Pansy lay across her bed, thumbing through Witch Weekly. "I cannot believe you willingly subjected yourself to dinner with Slughorn."
Daphne sighed. "It's not subjecting myself. There'll be stimulating conversation and—"
"I'm sorry, I thought I was speaking to Daphne. Have you been replaced by Astoria?" Pansy's voice dripped with sarcasm. "Come on. What's the real reason?"
"Don't be insufferable. If you must know, I'm curious. Slughorn's gatherings are where you can glean all sorts of things, if you listen closely enough. Potter and Granger will be there — who knows what might slip."
"Ah. So this is about Granger."
Daphne rolled her eyes. "You make it sound like I fancy her."
"No. I think you're afraid Theo does."
"I just want to understand what everyone finds so entertaining about her."
"Well, don't let me stop you." Pansy chuckled.
"When I get back, you better not still be reading that magazine." Daphne snatched the current issue from Pansy's hands. "'How to Bewitch a Wizard in Ten Days?' Honestly, Pans. It's ridiculous."
She opened the door — and paused. "Oh," she said softly, nodding at Theo, who was making his way toward their room. "Were you looking for me?"
Theo shook his head. "Nah, Daph. Just Pansy." He barely spared her a glance as he stepped past her into the room.
Daphne pressed her lips together. "Blaise, do be a dear and wait for me!" she called, hurrying down the stairs.
"You couldn't have told her she looked nice?" Pansy asked Theo as the door swung shut.
Theo's brows furrowed. "Daphne doesn't need me to call her pretty to know she is."
Pansy decided to hold her tongue on that one. "What can I do for you, Theodore?"
"Draco."
Pansy swung her legs off the bed and sat upright. "What about Draco?"
Theo crossed his arms, his casual posture at odds with the seriousness in his eyes. "Not that I'm not enjoying Hermione's company," he began, smirking at Pansy's incredulous expression, "but I'd like to know where exactly this plan of yours is heading."
"Draco won't talk to me, and it's not for lack of trying," Pansy said. "Potter's lot has clearly noticed the change in him. They'll start digging soon enough, so we may as well have Granger on side before they do."
Theo scoffed. "Then why not put your charms to work and start cosying up to Potter?"
"Theodore!" Pansy gasped. "As if I'd let Potter anywhere near me — I can't even finish that thought!"
Theo smirked, clearly enjoying her discomfort. "Fine. Don't get in bed with the enemy. Though Granger won't be able to get anything out of Draco."
---
Daphne walked with Blaise to Slughorn's quarters, her arm looped through his. "So, how are you? Any nice girls on the horizon?"
Blaise sighed. "I don't know what Theo is up to, Daphne."
Daphne's eyes went wide. "I never said anything!"
"You didn't have to," Blaise replied. "It's written all over you."
"Don't be ridiculous," Daphne huffed, flipping her hair.
Blaise didn't respond, and they arrived at Slughorn's door.
Slughorn threw it open with a beaming grin. "Ah, Mr Zabini, Miss Greengrass — I'm so glad you could join us!" He stepped aside to let them in.
Slughorn's quarters were opulent as ever — warm light from hovering candles, polished silver platters, the rich smell of spiced pumpkin soup mingling with aged Firewhisky. A small group had already gathered around the central table: McLaggen, Bobbin, and — to Daphne's mild irritation — Hermione Granger, sitting at the far end and looking thoroughly uncomfortable.
Blaise pulled Daphne's chair out for her.
"You can't say I was never a gentleman," he murmured as he took his own seat beside her.
Daphne's attention drifted around the room. Potter was conspicuously absent, and McLaggen kept glancing at Granger every time he made a joke, as though awaiting her approval.
"Professor, I believe connections are the most valuable thing we'll leave Hogwarts with next year," McLaggen announced grandly. "Most of the staff here already had some tie to Dumbledore. Connections are how people make it in their fields. I plan to work at the Ministry after graduation, and I intend to go in with the right ones."
