A/N - I am never posting a chapter written in 24 hours ever again. After going back to reread Chapter 6, I physically cringed when I saw that I'd made Hermione say "you've really changed!" to Draco. I am a firm believer in the 'show, don't tell' principle of good writing, so that was just... embarrassing. I made some pretty substantial changes to their conversation at the party if you want to go back and reread that part. It doesn't change any of the core plot facts though so you'll also be fine if you don't. I also changed the last chapter title from "New Year, New Me" to "Operation Man Hunt". I try to name the chapters in a way that reminds people of the contents so if you want to go back and reread something you'll know where to find it. Anyway, I spent much longer writing and editing this chapter so hopefully it's better this time around!

Edited: 8/6/22, original publish date

TW: More references to sexual assault and murder, but I feel like that should be a blanket trigger warning for this entire work at this point.

Saturday, February 12, 2000

The Four-Step Action Plan had been well and truly advanced by attending Pansy's birthday party. Hermione was quite pleased. Steps one and two had been challenging enough to accomplish over the last few months, and she didn't think she would've had the courage to move on to step three so quickly without Pansy's help. Hermione pulled out her journal to review her progress, batting away Crookshanks' tail which had drifted in front of her face. He was curled up under her arm, softly purring as they both lazed about in bed all day. A perfect Saturday. The sun had long ago sunk below the horizon though, so Hermione turned on her bedside lamp to read.

Step One: Write down the facts surrounding the events of the sexual assault and how you feel about those facts. Journal your feelings regularly.

Separating fact from feeling was a large theme in Hermione's work with Healer Davis, and it wasn't as simple as it sounded. She hadn't realized how jumbled up her own thoughts had become, how much self-blame she'd internalized, or even how she had been repressing herself from feeling anything out of sheer avoidance.

Now that she was allowing herself to process what had happened to her, she found that she oscillated between feelings of intense self-loathing and worthlessness, and burning anger at the injustice of it all. Healer Davis assured her that these contradictory reactions were totally normal, though she still felt a little crazy sometimes.

Step Two: Build a network of support from family and/or friends.

Hermione had stumbled into fulfilling this remit. She'd chosen Pansy as her first confidant last March in a drunken fit of impulsiveness and Harry now knew a few details as well only because of Ron's murder investigation. Regardless of how it had happened though, Hermione was glad that she had two friends who really knew her. Healer Davis was great, but sometimes only a friend could know the exact words Hermione needed to hear.

Pansy and Harry now considered themselves a sort of Hermione caretaking team. It had been tense at first. Pansy carried a lot of irrational resentment towards Harry for being asleep in the room during the assault and not being able to prevent it (and when Hermione was at her lowest, she'd felt the same way...it was tempting to imagine how different things would've been if someone had swooped in to save the day). But when Hermione reintroduced them following her confession to Harry, Pansy saw that Harry was an expert in self-flagellation and didn't need her to pile on. So, they'd struck a truce.

They each played distinct roles in ensuring Hermione stayed healthy and on her path to healing. Pansy made sure she didn't isolate herself when she fell into depression and her ride-or-die attitude helped Hermione feel vindicated when she wavered in her feelings. As for Harry, often the simple fact of his acceptance of her helped to remind Hermione that she wasn't broken or fundamentally altered by what happened. He treated her like the same friend who'd asked if he'd seen Neville's toad at eleven years old. He was also annoyingly persistent about ensuring she'd eaten each day, treating their standing appointment to grab lunch together in the Ministry cafeteria as a religious pilgrimage. Hermione's heart ached with fondness for them both.

Step Three: Go out on dates again.

Healer Davis had insisted on including this step, caveating that of course she shouldn't move towards it until she felt comfortable doing so, but meeting it head on would help reestablish some normalcy. Healer Davis further explained that she didn't want Hermione to create a narrative of fear around dating. Ron was responsible for what happened, not men as an entire gender.

