"You look very thin," comes his deep voice behind her, and she jumps.

She supposes she is. Eating hasn't been a priority. Her appetite vacated her some time back, making the most infrequent of appearances. Also not a priority: how thin she is, not compared to the knowledge that he's actually standing here. He came.

She bursts into violent tears and Draco takes her in his arms. "I'm sorry," she gasps, almost incoherently, racked with sobs. "And I love you."

This is probably why she ought to have stayed in the hotel room. Septimus could easily have told Draco which room featured Kitty's portrait. But she'd wanted to be outdoors and now she's halfway to hysterics in the garden in broad daylight. People must be staring. She's a blubbering mess, repeating the same two phrases again and again. It seems of supreme importance that she says both and keeps saying them.

He sits back down on the bench, pulling her with him. He keeps his arms around her, letting her cry herself out into his chest. When she calms, he says into the top of her head, "I'm really angry with you."

This is delivered in such a matter-of-fact way that she pulls back to look. He meets her gaze evenly. "I'm really angry. Not just that you didn't tell me, but that you left me. That you didn't give me enough credit to -"

Hermione shakes her head, her cheek pressing into his shirt, which is tracked with wet streaks and blotches. "No. No, the opposite. I knew you would. You're going to waste your time with me when you should be out living your life and meeting someone else. Someone who -"

"- Someone else I've waited fifteen years for already? What's another year now?"

The bluntness almost makes her smile and she wipes her eyes viciously with the back of her hand. "I was trying to rip off the bandage and let you go. I was trying to do the right thing. It was horribly late, but better late than never."

"No. Not 'better late than never,' you incorrigible witch. All you did was make us both miserable. This has been the worst – what day is it? – eight days of my life. Tell me it hasn't been for you, too."

"No, the worst days of your life will be watching me die," she softly says, looking out at the flowers. There are red and yellow tulips everywhere, as far as she can see, and the vividness of the colours is nearly blinding to the grey of her emotional state.

"That would be horrible," he agrees idly. "But it's my choice to make. This is what a real relationship is, Hermione. Good parts and bad parts, together. Me telling you I'm angry and why, and both of us trying to work through it. Just like I said in my letter."

"What letter?" she looks up at him, baffled. He stares back, equally confused.

"The letter I sent -" he stops. "Well, I don't know where it went. Fox took it and came back without it, so I assumed it got delivered to you."

Hermione blinks a few times, thinking. "It must have missed me in transit somewhere. What did it say?"

"Basically that. That I was really mad and wanted to tell you all about it, and that you're supposed to let me and not run off on a whim."

"It wasn't a whim!" she contests hotly, and he puts his hand over hers.

"Felt like one to me. To all of us, because none of us knew anything about it. Why didn't you say anything, Hermione?"

She exhales heavily, willing herself to get this out without crying again. She's so bloody tired of crying. "Until – well, until I left – for fifteen years, I thought I'd simply drop dead. That's what one of my Healers was convinced would happen."

"Stotch?"

Hermione glances up, surprised. "Yes, how -"

He motions for her to keep going.

"At first, we didn't know what it was, of course. No one knew. Poppy Pomfrey was able to use a cocktail of almost a dozen potions to help combat it at school, and then the following year Professor Slughorn alchemised them down into two. I took those for over a decade. Stotch thought they'd stop working but didn't know when, and he thought one day I just… wouldn't wake up."

She takes in a ragged breath and focusses on the tulips blowing gently in a light breeze. The sun is shining and everything is so beautiful, and she won't cry again. She won't.

"I didn't want the pity. Everything that could be done was already being done. I was avidly, madly, searching for other options or alternatives. I dedicated so much of my life to it already, that when I wasn't at work – when I was with Ron, or out with friends, or even at home reading a bloody book – I didn't want to think about it more. I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't want people bringing it up, asking how I was feeling, checking on me every time I nap to make sure I'm still breathing."

She ventures a look up at his face. He's looking out now, at a small boat on the canal, as he listens.

"I've seen how people are, around people with serious illnesses. The stupid shit they say. 'She's a strong one,' or 'she's a fighter, that one.' I couldn't handle people looking at me and saying things like that. 'Don't worry, Hermione, you're a fighter. You'll beat this.'"