Daphne ran a finger idly along the rim of her goblet. Granger had a polite, tight-lipped smile fixed on her face, though her eyes betrayed a complete absence of interest in McLaggen's self-serving speech.
"Any thoughts, Miss Granger?" Slughorn asked, glancing over at her.
"I don't think connections are everything," Hermione admitted. "Hard work and genuine talent should carry more weight than who you happen to know."
McLaggen leaned back, smirking. "Hard work only gets you so far. It's who you know that opens the doors."
"I'd rather earn my way than have it handed to me," Hermione replied evenly. "At least then I'd know I actually deserved it."
Something flicked behind McLaggen's eyes, and he held up his hands in a small concession.
The evening wore on pleasantly enough, but when Granger excused herself to use the bathroom, Daphne followed a moment later.
She was at the mirror, touching up her mascara, when Hermione stepped out of a stall and started slightly at the sight of her.
"Excuse me," Hermione said politely, moving around her toward the sink.
Daphne stepped aside, inspecting her nails with a studied nonchalance. "McLaggen seems rather taken with you tonight."
Granger paused for only a fraction of a second before turning on the tap. "He seems invested in everyone, really. I think he just likes to hear himself talk."
Daphne watched her in the mirror. "I'd say you've caught his attention specifically, though."
"Then I'm sure he'll find me quite uninteresting in time." Hermione dried her hands.
"You're not interested? He's rather... rugged."
Granger turned to face her. "Is there a point to all this, or are you just gossiping?"
"I'm only saying McLaggen is clearly interested. Perhaps you should go for it."
"That's not going to happen. So if you'll excuse me, Greengrass—"
"So I'm 'Greengrass', but Theo gets to be on a first-name basis?"
Granger let out a short laugh. "Merlin, you're all weirdly codependent. It's called being civil." She shook her head. "Goodnight."
---
Ginny walked into Hermione's dorm a couple of hours later to find her already back. "You're early."
Hermione scoffed. "Don't get me started."
Ginny made her way over. "What happened?"
Hermione sat cross-legged on her bed with a book open in her lap, though she clearly hadn't been reading it. "It's just not my sort of thing, these parties."
Ginny sat across from her, unimpressed. "How long did that excuse take you? Come off it."
"It's exhausting, Ginny!" Hermione snapped, shutting the book. "McLaggen wouldn't stop talking, Slughorn kept steering every conversation back to Harry, and Greengrass cornered me in the ladies' room."
"Why?"
"Something about McLaggen fancying me." Hermione groaned, leaning back against the headboard.
Ginny said nothing for a moment, picking at a loose thread on the quilt.
Hermione's eyes narrowed. "It's mad, right? I'd rather deal with a Blast-Ended Skrewt than McLaggen."
"I mean..." Ginny hesitated, fighting a grin.
Hermione buried her face in her hands.
"He did keep looking at you during Quidditch tryouts the other day."
"That is absolutely not true."
"It is. You were too busy watching Ron to notice." Ginny tilted her head. "What do you think Greengrass's angle is? Why does she care about McLaggen at all?"
Hermione threw her hands up. "That's exactly what I can't work out! She was all smug about it, pushing me toward him, and then she brought up Theo as if that were somehow relevant."
"Theo?" Ginny blinked. "What does he have to do with it?"
"I haven't the faintest idea! Apparently I'm not allowed to address him by his first name because it's too familiar." Hermione grabbed her pillow and hugged it to her chest. "The entire lot of them are deranged."
Ginny smirked. "So Greengrass is jealous."
"What?"
"Hermione, honestly. She likes Nott. It's obvious."
"Well, that's her problem, not mine."
---
The Slytherin common room was quiet, lit only by the pale glow filtering through the lake above. Most students had gone to bed, leaving a few stragglers bent over parchment by the fire.
