groups — we're all on the wrong end of pure-blood supremacy. I can't help identifying with them."
"In my eyes, you are entirely different." He said it stubbornly, covering her cushion with his again. "You are not like anyone else."
She looked at him, conflicted, annoyed with herself for feeling moved.
"That's not enough," she said quietly. "Do you think I only exist inside your perception of me? Have you thought about how Hogwarts sees me, how the wizarding world sees me? Your certainty doesn't protect me from any of that."
He was silent. He hadn't thought about it that way.
She had clean arms, no Dark marks anywhere near her — he had been watching — but what if the damage was being done somewhere he couldn't see?
"Has someone said something to you?" His voice dropped, sharpening.
"No," she said. "But that doesn't mean it never will. And you — the way you talk, the way you dismiss certain groups as simply *dangerous*, as if there's nothing more to be said — it frightens me." She looked at him directly. "I need to know that one day you won't look at me the same way."
He was quiet for a long moment.
"I can't immediately trust a stranger," he said at last. "Whether they're giants or werewolves or pure-blood or Muggle-born — unknown people are unknown people. That's not prejudice. That's survival. But you are not a stranger. You have never been a stranger to me." He looked away. "You could ask me how much I trust you. You could ask me that."
"How much do you trust me?" she said softly.
He turned back. Something flickered in his expression — raw and brief and quickly composed.
"How much trust do you think I have in you?" he said, very quietly. "When you suspected me of conspiring with Rita Skeeter — did you even consider trusting me first?"
The school bell rang in the distance. He picked up his bag and left before she could answer.
---
In February, Hagrid finally reappeared in Care of Magical Creatures. Draco hadn't expected to be glad about it, but he was. He hoped Hermione might soften.
Hagrid had, apparently, taken some advice. He introduced the class to Nifflers — small, burrowing creatures with black fur, long snouts, and an infallible instinct for anything shiny — and set the students to hunting coins he'd buried in the pumpkin patch.
"Hermione suggested the Nifflers," Ron murmured, appearing at Draco's elbow from the far side of the pumpkin patch. "Hagrid was going to bring a Sphinx. When are you two going to sort yourselves out? Harry and I are being driven completely mad. She's got us on a homework schedule."
"I've tried several times," Draco said morosely, watching Neville Longbottom partner enthusiastically with Hermione a few rows over. "It always ends badly."
"She mutters 'that bastard' roughly fifty times a day," Ron said. "I assume she means you."
"Of course she means me. Who else?" He watched the Niffler in Neville's hands burrow its snout into the soil with single-minded purpose. "She hasn't told you what we argued about?"
"Just that your ideas are fundamentally incompatible," Ron said. "She goes to the library, or she sits with Ginny whispering. Harry and I are afraid to ask too many questions."
Draco was oddly moved by this. He had expected her to rally her friends against him — to present his views on Hagrid and his connection with Skeeter as damning evidence. Instead she had kept it between them, protecting whatever it was they had from outside interference.
He flicked a coin from his Niffler's jaw to Theodore Nott, who pocketed it without a word, his eyes tracking back and forth between Draco and Hermione with the careful neutrality of someone who knew better than to get involved.
Neville Longbottom was suffering.
He had endured Draco's death-stare for the entire lesson. It felt remarkably like being in Snape's Potions class, except that at least Snape's hostility was impersonal.
"Hermione," he whispered desperately, "please — can I switch with Malfoy? Wouldn't you rather be in his group—"
"Absolutely not! You don't know who that bastard's partner is," Hermione said, with great feeling.
"He looks like he wants to curse me—"
"If that bastard curses you, I'll make him pay," she said, with queenly certainty. "You cannot abandon me, Neville. I have saved you from disaster in Potions more times than I can count. Now it's your turn."
Neville swallowed. He went back to digging.
---
The source of Draco's foul mood was not only his troubled love life.
Dumbledore and Sirius had searched Gaunt's abandoned house and found nothing. The cemetery nearby showed no signs of disturbance. Voldemort was hiding somewhere, being very careful.
"We've increased the watch around young Crouch — Moody — and placed additional wards around Dumbledore's office," Sirius said, his voice low. "Percy Weasley says old Crouch has been genuinely ill, looking dreadful. So far nothing's moved."
"No one would be well, in Crouch's position," Draco said. "His son's whereabouts are unknown, which is a permanent stain on his record. Barty Crouch Jr. is the Death Eater he campaigned hardest against. That's a contradiction that could destroy everything he's built."
"You're rather worldly for your age." Sirius glanced at him. "Couldn't he simply be worried about his son?"
"If he were truly worried about his son, he wouldn't have sent him to Azkaban," Draco said.
