Draco Malfoy stood on the footpath leading from the quidditch pitch to the castle, the crowds long dissipated, his heart racing from the jolt of hearing his name called out of the woody brush at his side. Hermione Granger was stepping toward him out of shade dim enough that she'd lit the end of her wand.
She wanted to speak with him, only she said she didn't. "What I need from you requires no talking," she said, extinguishing her light and shaking the broken twigs picked up from her hiding place out of her hair.
"What've you done to yourself?" he asked her, speaking anyway. "You look like you've been attacked by Professor Grubbly-Plank's bowtruckles."
She almost laughed. "Then help me. Get the ones in the back, would you?"
She turned her back to him. He watched his own hand reaching toward her without anger or fear or passion for the first time. Was this a movement toward normal, neutral friendliness - a cooling off? Or was it a step closer together, a warming up?
Whatever it might be for her, he swallowed hard as he sunk his fingertips into her hair. Even though she'd thoroughly mauled his hair in the vanished room on the night of their kiss, thanks to the hood she'd been wearing, he'd never touched hers until now. Like a lot of curly hair, it was thick and wiry, completely different from his. It was all he could do not to coil it around his finger, holding it wound taut and silky against his skin, feeling it between his fingers like a bow string meant for a violin.
"No need to be so ginger, Malfoy. They're just twigs, not creatures," she said. "At least, I don't think they are. Sound an alarm if anything sprouts arms and tries to fight you."
He almost laughed, lifting the mass of her hair to check for twigs, forgetting it would bare the nape of her neck to him. No, this was definitely not a cooling off.
He dropped his hands. "You're clean and safe," he said. "Right. See you then."
By the time Hermione turned, he was already climbing back up the path. "Wait," she called after him. "I didn't stop you because I needed you for bowtruckle removal."
He faked an exasperated sigh. "Why did you stop me then, Granger? I've got a rucksack full of filthy sports equipment, and frankly, I'm a little self conscious of it and would like to get it back to the castle for cleaning. So, if you don't mind - "
"Oh, don't worry. You smell fine," she said, blushing as soon as the words left her. She forced a cough. "Anyway, it's too bad about the match this morning. I mean, I'm happy for Ginny, winning her first time out and all but - "
He dropped his rucksack next to his feet. "Granger, did you really stop me here to babble about a meaningless sporting event?"
Her brow creased, "Meaningless? It's been my experience that right after a match there's no point trying to talk to a quidditch player about anything other than the fine details of every play, whether it bores me to death or not."
He smirked. "Well, you haven't experienced all quidditch players, have you?" He stepped forward to pull one last tiny, crinkling leaf from her hair, over her ear. "Rehashing a game bores some of us to death as well. Not all of us play for the love of it. Some of us are there mostly to keep our fathers happy. That and to have a go at Potter. And if there's no Potter and Ronald can bring glory to the Malfoy family without me, what does it matter if I lose, right? I'm not bothered and I'll spare us both the post-game quidditch talk. Thanks all the same. I'll be off now."
"Malfoy," she called again, a little too loudly, as if she was alarmed to see him turning away. She began again, more quietly. "I'm sorry. I'm stalling, obviously. But it's just…" She took a huge breath, wringing her hands.
Draco smirked again as she studied her own fingers. He wasn't sure what she wanted to say, but he did know he wasn't making it easy for her. After she'd sat in the Great Hall and kissed his brother in front of him hours earlier, he felt like she deserved to take her turn at squirming. But she was now stammering and struggling enough to make even Draco pity her. What had become of the overly confident girl on the train, bossing the rest of the fifth year prefects like she was Head Girl? It was almost sad.
"Breathe, Granger," Draco said. "Clear your head and start again. You've just stepped out of the bushes, claiming to not want to talk to me. And now you say..." He flourished his hand, inviting her to go on.
"You're best in our year at potions," she blurted. "I admit that. And potions take a particular kind of intelligence. One that can work its way from hypothesis to hypothesis, methodically, through trials and experiments."
