After Draco made the sales witches very happy by spending lots of galleons at the perfume boutique, they decided it was time to look for the perfect dress for Hermione's date with Severus. The first designer dress shop they visited was, 'Vanguard.' It was small in size and selection, but what they saw was promising, very promising indeed.

"Hermy, what about this one?" Draco asked as he held up a dress that was green. She thought it was ugly. It had long sleeves. Age hated long sleeves. It didn't help that Draco was holding it up to his body either. Although green was his color, he just couldn't seem to pull off the look of lace.

"Uh, no" the witch said, making retching noises behind her hand. "I can't stand long sleeves, they just make me feel so confined and restricted."

"Okay," Draco replied dramatically and resumed ' the search.' Sometimes he felt his work was never done.

"This is pretty," Hermione said holding up a short sleeveless black dress and came right above her knees. She held it up to herself and gave a little spin for her little blond fashion expert.

"Nope, too casual," he quickly said barely looking at it. They continued looking and debated about every dress in the shop. The answer to each one was a resounding, NO. Either it was too short or too long, too big or too small, and so on. They decided to move on to another shop. Hermione was starting to get nervous about finding a dress in time. If they looked through an entire store and couldn't even come up with one dress what was she supposed to do? She started having visions of having to wear her old Gryffindor uniform. Okay, she knew that she wouldn't really wear that, but times were getting desperate.

Next the shopping duo went to, 'Under the Robe.' Inside they looked around and both grimaced. It was NOT the kind of dress shop they were looking for. Minerva would feel right at home here though with the amount of tartan plaid that they had laid out. Tartan skirts, tartan tops, tartan robes, tartan ribbons, tartan tights, and tartan bloomers....bloomers? Who wore bloomers these days? They left the store quicker than a niffler could spot gold. Hermione shuddered and realized that she would never look at Professor McGonagall the same way ever again.

Walking around the corner and 6 blocks from where they started Hermione was dragging her feet. "Draco, my feet are killing me," she whined dropping her arms dramatically to show him how tired she was. Her little pink bag looked like it was about to be discarded in favor of a bench to rest. He was not sympathetic.

At all.

"No pain, no gain, sweetheart. Come on, chin up." Further ahead was, 'Wedding and Formal Wear.'

"Please, whatever god or goddess is listening to me, let me find the perfect dress," she pleaded trudging through the heavy beveled glass doors. As soon as her eyes landed on it, she knew that she had found it.

The perfect dress.

"There it is." She pointed to the dress on the mannequin.

"EW! Yellow so does NOT work for you," Draco exclaimed, shocked that she seemed totally unawares of this simple color factoid.

"Not that one dummy, the one next to it," Hermione replied pointing to the dress she meant. Her eyes lit up and her cheeks were rosy. This was 'The dress.'

They both oohed and ahhed over the dress. Each imagining what it would look like on. Draco shook the image from his head after a few seconds and imagined it on Hermione instead.

"I'll go try it on." Hermione plucked it off the rack and dashed off to the fitting room. It was perfect. She walked out barefoot to show Draco. She felt quite pleased that she found it before Draco did. It wasn't often that she could best him in the clothing department. And everyone thought she was only a bookworm.

"I am buying that or you," Draco breathed taking in the image of her. "It's gorgeous, Herms. It flaunts your curves, and makes your boobs look good, really good. Go take it off and I'll go pay for it while you're getting dressed," he instructed her. She locked the door to the changing room and took off the beautiful dress, zipped it up, placed it on the hanger, and then threw it over the door for Draco.

As they walked out of the store Hermione leaned over and said, "Thank you, Draco. That was one of the nicest things that anyone has every done for me." Draco was a Malfoy and true to his heritage he loved praise. So he had no problem basking in her thanks.

"The things that I do for the women in my life," he chuckled. "Shoes. That's our next battle," Draco said pulling Hermione with him down the street. Now Hermione had 2 bags to carry and the little pink one had already started to feel like it was stuffed with Hagrid's rock cakes. What would it feel like in an hour? Hermione stifled a groan and followed Draco.