Back in Runes on Wednesday, Theo pulled a chair up in front of Hermione's desk and leaned back in it, arms folded, watching her with an expression of barely-suppressed amusement.
He had expected her to be early. He had not been wrong. They had the classroom entirely to themselves.
Hermione looked up at him from beneath her brows, not lifting her head from the essay she was finishing. "Good morning."
"Morning. Quick question."
She set her quill down and looked at him properly. "Yes?"
"Do you really think I'm gay?"
Hermione blinked. Then she sputtered, sitting up straighter. "Sorry?"
Theo chuckled, tilting his chair back further. "Word reached me that Hermione Granger has been going about with the rather interesting theory that I've caught Draco Malfoy's eye. Thought I'd come straight to the source and set the record straight." He paused. "Pun intended."
"I — that's not — I wasn't serious!" Hermione stammered, going red.
"I'm flattered, truly. Malfoy's got good bone structure and everything. But I'm afraid blondes aren't my type." Theo's grin was insufferable.
"I didn't think he'd actually tell anyone!" she said. "It was a ridiculous throwaway comment — I was just trying to get the sopophorous beans off him!"
"Oh, you got under his skin all right." Theo was trying to sound solemn and failing completely. "He practically jumped every time I sat down next to him that evening."
Hermione blinked, recalculating. "That evening? I made that comment right after lunch."
Theo raised his eyebrows.
"I'm not proud," she said, before he could speak.
"You're completely proud," Theo said. "You wanted to rattle him, and it worked better than you planned."
"That's not —"
"You enjoyed it," Theo said. "Just admit it. Do you enjoy watching him squirm? Getting under his skin? Watching him lose his composure and go red?"
Hermione's face was already doing something similar. She opened her mouth to argue, and found she had no argument.
"Yeah," she said, very quietly.
Theo's grin went wide. "I knew it. Hermione Granger, you are playing a very dangerous game, and I am completely here for it."
"I'm not playing any game," she said, with considerably less conviction than she'd intended. "It was one comment. It's done."
Other students were beginning to drift in, and Theo stood to return his chair to its proper place. "Of course, of course. Just a throwaway comment that sent Malfoy avoiding me for eight solid hours and gave you that precise little spark of satisfaction you get when you're the first to answer a question in class."
After Runes, Hermione gathered her things and swung her bag over her shoulder.
Theo waited. "Ready?"
"I'm not walking with you. Not after Monday." She moved for the door.
He fell into step beside her anyway. "You didn't enjoy Draco calling you gorgeous?"
"No, surprisingly," she said, "I didn't."
"You should tell him that."
"You enjoy your friend's suffering far too much."
"Don't you?"
Hermione laughed. "I don't enjoy Harry being embarrassed. Not actually."
Theo hummed. "What about Weasley?"
"What about him?"
"Do you enjoy it when he's embarrassed?"
She stopped in the corridor, turning to him. "You're trying to make me out to be some kind of sadist."
"I'm simply asking."
"I do not take pleasure in my friends' discomfort," she said firmly, and continued walking.
They reached the Defence Against the Dark Arts corridor. Theo's classroom was the same, apparently, and he stopped with her outside the door, leaning against the wall. "Right. I'll leave you to your friends. Don't particularly fancy Weasley trying to hex me again."
Hermione winced slightly. "Sorry about that."
"You didn't hex me. Don't apologise for Weasley." He pushed off from the wall and headed inside.
Hermione slid down to sit against the stone, bag in her lap, trying not to think too hard about what Theo had said.
"Your boyfriends taking too long, Granger?"
She looked up. Malfoy was standing a few feet away, hands in his pockets, wearing an expression of mild enquiry.
"My what?"
"Potter and Weasley," he said, as if this were entirely obvious. "Are they still snogging or have they just forgotten the time?"
Hermione stared at him. "Malfoy, what on earth are you on about?"
He watched her for a moment, the usual cool contempt in place. "Are you done?" she finally managed, pushing herself to her feet.
"Done with what?"
"Your sad little attempt to get a rise out of me. Like I got one out of you on Monday."
