The turmoil surrounding Krum, Hermione, and Draco didn't last long.
When students discussed their dance partners, they might occasionally mention the incident with a laugh, but there was always fresher gossip arriving with the morning post.
Who, aside from those directly involved, would cling to old news forever?
The first day of the Christmas holidays was a sunny Saturday. Early that morning, Hermione woke to the sound of Lavender and Parvati whispering behind the curtains of their four-poster beds.
"Yesterday, someone tried to invite Fleur Delacour and failed miserably," Parvati said. "Someone from our own school. Guess who?"
"I know — it was Ron!" Lavender said. "I saw him sitting in the common room afterward, pale as a ghost, like he'd been Petrified."
Parvati dissolved into giggles. "Pretty embarrassing, wasn't it?"
"Oh, I think it was rather sweet," Lavender said with a grin. "These days, how many boys would have the nerve to invite a girl out loud, in front of everyone, in a crowded corridor? I admire the courage."
"Sweet? I still think Cedric — Hufflepuff's champion — is the cuter one. So, who did he invite her with in the end?"
"How would I know?" Lavender said cheerfully. "All I know is that our Gryffindor champion has already invited you. What did I tell you? You're certain to be front and centre for the opening dance!"
"Don't say it so loudly, Lavender — I'm meant to keep a low profile," Parvati said with a chuckle.
"Who do you think Krum's partner is, then?" Lavender asked, lowering her voice.
"Oh — Hermione, who are you going to the ball with?" Parvati swept back the curtain, peering hopefully at the neighbouring bed.
It was empty.
"Look at her — faster than a Snitch!" Parvati pursed her lips. "I really can't understand why Krum chose her. She's probably been floating on air ever since. She'd be mad to turn him down."
"I'm not so certain. I heard yesterday that Krum's dance partner is still undecided," Lavender said, glancing at Hermione's untouched pillow.
"I suppose he gave up on asking her. I always said it was a fleeting impulse on his part." Parvati shrugged. "It can't be that Hermione rejected him — who could refuse Krum?"
"I suppose," Lavender said doubtfully, recalling the Slytherin boy's frequent glances at Hermione during Potions, and Hermione's rigid posture and carefully guarded expression.
"That means Krum's admirers still have a chance," Parvati said with interest. "My sister Padma is planning a well-timed run-in with him. Any ideas?"
"The library?" Lavender suggested.
"No — the Black Lake. Krum's taken to walking along the shore lately."
Indeed, Krum seemed to have abandoned the library entirely, and its usual hush had returned — much to Hermione Granger's relief as she wandered between the towering bookshelves.
The library was deserted, save for the distant sound of Madam Pince's feather duster working its way around some unseen corner. Hermione breathed in the familiar scent of old parchment and, at last, felt her shoulders drop.
Throughout Hogwarts, few students were eager to spend the first morning of the Christmas holidays among books. Most were making the most of the week before the Yule Ball, scouring every corner of the castle in search of a dance partner.
Which meant that here, at this moment, nothing and no one could disturb her.
She would finish her arduous Ancient Runes assignment in a single sitting, from her favourite window seat.
She would not think about that infuriating, presumptuous, impossible boy. Hermione clenched her fists as she scanned the shelves, making the vow in silence.
She searched along the shelf until she reached the far corner. She swayed on her tiptoes, reaching for a thick volume just above her head — The Dictionary of Ancient Runes.
A shadow, carrying the clean scent of cedarwood, fell quietly over her.
A slender hand reached up and plucked the book from the shelf with ease.
"This one?" His unhurried voice carried the faint trace of a smile.
Hermione froze.
With a hollow feeling in her chest, she turned stiffly. What met her gaze was a head of gleaming platinum-blond hair, slightly amused grey eyes, and lips curved into a smile that released an allure she found dangerously difficult to resist.
"How did you know I was here?" she asked, startled, already looking away and angling for an escape — but he raised his arms on either side of the bookshelf, cutting off her retreat.
"If you're not here, where else would you be?" There was something layered in his tone, his voice perfectly calm.
Hermione's unease sharpened. She glanced left, then right, and finding no way out, forced herself to meet his gaze — those bright, warm grey eyes fixed steadily on her face.
"Move aside, Draco," she said firmly, pressing her back against the shelf.
Please — don't look at me like that. Don't come any closer.
