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Library As Witness

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Growing up, he had grown accustomed to formal events taking place in his home. Many of the pureblood children, in particular the girls, giggled and whispered, and when he caught a few pointing at his head he scowled at his reflection anytime he passed a mirror. Paranoia about all the giggling for how white his hair was had been debunked by his Father, who claimed he should never believe something without certain proof. He'd said in his steely voice , "A Mudblood, for example, has the most dreadful scent. That's how you know they're Muggles thieving in our world."

Draco never thought he would see the day where his Father is wrong. As it turns out, when people are glancing in your direction, hissing tales behind their hands, snickering as you pass them, they're most certainly talking about you; his parasite heightening his hearing has attested to that.

Mudbloods don't smell bad, either. Ernie Macmillan smells like Christmas. Those Creevey midgets give off the scent of warm milk and honey. And Granger...

She's everywhere. Any forsaken, dusty hallway he skitters through, the grounds he soars over on his broom in the midnight hours, or in his classrooms, he hates himself for each inhale he takes of her. Whether she is present or not.

Of course, such moments are rare.

The Room of Hidden Things has become his new dormitory. He doesn't remember the last time he set foot in the Slytherin common room. Nobody brings it up, either — no Slytherin is willing to be seen within a metre of the Blood Traitor, barmy Malfoy. Teachers appear to have forgotten his existence, but he's been under Potter's shadow with the rest of Hogwarts long enough to be accustomed to that. Even the four Triwizard Tournament champions can get shunted away when it comes to Saint Potter.

Some things the room cannot provide, however, and when Draco's dry throat begs to be watered or his stomach moans painfully, he has to slink outside its safety to find some sustenance. In the midnight hours, the only eyes he has to worry about is that of patrolling prefects, of Filch, and of his stupid tabby cat. That would've posed a problem half a year ago; now, he can sniff something from a mile away, or strain his ears for even a twitch of movement within the floors above, under his very feet, and below him.

After the Peeves debacle, Draco has been extra careful with noises. Ghosts give off a faint, breezy sound when they move, something that an ordinary witch or wizard would be deaf to. His stomach twists uncomfortably at the thought of being extraordinary. Or maybe he's just starving.

People had been having doubts about his lack of sanity, people like Pansy. But after Peeves' extremely loud declaration of 'a pelt wrapped around the barmy Malfoy', and with several eyewitnesses, including a Beauxbatons girl with a camera next to a grinning Potter and to add variation to the curse, Weasley twins, Draco made himself as scarce as possible. The only class he had gone to since was Transfiguration, but if the way that people were ogling him didn't pour hot shame down his insides, the way McGonnagall had defended him certainly did.

The only consolation he had was the article that had come in, with Rita Skeeter's dismissal from the Ministry on the front page. People find it difficult to find him wandering the halls at the hours of night, but his owl has no trouble. The sour-faced woman glared up at him from her photo plastered on the page, a quoted public apology claiming that her article had been "entirely a work of fiction." There's nothing Draco's Father could do about being caught walking around school almost naked, though. Not to mention the fact that there's no way Draco would write to his parents about such an incident, anyway.

He dreads the idea that anybody has told their families. The Notts, Parkinsons, Zabinis, Greengrasses, Puceys, Crabbes, Goyles, could come over to his manor for tea any day and disrespect his Mother or Father by questioning the mental state of their son. His stomach twists again, and he knows it's not the hunger, this time.

Shoving his thoughts away, Draco focuses on the quiet gloom of Hogwarts' intestines. Every time a portrait grumbles in their sleep or a window rattles slightly with the pounding of the wind outside, he twitches, shoulders tensed. The Room of Hidden Things has given him many silk robes, but an invisibility cloak apparently cannot come with his new wardrobe. After he's about to pass another window, and it shakes particularly aggressively, he pauses. There's no moonlight spilling out, as there wouldn't be even if there weren't billowing grey clouds claiming the sky. Even so, he glowers at the expanse of skies, and the vast grounds it overlooks. He hopes his Wolfsbane decides to actually work this month — well, work in the way he wants it to. He is a Malfoy, after all, diseased or not.

He's made it down to the first floor when he rounds a corridor, before coming to an abrupt halt. A metre away, the flickering candlelight at the library entrance makes his eyes dance with it. He doesn't need to sniff the buttercream and roses to know who's in there.

