"Holy fuck!" Draco said, massaging one shoulder as he hid behind a free-standing brick wall in the middle of the paintball field. Shaking his arm out, presumably to relieve the same throbbing that Hermione was feeling in all of her limbs as well, he asked, "This is supposed to be fun?"
Hermione turned to the sound of cackling to their left to see Seamus firing off rounds in all directions like a madman before diving behind a row of metal barrels to get away from back to Draco, she shrugged and spoke loudly enough for him to hear through the heavy face mask she was wearing. "Clearly, some people enjoy it."
They'd each been given their own protective gear, rifle, and ammunition, and then they'd made bets to see who would be able to cover the rest of them in their own specific color by the end of the session. So far, Hermione was certain that nobody had ended up with her shade of orange on them yet… except for herself, when she'd managed to inadvertently shoot herself in the foot while getting used to the hair-trigger.
When they didn't receive their normal dose of magic suppression potion on Monday, Walt informed them that not only would they be getting their magic back indefinitely but that they'd also be able to go on their own outing this week without the counseling team. The caveat, however, was that it had to be a group activity, and they all had to agree on it.
Her first thought when Dennis recommended paintball was that it was an incredibly stupid idea; who thought giving trauma victims weapons and telling them to shoot one another was a good idea? However, in addition to not giving them red paintballs, the man who had given them their gear and taught them how to use it told them that it was a great activity for those with PTSD, specifically war veterans, though she was certain he'd meant Muggle war veterans. Hermione had to admit that the process of shooting at someone with a paintball gun felt nothing at all like throwing curses with a wand; honestly, it didn't seem so bad.
Running actually felt good; though, she'd be lying if she said she'd been doing a whole lot of it. So far, she'd spent more time hiding than anything else, and still, she had a half dozen splatters covering her chest and legs in Seamus' yellow and Dennis' blue. Draco looked just as bad as she did, and it was oddly comforting to know she wasn't the only one who was dreadful at this.
There's no way she was leaving here without getting a shot on someone at least. She peeped around the wall, trying to appear distracted while she formulated a plan, and already she had to bite her lip to keep from smiling like a loon and giving herself away before she remembered that the lower half of her face was covered anyway.
"Maybe you aren't having fun because you just aren't good at this," she said, shouting slightly to be heard over Parvati's shrieks and subsequent laughter as she ran the length of one wall with Seamus right on her heels.
The mask may have covered half his face, but she could tell just from what little bit of his features she could see that Draco was giving her his characteristic "you-can't-possibly-be-serious" lifted eyebrow.
"It's okay, really. You're good at other things. Sarcasm. Potions. Making that face that I'm sure you're making right now," she said, holding back laughter, as he awkwardly tried to balance his rifle on one shoulder and scowl at her at the same time.
While he was maneuvering his weapon, she swung hers up quickly, praying that she actually managed to hit him in the chest guard and not somewhere where it would actually hurt from this close, and fired rapidly, the rounds making a dull thunk as they hit his chest. Bright orange paint splattered across the entire front of his chest, and she slowly released the trigger as his initial shock wore off, replaced with a look of annoyance.
"Really, Granger?" he asked, after she'd lowered her gun, now unable to hold back her giggles at the look he was giving her. She bent at the waist, laughing and trying to say she now understood why it was fun, but she couldn't get the words out. She leaned up, and before she had time to react, he'd smeared her own orange paint across the front of her mask, making it almost entirely impossible for her to see anything through the mess.
"No fair!" She tried to hold her gun in one arm and wipe her sleeves across her mask, but only managed to clear enough to barely make out the obstacles around her.
"You're a dirty cheat, Granger," he said, and despite his words, she could tell by his voice that he was smiling. She started to offer him her hand in truce, but before she could, a loud thwack thwack thwack resonated through her helmet, and she saw purple paint cover the entire right side of Draco's.
They turned simultaneously to see Nicola on the tower above them, shooting down at everyone below in the perfect cover of the beams and partial plexiglass that covered the platform.
She and Draco separated, both trying to get away from Nicola above them and Dennis on the other side of their brick wall.
An hour later, when they'd all ran out of paintballs, they hobbled toward the place where they'd started, each of them feeling the sting of welts rising on their skin beneath the areas that had been less protected. Other than the constant throbbing in one thigh and an obvious bruise forming from when Parvati had managed to shoot her just below her chest plate, striking her full-on in the ribs, Hermione felt amazing.
