Author's Note: And another chapter is born. Thank you to everybody who reads and reviews. It helps keep the creative juices flowing to know that the hard work I put in on writing this is appreciated. On that note, I was watching Labyrinth today and had some fan fic ideas percolating in my brain afterwards. Would anyone read a Labyrinth if I took the plunge into that fandom, or am I the only one fascinated by the Goblin King? He's so sparkly.

And I'll be flying tomorrow, so reviews would be a fun surprise between connections. I colored today for the first time in a while. Johanna Basford's grown up coloring books are awesome. I highly recommend them.

Chapter 28: Science

Draco put his mind to the task of asking out Hermione with a will. Or, he would have done, if she hadn't knocked on his door fairly early in the morning. He was really only at the musing stage at that hour—not really at the iron willed focus he'd need for a task of this importance.

He stood at the door in his pajamas. He'd done his best to smooth his hair back and straighten them before he answered the door, but he had no idea he still had a tuft of hair sticking up on the left side. "Hermione."

"Hi, Draco. I was thinking that since the library is closed today, and I don't have my lesson with Belby, we could go down to Heathrow. The airport, I mean. We were talking last week about airplanes. This might be a good time for you to see them in action. The airport is always open," she said, pulling her fluffy bathrobe closer to her.

The blonde looked over his shoulder at the clock. It was hardly past eight. He'd gotten as far as filling his kettle with water for tea, but hadn't heated it yet. He wasn't too sure what to expect at the airport, but spending a day with Hermione was probably more effective than spending the day watching Muggle television to find suggestions for courting her without any of his usual charming methods at his disposal. "It should be educational. Do I have time to put some actual clothes on, or are we going dressed like this?" he asked, running a finger over the cuff of his silk pajama shirt.

"Get dressed. Of course. I mean, I can't go in my bathrobe either. We're having pancakes across the hall if you want some. I don't think Ginny's eaten them all."

Draco was a little deflated that the Weaselette would be coming on there outing, but he didn't show it. "I'll be right over." As he shut the door, he would have sworn he saw her smile. He dressed quickly in slacks and a sweater, shrugging his jacket on, and adding his new scarf and gloves, though he tucked the gloves into his jacket pocket. He did his best to flatten the uncooperative bit of his hair with water and ended up glaring at his reflexion.

As Hermione had promised, there was a stack of pancakes on the table, and Ginny was sitting there having breakfast when he walked in. Hermione was out of sight, presumably getting dressed.

Draco fetched himself a cup of coffee from the coffee pot and sat down at the table. He tried to ignore her, but the redhead was grinning at him cheekily. "What?" he asked.

"You are absurd," she said.

He narrowed his eyes at her and carefully took two pancakes onto his plate. "I'm absurd, Weaselette?"

"You are. And don't call me Weaselette."

"If you really want to bother her, Draco, you have to call her Ginerva," Hermione said, coming out in jeans and a cardigan.

Draco gave a predatory grin. "Please pass the butter, Ginerva."

The redhead glared at her friend. "I can't believe you did that, Hermione. You know how that name grates on me."

"I know. Which is why I also know you'll stop whatever torment you were waging against him and he'll stop calling you Ginerva." She looked at them both pleasantly as she sat herself down at the table, but there was clearly an unspoken "or else" in her statement. "Ginny, did you decide whether or not you're coming with us?"

Draco suddenly wished he hadn't tormented the girl a few minutes before.

"I'm still thinking about it. Mum is expecting me back, but I imagine dad will tell me I'm crazy for missing such a great opportunity to observe wonderful Muggle creations if I don't go," she said.

They finished breakfast, and in the end, Ginny mercifully decided not to accompany them. Her mother had been skittish as it was about sending her away for an evening.

"I guess it's just us then," Hermione said, gathering up her things. "Let's go."

They spent a fair while on the underground before arriving at the airport, taking the elevator up. "You can't go all the way to the gate where people board. You have to have a ticket," she explained quietly. "There are a lot of security measures. Some of these planes are massive—carrying hundreds of people. A lot could go wrong if someone had a mind to do it."

Draco was floored at the sheer number of check in kiosks, manned by harried-looking customer services reps taking care of the long lines of impatient people toting their baggage.

"Basically, after you check in, they take your bags and make sure there's nothing dangerous in them. Then you pass through security—they make sure you're not carrying any weapons. And then you can go through to the gate. There's usually a few stores, and restaurants, and some rather uncomfortable chairs to sit on while you wait to board your flight. Come on, there's one restaurant over this way, where we can see the flights come in on this side of the gate. We'll get a coffee." She led the way to a restaurant outside of security and they grabbed a seat by the window.