The heavy door swung open, and the sound of Daphne's laughter carried in ahead of her as she stumbled into the common room, leaning on Blaise.
Draco looked up from his armchair by the fire.
"What are you still doing up?" Blaise asked, walking over.
"Thinking," Draco murmured. His gaze moved to Daphne's flushed cheeks. "I didn't realise Slughorn would be serving Firewhisky tonight."
Blaise grunted in agreement.
"I'll see her up to bed," Blaise said quietly. "Don't stay up too late."
Draco nodded.
Some time after they'd gone, he rose from his chair and slipped out of the common room.
It was well past curfew, and he was relying on the castle being quiet. The dungeon corridors were cold and close, the torchlight throwing long, restless shadows along the stone. He moved with purpose, his footsteps barely audible.
The staircases shifted and groaned as he made his way up to the seventh floor. He paused before the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy — that ridiculous oaf who'd tried to teach trolls to do ballet. His mother had always found it offensive. She could lecture at length about the degradation of dance.
He focused. He needed a space to work — somewhere private, where he could make progress on the task that had been burning a hole in his chest since the start of term. His father's spectacular failure at the Ministry had left the whole family's standing with the Dark Lord in ruins, and the job of repairing it had fallen, somehow, to Draco.
He began pacing in front of the tapestry, measured and deliberate. On the third pass, a door appeared in the stone wall, heavy and seamless. He pulled it open and stepped inside.
His mother had warned Lucius time and again to stay out of it this time around. They had barely escaped the last war with their innocence intact. His father hadn't listened. And Draco, fool that he was, had followed his lead.
The Room of Requirement stretched before him — vast, dim, a graveyard of forgotten things. Towers of broken furniture, dusty books, and rusted trinkets loomed on all sides. Draco moved through the maze of clutter with practised ease.
The Vanishing Cabinet stood apart from the rest, its black wood gleaming faintly in the lantern light. It had a presence to it — almost sentient, almost watchful.
He approached slowly. The wood was cool beneath his fingertips, a faint hum of dormant magic vibrating against his palm. This cabinet was his lifeline. His proof, if he could make it work, that he was capable of fulfilling the task placed on him.
He raised his wand and tapped the edge of the door. "Reparo."
The cabinet shuddered and groaned — not the sound of a spell working, but of the object itself resisting, ancient and affronted by the intrusion.
"Stupid thing," he hissed, crouching to examine the base. His fingers moved over deep cracks and splintered wood. The damage wasn't cosmetic — the cabinet's magic had fractured along with the grain, worn thin by years of neglect. A simple Reparo Charm would never be enough.
He pressed his wand to one of the cracks. "Reparo," he murmured again, concentrating. Blue light filled the fissure — and vanished just as quickly.
Draco stood, and kicked the cabinet. "I need you to work, damn it!"
He stepped back, staring at the room around him. He wasn't entirely sure how the Room of Requirement worked — he'd only heard stories — but he knew it responded to need.
A crash from somewhere to his left. He turned to find a stack of books scattered across the floor at his feet.
He crouched and sorted through them, brushing dust off worn leather covers and faded spines. Most were illegible with age, the titles barely visible. Then one caught his eye — small, its spine so cracked it was a wonder it held together at all. The moment he touched it, something shifted in the air. Not dramatically, but noticeably — a subtle thickening, as if the room were paying attention.
He opened it and began flipping through the pages. The text was nearly unreadable: ink bled and faded, whole passages missing where pages had been torn out, the remaining words written in a system of runes he couldn't parse at a glance.
Even a Translation Charm felt risky on something this fragile.
"Damn it!" He hurled the book into the dark.
It came straight back and smacked him in the face.
Draco recoiled, more from the shock than the sting. The book tumbled to the stone floor and lay there, perfectly innocent. He stared at it, then at the cabinet, then at the dim sprawl of the room around him.
"Right," he said. "The room's playing games, now."
