Hermione was sitting across from him, stooping over her papers in her usual way, grumbling angrily more than usual.
"Hermione," said Harry, getting anxious.
"Hm?" she said absent-mindedly, not really paying attention.
"What do you think Ginny is doing with Rebekah and Alex?" he wondered, tapping his chin with his pencil.
"Sure," she said, furrowing her brow.
"That wasn't a yes or no question, Hermione," Harry said bitterly.
"What?" she asked, still not looking up.
"You know what," said Harry, sitting up. "I'm tired of this. It's not safe for three girls to be wandering around from Hogsmeade and back in the middle of the night."
"What?" she asked, still looking at her paper.
It wasn't until Harry arrived at the bottom of the stairs, holding his invisibility cloak, that Hermione finally glanced up at him, frowned distastefully, and glared at him.
"Harry, why does every solution to a problem have to involve the Forbidden Forest and the invisibility cloak. 'Hey Ron, there's a problem!' 'OH NOES!' 'Let's get the cloak and the map!' 'OK!'."
"Right, the map," said Harry, and he ran back up the stairs.
"You're a prat," she said, as he appeared once more.
"You're just upset because you're not getting any," he said.
"Neither are you," she said.
"That's what you'd like to think," said Harry, raising his eyebrows suggestively.
"Yuck," she said.
"Right, anyway," he said. "I'm going after her."
"Sometimes it's like you just invent problems. 'Oh dear, Ginny's been gone for thirty minutes. I must save her!'"
"You're a bitch," he said, glaring at her over his glasses.
"I'm also pregnant, and if you call me a bitch one more time I'm going to hex your wand into a knot."
Harry winced uncomfortably.
"I want you to watch the map," said Harry. "If you see anything suspicious, I want you to find Ron—" she wrinkled her nose "—find Ron and come after us."
"Yeah whatever Magic Boy," she said.
Harry was just about to go out the door when he heard a sudden suspicious, familiar giggling coming from the girl's stairs.
"Draco," Romilda was saying as she appeared, looking frustrated as usual. "That's a horrible thing to sa—"
She suddenly caught sight of Harry at the door, and shut her mouth, turning a little pink. Harry glared at her, disgusted.
"Oh, hi Harry," she said faintly. Draco appeared behind her, looking devious as usual.
"Yeah," said Harry, and he backed out the portrait hole.
The boy continued until he was out of the portrait's sight, and then slipped under his cloak. He walked past the ghosts and occasional students, finally slipping out into the courtyard and out along the black lake, sneaking past Hagrid's hut and into the forest.
Harry and Ron had traveled along this path many time before on their trips to Hogsmeade, so he didn't need the map's assistance in getting there. Feeling himself to be safe and quite alone, he wasn't making as much of an effort to be quiet as he should have. What he couldn't have known, however, was what Hermione was just seeing on the map—Draco. He was following Harry into the forest. She choked on her pumpkin juice, ruining her essay.
Hermione pulled her coat on and immediately sprinted out the door, wand in hand and too proud to go look for Ron.
This would have been a problem in any other situation, but Ron happened to be coming down the dormitory stairs the minute she disappeared out the door. He looked around, confused, and inspected Hermione's ruined essay. The map, he recognized, was sitting haphazardly on the table, tossed aside as if it wasn't the most valuable artifact within the castle. He rolled his eyes, and picked it up.
He searched for Hermione, who he could not locate. Peeves was in the upstairs hall, ruining a painting, and Snape was in his office with—the horror—Luna. McGonagall was pacing in her office, and Ernie McMillian and Hannah Abbot were in an empty Ancient Ruins classroom, most likely doing something that they shouldn't.
"Cormac, Romilda, Finnigan, the Fat Friar...ha! There! Hermione!"
He paused.
"Where on Earth is she going? Wait—there's Harry, and—"
He stuffed the map and disappeared out the portrait hole, pulling out his wand as he did so.
Harry was walking along in the forest, feeling quite sure of himself, however unwary, when he suddenly heard it.
There was a crack behind him, and Harry whirled, losing the hood of his cloak as he did so.
"Who's there!" he called, voice urgent.
"It's no use, Potter!" said a voice—Harry recognized it instantly.
"Come out, Malfoy," he said, tone bitter and loathing. "Or are you too afraid to face me man to man?"
"Oh, shut up Potter," said Malfoy, strolling out from behind a tree. "This may catch you by surprise, but I'm not here to torture you for once."
"Like you could ever manage to bother me—"
"Yeah, shut up you moron," Draco said, rolling his eyes. "Bloody git."
"HARRY!" a female voice called. "HARRY! UGH—" there was a gasp. "HARRY! Oh, sodding—"
"Hermione!" said Harry, feeling foolish. He suddenly realized that he had instructed a very pregnant girl to follow after him in a dark, werewolf-infested forest.
"HERMIONE!" called another voice, male. "HERMIONE! WHERE ARE YOU! HERMIONE!"
"RON!" she called. Somewhere in the darkness, the two of them met. All Harry could see was Draco, standing in front of him, holding his wand uncomfortably.
"Hermione?" Harry asked aloud. He heard nothing, and could only assume it meant that Hermione and Ron had chosen this very inopportune moment to make up.
"Alright Potter," said Draco, strutting toward him. Harry whipped out his wand, ready for any of Draco's tricks. "I have a bargain to make with you."
Harry glared at him, unsure where this was going. Was Draco trying to trick him? Was Draco smart enough to trick him?
