Hermione Granger could see no point in sitting at the front of the classroom in fifth year Defense Against the Dark Arts anymore. Under Dolores Umbridge, nothing worthwhile was being taught in the class, certainly nothing that would help them pass their OWLs. Hermione's main goal in the class was now to keep Harry calm and out of detention so he wouldn't be hurt and he'd have freetime to start on her important new project. It was for something to replace these useless DADA classes, something only Harry could give them: the skills and experience to defend themselves.

He was still resisting the idea but she'd convince him soon. She was so sure of it she'd already started researching ways to keep Harry's defense classes secret and secure. The boys always acted as if such things were conjured instantaneously exactly when they were needed. The truth was they only came about after a lot of work on Hermione's part - hours of research and experiments, nearly missing her curfew every night as she worked in secret in the vanished fifth floor room.

At least the room she'd risked so much to find was good for something. Harry did use its fire to speak to Sirius. He had tried to calm Harry down about the pain in his scar getting worse all the time, but he squarely dismissed Harry's concerns about Umbridge being connected to Voldemort. Sirius believed she was nothing more than a terribly misguided Ministry official and all around awful person. Frankly, the conversation left Harry more dissatisfied and agitated than before.

At this moment, he was sitting beside Hermione in Umbridge's classroom where there was, as always, "no need to talk" or do anything but read the textbook chapter. He had a new strategy for not letting himself fly into a rage over it. From their seat in the very back of the classroom, he could watch Cho Chang in profile while she read, yawned, and whispered to her friends.

With Harry subdued, Hermione slumped on her desktop, her head braced on the heel of her hand, and joined him in ogling the classmates seated in front of them. While Cho Chang was pretty, she was not responsible for the best snog of Hermione's life, and she found herself staring instead at Draco Malfoy. He was usually reading a second book tucked inside his textbook and she would try to guess what it was. Some days, the book was blank and he sat sketching in it. If she squinted her eyes, she might sense his drawings moving over the pages.

She'd never bothered to get any good at doing that herself. Maybe she should. Maybe he could help her - if, that is, he hadn't stopped talking to her altogether.

Talking isn't everything. Looking is fine too, and it was better for her to get it over with here rather than in the Great Hall with everyone watching. After she'd contemplated his reading material for long enough, she would reward herself by looking at his shoulders, the nape of his neck, its pale skin fading into his fair hair cut so short at the back it had a rough, bristly texture before it turned longer and silky. If he turned his head toward his seatmate - usually Pansy Parkinson - Hermione could see the line of his nose. Pointy, yes but not hooked or hawkish, not so long it caused trouble, still elegant enough to smoothly, gently gliding against her cheek when he…

Hermione shook her head, clearing the memory away before her colour started to rise.

As she sat up, Ronald twitched in the seat on the other side of her, her movement interrupting him in looking at his classmate of choice. He had been watching her, following her eyes to the front of the room, unable to tell if she was trying to intimidate Umbridge with her stare, or if she was brooding over the pack of Slytherin suck ups sitting at the front - Draco and his goons and the rest.

Parkinson was sitting with them too, but she was alright, in her way. It might be hard for other people to understand, but Ronald was Draco's brother. He understood how people didn't fall neatly into good and bad, especially not at their age, with adults pulling at them while they tried to sort themselves out.

Ronald knew he was generally pitied in the pureblood community, the adopted son who wouldn't inherit more than he needed for his own living. The fortune and the estate were Draco's, always. But it was him who pitied Draco for the way their father brought him along to ghastly meetings, pushing him into the forefront, forcing him to answer for everything and to answer properly. Ronald was allowed to hang back with Mother, charming her lady friends, playing parlor games, Narcissa's little blue-eyed chess prodigy with the rustic background. Though Narcissa loved him, to the others he was a toy, eye candy for older ladies. But at least the stakes were low, not that fevered, poison intensity of their father's world.

These were bleak thoughts best avoided by returning to looking at Parkinson. She did have a mouth on her, that was true. It was obvious whether she was talking or not, all painted up in that burgundy lipstick of hers. He knew her face ridiculously well after meeting with her in that weird fifth floor room twice already, once with Draco as a chaperone waiting outside, and once on their own. Chaperone or not, she hadn't let him touch her either time.

