Ron Weasley and Pansy Parkinson were late for class - very late. Still, they were barely rushing as they stepped back into the Entrance Hall, their hair windblown and their clothing disheveled from flying.

"I mean, growing up in a family full of blokes, we never saw much figure flying," Ron was saying. "So I guess I never put it together, how figure flyers are constantly posing and waving their arms about while staying in perfect control of their broomsticks. Marvelous, really. And it's all in the thighs and hips, you say?"

"Where else would it be?" Pansy was laughing.

"I don't know, some special girl ability."

"For the love of stars, Weasley. Don't make it about sex."

"I never said sex," he was sputtering.

"Sex as in male versus female, not sex as in - oh, do shut up." She punched him in the arm, laughing.

"Sorry, sorry." He blushed, accepting the punching. "So instead of all the head saves, I need to work on lower body strength and control, then I can let go and use my hands more."

He stopped, a little stunned as he looked around the deserted corridors and staircases adjacent to the Entrance Hall. "Blimey, Parkinson, where is everyone?"

She swore. "What time is it?"

"I dunno. Hermione's the one with the watch so I never…"

She swore again. "We've been skiving off this whole time."

"Well, not for the first hour."

"Quick, Weasley, and we might make it to the last bit of herbology." She snatched his hand and towed him along as she ran back outside, toward the greenhouses.

They burst through the steaming glass doors to find a very surprised, very interrupted Professor Sprout lecturing a class of first years. Not only had they missed all of herbology, they were now late for charms.

Ron took in the scene in the greenhouse first, grabbed Pansy's hand, and ran back toward the castle before Professor Sprout could begin to question them. Inside, they tore through the corridors and up to the third floor. Whatever lower body strength Ron may have been lacking for broomstick control, he was still running powerfully enough to be dragging Pansy behind him by the time they came tumbling through the door of Professor Flitwick's classroom.

No one failed to turn to look at them. Malfoy jumped up from his desk and barely held himself back from running at them in relief. Doubled over, panting, Pansy couldn't lift her head to notice, but she did wrench her sweaty hand out of Ron's when the class began to titter and whisper.

Flitwick was waving them inside, calling for everyone's attention. To avoid a walk of shameful tardiness, they slumped into the empty table at the back of the classroom. Pansy lifted her fringe and fanned herself with a notebook, her makeup running down her neck. Ron's face was red and slick, and for a moment, she turned her fanning on him.

What was left of the class passed quickly, and they were soon sitting in the back of the room alone as Flitwick tidied up his notes at the front. He hadn't said anything about a detention but they anticipated one from him and from Sprout in due time.

"Well, there goes Malfoy," Ron said, watching the back of a haughty blond head disappear into the corridor. "Looks like he has no notion of relieving me of guard duty."

Exasperated, Pansy sighed. "This is all bloody ridiculous. I don't need to be guarded by some boy who can't wait to be relieved."

"No, no, no," Ron was sputtering again. "I don't mean relieved - wrong word. I said this morning I'd be happy to do this and I still am. So where do you want to go now? Anywhere on the school grounds and I'm your mate."

She slid off her stool. "Just walk me back to my common room. There will be lots of people there, even if they're all still pretending not to notice me. Drop me there and then you can go." Her tone was more sad than spiteful, and he hated it.

"I will if you want to, but don't slink off home because you think I'm not having any fun. I am. Best afternoon so far this year."

At the front of the room, the door to Flitwick's office clicked shut.

Pansy looked into Ron's face. "You'd hate me, wouldn't you?"

He frowned. "What'd you mean?"

She looked at her feet, her dark eyelashes sweeping her cheeks. "If I told anyone that - the thing they found, at Draco's - that it was made by Granger - and it got her into trouble, in danger, you'd hate me for that, wouldn't you?"

Ron let out his breath. "It would be a rotten thing for you to do to anyone, not just to Hermione."

"I hate her," Pansy said, almost in a whisper.

"You think I don't hate Malfoy?" Ron countered. "But it doesn't matter. I still wouldn't send him off to his enemies just to satisfy my own bad feelings. That's as deep as my powers of forgiveness and compassion go, though. Honestly, it's amazing how Hermione gets past everything and likes him anyway - "

Pansy snorted. "No, it's not."