His smirk shifted into something fractionally sharper. "You didn't get a rise out of me."
"Theo says you were bouncing off the walls."
"Theo exaggerates."
"Does he?" Hermione crossed her arms. "If you'll excuse me —" she moved to step into the classroom.
"Wouldn't wait too long, by the way," Malfoy said, his voice light and conversational. "Weasley seemed very engaged with Brown when I passed them just now."
Hermione stopped.
It was not a deliberate choice. Her feet simply stopped cooperating for a moment, and her chest did something uncomfortable, and she was aware — horribly, acutely aware — of Malfoy watching every bit of it.
She turned back around.
He was waiting, arms folded now, an expression of thoughtful satisfaction on his face. "Something wrong, Granger?"
"Nothing," she said, and hated how thin it sounded.
"You're not jealous of Brown," he said, tilting his head. "Surely not."
"Jealous of Lavender Brown?" Hermione said, with a short, dismissive laugh. "Malfoy, you give yourself far too much credit if you think you can read me that well."
"I'm not reading you at all," he said. "I'm simply observing. You're doing all the reading yourself." He stepped slightly closer. "Tell me — is she a ditz, then? Brown?"
"She —" Hermione caught herself.
Malfoy looked quietly triumphant.
"She's got nothing interesting to say," Hermione said, recovering. "All gossip and hair and Quidditch boys and —" She heard herself and stopped. Her hand went to her mouth.
"Don't stop," Malfoy said pleasantly. "Do go on."
Hermione pressed her lips together. Her cheeks were betraying her entirely.
"Does Weasley know about this infatuation of yours?" Malfoy asked, tilting his head slightly. "Does Saint Potter? Gryffindor's golden girl — brought low by her own feelings, not even a proper enemy required."
Hermione stared at him. It was one thing for Ginny to have said something similar over the summer, teasing from a place of closeness and friendship. It was entirely another to hear it from Malfoy, delivered with that look on his face — as if he found it deeply, privately amusing, and had no intention of letting it go.
"I don't even need to do anything," he said, his voice dropping just enough that only she could hear it. "I just have to wait." He was close enough that she could see the grey of his eyes clearly, sharp and watchful. "That's exactly what I plan to do."
He was shoved backward, and Harry stepped between them, wand out, expression flat. "Move along, Malfoy."
Malfoy scowled, straightened himself up, and sneered. "I was just leaving, Potter. Don't get your robes in a twist." He pushed past Hermione into the classroom.
Harry turned to her, frowning as he took in her face — too pale, eyes a little too bright. "What was that about? Whatever he said —"
"Class is starting," Hermione said, and walked past him to her seat.
Harry stood in the doorway for a moment, then followed. He settled beside her as Ron came in a moment later, sliding into the seat next to Harry with a cheerful expression.
"Already working?" Ron said, nodding at Hermione's parchment.
"Malfoy was at her," Harry murmured.
"Malfoy's a git," Ron said agreeably.
Hermione slammed her quill down and turned to face them. "I am sitting directly here," she said, with considerable precision.
They both leaned back in their chairs.
"He is a git," Ron added, a little more carefully.
"I can handle myself. I've been handling Malfoy's particular brand of cowardice for five years." She picked her quill back up and turned to the board. "And for the record, Ron — I was here on time, unlike some people. I don't want to know what detained you, but I'm going to assume it wasn't anything urgent."
Harry watched Hermione's profile carefully. "He wasn't late, Hermione. He just wasn't early. Class hasn't actually started."
Hermione's jaw went tight. She didn't answer, and as Snape began speaking, the moment passed.
Pansy watched Draco settle into his chair beside her, radiating a satisfaction that suggested he was very pleased with whatever had just happened in the corridor.
"What did you do?" she asked.
"What do you mean, what did I do?" he said.
"I mean," she said, "Theo left Granger out there, and you came in looking like you've just won something."
He shrugged. "I reminded her that her saintly friends aren't actual saints. That's all."
Theo glanced over, having caught the end of this. "Not to interrupt the entertainment," he said, "but you weren't actually being cruel to her, were you?"
"Mate, if you want to be friendly with her during Runes, fine," Draco said, his voice tightening slightly. "But don't let it go to your head."