Hermione had to admit it had been great for her self-esteem to see how men had reacted to her at Pansy's party. For a long time, she'd felt like she must be unattractive and undesirable since Ron had only been interested in taking from her in secret. It didn't help that she'd gone through a decidedly awkward phase in her teens as she'd grown into her looks. But Hayden Reynolds, Jack Gibbons, Luca Bianchi, Charles Owusu, and Magnus Anderson had all seemed to find her pretty enough now. And of course seeing Viktor again brought her back to the first time she'd ever felt beautiful, dressed to impress at the Yule Ball.

She wasn't planning to pursue anything with any of those men, but the transparent interest she'd recieved from them (a little too transparent in Anderson's case) filled her with hope for her future. One day she'd find somebody to love who loved her just as deeply in return.

'Maybe I'll find that with Marc,' she thought as she tickled her chin with the soft feathertip of her quill, pondering what to write about her adventures in dating following the New Year's Eve party. She'd met Marc Beaumont in the floo parlor of Pansy's home just before leaving the party. He'd introduced himself (neatly solving the 'complicated gender politics' that Pansy had been so worried about), pronounced her surname 'Gran-jay', and thouroughly swept Hermione off her feet. They'd exchanged phone numbers (he was muggleborn too) and since then they had been on a handful of dates together, all wonderful.

Marc was a perfect gentleman: he held doors and pulled out chairs for her, always walked on the street-side of the sidewalk, and was an attentive listener alongside being a vivacious storyteller. Hermione also found him to be very handsome, and it didn't hurt that he was the physical antithesis of Ron. Where Ron had been tall, lanky, and fair, Marc was short for a man, stocky, and dark in hair and eyes. It was a winning combination, but they hadn't shared more than a kiss goodnight in the five weeks they'd been seeing each other. Marc didn't seem to mind, or at least he wasn't pushy, but the looming shadow of the final step of Hermione's healing plan was constantly on her mind.

Step Four: Build physical intimacy with someone and celebrate positive sexual experiences.

Hermione wasn't sure that she was ready yet. Technically, she was still a virgin. Ron's 'ghost penis' hadn't taken that from her at least, and she barely considered what had happened with him to be sexual experience - not the kind that was meaningful anyway. Her only other opportunity for physical intimacy had been with Viktor, but she'd been young when they dated, so their relationship had stayed innocent.

She shook her head to clear her thoughts. She didn't need to decide right this second. Adding a few more lines of detail about her feelings on her most recent date with Marc (dinner at a Basque pintxos and tapas restaurant in Marylebone, delicious), Hermione packed away her journal and turned her mind towards the more pressing decision of what to wear to grab drinks with Pansy.

That same night, Pansy was entertaining the wild conspiracy theories of Theodore Nott.

"You have to believe me! The aurors have already given me the brush off and you're the only one I know that has access to Granger's apartment!" Theo looked ready to drop to his knees and beg. It was entirely out of character, and frankly it was unsettling.

"You still haven't explained why you think there's a bomb in her apartment!" Pansy argued for the umpteenth time. It had taken several minutes to calm Theo down long enough just to explain what a bomb was, but he still hadn't adequately addressed this critical piece of the puzzle. "It'll be weird if I just go to her and say 'Hey Granger, mind if I have your place swept for exploders? Ta!'"

"Explosives," Theo corrected absently. "Don't tell her then. Let's just sneak over and look for it ourselves," he suggested, like it was a perfectly reasonable course of action.

"Are you insane?! What if we touch it and it goes off?" As part of educating her about bombs, Theo had brought along a graphically illustrated book about bomb squads, people who were specially trained to handle highly volatile materials and still occassionally managed to get themselves killed.

"Okay, okay, you're right, I just don't know what to do!!" He capitulated and turned to pace the floor at speed, as though velocity was required to shake loose a better idea.