Granger breaking the rules has by now become part of the Hogwarts rules. She breaks the rules, casting collateral damage everywhere she passes. By his sides, his hands clench into fists.

Sometimes a hunter hunts for hunger. As the polished shoes on his feet pad from stone to carpet, the candlelight bathing him like the full moon, Draco's hunger is the last thing on his mind.

Her scent gets stronger, his heart pounds faster. The hilt of his wand is abruptly tightened in his fist. It's being gripped so tightly that his fingernails are digging into his palms. Draco wants to taste her fear. Her blood.

Against his palm, his wand is slippery. He sniffs at the iron liquid in his pocket. Under his fingernails. Relishes in the stinging of his palm.

Something claims his lips. It might be snarl. A part of him feels like it's a grin.

Her scent is only getting stronger.

When he passes the Restricted Section, his eyes zero in past the first set of shelves on the left. Surrounded by piles and piles of books, she's slumped on the floor, leaning against the wall, her knees bent upwards and supporting a large volume that her red-rimmed eyes are skimming over. Draco's tongue flicks out briefly over his top lip, but he tastes more than his salty skin.

Even from here, he can hear her heart pound hard against her chest. Perhaps he can make it beat even faster.

"I suppose I'm not surprised that Potter's Mudblood would break the rules — out after curfew and sitting in the Restricted Section?" His voice echoes out among the dusty shelves, and that strange grin returns to his lips, baring his teeth, when her head whips upwards to face him.

Her expression passive, she simply says, "I suppose I'm not surprised Daddy's boy would feel entitled to break the rules, either." As she returns her attention to the book, Draco stands rooted to the spot with his hand clenching and unclenching around the wand in his pocket, before he then shoves his other hand in his other pocket and starts marching towards her.

Even as he crouches down in front of her, the only barrier between them being several books splayed on top of each other, she doesn't remove her eyes from the one propped on her knees. As his own orbs wander around, he catches sight of titles like 'Advanced Spells', 'Dangerous Magical Creatures' and 'Taming Ridiculously Powerful Creatures'.

"Regretting putting yourself in the tournament already?" He scoffs, gouging her reaction by watching the way her coppery eyelashes flicker too much to be moving across a line on a page. "There's only so much being Potter's bitch can do for you." The way her nail scratches against the back of the book makes a shiver shoot down his spine; he's getting to her.

But then, a smirk pulls at her lips. His brows furrow as he focuses on the upturn of the plump, pink flesh… and the words that exit them. "Barmy Malfoy. That's what they're calling you now."

Draco snarls. She still doesn't look up from her book.

"Banging your head in bathrooms, screaming at your mates, running around stark naked—"

With reflexes he didn't know he has, Draco pounces forwards and grabs the front of her school jumper. As he drags her towards him, the book tumbles off her knees onto the carpeted library floor while some of the books on the piles slide off their perches to join it. His face is inches from hers, and if it wasn't for the panic flickering in her eyes, one would think she's having a dull conversation with him.

Baring his teeth, no grin this time, Draco hisses into her face. "You can make stories about me all you want, but on Salazar's Grave, I can promise that you will live to regret it far more than any tournament." That potent scent of hers is intoxicating; his eyes briefly flicker shut. Then, he shoves her away. Disgust climbs up his chest as she falls to the ground, knocking some more books astray.

Before he lets his mind wander again, Draco's on his feet, ready to disappear around the bend of the bookshelf.

Granger has other plans. She shifts behind him, and his ears twitch for any polished wood brushing against fabric or skin. Whipping around, Draco glares down at her, at the way she's sprawled on the ground. There's a look on her face that he's seen all too often: the one where she's figuring out a problem, quickly, so that she can be the first to answer in class. Having it directed at him is unsettling at best, so Draco growls, for good measure, "I would be careful wandering these hallways alone in the dark if I were you, Mudblood."

She whispers something that makes him stiffen. If he hadn't had his heightened hearing, he never would have caught the words. But "Big Bad Wolf" makes his heartbeat accelerate.

Keeping himself composed, Draco drawls, "What in Merlin's name are you talking about, Mudblood?" The corners of her lips twitch upwards slightly, and his throat goes dry. Standing up, she brushes dust off her skirt. When his eyes travel back up, past his faint blood smudged against her jumper, to her face, her head is tilted slightly to the side. "It's a Muggle tale. You wouldn't want to hear it."