"Theo's asking," Pansy said evenly, "whether you went too far."
Draco groaned. "I didn't do anything I haven't done for six years."
"That's not entirely true," Blaise said, not looking up from his desk. "You go after Potter and Weasley. You generally leave Granger alone, except when she gets in your way."
"Which she does constantly."
"What you're doing now is different," Pansy said quietly. She watched Hermione walk in across the room, head down, and slip into her seat. "You're pushing buttons that are new."
Draco said nothing.
The lesson moved on, and by the time class finished, Hermione was walking out with Harry and Ron. As she went, she had the distinct, crawling sensation that someone had been watching her throughout the lesson. Every time she'd turned, she'd found no one looking.
They made their way up to the common room, where Hermione settled cross-legged on the floor by the fire and spread her parchment out in front of her.
Ron sank into an armchair and absentmindedly flipped through a textbook. Harry sat at the low table and started scribbling, glancing over at Hermione occasionally.
The peace lasted perhaps eight minutes.
"Harry!" Lavender Brown appeared behind the sofa, leaning over it with a bright, expectant smile. "I heard you're Quidditch captain this year. Is that true?"
Harry blinked. "Er — yes. Yeah, I am."
"Oh, that's wonderful!" Lavender breathed. "I'd love to support the team from the stands. Honestly, it's such a shame we haven't got a proper cheer squad. We could wave banners and —"
Hermione's grip on her quill became slightly more determined. The voice was very high-pitched and relentless.
Lavender swung herself around and perched on the arm of the sofa beside Harry, twirling a lock of hair. "And Ron — I bet you're brilliant too. It's a real shame you weren't made captain. Though I suppose you can't be captain and a prefect at the same time."
Harry looked sideways at Hermione, rolling his eyes with great subtlety.
Ron looked up at Lavender with a grin that Hermione recognised as self-satisfied. "You think I'd make a good captain?"
"Oh, absolutely. If Harry wasn't Harry, you'd definitely be it."
Harry scoffed.
Lavender made herself fully at home on the sofa, effectively displacing Harry, who ended up on the floor next to Hermione with a pointed look that clearly asked for assistance.
Hermione took a steadying breath. "Lavender — don't you have an essay for Defence?"
Lavender glanced at her with the brief, pleasant contempt of someone who considers themselves entirely untroubled by the question. "Already done, Hermione. Some of us don't need all evening."
"Lucky you," Hermione said, with great restraint.
"I mean — Harry getting lucky in Potions on the very first day," Lavender said, shaking her head. "It's almost funny, isn't it? That you've always been the best, and then suddenly someone just —" She tilted her head. "Outpaces you."
"Harry works extremely hard," Hermione said.
"Of course he does! He was brilliant, wasn't he? But you —" Lavender seemed to be searching for tact and not finding it — "you study all the time. He just — he seems to get results without all the effort."
"I put effort into my work," Hermione said carefully, "because my work is worth being thorough about."
"Well, sure," Lavender said, "but you never do anything fun, do you? You and Harry both just — study, practice, study. Ron and I actually have a laugh."
"Ron and I," Hermione said.
Lavender blinked. "Hmm?"
"It's Ron and I, not Ron and me. When you're the subject, not the object."
"See, that," Lavender said, to Ron specifically, "is what I mean. Who actually corrects someone mid-sentence like that?"
"She just likes to be right," Ron explained, in the manner of someone being helpful.
"And I normally am," Harry added, a beat too late.
Lavender sighed. "If you ever want to do work with someone who isn't going to quiz you the whole time, Ron, you know where to find me." She smiled at him, stood up, and left.
Hermione gathered her parchment and stood. "I'll be in the library." She picked up her bag. "Don't follow me."
"Ron's a prat," Ginny said, stabbing a piece of potato at lunch the following day. "Forget about it."
"She was basically calling me an idiot," Hermione said, "while saying 'Ron and me' when it should have been 'Ron and I.'"
"Lavender is an idiot. This is already established."
"She was condescending and dismissive, and Ron just sat there beaming at her. At least Harry made some effort to shut her down."