"Yeah, it is."

"You wouldn't say that if Draco had ever kissed you. He's rather - "

Ron retched. "Spare me, Parkinson."

"Draco and I were each other's first kiss, you know. Cut our teeth on each other - literally."

Ron groaned into his hands. "Will you please shut up about it?"

She did. Instead of saying anything else, Pansy stepped toward where Ron still sat on his stool, and when he brought his face out of his hands, her face was close to his, about the same height when he was sitting. He hardly knew she was there before she was kissing him, with no lipstick, no teeth, no plans, right on the mouth. It was not long, not hard, not too wet, but it was a proper, unmistakable kiss, their first since the Yule Ball.

"As I remembered," she said, leaning away. "Raw potential."

Ron's jaw worked as if he felt he should speak, his face red again, his heart beating in his throat, but he could make no answer.

"I won't grass her up," Pansy said, turning away, sliding her arms into the straps of her book bag. "Granger, that is. I wouldn't do it just for her, or, if he were to ask me today, not even for Draco. But for a decent bloke like yourself, Weasley, on a day like today - I'd do it for you."

The library's restricted section looked more like Hermione Granger's private office. The table in its centre was covered in books on magical skin inscriptions and tattoos, love charms, protection charms, animal familiars, tenth century magical schools of thought, Mitrian Monks, and several dictionaries and grammar guides to ancient runes. Her pile was drifting into Draco's collection of books on medieval cyphers, constellations, obscure magical Greek mythology and mystery pantheons, and beginners' runes.

They worked so quietly and for so long that Madam Pince finally arrived, peering through the gap over the rope, to make sure they were actually working. When she caught them doing nothing but reading and jotting notes, Draco was almost offended. He dragged his chair closer to Hermione's letting it scrape noisily across the floor as Pince left.

"Don't sulk, Malfoy," Hermione scolded him. "I happen to know you were thoroughly snogged in a seventh floor corridor right after classes today."

"Who's sulking? I just wanted to check on your progress."

"Well then look at this," she began. "It's Ethelfred's Hierarchy of Animal Familiars. It says all of the most powerful ones are birds, like the Monks' doves, not mammals like Crookshanks."

"Rubbish."

"Yes exactly, and it's contrary to Muggle ideas of animal taxonomy, by the way. But look, the Hierarchy itself admits an exception." She turned a thick, massive page. "And that is for animal familiars, whatever their class, which are magical creatures like, say, Dumbledore's phoenix - "

"Or a giant cursed serpent - "

"Or," she said with unmasked pride, "a cat who is half kneazle. Any of these is more powerful than a non-magical creature. So spells that involve them will be more potent than those done with a standard familiar. And that means, whatever the Mitrian Monks could do with their doves, we can expect our effect to be stronger because we used a kneazle half-breed. Take that, blood purity."

She punctuated it with a kiss smacked loudly against Draco's cheek. The "mwah!" resounded through the library, startling both of them and sending them flying apart, watching for Madam Pince to reappear.

"Can you imagine," Hermione whispered, after a few more minutes of quiet work, "dating normally, like Ginny and Dean? Strolling around hand in hand, taking meals together, cuddling in the streets of Hogsmeade - "

"Your best friend not stalking me."

"Your dad not sending thugs chasing after me."

He turned toward her again, pulling her chair closer and tipping his forehead against her temple. "I'm sorry, love."

"Oh, I didn't mean for you to - "

"I'm sorry that normal is impossible."

She cupped his face in her hands, and kissed it again, quietly and softly. "We don't know that yet. Don't lose hope."

He let out a ragged breath, backing away from her cradling hands. "We're running out of time. The next time he calls me in to strip me half naked and question me while my mother sits and cries, he's going to demand some sign of my service to him."

She took his hands in hers. "Stay calm, Draco. We found promising news in just a few hours of research today. There's still a good chance we'll find something more in all of this," she waved at the mass of books, "and in this," she squeezed his twice-marked arm through his sleeve.

Draco was raised a spoiled child, a boy no one had ever taught to wait or to show any patience or restraint. It meant he was prone to worry and frustration, to rash action. "I'm trying to believe in this," he said. "I'll keep on trying. For now, I've got to kiss you goodbye," he said, clearing her hair away from her face in preparation. "I have to report to detention with McGonagall at 4:30."

