June

tick

Draco wobbled into the library fifteen minutes past nine with an enormous headache and a box of apple taffies under his arm. He spotted the nearest chaise: inconveniently located on the far side of the room, and under an obnoxiously bright window. He promptly collapsed onto it, closing his eyes against the light and allowing himself a smirk when he heard footsteps approaching.

"Where have you been?" he asked without opening his eyes, an effort to preempt the barrage of questions he suspected Granger had been a mere breath from speaking into existence.

"I could ask you the same thing," she said. "You didn't meet me at the Floo today."

Behind closed eyes, he could almost discern a touch of disappointment hiding behind her haughty tone.

He didn't say anything. Instead, Draco reached blindly into his box of candies and unwrapped one, popping it into his mouth while silently cursing Theo for thinking it would be funny to pour out all the hangover potions. Fucking idiot. He'd damn near asked for that experimental time turner just to get the potions back.

He heard her sigh.

"I actually took some of my time off this year—well, they forced me. I'm not allowed to accumulate any more until I've used some. The Ministry should have informed you I wouldn't be here last week. It was a last-minute decision."

Draco smiled to himself, blindly reaching for another candy.

"They did." He opened his eyes, recoiling against the offensive brightness in the room. "What did you do?" he asked.

"I stayed at home. I read a lot. Did some laundry, deep cleaned my kitchen."

Draco sat up straight, ignoring the lurch in his stomach at the motion. He popped another candy in his mouth, wishing it had some kind of stomach-soothing properties. He forced himself to speak through the nausea. This was of critical importance.

"That's appalling, Granger. That is not a holiday. That's manual labor. Trust me, I appreciate cleanliness as much as anyone, but I'm not spending a holiday on it. Holidays are meant to be spent on beaches, or snow-covered mountains, or exploring ruined ancient cities. Even museums—which I enjoy quite a bit, but have been reliably informed are not a favorite holiday activity for most—would be preferable to deep cleaning a kitchen."

That had been a lot of words. In rapid succession. Coupled with images of grease stains on kitchen surfaces. Draco felt unwell. Extremely unwell. He laid back down, one hand clutching his stomach and the other thrown over his eyes to block out the light. He opted, benevolently, to ignore the impolite snigger hovering somewhere above him.

"Well, I hardly have time to deep clean my kitchen otherwise. It was a good opportunity."

Draco let the hand covering his face fall away, forcing his eyes open. He furrowed his brows, determined to convey his disbelief. That was ridiculous. She was Hermione Granger. Surely he had every hour of every day planned to the second, accounting for everything in her life, manual labor included.

She sighed again.

"I'm here from nine in the morning to seven or eight in the evening, five days a week. I don't have an abundance of free time."

He narrowed his eyes. He didn't buy it. Alas—there were still alternatives preferable to wasting one's free time on something so mundane as chores.

"You should have said something. I could have loaned you an elf for the week."

"Absolutely not." Her voice pitched to a nearly inhuman sound, ricochetting between his ears and stabbing at an exceptionally painful place just behind his sinuses.

Despite the pain in his skull, Draco laughed: a cackle that lurched his stomach and amplified the pounding behind his eyes. It was worth it.

"I was kidding, Granger. I'm aware of your thoughts on the subject. I was witness to your spew days, after all. Though Topsy might have volunteered; she's quite fond of you." He groaned, pressure throbbing in his brain.

Granger looked torn between hexing him and pitying him, a not altogether unfamiliar expression for him to see warring on someone's face. Disgraced son of a Death Eater and a victim of his circumstances? Or old enough and smart enough to know the consequences to his actions? Most days he didn't know. Most days he'd say it was a little bit of both.

"What's going on with you, anyway," she asked. "You look like you've been hit by the Knight Bus."

"Could have been, don't remember much. I'm extremely hungover."

"And eating candies at barely ten in the morning."

Even Narcissa Malfoy would have been proud of Granger's you aren't to eat sweets at this hour tone.

"Birthday sweets can be had at any time of the day; everyone knows that. And if you plan to take that tone with me, then I won't be sharing any with you."

She cocked her head.

"It's your birthday?"

"Yesterday, hence the candy and the hangover. Blaise mixes drinks like you wouldn't believe, and Theo insists on having a good time until you literally can't stand."

Quiet, just for a beat.

"And your fiancée?" she asked, voice uncertain around the edges.

Draco might have rolled his eyes if the idea of engaging in such a motion didn't send his entire head spinning.

