Author's Note - Another Proposal...

Chapter twenty-three.

"What is that?"

Draco glanced up from the Daily prophet where he sat in front of the fire, took in a disbelieving Alice eyeing something on the coffee table, before looking back and lazily turning a page.

"A ring. Why, have you never seen one before?" He asked cheekily.

"Ha. Ha. Very funny. I know it's a ring, but why's it here?"

Draco scanned the page and replied slowly, "Well, my guess is that it's Potter's way of proposing."

At that point Hermione walked through the portrait door, back incredibly late from seeing to a detention she had to supervise, "It's better than having the ring thrown at you though." She quipped and Draco smirked at her and blew a kiss and a wink.

Hermione glared and brushed past them to go to their dorm, but not after Alice had seen a light blush start to develop on her high cheekbones. She cocked an eyebrow and looked back at Draco, whose smile still hadn't left his face as his eyes followed her track up the staircase and into their room.

Alice smiled softly, she knew Draco had had a crush on her during their school days, whenever Hogwarts was mentioned, so too was Hermione Granger.

Aunty Cissa and Uncle Lusi had encouraged him to bury that feeling in case the Dark Lord found any trace of it and decided that she could be used not only as a bargaining chip against Potter, but with young Draco too. As well as give him a reason to send their entire family to an early grave.

Apart from that, they were proud of their son for looking past appearances and seeing the true beauty of wit and keenness in a girl, something they had worried he would never see. But now that Hermione had grown up into a stunning creature, Alice surmised that those buried feelings were coming back full force. She had no idea as to why everyone said he was so hard to read, to her, he was an open book.

She frowned and looked at the ring on the coffee table, it was a delicate band of white gold with tiny diamonds embedded into the pattern of a shining flower. That Potter person she didn't understand though, they hardly talked and so why the hell was he giving her a ring?

Draco watched Hermione disappear through her door and then turned back to Alice who was studying the ring with a confused expression and standing back from it, as if it would bite. She looked up at him with an expression that clearly asked, 'why?'.

"It's part of the Law to give your intended spouse, if you're a male, a ring to symbolise the engagement. If you don't the Ministry will give the female a ring anyway." Draco surmised for her and Alice nodded in understanding.

He went back to his newspaper, but she just edged away from the ring and bolted to her room. Draco chuckled, that girl just didn't know what to do in any situation that had even the slightest hint of romance, even if it wasn't romantic at all. He ignored its glow as it picked itself up and began to leisurely follow her.

Alice growled, the damn ring was following her everywhere and humming.

"Make it stop!" she cried as she hid under the covers of her bed, the ring buzzed above her. Hermione came in from the bathroom and chuckled.

"You have to put it on to make it stop."

Alice peeked out and glared at her, "That was it? Why didn't you say so before? I would've been able to have showered in peace then!"

Hermione grinned and shrugged, "Now you know."

Alice grumbled and sat up in bed, eyeing the ring as if it was about to hex her and she reached for it tentatively. Just as she touched it, it disappeared and then reappeared on the ring finger of her left hand. Alice looked at it, touched it, frowned and then tugged...hard. She grunted and fell off the bed in her effort to get it loose. "The bastard's stuck on there!" She cried from the floor.

"Yeah… I forgot to mention that…"

Alice sat up and glared at her, "Damn it, Granger!"

"Sorry, but I'm in the same boat too, you know."

Alice said nothing but continued to glare and tug at the ring and Hermione looked on amusedly. Nyx hooted from the corner and Hermione smiled at her pet. Alice had brewed her a potion that gave her back all her feathers, but she wouldn't be able to fly for a day. And now that her time was up, Nyx was anxious to fly. Hermione opened the window and watched her owl swoop out gratefully. Just as she was about to close the window, a small white hand appeared next to hers. Whirling around, she looked right into Alice's large, sad, golden eyes.

She sighed, "Can we have the window open again tonight? To- tomorrow,' Alice stuttered, 'I promise we can have it closed."

Hermione just took one look into those puppy dog eyes and relented. She was such a sucker. Hermione moved away from the window and Alice smiled hopefully.

They went to bed with the smell of the bush and a faint tint of smoke floating on a soft, warm breeze that night.