Chapter 3

Later that night in the Common Room, Harry and Ron sat in their usual corner with the unusual absence of Hermione. The two of them had been pestering her the whole day to reveal her plans of spying on Malfoy. The attempts had not worked as they were still sitting in the maroon color schemed common room, with a roaring and crackling fireplace to distract them from their thoughts. Hermione had disappeared two hours ago to 'carry out her plans'. She had taken Harry's Marauder's Map and his Invisiblility Cloak, destructing any plans of the two of them following and spying on her. Her reason had been that they would have to split up eventually, and since there was only one invisibility cloak, somebody would get caught in the end.

"Why won't she tell us?" Harry asked in an annoyed tone of voice. He wanted to be out there, catching Malfoy, not sitting here nice and warm on a plushy armchair.

"You don't think she's really going to seduce him, is she?" Ron asked with his eyes narrowing in dislike as he imagined a scene where Hermione was flipping her hair in Malfoy's presence.

"Uh, well it doesn't seem very Hermione to do that, does it?" Harry cautiously replied to Ron's question. Even through his thick-headedness, Harry could Ron had feelings for Hermione beyond friendship.

"We might as well play a game of chess while we wait," Ron said pretending he didn't care as he let go of the cushion he was twisting around as he was talking to Harry.

"This time, I'm not going to get squashed," Harry announced as he slid from the couch to the plush crimson carpet.

"Squashed like a beetle instead of squashed like a fly?" Ron remarked as he took out his chess set and placed it between them.

Hermione tried not to shiver as she stepped cautiously in the corridors of Hogwarts. The drafty wind was like an icy breath against her smooth cheek. It was past curfew time and one wrong foot against the rough, stone floor could send Filch headed in her direction. Even under the invisibility cloak, dealing with Filch and Mrs. Norris was not something she would like to do now. She knew that Malfoy and Parkinson were doing patrol rounds today. She had the perfect plan, but first she had to separate the two of them.

Near the tapestry of a scowling old man, Hermione stopped and looked around, she had to make sure it was a completely empty corridor. If a passerby heard the rustle of parchment underneath her cloak, she might get caught.

She tapped the Marauders Map with her wand and watched as the layout of the school appeared on the piece of parchment. Even after seeing this happen many times, she was still amazed when the map words and lines seemed to appear out of nowhere. She snuggled deeper into the hood of her winter cloak, wishing that she didn't tie her hair up and clutched the map tightly in her numb fingers. There were hundreds of dots on the map, where would Malfoy be?

At last, she spotted the dot labeled 'Draco Malfoy' beside the dot 'Pansy Parkinson' on the third corridor near the tapestry of Winfred the Witless. She turned her head, right beside her was the tapestry of Winfred the Witless. She saw the heads of two blondes headed her way. She needed to act fast without them knowing. Reaching into her pocket and taking a deep breath, she took a pinch of Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder she took from Harry's trunk (birthday present from the Weasley twins) and threw it in their direction. She needed about two minutes of blindness from both of them.

"What the hell? Lumos! Lumos!" Draco angrily bellowed. He was caught off guard, he was walking through the third level corridor one minute, and the next he was swallowed in darkness and his stupid wand wouldn't light. It was as if all the flames from the hovering torches in the corridors went out. He couldn't even see his own hands that he placed in front of him.

Hermione quickly silenced Pansy temporarily and levitated her slightly in the air so she was now hovering near a suit of armor. Draco was wandering in the opposite direction of where Pansy was, the plan was working so far. She needed to get him to go to the Astronomy Tower. He was walking in that direction and the human instinct was to usually go forward in a situation like this. She hurried off to the shortcut to the Tower to begin her plan.

"Pansy!" Draco yelled again. This had better not be one of her stupid tricks. He had nothing against her, but sometimes, she really got on his nerves. He needed to calm down and think. If he was in some dark corridor, he should feel his way around for an exit. He moved his long, nimble fingers over the rough, stone wall. His fingertips ran over something cool and smooth, a door!

All of a sudden, it was as if his eyes had been opened again. He looked around, he was at the foot of the staircase to the Astronomy Tower, but Pansy was nowhere to be seen. He was about to turn around and head back to the corridor where he lost Pansy, but something caught his eye. A fleck of blue light shimmered on the door. He looked down, the light was coming from a butterfly shaped hairpin on the floor. He bent down and picked it up. The pin still felt a little warm, meaning it had been dropped only minutes before, he noticed that a faint vanilla scent lingered on his fingers after touching the hairpin. He raised his eyes to the lock on the door. It was unlocked. The Tower was off-bounds except for lessons, but he was a Prefect, he had patrol duty, which probably enabled him to go in the tower, but the question was…who is she?