Draco looked out across the pavement and was astounded at the size of the machines he saw. He'd seen airplanes on television since his enforced year without magic had begun, but nothing he'd seen really prepared him for the reality of a large passenger plane—gleaming metal, round bellied, tall enough for a person to walk under, and filled with dozens of rose of windows. "That thing gets off the ground?" he asked, dubiously.

"Every day," Hermione confirmed. Just keep watching.

He listened while Hermione narrated what he was seeing. His eyes bulged at the number of people she said transited through here in a day, from all over the world.

"Oh look, that one's taking off," she told him, pointing a little ways along the window.

Draco's mouth gaped open as he watched the massive machine beginning rolling down the runway, picking up speed as it went, going faster and faster until the front wheels and then the back where off of the ground. A flying machine carrying hundreds of Muggles was airborne, with no magic.

The brunette smiled. "It's pretty impressive, isn't it?"

He nodded mutely. It was just as well wizard kind was hidden from the Muggles. Magic might not be quite as much of an advantage as he'd always assumed. If the Muggles could get thousands of pounds of metal with hundreds of people on it airborne, what else could they do?

"If you think this is impressive, you should look up the space programs. Muggles went to the moon decades ago. People have actually stood on it. Hogwarts' Muggle Studies class never covered that. I was actually reading in the paper a few weeks ago that they've just launched the first part for what will be an international space station orbiting earth." She looked at him. "Have wizards ever made it to the moon? Or any space exploration?"

Draco frowned. "There were a couple of wizards about a hundred years ago who tried. It didn't end real well, and people thought they were mad for even attempting it."

Hermione frowned. "The best solution might be to put train wizards as astronauts and get them into space on the international space station, and then have them do exploration off planet from there. But I think it will be a couple of years before it's ready for habitation."

They passed time sitting in the cafe, watching the plans, and talking. Draco realized that for as much as he knew about charms, transfiguration, and potions, there were whole areas of study that he didn't even know existed. He had a fairly good grasp of math, and writing, but his history of the last 1000 years tended to center on the wizarding world and only involved Muggles when their paths crossed. Physics, biology, chemistry, medicine…all the sciences that had allowed Muggles to get where they were today. He'd never before felt like he knew so little.

"I don't know as much as I'd like to about chemistry and physics," Hermione admitted. "I know what I learned in primary school, and I've done some studying on my own, but they're wide fields, and there's a lot that I don't know." She pushed her hair back away from her face. "I would have liked to come out of Hogwarts with a full knowledge of the wizarding world, and a full knowledge of everything I would have learned in a Muggle school, but I guess there aren't enough hours in the day. I couldn't really go back into the Muggle world after Hogwarts—I don't have an academic record that would get me anywhere I'd want to be. But sometimes I'm still surprised at the things that I don't know about the wizarding world. I know Ginny's learned dozens of basic household spells from her mother, and I've picked up a few of them, but a lot of those aren't taught at Hogwarts. They're handed down mother to daughter and absorbed over a lifetime."

Draco reached for his coffee to take a sip and realized it was long empty. Oh well. "I'm sure Mrs. Weasley would teach you, if you asked."

"I'm sure she would. But I don't think it's the sort of thing she could come up with in an afternoon. I'm sure there are seasonally related spells, cooking…dozens or hundreds of little things that you just pick up during a lifetime. Things that I haven't. You always used to say that Muggle-borns weren't the same as the rest of you, weren't as good. Good is subjective, but I guess it's true to say we're not exactly the same. No matter how much I read, there will always be things I don't know."

He shook his head emphatically. "We're the same in all the ways that matter. You taught me that."

Hermione met his eyes. She could hear the truth in his voice and was surprised at the level of sincerity. You couldn't just reshape someone's worldview in a few months. That didn't happen. Not really. But she found her lips curling in a slow smile anyway. An echoing smile appeared on his face before they both looked away.

"I realized a long time ago, that my bloodlines didn't make my magic any stronger than yours. I felt like it should have, but, if school was any indication, it didn't. It didn't give me better friends. For as much flak as I gave you about Potter and Weasley…they were real friends." He wasn't looking at her, but shrugged, embarrassed all the same. He did his best to pretend to move past it. "Admittedly, I do have a better nose, and much better hair."

"What's wrong with my nose?" she asked, suddenly reaching for it, as if checking to make sure it was still in the same shape she thought it was.

"Nothing particularly. It just doesn't have my aristocratic line." He turned his head to give her a good profile view, and she laughed.

It was a good day.

Draco contemplated what the best course of action was for him. He wanted to be around Hermione all the time. He was slaving away at the library in hopes of a job opening up. Their discussion at the airport had further opened his eyes to just how little he knew at the Muggle world. He at least knew people at the library now. He was beginning to feel that going anywhere else would reveal his woefully inadequate knowledge of the Muggle world.