"Experiments?" His face flushed and he stepped backward, tripping slightly as the uphill grade rose higher beneath his foot than he anticipated. Experiment - that's what Ronald and Pansy called it when they went off alone together and…
"It's stupid," she said, her face growing redder as well. "But I'm caught in the middle of an experiment that I can't advance any further without your help. See, I tested something on Ronald this morning at breakfast - "
"Testing? Is THAT what you call it?" Draco said, surprised by the intensity of his own outburst.
"You saw," she said.
"Everyone saw."
Her head bobbed as she swallowed. "I shouldn't have done it. I know that now. Is he alright?"
Draco scooped his rucksack off the ground. "I'm not getting involved, Granger. If you want a line on whether Ronald fancies you or not, ask him yourself. Or send Potter. Send anyone but me."
"No, that's not the hypothesis I was testing," she said, lunging forward to grab the dangling strap from Draco's bag. "Ronald's feelings - they weren't what I was gauging, though they probably should have been. No, I didn't wait here for you to talk about Ronald. It's about me." She scanned the length of the path. "Can we - can we sit down?" Still holding onto his bag, she was leading him to the stone stairs, sitting on them herself.
He sat next to her, prying his bag out of her fingers. "Leave it," he said. "I meant it when I said post-game quidditch uniforms aren't very nice. You shouldn't come in contact with mine."
She raised her eyebrows, trying to put the thought of coming in contact with his quidditch uniform out of her mind. She bent at the waist until her chin rested on her knees, saying nothing.
"Granger," he prodded. "This stone is freezing cold. What is it you want to know?"
She sat up. "You don't kiss like Viktor Krum."
His heart crashed in his chest, but all he did was nod and ask, "Why would I?"
"Is Viktor terrible at it? Is that it?"
Draco shouted out a short, dry laugh. "How should I know?" The laugh died. "Wait - if he's not, does that mean that I'm terrible at it?"
"See, that's just it," she said. "I don't know how you compare to other people. I - oh, for the love of Boggarts - I can't look you in the face and say it." She turned herself away from him, so he was looking at the back of her head again. "I liked kissing you more than I liked kissing Viktor. A lot more." Her face fell into her hands as she whimpered to herself. "So I kissed Ronald to see if Viktor was just - bad. Kissing Ronald was supposed to feel like kissing you, so I could conclude that Viktor had just been - well, not right for me."
Draco blew out his breath as Hermione groaned to herself, still not turning around. Was she ever going to finish explaining? He gave her a light shove, his hand on her elbow. "Ronald was supposed to be the same as me, you say. He was supposed to show you what an average kiss was like, and it's supposed to be like me."
She nodded.
He waited but she kept silent. "Well?" he said himself. "What happened?"
She turned around, somewhat frantic but no longer flustered. "What happened is I botched the experimental design. I failed to control for enough of the variables to make a fair comparison. If my experiment was a potion, it would have blown up in my face." She was tying her hair back, as if about to set to work. "Because the circumstances in which I kissed Ronald were nothing like those in which I - in which you kissed me."
"I kissed you?"
"Yes, you did."
He sputtered for a moment. "Yes, well, I still had to all but wrestle your arms from around my neck to get you to stop kissing me back after Montague had gone."
"This - this is why I did not want you to talk," she said. "Now, what I do want from you is to recreate my kiss with Ronald in every way except for having an audience. That's impossible - "
"You've got that right - "
"But the rest of it - I think we could recreate the rest of it, right here." She was opening her bag, rifling through it, pulling out props: a quidditch keeper's helmet, an empty cereal bowl, a spoon. "Come on, Malfoy."
"Why is this necessary?"
