The uncontested consensus at the school was that new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Dolores Umbridge, was a nightmare.

Her fifth year class would have been dead boring - no wands, no monsters, just assurances that all was well - if it weren't for Harry Potter winding her up into a shouting frenzy every time.

Hermione Granger helped upset her too, but she was smarter about it, escaping without detention somehow. Even Draco was dazzled that time Umbridge set out to waste another day with more useless in-class reading of the textbook just to have Granger raise her hand to say she'd already read the entire thing. She had all the answers when Umbridge quizzed her on the book's contents, trying to trip her up and make a liar, or worse in Draco's opinion, a fool out of her. Granger not only answered, but tried to add something thoughtful about the book's central issues.

Umbridge was having none of it.

"It would be funny to see her riled up," Ronald agreed with Draco as they sat under a sycamore tree on the school grounds devouring one of their mother's care packages, "if Harry's detentions didn't include actual bloody torture."

He told him about the cursed quill Umbridge made Potter use to write lines - the one that cut every letter he wrote into his flesh.

Draco shuddered, flexing his fingers, pulling his pristine, unspotted white skin taut across the blue veins of his hand.

"It's just as well you've kept your mouth shut in there, Draco," Ronald said. "Uncharacteristic of you, but not stupid."

Draco scoffed. "What do you mean? I'm always polite to teachers. It's why my potions mark is near perfect while yours," he sighed, "well…"

"Sucking up to Snape is not the same as having good manners," Ronald said, pulling one of his mother's perfect pastries apart to slurp the cream out of the centre.

Draco punched his arm. "As if you've never sucked up to a teacher. Remus Lupin ring a bell? Or that great oaf, Hagrid? Or even bleeding Mad-eye Moody, or whoever that was?" Draco shuddered at the memory. "And anyways, Dad told us before we left home this year to be on our best behaviour around Umbridge, always."

Ronald swallowed a pastry whole. "When did he say that?"

Draco blinked, remembering. "Ah, it was when you were off on Weasley duty, spending that mandatory week with them after getting back from Russia. All Dad said was that Umbridge is very powerfully connected at the Ministry - almost more powerful than Minister Fudge himself."

Ronald frowned. "More powerful than the Minister? What can that even mean?"

Draco shrugged. "Just Dad talking things up, his usual drama I suppose. Still, I understood him well enough to know he means for us to keep quiet in her class. Umbridge is enough of a laugh thanks to Potter and Granger already. Nothing more for us to do."

Ronald had been struck motionless by some new thought, a biscuit in each hand but no longer eating. "Granger," he intoned. "I need a new way to relate to Granger, now that we promised Harry we wouldn't argue so much. Being civil to one another is so hollow, boring. She and I, we need something - something with the same emotional intensity as fighting. And maybe with a bit more, you know - physical intensity."

Draco coughed. "You're making plans to snog her?"

"Well, obviously," Ronald said. "I mean, eventually. Nothing concrete, but all kisses start as fantasies though, don't they? You can't do it until you can dream it, right? That kind of nonsense, like, looking longingly at her lips, flirty eye contact, smelling her hair, tuning in to the sound of her voice..."

Draco was sneering. "Granger's voice." He raised his hand, imitating her eagerness to answer questions in class. "Oh! Sir, sir! Call on me! Please!"

Ronald batted his arm down. "Shut it, you. And, it's not a rhetorical question. I'm asking sincerely. Where does a good kiss start? It's in your heart or something gaggy like that, isn't it?"

Draco snorted. "You tell me."

"Come on, Draco," Ronald said, not quite pleading. "You must know how to craft a kiss so you really - really feel something, a strong connection that makes you all overwhelmed and lovestruck. I don't get it. But you must know what that's like, I mean, how many girls have you kissed? Ten? Twelve?"

Draco was coughing again, clawing through the care package for the bottle of elderflower cordial their mother always included. "Two," he said, wiping the drink from his mouth while his throat stopped spasming.

"No," Ronald laughed. 'What? No, it's not possible. Only two? So there's Pansy Parkinson, of course, and the Beauxbatons girl - "

"Gisele, yeah. And that's it."