"I saw it with my own eyes," Sirius said, his voice darkening. "The boy was nineteen. He looked terrified. And Crouch himself handed him over." He was quiet for a moment. "And yet he did eventually pull him out. At great personal risk."
"And then locked him in the house under the Imperius Curse," Draco said flatly. "If it weren't for that particular arrogance — believing he could contain a dangerous Death Eater with a household charm — none of this would have happened."
"You sound as though this is personal," Sirius said.
Draco looked toward the Forbidden Forest — toward the place where, in another life, Barty Crouch Sr.'s bones had been dug up.
"It is," he said quietly, "in a manner of speaking."
He thought of his father. He thought about what it would mean for Lucius to discover that his son had chosen a different path. He had been constructing a careful performance for his parents for years — the loyal, admiring, obedient child who supported everything they believed. It was a lie, and one day it would collapse.
When it did, what would Lucius do? Would he do what Crouch had done?
Draco said nothing more. He pushed the thought down and turned back to the lake.
---
On Valentine's Day, Hermione woke to find a large bouquet of yellow roses in a vase on her bedside table.
She was puzzled, and then, privately, pleased. A small, silver card was tucked among the stems, blank except for two initials in extravagant script: *D.M.*
Of course it was him.
"Oh — those are yellow roses," Lavender Brown said, poking her head through the curtain of her four-poster with an expression of genuine horror. "On Valentine's Day. Hermione — are you *alright*?"
The tiny flicker of warmth in Hermione's chest went out as if snuffed.
Yellow roses. She knew what that meant.
*He's ending it. He finally got tired of the whole thing and he's ending it with a flower arrangement.*
She was shaking slightly as she dropped the card into the wastepaper basket.
So when Draco appeared beside her that morning, clearly thrumming with anticipation, and asked — "Do you like the flowers?" — the look she gave him could have stopped a charging Hippogriff.
She said nothing. She walked away.
---
"Your method was completely useless, Pansy," Draco said, returning to the Slytherin table with the expression of someone who has just stepped on a garden rake.
"She didn't like them?" Pansy looked absolutely delighted. "Our Malfoy heir, rejected on Valentine's Day — what a tragedy. Was the bouquet not impressive enough?"
"The most fashionable arrangement, the best quality, and in the colour that's supposed to signify an apology—"
"*What?*" Pansy stared. "You gave her *yellow roses*? On Valentine's Day? You absolute idiot — that doesn't mean apology, that means *it's over*!"
"Why didn't you tell me that?!"
"You never *asked*!" Pansy gathered her own bouquet of red roses — ostentatiously large — and stood. "Read the Victorian Language of Flowers sometime. It's a gentlemen's basic." She walked away, tossing over her shoulder: "Look at Blaise. Then look at yourself."
"Blaise," Draco said through his teeth, rounding on him. "Last week you called me a coward without principles for considering sending flowers at all. You said you would *never* send them — you stood up straight and said it—"
"Principles apply to other people," Blaise said, raising his chin with the serenity of a man entirely at peace with his contradictions. "Anyone who believes otherwise is an idiot."
"You're both completely useless," Draco said.
"I maintain," Blaise said, more seriously now, "that constantly giving in without limit is not healthy. She'll come to expect it. That's just human nature."
"She isn't like that."
"It has nothing to do with her personality specifically—"
"You don't know what happened between us."
"I don't," Blaise agreed. "But have you considered whether she actually values you the way you value her? Whether you're truly important enough to her that she'd get this angry over a genuine misunderstanding?"
"I know exactly what you're doing," Draco said, giving him a warning look. "And I know you've never approved."
"No, I haven't. But I respect it." Blaise's expression settled into something more sincere. "You've become someone I barely recognise, because of her. You've lowered yourself to apologise — repeatedly — and she hasn't met you halfway. I find that worth noting."
He leaned back, tilting his glass. "Pansy explodes, says exactly what she's angry about, and it's done by morning. She's difficult in plain sight — no games. She supports me in front of other people, regardless of whether I'm right or wrong. That's what I value in her. Complete frankness."
"I'm going to be ill," Draco said.
"Go ahead," Blaise said, unmoved. "I'm serious. The girl you treasure — does she do any of that?"
Draco started to say something cutting. Then he stopped.
He thought of how Hermione had never once told Harry or Ron the substance of their quarrel. She had been furious with him for weeks, and she had kept every detail of it between them. She had separated *them* from everything outside them.
A slow smile crossed his face.
"What are you grinning at?" Blaise looked suspicious.
"You've accidentally made a useful observation," Draco said. "I don't require her to behave the way Pansy behaves with you. I don't need that. And neither does she." He picked up his Butterbeer. "We're not the same as you two."