"It's research, " she said. "Sane, well-considered, well-executed research. If I do a little controlled kissing, I can figure it out without making a slag out of myself." She moved to put the keeper's helmet on him. "Ronald was wearing something like this when it happened. It's not the most handsome garment so of course it would have been dampening things between us when I - "
Draco caught her hand. "You're going to kiss me because you're dying to prove to yourself you feel nothing for me, the way you felt nothing for Ronald at breakfast this morning. Even though - "
She yanked her hand away. "I thought you didn't want to talk about Ronald and me."
They sat on the stone step, glaring at each other until Draco shrugged and took the helmet from her. "I don't," he said, working the crown of his head into the leather cage. "Who cares? What's next?"
She nodded when Draco's angel-hair disappeared from view. "Good. Now, I'm very sensitive to smells, and so recreating that will be vital," she said, dropping a dry rolled oat into the empty bowl and swirling her wand over it, spinning it into a thick grey gruel. "Ronald was trying to eat a bowl of oatmeal. Take it."
She pressed the bowl into Draco's hands. "Hold it up to your face, Malfoy, so I can smell it on you when I come near. In fact, you'd better take a few bites."
He nipped gingerly at the tip of the spoon she'd given him. "Ugh, it's awful," he said.
"Sorry, I didn't bring any milk or sugar."
"That's all I can eat of it, Granger."
"Good enough," she said. "As for the rest, we're sat side by side instead of standing face to face this time. It's daylight. No one has been chasing us. All of this is right. Oh, and Ronald was in a horrible mood when I did it, just like you are right now."
"Just do it then" Draco said, flicking a spoonful of oats into the thicket.
"I can't do it on command," she said. "I took Ronald by surprise. That's another crucial element. Just look into your oatmeal and think about something that upsets you."
He scoffed. "Great. The possibilities are endless. Something that upsets me, something other than what we're doing right n- "
There was warm, sweet pressure on Draco's cheek, faintly wet, and arms encircling his arm, tugging him slightly downward.
And then it was gone.
Hermione was still beside him. He could sense her in his peripheral vision, hear her breathing, but she was saying nothing.
Draco cleared his throat. "That was exactly how you did it? This morning with Ronald?"
"Pretty much," she squeaked.
"With the," he said, "with the same - um - humming sound and everything?"
She gasped. "You heard that?"
He nodded. "Yeah. Kind of like a moan."
She slapped his arm with the flat of her hand. "It was not."
"Whatever it was, did you do it that way with Ronald or not?" he asked.
She threw her hands up. "I don't think I did. I certainly wouldn't have meant to. And even if I had done it, he wouldn't have heard me in the Great Hall."
Draco gave a sharp nod. "Right. Do it again. But quietly."
She took a deep breath, shaking out her hands. "Yes, again. Think about something upsetting."
"Got it."
The pressure on his cheek was warmer this time, wetter, and while the contact was harder and tighter at first, it lingered. He felt her mouth soften against him, and she dragged the inner edge of her lip across his skin as she pulled away, his eyelids falling with her downward motion.
And she made the sound again.
"What is that?" Draco nearly shouted, leaping at the chance to break himself out of the stupor that nearly took hold of him as she kissed him.
"I'm sorry," she was rushing to say, shouting over his voice, wiping her mouth. "It just happens. Here, let me have another go. And I'll be sure not to lick my lips this time."
She was already turning toward him, her neck craning to reach his face, her lips slightly parted, her hands reaching for his arm to pull him down to her level again when Draco caught her hands in both of his, pressing them together like stacked parchment.
"No," he was saying, shaking his head. "No more, Granger. The longer it goes, the less it gets like what happened with Ronald. One more go and, I promise you, it will be nothing at all like it."
He was releasing her hands and moving to wrench the helmet off his head.
"Malfoy, wait - "
"No, I'm leaving now," he said, still struggling with the helmet. "If you don't have enough - enough data to draw a conclusion from this experiment by now, then there's nothing more I can do for you."
She stood up. "Look, if I've offended you, I'm sorry."
"I'm not offended," he said, finally freeing his head, shaking his hair to stop it from clinging to his forehead. "But I am overcome."