"Look, I'm still not wholly convinced there's anything to worry about, but it's clear that you're not going to let this go. I'm meeting Granger for drinks tonight in," Pansy checked the clock on her wall, "five minutes ago. Damn. If you let me finish getting ready you can tag along and explain this bomb thing yourself."

"She won't take me seriously," Theo grumbled though he didn't prevent Pansy from retreating back into her closet to pick out an outfit. He just raised his volume so she'd still hear him even buried in her racks of clothing. "I've already written her a letter and she wrote back 'thanking me for my concern'. She doesn't trust me like she trusts you!"

"Pansy!" A third voice called from somewhere outside Pansy's room.

"In here!" Pansy shouted. It sounded like Draco, so she didn't bother walking out to meet him. He knew his way around her parents house.

"Oh hey, Theo," she heard Draco enter her room just as she found the perfect pair of high-waisted black palazzo trousers. She'd pair it with her favorite silver crop top and a blazer.

"Draco, excellent, you can come and help me convince Granger!" Theo greeted him with excitment.

"Uh, convince Granger of what?" Draco warily replied.

"Theo had a nightmare about Granger and thinks she's going to get blown up," Pansy rolled her eyes, emerging from her closet with boots in one arm and her clothes draped over the other.

"You had another dream?" Draco inquired.

"Wait, another? You've had multiple dreams about Granger?" She didn't think Theo had mentioned that, but he had been a bit hysterical when he'd first arrived.

"Visions! But yes, I told Draco about the first one. Draco's known I'm a Seer this whole time. Please tell her!"

"It's true," Draco shrugged, but he didn't seem to be just sarcastically humoring Theo. "He's Seen my future a few times since we were kids, he's scary accurate."

"You guys are taking the piss," Pansy insisted, reeling from the idea that he would have been able to keep such a secret his entire life - no, through an entire war with a psychopath who could read minds bunking with the Malfoys. Draco shook his head solemnly and Pansy's jaw dropped.

"I'm an occlumens, so I was able to keep Him from finding out," Draco intuited what Pansy was currently realizing.

"And you already know I hid for most of the war," Theo added quickly, "but do you believe me now?"

Pansy hesitated. "What was your other dream about?"

"It was about Greyback attacking Granger at your birthday party," Theo quickly provided.

Pansy sighed in relief. "Well there you go. Maybe you're just Seeing things that might happen. As you'll recall, Greyback didn't hurt Granger at my party. Now turn around," she ordered. The boys obeyed so that she could disrobe and change into her chosen outfit.

"That was an anomaly. I think it only didn't happen because the aurors were there," Theo defended the veracity of his Sight.

"Then contact the aurors," Pansy finished lacing her boots and called out, "done!" so that they could turn back around.

"They don't believe me either. I couldn't find Potter to find out how that anonymous tip got taken so seriously, but it's clear that my word isn't going to be enough."

"Ugh, fine, you can both come crash my girls night with this ridiculousness, but you're paying for everything." Pansy would be damned if she didn't get something in return for being so accommodating. She leaned in front of her vanity mirror to put on a quick swipe of mascara and lipstick.

"Wait, I don't want to come," Draco objected with a whine.

"Then why are you here?" Pansy smacked her lips to even out the color on them and turned to him in annoyance.

"I just wanted to see if you were free to hang out tonight. I can just go..."

"You can't go! I need you to back me up when I tell Granger that I'm a Seer!" Theo barred the door with his arms.

"Mate, if she doesn't take your word for it, what makes you think she'll take mine?"

"You got along well enough at Pansy's party."

"Yeah, well I thought she was going to die, so I was being extra nice, wasn't I? I have no desire to spend more time with her."

"Liar! I caught you looking at her arse! Remember I was disillusioned the whole night watching her!"

"I told you she's off limits!!" Pansy jumped into the volley and the trio devolved into incoherant shouting at each other.

