My song inspiration for this chapter (specifically the last part of the chapter):
all the good girls go to hell - Billie Eilish
When Hermione walked into the Great Hall with Draco by her side, it was as if she had walked into a completely different world. Whereas only a week earlier the seventh- and eighth-year students had been divided by gender at each house table, now they were comingling together once again. And there were students sitting at the wrong tables in every single house.
She looked up at Draco, who looked just as surprised as her.
There were still several of her housemates missing from the tables, and Hermione wondered just how many other couples had been barricaded in their rooms after the door closed behind her and Draco. But more surprising than the missing students…were the ones that were present. It seemed like there were couples everywhere.
Pansy sat with Ron at the Gryffindor table and, Hermione was shocked to see, Ron was so absorbed in whatever conversation the two were having that he was hardly touching the food on the plate in front of him. Across from them were Harry and Tracey, although there was decidedly more space between them than there was between the other couple, and by the careful way that the two avoided touching one another, Hermione wondered if they were prolonging the inevitable in order to get to know one another better: she didn't know Tracey all that well, but thought with a smile that it definitely sounded like something her best friend would do.
At the Ravenclaw table sat Padma Patil, joined by her twin and both Dean and Seamus. The four were involved in some kind of very animated conversation, and she watched as Seamus used his hands to mime something exploding, and Padma, Parvati, and Dean all doubled over laughing. Further down the table she spotted Sue Li sitting next to the seventh year Slytherin she had literally collided with in the Great Hall less than a week earlier and had to turn away with a blush as she remembered the eyeful she had nearly received when the two had gotten together.
At the Hufflepuff table she spied Hannah Abbott sitting nearly in Justin Finch-Fletchley's lap, and she watched the sickeningly sweet couple feed one another pieces of fruit as they sat whispering to one another. Also, at the Hufflepuff table were Luna and Theo, which made Hermione giggle. She wasn't sure why the couple had sat at the Hufflepuff table instead of one of their own, but Hermione figured it was exactly something that Luna would have done and, by the indulgent smirk he was aiming at the petite blonde witch, clearly Theo didn't mind sitting with the badgers in the slightest.
"Do you mind…could we sit at the Slytherin table?" Draco asked her.
She looked up at him to see him nervously eying her friends and sighed. She knew from their conversations in the wee hours of the morning that Draco had – mostly – moved past his dislike of Harry. He had even told her about the two brief conversations they had already had this year. She also knew, however, that he was still uncomfortable around Ron. Theirs was an enmity that ran deep, much deeper than just their time at school. While she knew that he would have to move past it and learn to at least be civil to her friends, he had already bared a lot of his soul to her today; she could give him this. So, she nodded.
As they walked to the Slytherin table with Draco's hand at the small of her back, guiding her, she was pleased to see that she wouldn't be the only one wearing a scarlet tie among the sea of green. Neville sat with Daphne, and she could tell by the awkward way that he was using his left hand to eat that his right hand was clutching hers. Across from them were Ginny and Zabini. They appeared to be the least outwardly affectionate of all of the couples she'd seen in the Great Hall, but there was still an air of intimacy that hung around them. She watched as he leaned in to whisper something in her friend's ear before pulling back with a devilish smirk as twin patches of red blossomed over the redhead's freckled cheeks. Ginny reached out to playfully smack at his arm before tucking back into her breakfast, but Hermione saw the grin she was trying so hard to conceal.
They all looked up when she and Draco approached, and Hermione felt her own cheeks bloom with heat when Zabini let out a wolf-whistle at the sight of them.
"About time you two came out of your little hidey-hole!" he exclaimed.
"Blaise," Draco said, a warning clear to hear in his voice.
"Sorry, Granger," Zabini said with a grin that told her that he was not, in fact, apologetic in the least. "What I meant to say was, welcome to the land of corrupted Gryffindors!"