He picked it up and waved it at the ceiling. "I can't read Runes!" he said. "Do you have something in English? French, even — I'm rusty, but I'd manage."
The pile of fallen books swirled as though caught in a current, then launched another volume at him. This time, he caught it.
He turned it over.
Advanced Rune Translation.
The room, apparently, thought he should take another class.
---
Over the following weekend, Hermione found herself dragged along to Harry and Ron's Quidditch practices more often than she'd intended. She told herself it was out of loyalty. What actually tested her loyalty was Lavender Brown, who had taken up residence in the stands and seemed to treat every half-decent save Ron made as a personal achievement.
McLaggen had also decided — apparently without consulting Hermione — that she was his new confidante. He positioned himself beside her in the stands at every opportunity and talked at length about Quidditch tactics, Ministry connections, and his own considerable talents. Hermione's polite responses only encouraged him.
Meanwhile, Harry had grown increasingly fixated on Malfoy, having spotted him on the Marauder's Map wandering the castle well after midnight on the night of Slughorn's supper. Harry had also taken to annotating his Advanced Potion-Making textbook with spells from the margins — spells that weren't his.
Hermione had quietly retreated toward Ginny, finding Harry's obsessions exhausting and Ron's inflated ego difficult to be around.
By Sunday evening, she was curled up by the common room fire while Ginny spoke enthusiastically about what a wonderful boyfriend Dean was.
Hermione smiled, though her mind wandered. She admired Ginny's confidence — her total lack of apology about how she felt. It made Hermione's own tangle of confused feelings about Ron, about McLaggen, about whatever Daphne Greengrass thought was happening with Theo, seem all the more ridiculous by comparison.
Ginny sighed. "Alright. No more Dean."
Hermione shook her head. "No, no, I'm genuinely interested."
"You're not," Ginny laughed, "but I can talk to Luna about him later. What's on your mind?"
"Everything feels off this year," Hermione admitted. "Harry is obsessing over that book and Malfoy's midnight wandering. Ron's convinced he's a Quidditch god, and Lavender's standing right there stoking his ego — and he can't even see it. McLaggen won't leave me alone. And now Greengrass is being strange, and Theo is suddenly perfectly civil, and I just can't quite—" She stopped, hearing how frantic she sounded. "I can't catch my breath."
Ginny laughed.
Hermione frowned. "What?"
"You helped Harry form Dumbledore's Army when Umbridge was terrorising the school. You had Umbridge removed by a herd of centaurs and then went to the Ministry to fight Death Eaters. You got Skeeter exposed and contained. The year before that, you helped an innocent man escape on the back of a Hippogriff." Ginny gave her a level look. "And your biggest crisis this year is that your friends are being self-absorbed and everyone suddenly wants your attention?"
Hermione opened and closed her mouth.
"When you put it like that..."
"Because it is what it is," Ginny said, grinning. "Let Harry obsess. Ignore Ron. Lavender will move on. Tell McLaggen where to go. As for Greengrass and Nott — she's marking her territory." She shrugged. "No one is trying to kill you this year. Enjoy it. Be normal."
---
Monday morning, Hermione decided to give Ginny's advice a trial run.
She woke up with a quiet sense of determination and, for once, let herself sit with the morning calm before the day began. When she made her way down to the Great Hall, she walked straight past her usual seat between Harry and Ron — both already deep in argument about something — and continued to the other end of the table, where Ginny was sitting with Luna.
"Good morning." She smiled, taking a seat and helping herself to breakfast.
Ginny grinned, clearly noticing. "Good morning. You look... relaxed."
Luna glanced up from her bowl and smiled serenely. "I was just telling Ginny about the Wrackspurts floating around Harry lately. They do tend to gather around people who need a bit of clarity."
Hermione blinked, but found herself laughing softly. "I thought I'd try something different today." She explained.
"New approaches are always interesting," Luna replied thoughtfully. "Wrackspurts do hate routine, so that should help."