"Enough!" She finally roared. "You dickheads have made me late. I'm leaving now, and if you still insist on coming and ruining my night I suppose you can follow." With that, Pansy turned on her heel, tossed floo powder into the grate and shouted, "The Leaky Cauldron!"

She didn't wait to hear their responses before stepping smartly into the green flames and whirling away.

"Finally, there you are! And oh... you've brought others," Hermione didn't try to hide her disappointment. This was girls night. It was against Pansy's own rules to bring men, yet Theo Nott and Draco Malfoy were unmistakably intending to stay. They'd already settled into the booth across from her and were flagging down the waiter.

Pansy sat next to Hermione and emitted a long-suffering sigh. "I didn't want them to come. I thought once they realized I was walking from the Leaky Cauldron to a muggle bar they'd shove off."

"For the record, I didn't want us to come either, but the muggle world doesn't scare me anymore," Malfoy added petulantly. Hermione mentally filed away the fact that Malfoy was ever scared of the muggle world in her 'Interesting' folder.

"Hush, you're my character witness and I need you," Theo pushed a glass of dark liquor (which had arrived remarkably quickly, or had Theo poured that from a flask?) into Malfoy's hand to placate him, and held another for himself. "Now, Granger, I'm about to tell you something unbelievable, but I need you to hear me out, okay?"

Hermione looked at Pansy hoping for some kind of clue as to what all this was about, but she was busy explaining to the waiter how to make her complicated drink order. This left her to deal with Theo staring intensely at her all by herself (she didn't think Malfoy would be much help, he looked cranky). She nodded in acquiescence. She'd at least listen.

"Good girl," Hermione blushed and Malfoy raised an eyebrow, but Theo carried on. "I am a Seer," he pronounced dramatically, then paused, clearly intending for that to be a big reveal. He must not have known that Hermione was famously skeptical of Divination.

"Er... that's very impressive," she said unconvincingly. Theo looked devastated.

"Draco, help me!" He urged Malfoy with a poke to ribs.

Malfoy had already finished his first drink and signaled for another. "He's not lying, Granger. Theo's been a Seer for almost as long as I've known him."

"There, you see!" Theo banged the table as though that settled everything, but Hermione didn't understand why he was telling her this. "So when I tell you I've seen that a bomb is going to be placed in your apartment, I'm telling you I've really Seen it! Do you get it?"

"Look, Theo, I appreciate that you're worried about me, it's very sweet of you--"

"No, no, no, I can tell you're about to say 'but', there is no 'but'!"

"Ghost butt," Pansy snickered, adding absolutely nothing of substance to their conversation. The waiter had come back with her egregiously frilly cocktail and she seemed to be making quick work of it. She nudged Hermione's glass, half-filled with a white wine that had gone warm while she'd waited for Pansy to arrive. "Drink up, and I'll get you what I'm having. It's Theo's treat."

Hermione took a solid gulp and Theo renewed his advocacy.

"If you could just get a message to Potter, I'm sure he'd believe me after the whole Greyback incident last month. I couldn't get past the welcome witch at the Auror Office," Theo made a sour face, but now Hermione's curiosity was piqued.

"What Greyback incident?"

The other occupants of the booth looked at each other and then quickly away. They couldn't have looked more guilty if they'd tried. It was clear they all knew about this incident and that it had been deliberately kept from her.

"One of you had better start talking," Hermione snarled, downing the rest of her wine.

"I'll find the waiter to get you a fresh drink, Granger," Pansy leapt to her feet and scurried off.

"Well?"

Theo swallowed thickly and looked down to fiddle with his coaster. Surprisingly, it was Malfoy who deigned to enlighten her. He'd made significant progress on a second drink already, maybe it had loosened his tongue.

"The aurors got an anonymous tip that Greyback would try to off you at Pansy's party, so Potter and pals showed up to provide security detail."

Hermione's jaw dropped. She distinctly remembered him telling her that Harry hadn't been at the party.