She had to draw in a sharp breath as he tossed his hair, but she managed to repeat the word, "Overcome?"
"Yes, Granger," he said, dumping the oatmeal into the grass and scourgifying the bowl and spoon before handing them back to her. "Even with the helmet and the reeking oatmeal and the spectre of my brother hanging over everything, I am still overcome."
She stood speechless, blinking up at him.
He was groaning now. "By the stars, Granger, how can you not…" He let the question fade. "Look, I'm sorry this wasn't more helpful for you. But it's all I can do. I need to leave."
"Malfoy, I'm sorry."
"Don't be."
She didn't stop him this time, as he gathered his bag and trudged up the rest of the steep stone steps, leaving her to repack her experimental apparatus in the middle of the path, alone.
It was an eagle owl, the large speckled bird of prey pecking at Molly Weasley's kitchen window in the middle of a cold, bright morning. What a ridiculous creature it was, an invasive species imported by humans though it had no business being in Britain at all let alone strutting on the wooden plank window sills of the Burrow. It was the kind of beast that would have chased the pigeons around the owlery at school. Yes, it was a ridiculous creature sent to Molly by a ridiculous person.
She opened the window and took the parchment from its ankle all the same.
Dear Mrs. Weasley,
I do hope you will oblige me with a brief meeting regarding young Ronald and his arrangements for the holidays. It is a simple matter, yet a delicate one which I would keep in strict confidence.
Yours Truly,
L.A. Malfoy
She moved to shoo the owl away without a treat, without a reply, but it stood its ground, pacing and bobbing around her waving hands.
"Oh, have it your own way," she told it as she hastily wrote a reply on the back of the parchment.
Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy,
Arthur and I would be happy to meet with both of you to discuss Ronald's holiday plans at a discrete but public place of your choosing anytime outside regular Ministry hours of operation. Please advise.
Regards,
M. and A. Weasley
"There, off with you," she said as the owl finally left. Molly was about to turn her back to the window when she saw the owl diving behind the stone berm at the edge of the yard instead of soaring off into the western sky.
She swore. He was here. He hadn't made himself known yet but he was here, somewhere just outside the wall.
"No," she said aloud, pursing her lips, narrowing her eyes.
She wound up her knitting and reached for her coat and hat. She would floo to London, find Arthur or Bill, and leave Lucius Malfoy to find the house locked and empty. She was watching the yard as she dressed for the weather. With still no further sign of him, there was enough time for her to button her coat, tuck her scarf into her collar -
The doorknob clicked open before a soundless Alohomora spell.
"NO," she said again, spinning away from the window. "No, Lucius, I will not meet with you without Arthur."
"Molly, it's Ronald," he said, stepping into the vestibule at the foot of the stairwell, his voice barely loud enough for her to hear. "It's our son. Please."
"Whose son?" she scoffed. "My son, the one Arthur and I gave to the Ministry in the interest of national peace? Is he hurt? Maimed? Hexed?"
"No," Lucius said, ignoring the rest. "Not yet."
"Then get out."
"Wait, Molly, I need your help," Lucius said in the same low, quiet voice. "Let's not be coy. You know that - that dark forces are afoot. Draco - they already have sights set on Draco. I don't know how I'm going to save him. It's none of your concern, of course, but Ronald - " Lucius's voice broke. "Help me shelter Ronald, keep him away and safe."
Molly dropped her hat. "Safe from who, Lucius?"
He shook his head.
She whipped her scarf from around her neck, throwing it at his feet. "Safe from who? Say it!"
He shook his head again. "I can't cast Ronald off completely. It would be better for him if I could, but Narcissa is in denial about the danger the boys are in and won't allow it. All I ask is that you take him more fully under your protection. Stop the twins from goading him. Plan to have him for Christmas next month just in case…"
His shoulders heaved.