"No!"

Draco shoved him sideways. "Yes! Why? How many have you kissed?"

Ronald shifted where he sat in the grass. "Like, really, fully kissed?" He began to count on his fingers before giving up and throwing both of his hands in the air. "Quite a few, alright?"

Draco was laughing at him, and now Ronald was shoving him. "I said shut it, will you? It's not funny. I don't do it because I'm slaggy. It's more like - like it never feels the way everyone says it does for them. So I've been looking for it - looking for what everyone says is out there, but I've never found, not in a dozen girls."

Sitting under the tree, staring off into the distance over his uneaten sweets, Ronald Malfoy had taken on a rare look of vulnerable neediness. It was almost moving. Draco swallowed, posing a question that had to be said. "Maybe it's not girls you want."

Ronald shook himself. "No, it's definitely girls. A girl in particular - Hermione Jean Granger."

"So follow through and snog her," Draco said. "But don't stake too much on it. If you kiss her and it doesn't give you this transcendent experience you think everyone else is having, what'll you do then?"

"See, that's it exactly," Ronald said. "The thought of kissing her is exciting and all that but it's also terrifying. Do or die. And I actually have a theory about why I might be like this - why everyone's kissing was nice but just kind of missed me. I think I may be a victim of a magical accident, from a long time ago."

Draco raised both of his eyebrows, leaning closer. "Explain."

Ronald dusted the biscuit crumbs from his fingertips. "My birth parents, well, they conceived me while Fred and George were still extremely young and, there's no doubt about it, extremely bad. Arthur and Molly Weasley - they must have been exhausted and miserable during those years, with those twins in infant form to chase after. So maybe they used potions to - to work on their relationship, if you know what I mean."

Draco closed his eyes, shaking his head. "Relationship?"

"Yeah." Ronald was squirming more than ever. "What if I was - you know - conceived while one or both of my birth parents was under the influence of a love potion?"

Draco blinked. "So what if you were?"

Ronald's posture slumped, and he was muttering to himself. "That's right. You don't know anything."

"Then tell me," Draco said, his skin pricking with that unpleasant but invigorating feeling he got whenever their father sent him probing through Ronald's thoughts and feelings after information on Potter and all the sappy adults who enable him. What didn't Draco know that Ronald did? Was it something about the Order of the Phoenix they were trying to get back together? Father had warned him to let him know anything he found out about it.

Ronald sighed. "I'm not supposed to tell anyone. Least of all you."

Draco sat back, waiting. It wouldn't be long.

"Right," Ronald said, "don't tell anyone, not even Dad."

"What is it?"

Ronald's voice fell to almost a whisper. "It's something Dumbledore told Harry, about You-know-who."

Draco's skin pricked more sharply than ever.

Ronald leaned in close. "Dumbledore said that the Dark Lord's father was a Muggle who was bewitched by a love potion into marrying the Dark Lord's mother. It was the big one too, Amortentia. Daddy Dark Lord didn't stay with the witch and was never a proper father, but that wasn't even the worst of it. Because You-know-who was conceived under a love potion, he can't love anyone. It's part of what makes him so cruel."

Draco sat back. "Dumbledore's cracked."

"He isn't," Ronald said. "You know he's not. You're just talking like Dad for the sake of it, out of habit, as his precious little -. You know what? Never mind." He was standing up, brushing himself off.

"Wait," Draco was saying, tugging on his brother's robes. "Ronald, you are not necessarily a junior Dark Lord incapable of love even if it is true that your birth parents were too tired for romance, used a potion, and ended up with you."

Ronald yanked the hem of his robes out of Draco's grip. "Only, they didn't end up with me, did they? They gave me up. Maybe it was because they knew."

Draco stood up, facing him. "Look, even if Dumbledore's version is true, your birth parents actually love each other and always have. That's nothing like the Dark Lord's parents. It's got to make a difference for you, and they would have known that all along. The Weasleys wouldn't have used a love potion to be deceptive or forceful with each other. They probably began by asking politely."