"You lied to me!" She accused.

"Yup," he said, without a hint of remorse.

"Why wouldn't you just tell me?"

Malfoy leveled her with a knowing stare. "You wouldn't have tried to interfere with the aurors if I'd told you?" Her face heated. That was completely beside the point.

"You still should've told me."

"Yes, well, I didn't. Sorry."

He didn't sound sorry. Hermione's frown remained.

"The aurors had it handled, Granger," Malfoy continued. "They were patrolling the property line all night and set up extra wards to make sure nothing got through. I'm sure they were very thorough with Potter there, breathing down their necks. I bet you're used to being the one in charge, but it's best to leave these sorts of things to the professionals." Those were logical points but her pride was still wounded.

"I fought in a war!" She rarely played that card, but felt indignant enough to do so now. "I think I could've at least been given the courtesy of knowing what was going on. You said they were patrolling outside, but what if Greyback had slipped past them? I would've been a sitting duck, alone and ignorant."

"You were never alone. I was with you all night, wasn't I?"

That was true. Malfoy had stuck by her side all night. She'd thought it slightly odd at the time, but assumed it was because of Operation Man Hunt. He had been looking out for her? That was... unexpected.

"And don't forget that Pansy was also aware and would've drawn blood before she let you get hurt."

Pansy returned with a neon pink drink for Hermione. It had four marachino cherries on top - a peace offering.

"Can we be done talking about death threats and visions?" Pansy stole one of the cherries from Hermione's drink and glared at the two boys sitting across from her. "Girls night is for gossip and boy talk." She flicked the cherry stem (that she'd tied into a knot with her tongue) at Malfoy's eye.

"Can I leave then?" Malfoy swatted the cherry stem away before it could pierce his sclera and scowled back at Pansy.

"Yes!" Pansy promptly responded, but not loudly enough to overrule Theo saying "No!" Given that Theo had Malfoy stuck in the inner booth seat, his opinion mattered more in this case. Hermione was still too stunned by the revelation that Malfoy had cared enough about her well-being to watch over her for an entire evening to voice an opinion either way. She took a large sip of the alcoholic concoction that Pansy had placed in front of her and immediately started coughing. It tasted like pure gasoline. There was at least a double shot of vodka in it.

"Fine, stay! But I'm changing the subject. How are things with Marc?" Pansy had turned to Hermione. She'd already known that this would be item one on the conversational agenda tonight, but was wary to speak frankly in front of Malfoy and Theo.

"Who's Marc?" Theo chimed in. He at least seemed temporarily content to let his bomb dream fall by the wayside.

"A fit bloke she met at my party. She's been on several dates with him," Pansy summarized.

"Ooh, the one you met in the floo parlor at the end of the night?" Theo made significant eye contact with Malfoy for some reason.

"How did you know that?" Hermione had sworn she and Marc had been the only ones there that night.

"He was disillusioned and stalking you the whole night," Malfoy smirked as he threw Theo under the proverbial bus.

"Theo!" Hermione exclaimed in a scolding tone.

"I thought Greyback was going to make your insides into outsides! I was being noble!"

"Not the kind of gory details I'm looking for tonight, thank you," Pansy dryly interrupted. "I want gory details about your last date, Granger. Spill!"

"Oh, um... there's really nothing 'gory' to tell..." Hermione's eyes darted shiftily towards Theo and Malfoy, hoping Pansy would pick up on her discomfort. She did, but it wasn't the panacea she was hoping for.

"Don't mind them. Consider them honorary women for the purposes of this conversation," Malfoy looked scandalized by the suggestion, but Theo was grinning and nodded his head enthusiastically.

Hermione licked her lips nervously. "We still haven't... you know," she ended, hopelessly embarrassed.

"But do you want to... 'you know'?" Pansy gave a little provocative shimmy to make sure everyone did know.

"I'm not participating in this conversation," Malfoy announced grumpily. Theo snickered at him.