Otherwise, I won't be able to keep a straight face. She cried out inwardly.
"No." He held his ground, his gaze unwavering.
He was merciless about it — holding her eyes with his, as if trying to reach past every careful wall she had built.
She couldn't let him see. She'd end up like all the others — hurt and discarded. Hermione reminded herself firmly.
She exhaled and, with considerable effort, dragged her gaze away to a point somewhere near his chin, finding her voice again.
"What — what do you want?" she asked, her voice unsteady.
"I'm fairly certain you've been avoiding me." He tilted his head slightly, enunciating each word with deliberate care.
His breath was warm against her cheek, close enough to stir the fine hair along her temple.
Draco's frown deepened slightly as he watched her eyelashes flutter rapidly. "Tell me why," he said.
"I — I haven't been — I wasn't hiding from you." Hermione shook her head, not knowing what to do with her hands.
He was so close. Close enough that she might stumble into him without meaning to. His arms were practically encircling her, and she could feel the pull of his proximity in every nerve.
She pressed her fingertips against the row of book spines behind her. It did nothing to settle the current racing through her — if anything, it made it worse.
"That's nonsense." His jaw shifted as he spoke, drawing her eye back to his lips against her will. "Since last Thursday you haven't said a proper word to me. You look straight through me in the corridors. You've stopped sitting beside me in Potions—"
Draco's composure was fraying.
This wasn't how things were supposed to be. They were dance partners — they ought to be finding an empty classroom to practice, not circling each other in cold silence.
"I — I owe you an apology, all right?" he said, and the sincerity in his voice surprised even him. "I shouldn't have stepped in the way I did with Krum. I acted without thinking."
"Oh. Fine," she said flatly, eyes still averted.
"What did I do wrong? If I've upset you, just tell me," he pressed, his tone edged with something almost anxious.
"It's nothing, I just—" She kept her eyes down. "There are some things I haven't quite sorted out yet."
"What things?"
"Just — things." The cedarwood scent drifting from him was making it remarkably difficult to think clearly. She needed a way out before she said something she couldn't take back.
For Draco, her evasiveness struck a nerve. He had told himself to be calm, patient even — he had no wish to be heavy-handed with her. But the sensation of losing his grip on her thoughts entirely, of watching her pull further and further away from him, was becoming unbearable.
"I don't like this," he said, his temper finally slipping through. "Why won't you even look at me?"
Before he could stop himself, he reached out and tilted her chin upward — and their eyes met.
Hermione's breath caught.
She could hear her own heartbeat. It was entirely unreasonable.
His eyes, usually so composed, held a flicker of anger and something rawer beneath it — a searching intensity, as though he was trying to read every word she had refused to say aloud.
"It's all over," she thought, with a sinking certainty. He was going to see everything.
In Draco's eyes, her expression was completely open to him. His own face was reflected in the dark warmth of hers.
Then he noticed it — a faint flush rising on her cheeks, soft and unguarded, like the skin of the apple he'd eaten that morning.
They stared at each other in silence.
He had come here with a perfectly reasonable purpose. Dance partners needed to practise — they needed to be at ease with each other. Simple enough.
But the moment the actual, breathing, real Hermione Granger was trapped in his arms and looking up at him, every prepared word vanished.
He found himself simply looking at her. At the girl who always seemed to be trying to make herself smaller, less visible.
Her eyelashes were remarkably long, and caught the light with a faint gold shimmer. Her eyes were warm and dark, and held a hidden feeling he couldn't quite name — but whatever it was, it wasn't dislike.
She reached up to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear; a few glossy, slightly wavy curls escaped and brushed against his hand where it still rested beneath her chin.
A pleasant scent reached him — something clean and warm, drifting from her hair and skin.
It kindled a restless, gnawing hunger that had no sensible explanation.
He had the sudden, irrational urge to close the remaining distance between them.
He hesitated. He should let her go — before he did something he couldn't undo. She had always held a fatal kind of pull over him, and the responsible thing was to step back.
But then, without either of them noticing, her hand had found the lapel of his robes and curled against his chest, pressing directly over his heart.
That small, unthinking grip undid him entirely.
Draco parted his lips, searching for some word that might bring him back to reason.
Then she made it worse. In the space of a single, unguarded moment, her lips parted slightly, and she looked up at him with wide, wondering eyes — an expression of such undefended openness that it broke through every last wall he had.