Ronald's shoulders heaved. "You don't know anything - "

"Then let's find out," Draco said, dropping a hand on Ronald's shoulder, trying his best at calm persuasion, every word ringing with an unspoken apology for being exactly the precious image of Lucius that Ronald could never be. "Let's test your theories on your capacity to love. Don't risk it all kissing Granger - not yet. Work on seeing if you can achieve the kind of kiss you're looking for with someone else first. A friendly volunteer. Prove it to yourself, then go about your life."

"Volunteer," Ronald echoed.

Draco smirked. "Yes. I have one already."

It was almost curfew when Draco was hauling Ronald along the corridor, his fist closed in the fabric of his robes. "Come along, Ronald. We're late. But when did you last clean your teeth?"

"Right after dinner," Ronald said, blowing into his cupped hand.

"Good. And are you clean? I promised her you'd be clean."

Ronald was pulling himself free of his brother, nodding at the people looking askance at them as they trotted away from Gryffindor Tower, toward the stairs. "Calm down, Draco. I'm always clean."

Draco frowned. "Really? No quidditch practice today?" He thrust his face into Ronald's armpit.

Ronald shouted an unhappy ticklish laugh. "No! Get off me, you nutter."

"Oi, don't shove me on the stairs. I've got a firm hold of you and I won't fall down alone."

They managed to climb the stairs safely and were on the fifth floor, making for the quietest, emptiest reaches of the castle.

"So Parkinson is the volunteer," Ronald confirmed again.

"Yes. And I recommend you get on a first-name basis with her as soon as possible," Draco said.

Ronald ruffled the hair at the nape of his own neck. "And why did she agree to this? She's your ex, so I always assumed it made her off-limits for me."

"Don't be silly," Draco replied. "I'm not attached to her like that anymore. And this isn't a romance, it's an experiment. Think, Ronald. Pansy is the only person it makes any sense for us to ask. I've snogged her myself and know she can deliver a - how did you put it - a kiss that connects, overwhelms, or what have you. So if you don't find what you're looking for in her, we'll know it's not because she's lacking anything."

"Right. It'll all be down to cursed me."

"Or it will be some faulty synergy between the two of you."

"How will we know which one?"

"WE? I reckon YOU will just know."

Ronald knew his brother well enough to know that the more nervous Draco was, the bossier he became. "Why are you so tense about this?"

Draco stopped his purposeful stomping down the corridor. "Just - be nice to her, Ronald. I know Pansy is going to act tough and like she's not bothered by the very, very casual tone of all of this but - well, she's one of my oldest friends. I don't want to ruin that over this experiment."

Ronald was sighing. "You're telling me to not be an F-boy."

Draco frowned. "A wot?"

"You're warning me to be a gentleman," he said, louder.

Draco nodded. "Yes, and more than that. Be kind - sweet, if you can manage it."

Ronald was nodding. "Yes. Yes, I'll do my best."

Draco passed the last visible door in the corridor and kept walking. "There's a false wall, here at the end," he explained, muttering an opening spell, snagging Ronald's arm and stepping through the wall into a disused room. It was large enough to be a classroom but completely empty of any desks or chairs. Sitting on the room's lone table, in the centre of the floor, swinging her feet, was Pansy Parkinson.

"Hello, Malfoys," she said, not getting up.

"Pansy, thank you for meeting us," Draco said, unsure of how to stop sounding so strained and formal.

"Hiya," Ronald said. He'd never looked too closely at Pansy before, dismissing her as an irretrievable part of Draco's dating history. She looked like a delicate little bird, perched on the edge of the table, slim legs dangling toward the floor but not quite touching it. Her hair was dark and glossy, and looked as if it would be smooth if he were to pet her like a cat.

Animal metaphors - stop it, Malfoy, she's a real girl.

Draco cleared his throat. "So, anyways, for today - "

"We don't need a coach, Draco," Pansy said, her eyes locked on Ronald even as she spoke to his brother.

Draco looked between the two people he'd brought here, the edge of panic he had tread all the way up here growing thinner and thinner. But what he said was, "Right. I'll leave you to it."

"Wait outside," Ronald said just as Draco was reaching for the door now visible on their side of the room. "We'll feel safer if we know someone's keeping watch. So no one comes barging in."