"Ron is too dense to notice when he's being a bystander." Ginny propped her chin on her hand. "Stop wasting energy on it."
Harry slid in beside Hermione with the look of someone who has navigated a social situation he would rather not have experienced. "Y'know, Hermione, you could've told us you were coming to lunch."
"Hermione is on the verge of setting something on fire," Ginny told him pleasantly. "Lavender-related."
Harry groaned. "Because of the grammar thing and —"
"Don't," Hermione said.
Harry redirected. "Ron doesn't seem to mind her enthusiasm," he offered, which was not the improvement he might have hoped.
"She is embarrassingly obvious," Hermione said, setting her fork down. "Honestly — watching someone throw themselves at a person with that much effort — it's exhausting just to be in the room."
"I genuinely don't understand why it bothers you as much as it does," Harry said. "I don't remember you this wound-up when I was pining after Cho."
"Gee, I wonder," Ginny said, in a tone of profound, theatrical bewilderment.
"Don't," Hermione said to Ginny.
"I'm only saying —"
"I know what you're saying, and you're wrong," Hermione said, her cheeks warm, her eyes firmly on her plate.
Ginny raised an eyebrow, then turned to the other end of the table. "Dean!" she called. "Quick question. Does Hermione have a thing for Ron?"
"Ginny!" Hermione said.
Dean ambled over, glancing between all of them with the wary expression of someone being invited into a conversation that has at least one landmine in it.
"It's just a yes or no," Ginny said helpfully.
"It is not a yes or no," Hermione said, "because the question is based on a false premise."
"No opinion," Harry said to Dean, very firmly, on his behalf.
Dean held both hands up and backed away.
Ginny groaned. "Harry, she's been snapping at everyone for days. It always comes back to the same thing. If it's not about Ron —"
"It's about the principle of things," Hermione said. "Lavender is setting herself back about a century. She isn't interested in anything that doesn't reflect off a surface, and she talks down to people while smiling at them, and Ron sat there looking absolutely delighted through all of it." She paused. "And I caught her checking her reflection in her syrup one morning."
A silence settled over the table.
"You've convinced yourself," Ginny said at last, "that this is about feminism."
"It is partly about feminism."
"You've gone completely around the bend," Harry muttered.
"I have not," Hermione said, and stood up. "I'm going to Potions early."
"We've got another hour," Harry said.
"Then I'll be very well-prepared, won't I?" She picked up her bag. "Don't follow me."
"She's wound tighter than a watch spring," Harry said, once she'd gone.
"She needs to stop pretending," Ginny said, watching Hermione's retreating back. "Ron won't wait forever."
"Maybe lay off her a bit," Harry said. "She's not one of your —"
"Harry," Ginny said patiently, "what Hermione and I have been doing is being friends. Which is the same thing you and Ron are. You just don't call it that. She's not as different as you seem to think."
Harry rubbed the back of his neck. "Hermione is wound tighter than a spring. Ron is as dense as a troll. And Lavender Brown is doing my head in. I don't see what I'm supposed to do about any of it."
"The sooner someone does something, the better," Ginny agreed.
"Like what, exactly? Lock them in a broom cupboard?"
Ginny's expression became thoughtful. "You know, that's not the worst idea you've ever had."
"It was not an idea," Harry said, firmly. "It was an example. Of a bad idea. Do not act on it."
In the Potions dungeon, Draco measured out powdered asphodel with practised care as Daphne recounted, with great feeling, her mother's attempts to set her up with a boy named Thornwell over the summer.
"He explained the strategic intricacies of Gobstone tournaments," Daphne said, dropping her head into her hands. "For an entire dinner. My father was riveted."
"Thornwell," Draco mused. "Isn't he the one who considers club membership a personality trait?"
"Exactly. And my father's decided this means I'm troubled."
"You're not troubled," Pansy said, loyally.
They all looked at each other.
"I am not troubled," Daphne said.
Blaise made a diplomatic adjustment to his potion.
"It doesn't help that your parents adore Pansy," Theo pointed out.
Pansy sat up straighter. "Because I'm lovely."
Draco snorted. "Lovely."
