packing up her much loved Head Girl's room and making a more permanent move back into her old room at her parents' house over the summer seemed nothing short of depressing.
Maybe it had been the sight of Harry, smiling for the first time in weeks, as a pretty, blonde, Hufflepuff whispered in his ear. Or Seamus Finnegan bravely risking Ron's wrath by snogging enthusiastically with Ginny under the streamers. Parvati Patil gave new meaning to the term 'alight with happiness' when she flitted about the Hall, showing off her newly acquired engagement ring. No matter that she and Justin Finch-Fletchly had broken up and gotten back together four times that year.
Even the Slytherins were uncharacteristically jovial. Gregory Goyle was bouncing a laughing Pansy Parkinson on his knee, while Blaise Zabini had shed his usual Head Boy mask of authority long enough to lead a grinning Ravenclaw out to the dance floor.
And Hermione had stood amidst it all, dizzy with nostalgia and a strange melancholy, surrounded by more than a hundred of her classmates, and yet completely, inexplicably alone.
She made her way to the punch, and there she remained for the next two hours. Morose and maudlin.
Three or four non-alcoholic drinks later, she noticed Draco Malfoy.
Her fellow prefect was lounging at the far end of the Great Hall, to the left of the wide doors. He was watching the crowd with an unreadable expression, arms folded across his chest, dressed in finely-tailored formal robes in shade of tactile black that sucked the candlelight in the room towards him.
A romanticized version of the story might have had their eyes meeting across the crowded hall, where they would share a quiet, but meaningful look crystallizing years of alleged sexual tension. But this was Draco Malfoy, and Draco Malfoy simply did not do wistful or romantic. He kept his eyes on the crowd, and Hermione kept her eyes on him.
She watched him for a long time. Everyone watched Draco Malfoy. It was hard not to. He was a prefect, and he was Captain and Seeker of Slytherin Quidditch. Academically, he was ranked among the top five students in the school, tying with Padma Patil from Ravenclaw, and sitting three and a half points below Hermione herself.
He wasn't the most subtle-minded of Slytherins either, strutting around the school like the world owed him a living. Oh and he also happened to be an irredeemably awful person.
Over the years, Draco Malfoy hadn't changed much in the way of personality, but he had grown up in other ways.There was no logical reason why Hermione had chosen that night, of all nights, to allow her mild physical interest in Malfoy to run unchecked. She was only a girl, she supposed, a teenager with the requisite barrage of hormones pulling her in this direction or that. Usually, she kept a tight leash on her more impractical impulses. Her feelings were unchanged about Malfoy, but she still found it remarkable that a person could find another to be so attractive, and yet so unpleasant.
To her amazement, she had found herself putting one foot in front of the other, as she walked across the Great Hall towards him, holding two glasses of punch and wondering where her unusual bravado was coming from.He dressed to the left, she noted, judging from the way the slight, bulge resided on the left of his trouser delta. Her face was on fire as she thought this, but that was ok because there was only candlelight in the Great Hall and everyone else was too preoccupied to pay her much heed.
On a whim, she tried to picture what that part of him would look like. Pale, like the rest of him, except flushed with pink. She wondered about the feel of him. The heat and the weight, the sensation of running her thumb across a moist, blunt tip. She imagined him closing his eyes, his mouth forming a silent 'ah'.
But no, surely Draco Malfoy was not so plebeian as to actually show real emotion, even during sex. Even on a celebratory night such as that. As a prefect and Head Girl, she was allowed unrestricted entry to common rooms and other nooks and crannies around the castle frequently visited by stealthy students. She had heard the whispers and the smothered giggles.
If the hyperbolic claims of Hogwarts senior female population were to be believed, dubious family connections aside, Draco Malfoy was considered to be quite the catch.
Her mouth had gone dry as she approached him, wondering why