He agreed, shutting the door behind himself.

They were alone.

Ronald began. "Yeah, thanks for your help - with - this."

Pansy waved a hand. "Don't mention it. Really. It makes you sound like you're groveling, and that's not what I like about you."

Ronald swallowed. "You already know what you like about me?"

She tilted her head. "I know enough. And I know you're going to have to come closer than that." She beckoned to him, calling him across the room. By the time he reached her table, she had slid off of it. "Take a seat here," she said. "You sit and I'll stand. It will correct our height difference."

Ronald hummed. "That's important?"

"Of course it is. Otherwise I'll end up with a pain in the neck and light-headed from constricting my airway. Trust me," she said, preemptively kneading her neck with one hand, twisting it in a way that bared it to him..

He cleared his throat. "None of the girls I've kissed before has been anywhere near as tall as me. Why did they never mention it?"

Pansy raised her dark, fine eyebrows. "Why did it never occur to you?"

He shrugged and settled in to sit on the table. "Because I'm an F-boy. I lack connection with the people I kiss, don't I? That's what you're going to help me figure out, isn't it?"

She nodded but didn't approach him - not yet. "Look at me," she said.

He breathed out a laugh. "Done."

"At my face, Malfoy. Look at me as if you like me."

He took a deep, bracing breath as he looked into her eyes across the space between them.

"It's only as awkward as you make it," she said.

He shrugged. "Sorry. Is there, like, a big bushy wig you could wear, or something? I mean - you're not a thing like her."

Pansy's posture stiffened. "Her? Granger?"

Ronald wasn't sure why he was seized with a sense of doom, or why it wasn't enough to get him to stop talking immediately. "Well, yeah. This is the trial, the experiment but not the main event, right?"

Pansy scoffed, folding her arms over her chest. "Look, I agreed to help you FOR Granger but not AS Granger. The only thing I can teach you here is how to connect to ME so you can apply those - what would we call them - skills to other people. I'm not here as HER."

"Well, yeah," he said again. "That's what I meant, of course. You're Pansy Parkinson. I know that. And," he pushed himself off the edge of the table, pacing toward her, "and I'm honored to learn whatever you're kind enough to teach me."

The moment he pushed himself away from the table he became the notoriously seductive Ronald Malfoy, confident and tall, rich and spoiled. Somehow, the balance of power in the room had shifted from Pansy to this towering, terribly attractive boy closing in on her the way she'd seen him do with other girls, as she watched him in the grass by the lake, on the sidelines of quidditch matches, on the glittering dancefloor at the Yule Ball, when she'd stood pining silently for him.

The object of his attention was now her. It was her whose blood was racing, her fighting to stand still as he advanced, to keep him from seeing her stance wavering, crumbling into a long-held desire for him. Ronald Malfoy, her crush for half a year now, close enough to touch, to bury her face in his robes...

Get it together, Parkinson.

She raised her fingertips to his chest to hold him back. "For tonight," she began in a clear, ringing voice, "we work on addressing the misunderstanding you seem to have that I'm a Granger stand-in - a random female body for your use. That is dead wrong. And it means you don't come any closer. You go back to your table and you look at me, face to face, no touching for three full minutes."

He laughed. "You're not random. I know who you are. And right now YOU are the one who is touching ME."

She snatched her fingers away. "You may be able to identify me, but you haven't connected with me yet," she said, turning him around with both her hands, pushing him back to the table.

"Are you sure I haven't, Parkinson? You look a little flushed - "

"Shut up, Malfoy. Sit down. This is going to take time."

He obeyed, smirking.

"Now shut up and look at me."

Asking Draco to stay to keep watch had turned out to be an excellent idea. He sat down on the floor outside the hidden room, on the edge of the illusion that obscured the entrance. He took a block from his pocket, tapped it with his wand and it expanded into his copy of a textbook - transfiguration, of course - one of the few texts he was expected to read outside of class rather than during it.

"This school is ridiculous," he muttered to himself as he settled in to read.