"Astoria made an obligatory appearance, had an obligatory drink, and left before my friends became obligatory arses. All for the best."

"Oh," she said, and that was it. But he could see her processing, that same face of deliberate, debilitating thinking winding its way through every muscle, in every flicker of an expression. She had something on her mind, came to some kind of conclusion, but she let it drop, returning to her work and leaving him in blissful quiet as he slept off his hangover.

She could have truly gutted his home that day; he would neither have noticed nor cared.

—

"I have something for you," Granger said in greeting as she stepped through the Floo later that month.

Draco lifted a brow, nodding to greet her as he always did, and turned to walk with her towards the library.

"Well, hold on," she said. "You don't want it?"

Draco turned back to her, puzzled. "Oh—it's a thing? I just assumed you meant an obscure fact you wanted to tell me. Or an embarrassing story about Potter, you know those are worth actual gold to me. Or maybe a renewed proposal on how to free the manor's house elves—"

"Oh, shut it Malfoy, and sit."

She pointed at the tufted green velvet sofa.

"You're kind of fun when you're bossy," he said beneath his breath, following her directions regardless and planting himself on the sofa.

She laughed.

"You did not feel that way in school. Anyway, here. I asked about it—I thought—well, it seemed only fair that you should have it back."

She held out a long narrow box. He knew the shape of the box well, every witch or wizard did. How could they not? Draco tried not to gasp, tried not to look too thrown off kilter as he reached for it. He slid the top of the box off and blinked, eyesight blurred for a brief second before it cleared again.

His wand. The wand he'd lost hope of ever seeing again. He occluded, just enough to steady himself as he reached for it. Without the safety of his barriers, he knew his hand would have trembled.

He felt the familiar rush of magic flow through him the moment his fingers touched the hawthorne handle. Gods. It was like discovering dry land in the middle of the ocean, steady and sure after what felt like years at the mercy of rocking waves. And Granger had given this to him. Granger, who now witnessed his unblinking eye contact with a wand.

"I—uh, do you need a minute?" she asked, shifting her weight from foot to foot, as if she couldn't decide if she should stay or go.

He tried to act casual, tried to look unaffected.

"I don't need alone time with my wand, Granger." He smirked for good measure.

He only realized the double meaning when she flushed, a rise of pink creeping up from beneath her collar. Her eyes widened as the entendre dawned on her, he assumed, in several layers of detail.

He wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh or feel equally as embarrassed.

"I didn't mean it like that—I just. It's different from my other wand. More familiar."

She fidgeted again, as if physically fighting off her embarrassment. But she smiled: a small thing.

"What's the difference, do you think?" she asked, opting to sit next to him in what felt like a wary sort of peace offering.

He cast a couple of showy charms: sparks, lights, little gusts of wind, a tendril of smoke. He levitated the box and let it come to rest on the end table again. He conjured a strip of green ribbon and sent it towards her hair, where it burrowed through her curls before it emerged, winding around and through it, binding it at the nape of her neck. Granger huffed in annoyance as she lifted her hands to find the ribbon.

"Probably the core," he said, finally answering her question as he ignored her examination of what he'd done to her hair. Charms were so much easier with this wand; he'd almost forgotten how intuitive they could feel. "Unicorn hair instead of dragon heartstring. My newer wand may have more inherent power with the heartstrings, but this one, with the unicorn hair, it just—always felt more me."

"Unicorn hair," she repeated, softly, but with something like amusement peeking through.

He stopped fiddling with charms.

"Something funny about my wand?"

Gods. Schoolboy wand in hand and he already sounded exactly like he had back then, too: all bite and sneer and words meant to wound.

"No," she said, surprisingly calm considering the tone he'd just taken. "It's not funny, not at all. I'm just surprised."

"What do you have to be surprised about?"

"It's difficult to cast dark magic with a unicorn hair wand, that's all."

Oh.

Draco lowered his wand, letting it rest on his lap. He couldn't look at her.

"I know," was all he said. And really, he probably knew it more than most.

—

Draco spent the entire afternoon practicing charms. Pointedly, he ignored the occasional sounds of amusement he heard coming from Granger's direction as she worked on one of the many rows of history books his family had accumulated over the centuries.

He'd been deep in thought, watching the wisps of smoke from a fire charm dancing above his head, when Granger dropped an enormous tome on the table in front of him. He jumped at the thud and then scowled, not appreciating the smirk she lobbed at him.