She's right. But the mention of a wolf has his head dizzy trying to figure out if she's figured him out. "Tell it to me," he snarls. A smug look crosses her face. For the briefest of moments he considers ripping it off.

"Little Red Riding Hood was skipping alone through a dark, dark forest, to get to her grandmother's house. Then suddenly, a Big, Bad Wolf came to ask her what she was doing. The little girl, who was ever so friendly and naive, responded that she wanted to visit her grandmother. The wolf said that was a lovely idea, and they parted ways. But unbeknownst to Red Riding Hood, the wolf had travelled to grandma's house, and gobbled her up. When the little girl arrived, she knocked, to which the wolf answered, 'come in', in her grandma's voice. When she opened the door—"

"The wolf ate her, too," Draco mumbles, his thoughts racing.

Granger nods. "More or less."

"Why are you telling me this story?"

"Because you told me to," she deadpans, to which Draco sneers.

"I meant, why even mention it in the first place?"

Granger draws her head back slightly, and from the calculating stare she's giving him, he has a pin-like inkling. "I think you know, Malfoy."

It feels like icy water has been poured down his chest. As Granger glowers up at him, challenging him, he should threaten her with silence, or even just murder her on the spot. Anything to protect the Malfoy name.

Instead, he takes the coward's route. Snickering, he drawls, "I don't know what in Merlin's name is going on in that muddy head of yours, but I think you're the barmy one, Granger." He walks away from Little Red Riding Hood, her burning stare imprinted in his mind, running his tongue harshly over his teeth for how good it felt for her name to roll off of it.

...

So she was right.

Hermione never imagined a day where her schoolwork became the least of her priorities — but then, she'd never imagined the concept of magic actually existing, and here she is.

Every class she's in, there's a treacherous book not related to any subject, except for dangerous magical beasts, sitting on her desk under a glamour charm. The words of half of her professors sail over her head as she practices spells against dragons in her head, whispering the incantations, twisting her hand in the instructed movements, envisioning the effect on a great beast with fire spewing from its colossal jaws, her wand charring to a splinter, her whole body engulfed in flames…

A few times, she'd been called out by Professor McGonagall for being incredibly quiet, but after her first panic attack, most of her teachers let her be. Most.

She now dreads potions lessons more than Neville has in his entire Hogwarts lifetime. Acknowledging that she's now a hypocrite — she used to admonish Harry and Ron about the terrible things they said about Snape — she spends any meal in the Great Hall, or any evening in the warmth of the common room, venting towards Harry. He would nod and laugh at her more creative profanities, and bless him for not putting on a smug look and telling her he told her so like she's sure Ron would.

Hermione has an inkling that the sour, cruel demeanour Snape now channels towards her more than even Harry has something to do with his favourite student.

Malfoy has been skipping classes all throughout the past fortnight. He's become so scarce that when someone does spot him, it becomes the school's newest gossip for the next several hours. Most Slytherins claim that Malfoy has a mutated form of Narcolepsy, where when he falls asleep at inappropriate times, he then sleepwalks and performs strange acts. Pretty much everyone else thinks he's either seeking attention or just full on crazy. The professors stick with the Narcolepsy story, rumour has it even his parents have been told this, because it's the kindest, she supposes. But she doesn't believe it.

The silver-haired beauxbatons girl that had tried to snap a photo of Harry when he was in the hospital wing, had apparently repaired her camera. The image of Malfoy, blinking owlishly while wrapped in nothing but a fur pelt, is pasted on parchment posters which are plastered on any free space of wall that students can find. Harry had been there with her, and so had Fred and George, and Hermione suspects that the naked Malfoy story wouldn't have gotten anywhere near as widespread if the twins hadn't been involved.

Well, Hermione had kickstarted things with Skeeter's article. Even when the reporter was fired for her lies (much to the dismay of Lavender, who had to be constantly consoled by Parvati), several people still bring up the article whenever they catch sight of Hermione, and she has no doubt they do the same with Malfoy. Assuming they could ever catch sight of him. Hence why Snape takes out his temper on her.

Hermione had known like everyone else that there's something up with Malfoy. But she didn't think it's narcolepsy or insanity or attention-seeking. After what she had seen that night, something somehow far worse than dragons, she was wondering if that truly was a possibility.

She spends her days practicing spells in lessons and the dead of night researching for the First Task. Things are really starting to get real now; she's only just fully comprehending that she's about to be requested to fight a full grown, adult dragon. But when the thought of entering an arena with a fifty-foot reptile becomes too overwhelming, Hermione casts her mind to her other subject of interest — werewolves.