He didn't stir when he heard footsteps coming along the corridor. It was still before curfew and even if it wasn't, he was a prefect, someone the school should trust to roam about without causing trouble.

He held his ground, not looking up from his book even as a pair of feet in shiny black school loafers and white knee-high socks stopped in front of him.

"Draco Malfoy," said a voice above the feet.

He looked up now. "Granger." He forced himself not to glance over his shoulder, at the false wall keeping Ronald and Pansy barely out of view doing who knows what by now.

"Library not up to your standards?" Granger snarked.

"I've done nothing wrong, Granger. Move along," he said into his book. Boring, Malfoy. Stay boring and she'll be gone before Ronald comes staggering out of the room all kissed up by another girl.

But she was crouching in front of him, well aware of how to fold up her legs while keeping her skirt tucked primly in place. "You're not on duty tonight, and it will be curfew in five minutes. Maybe you'd better head back to the dungeons so you aren't late."

He snapped his book shut, smirking. "Spare me the motherly concern, Granger. It doesn't work on all of us."

She sat back, affronted. "Motherly?"

He shouldn't have done it. He should have thanked her, assured her he'd make curfew, tipped his book, and sent her on her way, not attracting any further attention to himself or to Ronald.

Instead he said, "Look, I know you and Ronald have some Oedipal role playing scenario going on. It's a bit sick, but I respect it. Our mother doesn't nag, you see. And while it appears to have left Ronald unsatisfied and trawling about for more mother figures, I'm quite content with just the mother I have at home, thank you."

Her mouth had fallen open, gawking at his awfulness. "Oedipal? Ronald? And me? How do you even know about Sigmund Freud?"

Draco chuckled a smug profanity. "The unsavoury Austrian doctor? You're not the only one at school who reads, Granger. Hasn't Ronald told you about the legendary library at Malfoy Manor?" If Draco had been trying to romance Granger, bragging up the family library would have been his first move. Ronald could be so thick…

Ronald - he had to get Granger to leave this corridor.

But she wasn't leaving. She was pushing the sleeves of her robes above her elbows, as if she was just getting started.

"So," she began in a high chirp. "How is dogging Harry's steps coming along? Caught him up to anything yet?"

She was fishing for him to admit the comment meant nothing, or to admit his father had put him up to it.

He refused to do either, and the pair of them sat on the floor, looking hard into each other's faces, just as Ronald and Pansy were doing on the opposite side of the hidden door. The emotional engines behind it were different but the process was the same, a connection made eye to eye, breaking through the shyness of being close and seeing each other so plainly. Hermione's eyes were brown - he remembered that from the train - and her mouth had lost that toothy prominence it used to have before she got in the way of that hex Draco had meant for Potter last year.

His face broke into laughter at the memory of it, of Snape's deadpan refusal to acknowledge that anything had happened.

"What?" she demanded.

"Nothing," he answered, well aware she'd know he was laughing at her - at something real or remembered in her face.

She narrowed her eyes, smiling dangerously. "Tell me something, Malfoy. You and Ronald aren't related by blood. Why does he have a nose exactly like yours rather than like the ones Fred and George Weasley have?"

Draco scoffed. She was trying to get him to admit that pureblood wizarding families were so inbred it was nothing for their members to share traits. There was no way he would play into that. She didn't deserve to hear him outline the complicated cousin connection between his mother's Black family and Ronald's birth mother's Prewetts. At least, she didn't deserve to hear it from him. He sneered and said, "Why don't you ask Ronald, since you're so close?"

She shrugged. "Because I hadn't noticed it until just now. That nose - it's a bit long and very pointy. Must stab girls' eyes out with it when you try to kiss them. Or maybe they just wish you would, the poor things."

He reflected back a smile much more practiced at danger than her own. "Thinking about kissing me, are you Granger?"

The clock downstairs was signalling curfew. Without a word, without a glance back at the hidden door, Draco was on his feet. "That's time," he said. "Hadn't you better show me out?"

Hermione was getting to her feet, supervising his retreat toward the staircase, her back barely turned just as Ronald was emerging, on tiptoe from the hidden room with Pansy Parkinson.

Disaster averted.