Hermione and Ron appeared, looking flushed and pleased with themselves. Hermione and Ron already had their wands out, facing Draco.
"I would feel better if you'd ask your friends to leave," said Draco, taking the opportunity to make an awkward glance at Ron.
"Whatever you have to say to me you can say in front of my friends," said Harry. "It's not like they're paying attention anyway."
This was true. They were now snogging.
"You're not going to find your girlfriend," said Draco.
Hermione and Ron stopped snogging.
"You filthy Slytherin bastard!" said Ron. "What'd you do with Ginny!"
"I didn't do anything with your sister, Weasley," he spat. "I don't care what the Death Eaters want with her."
"The Death Eaters!" said Harry, going towards him. "What do you mean, Death Eaters!"
"It's not me!" said Draco, pointing at himself. "I couldn't care less what my father and his friends do. But I thought—well, it's going to get out anyway—stupid whorecr—"
"What do you mean, 'it's going to get out anyway'?" asked Hermione slowly.
"Don't interrupt him!" said Harry. "Just—well, tell me where Ginny is! What did your father do with her!"
"My father didn't do anything with her!" Draco shouted. "There's not enough brains in his stupid blonde head to know what to do with her—I'm talking about Alex and Rebekah."
Hermione, Ron, and Harry stared at him in silence.
"Well," said Draco, faltering a little. "It's just that—she knew about, um—something. And, well, I knew about her, so she never said anything, but now she's told my father because of her—" he pointed at Hermione, who looked as if she had no clue what he was talking about. "—Shouting away about things that would never happen right for everyone to hear. So Alex thought—but it wasn't true, and I didn't—so she told my dad. I wasn't even snogging Cormac—I don't know what she's talking about—"
It took Harry and Ron a moment to process this, but Hermione got it almost instantly.
"Wait—" she started. "What—?"
"I WASN'T SNOGGING CORMAC!" he shouted. "I might've, if she hadn't burst in like she did, but then she was already going on about how she was going to tell my dad, and I tried to lie, but—"
Draco stopped, and looked at Ron.
"Damn you Weasleys'," he said. "And your—quidditch, and your farmer tans, and...messy house, and...biceps, and silky red-hair..."
Harry nearly died in his spot. Ron was beat red.
"Draco," said Hermione. "Are you—you're—oh my God. You're in love with Ron."
"I AM NOT!" he shouted, turning a little red himself.
"Biceps? Red hair? Tan?"
"I said FARMER'S TAN," Draco pressed, looking embarrassed.
"You like the freckles too, don't you?" she asked knowingly.
"They are quite nice," he said. "I mean—!"
Hermione burst out laughing. Ron looked as if it would have pleased him to hex Draco into the next century.
"Yeah, well, she gets what she deserves!" said Draco. "It was what they were planning all along. They put Neville under the Imperius curse, and—and told my dad about Hermione, and then found out they were wrong, and they were there when that teacher had a prophesy—"
"Those bitches!" said Hermione, scandalized.
"—Then they took Ginny down to Hogsmeade."
"Fantastic," said Harry. "Now what am I supposed to do?"
Draco stared at him pointedly, then pointed to himself and said:
"DUH!"
"Well what do you have to do with anything," said Harry. "Everyone knows you're too gay to be a Death Eater."
"Le sigh," said Draco, rolling his eyes. "Ok—you know how I said that 'I knew about her'? Well—When Alex found out about me and Cormac, she started to use it against me as some kind of a sick joke. I knew she was in line with the Dark Lord, but I didn't know how much she was in line—then I overheard her and Rebekah speaking to my dad through the fire one night—"
"So you figured out their plan," said Harry.
"Yes," he said. "And I would have kept my mouth shut, but Alex just nearly told my father about Cormac—so I decided to use her secret against her so she'd keep her mouth shut. But then, that one day, when Hermione and Weasley were fighting again, she said something about the baby being mine—I'm a bit bisexual, but I would never touch her, I swear. She thought I was making the whole thing up, and freaked out, thought I was cheating on her and in line with your side, and ran off and told my dad about—"
Draco stopped.
"About...Ron?" Hermione guessed. Ron gagged.
"Yes," said Draco, turning red again. "My father disowned me—said he couldn't bear the likes of a girl like me being in the family. To him, I'm no better than a blood traitor."
"So you're telling us all of this to get back at your dad?" asked Harry.
"Mostly," said the blonde with a shrugg.
"You really suck at the blood-traitor thing," Harry added.
"It's my first day!" said Draco. "Be quiet!"
"I must tell you, Draco," said Hermione. "I'm not exactly opposed to this crush you have on Ron. Actually, it's...kind of—"
"Don't say it!" said Ron, who had been keeping quiet. "If you say it, I'm going to throw up! I swear!"
Draco rolled his eyes.
"I get it Weasley, you're not gay," he said. "I'll just shag George or something."
"UGH!" said Ron, scandalized.
"Oh come on," said Draco. "Seven children? One of them is bound to be gay."
"Well, I always thought it was Charlie," said Ron with an unpleasant frown.
"Think again," said Draco.
"Well, where is my girlfriend?" Harry shouted.
"Chill out," said Draco. "Where do you think she is? Death Eaters aren't very clever, you know."
Harry fell silent.
"Tom Riddle's house?" he wondered aloud.
"Bingo," said Draco. "You're smarter than I've been telling people."