Her lungs burned from when she'd been running, but she felt elated almost. And though her muscles ached from the strain after months of disuse, it was a good ache, one felt after accomplishing something to be proud of.
And proud she was… even if Draco was the only one of them wearing orange paint.
They sat at a Muggle bar, sans-escorts for the first time, after they finished paintball, all arguing about who had "won" the battle.
Hermione, knowing she really had no chance whatsoever, simply listened and cut in wherever she could to stir the pot a bit.
"You said that nobody would be able to hit you," Hermione said, speaking over Seamus and Nicola's debate.
"Yes, but I had all of three shots on me, and they were all purple," Seamus replied, pointing toward Nicola. "She's the only one who hit me."
"I'm also the only one who hit everyone." Nicola took a drink of her gin and tonic, eyeing Seamus haughtily over the rim of the glass.
"Oh, come on! They were hiding the entire time," Seamus said, lifting a hand toward Draco and Hermione.
"That's not true!" Hermione said before Draco could speak up. Yes, they'd hidden for the first ten minutes or so, but after Nicola shot them, they'd run in their own separate directions.
They'd all ended up covered in everyone else's colors except for Draco and Nicola; both of them, much to Seamus' chagrin, had managed to elude him somehow. Draco had only been hit by Nicola and Hermione – whose shots, he argued, didn't count at all – and Nicola herself was the only one of them that had walked away entirely unscathed.
The debate continued for another few moments, each of them jumping in to continue to rile Seamus before he finally conceded and admitted defeat, lifting his mug and spilling froth down the side of it as he congratulated her on her victory.
"You're kind of terrifying, you know," Dennis said toward Nicola.
"Watch out," she replied, with a smirk that could've given Draco a run for his money, "I know how you feel about older women."
The table erupted into a round of laughter, and Dennis' cheeks blushed all the way to his temples.
When the conversation quieted down and Draco got up to get another round, Parvati dropped her voice slightly, and asked, "Have you talked to Ron at all?" Obviously, her attempt at subtlety ensured that everyone else at the table stopped to listen. "You bunch of busy-bodies," she said, before turning back to Hermione.
Hermione had honestly thought that she'd get a letter from him the very next day, apologizing for his behavior and all that he'd said to her, but it'd been four days. Four days since their visits and he'd Disapparated, his face a mixture of hurt and anger, and she hadn't heard a word from him since.
Or from Harry for that matter. She didn't think that Harry was angry with her, after the way he'd talked to her after Ron left, but the fact that she'd heard nothing from him since then did sting a bit.
"No," Hermione said, refusing to sound defeated. "I haven't. But I'm sure it'll take him a while to admit that he was wrong." She shrugged, trying to feign indifference despite the stab of pain in her chest. "He'll come around."
"I thought he was about to start swinging," Seamus cut in, then killed the rest of his ale.
"No, he wouldn't have gone that far, I don't think," Hermione said. The thought certainly seemed to have crossed Ron's mind, but she really didn't think he would have done that.
"No," Seamus said, "I meant him." He nodded toward Draco's back as he walked to the counter to get another round for the table. "Ron was really trying to get him to throw the first one."
Seamus wasn't wrong. It definitely looked as if Ron had been trying to goad Draco into hitting him, but that seemed to be below the belt, even for Ron. There's no way he didn't know that Draco was on very strict probation, and the Wizengamot wouldn't think twice about sending him back to Azkaban at even the slightest provocation.
"He really was," Nicola added, shaking her head. "What a dick."
Ron hadn't really been the type back in school to provoke anyone, preferring to just jump the gun and run headlong into the fray himself, but something had changed in him. Hermione hoped that it was due to him growing up somewhat, learning to control his actions a bit better, and not that he'd been intentionally trying to get Draco into trouble.
"Thank you, by the way," Hermione said to Seamus, casting an eye at Draco first to make sure he was still at the bar. She wasn't sure how uncomfortable the conversation would make him, but she did want to thank Seamus for intervening when he did. "For stepping in, I mean."
Seamus shrugged before responding. "I know Ron's your friend and all, and I hope at some point he'll come around, but he's not worth going back to Azkaban over, that's for sure."
Again, Seamus was right, and once again she was thankful that he'd been there to intervene before Ron had pushed Draco that far.
Hermione was running through a field, ducking behind barrels and dilapidated brick walls, and laughing as she fired off rounds at her friends behind her, orange paint splattering across the various objects between them.
She hid behind an old military truck and lifted her head just enough to see Seamus dip behind another across from her.