"That's your future wife you're being rude about," Pansy said, with the air of someone making a legal point.
"If you were my wife," Draco said, "I'd take my father's place in his cell."
The table erupted. Even Daphne, mid-grievance, gave up and laughed. Pansy clutched her chest with theatrical anguish.
"You wound me, Draco Malfoy."
"Which is exactly why we'll never marry."
"And if not me," Pansy said, with the bright, pointed look she used when she already knew the answer she was aiming for, "then who?"
Before Draco could respond, Theo glanced toward the door and nodded. "Granger?"
Draco turned.
Granger had walked in and taken a seat at her station, apparently under the impression the room was empty. She had her Potions textbook open before the benches had finished scraping, head bent over the pages, hair falling forward around her face.
"Already after extra credit, are we?" Pansy called across the room.
Granger jumped. Looked over. Took in the five of them watching her.
"I didn't realise anyone was here," she said. "I just wanted a head start." She collected her ingredients and returned to her station.
"That's called cheating," Pansy said pleasantly.
Granger closed her eyes for a fraction of a second. "You're all already working too. Can we just be civil for one hour?"
Draco allowed himself a quiet laugh, and Pansy's eyes slid sideways toward him.
The room settled into a kind of truce — the familiar sounds of cauldrons and quills, the occasional murmur from the Slytherin end of the benches. Granger stayed at her station, moving quietly and efficiently, and to all appearances ignoring them entirely.
To all appearances.
Draco watched her, not conspicuously. He noticed the slight tilt of her head when voices carried across the room. The way she did not look over, but her hand would pause, fractionally, before continuing.
"Draco," Pansy murmured beside him. "What are you doing?"
"Working."
"You're watching Granger."
"I'm thinking."
"You can think while watching Granger. Apparently."
Theo, who had drifted over to Granger's station at some point, was sitting beside her now, speaking quietly — too quietly for Draco to make out.
Something in Granger's expression shifted. She smiled, briefly but without reservation, the way she smiled when she found something genuinely funny rather than politely so.
"Careful, Nott," Draco called across the room. "She helped put your father in Azkaban. Watch your back."
Theo's easy posture went still.
Granger's hand stopped mid-motion over her Baneberry. "I didn't put anyone in Azkaban," she said, not looking at him. "Their own actions did."
But she looked at Theo when she said it, and Draco could see the guilt in her face clearly from across the room.
Theo looked up. "Leave it, Draco." His voice was flat and meant it. "Unless you'd like to revisit your own family's activities that evening."
"Is Granger suddenly the most interesting person in the room?" Blaise murmured to Pansy.
"I think she might be," Pansy murmured back.
"Jealous that Theo can get her to talk?" Blaise asked Draco.
"As if," Draco said. He was already looking at his cauldron, which had begun to do something it should not be doing.
Daphne screeched. "Draco!"
She snatched her wand from the table and reduced the flame just in time, then turned to him with an expression that suggested she was reconsidering several life choices. "What on earth are you doing? You'd have taken the table out."
"I had it."
"You manifestly did not have it," Daphne said. "You were too busy glaring across the room to notice your potion boiling over."
From the corner of his eye, he could see Granger very carefully not smiling.
"Laugh if you want, Granger," he said, keeping his voice mild.
She looked up and met his gaze. "Maybe if you spent less time trying to provoke people," she said, "you'd have got it right the first time."
Before he could respond, the dungeon door opened and Slughorn came in, beaming at the room.
"Oh, dear me — you've already started!"
Granger turned to her professor with a bright expression entirely unlike the one she'd been wearing a moment ago. "I hope that's all right, Professor. I wanted to practice before class."
Slughorn was delighted. "Initiative makes a fine potioner, Miss Granger. I do hope you'll consider carrying on with the subject."
Draco rolled his eyes.
Students began filtering into the dungeon, and Daphne slid down from the counter, smooth and unhurried.
"Theo," she said. "Come and help me before Draco decides to re-create the incident of Wednesday."
"There was no incident of Wednesday," Draco said.
"There absolutely was," Daphne said. "You just weren't conscious for the worst of it."