Hermione raised her eyebrows. "What did you do to her?"

He tucked the last of her wayward hair behind her ear. "Nothing, it's just with all my - issues at home, I've fallen a bit behind on my transfigurations essays. So she's forcing me to get caught up in detention. I've got one today and one on the weekend."

"On the weekend? Then you won't be coming to Hogsmeade."

"No great loss," he shrugged. "Weather's going to be awful anyway."

"Is it?"

"Mmhm, shouldn't have quit divination, Granger," he said as he leaned in and made good on his promise to kiss her.

Detention with McGonagall ended as the dinner hour began, but instead of going downstairs to the Great Hall, Draco went up, to the Room of Hidden Things. He stood in front of the vanishing cabinet, and cracked its door open without removing its dusty cloth cover. Behind the door was where he kept the parchment with Borgin's repair instructions on it, and his half of a pair of galleons enchanted with a protean charm. His mother had given the galleon to him just before Snape came to take him back to Hogwarts. She said its mate was held by a contact in Hogsmeade that he could trust to do their bidding without question or complaint. He wasn't sure who it was, or why they were helping him, but he would soon be desperate for that help. The cursed necklace would arrive from Borgin and Burkes by the end of the week, and it would need someone other than himself to carry it to Dumbledore.

Hermione sat with Harry and Ron in the Gryffindor common room after dinner. Harry lay sprawled in an armchair, trying to relax as he watched the Map. "Where's Malfoy, Hermione? He's not on the Map."

Behind her book, she frowned. "Look harder. He'll have just had detention with McGonagall."

"Nowhere near her."

"Library? Restricted Section? It's unplottable isn't it?"

"No. Try again."

She was peeved enough to drop her book. "I don't know, Harry. Snape takes him home to see his mum quite a lot ever since…"

Unsatisfied, Harry crammed the Map back into his robes. Hermione retreated back behind her book. If Harry were to ask her again if she knew whether Draco had been marked, she wasn't sure what she'd say now. It was rather sickening and heightened the urgency of her research.

For now, she threw Ron between them. "Haven't seen much of you today, Ronald."

Harry smirked. "Not since he returned from skiving off with Parkinson."

She laughed. "Did you really? How did that come about?"

Ron groaned. "Don't ask me. It was Malfoy's idea for me to keep an eye on her during class, since the Slytherins are useless. So I did, but then it all went pear-shaped."

Harry was blinking furiously behind his glasses. "Malfoy?"

"Don't start, Harry." Ron seemed too exhausted to explain and looked to Hermione. "It's about that thing, Hermione. That thing Malfoy's mum found - some charm."

"Muffliato," she chirped.

"Oh, muffliato, is it?" said Harry. "All of a sudden, you're not too good for the Half-blood Prince's muffliato spell?"

"Are you interested or not?" Ron interrupted. The room was emptying, as it usually did when someone cast a muffliato spell. No one liked the fuzzy feeling in their ears. "Right. So, Malfoy's mum finds this love charm Hermione made him, but she assumes it's from Parkinson, like any reasonable person would. Then the Death Eaters see it and it gets them riled up, for some reason, and now Malfoy's afraid they might haul Parkinson off to question her about it. And even if you don't care about that, it gets more interesting when she tells Malfoy, right to his face, that she'd grass Hermione up soon as look at her - "

Hermione made a loud scoffing sound.

" - so I spent the day defusing that for him while he - oh, who cares," Ron finished.

Harry cared, and he leapt to questioning. "What kind of teenaged love charm gets the Death Eaters up in arms? And if it was so dangerous, why didn't Malfoy take care of it himself? And what do you mean defuse, Ron? Is Parkinson still out to snitch on Hermione or not?"

The only question Ron could hear was the last one. "No, she's not. She promised me she'd say nothing to any Death Eaters about Hermione."

Hermione frowned. "How did you get her to agree to that, Ronald?"

He shook his head. "I didn't get her to do anything. She just offered. She just stepped forward, all on her own and said it - after she kissed me."

Harry was shaking his head now. "That bloody Yule Ball."