On the first day they'd looked at each other from a metre apart. They went for stretches of three minutes at a time, with breaks in between to walk and stretch and laugh off their nervousness.

"You're a bit silly, but you're not shy of girls at all, are you Ronald?' she had asked him.

He had smirked. "Not at all. I like them too well to be shy."

She had begun to saunter toward him. "That means you like me then."

He hadn't blushed, hadn't even blinked as he'd answered, "Naturally."

The second time they met, while Draco was off sulking about something or other, Ronald had expected to touch her but she'd held him off again.

"We're still just looking," Pansy had explained. "But not from a metre away. From much closer." She had sat him on the table again. "Spread your knees, Malfoy."

He'd tried to quip something at her but his throat and mouth were suddenly too dry for speech and he'd only managed to sound slightly strangled.

"Oh, grow up, Ronald," she'd laughed at him. "Your legs are too long and if I'm going to get close to you while you're sitting, you're going to have to make room."

He'd cleared his throat. "Right. Come on in."

"Arms at your sides," she'd said as she crossed her own arms across her chest. "Admit it. You've never been this close to a girl without touching her."

He'd shaken his head. "Sure I have. Like when queuing to board a train, or to get in to dinner - "

"I mean face to face, like this," she'd said.

"Nothing I can't handle." He'd smirked again, leaning forward, as close to her face as he could get without pressing the end of his nose against hers, daring her to bolt.

"You know," she'd said, "up this close, all blurry and nosy, you're very much like your brother."

He'd sat back quickly. "Sick, Parkinson."

"What? People tell me I look like my sisters all the time," she'd begun.

He'd scrubbed his face with his hands, as if trying to knock whatever resemblance he might bear to Draco off of it. "Because you're blood relatives, aren't you? Not like Draco and me, not if you don't count all that inbred twenty-eight business."

She'd rolled her eyes. "That is not what I mean. Draco said you had reason to suspect you were conceived under the influence of a love potion. And it's not - well, it's not inconceivable that Mrs. Weasley and your dad - "

He'd shouted a laugh into her face. "Not a love potion accident between Lucius Malfoy and Molly Weasley, you daft thing. Watch your mouth. That's how nasty rumours get started. I mean one between my birth parents."

Pansy had stood back, out from between Ronald's knees, turning in a circle. "Ronald, that makes no sense. If they were already in love they wouldn't need to - "

"But they would have been tired. I was their sixth born, after the twins and everything. They might've needed a boost," he'd argued. "I'm not really making an argument for how they must have felt. It's about me, how I feel when I try to get close to people."

Pansy had tossed her head. "No. My scenario still makes more sense."

Ronald had stood up. "It might in a far-fetched trashy romance novel."

She had scoffed. "Far-fetched? I'm stood here giving you kissing lessons aren't I? How much more proof do you need that trashy romance scenarios aren't necessarily far-fetched?"

"Kissing lessons?" he'd burst. "What kind of kissing lessons make me keep my hands stuck to a tabletop?"

"The kind that are going to work," she'd said, shouting at him. "Honestly, Ronald. If I'd come in here the first day, marched up to you, snogged you for an hour and left, you'd have already forgotten all about me. No connection. Don't act like that very thing hasn't happened with you and other girls before."

Of course it had.

She'd gone on. "If I'd gone straight to your mouth, right from the start, you'd have left here with even less of a connection to me after an hour of kissing than you have with me right now after never having laid a hand on me. Admit it."

His pale ginger eyelashes had blinked in rapid succession. He'd sighed. "Fine, we'll keep trying this your way. When do we meet next?"

He hadn't admitted to anything at the time, but now, from the back of the silent, suffering DADA classroom, Ronald asked himself if he felt connected to Pansy Parkinson yet. He wasn't sure. He definitely needed to meet with her again.

In the meantime, he had these double periods of DADA to spend using what she taught him about staring with an intent to connect to look at Hermione. If only she would turn and look at him.

