Disclaimer: all characters and the wider wizarding world belong to J. K. Rowling.
As the end of term and the promised Yule Ball approached it seemed the entire castle took leave of their senses. There were declarations of undying love, flowers, and extravagant date "proposals" everywhere. Hermione sought solace in the Library to escape the happy couples in the Gryffindor common room.
Ron had asked Luna, as they'd been spending a lot more time together. This prompted Luna to assure Hermione that she and Ron were no more than friends more often than was entirely comfortable. But at least it saved her the embarrassment of turning him down, especially after the last ball.
The week before the ball Hermione was looking forward to shutting herself up in the Library. She was just leaving the common room when the Head Boy bounded up to her breathlessly
"Hermione, there you are! I need a favour."
Of course, he did. Hermione resisted the temptation to roll her eyes. Between Ron, Harry, and Michael, she was going to do herself an injury one of these days.
"Sure, Michael, what do you need?"
"One of the 6th year prefects needs to swap their slot for rounds this week."
Hermione knew the halls would be filled with students breaking curfew for the sake of singing roses and overblown romantic gestures. But the Head Boy had asked her to cover for a younger prefect and she took her Head Girl duties incredibly seriously.
"Ok, fine. Who else-?"
Michael cut her off with a hug.
"Oh, thanks Hermione, I knew I could count on you, you're a lifesaver. I have to go; I'm meeting Cho in Hogsmeade"
"Cho? Why are you meeting Cho?" she asked. It was no secret there was no love lost between those two, following Harry's ill-fated romance with the older girl in 5th year.
"Oh right, I forgot, McGonagall has given me permission to invite her to the Yule Ball!"
Hermione's face screwed up in confusion.
"I know she's not a student anymore, but she and I have been sort of seeing each other since the summer, and I know one of the girls in our year got permission to invite her boyfriend from a couple of years above us, so I thought I'd ask."
Michael was almost bouncing on the balls of his feet. He didn't notice the look of shock on the Head Girl's face.
"I'm so excited, I asked her to meet me for lunch – and if I don't rush, I'll be late. See you at the prefects meeting tomorrow!" He was already around the corner by the time he finished.
Hermione was left completely stunned for a moment. She immediately rushed back into the common room and up to the 6th year girls' dorms.
"Ginny! I have a problem!"
Ginny was brushing her hair which hung wet over her shoulders when Hermione rushed in. Her friend started pacing deep in thought. Ginny knew that look. Hermione was thinking through a problem, it was probably best to just wait for her to open up, she would eventually.
"Michael's going to ask Cho to go to the ball with him."
Well, that wasn't what she expected. The last thing Ginny wanted was to see Cho again, but she couldn't understand why Hermione had gotten herself so worked up about this.
"So? I'm going with Harry, we're dating. Surely it doesn't matter if Cho's there or not?"
Hermione looked at Ginny, her brows knotted together. It must have been the shock, but it took her a moment to work out what Ginny was talking about.
"No, Ginny, that's not why it's a problem."
Hermione slumped down on Ginny's bed and the red head joined her.
"I thought we were going to the ball together."
Ginny looked at her friend's still knotted brows. She was wringing her hands. There was more to this and if she was just a little bit patient, Hermione would tell her of her own accord.
"I mean, I hadn't asked him, and he didn't exactly ask me, but, well, I just sort of assumed…"
Ginny shook her head in disbelief.
"You assumed? Oh Mione! Why didn't you say? I'm sure he would have gone with you if he'd known you had nobody to go with. I heard him talking to Terry the other day about how he had nobody to go with, so he was going to ask McGonagall for permission to ask someone from outside the school!"
Hermione looked distraught. She did the maths, there was nobody left out of her 5th, 6th or 7th year friends. She'd completely misjudged the situation and now she was going to have to go to the ball alone.
"This is a disaster. How are we supposed to open the Yule Ball with the traditional Head Girl, Head Boy dance when he has another partner and I don't have anyone!"
She hung her head in her hands and tried to take deep breaths.
"Oh for the love of Merlin!" Ginny interjected "You can dance with Harry for the first dance. Remember your 4th year? He wasn't half bad, and it's not like I mind, I'll have him for the rest of the evening anyway!"
Problem solved, Ginny squeezed her friend's hand and turned her attention back to her hair. She muttered a few charms and her hair was dry, straight and tangle free in moments.
Hermione looked at the back of Ginny's perfect hair as she disappeared into the bathroom. By the time Ginny returned, she had vanished. Hermione knew Ginny thought the problem was solved, but she was still going to spend the rest of the day berating herself for overlooking such a simple variable.