She heard Parvati and Dennis yelling at one another from across the field, and though she couldn't see them yet, she could tell from their voices that they were getting closer.
The tower that she knew Nicola had been hiding on stood a few paces in front of her, and the door was open. Casting a quick glance behind her, Hermione ran for the door, her heart pounding and a smile on her face as she thought maybe she and Nicola could team up and beat them all.
She could hear yelling from behind her again as she barreled through the door, and without even a second glance, she slammed it shut behind her. Only a split second after the door had clanged shut, it sounded as if it had been slammed with a battering ram; something had hit it hard enough that the hinges bowed, and the metal strained beneath the pressure of it.
Hermione stepped away from the door hastily, almost dropping her gun in the process, but when she looked down at her hands, the gun was gone entirely, replaced with the familiar feel of her wand in her hand.
This isn't right, she thought, but she didn't have time to think about it further, as another heavy thud collided with the door, causing her to jump. The handle was shaking, and voices boomed on the other side, but she couldn't make out what they were saying, and as Hermione backed away, trying to distance herself further from whatever was outside, she tripped over something on the floor. Just as she started to fall backward, a hand reached out of the darkness and grabbed hers, hauling her back to her feet.
"Come on! We have to go!" Harry shouted, inches from her face, and the sound of crashing metal filled the room. When the door was blasted inward, shards of wood rained down around them as a host of Death Eaters rushed through the hole in the wall, their silver masks almost glowing in the ethereal blue light of the bell jars behind her.
She heard Harry's voice again, so loud that it left her ears ringing afterward, "RUN!"
She ran, with everything she had, yelling for Harry along the way, but he was nowhere to be seen. Every time she slowed, wanting to find him, needing to save him, she'd hear his voice again, somewhere ahead of her in the blackness of the hallway.
Her legs felt leaden, slowing her steps, but still she kept running, pushing herself as fast as she could, though now it felt more like a crawl. Whatever was causing her steps to slow wasn't affecting the Death Eaters behind her; she could hear their footsteps getting closer and closer, and the more she tried to push herself, the heavier her feet became.
"Harry!" she yelled, trying to get his attention, hoping he'd come back. How could he have left her, left her to fight them on her own?
"Help me!" She fell, sharp pain igniting across one hip as it collided with the floor. She tried to use her arms to pull her forward, but it was as if her limbs were turning to stone.
A snarl exploded in her ear, and she gagged on the smell of sweat and blood. Her heart hammered like a drum in her chest, hard enough that she thought it would surely shatter from the fear of knowing who it was behind her, who was grabbing onto her arms. "I've got you now, Mudblood!"
She let out a scream, pushing him away and fighting to keep his hands off her.
Something cold and white splashed across her face, and she gasped wiping across her eyes to try and clear whatever it was that had just hit her.
"Hermione," she heard from somewhere in front of her, and she opened her eyes, taking in the darkness of Draco's room around her, obscured slightly by whatever had splashed into her eyes.
It was just a dream, she thought, feeling her chest begin to loosen slightly, but her heart was still racing, having not quite caught up with the rest of her that she wasn't actually fighting for her life.
"Hermione," Draco said again, pushing closer toward her on the floor.
On the floor?
"Why are we on the floor?" she asked. At the moment, a dozen questions were going through her mind, and this one seemed as good a place as any to start.
"You fell. Or… you jumped, actually."
She blinked at him, uncomprehendingly. He wasn't smiling or appearing to be joking at all, and yet the words made no sense to her just yet. Her mind was still reeling from the near panic of her nightmare, and her hip was on fire, presumably from drop to the ground.
"And why am I wet?" It wasn't much but enough that the top of her shirt was slightly damp as the water ran down her face.
He slipped her wand into her hands, and looked at her sheepishly, an expression that was altogether strange on his face, she'd seen it so seldomly. He said, "Aguamenti. I couldn't get you to wake up, and I didn't know what else to do. "
She dried herself with a shaky flick of her wand, and tried to stand up, but the dull throb in her hip turned to a full-on roar, causing her to sit back down with a wince.
"Are you okay?" Draco asked, scooting closer to her as she tried to stand. He looked as if he was about to touch her, but then thought better of it.
When her eyes glanced down toward his hands questioningly as he drew them away from her, he said, "I tried to wake you, and touching you was apparently the wrong thing to do."
"Did I…" She looked around the room briefly, trying to ascertain the damage, expecting to see splintered bedrails or torn upholstery, but the room appeared completely normal in the pale glow of the moon.
"No," he said quickly, appearing to understand where she'd been going with her questioning. "You were just thrashing around… but when I touched you, you panicked."