"Lovely, Granger. What is this?"

"You know, you're quite good at charms," she said, eyeing the space above him where flames had danced moments before.

"Unicorn hair is good for charms and I—it was my best subject behind potions." He frowned. "Don't try to distract me, Granger. I can see the misdirection hiding in that fluff you call hair. What's with the book?"

She reached, just briefly, for the ribbon still tying her hair back, as if to confirm that it hadn't escaped its binds. She tapped her fingers on the cover of the book. Draco tilted his head, craning to read the spine.

"Do you—does your family—do you ever loan books out?"

He shouldn't have smirked. The moment the corner of his mouth lifted, brow raised, she rolled her eyes and sighed. Her shoulders sank, and her hands slipped from the cover, tapping irritably on the table.

"Never mind, Malfoy. If you're going to be a prat about it—"

"Why do you want to read a book on Sacred Twenty Eight genealogy? Lot's of overlap, gets pretty repetitive."

That earned him a small smirk in return.

"I was just—interested in understanding, better, where it comes from."

It. Hatred for her very existence, she meant.

"You won't find it in there, Granger. This book will only make it worse."

One of her nails scraped against the wood grain on the table. Draco watched as her fingers flexed, twitched, formed a fist: the only indication of whatever thought had barreled through her. Normally so dynamic, the thoughts crawling across her face had stilled. No amount of connecting the dots between her freckles could make sense of her expression.

Her voice came out quiet, strained against her vocal cords in a register she didn't normally use. "I don't see how it can be any worse than wanting me dead." Draco could hear the tension in her throat, fighting her words.

His stomach sank, despairing for her and embarrassed for himself and his family: a whole lineage of people who'd culminated in the current disaster of the Malfoy name. He reached for the book and flipped it open. The enormous tome, thick as a cake, practically groaned as he cracked the long-disused spine. He thumbed to the Malfoy line, thick parchment stiff between his fingers as he turned through centuries, traveling back in time.

He found the page he sought and rotated the book towards Granger, sliding it back across the table. He pointed at the name at the top of the page and, next to it: blood status.

Muggle.

"Before the Statute for Secrecy. A very long time ago. This is what makes it worse, Granger." He risked a glance up at her. Her lips were moving, mouthing the words as she read, eyes focused and growing glassy. She touched a finger to the name, some long-dead ancestor of his who didn't have a single drop of magic in her veins. "Just shows you that none of it really mattered. Maybe it won't make a difference for you. But for me, that makes it worse."

"Is this"—she swallowed, a heavy motion—"normal? Common?"

"In pureblood families? Yeah, Granger. Things were different a few centuries ago, though you'll have trouble getting most of the Sacred Twenty Eight to admit to any of it."

"You just did."

Draco twirled his wand between his fingers, watching as it spun. Anything to avoid looking at her.

"Yeah, well—I'm nearly as annoyed about it as you probably are." In his periphery, he saw her shoulders sink by a fraction. "And not—shit, that probably sounded—I'm not annoyed because I have some muggle ancestors from the sixteenth century. I'm annoyed because it means—I don't know, nothing."

Draco wanted to sprint out of the library, remove himself from her presence as he'd started to slip, to stumble, to spill.

The library doors swung open, saving him from his impulse to disappear.

Draco groaned; they were early.

"Granger's still here," Theo nearly shouted, announcing his entrance. Blaise trailed behind, a hint of amusement betraying his mostly impassive expression.

"Hello—" she started.

Theo thrust a hand at her, "Theodore Nott, call me Theo."

She took his hand, a flash of confusion crossing her face.

"I—I know who you are, Theo. We went to school together for six years." She tilted her whole body to peer behind him, "and hello, Blaise."

"Oh, no, no, Granger. You should be thanking me for saving you from the mortification of having to admit you had no idea who I am. Classmates or not. Though, I'm annoyed you remember Blaise," Theo said, taking a seat at the table across from Draco, next to where Granger still stood above the book. "This could have been very uncomfortable, for all parties. Me especially. Thank a bloke next time he saves you by being all"—a vague wave at his person—"magnanimous."

"Fair warning, Granger, it sounds like Theo might be a little drunk," Draco said, sending a pointed look in Theo's direction.

Her face, which had slipped into outright awe at the show Theo had just put on, shifted. Her eyes widened, a smile twitching at the corners of her mouth, amusement hidden beneath the surface.

