Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter franchise, nor anything affiliated with it.
Draco's POV
A couple of weeks have gone by since Granger showed me how to use the computer and it's been quite enjoyable to learn about muggle technology. I haven't told Blaise how much I love it, nor Granger, but I suspect they've already figured it out; even if no one else has yet. I've done very well on the tests we've gotten and, strangely enough, it's my best subject thus far.
In our class, we've all gotten earbuds and phones since we just finished our unit on communication. I can now call, email, and text decently well, though the formality of email makes me significantly more partial towards it. We will be starting a unit on entertainment soon, and the muggleborns have each selected a film or series to watch during class to help catch us up with 'pop-culture'. After we finish the movies and television, we will explore music, which I can't wait to do. Ever since Granger first let me listen to her song on the train ride, I've been quite eager to learn more about muggle music.
Granger and I have talked a little bit more, and we don't seem to hate each other as much. After giving it a lot of thought, I decided that just because I could smell Granger in the potion it doesn't mean we are destined be together; I don't even know if she sees me as anything more than a friend. Instead, I've been nicer and I will see how it goes from there. Our relationship is less tense, and seeing as how she doesn't have many friends in her year, she often sits with Blaise and I. As she says, Blaise isn't 'too Slytherin'.
Granger and I are walking back from class to drop our books off in our room before dinner when we see McGonagall waiting for us at the portrait.
"Miss Granger, Mr. Malfoy," she greets us. "I'm sure you know we are already a week into October. Since you are our Head students this year, it falls on you to plan the annual Halloween feast. I thought that perhaps this year, though, we could try to make it a ball. You would be in charge of invitations and announcements; decorations and dining equipment; seating placement; theme; entertainment; setting up, with the help of the prefects of course; and food. I'll need a rough plan with basic information by this time next week. A final plan should be submitted to me no later than five days before the 31st. Are you up for the challenge?"
At first I'm too shocked to come up with a suitable answer, but Granger recovers much faster.
"It would be an honour, Headmistress!"
McGongall smiles warmly, "I'm glad to hear it. Hogwarts needs just a little bit more atmosphere after the past few years, and I'm confident that you two will be able to sort that out."
I finally manage to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth, "Thank you, Headmistress, we will do our best."
"I'm sure you will Mr. Malfoy," she says, with a grin to rival Dumbledore's twinkle. "Well, that will be all for now. How have the two of you been? I've noticed you've been getting along far more easily than I thought you would. If you're just acting, you are doing a marvellous job."
I'm about to respond when Granger cuts me off. "We've been doing quite well Headmistress. How have you been?"
"I've been well. Thank you, Ms. Granger. Well, seeing as how that's settled, I have a staff meeting to attend to." She turns to leave before suddenly pivoting back to us, a piece of parchment now in her hand. "This is a written list of the requirements, just in case you can't remember all of them. Good evening to you both," she says as she sets off down the hall, robes billowing around her.
"Pheonix wings," I call out to the portrait, and the two children hasten to open the portrait. No matter how many times I've tried to remind myself to talk to Granger, we just haven't gotten around to changing it. I turn back to her and motion for her to enter, "After you." At first, I don't think she's heard me, but after a moment, she snaps out of her reverie.
We've barely made it through the entrance and taken off our shoes before she launches into planning, "We should probably get dinner from the Hall and bring it up here to eat. That way we can start now."
I grin ruefully at her, "Granger, we've just gotten in. Shouldn't we put our things down first and then sort out a plan?"
"Oh! Right," she says as her cheeks turn pink, "I guess we'll meet back here in a few minutes then."
"Thank you, that's a little more reasonable, don't you think?"
She just glares back. Well, you can't win every time.
It only takes a moment to place my schoolbooks back on the shelf and I'm down in no time, even if Granger did beat me.
"We might as well walk and talk," I say as I begin slipping my shoes on again.
"Yes, we might," she replies as she follows.
"So do you think we should we use create a google doc for this?" I ask.
I have to admit, all of this 'cloud' technology is quite handy. Much easier to have multiple people editing the same document, rather than having one note taker struggling to keep up.
"I think so," she agrees. "How about I set up the document and a spreadsheet, while you go grab us some food? It might be faster that way."
"Are you sure you're not just trying to get out of taking the stairs?" I joke.
"Of course not Malfoy. If that was the case, I'd push you down and use you as a ramp," she replies innocently.
"Well I'd expect nothing less from a beaver."
"Whatever Ferret."
She turns to head back to our dorms and I call out, "What did you want for dinner?"
"I think I'll just take whatever you're having."
"Perfect, I should be up in about 10 or 15 minutes." She nods and we split up.
The Hall is already quite full when I enter, the Gryffindors being particularly noisy. Looks like one of the first years is trying to see how many potatoes he can fit into his mouth, though I doubt he'd be able to beat the castle record.
Tonight's main dish is pasta bake with tuna and salad. Most of the other Eighth Years are missing so it's simple enough to take a moderately sized portion for both of us. I almost leave before deciding to select a piece of black forest cake each.
I walk upstairs without incident until I bump into Blaise in the main hall.
"What do you have there? You got a hot date with Granger?" he asks when he notices the plates in my hand, wiggling his eyebrows in a teasing way.
"Of course not, Blaise," I say, slightly exasperated with him. "McGonagall asked us to start preparing for Halloween, and seeing as how my counterpart is Granger, we're getting an early start. Better to start while we don't have a lot of homework."
"Counterpart?"
"In terms of school positions," I reply, rolling my eyes.
"Sure, sure, Draco. One of these days I'll be right. Just remember that I'm sacrificing eating with friends for you two."
"Goodbye Zabini."