He motioned to Neville across from him, then down the table to where Prudence and Amanda sat with two seventh-year boys whose names she couldn't recall, then to Ginny at his side. Ginny just rolled her eyes and chuckled along with Neville before motioning for them to join.
"Whatever, Zabini," Hermione snipped good-naturedly as she sat down beside Ginny and Draco sat on her other side. "Who's to say that we aren't the ones corrupting you."
He held a hand to his heart dramatically.
"As if a Slytherin could possibly be corrupted by a do-gooder Gryffindor? You wound me, Granger!" he said, clutching his chest as if her words had broken his heart. "Besides, if we're mutually corrupting one another, shouldn't we at least cause a real scandal by calling one another by our given names? What do you say, Hermione darling?"
He said it with a playful waggle of his eyebrows and a ribald grin, and Hermione couldn't help but smile at his antics.
"Of course, Blaise," she acquiesced, then laughed aloud at the mock-shudder than when through his body when she said his name in an exaggeratedly suggestive voice.
"Oh, be still my heart!"
Hermione laughed again at the way the darkly handsome wizard yelped when Ginny smacked him upside the back of the head at the same moment that Draco fired a non-verbal stinging hex at him.
"Mine, Zabini," he said sardonically as he slid his wand back into the holster around his forearm. "Woo your own witch, not Granger."
"I'm sorry, Hermione!" blurted out a voice, interrupting the levity of the moment, and Hermione looked in surprise at Daphne. The witch was staring down at the hand that was clutching her spoon tightly.
"For what, Daphne?" Hermione asked her, genuinely confused.
"For nearly attacking you in the hallway."
The words were said so softly that Hermione nearly missed them, but she knew immediately what Daphne was talking about.
"It's okay. Really," she insisted when the other girl looked up at her skeptically, "it wasn't your fault, and you didn't hurt me. Nothing to be sorry for."
The other witch still looked doubtful of her words but nodded anyway, and Hermione watched with a smile as Neville leaned in to place a sweet kiss to her rosy cheek.
Hermione found during breakfast that morning that she quite enjoyed the company of Draco, Blaise, and Daphne – and even that of Goyle and Millicent, who came in only a few minutes after them and sat across the table from her and Draco. Draco and Blaise specifically had a lightning-fast wit that even she'd had trouble keeping up with on occasion. The two wizards bickered back and forth like brothers while Daphne, Millicent, and Goyle watched them.
She quickly discovered that Blaise was the most playful of the group and watching him spar verbally back and forth with both Draco and Ginny was like watching a tennis match. Goyle didn't say much, but she saw his eyes watching what was going on around him with an intense focus. Hermione didn't remember him being that watchful before and wondered if it was just one of the ways the war had changed him. Not only had his father been sentenced to Azkaban for his part in the war, but he had also lost his best friend in the fire that had nearly killed not only him but also her, Draco, Harry, and Ron. She figured that such a close brush with death could leave anyone changed, and she found her heart softening toward the often-mocked wizard who clearly carried a lot of guilt on his broad shoulders.
After everyone had finished eating, and the hall had largely cleared out of the younger students that were eager to spend their Sunday out on the grounds – and, more importantly, out of the way of the unpredictable seventh and eighth years – Hermione grew serious. She looked over to the other tables, motioning with her head for Harry, Ron, and Luna to come and join them. The three came, accompanied by Pansy, Tracey, and Theo, and the four couples already sitting at the Slytherin table readjusted to give them more room at the table.
Draco pulled Hermione into his side with an arm slung around her lower back while Neville and Goyle both urged their witches closer to their own bodies with arms around their shoulders. Blaise simply lifted Ginny from the bench and pulled her into his lap, receiving another playful smack to the arm from Ginny and a nauseated glance from Ron as he walked up to them.