It wasn't until she was already at dinner that Hermione realised Michael had neglected to tell her who she would be patrolling with.
After dinner, Hermione dropped her stuff in the Head Girl room in Gryffindor tower and headed to the main entrance hall to meet her partner for patrols. She knew it would be a long, long night. The sooner she started, the sooner she could finish and get back to fretting about going to the ball alone.
She was thinking about it so intently she didn't take in her surroundings until she was at the bottom step. There, at the door to the castle, stood a familiar blond. Just what she needed when her mind was elsewhere.
"Hello Malfoy."
"Granger."
They nodded to one another and began their rounds in silence.
"Have you finished the Transfiguration essay?"
"Of course - that old bat hates me; I don't need to give her a reason," he replied. "I don't even need to ask if you've finished it, Granger. You probably finished it the day it was set and wrote a foot more than necessary."
Hermione was about to object – not that it wasn't all true – but at that moment they passed a window and the moonlight lit up the smirk on his face. It was softer than his customary sneer, a cheeky glint in his eye.
"Who knew you had a sense of humour?" she replied, smirking back.
He chuckled – she realised he was chuckling a lot more this term, a marked improvement on the spoilt bully of his younger year, and his haunted detachment from 6th year up until the beginning of term. It was like he was a whole new person. Sure, he was still cold and aloof, but they'd partnered in Potions more than once, they'd even managed to converse, especially when Theo was around.
And here he was gently ribbing her, like Harry or Ron would. He even looked different; those aristocratic features, coupled with his height and his unusual colouring, untainted by the slicked back hair and the permanent sneer on his face, made him very striking.
It occurred to Hermione, in a very academic sort of way, that he was attractive. Maybe those girls had been onto something all these years?
They walked in contented silence a few minutes more. Turning a corner in the dungeons they came face to face with a Slytherin student. He couldn't have been older than 12 or 13 and he looked terrified.
"What are you doing out after curfew? And alone? What were you thinking? 5 points from Slytherin and I want your name!"
Hermione realised her voice was shrill, but it was really only because she'd been startled by the boy and she didn't want to let on.
His eyes widened and he quickly thrust his hands behind him, and a blush quickly spread up his neck to his cheeks.
"What have you got in your hands? Show me!"
Draco wondered how this girl had got to 19 without having a clue about subtlety.
"Granger, why don't you take a breath and let him answer?"
Hermione looked at Draco. As it was a student from his own house it was more his place than hers. She took a couple of steps back and let him take over. She would step in only if he decided to be unduly lenient.
Draco stepped forward to partially block the boy from Hermione's view.
"Well?" he drawled.
The boy shuffled a bit before revealing a single red rose in his hand.
"All the Slytherin girls have dates. I'll be a laughingstock if I have to go to the ball alone – Stan Slinkhard said you're not a real man if you don't have a date."
Draco rolled his eyes. Sometimes he forgot what it was like to be a child – he'd grown up so much in the past couple of years.
"And this Slinkhard, is he in your year?"
"Yeah – he's repeating first year, same as me."
"Well, do you think he'd tell me I'm not a real man?"
The boy looked up at that, his eyes widening even further.
"You mean- "
"Not that a first year like Slinkhard would know but I think it would make you more of a man to attend a ball without a date, find some girl standing on her own and ask her to dance. You could probably make her night."
The boy's eyes lit up at the thought of making some girl's night by being a "real man". He smiled brightly and looked up. His smile fell slightly when he locked eyes with Hermione. He'd almost forgotten he'd been caught out after curfew by the Head Girl.
"Get back to your dorm. Don't do it again" she added, and he turned and ran off dropping the rose on the way.
Draco turned to continue their rounds. After a couple of paces, he realised Hermione hadn't moved. He turned to see her wringing her hands, her brows knitted together. They may not have been close, but he'd known her for 7 years; she was working that Gryffindor courage up to something.
"Out with it, Granger, your overthinking is deafening, and students are trying to sleep."
She looked at him then and unclenched her hands.
"Did you mean what you said? Well, I mean, implied I guess, you didn't really say it- "
"Didn't really say what, Granger? You're not making any sense"
She bit her lip. It was now or never. He'd implied he didn't have a date. He might just have been saying it to make that poor boy feel better but maybe not. Besides, she needed a date to complete the first dance with, and they'd been getting on so well lately.
"Did you mean it when you said you didn't have a date for the ball?"
"Yes," he answered clearly, quirking an eyebrow, urging her to continue.
"Oh, well, I just figured you'd be going with one of the Slytherin girls, Pansy seems desperate to get you back."
He looked at his hands and picked at an imaginary piece of dirt under his fingernail.
