Blaise had had a fabulous afternoon. He wasn't generally interested in role-play games but the witch he'd taken to lunch had convinced him to play naughty school girl and the prefect and, well, she'd put a lot more emphasis on the 'naughty' part than on the 'school girl' part.

"I'm not sure those shoes would have fit into the dress code," he'd said as he'd admired the stilettos she'd added to an outfit that only vaguely resembled what girls at school had worn. The tie she'd worn, however, had been useful for a variety of things as she worked at convincing the 'prefect' not to take away any points or send her to detention.

All in all, a most satisfactory afternoon, and Blaise was thus in an excellent mood as he pushed open the door to his flat and greeted Draco, who, for once, wasn't sulking but was curled up on the couch with Granger where they –

Shite.

"Hermione?" Blaise raised an eyebrow as he tried to hide his utter befuddlement that Draco had somehow talked the witch into coming over to their flat. "I didn't expect to see you here."

"Park got cold," Draco said.

"Plus," Hermione said, "Ginny assures me that public shagging is a bad idea." She sniffed. "I had no idea she was so consevative."

Blaise eyed the couch with only mostly feigned trepidation. "Please tell me we don't need to get a new couch now. I rather liked that one."

"Like you've never shagged on the couch," Draco said with a snort.

"I have not," Blaise said, sounding – and feeling - offended. "It's very rude to… not in public spaces you share with your flat mate. That's disgusting and something only a Gryffindor would do." He seemed, too late, to realize what he'd said and added a muttered, "Begging your pardon."

"I can't quite decide if I'm going to be insulted on behalf of my House or relieved I'm not sitting in the dried remains of your bodily fluids," Hermione said and Draco snickered.

Blaise, however, shuddered rather dramatically. "Sometimes I do wish you'd be as particular as all the other pureblood girls." He eyed Draco, "Speaking of which, what are you doing? You can't just… cuddle… with Theo's sister. You can't. It's…. you just can't."

"I know, he's terrible," Hermione said. "And he refuses to get me a diamond bracelet. Cheap bastard."

"My parents were very much married," Draco objected as Blaise sank down into a chair, his afternoon ruined.

"What are you doing?" he asked again. "I told you to date half-bloods. Date half-bloods and you get all the good times and everyone goes home happy and no obligations. She's a Nott." Blaise nearly moaned. "Draco, you're going to ruin her!"

"I'm not a soufflé," Hermione said, sitting up and looking irritated. "I don't get ruined that easily."

"But –" Blaise was still holding his head in his hands. "Hermione…"

"Ruined for what? Marriage with Marcus Flint?" Hermione snorted. "Bring it. Like I'd want to be the perfect princess for someone who only sees me as a blood status."

Blaise picked his head up to give Draco a meaningful look, which the blond man chose to ignore.

"If going on a perfectly normal date with a perfectly normal man spoils me, than so be it," Hermione said, settling back down against Draco's chest. He wrapped his arms around her and smirked up at Blaise.

"I told you I'd get her to like me," Draco said.

"Besides, I don't think anyone outside your little circle of inbred obsessives cares about this crap anyway," Hermione added.

"Speaking of soufflé," Draco said, cutting off Blaise before he could open his mouth. "We're meeting Ginny Weasley at Belle Reine for dinner tomorrow at seven. It's a date, so put your pureblood manners on."

Blaise eyed the way Draco's hands were resting on Hermione's stomach and snorted. "And how will you two be behaving?"

"Like the princess that I am," Hermione said with a smirk. "And he gets no public touching until I get my bracelet."

"Uh huh," Blaise said. "I'm going to go to my room now and shut the door and pretend I didn't see this. Just… holler or something when it's safe to come out." He stopped at his door. "Draco, when she leaves, we need to have a talk."

"I'm in trouble," Draco whispered to Hermione as Blaise shut his door with more vigor than was perhaps necessary.

"I had no idea you Slytherin types were such rule followers," Hermione said. "It's kind of sad, really. To think I'll be the one teaching Draco Malfoy to be naughty." She shook her head in mock exasperation.

"I shall endeavor to be an attentive student," he said and she laughed. There was a loud banging noise from inside Blaise's room and Draco grinned. "He's going to kill me," he added.

. . . . . . . . . .

"What the bloody fuck do you think you're doing?" Blaise demanded after Hermione had gone home.

Draco looked up at him from the couch were he was lounging, looking smug enough for three men. "Courting a princess?"

"Does she even understand what you're up to?"

Draco tipped back the beer in his hand, took a long swallow, and then smirked up at his roommate. "Maybe she likes me."

"Maybe you've manipulated her until she can't see straight!"

"Maybe you should give her a little credit," Draco said, taking another drink. "Or is it that impossible that she might actually like me."

"She could barely be civil to you not so long ago. Does she even know you're still all caught up in her wonderful new blood status, the same way the dreaded Marcus Flint is, or does she think you've become magically enlightened in the last week or so?"

"This might shock you," Draco drawled, "but I've been honest with her that her blood status still matters to me." He took another drink. "I've also convinced her to start following the damn rules so she doesn't end up dragging Theo into one duel after another."