She sighed as she came to stand next to him, laying her hand on his left forearm through his heavy brocade robes. "Lucius, don't go back. Don't answer him. Take Narcissa and the children and run. Leave everything and go. Whatever you lose by going, nothing could be worth the price he demands."
Lucius turned away, his arm moving out of her grip. "Christmas," he said. "Will you have Ronald for the entirety of the holidays?"
"Of course we will," she said. "Draco too if need be."
He lunged across the floor, crushing her to his chest. "Ronald, Molly, tell me he's mine."
"I can't," she said, moved enough by Lucius's nightmare to let him hold her for a moment, knowing he felt in her the hope he once had for a life free from this darkness. It wasn't what he had chosen then, but she hoped something in the warm reality of her form might help him see the promise that still existed of a life free of darkness now.
When he sensed her permission, he held her closer, whispering into her hair. "Tell me Ronald is my son, my firstborn son."
She pushed herself away from him now. "No one knows for certain who Ron's father is. It's what Arthur and I have chosen. And it's better this way."
Lucius dropped his arms.
Molly stood back, drawing herself up as tall as she could. "Here is an image for you to call out of your memory, when the time comes for you to work occulmency on the devil you've sold yourself to. Show him this image of Ronald's mother standing in her humble home telling you that you are in no wise his father."
Ronald sat on the table in the vanished room. Between Hermione and Draco, he never felt the need to get his own wrist watch but he wished he had one now. He was almost sure Pansy was late in meeting him. Not that he blamed her.
How could it all have gone so wrong? Hermione had kissed him for the first time. It was just on the cheek, and just for luck before a match, but it was all he had and it counted for something, surely. But where was the ecstasy, the euphoria? Where was Hermione, for that matter? How did he get to be spending the evening after she kissed him waiting to apologize to another girl?
He was looking at his shoes when Pansy came through the false wall. She stepped inside and stopped.
"Hey-a," he said, offering his sweetest smile.
She tossed her head, tapping her foot, arms folded.
"You came," Ronald said, extending a hand. "Now you have to come here. I'm not allowed to stand up from this table. Those are the rules of this room."
She stepped closer, lifting one eyebrow. "We're still following rules, are we?" she said. "From the looks of things between you and Granger at breakfast, I assumed you had jumped ahead and didn't need my guidance anymore."
"That was completely unexpected," he said. "And since I wasn't ready for it, since none of the very important preliminaries you've schooled me in were laid down first, it was - " He paused, digging deep into his vocabulary to find the right word. "It was lacklustre. My faith in your training is stronger than ever."
She was fighting a smile. "Is it?"
"Yes."
Pansy was near enough now that by leaning as far from the table as he could without standing, Ronald could snag her fingers with his. He caught hold of her and pulled her to stand between his knees, their fingers lacing together.
She smirked. "I suppose she's made you think you're ready to move on to non-lip facial kissing."
He shook his head. "Not until you say so, teacher."
"Well, I don't say so," she answered. "There is a lot more to be learned from hand-to-hand contact."
Without a word, Ronald agreed, the pad of his thumb rubbing a slow, firm line against the skin on the top of her hand, his palm pressed to hers and moving back and forth, like a swaying kiss.
"What makes your hands so soft?" he asked. "It's downright otherworldly."
She huffed. "You're flattering me because you think I'm upset about Granger's peck this morning."
"Aren't you?"
She tugged at her hand, as if she'd like to take it away. "I told you. She is not to be mentioned during our lessons - "
"It's some kind of lotion, isn't it?" Ronald said, changing the subject as ordered. "On your hands."
"It's mostly just being a girl," she said.
But he was raising her hand to his face, sniffing at her skin. "Yeah, but there's a scent here too. It's pretty, like flowers. What do actual pansies smell like, anyways?"
"Nothing," she said, barely able to make a sound as he held her hand beneath his nose, his breath warm on her knuckles. "They smell like nothing."
"Well they're not."
Pansy watched, her heart in her throat, as Ronald Malfoy closed his eyes and pressed his lips to her hand.