She leaned toward him, wanting to apologize for waking him, for scaring him, for being this way still, but when she opened her mouth to do so, he shook his head and wrapped his arms around her. She took a breath, savoring the calmness that came with being this close to him, allowing it to wash over her and push away the lingering panic from her dream.
"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked, his words warm across the top of her head as he stroked her back with one thumb.
She thought back over her dream, already the images were blurring together. The paintball field, the Ministry, Harry, Greyback. None of it made any sense, and yet in the moment, it had seemed so real.
But, don't they all?
She leaned back, trying to stretch out the pain in her hip, feeling it twinge with every movement, and said, "Not really. It didn't make much sense. It was some weird mixture of a bunch of different events."
"You were saying 'Harry,'" he said, something flashing across his face quickly, and she realized it was the first time she'd ever heard him say "Harry" before; it'd always been "Potter" or some colorful, and often rude, moniker for him.
"He was there." She paused, thinking back to her dream again, and said, "Actually, he wasn't there. He left me, and I… I couldn't find him again." She shook her head, trying to dispel the memory of her nightmare. A memory that had certainly never happened. Harry had never, would never, leave her behind like that.
She was sure Alys would find some psychoanalytic reason for Harry's absence in her dream, but Hermione was sure it was just a nightmare; it didn't mean anything. She'd never been the type of person to take stock in dream interpretations.
"Are you hurt?" he asked again, his eyes looking her over for injuries.
"No, just my pride," she said with a slight smile. "It isn't fair. You had a nightmare and got to retain some dignity. I fell out of the sodding bed."
It was the first time she'd mentioned his nightmare the week prior; neither of them had spoken about it the following morning, and if he didn't want to talk about it, she wasn't going to make him. She knew it was important to talk about things with one another, but sometimes it felt like they were always talking about trauma and war and death. In her opinion, though Alys would most likely disagree, it was okay to just keep things to yourself sometimes.
He returned her smile with a forced chuckle and stood up, offering her his hand when he got to his feet, and she took it, allowing him to pull her from the floor. Her pride was already in shambles at having wound up there to begin with; she wasn't above letting him practically pick her up off the floor when she was certainly going to be sporting a hell of a bruise in the next day or two.
"I'm okay," she said, shaking her leg out and feeling relieved that other than some stiffness, she was fine.
When they'd both made it back to the bed, curled around one another as they always were, he said, "If you want to talk about it, I'm here."
"I know." Despite feeling a bit self-conscious at having woken him up and then proceeded to fight him in her sleep, she knew he was being honest with her right now. He was here, and she knew, no matter what, he'd listen to whatever she needed to share.
She felt him wince beneath her, as her fingers brushed across his forearm.
"What happened?" she asked, but he shrugged. She sat up, brightening the tip of her wand enough to see three deep scratches across his skin. "Did I do that?" she asked, immediately feeling embarrassed at having hurt him.
"It's okay," he said. "I told you, touching you is definitely not the right way to wake you up."
"I'm so sorry," she said, muttering a healing spell that slowly threaded his skin back together, leaving not a trace of the superficial scratches she'd left on him. "You should've told me. I could've healed you!"
"It's fine," he said, pulling her own wrist up to his lips as she extinguished her wand and laid back down beside him. "You didn't punch me, so there's that, at least."
"I'm serious." She elbowed him and turned her face up to meet his. "I'm so sorry. I didn't-"
"I'm serious too," he said, interrupting her and pulling her to him. "It's fine."
What a pair we make. Her thoughts drifted back to when she'd woken him up on one of their first mornings in his bed, her fingers barely touching the Mark on his left arm. The wrong move from either of us, and someone ends up hurt. At least I didn't throw him across the room like Dennis.
As if he could read her thoughts, he said, "I'd rather have some bruises than sleep without you."
"Me too," she said, pushing away the feelings of self-condemnation and focusing instead on the solace she found in his lips.
The canvas in front of her was actually starting to resemble something of a campfire, and Hermione was as astonished by that as Draco was.
"How are you doing that?" he asked, leaning off his stool to get a better look at her "artwork."
"I'm following instructions." She nodded toward Luna in the front of the room as she continued guiding them through the process of turning a blank canvas into a woodsy campfire. "You should try that and maybe yours wouldn't look like a glowing amoeba."
"But it's a beautiful glowing amoeba," Nicola said from Draco's other side, patting his arm placatingly. Draco's trees had been mostly covered by the mixtures of yellow and orange, and his lines were much blunter than they should've been.