Hermione's suddenly angry, too, but not at Draco. It just feels good to pour this all out. "I know people mean well, but do you know how offensive that sounds to me? To the person going through it? Like if the person succumbs to their illness, it was their own fault for not fighting hard enough. As if they hold some blame for dying, going and disappointing everybody after all. The implied inverse to all those statements is things like, 'She wasn't strong enough, I guess,' or, 'If only she'd fought harder.' Such stupid, insensitive, fucking bollocks, the lot of it."

Not that she thinks Draco would have done that necessarily. But it was – and is – a legitimate fear of hers. Once people know, how will they treat her? How will they react to her?

"I should have told you. I know I should have. But tell me: could you have avoided worrying constantly? Can you now? Are you going to treat me like I'm going to break every time you touch me? Are you going to look at me every four minutes and wonder what it's doing to me, deep inside, that you can't see?"

Draco inhales slowly and lets it out. "Not worrying about you will be hard. I understand why you want to avoid that. It makes perfect sense, not wanting to be treated differently, or having people fixate on it. On you. But just this minute, I'm more concerned about how thin you are, and how I'd very much like to feed you something."

Hermione ignores this. He lets her.

"No one can figure out what else to do and the potions are losing their touch, now. They're going to stop working soon. When Elena dug deeper, she and Slughorn concluded that it'll be more of a slow decay. Organ failure. It's going to be horrible, Draco. And making you watch that – I can't -"

She does start to cry again now, blast it all, a small hiccup in her throat. He wraps her up again.

"Ah, but we covered that, didn't we? It's not entirely up to you. I'm not going anywhere. So you can keep running off and I can keep chasing you down, but I think we can both agree neither of us were very happy doing that."

Hermione shakes her head, pressed back into his shirt.

"No more running?"

She shakes her head again, along with another hiccup.

"No matter what other news you may get? You'll come to me?"

Nodding, she wipes her nose and grimaces at it. Draco wordlessly produces a linen handkerchief from an inner jacket pocket and hands it to her.

He's still rustling around in there as she honks her nose, making a sound she'd be embarrassed by if it wasn't outshined by her entire public display here this afternoon. Or the one previously in the hotel, the total fit she pitched right in front of one Lady Catharina Malfoy, and she's glad she cleaned up the evidence before Draco could see it.

"No," she says at last. "No more running. None of us know when we're going to die, right? I could fall off a broom tomorrow." Kingsley's past words make her smile.

"Not my broom."

"Well, that's one risk down," she sighs, but the smile feels good. The tulips wave in the breeze and the sun is nice on her skin. "But whatever else might happen, I want to do it with you. I love you. I should have told you before, but I thought it would make it even harder, as if it wasn't bad enough already. But now – now, let's have fun, together. Promise?"

She looks back at him for the first time in several minutes and is floored. She hadn't noticed, as his profile is nearly the same height as when he was sitting on the bench, but he's on one knee to her right.

He has a box open.

There's something shiny in it.

"What the hell is that?" she asks dumbly. Obviously, she'd heard Ginny telling Harry about this, but it still doesn't seem real.

"I should think that was obvious," he coughs, a little awkward about it, but not breaking eye contact. "I would like to have fun with you, for every single day we possibly get together, clothed or unclothed, with open-ended suggestions of mischief, contraptions optional but welcome. What say you?"

Hermione can't hold in a snicker, but also can't help asking, "You're sure?"

He nods.

"Are you mental?"

"Does it matter?"

She laughs properly now. No, it doesn't. "Yes," she says, starting to cry again and glad she has the handkerchief still balled in her fist. "Wait. No. It doesn't matter that you're obviously mental, and yes, I'll marry you."

She moves to kiss him and he quickly inserts, "There's one condition. If I get angry you have to give me a chance to tell you in person."

"I already agreed -"

"And if you do try to run, I reserve the right to restrain you to the bed."

"That's two conditions." She's laughing and crying, now, and she thinks his eyes might be a little bright too as he slips the ring on her finger. It's a gigantic emerald, and she doesn't know why she's surprised. "And only if Septimus suggests a safe word."

Maybe it's finally having the secret off her shoulders. Maybe it's the Amsterdam sunshine and the rippling red and yellow of the tulips. Maybe it's Draco holding her hand again. Or maybe it's the gorgeous ring on her finger.

Whatever the combination, Hermione feels lighter than she has in years.

She won't let herself feel any guilt about how Draco will have to watch her die. He's making an informed decision and he's an adult, and she's done pushing him away. She can't deny he makes her happy, so happy.