Ginny rolled her eyes with obvious fondness. "Luna's way of saying Harry's been distracted. Not that it's anything new."
Hermione reached for the toast and felt, for the first time in days, something close to ease.
The three of them talked over breakfast — normal things, pleasant things, nothing to do with Malfoy's late-night movements or Voldemort or Ron's Quidditch save statistics. By the time Hermione stood to leave for her first lesson, she felt lighter than she had in weeks.
"Thanks for the company," she told Ginny.
Ginny grinned. "Anytime. And if McLaggen gets too persistent, let me know. I've been looking for an excuse to use a Bat-Bogey Hex."
Hermione laughed, still smiling as she walked into Ancient Runes to find Theo already seated, flipping through his textbook.
She dropped her bag and sat across from him. "Morning, Theo."
He looked up. "Morning." His eyes moved over her face for a moment. "You look different."
"Different?"
"That crinkle between your eyebrows is gone." He pointed at the spot.
Hermione chuckled. "I've been told I'm tense."
Theo's gaze shifted past her, his brows drawing together in confusion.
Hermione frowned. "What did I say?"
The scrape of a chair and the thud of a bag on a desk behind her answered before Theo could.
Her face fell.
"You'll keep that hair under control, won't you, Granger?" Malfoy drawled. "I'd like to be able to read the board."
Hermione forced a tight smile without turning around. "Funny. You're not in this class, Malfoy."
"I didn't realise you tracked my schedule so closely."
"I track my own schedule. It's been several days since term began, and you haven't been here once."
Malfoy sighed with theatrical patience. "If you must know, I've decided to broaden my studies. I arranged a transfer with Snape. The class was full, but after a delicate conversation with a Hufflepuff, a seat became available."
Hermione's jaw tightened. She didn't need to imagine what that "delicate conversation" had involved.
"How nice," she said coolly, turning back to her desk.
Theo frowned. "Draco, you said Ancient Runes was a waste of time."
"I've reconsidered. It might come in useful."
Hermione resisted the urge to roll her eyes with some effort.
"Granger, why do you look so put out? I'm here to learn — isn't that what you're always going on about? Education and all the rest."
"Draco," Theo warned, as Professor Babbling swept in and called the class to order.
The lesson opened with a detailed examination of ancient Norse runic clusters, and Hermione was grateful for the excuse to focus on something other than the boy behind her.
That was, until she felt a deliberate tap against the back of her chair.
She ignored it.
Tap. Tap.
She clenched her quill.
Tap. Tap.
She looked at Theo. He appeared to be taking notes, oblivious.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap—
"Malfoy!" She snapped, spinning round.
He leaned back with a perfectly composed smirk. "Yes, Granger?"
"Do you mind? I'm trying to learn."
"I don't mind at all. It's quite entertaining watching you get worked up over nothing."
Hermione's patience evaporated. "Right. Well, this time when I punch you, don't go running to your father. Oh, you can't — that's right. He's in Azkaban."
A heavy silence fell.
"Miss Granger, Mr Malfoy — this is a classroom, not a duelling ground," Professor Babbling said with cool authority. "I expect better from two prefects. Miss Granger, detention this evening."
"That's not fair — he provoked me!"
"Be that as it may, Miss Granger, I expect restraint. Mr Malfoy, since you appear so determined to cause disruptions, you'll join her. Perhaps a quiet evening together will teach you both to conduct yourselves appropriately. Report to Mr Filch at eight o'clock." She looked between them. "Keep arguing, and I'll take house points as well."
"Professor—" Malfoy started.
"Enough!"
When the class finally ended, Hermione gathered her things and walked out without looking at anyone.
Theo turned to Draco, unimpressed. "Why are you here, really?"
Draco grinned. "Thought it might be entertaining."
"You're aware she actually punched you once, aren't you? Or has the humiliation faded?"
Draco's grin slipped. "Shut up."
"Enjoy detention." Theo shook his head and left.