Listen to me, Hermione thought with an eye hroll, acting like I have the foggiest idea what I'm doing.
She wasn't sure how, because she certainly had never had an artistic bone in her body – her knobby crocheted hats were testament to that – but somehow her painting actually looked nice. It wasn't as beautiful as Luna's, but it definitely looked like a campfire.
"Just take a little bit of the yellow ochre and burnt umber," Luna said, her sing-song voice carrying across the art therapy room, "and just lightly pull it across the wood pile to create some highlights. That's great, Seamus. An abstract fire is still a fire."
Parvati stifled a laugh from the front of the room at Seamus' "abstract" fire. Hermione continued following along with Luna's instructions, thinking that she never knew Luna was such an artist and listening to the soft sounds of Pachelbel playing in the background.
As her lake began to take shape behind the fire, Hermione's mind returned to Parvati's memories from the night before. Hers had been traumatic, of course, but thankfully they hadn't been nearly as violent as Seamus' had been, likely due to not having to go through some of the same ones that Parvati shared with him.
In the first memory, Hermione and the others had dropped into the middle of a corridor in Hogwarts.
"I feel threatened. Don't you?" Crabbe said, turning to Goyle with a conspiratorial smile, and the one Goyle returned to him looked even more predatory, his eyes half-lidded as he turned back to Parvati and Padma in front of him.
He held two extra wands in one grubby hand, and when Parvati took a step forward, her chin held high and fury in her eyes, demanding their wands back, Hermione knew she'd been right in assuming they'd belonged to the girls.
"Oh, I think we need to hang onto these for a while," Goyle said, as the two wands disappeared into the back pocket of his pants. He took a step toward Padma, backing her into the wall behind her as she tried to get away from him.
To her credit, Padma too lifted her chin, staring into Goyle's eyes defiantly and said, "I'm not afraid of you."
Surprisingly, Goyle let out a snide laugh and said with a shrug, "Good." He pointed his wand at her chest and mumbled a quick, "Imperio," before either of the girls had a chance to flinch.
"You can't do that!" Parvati yelled, trying to step in front of her sister and push Goyle away, but Crabbe grabbed her by the waist. Outweighing her by a hundred pounds, he easily restrained her, his laughter ringing out through the abandoned hallway.
Hermione looked around, hoping for someone to show up and put an end to this, but for Parvati to have chosen this memory to begin with, then she was sure it wasn't over yet. Dennis had gone a little green, watching the scene unfold around him, but thankfully Draco hadn't dropped her hand.
"I can do whatever the fuck I want," Goyle said, never taking his eyes off the Imperio'd twin in front of him, who was looking back at him with a somewhat dazed expression on her face. "Take off your robe," Padma immediately dropped her school robes off her shoulders.
"Stop it!" Padma screamed, fighting against Crabbe and trying to wrench his arms off her.
"How about you jump out that window?" His wand pointed toward the window beside them, and Padma stepped toward it, Parvati's shrieks now louder than Crabbe's laughter.
"Stop! Please!"
"Or, on second thought," Goyle said, stopping Padma in her tracks, "come back here and get on your knees." Padma did as she was instructed, immediately dropping to her knees in front of him and looking up expectantly. Parvati's yells were getting louder, and Goyle turned to his friend, and snapped, "Shut her up, will ya?"
Crabbe silenced Padma with his wand in one hand and the other still wrapped tightly around her waist. Shoving his own wand into his pants pocket, Goyle unbuttoned his trousers, and Hermione covered her face. She couldn't watch this. Knowing it was going to happen or that it had happened was one thing, but having to watch was something else entirely, and she couldn't do it.
Suddenly two loud bangs rang through the hallway, and Hermione's hands dropped from her face. Professor McGonagall was standing over the top of Crabbe and Goyle, both Stupified and lying unconscious at her feet. Turning her wand on Padma, she broke the Imperio she'd been put under, and she immediately dissolved into tears on the floor. Parvati helped her sister to her feet and Padma fell into her, her arms trembling around Parvati's neck.
Hermione had never seen her favorite professor look so furious. The look she was giving the two boys at her feet was one of absolute contempt. She was talking to herself, shaking with anger, her wand still leveled at them. Hermione could only hear snippets of what she was saying.
"…turn them into the cockroaches they are…
…disgusting, disgraceful…
…should blow their damned bits off…"
McGonagall turned sharply, and her face shifted as she looked at Padma and Parvati.