The image of Hermione perched on the arm of his chair, and the smell of her shampoo, and feel of her lips as she leaned down to kiss him on New Year's was seared into his mind. He desperately wanted to be able to do that again…and again.

Still, he didn't ask her out.

Despite Ginny's assurances that Hermione would be pleased with something as simple as dinner in his flat, he wanted to do more, do better. They had had dinner at one another's flats many times over the last six months. He needed to be sure that she knew it was a date, and that he'd put forth effort into doing it right.

He'd flipped through the channels, watching Muggle courtship rituals. Knocking on the door with a bouquet of flowers seemed to be a favorite. Serenading a girl under her window seemed to be a bit hit or miss; Draco decided not to try his luck with that one. Going to the movies seemed to be a popular date night choice—according to television anyway—and usually stealing some kisses in the dark. It sounded rather rubbish. If you were going to pay to get into a movie, wouldn't you rather watch it? And if you were only watching under pretense and really there to make out, wouldn't that be better served at home?

Muggles.

In his determination to get it right, he even when so far as to seek advice from his coworkers. One of the people he'd worked with often and was on fairly reasonable terms with was working the busy Saturday night shift with him. Towards the end of the night, when things were slowing down, he finally asked the question. "Where's the best place around here to take someone you really want to impress?"

Rick continued loading up his tray. "Fancy someone?"

"You could say that."

"Is it the new girl at the bar? Because I think she's already seeing Frank."

"No, no one from here. She's special. I want to sweep her off her feet. Any suggestions?"

"What's she like?"

"She's smart, funny, kind…nicer than I probably deserve," he admitted.

"No, not what is she like. What does she like? Sports? Clothes? Movies?"

"Books. Anything she can learn. Showing off how smart she is."

Rick gave him a look. "And you want to go out with her?"

"Yes," Draco said, starting to sound annoyed.

"Take her to a library."

Draco found this advice slightly less than helpful. Taking her to the library where he was volunteering was not exactly his idea of a big romantic gesture. But maybe it was the start of an idea. He forced himself to seek aid from Theresa on Monday. They were in one of the back rooms, placing barcodes on a new shipment of books, and scanning them into the new computer system Theresa was excited about. He wasn't entirely sure how to broach the subject, but he did his best.

"Theresa?"

"Yes?" she said, setting another book aside.

"If I was going to take someone to a really impressive library…which one would you recommend? Preferably outside the city."

"Outside the city?" she frowned. "There are so many good ones right here." She thought for a moment. "There's the Bodleian, at Oxford. One of the biggest in the country. And gorgeous. They have open hours for visitors, unlike some of the other university libraries."

"How far is it?"

"About an hour and a half by train. Maybe a little more or less by car depending on traffic."

"Perfect." He frowned. "And…train tickets. Will my Oyster card work?"

She looked at him like he might be a bit daft. "No, you'll have to go to the station and purchase your tickets."

He frowned. He'd have to find out how to do that. Clearly asking Theresa any more questions was only going to make things worse. "Thanks." He handed her the last barcoded book from his stack. "I'll go open the next box."

She started after him, not sure exactly what the conversation had just been about, or how he could have made it this far along in life without ever purchasing a train ticket before.

It took Draco a few days to sort out his preparations. With their opposite schedules, he'd need to wait until he had a night off to go over and ask her the important question, and figure out what day they'd both be available for an all day outing. It took a lot of bargaining to get someone to switch him off of the Saturday night shift for that day. He'd have to work a double on Sunday to make up for it—champagne brunch in the morning and afternoon, and the regular Sunday night crowd all evening.

He bought a bouquet of carnations. He would have preferred roses, but…he was on a budget these days. Oh how he missed his vault at Gringotts. It solved so many problems for him so easily.

Draco straightened his tie. Learning to tie a tie without magic had been one of the rough points of dealing with his wardrobe the last few months. Polishing his shoes had been another. Still, even if he had to do it all without magic, he would look damn good. It was one thing those bloody Aurors and the Wizengammot hadn't taken away from him. He knew he was good-looking.

His shirt was freshly pressed, and so were his pants. He'd had Hermione's iron for months now. She'd never seemed to care to have it back; if she did care that any of her clothes were wrinkled, she had her magic, not that such things bothered her particularly. Looking down at his feet, he admired the gleam on his shoes. Glancing over his shoulder, he had to admit that trousers showed off his assets better than robes.

He swallowed a little nervously, putting his keys in his pocket and gathering up the flowers he'd bought on the way home from the library. Oh Salazar. He was really about to ask out Hermione Granger. He wondered what his mother would say. She might tell him it was politically advantageous. She might say that even looking too hard at the Granger girl could damage his eyes and marriage prospects. Either way, he didn't care. He was happier with Hermione than without her, and he wanted to see more of her.