They're going to spend whatever time she has left doing whatever she likes, he promises her. Going anywhere, doing anything.

First is an early supper at Cannibal Royale, which they didn't try last time and will now be able to report back opinions to Septimus on their return. Draco's pleased to see her eat, and Hermione's pleased to eat everything in front of her. She's ravenous, for food and for life.

Maybe it's a year, maybe two; but they've only spent two months together up to now, and they'll get potentially ten times that.

"Is everyone else angry too?" she winces, sipping on her second glass of white wine as they sit by the canal. "I'm sure they are. Should we hurry back? Should you at least send an owl?"

"I'm sure Septimus is keeping them informed."

"What? How?"

Draco coughs. "Ah, he's now hanging above my fireplace, in my flat."

"You did bring him home!" She called it 'home' without even thinking about it, and he squeezes her fingers. They haven't talked about any logistics yet, least of all where they'll live, but it seems reasonable to assume the portrait will be going along.

"Well, no. My father brought him by. Said his constant raving about you was unbearable. Hoisted him on me, instead."

Hermione's caught between grinning and wincing, knowing he can't have enjoyed speaking with his father. The breeze blows through, lifting her hair and it feels absolutely marvellous. "How was that?"

"Oh, fine. He's funding all the current curse research, in fact." His eyebrows go up in an unspoken prompt and she blinks.

"What do you mean?"

"Vasile is making huge progress. She's got Slughorn and Stotch corralled, and we've looped in Lovegood and Longbottom, and Ginny and Potter are there, too, and -"

"What?!"

"Well, after you bolted from his flat, they took your key straight to Gringotts. They brought your folders home to distribute -"

Hermione covers her face with her hands, groaning. Kitty hadn't had to break the news at all.

"- but by then, my father had already confronted me. Said he'd heard rumours from the Department of Mysteries about odd curse research, and so on. I cornered Vasile and – don't be cross with her – told her I wanted to continue the research. I think the whole crowd is at your old lab, now. Vasile is running it."

She's too flabbergasted to speak. He watches her steadily until she finally manages to put words in a sequence. "But – but there's nothing that can be done."

"Vasile was emphatic that that is not necessarily the case. They haven't stopped working."

"How… how long will your father fund it for?" Tentative, she almost doesn't want to know. All she knows is that she can't keep funding it.

Draco barks a loud laugh. "Indefinitely, so long as I ended things with you. I agreed to that little stipulation so things could going right away. So whenever he finds out about this, I expect he'll pull his money, but I have plenty of that on my own. I didn't mind spending his money for a while in the meantime, and I figured you wouldn't either."

Smiling, he moves to kiss her softly on the mouth. "And I don't think it'll be very long, anyway. They're making quick work of it."

"Don't dangle that -" she protests, and he stops.

"You're right. I won't make promises. But the curse came from the DoM. Rookwood had been experimenting. Lovegood found his old records, and Vasile has been working to replicate it. And the glamour – Longbottom says it's used on long-term patients in the Janus Thickey Ward on occasion. Everybody's putting their heads together."

"Everybody?" she whispers. She's not sure if she's mortified, horrified, or both. Half of her wants to sprint straight into the canal, possibly screaming and yanking out clumps of hair. But she's promised not to do that, or any less dramatic options.

"Everybody," he confirms. "Parks, Zabini, and Nott are there too. It's a full house."

He'd said, 'the whole crowd,' but… she bobs down a swallow with effort, still dumbstruck.

"So I suppose, yes, we should go back eventually. Probably soon. But we can make it tomorrow. Let's take tonight here, together, just you and me." He takes one of her hands again, squeezing her fingers lightly. "And have another sip of that wine. You look like you could use it."

She does. And then takes another. Draco orders pudding, a molten chocolate cake, and Hermione stares at her hand. The ring sparkles in the light and slides too easily around her finger. She has lost weight, she realises, and digs into the cake with fresh enthusiasm. It's warm and gooey and perfect.

People know, now. Alright. She tries to wrap her head around the knowledge that everything is going to feel very strange when they return.

"I'm going to hex anybody who treats me differently," she warns him around a mouthful of pudding.

"I'm sure they'd expect nothing less. I think you should expect more concern about your current mental state, running off and whatnot, more than a decade-worth of outpouring fear at your impending death."