Blaise took a seat on the other side of Theo. He dragged a chair out next to him, a scrape of wooden legs against stone floors echoing through the space, and propped his feet up. No one spoke as they adjusted to the shift in dynamic, in the doubling of personalities in the room, quadrupling if you accounted for the sheer space Theo's tended to take up.

Theo reached out and pulled the book towards him.

"Oh, how thrilling. Are we betting on incest? A classic, of course."

Granger paled, watching as Theo flipped through the pages in the enormous book. Draco, appalled as he was, also wanted to laugh. She probably thought Theo was joking, but there had definitely been bets about incest in the past. Whose family had the most, the most recent, the most severe.

"Aha," Theo said, trailing his finger down a page. He cleared his throat, "Cantankerous Nott married to Adelia also Nott, first cousins. Eighteenth century. I have furniture older than that."

Granger craned to confirm what he'd read. Theo slid the book towards her.

"I do so love celebrating the day of my birth with an existential crisis about inbreeding."

"Oh," Granger said, closing the offending book and sliding it away from them. She hovered by the table; she wouldn't have looked so out of place if not for the nervous chewing on her bottom lip and the rapid glancing between the three of them. "Happy birthday, Theo. You—must have plans, I'll just wrap up my work for today."

"No you don't, Granger. As the birthday boy, I hereby request you stay and have fun with us."

Granger looked dumbfounded.

"But—why? You don't know me—you don't even like me. Why would you want me here for your birthday?"

Theo laughed, "Draco likes you just fine, and I defer to his judgement in most things. Except on the acceptability of peacocks as pets. And on potions as an enjoyable discipline. And on the appropriate number of charms to keep one's hair in place—"

"She gets the point, Theo." Draco had gone still, pinned under the casual, blatant assessment that Draco not only didn't actively disapprove of Granger, but rather, that he liked her. That could not—was not—no. He could tolerate her fine, act civil towards her, annoy her for amusement, but actively like her? That simply wasn't allowed: a line too far that he would not, should not, could not cross.

Theo rolled his eyes and called for Topsy.

Crack.

Well, that certainly wouldn't help Theo's cause. Granger cringed. Her brows furrowed, her eyes narrowed, and she looked so hopelessly at Topsy—like every drop of magic in her bones wanted to crush the elf in a hug and offer her safe passage to another land—that Draco's chest actually clenched. And that was ridiculous.

"Ah, Topsy, my sweet," Theo said. He dipped his head and extended his hand in a low and dramatic bow-cum-handshake. "Mopsy returns your regards from the Nott Estate and wishes you good health on this summer solstice."

The elf trembled under Theo's formality, the tips of her long, drooping ears stained a maroonish-pink. Some days, Draco wondered if Theo's antics were actually a strangely specific form of torture for Topsy, who could barely handle his praise and affection.

Topsy made several unintelligible noises, presumably an attempt to speak.

"Topsy, today is my birthday and Draco would like to break out several expensive bottles of liquor to celebrate, would you mind terribly popping to the main cellars and grabbing them for us? Feel free to dip into Master Lucius's personal reserves as well, only the best for my special day and all."

If Topsy vibrated with any more nervous energy she might simply pop out of existence. Draco dared a look at Granger. She watched Theo with her head tilted to the side, knuckles pressed into the table next to her, a look of wonder and confusion clouding her normally clear eyes.

Topsy made a squeaking sound and disappeared under the table, reemerging next to Draco. The elf looked up at him, waiting for confirmation of Theo's request. The answer stalled on the tip of Draco's tongue: of course, yes, sounds wonderful. But Granger had turned to him, watching. And suddenly the idea of having Topsy delivering several bottles of liquor when they could just as easily get it themselves—

Draco had lost his gods damned mind. He shook his head, not at Topsy, but more to clear his thoughts. Granger had hijacked his brain.

He risked a glance up at her and immediately regretted it. She looked so serious, so preemptively disappointed. Well, that wasn't fair. Theo, on the other hand, looked like he couldn't wait to see how this played out. And Blaise looked rather uninterested, staring vaguely in Theo's direction as he balanced on two legs of his chair.

Draco looked back at Topsy. She stared up at him, eyes wide, the very face of pleading.

Draco swallowed, jaw tense.

"Yes, Topsy, that would be excellent."

"Malfoy," Granger said, voice low as her hands came down on the table.

