Chapter 20

A/N: Hello everyone! I wanted to thank all of you who favourite and story alerts my fanfic, I get so happy every time I check my mail and see that I have another mail from fanfiction!

I just need to sort something out! In chapter 17 (I think) Louise mention that their cousin is named Viktor and then in the last chapter I mention another Viktor. Viktor Krum to be precise. So Ellie and Gabryel's' cousin Viktor and the Viktor Hermione mention in the last chapter is NOT the same person!

Another little note for those of you who read my grammar carefully, my friend enlightened me that I should write in British English since Harry Potter is British. So from now on, I will start to write more British-English. Or at least I will try! So don't write any reviews that I misspell the word color when I will write colour.

He was going to fucking murder Gabryel! It was not like he didn't have enjoyed the kiss, he truly had. He had told Granger the truth. She was a good kisser. She really was. So it wasn't the kiss that was the problem. It wasn't even the fact that Gabryel had used his little spell on them, that part was kind of fun actually. The problem was that he had used the spell in front of all of their friends. Now all of them would think of the kiss as a prank. A jest that didn't mean anything. But that wasn't the whole truth.

Because Draco had realised something during their snogging session and it wasn't something he was pleased about. But it had popped up in his head, and now he couldn't even force the thought away. The realisation of his was not something that would make things easier, rather the contrary.

It had hit him like a slap in the face, he liked it. He, Draco Malfoy had liked it when Hermione Granger kissed him. Not liked it because she was a good kisser. He had liked it that it was her hand in his hair, her waist that he had held and he had liked that odd warm feeling in his stomach that she had elicit. And that realisation scared the shit out of him.

He had no idea how to deal with this insight of his and it was not like he could talk about it with Blaise. Firstly, because they did not talk about feelings and secondly because then Blaise, Joel and Gabryel would be right about that he felt something for Granger, more than friendship. If it was something Draco hated it was being wrong, especially when it came to being wrong about himself. Maybe he could write a letter to Pansy. She was better at this understanding feeling stuff than he was, but her reply would take days.

He went to his room and wrote Pansy but concluded that he would probably need to figure this out for himself. And if he was going to figure this out he probably would need to talk to Granger. Lovely.

"So..." Ellie began a bit hesitant when they both lay in Ellie's big double bed an hour after the last guests had left.

"So... what?" Hermione asked the other witch.

"Care to share your feeling about the evening?"

"Why do I have the feeling that that question is aiming on a special event this evening?" Hermione asked with a sigh.

"That's exactly what I mean! So how do you feel?"

"How I feel about the kiss or about Draco?"

"Both!" Ellie said excitedly.

"Well, the kiss was nice," Hermione started reluctantly. Not sure how much of her thoughts she wanted to share with her mentor. The kiss had indeed been nice. But there's was the fact that it seemed like Draco had liked it too. That made her a bit unsure of the kiss deepness. Was it that deep because they unconsciously wanted it or because of the spell. She new for fact that she had wanted to pull her fingers through his hair, and she had. So how much did the spell force you to do and how much had been what they wanted to do to each other?

He was very attractive. She couldn't deny it, it was simply the truth. But she didn't know how Ellie would react to this information. One thing that Hermione counted on though, was that she would be ecstatic. Ecstatic and Ellie did not fit well together. It often ended with that Ellie got so over-thrilled that she just had to punch your arm or squeeze the life out of your hand, and New Years was coming up and a bruise on her arm would not look nice together with her New Years dress!

"The kiss was nice?" Ellie interrupted her thoughts. "That kiss was more than nice. It looked like you would eat up each other. None of the other couples' kisses were as intense as yours were!" A light blush coloured Hermione's cheeks and she saw how Ellie started to smirk.

"Let's sleep, I'm tired." Hermione said

"Oh missy, you're not getting away so easy!" Ellie said, the smirk still playing on her lips. "But I will be pleased if you answer one more question!"

"Okay, just one more!" Hermione agreed, knowing that she was not able to argue herself out of this.

"You are happy it happened, right?"

"Yes." Was Hermione's honest answer and it troubled her that she was. Draco Malfoy's kisses were not something she should be glad over. What would Harry and Ron say if they knew that she had French-kissed their nemesis? She reckoned that would not be a pleasant conversation.

Once again, Ellie interrupted her thoughts;

"Good night Hermy"

"Good night Ellie!"

"Promise me one thing before you go to sleep though."

"What?" Hermione said tiredly.

"Try not to think too much about Draco before you fall asleep." Ellie gave her a smirk when she saw the blush growing for the second time in 10 minutes on Hermione's cheeks before she turned out the light.