She gives him a sceptical look and he chuckles, running his hand over his jaw. "Really, Hermione. People know you quite well. I don't think a single person in that lab thinks it would be a good idea to tiptoe around you. If anything, I think you might field a jinx or two once they get over their glee at having you home."

That's probably true. She considers.

"So just try not to hex people for expressing garden-variety concern, and I think everything will be fine."

Hermione thinks she can manage that. Really, the lightness she feels makes it hard to muster even imagined aggravation. She exhales a huge breath and Draco looks at her questioningly.

"Everything alright?"

"Yes. I was just thinking how – how good it feels to finally have it out in the open. I didn't know it would feel like this."

He scoots his chair closer to her. "I'm sorry you carried it alone for as long as you did. I can't imagine how hard that must have been."

Hermione nods slowly. "I thought I was used to it, really. I think it was growing on me so gradually I didn't notice how oppressive it was. That sounds silly now, saying it like that. But I'd been living with it for so long… it seemed so ridiculous, the idea of walking up to Harry one day at random and saying, 'by the way, for the past fifteen years that you've known me…'"

"And now?" he prompts.

"Now, it's a factor. Of course, it is. But I don't want to let it stop me any longer. I want to get married and live with you, and travel, and have fun anywhere and everywhere we can manage. I want to do everything."

Draco leans in to kiss her and promises, "We will."

Hermione takes another deep breath, enjoying the simple taste of the crisp, Amsterdam air. She's taken aback at how much better she feels. She wishes she'd done this before, long before, years and years ago. How would things be different now?

That's a futile exercise, she knows. She can't redo anything and it's a waste of her increasingly precious time to dwell on it. But she can enjoy her life now and live it to the fullest.

Theo rests his weight on one leg, shifting to relieve the tension in his back. He rolls his shoulders and watches Healer Vasile try again.

No matter what she does, the shimmer remains in the air. Theo must admit he's impressed at how fast she's become at recasting the same type of horrific curse Granger apparently houses indefinitely, layered and complex. But she does it, again and again, in the containment area she's created in the centre of the lab.

The purple mist, almost a smoke, really, snakes back and forth. Its tendrils are never idle. Luna, tight to his side, watches with intensity. Although, Theo notices, Luna rarely blinks anyway.

The witch is more than a little distracting. Theo's mind is racing regardless, darting among the scene before him in the lab, Draco going to (hopefully) fetch Hermione, and Luna's tantalising scent right under his nose. Hibiscus? Is that what he smells? Her blonde hair, while not at all frizzy, still seems to drift about with a mind of its own, and Theo can almost sense her magic crackling off her.

What is it she does in the Department of Mysteries, exactly? He doesn't know and she's not permitted to tell him. Somehow the enigma is just as tantalising.

She's standing close enough to him to be flirtatious. If it were any other witch, Theo would certainly read it as flirtatious. And her bold, direct eye contact, too. But again, Theo doesn't think she blinks much either way, so that direct stare could be aimed at anybody. She's just hard to read.

"Pansy knows something," Luna says unexpectedly. "But she doesn't know it yet. She'll figure it out."

Huh? Theo shifts his weight again and bends down towards her ear. "What do you mean?"

All he gets back is a cryptic glance, her attention still diverted.

Maddening. He gives her a little prod. "Do you know what it is, Luna?"

She turns and smiles fully at him now, wide and open. "No, I don't think so. It's a mystery to me. But it will make sense."

"To her? To you?"

"To all of us here. We will find out very soon. They're almost back now."

"Lovegood, do you make more sense after a few glasses of elvish wine? Please say you do." Theo rubs his temples. And yet, he can't deny a bizarre attraction to her, a drawing in. She twists her neck to peer up at him and he thinks he could drown in that pair of bottomless blues.

"You'll have to find out. Would you like to, sometime soon? I know I'd like that."

Well, that was simple. Theo nods, feeling a bit off-kilter at the directness of it all, and says, "Er, yes. How about dinner first, though?"

She beams again at the same time Vasile swears colourfully from the middle of the room. Theo looks over and sees the same shimmer hovering in the right light.

Pansy calls out, "What would happen if you did this much for Hermione? Get rid of everything but the glamour?"

Vasile rakes her short black hair back, fingernails going from forehead to nape. "It might be the reasonable next step. If nothing else, it might help us narrow down the purpose, based on what's left and what Hermione can feel or sense."