Instead of joining them at the Slytherin table, Ron settled on the bench behind them at the Ravenclaw table and, pulling a page from Blaise's book, tugged Pansy down on his own lap. Harry sat on one side of the couple while Tracey sat on the other, making sure that they didn't inadvertently touch one another and confirming Hermione's earlier guess that the two had not allowed their relationship to become intimate yet. Theo sat beside Tracey, and Luna sat on the bench beside him before pulling her legs up to rest them across his lap. The position didn't look very comfortable to Hermione, but to each their own, she supposed. Padma, Parvati, Dean, and Seamus slid down the table as well, joining them.
Hermione turned to straddle the bench so that she could see everyone and felt a shifting behind her that let her know that Draco had done the same – she tried not to think about the fact that she was now essentially sitting between his legs, although the overtly-salacious grin Blaise shot her way let her know that her pink cheeks were damnably obvious.
"I don't know about you all," Hermione began, "but I've found that the Ministry's spell did a rather effective job of pairing us all up. Regardless of its effectiveness, though, I am unwilling to let them get away with this. While I personally have decided that I'm okay with seeing how things go between Draco and myself for the time being, it was still ethically and morally wrong what they did to us all."
She saw them all nodding and knew that they felt the same way. So far, she hadn't seen any of the new couples that had come from this seeming to be overly upset with the way things had turned out – at least regarding their new mates. She knew every single witch she had spoken to was more than resentful of their new designations and the impact that it would have on the plans they had imagined for their futures. From talking with Draco, she assumed that at least some of the wizards were resentful of it as well – Draco had told her how much he'd had to fight with himself to try to give her time, to not let his Alpha take control of his actions and potentially hurt her, and knew that he'd hated having yet another choice taken from him.
She had spent a long time thinking about this; really, had been mulling it all over in her head since that first night following the announcement by Professor McGonagall. And seeing the couples around the Hall this morning, she had decided exactly how she wanted to go about getting justice for them all. Now, she just needed to know if they were all willing to help her get it.
"Here is what I propose," she said, then laid out her plan before all of them. The nods around the two tables were encouraging, and she felt more secure in her plan than she had been before speaking to them all.
Everyone knew what they needed to do, and what their roles were. Vengeance was a dish best served cold, so they would allow the Ministry to think they had gotten away with their actions…for now. Come winter break, however, they would begin to pull things together, one strand at a time. She was confident that by the time they all graduated in June, they would be ready to drag the Ministry through the mud and come up on the other side, victorious. They would never be allowed to do to others what they had done to Hermione and her friends. They would pay for it, and Hermione felt a wicked smirk curl up the corners of her lips at the thought of what her plan would bring to the Ministry's proverbial doorstep.
"You know," Blaise said, face solemn for the first time since she and Draco had approached the table that morning, "you're kind of terrifying like this."
Harry, Ron, Neville, and Ginny all burst out laughing at his words, knowing full well just how terrifying Hermione Granger could be when she wanted to. Luna simply nodded sagely before adding:
"Oh, yes. Hermione has quite a vindictive streak. Make sure you stay on her good side, Blaise Zabini."
Hermione choked out a laugh at the frightened look that crossed Blaise's face, then nodded at the witch.
"Why, thank you Luna!" she said, as if it were the greatest compliment she had ever received.
The blonde witch just nodded again before standing and pulling Theo along behind her, saying she wanted to go visit the Thestrals. She watched as Theo shrugged at his friends before following along behind her with a bemused smirk that Hermione was certain would become his new default expression around the eccentric witch.
She felt a firm body press against her back as Draco leaned into her, and his warm breath raised gooseflesh across her arms as it wafted across her ear.
"Blaise may think you are terrifying like this," he said in a husky voice, "but not me."
"No?" she asked him, her voice coming out less bold than she wanted, instead sounding like a breathy sigh.
"No," he confirmed, and she felt his lips brush against her neck before he continued.
"I think you're magnificent."
Blaise chose that moment to look up at them, and he told Draco years later that the wicked smirk that had spread across her face at Draco's words had given him nightmares for at least a month after.