"Oh yes, the girl snuggling you on our couch sure looked like a pureblood rule follower to me," Blaise kicked a chair leg before sitting down in it. "Do we have any of that beer left?"

Draco accioed a bottle and Blaise cracked it open.

"Doesn't count if no one sees her," Draco said.

"I saw her," Blaise muttered but he relaxed a little bit. "You swear you're being honest that you aren't some fluffy Hufflepuff? That you're not lying to her about what a godawful prat you are?"

Draco raised an eyebrow in one of his more practiced sneers. "I'm being me, Blaise. That's all." He let the sneer go and sighed. "She seems to like me anyway, though, no, she's not exactly excited I care about her blood status. She's just… she's not making that a deal breaker."

"Well, huh." Blaise sounded like he didn't quite believe it but he slouched back and sighed. "Better you than Marcus Flint, I guess."

"She doesn't have to marry a pureblood," Draco said.

Blaise turned his head slowly to look at his roommate. "Well," he said, "I guess you are changing, if only by inches."

"Whatever," Draco muttered, taking another drink. He looked down at his hand and wrist as if considering something and then asked, "Blaise, do you have any jewelry I could borrow? Something with rubies if possible?"

"I'm not marrying you," Blaise said with a smirk. "Don't think you can trap me into an understanding."

"You're not my type," Draco said, "but… she's right. She looks cheap for kissing me in public without…and for all her teasing she wouldn't take a bracelet or something if I offered it now that she knows what it means, so…"

"Nice," Blaise said with a low whistle. "That's an elegant workaround. You're just going to wear something and not say anything and protect her from the slurs that she's… maybe you aren't a total arsehole." He considered his friend. "Of course, if it doesn't work out, she'll look like a jilt."

"I don't care how long it takes; it will work out. I want to marry her, Blaise," Draco said very seriously. "I know you don't like my reasons, but part of that goal involves protecting her from people who'd hurt her or use her."

"I know," Blaise sighed. "You're doing this all the right way, you're just… she has no idea what she's doing and at least it's you because I can see Montague or Flint taking advantage and then demanding Theo make good on the 'dishonor' she's done them by not hauling her arse to the alter after swapping spit and thus giving them access to those Nott vaults."

Draco took another drink. "I may be a bloody failure at life, but I'm rich as fuck. I'm not after her money."

"Neither is she; Theo whines how she won't take a knut. And you're not a failure."

"Brand says otherwise," Draco muttered.

. . . . . . . . . .

Theo grinned as Hermione flung herself after the ball and, yet again, failed to catch it. "You really aren't good at this, are you?" he teased as she tried to peg the ball at his head.

She missed.

"Sod off, Theo," she muttered as he tossed the ball back to her, an easy underhanded toss.

She missed.

"Give up, mate," Ron said from the steps. "We tried for years. She's actually impaired athletically."

"Sod off, Ron."

"And it makes her hostile," Ron added.

"You don't see me making you analyze the risks of shifting policy on international currency regulation," Hermione snapped. "In public, no less. And then mocking you for not being able to do it."

Ron held his hands up. "See what I mean," he said to Theo.

Theo laughed and slouched over to Hermione and pulled her into a hug. "Sorry," he murmured. "I had no idea you couldn't catch. At all."

Hermione smiled a bit maliciously as she pulled back a bit to look at her brother. She could see him tense as she saw the look on her face. "It's okay," she nearly cooed. "After all, you upset me with the ball thing and I'm about to upset you."

"What did you do?" Theo demanded.

"Kissed Draco in the park," she said, her voice as innocent and sweet as she could contrive.

"The ferret?" Ron made a gagging noise. "Why would you do that? Were you trying to induce vomiting after ingesting poison or something?"

"Ha ha," Hermione said. "It was a date. Consenting adults have been known to kiss on those."

Theo closed his eyes and counted to ten and reminded himself that, whatever the man's myriad flaws were, Draco was not going to deliberately compromise any woman he saw as a pureblood. He was an elitist, prejudiced snob with self-esteem issues, but he played by the rules as he understood them and those rules excluded public snogging.

"Muggle park, I assume," he said when he opened his eyes and looked steadily at his sister's smirking face.

Hermione looked disappointed at his lack of reaction. "How did you know?" she asked.

"Because the ferret's not bloody stupid enough to kiss you in public," Ron said with a snort. "Not really. He knows Harry and I would beat him to a bloody pulp if he tried anything."

Hermione glared at her long-time friend. "You do read the Prophet, right?" she asked.

Ron and Theo made eye contact and then Ron said, "I knew that was your doing, 'Mione. Probably scared the man half to death, too. Which I applaud, by the way."

Hermione made a face. "You know all the pureblood crap too?" she asked, nearly whining.

"Sacred Twenty-Eight," Ron and Theo said in unison.

"Plus," Ron muttered, "Lav's really into it. She made my mother dredge up every last stupid custom she could and made me do all of them." He glared at Theo. "Who came up with the modesty one, anyway? Lav used to dress like a hot little number and now her shoulders are always covered and her skirts hit below her knees and she's always got a hat or scarf on. I cannot wait for her to get tired of that shite."