"It might be nice..." Hermione was sure that even her kneecaps were blushing. She took another two sips of her drink. It helped. "It's only been five dates, maybe it's too soon."

"Granger, he's a bloke. Five dates is a lifetime to wait for 'you know'," Theo contributed, articulating exactly what Hermione had been fearing. Her face went pale. Pansy and Malfoy kicked Theo under the table at the same time.

"I say keep him waiting," Pansy quickly jumped in to say. "You don't owe anyone anything, and if you're not ready then a good guy will understand."

"I want to be though," Hermione admitted, contorting her straw into strange shapes. Her drink was quickly turning into just ice. She felt a bit light headed. "Ready, I mean."

"Then what's the problem?" Theo innocently asked. Maybe for a normal girl there wouldn't be a problem. Hermione didn't feel like a normal girl.

"I guess I never know what to say, to... get things going."

"Granger, looking like that you could probably say anything," Theo insisted, but Hermione was mired in inecurity for the moment and couldn't take his words to heart.

"Can we talk about something else?" She pleaded, looking beseechingly at Pansy.

"Of course, we still haven't discussed my Valentine's Day plans. You're definitely going to want to hear what I'm going to get up to!"

Bless Pansy. She seamlessly took the spotlight away from Hermione and regaled them all with her plans to seduce men along the Italian Riviera for the next week in celebration of Valentine's Day, which was the coming Monday.

Malfoy, now three drinks deep, seemed much less irate and shared his own plans for the holiday, which were not nearly as salacious. He would be running a lab experiment that required 24-hour observation for three days and he would be taking shifts with his lab partners. Hermione had asked an avalanche of follow-up questions about the experiment and Malfoy humored her with a basic overview of what he was learning about stoichiometry.

Pansy eventually reached her limit for 'nerd talk' though and brought them back to love life gossip, now grilling Malfoy on whether he'd been seeing anyone lately. Malfoy either didn't want to say or the answer was 'no', but Pansy wasn't making much progress getting a straight answer out of him.

The group probably should have been paying more attention to Theo. He'd been going drink for drink with Malfoy, and although the boys were the same height, Theo had the musculature of a lamp post, and having less mass than Malfoy meant that the drinks were hitting him harder. Still, he ordered another, and Hermione had the vague sense that she should maybe put a stop to it, but she was too tipsy herself to act on that rogue thought.

She excused herself to go the restroom. Everyone was laughing and having a good time when she left, but they had gone eerily quiet by the time she got back.

"What did you do?" She heard Pansy hissing as she snatched something - no, a cellphone - out of Theo's hands.

Theo was smiling proudly as though he'd done something impressive, and indeed when he caught sight of Hermione returning he boasted, "I helped solve your problem, Granger!"

"What problem?" She asked cautiously, sliding back into the booth next to Pansy.

"Your problem with 'you know'!" Theo was maybe trying to wink, but he was too drunk. His whole face scrunched. "You said you didn't know what to say, so I said it for you!" He gestured his hands towards the cellphone that Pansy had wrestled away from him, Hermione's cellphone she was now realizing. Pansy was scrolling through something on the phone with her hand over her mouth and a look of horror on her face.

"Give me the phone, Pansy," Hermione needed to know what Theo had done. Pansy shook her head and started to pull the phone away, but Hermione was too quick. She snatched it and read a few lines of the text conversation that was on screen.

Theo had been texting Marc. No... Theo had been sexting Marc. No, worse... Theo had been sexting Marc while pretending to be Hermione.

The next time I see you, I might not be wearing anything under my coat.

I want to run my hands all over your body.

I'm going to let you do anything you want to me.

Hermione couldn't read any more. Tears had completely obscured her vision and she had to focus on breathing. She couldn't get enough air. Pansy was gently shoving her side, but she couldn't understand what she wanted.