A girl with a butterfly hairpin, the Astronomy Tower…curiosity overwhelmed him and he reached for the unlocked door. He lit his wand, half expecting it to malfunction again, but it didn't. The foot of the tower was like a stone cave, even his light footsteps echoed like a rubber ball bouncing on a metal sheet. He looked around, the girl was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly, music flooded the room. She must be at the top of the tower.

Hermione threw off her Invisibility Cloak at the top of the Tower. She checked her map. All the teachers were back in their lounges and Filch's weak knees would never enable him to climb the stairs to the tower. She checked to make sure her frizzy hair was completely hidden in her hood. She took out her recorder from her pocket. It was a white baroque recorder she got for her birthday when she was seven. She ran her fingers down the once smooth exterior. She placed her lips over the mouthpiece and her fingers over the holes. She hadn't played since she came to Hogwarts, but as her fingers played the notes of the well known pieces, she found that her fingers remembered better than her brain. She was halfway through Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons' when she noticed a shadow on the stone railing in front of her. She lowered the recorder.

"Is this yours?" Draco asked calmly radiating an iciness from the way he let his last word drawl out before holding out the hairpin.

Hermione inhaled in the fresh leafy scent of the night air.

Act cool and calm, cool and calm…

"Thank you," Hermione politely replied. She turned her head forty-five degrees so her face was still in the shadow of the turret of the castle and took the hairpin from his hand. She hoped, in the combination of dark and shadows that her face would not be visible.

Hermione lifted the recorder to her lips and continued playing. They were still standing quite far apart. Draco didn't say anything, he didn't leave either. She knew he was attracted. Not to her music playing or to her hairpin, but to her aura of mysteriousness. She was up all night last night reading through Parvati and Lavender's romance novels. Even though most of them somehow ended up talking about how the main characters were making love, she had learned that men, or more accurately males were attracted to the mysterious. She had used vanilla scented shampoo, body lotion, and body wash. According to 'Seducing the Wizard… by non-magical means' Vanilla and cinnamon seemed to make men relate to love. This was her ultimate reason for not allowing Harry and Ron to come with her. She knew that if her seducing succeeded, the boys' tempers would get to the better of them and they would ruin everything. She knew that she would never be able to gain Draco's trust as long as he knew who she was. Love however was also the most dangerous and useful tool in spying. Kingsley Shacklebolt once mentioned to her that the hardest thing for a spy to do was not to get information out of people, but not to befriend the people they were spying on. The research was done, now for the real thing.

"Do you come here every night?" Draco asked in the middle of Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy'.

"Not every night, only when the mood is right," Hermione replied. She could sense his mind thinking about what kind of person would find mood like this 'right'.

The half-moon was a hazy blur in a blanket of fog that surrounded the castle of Hogwarts. Draco spoke a few moments after her response.

"How do you know whether or not I'll turn you in for being in an off-bounds area past curfew?" He asked this time without the blade of ice that was usually in his cold voice, but instead with innocent curiosity.

Hermione thought his questions for a few seconds before deciding on a safe answer.

"I trust my instincts," she said responding in the same tone of voice she used throughout their entire conversation.

Draco was about to question further when he heard footsteps coming up from the staircase. He turned his head and saw a flushed and distressed Pansy rushing straight towards him.

"Draco! What happened back there? I couldn't see or talk, and when I could I was floating in the air and you were gone!" Pansy said in a both flustered and relieved tone that she had finally found her fellow Slytherin.

Hermione had taken this chance to disappear back under the Invisibility Cloak. A mysterious exit would guarantee better chances of Draco being interested and preventing Pansy from catching a glimpse of her.

Draco turned his head around to see if the girl would flee since there was another person on the tower, but she was nowhere to be seen. She couldn't have flown off the tower. Disapparate? Was she a figure of his imagination? He was about to leave but on the ground, he saw proof that she existed for sure. From the light on his wand, he could make out that the object on the ground was a paper crane. On it's right wing, there were three glowing letters emblazed on it.

C'est la vie?

This is life? Posed not as a statement, but as a question. Ignoring Pansy's endless babbling debate on whether they should report their mysterious darkness experience to Filch and deal with his wheezing insults or report it to Snape and be fussed about, he picked up the crane and placed it in his pocket as he turned to the staircase.

"Who's winning?" Hermione asked as she stepped into the near empty Gryffindor common room and saw her two best friends engaged in a chess match. The heat flooded senses back to her numb fingers.

Harry scowled and Ron laughed.

"Correction, who won. Checkmate," Ron said as his black knight battered Harry's white king.

"So, how did it go?" Harry asked Hermione as she handed him back his Invisibility Cloak and Marauder's Map.

"Better than your chess match with Ron I hope," Hermione replied.

"You hope?" Ron asked questioningly, she smelled like vanilla ice-cream. Something must be up.

"I hope," Hermione echoed as she fingered the butterfly hairpin in her pocket.