"Are you alright?" Before Parvati could respond - Padma didn't seem to have even heard her as her face was still buried in her sister's neck, her back shaking with sobs - Professor McGonnagall continued. "Of course, you're not alright. Did… did they hurt you?"
Parvati shook her head, and McGonagall sighed in relief, but the look of compassion on her face remained. She rummaged through the pocket of her robes and removed a foiled square of chocolate. Handing it to Parvati, McGonagall gave a derisive huff. "Chocolate!" she said, rolling her eyes, as if the very idea was ludicrous. "Eat this and take her Madam Pomfrey for a calming draught."
Parvati took the chocolate from her fingers and started to walk away, pulling her sister along beside her, when McGonagall laid a hand across her shoulder. She pursed her lips, and Hermione noticed the tears swimming in the older woman's eyes as she said, "I'm so sorry, Miss Patil. I… I wish we…"
Hermione couldn't recall ever hearing Professor McGonagall stammer before. She'd seen her frazzled. She'd seen her angry. But she'd never once seen her at a loss for words.
"I know," Parvati said, nodding somberly toward her.
McGonagall stood back up, sniffing once before lifting her head up and saying, "Steer clear of these two. They'll be a bit crankier than usual, but that'll be because of the curse I'm about to put on their tadgers. You won't have to worry about whatever vile thing they had planned; they won't be able to use their bits for quite some time."
"Hermione, this is lovely," Luna said, pulling her from her thoughts and back to the present. "You did a wonderful job." Before Hermione had a chance to thank her, Luna had strolled toward Nicola and Draco.
Speaking to Nicola, Luna said, "Your moon is perfect. It's so delicate but also…strong." Luna nodded, as if she'd found the perfect word. "Captivating. Draco," she turned toward his painting, her eyes lighting up, "you've set the whole forest on fire. It's beautiful."
Hermione tilted in her chair far enough so that she could see Draco's "lovely" picture, and she almost fell out of her chair.
Standing, she walked toward him, and when she laid her arms across his shoulders, he asked, "Jealous? Yours was only lovely. Mine was beautiful." Most of his canvas was yellow and orange, with only bits and pieces of trees showing through the brighter colors. He'd certainly set the woods on fire, alright.
Hermione shrugged. "It is kind of beautiful, if you tilt your head to the side and squint just so."
She tried to dodge him, but she hadn't been quick enough. His hand shot out, covering her face in yellow acrylic.
Obviously, the only possible course of action was then to squirt the entire tube down the front of his shirt.
Luna, being the free spirit that she was, said, "Good idea, Hermione." She picked up a large bottle of paint and spun in a circle, spraying red streams around the room.
Hermione gaped at her but didn't have a chance to really take it in before the others had joined in… except for Dennis, who was standing protectively in front of his canvas, trying to block the globs of paint flying through the air.
"I worked really hard on this!" he said before he picked it up from the easel and marched it out of the room like his most prized possession.
Unfortunately, while Hermione had been paying attention to Dennis' hilarious behavior, Draco had managed to twist the cap off a bottle of white and was just about to let it fly when Nicola came to her rescue. Apparently, she was the only one of them who remembered they had their magic back, and with a flick of her wand, she sent Draco's entire paint tray tumbling over into his lap.
The battle continued, and by the end of it, they were all covered in sticky, half-dry paint, and everyone's artwork was now abstract to match Seamus'. Though they had to spend the next hour cleaning the art room, it'd been worth it.
There were only a few times when Hermione could remember seeing the full-on, carefree smile on any of their faces, but those moments did seem to be coming much more frequently. Her eyes fell on Draco, and she noticed one of his cheeks was orange, and his hair, now the same shade as Ron's, was standing on end in every direction.
As soon as she fell into giggles, Draco shook his head at her. "You may have to shave your head," he said, attempting to lift a lock of her hair but, as it was all stuck together, it rose up as a single unit on one side.
Even while making fun of her, he was adorable. There was a fleck of white in his eyelashes and yellow in one ear, and the smirk he was wearing was the same one that never failed to light her up inside.
When Nicola and Seamus began yet another squabble as to who won this paint war, Hermione took Draco's hand and pulled him from the room. They'd barely made it out the doors before he had her pressed against the wall, his lips on hers and his hands beneath her shirt, splayed and hot across her bare back.
But then her fingers tangled in the paint in his hair, so they headed back to their room to shower before they were caught or "scalped", as he put it. On the walk, Hermione realized with a smile as his hand locked around hers, that she'd thought of it as their room for the first time.