31th December

Hermione had just stepped out of a steaming shower and cast a drying spell on hair before she started to fix her hairstyle for the New Year's party she would attend in 2 hours. For the evening the Bonér and Atterling family had been invited to Stockholm to celebrate New Year's Eve with Mr. Bonér and Mr. Atterling's chef Mr. Wallenberg.

Both of the brothers worked at the Swedish ministry of magic and the families always went to the Wallenberg New Year's party. Ellie and Gabyrel had said that they would eat dinner at Mr. Wallenberg's party and maybe stay till 10.30 pm before they would sneak away to Joel where he would have a more entertaining New Year's party.

So that meant two dresses for one evening. Hermione thought back on the five last days since the Bonér Christmas Ball and came to the conclusion that she hadn't seen Draco or Gabryel much. The 26 and 27 of December she, Ellie and Ellie's awful cousin Veronika had gone to Stockholm to do some New Year's dress shopping. They had looked both in muggle and wizard stores and she had found two lovely dresses. One grey dress robe for the ball and a navy muggledress for Joel's party. When they've came home Gabryel and Draco had travelled with Joel and his father to Gothenburg to see a broolo game and they'd come home this morning.

So, back to the present, she was just going to put on her dress robe. The dress was grey and simply perfect. The top part of the dress was pleated sleeveless with halter neck silk ribbons. The bottom part of the dress floated nicely down from her waist to her feet and a silk ribbon tied the bottom and top part together. Her favourite part of the dress was though the open back. The silk ribbon at her waist hugged her lower back in a very flattering way. Till the dress, she had decided to just curl her hair into neat curls. She had decided on a light make-up with just a tad of grey eye-shadow and some lip-gloss. Hermione had always believed in the less is more principle.

When she was ready, there was 20 minutes before their caravan dragged by charmed horses would arrive so she decided to go and see how Ellie was doing.

As Hermione opened her friends bedroom door she saw that Ellie was still in her bathrobe, trying to straightened her hair without much success.

"Hermione!" Ellie cried when she saw her friend in the mirror. "Some help please?" she asked. Fifteen minutes later Ellie too was ready to leave and she only needed to put on her cloak over her dark blue-sequin dress robe before they would wait for the others in the lounge.

A few hours later they were still at the Wallenberg New Year's Ball and they had just spent a couple of hours boring small-talking with the adult guests at the Party. Both Hermione and Draco were apparently very interesting and he barley had any time to talk to his friends.

"Draco, we're leaving now" He heard Hermione whisper in his ear and he felt that weird feeling in his abdomen when Granger's breathe tickled his neck. He turned to follow her when she abruptly stopped. He locked over his shoulder to see why and saw that Gabryel's terrific cousin Veronika was approaching.

"Quickly," he heard Hermione whisper under her breath. "Let's go this way." She said while taking his hand and dragging him in the opposite direction. He couldn't help the small smile on his lips and he started thinking of Ellie's plan for the evening.

The plan was rather simple. 1. Go to the Ball. 2. Sneak away to Joel's party, and the most important part of the plan: 3. Make sure Veronika didn't join them to the party.

He thought it was an excellent plan as he couldn't stand their cousin at all. He looked back and saw that they had lost her in the crowd. He whispered it to Granger and they slowly sneaked out of the ballroom and then, still hand in hand, made a quick run towards their coats. Their mentors were already waiting for them and gave each other a quick glance when they saw that he and Granger held hands. He quickly released his hand from hers and tried to ignore the hurt feeling in her face.

Gabryel gave them their coats before he nodded at the door. Outside, they all grabbed each other's hands as they'd agreed on before Gabryel side-apparated them to Joel's house.

After making sure that they all had their balance, the released each others' hands and Hermione looked up at the house. It was not a manor, but it was very big and it had a huge porch. It was probably there they would stand when the New Year began and watch the fireworks that Joel had promised.

"Are we going to stand here all day or are we going to enter?" Draco said after a few minutes of silence. All of them seemed to be lost in thought and all jumped as Draco spoke.

"Yeah, sure. The door is this way!" Ellie said and pointing to the left side of the house. When they stepped inside they saw that the party already had started and they rapidly changed their clothes. Instead of her grey dress robe Hermione now wore a mid thigh marine muggle dress that showed her long legs. This dress also was sleeveless, but this time the straps covered her shoulders. The dress was an overlap dress with a few folds that decorated the front. It was rather simple but looked extraordinary on her. She let her hair and makeup remain the same and put on a pair of royal-blue heels. The two different blue colours looked surprisingly good together and she was pleased with that they were actually very comfy.