"Surely the removal of the Mind Flayer itself would be a huge step forward," Blaise comments, Ginny leaning her weight against him.

"It would," Vasile and Stotch say together, and exchange a look. Vasile takes over. "At a minimum, it'll let us assess any lingering physical damage to hopefully treat. Then we could tackle the glamour separately."

"Can you separate them?" Blaise asks, draping an arm around Ginny's shoulder. "You can here in the air, but can you do it without harming Hermione?"

Vasile flinches. "I don't know. None of this has been done before. I'd feel much better getting rid of it all in one go. Only recreating that exact thing here, a dozen times or more, before trying it on her would make me comfortable with it."

Theo sees Pansy bite a lip, something he knows she tries to avoid since it necessitates a reapplication of lipstick.

"What does she know, Luna? What does she not know she knows?" he whispers to her, but she only shakes her head.

"It's doing something. The glamour is all a trick. Pansy can see it."

Which doesn't answer a blasted thing. Theo sighs.

"Parks, you're onto something with the glamour. Talk it through out loud," he encourages her, and she almost jolts in surprise. Every eye turns her way, and she begins to fidget with her hair.

"I don't know how to say it any different. We know it's actually hurting her; there's no illusion to that. But what if it's manipulating her mind some other way? What if – what if –" Frustrated, she breaks off, and Neville's hand comes to rest where her shoulder meets her neck. Theo can see his thumb start to roll, trying to relax her.

Pansy heaves a breath and says, "What if it's making her fear everything? What if it's meant to make her afraid to live her life? What if the point was the fear and dread, the misery, the feeling of being the only one suffering? That awful isolation? Maybe not the whole point, but like everything else, just one more layer?"

Luna claps her hands suddenly and Theo jumps. Vasile tilts her head, mulling it over. Tapping her wand against her lips, she turns back to the barrier containing the curse. Stotch visibly leans forward, almost on the balls of his feet, and even Slughorn seems to stop his heavy breathing.

Vasile turns away briefly, practising a wand motion twice through before aiming back at the curse. She casts the incantation, which has sounded slightly different for each variation she's tried to test, and just like before, the curse tries to resist. It grasps and trails and struggles, but eventually tucks into itself with a loud POP.

No shimmer left behind.

Cheers go up around the room.

Blaise is gripping Ginny's shoulder so hard it might bruise. She wiggles it a little but she can't deny she's thrilled, too. It worked. It worked!

"Now, hang on," the Healer cautions the room. "I'm going to do it several more times. Once could be anything, and even if it's right, I have to know what I did that made it work if I want to do it twice. Especially if I want to do it on Hermione."

This is all very fair, but Ginny's desperate drive for instant gratification wants to pop champagne. Pansy's brilliant. She wants to smack the witch a kiss right on the mouth. She bounces on the tips of her toes, watching Elena Vasile do it over and over again. Each time, the shimmer vanishes along with the purple smoke.

How long have they been here? She doesn't even know. Hours and hours. Maybe more than a day. She knows different people have run to the abysmal St Mungo's café occasionally to grab various foodstuffs and snacks. Others have made coffee runs when tea was no longer sufficient. People have gone home at varying times to shower and change, maybe catch a nap, and returned refreshed.

"Should someone send an owl to Draco?" she whispers to Blaise, who pauses.

"Fastest thing would be to tell Septimus. And you're right, one of us should probably go do that. This might not be the final fix, but no one can deny that this is huge. Vasile might need Hermione soon."

Septimus. Ginny holds in a snort. When she and Blaise took a short break to his flat (read: have very efficient shower sex, stuff a few biscuits in their mouths, and sprint back to the Floo), she'd finally gotten to meet the Malfoy ancestor properly.

He does look eerily like Lucius Malfoy, something that gives Ginny the shivers, but his demeanour is anything but. Maximising his limited time with them as they rushed towards Blaise's room, he'd called out, "Master Zabini! Are you set on pleasuring your witch? Know you what to do?"

To which Blaise had responded succinctly that he had it handled, thank you very much, but they might be open to ideas later.

"'Later'?" Ginny had repeated dubiously, and Blaise had nearly cackled his way through their entire shower. This had been somewhat disconcerting, as Ginny is not accustomed to laughter in the general vicinity of her nudity, even if the subject matter is not precisely about her.