The rest of the afternoon was quidditch practice. Harry was finally finished the latest round of detention and was on a broom again, at last. Maybe everyone was frustrated with Umbridge that year, but the matches had taken on a violent, angry feel. Draco's unsavory Austrian doctor would have called it cathartic. But everyone knows catharsis only amplifies dangerous energy.

"So watch yourselves," Angelina, the team captain, warned everyone. "Especially you, Harry. Seeker is not a full-contact position but they way everyone's playing this year - just keep your head up."

Whatever the games were like, the practice was pleasant enough even though most of the Slytherin team, led by Montague, showed up to heckle from the stands. They ran through their cycle of derisive chants for all the players. No one was particularly bothered, except for Ronald who noticed immediately that Draco hadn't come along. In truth, he would have been happier if Draco was there, sneering at them. It would mean he wasn't avoiding him anymore, for whatever reason.

The Ravenclaw team was in the stands too, including Cho Chang. Harry disappeared to make sure to accidentally run into her after practice. Alone in the fieldhouse, Ronald hung up his equipment slowly, finishing with a great sigh, knowing it was time to find Draco and sort him out, the moody, dramatic git.

Draco was in the last place Ronald would have gone looking for him that evening, having taken the stairs to the vanished room on the fifth floor, the room which existed, as far as Ronald was concerned, solely as a place for Harry to talk to Sirius and for Pansy Parkinson to tease him.

Up Draco went all the same. Simply ignoring what happened in the room with Hermione Granger the night she tripped the alarm on the Gryffindor tower's exit wasn't working. He was still thinking about it, obsessing over it. On its own, the memory of the kiss would have been a favourite of his if it didn't keep him feeling unworthy to speak to Ronald. That could not go on. And since Granger wouldn't even look at him anymore, he didn't need to agonize over letting it go. There was nothing to hold onto. She was already gone. He went to face that reality, in the form of an empty room where he would sit on a cold floor until he felt nothing.

He was sitting in a corner sketching the intricate design of the pair of windows when she shouldered through the false wall. For stars' sake...

"Granger?"

"Malfoy?"

He snapped his sketchbook closed over his quill. "What are you doing here? On the run again?"

She tossed her head. "No. It's just a nice quiet place to work on extra-credit projects. I told you. This room is exactly what I was looking for."

He clucked his tongue, rising to stand. "There are extra-credit projects of which I was not informed?" he said. "Doubtful. That's the kind of excuse that works with your dullard boyfriends but it's wasted on me, Granger."

She sniffed. "What are you doing here then? Sulking?"

"Sketching," he said. "Because art is a worthy pursuit even without reward, not just to please some teacher. And it is a crime that we keep attending this school, year after year, with no education whatsoever on this ancient castle's architecture. Except for a few mentions in "Hogwarts: A History," there's nothing…"

What was she hearing? Draco Malfoy, a boy her age, was going off on architecture, pointing at the windows with his sketchbook, verging on lecturing as he ranted over the detail in the glass, the lead between its panes, the height and shape of the arch, the metallic salts, the alchemy used to colour the glass.

"...and no one even mentions it. Bloody shame, don't you think?" he was finishing.

She blinked. "Hogwarts: A History" - Draco had read it, read it and found it lacking and gone to the library to read more. Now he was asking what she thought of it. She took in a deep breath to slow her pulse before she said, "Yes, a wasted opportunity. To be sure."

He folded his hands around his book. "See how easy that was? Sharing my interest in this room in a pleasant, informative way? Now it's your turn, Granger."

She stiffened. Informative? He was looking for information. Did he know, or at least suspect, that she was plotting to subvert Ministry schemes to stifle combat training at Hogwarts by starting a secret class with Harry? Was Draco here not as an art enthusiast but as a spy for his father's cronies?

"I've already told you. I'm working on a charms project," she insisted. " And I don't care if you don't like that answer, Malfoy. You've done nothing to deserve an explanation from me."

He was smirking. "Haven't I? Didn't I save your skin the other night?" He eyed the smooth, unscarred flesh on the top of her hand where Umbridge's now infamous cursed quills were known to leave their cuts. Her fingers were clenched around the spine of the book she'd borrowed from the library on Protean charms. Draco was reaching toward her. Daughter of two steady-handed dentists, she willed herself not to start shaking as he came closer. But when his fingers were close enough to touch hers, he took the book instead.