"Wow, you look so beautiful!" Ellie shrieked and hugged Hermione tightly. She looked very nice herself with her dark powder pink dress that showed both legs and cleavage. She gave Ellie a smile and they walked out to the party.

They had just stepped into the room when a blond haired boy lunged himself at them and gave them a tight hug.

"Hi, Joel! Nice to see you too!" Ellie laughed.

"You came!" He said with a happy but drunk voice.

"We wouldn't miss your party for anything in the world!" Ellie said, smiling. "And here comes the boys with drinks" she said ending the sentence with a shriek. Hermione looked behind her and saw Draco and Gabryel walking towards them with one drink in each hand. To her surprise, both of them wore muggle-jeans and a shirt.

She slowly accepted the drink Draco gave her, and when he saw her nervous expression he asked:

"Have you ever had a drink before Granger?" and to her shock, without a smirk!

"Yes, but never like this."

"Like this?"

"Never like this as in never at New Year's." She explained.

"Well, better drink it then." He said, still very serious.

This party was definitely more fun than the other they had been at, even though the Ball had been very interesting. The night passed quickly and before she knew it, it was 7 minutes left of the New Year and all of the guests stood on the porch talking. Joel had cast a warming spell at the veranda so they didn't need any coats, which was nice.

Ellie had disappeared to find Dean so that he would be her New Year's kiss so Hermione leaned at the wall alone. She looked up to the sky and saw that someone in the neighbourhood already had lit there fireworks. Wizard fireworks were so much prettier than the muggle ones. Much more vivid and colourful.

"Lost in thought?" She heard a familiar voice said and found that Draco had leaned against the wall next to her without her noticing. He reached her a glass of champagne and she saw that all of the guests had received one. She muttered a "thanks" when she took it from him and started to answer his question.

"I was just thinking about how beautiful the fireworks are."

"3 MINUTES EVERYONE" she heard a guy that Joel had introduced as "Markus" call.

"Do you have any New Year's resolution?" She heard herself ask.

"Do I have what?" Draco asked with a confused look in his face.

"A New Year's resolution, it's a muggle thing. A commitment you make to yourself that you will try to fulfil during the year. For example; I will stop smoking."

"You don't smoke Granger."

"I know, it was not an example of mine resolutions. So do you have any? She heard a distant "2 MINITES!" as she looked into Draco's steel grey eyes.

"No, I don't do muggle-traditions" Draco declared. "Then what is your resolution then?"

"I usually think a lot about what my resolution for the coming year would be. But I haven't really thought about it this year. Maybe trying to catch every chance I can. Life is too short to regret things you don't do." She answered thoughtfully.

"1 MINUTE!"

"I think that is the best New Year's resolution I've heard." Draco said with an attempt to a smile on his lips.

"50 SECONDS!"

"It's the only one you've heard." she said amused by his statement.

"Well, it's still good!"

"40 SECONDS!"

"I guess it is." Hermione said thoughtfully and took a little sip from her glass.

"30 SECONDS."

A comfortable silence fell between them as the guy Markus shouted that it was 20 seconds left.

"When does this resolution of yours begin?" Draco asked her.

"15 SECONDS!"

"In 15 seconds" She said smilingly.

"10 SECONDS!" Markus shouted very excitedly now.

"Why do you ask when my resolution began?"

"9!" Markus shouted and now the other guests also started counting.

"Well" he began. Did he look a tad nervous?

"8!"

"7!"

"6!"

"Well, I think that you should start with me"

"5!"

"Sorry? I didn't understand?"

"4!"

"3!"

"Kiss me" he said. When she stared at him like she did not understand him, he sighed and started talking again as the fireworks rapidly made their way up to the sky.

"2!"

"Start your resolution by kissing me."

"1!"

He didn't have to tell her twice. This was after all what she had longed for. As everyone shouted "HAPPY NEW YEAR!" she leaned in her head against his. For the second time that week, Hermione Jean Granger and Draco Lucius Malfoy were kissing, and this time it was entirely their own choice.

A/N: ah, seven word pages later... One of you requested longer chapters so here you are! I hope you like this chapter because I liked writing it, even though it took its time! As always, thanks to my lovely beta FreakyElla.

Lend me your thoughts will ya?

Here are the links to the two dresses that Hermione had.

Here is the grey dress robe:
/se/kl%C3%A4der-f%C3%B6r-kvinnor/kl%C3%A4der/festkl%C3%A4nningar/nelly-eve-1103/julia-dress-201871-80/

And here is the muggle dress she wore:

/se/kl%C3%A4der-f%C3%B6r-kvinnor/kl%C3%A4der/kl%C3%A4nningar/vila-479/carolin-dress-479948-29/