---
Hermione couldn't throw the yellow roses away.
They stayed on her bedside table, changed the water every few days, and remained stubbornly beautiful. Whatever their symbolism, they were the first flowers anyone had ever given her on Valentine's Day.
His behaviour, meanwhile, continued to confuse her. He didn't behave like someone who wanted things to end. He appeared at meals, looked at her with that forlorn grey gaze, and one afternoon in Potions — when Neville's cauldron detonated in a spectacular arc of scalding potion — he had shoved her out of the way before she'd registered the explosion, then stood over her in the fumes asking whether she was hurt, in front of everyone, apparently without the slightest concern for how it looked.
She changed the water and thought about him.
He'd been clumsy about it. He was always clumsy about apologies. He was one of the most arrogant people she had ever met, and he was never good at being wrong.
But he had tried.
The first yellow petal fell. She sighed and watched it go.
The anger had quietly left her. She had been too proud to notice exactly when.
Then there was the matter of Rita Skeeter.
After their encounter at the Three Broomsticks, Hermione had braced herself for the inevitable article — the sensational exposé, the invented scandals, the Quick-Quotes Quill turning every word she'd ever spoken into a weapon. She had seen what Skeeter did to Harry. She had prepared herself.
Instead, Skeeter published a discreet piece on Madame Maxime's possible giant heritage. Then a multi-part investigation into Ludo Bagman's debts to a goblin moneylending operation. Hermione's name did not appear.
She didn't know how he'd done it.
But she had heard, from Ginny, what it actually meant to be on the receiving end of one of Skeeter's campaigns — the Howlers, the curses in the post, the friends who read the Prophet and couldn't quite look you the same way even though they knew better.
She had been sheltered from all of that. He had put himself between her and it, and he hadn't mentioned it once.
She had accused him without even knowing the facts.
She knew, when she sat quietly with it, that she had been too rash, too loud, too proud to back down. She had said things that were excessive. And every time she passed that alcove in the corridor — the one no longer covered by the tapestry — she felt the lack of him with a dull, persistent ache.
She needed to fix it. She simply could not bring herself to go first.
---
In late February, in another Care of Magical Creatures lesson, Hagrid brought two golden unicorn foals.
"They turn silver around two years old," he said warmly, "and their horns come in around four..."
Hermione was watching the foals with wide eyes. She was so absorbed that she didn't notice Draco until he tugged lightly at the hem of her cloak.
"What?" she asked the nearest foal, her tone clipped.
"I'll admit that Hagrid knows unicorns extremely well," he said, very quietly. "His knowledge is as good as Professor Grubbly-Plank's. Possibly better."
She made a soft, acknowledging sound. The ice in her voice had thawed, fractionally.
"They don't turn pure white until around seven years old..." Hagrid continued.
Draco kept his voice low. "I don't hate Hagrid. I can't pretend the dangers he introduces don't concern me — but I don't hate him." A pause. "Hermione, you always look for the best in people first. I don't. I look for the worst — the worst possible outcome — and I measure whether I can bear it before I decide whether to let someone in. It's the only way I know how to operate." He glanced at her. "So when you ask why I'm willing to be kind to you — the answer is that it was never the same calculation. It was never a calculation at all."
"Then what was it?" she asked, and finally looked at him.
"You can feel that for yourself," he said simply. "You don't need me to say it."
"The little ones are quite friendly to boys, if you'd like to come closer — I've got sugar cubes..." Hagrid was saying, and the students drifted forward.
Only the two of them stayed where they were.
"I know I said things that sounded arrogant," he said. "If the tone was wrong, I regret it. But what I meant — my actual view of werewolves and giants — it has nothing to do with prejudice, and it has nothing to do with you. I want to explain it properly." He looked at her steadily. "If it were a giant you didn't know, a werewolf you'd never met — not Hagrid, not Lupin, but a stranger — what would your first instinct be? To trust them immediately? Or to assess the situation carefully?"
"I can't..." she started.
"I couldn't trust a stranger," he said. "I don't care what blood they are. I can't immediately trust an unknown person, because there are people I have to protect." He held her gaze. "Do you understand that?"
She did, she realised. He didn't distrust giants specifically, or werewolves specifically. He distrusted everyone, fairly and without exception, until they proved themselves worth trusting.
"How much do you trust me?" she asked, suddenly wanting to hear the answer.
He looked at her for a long moment. Something moved in his expression — a flash of genuine hurt, quickly submerged.
"How much trust do you think I have in you?" he said quietly. "When you suspected me of conspiring with Skeeter — did you trust me then? Even a little?"
He walked away as the bell rang from the castle.
---
The strange new dynamic that followed, Harry found utterly exhausting.