"Actually, Pansy will be going with Blaise. Despite only dating him to get back at me, it turns out they have a lot in common."
"What, like being the easiest trollops in the school?"
Hermione's eyes widened and her hand flew to her mouth.
"Oh Merlin," she mumbled between her fingers, "Malfoy, I don't know what came over me, they're your friends and I shouldn't really say things like that, especially not about fellow students, I'm so- "
He laughed out loud before she could finish her apology.
"Merlin's bollocks, Granger, don't apologise," he managed once his laughter had subsided. "I just didn't know you had it in you." He paused and lowered his voice, "It's actually a pretty accurate description of the situation.
"I'm not sure I'll go to be honest," Draco added, picking an imaginary piece of lint off his sleeve. "Theo's always good for smuggling in some of Ogden's finest so if he goes, I'll probably just go on my own."
She took a deep breath. She was a Gryffindor, time to summon up her courage.
"Would you like to go with me?"
His eyes shot up, wide for a fraction of a second before he schooled his features into his customary placid look. The question hung between them in the silence of the corridor for a moment too long. Hermione braced herself for the put down, she could picture his sneer already.
"Alright," he drawled, "but colour me surprised, I would have thought you'd be going with Weaselbee."
She quirked an eyebrow at that and tried really hard to hide her smile.
"My ex, you mean? His name is Ron and if you're serious about that whole clean slate thing you said at the start of the year, you'd do well to remember that, Malfoy."
"Draco," he muttered, so quietly she would have missed it if they hadn't been stood so near in the silence of the dungeons.
"Draco."
At the sound of his name he looked up and caught her eyes. Sure, she wasn't the only person to use his first name; the rest of the 7th year Slytherins called him Draco or Drake, except Pansy who still insisted on calling him 'Drakie'. It was probably because she knew he hated it. But there was something about the way Hermione said it, like for her it meant something more.
Hermione smiled when their eyes met, and she could feel the heat in her cheeks. She had never really held with calling people by their last names and she never did it with her friends. She might have been jumping ahead of herself, but she'd come to think of Malfoy – Draco – as her friend. He might not reciprocate it, but he had said yes to the dance so at least that was something.
Draco wondered what that smile meant. Did she realise how her whole face changed when she smiled?
The girl who had faced the darkest wizard the world had ever seen, was embarrassed asking him to the ball.
The war heroine who'd been tortured and ridiculed, smiled and blushed prettily when she said his given name for the first time.
He coughed and shuffled his feet at the realisation.
"Well, we should finish our rounds. We're only half-way through and you still insist on patrolling together since last time, so…"
"Right."
They spent the rest of the patrol walking in silence, but it wasn't uncomfortable like it had been at the beginning of term. Back in the entrance hall they stopped as Hermione stood on the first step of the grand staircase and turned to her partner.
"Good night, Draco."
"And you, Granger."
"Hermione," she whispered. She looked down at her feet, her hands, anywhere but at him. Her Gryffindor courage had just about got her through asking him to the ball, but it was done for the day.
"Let's not get carried away, you'll always be Granger to me...Hermione."
She looked up then. He was staring at her, with one of those pale, perfect eyebrows quirked and half a smile on his face – not a smirk, a real smile. It was breath-taking.
She shook her head and turned to leave but caught her foot on the second step and stumbled a couple of steps, before she caught her balance.
He struggled not to laugh as she blushed crimson and rushed the rest of the way until she was out of sight. He headed back to his dorm with a spring in his step that hadn't been there this morning and fell asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow, with a smile on his face.
Ginny was rushing to Quidditch practice – she was late as usual, the girls in her dorm were still talking about the ball when she'd left them. She turned a corner, and a familiar blond was leaning against the wall in front of her.
She slowed to a walk as she passed him – he might not be the same git he had been but he could still trip her up and she didn't want to fall flat on her face just 2 days before the ball.
"Weaselette."
The sound of his voice surprised her, she stopped directly in front of him.
"What do you want, Malfoy, I'm late."
"What colour is Granger wearing to the ball?"
Well, she hadn't seen that one coming. Hermione had told her that she was going with him, of course, after making her promise not to tell Harry or Ron, but she could have spent 10 years guessing what he'd have to say to her and she wouldn't have come up with that.
She just stood there, mouth open, staring at him for a moment, trying to process it.
"Weaselette! Do you know what colour she's wearing?"
When she still didn't respond he shook his head and moved to walk away until she reached out to grab his arm and stopped him.
"Purple."
He nodded his head and walked off, leaving Ginny to stare after him. Maybe Hermione was right, maybe he had changed.
Back in his dorm he grabbed some of his headed parchment and a quill and began writing.
"Dear Mother…"