By the time I reach the common room, Granger is sitting on the couch; too engrossed in a piece of paper to realize that I've come in. By the way she's glaring at it and the clenched fingers, I doubt it's good news.
"Granger... hello? Aren't you gonna come over and eat?" When she doesn't look up, I walk over to her. "What are you looking at?"
"Oh!" she startles. "Well, I finally heard from Harry. He asked how I was and told me about Auror training, but apparently Ron is still being a selfish prat."
"A selfish prat? I thought that name was reserved for me," I say with a smile.
"No, trust me he deserves it. He's been acting like a complete idiot since the war ended. He thinks he's so high and mighty since he was on the winning side, and that all purebloods should be sent to Azkaban. Essentially, he's turned into you, but with an intolerance for purebloods instead of muggles and muggleborns. I can't stand it. You don't fight discrimination with more discrimination, you fight it with equality."
Well she's right about that, I just wish I'd learnt that sooner.
"Come on," I say, "you need to eat. I can't stand to hear you compare me to Weaselbee. In fact, I'd rather be compared to your pal, Scar-Head."
"Sorry, he's just really bugging me right now. He still thinks he'll be able to fudge over our last 'meeting' and be my friend. It's a good thing we went different ways this year because I swear I'll hex him the next time I see him." I struggle to resist the urge to ask what happened at their last meeting. Instead, I focus on her last remark.
"Great, I hope I get to see it. Now eat your food before it goes cold so we can start to work on planning this ball."
She raises an eyebrow at me. "Okay, mother."
I almost choke on my mouthful of pasta and quickly reach for a glass of water as she laughs at my reaction. "That's uncalled for Granger." I wipe my mouth with a napkin and we lapse into silence.
I finish my food before her, so I go up to my room and get my laptop before coming back down again.
"So, let's start with basics. What's the theme going to be?" I ask.
"How about autumn vs. Halloween? Many of the younger kids, and some older kids, like to dress up in costumes. Some of the older students though might want to wear proper dress robes. We can have a competition to see which category has the most people dressing in it."
"That's an excellent idea! How long did it take you to come up with that?"
"Well you were gone for quite a while," she deadpans.
"I was not! I thought I was rather quick considering the stairs are particularly active at this hour."
"Whatever you say."
I resist the urge to make a snarky comment about her not helping, moving on with my next question. "What about the time? I think that we shouldn't schedule it too late since we'll have school the day after. Do you think 7 pm to 12 am would work?"
"I believe so, but we should end classes about an hour earlier then. Just take off 15 minutes from each class."
I'm glad Granger thought of that; it would help a lot without interfering too much with our schedules. I know for a fact that most of the student population took at least three hours to get ready for the Yule Ball, and that was only the older students.
"Okay, should we go with a set menu or buffet style?" I ask.
"Buffet style, but we should talk with the house-elves about it. I know some of them and I could probably ask them to create sample dishes so we can curate our menu more accurately." Of course she knows them; though I'm surprised that they actually talk to her. Most of the house-elves I know would be permanently offended if you offered to free them like she did in our second year.
"For the ball itself, what kind of decor do you think we should have?"
"Well at least for the colours, I was thinking that we should have a scheme of Registration Black, Dark Sienna, Pumpkin, Saddle Brown, and Ginger."
"Do I want to know why your colour choices are so specific?"
She rolls her eyes at me. "I looked up some colour schemes. I may also have read a couple books on common wizarding colour theory in fourth year." At my quizzical expression she elaborates. "I wanted to choose the best dress robes to compliment my complexion and hair for the Yule Ball, especially since I was going with Viktor." Well that certainly makes more sense.
"Look, here's a sample of them. We can send them to a few suppliers and see if they can accommodate us."
"Wow," I say, though wow is an understatement, "they work quite well with each other. If you could send that to me, I know a couple of businesses who owe me a few personal favours. I should be able to get everything in those colours, and at a discounted price," I say.
"Thanks Malfoy, that could save us a lot of money. Now, we still need to sort out posters, invitations, and announcements. We need to get the word out soon. A lot of the students will want time to get costumes or formal wear."
I nod and begin to jot down the information on the document. "We should call it quits for tonight. We have a rough guideline for what McGonagall wants in the proposal and plenty of ideas for the specifics. Let's set aside two hours every Saturday and one hour every Wednesday night to work on this from now until then. That should leave plenty of time to complete our homework while staying on top of all of this."
"Perfect, I'll just put a reminder on my phone then," she replies. After that, she takes all her written notes and collects them in a folder. "I'll type this up tonight okay, it should be updated in a few hours."
"Thank you. I've already added the notes about the businesses we could contact and some of the things we agreed upon earlier so just give it a read through first. In the meantime, I'm going to take the dishes down to the kitchens. You should probably reply to Potter now as well, before it get's too late."
"Oh right! I better do that soon. Wouldn't want him to begin worrying that you've killed me in the last two months."
"Right, because no one would have figured it out and notified your best friends about it," I say while smirking at her.
"Ha ha. Jokes aside, Harry and Ron," her eyes darken as she says his name, "are so paranoid. They think I can't handle anything on my own. It's extremely upsetting since I've saved them more times than I can count." I know that of course. Even before last year, half of the schemes they got up to during school would never have worked without her.
"Quite right, but I have to go drop off these dishes before the house-elves send a search party for them," I say, offering Granger a soft, teasing smile.
"Oh, well I'll see you later then." She smiles back. "Bye."
"Goodbye Granger," I reply.
Author's Note: The website mentioned is real, and the exact colour numbers following the previously stated sequence are #010001, #2B0504, #FF6E00, #874000, and #BC5F04 in case anyone wanted to see what they actually look like. Please read and review, thanks for sticking with this fic. Till next time and have a nice week.