He flipped to the table of contents, whistling. "This is dark magic, Granger."

She snatched the book back. "Only if you're a dark wizard."

"It's how the Dark Lord calls them, you know." The hard, taunting edge of his voice was rounded off with a sadness now. He turned his back to her. "That mark in their arms. It burns and they have to come running or die."

She lowered her voice, suddenly sad herself, stepping toward his back, the view of him she knew best, the one that made her feel safest. "Then no one should ever take that mark. Not ever. No matter what. No matter who tells them to do it. No one deserves to be enslaved like that."

"That's the thing about being enslaved, isn't it, Granger," he said, turning to find her closer than he expected, not safe at all. "Enslaved people don't get to make choices."

From where she stood, she could smell his hair again. Her heart crashed with a desire to fill her arms with him, even as that same heart broke with compassion. Those awful people his father was always taking him to meet, thrusting him about with the handle of his walking stick, while Ronald ate finger sandwiches and beamed his blue-eyes at the guests at Narcissa's garden parties. What was their father doing to Draco?

"You haven't so much as looked at me since the last time we met in this room," he said, low and rumbling, taking another step closer.

She huffed. "How could you know that, since you haven't been looking at me either?"

"I'm looking at you now."

She raised her head, her eyes tracking up his throat, to his chin, stalling at his mouth before she could find his eyes. She'd felt his lips but never looked at them closely. As she took them in with her eyes, her posture was aligning itself to her fullest height, unconsciously bringing her closer to them.

"Granger, you should know that ki - "

Draco's voice was drowned out by loud, almost giddy arguing and laughing. Hermione spun toward the door to find Ronald bounding into the room followed far too closely by Pansy Parkinson. His eyes widened, shocked to find her there with Draco. Behind Hermione's back, Draco met his brother's gobsmacked stare.

Draco raised one finger and, slick as you please, began to lie. "Pansy, there you," he said. "Yes, it's like I said. The only fire not watched in the entire school is this one here. Thank you, Ronald, for showing her."

Ronald took it up as best he could. "Yeah. Yeah this one is completely private, Parkinson. You can definitely talk to your Durmstrang boyfriend from here without your parents finding out."

She twisted her neck to glare up at him over her shoulder. "Durmstrang boyfriend?"

"Aw, don't be shy, Parkinson," he said, punching her lightly on the arm. "No need to be embarrassed of it in front of Hermione. If anyone understands the appeal of your dear Zdravko, with the boots and the fur and the shouting, it'll be Hermione, won't it?"

Hermione groaned. "Right. I'm off. Enjoy your fire, Parkinson."

"Keep it a secret, would you?" Ronald called out just as she was passing through the one-sided door.

When she was gone, Pansy elbowed Ronald in the stomach.

He bent over, groaning and swearing.

"Dear Zdravko, my Durmstrang boyfriend? What was that all about?" she demanded.

"What? It activated her Viktor Krum nerves and got her to leave in a hurry, didn't it?" Ronald argued. "Zdravko is a good name, taken in honour of one of the best chess opponents I had all summer."

She rolled her eyes. "Who cares, Ronald?"

"Well, no one," he allowed. "But at least Hermione let us off."

"Are you sure you fancy her?" Pansy asked. "You do talk about her like she's your mother, you know. Just ask Draco."

"Ridiculous. Our mother's a darling," Draco said with a wink to Pansy. "But well-played, Ronald. Impressive way to get clear of her."

Ronald pointed at him. "See, Pansy? I don't know about you, but I was not up to being questioned by her right now, right in the middle of one of our lessons."

"Ah, yes," said Draco, glad beyond words himself to not be called on to answer for what he was doing when they found him here, alone with Granger. "What grope-level have the pair of you worked up to this week? Elbows to the stomach, from the look of it."

Ronald grabbed Pansy's hand and waved it in Draco's face. "No, we've graduated from eye-snogging to hand-snogging."

"For the love of Boggarts, Ronald," Pansy hissed as she yanked her hand free of his.

For the first time since he kissed Hermione Granger, Draco laughed at his brother. "Right," he said. "Excuse me while I leave you to it."