"Underneath?" Theo asked.

"Well, under the proper little shell she's got some – " Ron broke off and looked at Hermione. "Not that I would know what Lavender's knickers look like because, of course, we aren't married yet."

"What the bloody hell?" Hermione demanded. "Are you going to start treating me like some kind of princess too, because I might have to poison you in your sleep if you do that."

"Such a pureblood thing to do," Theo said. "See how well she fits in, Ron? She's my perfect, princess sister. And look, shoulders covered, knees covered. Go to do something about that hair, though. Do you think we could get her to wear a little hat?"

Ron was nearly convulsed with laughter at the sight of how furious Hermione was. Theo looked down at her. She was wearing one of his jumpers that had shrunk in an unfortunate laundry accident and which she'd snagged, claiming that since it fit her now he might as well give it up, and a pair of scrubby trousers and she carried herself with that casual air of ease she didn't even recognize she had; surviving a war had given her a quiet self-confidence that couldn't be faked. She looked, Theo thought, like no one quite so much as Narcissa Malfoy dressed to work in her garden and exuded the kind of unconscious privilege that only a ratty alpaca jumper could convey. Her clothes said, 'I have money and power and I don't need to try to look pretty for you.'

He wondered if she knew how utterly aristocratic she appeared. She seemed far, far more like a member of the upper classes than Ron's silly little Lavender, for all that the other woman wore designer ensembles as if her life hung in the balance of how well she matched her shoes to her bag.

"I will get you, Ron Weasley," Hermione was promising. "When you least expect it, you'll be sorry." She turned to Theo. "And you," she added, "I know where you live."

Theo laughed but Ron shook his head violently from side to side. "Theo," the man on the steps hissed, "Don't laugh. It'll just make her meaner when she finally gets her revenge."

Theo, still holding on to Hermione, looked down at her face and, smothering his laughter, kissed her on the forehead. "Love you, sis," he offered and she screwed up her face at him but let him pull her back into a tight hug. "I'm just worried you're moving so fast," he said quietly into her hair. "Draco can be a bit of a self-serving prick, you know."

"I have known him since we were both eleven," she said. "His flaws are not wholly mysterious to me."

"And yet you're going out with him, Blaise, and Ginny tonight," Theo said, his voice worried.

Brotherly.

Hermione let herself rest against his chest and he savored the opportunity to nurture the normally stubborn witch. She sighed and let Theo lead her over to the steps. Ron muttered something about needing to help his mother do wedding planning and disappeared.

"Explain it to me," Theo said. "You were spitting mad at him and now you're kissing him and going out to an expensive restaurant."

"Well," Hermione hedged, "he's assured me he's disgustingly wealthy so not to worry about the – "

"As are you," Theo said with exaggerated patience. "Doesn't mean you head out for pricey French food in Diagon Alley with every random boy we went to school with."

"I'm not, because none of the Nott money is mine," Hermione said.

Theo opted not to pursue that.

"Yes, sis," he said. "Stop dodging the issue."

She leaned down over her knees and sighed. "He's so… I mean, he's awful in a lot of ways. He's a product of his environment and I get the impression Lucius was a nightmare of a parent."

"Has he talked to you about his father?" Theo was shocked and Hermione looked up at him, her eyes narrowed.

"Thank you for that little confirmation I was right," she said.

Theo let out a huff of air. "Conniving," he muttered.

Hermione grinned a little, then sighed again. "He's so… I took him to that Thai place, did he tell you that? The one with the good green curry?"

"Blue Elephant?" Theo asked.

She nodded.

"I like that place," he said. "Good choice."

"He was terrified," Hermione said. "He's so afraid of Muggles he thought, I don't know, something awful would happen at any moment. It was horrible to watch."

"And you felt sorry for him," Theo murmured. "Oh, Merlin, Hermione."

"But he sat there," she pressed on, "and talked to me and tried his best to hide how scared he was and all I could think was he was doing this for me. You'd said he wasn't the worst person to have on your side and, I mean, I know it was ridiculous to be afraid of that place, but he didn't and he was facing it down for me and, Merlin, it sounds so stupid when I say it out like this but – "

"But you saw that he'd walk into hell for you," Theo said, "even if he has some totally fucked up ideas of what hell is. Damn him. Why couldn't he have just been an arsehole?"

"You'd prefer that?" Hermione turned her face up and grinned at Theo.

He sighed. "And then you went and defended him in that damn ice cream shop and if he hadn't been mad for you before, he was after that."

"Some person named Montague wanted you to know he was interested, by the way, on the off chance I got tired of the, and I quote, loser."

"He's interested all right," Theo muttered, "interested in your fucking dowry."

"I do not have a dowry," Hermione said. "This is not 1723 or something. You do not have to pay some cretin to take me off your hands."

"No," Theo agreed, "I'm pretty sure Draco's going to do it for free."

. . . . . . . . . .

A/N – I don't MEAN to keep dragging out the wait for the double date, it just happens. Thank you for all your wonderful comments and thoughts. Some day I will again have time to respond to reviews; I hope in the meanwhile I can buy your forgiveness with rapid updates.