"So," Hermione mumbles into her glass of wine, "I might be dating Draco Malfoy."

Harry recoils from her admission, but Ginny crows in triumph.

"I knew it!" she practically shouts, making the other patrons in the fancy Muggle restaurant shoot glares at their table. "I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!"

Hermione sighs and sets down her wine – a 1989 Chateaux Margaux, because she intends to treat herself when not in Draco's presence. It's Friday evening, the night before her next…well, date with Draco, and she's finally decided to make a full confession to Harry and Ginny. With good food. And plenty of Bordeaux.

"You were right to be suspicious, Harry," she admits. "But I swear, it just crept up on me. I didn't even realize that's what was happening until you planted the idea in my head the other night."

"I'm good at that," Harry says with a sage nod.

Ginny just rolls her eyes at him and leans closer to Hermione. "Spill it. Spill everything."

"I'm not even sure where to start, really."

"Start with the snogging," Ginny suggests. "It's always good to start with the snogging."

Harry gags dramatically, and a few of the more annoyed patrons glare at their table again. Harry looks like he's going to continue with this loud show of repulsion, so Hermione waves her hands violently to dismiss Ginny's idea.

"No, no, no! It's not like that. I don't think we're intentionally dating each other; more like…'de facto dating,' I'd called it. I mean, we haven't even kissed yet. Well, except for when I kissed him on the cheek last week. And two weeks ago. But I only kissed him two weeks ago to fluster him, since he didn't ask my permission to connect our Floo stations—"

"He did what?" Harry gasps.

"Oh, it was just a misunderstanding. You see, Draco noticed that I secretly hate to Apparate—"

"You hate to Apparate?" Ginny asks, surprised, at the same time Harry nods in understanding. Harry undoubtedly remembers the day Hermione aced her Apparition test. Just like he remembers the day that nasty Death Eater, Yaxley, forced a Side-along on her during the War and thus ruined Apparition for her.

"I do hate it. Almost as much as flying. So Draco was technically trying to do something thoughtful for me. Albeit in an irritatingly intrusive way."

"Uh, yeah," Harry says.

"But it was also somewhat sweet," Hermione argues. "I think he just doesn't know how to dial back the extravagance. Like the wine he served at our first dinner. I mean, Merlin, a bottle of 1947 Cheval Blanc probably costs more than my flat—"

"But that's Malfoy, isn't it?" Harry scoffs. "All show. Like those daft peacocks of his."

Hermione scowls at his interruption. "Draco doesn't even like the peacocks. Apparently, they're horrible to Pleiades—"

"Plee-a-what?"

"Pleiades. Draco's owl. Whom I adore, and who has been wonderful to me. Especially considering how we made him carry letters back and forth between us at dinner last week, for almost four hours until he finally got fed up and—"

"You and Malfoy owled each other? Over dinner?"

Hermione feels herself blushing. "Well, the table in the Lesser Dining Room is rather long and—"

"The Lesser Dining Room?"

"Yes."

"Lesser than what?"

"Than the Grand Dining Room."

"Obviously."

"Obviously. Anyway, the table in the Lesser Dining Room is about nine metres long, and that means you can hardly hear each other from opposite ends of the—"

"Wait, Malfoy owns a table that's considered small at nine metres long?"

"Yes."

"Good lord, Hermione, it's like you're having dinner with Bruce Wayne every week."

"That's what I said! But of course Draco didn't get the reference."

"Who's Bruce Wayne?" Ginny asks.

"Batman," Harry and Hermione answer simultaneously. To which Ginny replies, "Who's Batman?"

Harry and Hermione shake their heads in unison.

"Purebloods," they both sigh.

Hermione hates to admit it, but wine really does improve the situation.

Their conversation has grown increasingly discordant, much to the joy of everyone else in the restaurant. Interruption piles upon misunderstanding, louder and louder until Hermione fears they'll be booted from the restaurant before they can finish their meal. She pours Harry and Ginny both a glass of the Chateaux Margaux in the hope that they'll drink instead of interrupt. Then she proceeds to tell them everything.

She leaves out a few details, like how often Draco's foot accidentally-on-purpose grazes hers under the table. Or the way her stomach goes all warm and her brain all buzzy when her eyes meet his for more than a few seconds.

But she tells Harry and Ginny about loads of other things, like the baking and the talking and his parents. She tells them about the bottle of Ogden's that is presumably still unopened in his kitchen, and the key lime macarons, and how he looked at her when she Vanished her glass of Cheval Blanc. When she gets to their mutual injuries, and the way Draco popped her bleeding finger into his mouth, Harry almost spits expensive red wine all over their table.

"What?"

Hermione cringes at the memory. "I know. It was definitely…something."

"Yeah," Harry snorts, a sound he only makes when he's a smidgen drunk. "And that something is unsanitary."

"But also symbolic, right?"

As soon as Ginny asks the question, she and Harry share a worried glance. Then they both look back at Hermione.

"Is he still, you know…?"

"A giant pureblood elitist?" Hermione finishes for Harry. "I don't think so. Not if he did something like that with my finger. After he healed me, Draco basically admitted that he didn't believe in the blood-purity rubbish anymore. But I know it takes time for a racist to come to terms with his own bullshit. Maybe a lifetime."

"Do you have that long to wait?" Harry asks harshly. It's Ginny, however, who reaches across the table to take Hermione's hand.

"What does your heart tell you, friend?"

Hermione gnaws on her lower lip before answering. "My heart tells me that Draco's changing. That he knows he was a terrible human being, and the knowledge makes him sick. Literally. He wants to be a better person – is trying to be a better person. And I think…I think I'd like to be there to see the results."

The table falls silent for a long time, even after their bowls of sorbet arrive. Harry is still deep in thought, listlessly dragging a spoon through his melting dessert, when Hermione says, "Harry, if it makes you feel any better, you have my permission to hex him if he hurts me."

Harry grins drunkenly. "Hermione, if Draco Malfoy hurts you, I'll just be the first in a very long line of people who'll want to hex him."

Ginny's eyebrows waggle. "Including Gregory Goyle, apparently."

At this, Harry and Hermione give twin groans.

"If it makes you feel any better, Hermione," Ginny says, waggling her eyebrows again, "I get it. The physical attraction, I mean."

Harry's head swivels so fast toward his fiancée, he might sustain whiplash. "What do you mean, you 'get' the physical attraction?"

Ginny shrugs. "To Malfoy. He's no Troll, that's for sure. And I have some pretty vivid memories of the way he looked in Quidditch pants."

"I played Quidditch, too, you know," Harry grumbles.

"Oh, I know." Ginny drapes an arm over Harry's shoulder and leans so close to him that her nose brushes his cheek. "Why do you think I'm marrying you, Potter?"

This time, it's just Hermione who groans. Possibly because her mouth is the only one not occupied with snogging at the moment. She motions frantically for the bill, hoping against all hope that they can leave the restaurant before they get thrown out for violating public decency laws.