A lot of stuff she had already done last year while working out Professor Lupin's condition. The illness several days prior to the full moon; his fear of the full moon; the fact that the wolf consumes any human memories until the moon has sunken into a sunrise. She could research all she wanted about werewolf anatomy, about the infection in their saliva, but without a subject to study, it makes her case very difficult to prove.

So for the most part, when it came to Malfoy, she drew it all towards speculation.

Her mind often wanders to that night. If it hadn't been for Moody, she probably would've been dead. The last thing she remembered was the wolf pouncing towards her before everything went black; the next thing she knew, she was in the Hospital Wing with Madam Pomfrey tutting and fussing over her. After Dumbledore had questioned her about her wellbeing, and McGonagall had let her off for being out after curfew with a warning, Moody loitered in the Hospital Wing while the other two went for a word with Madam Pomfrey. Her Defence Against the Dark Arts professor said that he'd been patrolling the forest in case of any cheating champions, and had found her passed out by the rim. When she'd asked him what had happened to the werewolf, Moody had raised his gnarly brow bones and tilted his head like a dog that couldn't understand her.

"Werewolf?" he had growled, normal eye twitching when she nodded. Moody had clucked his tongue, his magical eye rolling up to the ceiling briefly before zipping back towards her. Then, he'd heaved himself onto a hospital wing seat, grunting as he adjusted his wooden leg.

A crooked grin revealed his crooked teeth. "In my line of work, I come across many people who have experienced a great deal of fear. This means they often see things that they may have misinterpreted far beyond its reality." Hermione had furrowed her brows, nodding in understanding. Post-traumatic stress disorder. She's seen some crime shows that refer to it in regards to both victims and criminals. "Seeing those scaly beasts must've scared Godric right out of you, Miss Granger."

Hermione had gone bright red, both at the insulation that she'd been hallucinating because of the dragons and at the fact that Moody knew she had basically cheated.

Moody had chuckled, a hacking, grizzly sort of noise in his throat, and said, "Don't worry, I saw Maxine, and Karkaroff, too. I might've been an auror, but my dirty work was in the catching, not the telling." Then, he'd winked at her, and left. Not five minutes later, Harry came in with a bunch of Honeydukes sweets and she told him everything… except for the werewolf. As they started planning for the First Task, her bed littered with empty wrappers, lollipop sticks and cake crumbs, she couldn't stop thinking about what Moody had said.

Even so, she was certain of what she had seen.

And now, she's certain she was right all along.

There was a werewolf, and the werewolf is Malfoy. The signs had always been there, from his suddenly detached persona, his bursts of angry violence, even the several layers of clothes he wore — it makes her wonder where his bite is. How big it is. Whether there is more than one. Who had bitten him.

She has a terrible feeling about that last one.

All it took to conclude her theory was his reaction to what she'd said in the library. It had been a breath. He's so bloody tall and was walking away, too. She was on the ground. But his whole body froze with the ghost of 'Big Bad Wolf' on her lips.

That's when she knew for sure, she was right. Despite his casual denial.

Lupin had been the same, with small noises. Although he was far more practiced at subtlety, Hermione had still sometimes caught him in her Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons reacting to a fly buzzing at the other end of the room, or the slight raise of his brows when Malfoy muttered something undoubtedly nasty to a snickering pair of Crabbe and Goyle.

Dearly, she hopes it wasn't Lupin.

As for why Malfoy hadn't eaten her up like the Big Bad Wolf had Red Riding Hood, she has no idea. There's not even a scratch on her skin, in fact, nothing that Madam Pomfrey couldn't heal. She wonders if one of the dragons had woken up, and the ruckus had caught the werewolf off-guard, making him flee.

She supposes she'll never know.

What she does know is that Malfoy is a werewolf, the First Task has dragons in it, and Harry won't stop pestering her about Diggory. "Delacour and Krum know," he hisses for the millionth time towards the end of one Herbology lesson.

When Zacharias Smith sneers in her direction next to Hannah Abbot, who's more interested in the bubotuber plant in front of her, Hermione attacks her own bubotuber. Within seconds she's sprayed with the pus she was supposed to be collecting. As Smith starts laughing obnoxiously, she growls at the plant, then whips around when Harry's hand stretches out with some napkins.