Merlin, Circe, Morgana. What if he blew it? What if she didn't like him like that, and didn't want anything to do with him after he asked her out?

Ridiculous. He was charming and handsome and rich and smart. Why wouldn't she want to go out with him?

Draco nearly sunk down onto his couch, but stopped himself as he realized he would wrinkle his trousers. He had tormented her for a substantial portion of their lives. He'd been on the wrong side of the war. She'd been tortured in his childhood home. How do you get passed that?

Well, they had already, hadn't they? They were comfortable with each other. And that kiss. She'd initiated it. She had to be interested in him. There was no risk here. He was doing everything correctly.

He took himself across the hall before he could talk himself out of it again. With the flowers gripped in one hand, he knocked on her door. Was his heart supposed to be pounding like this? Merlin, how long did it take to open a door? It seemed like an eternity. She should be back from the joke shop by this point—unless she'd gone out for dinner somewhere?

At last, the door swung open, and Hermione was standing there, still wearing the robes she would have worn to both her apprenticeship and the joke shop, and there was a smell of simmering herbs and gunpowder. Her hair was frizzy and wild. "Draco. This is your night off? Do you want to come in and have dinner?"

Come on, Draco, words aren't that hard, he scolded himself. He held out the bouquet of flowers to her. "Actually, Hermione, I'm…here to ask you a question."

"Do you want to come in?"

"No, no, I'm asking the questions." He shook the flowers slightly to get her attention again. "These are for you." He waited half a moment while she took them from him. "I'm sorry they're not roses. I was wondering if you might be available next Saturday. For a date. With me."

She stared at him, her face half hidden behind the carnations.

Draco found himself trying to fill the silence. "It's just, I like spending time with you, and I was thinking that it might be a good idea to go on a date. If you wanted to. I would like it. I think you would." Merlin, why couldn't he stop talking? He sounded like a third year asking a girl out for their first Hogsmeade weekend.

"I'd love to," Hermione interrupted.

"You would?"

A smile appeared on her face. "I would."

It took all of Draco's concentration to keep his posture upright, and not to sag with relief.

"Do you want to come in?" she asked again.

"Yes," he said, following her in. He watched as she put the flowers in a vase, and poured them each a drink. He took his drink, but remained in the kitchen with her.

As she began rummaging through her fridge for something to put in the oven, she asked, "So, why Saturday? Why not tonight?"

"You should never expect a lady of quality to be available the night of for plans. I know you're a busy person. I thought some notice would be needed."

Hermione hid her smile in the fridge and pulled out some left over chicken and pasta to put in the oven. "And where are we going on this date?"

He sipped his wine, looking at her. Now that the important question had been answered, his heart rate had slowed back down to normal. He gave her a cool smile. "That is a surprise. You do know how I feel about surprises, don't you?"

She chuckled. "And you know how I feel about them. I'd rather have time to prepare myself for whatever's coming."

"But my surprises are always good, aren't they?"

"Generally," she agreed. She pre-heated the oven and transferred the food to something that could go in it. "So what time is our date?"

"8 o'clock."

"At night?" she asked, a little surprised. It was a bit late for dinner, but maybe they were going to see a show?

"In the morning," he said, smugly.

She arched an eyebrow, but he smiled and made no comment. She could guess all she liked. He wasn't going to spoil the surprise by telling her his plans.

Draco stayed at Hermione's flat for a little while and they talked and ate. There was a moment of hesitation as he left, but Hermione just smiled and shut the door. If he wanted to take her out properly in a few days and wasn't even going to tell her where they were going, then he could wait a few days for a kiss. But she had to admit, the thought was tempting.

She looked at the flowers on her counter. When was the last time anyone had given her flowers? Had anyone ever given her flowers before?

Hermione took a deep breath. A date. She hadn't been on a date since Ron. And Draco Malfoy of all people. It wasn't much different from the way they normally spent their time with one another, but he wanted to call it something else. To draw a line. That was something wasn't it? Some sort of turning point.

She half-expected that she was going to start crying now. After all, she was thinking of Ron, and this was a new chapter, one without him in it. She inhaled deeply again and discovered…she wasn't crying.

Author's Note on Accuracy: I'm not British, and have only made a couple of trips to the UK. I do try for accuracy, but I'm going to admit, some of my memories are a bit fuzzy. While I've been to Heathrow, not too much about it stands out to me, except that my luggage was lost. I do consult occasionally with my husband on some points of life in Britain in the 90s. For example: in the 90s in the US, you could go all the away to the gate. Not so the in the UK. Any inaccuracies…I'm sorry, but I'm doing the best I can, writing from the other side of the ocean. Please bear with me?