"My house, Granger. She would have been heartbroken if I didn't let her help with Theo's birthday. She likes him more than she likes me—"

Theo cut in with an, "Obviously, I'm nicer to her."

"I'm hardly cruel to her, Theo," Draco said, jaw tensing and he tried to communicate via eye contact that he should not say things like that in front of Granger. A voice that sounded very much like a disinterested Blaise flared to life in the back of his head: why does that matter?

"The Malfoy elves are free, Granger." This time, Blaise actually did speak. All the heads in the room swiveled to him. Theo pouted, Draco sighed, and Granger's eyes grew round and wide.

"Don't ruin my fun. Draco was right; she is fun to tease," Theo said. He jumped to greet Topsy when she reappeared in a crack, levitating several bottles of liquor with her.

Draco could feel his mouth tightening, tendons in his jaw flexing under the force grinding his teeth together. Granger had turned to him again: anger etched in the line between her furrowed brows, the pursing of her lips, and the slight twitch at the corner of her right eye.

"You never said." It sounded like an accusation.

"It was Ministry mandated, Granger. I didn't think you'd find it especially impressive that we didn't have a choice. Topsy and several of the others stick around because they want to."

"Want to," she repeated his words. "Want to." Her voice pitched.

"Granger, it's my birthday," Theo said, wrapping her fingers around a shot glass, pulling her from where she'd held her palms open towards the sky, seeking Merlin's ghost for support, no doubt. "Take a shot and shut up, I want to have fun now."

Granger, for her part, allowed Theo to steer her to the seat he'd formerly occupied and, with almost no prompting, she downed the shot and grumbled a furious—and furiously endearing—"fine."

—

Draco would never have bet, even if given the option to pick the most outlandish, unexpected outcome, that he would have the chance to witness a drunk Hermione Granger socializing with him and his friends. And having a damn good time, too.

To be fair, Draco had also indulged in several drinks, and if he moved his head too quickly, the room took a blink to catch up with him, slogging behind in slow motion. Theo seemed as wobbly and intoxicated as Granger, laughing easily and shouting most of his words for no reason. Draco couldn't tell how much Blaise had partaken, but he kept mixing delicious drinks for the rest of them, so he clearly still had adequate use of his motor functions.

"Theo. Theo—Theo," Granger said, repeating the name with increasing urgency when she couldn't get him to look up at her.

They'd revisited the genealogy book, flipping between pages, laughing together at ridiculous, outdated names and oohing and ahhing over particularly scandalous unions. Draco and Blaise had started a very lazy game of poker to distract themselves from the constant screeching over Felcuin this and Idoine that and my gods look at this; an eighty-six year age difference, that's barbaric.

"No, it's true," Granger was saying, face hunched closer to the pages than necessary. "The Queen, Theo. The actual queen."

Theo laughed. "Granger the wizarding world hasn't had a queen in—I don't know. Millenia? Maybe ever? I'm drunk and it's a little fizzy, no—fuzzy. I didn't care for History of Magic."

"You got an 'O' on that NEWT," Draco cut in, letting his playing cards drop to the table. He and Blaise had mostly been pretending anyway.

Theo tapped a finger to his temple.

"Intuition," he said.

Granger's head shot up from where she'd still been intensively studying the book. She blinked rapidly, looked briefly like she might tip backwards, before righting herself and turning to Theo.

"You can't use intuition in History of Magic—it's about facts. You can't—"

"Don't hurt yourself trying to understand how Theo does anything he does, Granger. It's a mystery to all of us," Draco said. He took a sip of his firewhiskey, enjoying how he could barely even feel the burn as the liquid slid down his throat, shooting off tendrils of delicious heat in his chest as it descended.

Granger looked at him, for the first time in what had likely been an hour of peculiar bonding between her and Theo. A flush of pink crawled up her neck, more of it smearing her cheeks. Her hair, still tied by the ribbon he'd charmed, had started fluffing out around her temples, giving her a wild sort of look. He wondered, seeing how glassy and distant her eyes had become, if his own were much of the same.

"I can also make portkeys that travel inside buildings," Theo said.

And just like that, Draco lost her attention to Theo again. He sent his glass sliding across the table towards Blaise, who obliged him with a refill and an unwarranted look of assessment.

"You cannot," Granger said.

"Yes I can. Draco, tell her. You've tested them."

In another blink, he had her attention again. He liked her attention, it warmed him like firewhiskey.

"You tested illegal, experimental portkeys?" she asked.