"I can't believe you, Harry," she whispers furiously, swatting his hand away. Ignoring the twinge in her stomach from the way his bayleaf eyes widen slightly behind his spectacles, she continues, "I'm about to enter a suicide task with a dragon, am barely keeping up with my schoolwork, am getting no sleep, everyone hates me, and you want me to worry about Diggory?"

His cheeks go pink while his own brows draw together, and he takes a step forward. "He has a right to know." His voice is firm and steady, and he's gripping the napkins tightly in his fist. "So everyone can enter with equal footing."

"At least he volunteered," she snaps quietly.

"Thinking it would be a fair game," Harry adds heatedly.

Scowling, Hermione mutters, "Why the bloody hell won't you just tell him, then? Since you care so much about the precious Hufflepuff Prince of Hogwarts."

For a few moments, Harry blinks at her. Even when she's covered in plant pus in the middle of a Herbology lesson, having an argument about everyone's favourite Hufflepuff, she can't find any humour in the situation. The way Harry's looking at her makes something unpleasant bubble in her gut.

"You know, not everyone hated you, right?" Then, he turns his back to her to attend to his bubotuber. Hermione gapes at the back of his head, before her eyes drift over to Smith, who's smirking maliciously at her. Swivelling around for the exit, Hermione swiftly excuses herself from Professor Sprout, who, like most people, still gives her a funny look, pus or not. Her heart clenches at Harry's voice reverberating "hated" in her skull.

When she cleans herself up, she makes her way to the library. Even as lunch rolls by, she doesn't move from her fortress of books, and like she expected, Harry doesn't come up to the library. A foolish part of her was hoping he would — there's a dent in the wide bookshelf beside her from the volumes she'd pulled out, giving her a full view of the entrance of the library — but she knows him too well. For the first time since her first Halloween at Hogwarts, she's all alone again.

At some point in the middle of lunch, her eyes flick up to the gap, and catch the sight of Krum striding in. She can't help but scoff irritably. If he's here, then —

"Look at him!" His fanclub tiptoe into the library, giggling not quite as quietly. One girl even has a Bulgarian scarf wrapped around her waist. Painfully, Hermione rolls her eyes. As Krum starts scanning the bookshelves, she ducks from the gap she was peeping through. It's as his heavy footsteps draw closer and closer towards her spot that she shoves her eyes, and keeps them fixed on 'fang venom', in a sentence about Acromantula, even though the First Task has nothing to do with giant talking spiders.

When he makes his way down the aisle to her end of the bookshelf, Hermione is strangely reminded of Sunday's midnight, with Malfoy prowling towards her. Like she had then, she pretends that she doesn't realise Krum's there. It's only when he slumps onto the floor next to her fortress that she resigns herself to human interaction she has no energy for. As she looks up, she gets a glimpse of his fanclub scowling in their direction before they flounce past the aisle.

Raising her brows, Hermione turns her eyes to Krum, who's got a surly look on his face as he stares at a book resting by her foot.

"'Dangerous magical creatures'?" he asks in his thick accent. She quickly scans the title before following his gaze. "'Fighting Magical Beasts'. 'Taming the Untamable', 'Duels With Dragons'." At that last one, she raises her gaze, eyes locking with his. Harry had said Delacour and Krum knew, and while it's safe to assume both Maxine and Karkaroff aren't past cheating, especially with their firm belief Hogwarts has already done so, she always likes to take things with a pinch of salt.

Shrugging noncommittally, Hermione responds, "You never know."

For a few seconds, Krum studies her, one of his heavy brows twitching. It's when she catches that hint of a smile on the corners of his mouth that she has to wrestle with her own lips by pursing them. "Yes," he says slowly, "you never know."

A few more moments of silent calculation, before Hermione decides to break the vow. "I'm guessing your headmaster told you." Krum nods, a grim smile on his lips.

"I'm guessing you worked it out on your own." Hermione's brows shoot so far up that she imagines they're in danger of disappearing in her hairline. As they do, she can tell a heavy blush is staining her cheeks by how hot her face feels.

"What?" she squeaks, much higher-pitched than she intended. Hermione thinks she must be the only person on Earth who's witnessed Viktor Krum grin toothily.

"The brightest witch of your age, correct?" When she covers her face with her hands, Krum chuckles. "People truly believe that you tricked the Goblet, too." The smile on her palms fades, and Hermione sighs. Sliding her hands off her face, she meets Krum's eyes again.

