Swipe. Swipe. Swipe.
Hermione never had installed the Tinder app on her muggle smartphone. After all, she wasn't looking for just some random date. She'd rather find a nice smart wizard guy, hopefully smart enough to talk about the science of magic with, the topic that occupied her mind most of the time anyways.
All the good, bad and ugly muggle things ultimately got reinvented for the magical folk, and so here she was: swiping her finger (mostly left) on a piece of enchanted parchment, looking at the endless stream of moving photographs. Some continuously flexed their muscles, showing off their bare chest (that's an instant swipe left, thank you very much), some would just wink at her or try to turn to the most flattering angle, and others would just smile in a charming way. Her own profile wasn't too sophisticated either, just the first name and a photo with a rather reserved kind of smile. Basic info - she was a magical scholar, and a professor at Hogwarts, looking for a similarly minded guy.
"Whatcha doing?"
Hermione almost jumped off her chair at the sudden sound of high pitched voice coming from behind her chair. She hurried to fold the parchment to try to hide it away, but it was too late. Ginny had already seen the dating app, before Hermione had a chance to notice her presence.
"Oh Gin. Come on. You'll give me a heart attack."
"Oooh, I see someone's rather jumpy. Caught anything good today?" Ginny winked, clearly enjoying the situation. Hermione was not easily embarrassed - after all, she really did know almost everything about any subject. Dating however was not one of them.
"I dunno. The more I look at them the less I want to continue swiping…" She sighed. She really felt resigned. Wasn't one supposed to just meet the love of their life randomly, at a party or something like that? This felt extremely artificial.
"Come on, don't be like that, give life a chance!" Ginny brought in an empty chair and sat next to Hermione. "Let's do this together."
She took the parchment out of Hermione's hands and unrolled it. It was currently displaying a photo of a thin, black-haired guy wearing a cowboy hat. He winked at them, and proceeded to send them a virtual kiss.
"Sheesh, this one is really trying too hard," Ginny said. "Bye, bye!" She addressed him, and immediately swiped left, not even giving him a chance to react.
What happened next left both of the girls frozen with their mouths open for good ten seconds.
Staring at them, with his trademark overconfident smile plastered to his face, was none other than Draco Malfoy. That is, just a moving photo of him of course. Evidently, the photo Draco had no idea who the two girls with their jaws dropped to the floor on the other side of the parchment were - otherwise he wouldn't keep smile at them so charmingly.
Ginny was the first one to break the silence.
"I'm sorry, Hermione. I have to do this," she said.
"Wait, what…?"
Before Hermione had the chance to understand what was going on, Ginny snatched the parchment and started walking away towards the other side of the room.
"I'm swiping this one right!" she yelled.
"No!" Hermione grabbed her by her robe and try to pull her down to get the parchment out of Ginny's hands. She made a good effort, but in the end it proved futile. Ginny had already swiped the photo of Malfoy to the right.
There was no turning back. The invitation had been sent. In a few minutes, he would open his parchment and get a notification. It would say that none other than a certain Hermione Granger would like to connect with him.
And to think that just an hour ago Hermione had thought this evening couldn't possibly get any worse.