"You'll see," was all he'd tell her. Sure enough, upon approaching the Floo for their return trip, Septimus had surveyed Ginny quite closely.

"Lovely witch," he'd commented in approval, nose in the air. "She appears satisfied, for now."

"I shall do my best to keep her that way," Blaise had returned with a wink at Ginny.

Septimus had called out, "Good man!" as they'd spun away, Ginny trying her best not to laugh so as not to inhale ash and choke at a rather inopportune time. The last time she did that, she was still in school and had promptly tossed the biscuits she'd just consumed as soon as she spilled out onto solid ground, which happened to be the pristine floor of Minerva McGonagall's office and fireside rug. As she had consumed a delicious set of biscuits right before entering Blaise's fireplace, she was quite partial to not tossing those, as well.

Least of all in front of Blaise, who is always maddeningly put together and polished, at all hours of the day or night. Ginny often feels like a generally cobbled-together mess of a person held together by Spellotape and sheer luck. Tossing said biscuits on his perfectly expensive dragonhide shoes would not be ideal, no matter how reasonable the instigation may be.

Bringing herself back to the present, she leans back towards his ear and relishing the way he seems to quiver at the closeness of her mouth. "Should we volunteer for that job?"

Vasile has now replicated her result several times. She doesn't re-cast the complex curse this time, however. Ginny watches her release the curse sample from the vial on the desk, the one that – she presumes – came from Hermione herself.

"Wait," Blaise breathes, but Ginny needs no urging.

The entire room seems to hold its breath. Vasile, seemingly unintimidated by the attention of her audience, steadies herself with a single deep inhale and points her wand.

She casts and waves and wiggles, and the curse responds.

But only the curse. As it POPs out of existence, there's the blasted sodding shimmer, all over again.

"Fuck!" shouts Ginny, on behalf of them all.

Back inside the Hotel Estheréa, they find Kitty and Septimus together, in the large portrait by the incoming Floo. They're holding hands, something that looks oddly demure (for Septimus in particular), and both give them a wide smile.

"Welcome back, my Queen." Septimus gives her a slight bow.

She doesn't wait for Draco to do it. She lifts her left hand, clasped in his, and twists it around to show the ring on it.

Both Malfoy ancestors beam at them, Kitty looking particularly pleased. Whether it's with Hermione or herself, Hermione isn't sure, but she doesn't mind. She's blushing like a silly schoolgirl, something that hasn't happened to her in what feels like years.

Everything feels fresh and new, in fact. The undeniable lightness is permeating her mind and her body, and she squeezes Draco's hand. "I suppose we should go back," she starts with reluctance. "I'm sure everybody has loads of things they'd like to shout at me."

Even this doesn't affect her much. Not like how she'd expect, knowing she'll be facing down the wrath and general ire of nearly everybody she cares about all at once. She does feel guilty, but nothing seems to chip away at the jubilant armour of her current state of mind.

Septimus cuts her off. "No one is at the Manor, last time I checked. They're all at the lab. I think the pair of you could easily take a few hours – or the night – to yourselves here. I daresay you should."

"I'll stay here out with you, darling, shall I?" Kitty asks her husband coquettishly, with a wink at Hermione.

Hermione's still caught on Septimus using the word 'Manor,' and it takes her a moment to remember he's been relocated and must be referring to Draco's flat. Draco, meanwhile, is taking full advantage of the suggestion and is already tugging her hand to scoot down the hallway. He doesn't even know which room she's in and she takes the lead.

"How has it been having him in your flat?" she asks with a light laugh. "Is he getting on with Blaise and Theo?"

"Like a bloody house on fire," Draco grumbles. "He's delighted with the, ah, additional possibilities of having all three of us in the same flat. I don't think anybody's given him a show quite yet -"

Hermione's temporarily diverted by trying to figure who he might be referring to. Neither Blaise nor Theo are seeing anybody, unless – unless Blaise finally made a move on Ginny! Ah, that makes her even happier.

"- although he keeps hinting. He's in the living room, above the Floo. It'll be easy enough to keep any sexual shenanigans in our bedrooms, but sooner or later, I'm sure he's going to want to watch, and I'll have to draw the line."

Draco, while thrilled at the turn things have taken, isn't quite finished being cross with her. Hermione lets him take charge in the hotel room, and he doesn't treat her like she's breakable once.