She would glance at Draco when she thought he wasn't looking. The moment he looked up, she'd look away. He would then stare at her, very directly, until she looked up again — at which point he'd appear to be absorbed in a book.
This had been going on for two weeks.
"You're both desperate to make up," Harry said finally, sitting down beside Draco in the library. "What's the holdup?"
"She should come to me," Draco said. He was watching the way she was anxiously biting her lip over a book across the room. "She crushed my pride. She didn't trust me. I went to her multiple times and she ignored me." He paused. "I want her to take the first step. That's all."
"So you're going to stare at her until she cracks," Harry said.
"Essentially." He seemed to notice that her cheeks had gone pink under his gaze, and the ghost of a smile crossed his face.
"That's — I really can't watch this," Harry said.
"Then don't. Was there something you actually needed?"
"Yes, actually." Harry leaned in, keeping his voice down. "How do you stay underwater for a full hour?"
Draco felt something in his chest release.
*Finally.*
"Bubble-Head Charm, or Gillyweed — your choice," he said, keeping his voice casual.
Harry stared. "That's it? Hermione's been through twenty books—"
"It's not that simple," Draco cut in. "The Bubble-Head Charm takes practice you don't have time for now. As for Gillyweed — straightforward, you just eat it. But the only supply in the castle is in Snape's private Potions stores."
Harry's expression became pained.
"This is why you don't leave things to the last minute," Draco said, without mercy, already turning his attention back across the room. "Think about which one you're attempting and come back to me."
He returned cheerfully to the very pleasant occupation of watching Hermione Granger try not to look at him.
---
**Goyle's Diary, Part Three**
*Weather, 14 February 1995: Sunny, turning cloudy*
Valentine's Day — and what a bountiful morning.
Draco received an enormous pile of chocolate cauldrons from girls across every house and tossed the whole lot to me before breakfast.
He doesn't like chocolate. I will never understand him.
I had opened the thirtieth piece by the time he came back and looked at me.
He stared at the wrappers. He announced new training: diving practice.
Extreme joy, followed immediately by despair.
Vincent and I jogged miserably around the Quidditch pitch. It is Valentine's Day. There is nothing here but us and the cold.
Why is Draco here too? Shouldn't he be with Granger?
Oh. Right. She rejected his flowers.
Neither of us dared say anything.
20 laps. 300 hits. 30 minutes flying. 30 minutes Counter-Attack Bludger. 30 minutes diving.
---
*Weather, 17 February 1995: Forgot*
In Potions today, Draco had approximately the same expression as Professor Snape at the front of the room.
I followed his gaze. Granger was teaching Longbottom how to adjust the flame under his cauldron.
Granger didn't look at Draco once. Longbottom looked at Draco several times and appeared deeply anxious.
Longbottom's spellwork is genuinely alarming. Watching him, I suddenly feel much better about myself.
His attempt to adjust the flame somehow removed most of the cauldrons in the room from existence. Several Gryffindors were screaming. It was extraordinary.
Then Draco was standing next to Granger, and I'm not sure when that happened.
He helped her up, dusted off her robes, and asked quietly whether she was alright.
Granger's mouth was open. She looked stunned.
Later she muttered something to him and walked away, blushing.
Parkinson said Draco must be possessed. Draco looked at her and his normal imposing aura returned immediately. He said: "Would you like to be poisoned and rendered mute?"
Parkinson shut up.
Professor Snape made Longbottom scrub every cauldron in the classroom without a wand. This was fair.
20 laps. 300 hits. 30 minutes flying. 30 minutes Counter-Attack. 30 minutes diving.
---
*Weather, 20 February 1995: Sunny*
Unicorn foals are gold! And very round.
Draco and Granger seem close to making up. I saw them standing together talking quietly. He was pulling at her cloak.
20 laps. 300 hits. 30 minutes flying. 30 minutes Counter-Attack. 30 minutes diving.
---
*Weather, 21 February 1995: Cloudy*
They did not make up.
Draco stared at Granger all day. I don't know what he was planning, but I know the look. It was the same look I have when I see a whole roast turkey after three days without food.
No question about it.
20 laps. 300 hits. 30 minutes flying. 30 minutes Counter-Attack. 30 minutes diving.
---
*Weather, 23 February 1995: Sunny*
20 laps. 300 hits. 30 minutes flying. 30 minutes Counter-Attack. 30 minutes diving.
I just noticed that no one in the house has mocked me in quite a long time.
I practiced Counter-Attack for an extra fifteen minutes. I added that myself. I'm not sure why.
I'm exhausted.
Early bed tonight. Tomorrow is the Second Task and everyone wants a good seat in the stands!