At that moment, Draco drew nearer, glancing briefly her way, raising an eyebrow slightly, as though sending her some secret greeting.
However, Hermione could not be entirely sure it was not simply her imagination, since he did not stop, but walked steadily on, past her, and further up.
The one small mercy was that his rather overwhelming gaze had moved off her at last, letting her look elsewhere. Hermione lowered her head, watching his black trousers sweep past her along the aisle, then, hesitating a moment, glide past the arm of her chair, and vanish behind her.
His cufflink seemed to brush, ever so lightly, against a strand of hair fallen across her shoulder, sending a faint tingle across her scalp where it rested. She was left bewildered once again; perhaps that, too, had only been her imagination.
The one certainty was a strange yet pleasant scent of cedarwood, suddenly drifting into her nose, slipping down into her chest, and cunningly plucking at her heartstrings.
"Hermione, why has your face gone so red?" Ginny, always eager to stir up a little mischief, tugged at her sleeve and whispered in her ear. "What is wrong? Have you gone all soft over Draco Malfoy?"
"Yes..." she mumbled, that faint scent of cedarwood still lingering about her.
A few seconds later, her heart pounding, she suddenly realised what a foolish thing she had just admitted, and quickly whispered to Ginny, "Oh, no! Of course not!"
However, Ginny gave her such a knowing look that Hermione's cheeks burned all the hotter.
She heard Ginny say, in a distinctly knowing tone, "Just a friend from the House next door? Well, that puts my mind at ease, then."
"We really are only ordinary friends," she said softly, giving Ginny a guilty little smile, feeling suddenly and thoroughly uncomfortable.
Had she really been so obvious about it?
She sat up very straight, determined not to look back at him again, for fear of giving herself away entirely.
Draco Malfoy spotted Hermione in her seat at once. She looked rather lost, her mind plainly elsewhere, her lips slightly parted, her eyes fixed blankly in his direction.
Beside her sat that red-headed girl, and near them, Harry, Ron, and a good many more red-headed Weasleys besides.
Had his parents not been present, he might well have gone over to greet them. But given how his father, Lucius, walking ahead of him, had always been on poor terms with Mr Weasley, he had no wish to invite trouble on such a day.
He could only steal a few more glances at her as he climbed the stairs. Her eyes were bright, and she kept looking his way, offering him something like a smile.
Was this, then, what she meant by "an ordinary friendship between people from neighbouring Houses"... smiling at him so sweetly?
He had meant, at first, to show this careless girl a little arrogance in return, but in the end could not help himself, and raised an eyebrow back at her. She seemed to grow flustered at once, and quickly lowered her head.
He wanted to reach out and touch her hair, but felt it hardly proper to do so in public, and so restrained himself, letting only his sleeve brush lightly against it as he passed.
Without exchanging a single word, he walked on past her.
Draco felt rather put out. He knew perfectly well he could show none of it just now. Every move he made was being watched by Lucius and Narcissa, and he did not think it wise to draw their attention towards Hermione at this particular moment.
So he swallowed his temper, followed behind his parents, exchanged pleasantries with Fudge, and finally took his seat in the second row. He crossed his long legs and sat, coolly composed, in the aisle seat, directly behind Hermione.
The seating arrangement pleased him rather more than he cared to admit. He could lean forward and reach out to take hold of her thick hair. Perhaps she might even turn round and look at him.
However, the red-headed girl beside her kept murmuring in her ear, which he found rather irritating.
Had she and Ron's sister already reached the stage of whispering secrets to one another? Whatever were they saying, that she could not even spare him a glance?
These questions circled endlessly through Draco's mind.
She never once turned round, sitting perfectly upright and proper. As though some stranger's boulder sat behind her, and not him at all.
Hermione Granger, what a heartless girl!
How thoroughly heartless!
Draco's lips drooped, disappointed.
He sat in silence, still as a statue, glancing round at the others in the box. Much as in his past life, most of them were high-ranking Ministry officials; he even spotted the Bulgarian Minister for Magic among them.
In the corner, a house-elf looking rather like Dobby sat in the second-to-last seat of the back row, its face buried in its hands.
Whose elf was this, again? Was it keeping a seat for its master?
Draco could not quite place it.
At this point, in his past life, most of his attention had been fixed on "quarrelling with the Golden Trio."
Draco, distracted, meant to take another look at the house-elf, but Ludo Bagman, dressed in a Wimbourne Wasps jersey, interrupted his train of thought.
He came bustling into the box like a great bumblebee, exchanged a few pleasantries with the assembled wizards, and then, laughing heartily, got straight down to business.
He pressed the tip of his wand to his throat and cast Sonorus, announcing to the whole stadium, "The four hundred and twenty-second Quidditch World Cup is now underway!"
The stadium erupted into cheers.
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