"I'm truly flattered. But whatever perception you have of me is… glorified. I didn't work out the first task on my own, Ha — uh, a friend who works with the beast handlers told me. And I didn't trick the Goblet to choose me for the Triwizard Tournament." She's said the latter so many times that it's almost become a ritual, but for the first time, it feels like her words haven't fallen on deaf ears.

Krum appears to mull over this, his gaze unfocused. Then, he pinpoints her with his stare, and his bloody smile is back again. It reaches crinkles on sides of his eyes she never knew existed, warming his charcoal orbs. Somehow, she feels her blush is deepening. Bloody hell.

"I like your honesty," he finally says.

Clearing her throat to make sure she doesn't squeak, Hermione mutters, "Thanks." She's not really sure what else to say. Krum appears to be sure, though.

"I was going to tell you about the dragons."

"Oh." Her bottom lip gets trapped under her teeth, before she drags them away. The way Krum follows the movement is not lost on her. "Why?"

Krum scratches the back of his head. The way he averts his eyes makes this world-famous eighteen-year-old Quidditch player look almost... timid. Funny, that. "I would say out of honour, but if I am going to be honest, I will tell you that I admire you."

A nervous laugh escapes her lips. Now she moves her eyes away, before he can meet them. There's no answers in textbooks for male attention. Harry is like a brother to her, and Ron treats her like she's a boy. Everyone else kind of just sees her as the nerdy teacher's pet. Not much to see. Even less to find.

So to have some well-built bloke that a great majority of the Wizarding population pine over (including the fanclub undoubtedly loitering in a nearby bookshelf for another ambush) stare at her like she's a phoenix soaring in the sky makes something warm she'd never really felt before tweak in the pit of her belly. It's more alarming than the concept of fighting a dragon in three days' time.

"Uh, thanks," she finally croaks, inwardly cursing herself for not keeping her composure. "Um, I'm going to be honest, I've never liked Quidditch, so... yeah."

Krums brows raise, a quick, deep laugh rumbling from his chest as he slaps his knee. "Shame on you, Hermy-own." A giggle that she didn't know she was capable of escapes her lips. His laugh is contagious.

"It's Hermione," she amends, and for the briefest of moments, she worries that she's pissed him off with her inability to not be a prissy know-it-all. Then she immediately scolds herself for such a Lavender-like thought.

Instead, his face draws up in concentration. "Hermy-own-ee?"

Grinning, the book on her lap falls off as she shifts closer to him. No wonder Lavender is always happy. For once, she just wants to be a stupid teenage girl, too. "Her-my-oh-nee," she says clearly, playfully, as if she's teaching him an incantation for a glamour spell. Krum's tongue flick over his lips.

"Herm-own-ninny." Her smile is hurting her cheeks. Those lips of hers are traitorous. Maybe it's the stress. The tournament. All the eyes and whispers. Every taunt. Mean-spirited jinxes. Maxine and Karkaroff. Mudblood here, Mudblood there. Malfoy. Dragons and werewolves. Ron's betrayal. That look in Harry's eyes… was it disgust? It's all been building up, right to today. But now this silly little conversation with Krum has her breaking out into a fit of giggles. Heavy ones that rack her chest. Make her heave and wheeze. That sting her eyes. In horror, she realises she's not laughing, anymore.

The heavy, warm hand on her shoulder makes her flinch. "I'm sorry if I didn't say it right," he mumbles, and she can't help the snotty snort she lets out.

"No, no, it's not that. Sorry. I'm just — ugh, there's a lot going on in my mind. That's all." In an attempt to retain as much of her dignity as she can, Hermione for the first time thanks the heavens for her bushy mane of hair, hiding her face as she pushes herself to a stand. There's a scuffle behind her, and Krum's hand is on her arm. She doesn't flinch, this time.

His heavy footsteps move in front of her. The hand leaves her arm, his skin instead tickling her forehead. As her hair falls back away from blocking her sight, his charcoal eyes fix on hers. "We can help each other, if you like."

Hermione tilts her head. "Doesn't that defeat the purpose of a tournament?"

"Doesn't cheating?"

Grinning, she nods. "Good point." A tear slides through her teeth and she tastes salt.

Krum mirrors her grin. "Until it's just the two of us?"

She looks down at his extended hand. Her mind wanders to Herbology, and Harry's imploring bayleaf eyes. "It's a deal, but on one condition."