"Didn't you break into Gringotts?" he countered.

Her flush deepened beneath her freckles, from pink to near red as she dropped her gaze.

"You what?" Theo asked, slapping the table unnecessarily. The shouting had been enough to get the point across.

Granger lifted both of her hands, creating a blinder on one side of her head to effectively block Theo from her view. "How do you know about that?" she asked in a loud whisper when she finally looked at Draco again. She did an excellent job ignoring Theo poking at her palms.

"You broke into one of my family's vaults. Of course I know about it."

Draco expected her to drop eye contact, to look sheepish or embarrassed over confirmation of her lawbreaking. Instead, still ignoring Theo trying to poke his way through her hands as she shielded one side of her face, she smirked.

Merlin, she smirked.

And it only got worse from there.

She dropped her hands, swatting at Theo as if they'd been best friends for years, and stood. She leaned over the table towards Draco, testing every ounce of his gentlemanly manners to not glance down a witch's shirt when presented with the opportunity. He did it anyway, manners be damned. But his eyes were the only thing he seemed capable of controlling; every other part of him had frozen as she leaned over the table, giggling as she did so, stopping only when her face was distractingly close to his.

Voice dropped to a low whisper, a smirk still tugging at her pretty—pretty?—little mouth, "Do you know what I did after I broke into Gringotts?"

Draco was going to experience spontaneous combustion at the hands of Hermione Granger. He just knew it. She smelled nice. She was close enough that he could tell.

And she was relaxed, so at ease in a way he'd never imagined Granger even capable of being. He'd limited his previous impression of her to books and timetables and fastidious dependency on rules and order. But this Granger—this Granger knew how to have some fun.

And fuck she was pretty. And fun. And smart. And fuck.

He'd forgotten she was going to say something, lost in the inferno inside his own skull. But then her lips—apparently he'd been staring at them—moved.

"I rode a dragon."

He honestly thought he'd imagined it. A sick, intrusive, wet dream kind of thought popping into his consciousness, sounding like Granger. But then she laughed, settling herself back in her seat across the table, and Theo said, "Did you say dragon, Granger?"

Draco felt like he'd been hit with a confringo, ablaze and blasted apart, heat roaring through him. He had to adjust himself in his trousers, as inconspicuously as possible, having grown inconveniently hard in a matter of seconds.

Across the table, Draco caught Blaise watching him, seeing straight through him, as he usually did. He watched as Blaise's eyes flicked quickly towards Granger and then back again. With a quirk of his brow and a contemplative look, Blaise took a sip of his drink.

"Draco, is your fiancée planning on making an appearance this evening?" Blaise asked after his sip.

Any fledgling, inappropriate erections Draco might have been nurturing died at the reminder that Astoria—well, that she was meant to be something to him.

"I don't know," he said.

"Shouldn't you?" from Blaise as Theo made an annoyed sound in the background.

"Why?" Draco asked. He noticed that the movement across the table from him had stilled; Hermione's giggling now absent.

"Well, because she's your fiancée. Do you not want to spend time with her?"

What in the ever-living fuck was Blaise doing?

"It's a betrothal agreement, not a romance."

"What a lovely foundation to build a life on."

If Hermione—wait? Hermione? No, Granger—hadn't been sitting directly across from him, silent and still and so obviously intrigued, Draco might have challenged Blaise to a duel just to burn off some of his anger. Some of the liquor, too.

But Blaise kept staring at him. Granger did, too, he suspected. Even Theo had gone quiet. What exactly did they want from him? His temple throbbed, the first sign that maybe he'd reached a limit, or should impose one.

"I didn't ask for it," he said, wishing in the same breath that he'd stayed silent. Because the three identical looks of pity, useless looks he had no interest in, made him want to hex them all: one by one, and slowly.

But it was Theo's birthday, so he endured. Occlumency and alcohol did not mix; his magic became sloppy under the influence, but Draco tried anyway. Tried to freeze out, pack away and forget every last intrusively affectionate and unfortunately lustful thought he'd had toward Granger in that library. They weren't real thoughts, just the result of alcohol, boredom, or proximity.

He didn't really think any of those things about Granger. And he repeated that thought to himself, over and over again, right up until Theo asked her about her relationship with Weasley.

"Oh," she said. "We broke up last year."

It shouldn't have changed anything.

If he occluded hard enough, sloppy and mostly useless from the liquor, he could almost convince himself it didn't.