Oh, get out of the booth. Pansy wanted out. She was yelling at Theo now, or at Malfoy, or both of them. Hermione didn't care. She just had to breathe.

The next thing she knew, she was in a taxi with Pansy, her sobs now completely uncontrollable. Pansy was stroking her back and whispering comforting words in her ear, but she couldn't hear them over the wind blowing through the open window on her side of the car.

They slowed to a stop at a red light, and suddenly she could hear again.

"He's not worth it!" Came a shout from nearby. Were they talking to her? She looked up. In another car, a group of scantily clad gay men were leaning out their car windows to shout at her again, "Whoever you're crying over, honey. He's not worth it!" They cheered at her even as the light turned green and they began to drive away.

Hermione laughed. She could breathe again. She was laughing and crying still all at once, but her heart felt a bit less constricted. He wasn't worth it: not Ron, not Marc, and not Theo. She didn't want to feel this way.

"We'll be at your apartment soon, okay?" Pansy continued to rub soothing circles against her back. Hermione nodded and lifted her face to feel the cool night air against her tear-soaked cheeks.

The taxi turned onto a street she recognized as her own, but they stopped a few blocks away from her building. There was police tape blocking their path.

"Wait here, I'll figure out what's going on," Pansy said, but Hermione didn't want to be left alone so she followed Pansy out of the car.

"Harry?" She called out when she recognized her best friend's profile among the policemen that were clustered outside her building.

"Hermione," Harry sighed with relief and trotted forward to grip her in a hug. "What's wrong? You're crying," he questioned immediately. She must look wretched.

"Nevermind that, why are the police here? And the... Explosives Disposal Unit?" Hermione suddenly noticed a strange robot being wheeled out of a lorry.

"We had an anonymous tip that there was a bomb placed in your apartment. We had to call in the muggles for help with this, since aurors don't have the right equipment. They're confunded to think I'm an officer with the Metropolitan Police..." he added in an undertone. Whoever cast the confundus charm did a good job though, no one nearby even blinked at the terms 'muggles' and 'aurors' despite the fact that Harry hadn't remembered to lower his voice for that part.

"Another anonymous tip, you mean? I heard about what happened at Pansy's." Hermione was cross. This was a perfect ending to a horrible evening. She was still crying, still drunk, and... yes, now she had the hiccups.

"Ah, yeah, sorry about that, I meant to tell you..." Harry ruffled his hair.

"No, you -hic- didn't!"

"Look, Potter, we've had a rough night. How long is this going to take?" Pansy cut in.

"I'm honestly not sure. You could go back to my place to sleep? Ginny's there and can set up the guest rooms. There's plenty of room for both of you."

"Thanks, but we've got an option closer by. We're both knackered. Get in touch in the morning, will you?"

"Closer by? Don't you live in Ardingly?"

"Yes, but Draco lives just there," Pansy pointed to the apartment building across the street. "I have a key, we can let ourselves in."

"Malfoy??" Harry seemed ready to object, but Pansy didn't let him gather any steam.

"He won't be home tonight. He's taking care of Theo. We'll talk to you in the morning, Potter." Hermione gave him one last hug, sniffling and hiccuping like the pathetic fool she was, and followed Pansy again. She was sure her brain would have something to say tomorrow about Malfoy being her neighbor, but she couldn't muster anything beyond relief that she had a bed for the night just yet.

Pansy took her hand and led her up four flights of stairs and through three doors, before she found herself in a handsomely decorated room with sage green wall paneling and plush beige carpet. Pansy helped her transfigure her clothes into a flannel pajama set and brush her teeth, then tucked her into the soft bedding. Sometime along the way, she'd finally stopped crying and her hiccups had died down, so when Pansy bid her goodnight and left her alone in the darkness she had nothing to distract her from her thoughts. Or rather thought - singular - because she could only think of one thing... she definitely wasn't ready for step four.

A/N - Theo, yikes. Big fuck-up.