Potter and Weasley were child's play to sneak past - too clumped together and noisy to manage the proper amount of serious contemplation being quiet actually required. Draco Malfoy could hear them as he walked past (a simple slip beside a statue, and a clickety-clock noise of a tossed stone had them looking in the opposite direction for just enough time. His heart beat as he walked by, but he smiled a proper smirk, and enjoyed the careful sneak. Cunning was as subtle does, and it was always Slytherin. He had time to strap the message to a school owl, and whisk off his cloak before the Dynamic Duo showed up. They gaped as they ran in, confused as to why Draco Malfoy was standing there.

Idiots. They wouldn't realize until later that they hadn't seen him come by (his tatty cloak was well shrunk and stored inside a dresspocket).

"Where'd he go?" Harry Potter asked, bottle green eyes blinking confusedly.

"Did you see a bloke in a tatty cloak?" Weasley said, not having stopped to think about why asking Draco Malfoy anything was a bad idea.

"You mean who wasn't you? Can't say that I have, honestly. Though if I did see one, I'm not so certain I'd help you at any rate." Draco Malfoy said with an easy shrug, striding forward with a gait that expected the other two to step aside.

As usual, they failed to take any hint, and at the moment when Draco Malfoy was sure he was going to crash shoulders in with both of them, Harry Potter held up a hand, taking the blow in stride.

"What is it, Potter? I haven't got all day..." Draco Malfoy spat, his hatred shining through his storm gray eyes. Draco Malfoy could see the thoughts turning clearly in Potter's mind, the fleeting thought that it might have been Malfoy sending the letters - and Draco Malfoy fought back a knife-sharp smile at the look in Potter's eye, as Draco's seething hatred cleared any such thoughts out of his mind.

Hermione opened her mail late, as she looked down at it. "Let me see!" Padma squealed, and the other two girls echoed her laughter.

Hermione carefully passed the missive out, looking at it softly.

"Confucious, of all things..." Padma said with a smile.

"Confucious?" Hermione asked confusedly.

"He wrote that it is better to bend like the reed than stand tall like the oak, which will break in the storm." Padma said. "I told you he was Ravenclaw."

The other two girls laughed at this, and Hermione asked, "Isn't that a Muggle philosopher?"

Padma, pureblooded as she was, nodded and said, "British wizards know about Christianity, at least a little. Indians learn about muggle religions too - just different ones."

Lavender braided Parvati's hair as Hermione began to pepper the other two girls with questions about Muggle religions, swiftly losing herself in the intricacies of Indian religions. By the end, she couldn't distinguish Shiva from Buddha, and yet felt that she had been enormously enriched anyway. That summer, she was going to read more Muggle literature, she promised herself.

[a/n: Write a review? If you're curious as to why Draco Malfoy knows about Confucius, you can straight out blame Severus Snape. He hasn't any moral reason to keep Muggle books away from his House, and at any rate, most Purebloods wouldn't recognize that they were Muggle.]