He forgot reason. His hand slid from her chin to cradle the back of her head, lifting her face toward him.
She let him. She didn't turn away. She simply gazed up at him, her cheeks flushed, as if waiting to see what he would do.
So he tilted his head and kissed her, his heart lurching.
He kissed her.
It was a touch as gentle as wind, and a force as sudden as a storm.
Hermione stared, stunned, at the boy in front of her.
Draco. Draco was kissing her.
A faint colour had risen to his cheeks; his platinum-blond hair had fallen across his brow, and his eyes held a fragile, aching light.
Why was he kissing her? Was that something friends did?
Amidst the pounding of her heart, those impossible lips pressed against hers — gently, carefully, tenderly.
Draco's awareness snapped back in an instant. This was not a dream. The sensation was far too real. He had kissed her without asking whether she wished to be kissed.
He shouldn't have done that.
His lips retreated slowly, his gaze anxious as it searched her face. His warm breath still lingered against her nose. Would she be angry? Would she pull away? He braced himself, thinking rather bleakly that whatever she chose to do to him next, he deserved it.
Hermione was bewildered — and also, absurdly, overcome by a sense of loss. She disliked the quiet sadness that had crept into his eyes. She didn't want his lips to leave so soon.
Before she could think better of it, she tilted her head and, with a breath's worth of courage, brushed her lips against his.
For a boy who had been waging a desperate war against himself, that slight touch was an answer to every question he had not dared to ask — an affirmation, an open door.
Draco could no longer hold back.
Merlin. She was kissing him back. She wasn't pulling away. She was welcoming him.
His heart surged. He tightened his hand against the back of her head and kissed her again, with an urgency he made no attempt to disguise.
He found her. She was soft, sweet, and more vivid than any dream. He kissed her as if he was trying to keep hold of something he'd been afraid to want.
Hermione was lost. He was no longer tentative — he pressed forward with a warmth and conviction that made her forget to think. Shyness closed her eyes, and her eyelashes trembled as she gave herself over to it.
In the hush of the library, between the parchment-scented bookshelves, in the slant of winter sunlight through the tall windows, they kissed — entirely unaware of anything beyond each other.
He was tender and unhurried, yet insistent in a way that coaxed rather than demanded, as though his lips were saying: you need not be afraid.
She was utterly at a loss. He was patient and persistent, drawing her in by degrees until she felt breathless and unmoored.
It was quiet, and then it was consuming. She was surrounded by him, and she had no desire whatsoever to be anywhere else.
She trembled. Her legs began to give way beneath her, her body sliding down the shelf entirely against her wishes.
She might have sunk to the floor had Draco not reacted instantly — he tossed the dictionary aside and locked one arm around her waist with a precision that suggested he had steadied her in his dreams a hundred times before — holding her against him so that she was entirely enclosed in his arms.
Like two opposing forces finally meeting their match, Hermione settled into him, and every inexplicable current that had plagued her for weeks suddenly made perfect sense.
*Thud.* The Dictionary of Ancient Runes hit the carpet at their feet, disturbing a small cloud of dust that swirled and drifted in the golden light like flecks of fairy-fire.
The cedarwood scent of him wrapped around her completely — a warm, invisible enclosure — and she was quite helpless within it. Rather than minding, she tightened her own arms in return.
In the haze, she heard him breathe a slow, satisfied exhale, and then he kissed her again — deeper, and with a tenderness that made thinking entirely impossible.
From her, in answer, came a small and thoroughly embarrassing sound that she could not explain or account for. All she knew was that it made him hold her closer.
He had stopped fighting himself entirely.
He had stopped fighting the bone-deep, aching want he had sealed away so carefully — buried in restraint and in the small hours of restless nights. It should never have been set loose.
But she had done it without effort, with nothing more than one hand pressed against his heart. One hand, and one unguarded glance.
She had kissed him back. There was nothing left to resist.
So he stopped resisting.
—————————This is the bookshelf on the left—————————
In the shadowed alcove behind the shelves, Madam Pince — who had come hurrying over at the sound of the falling book — stood with her hand pressed over her mouth, barely containing an ecstatic whisper.
"Poppy, you can rest in peace. When it comes to bearing witness to a couple finally getting on with it, no one can hold a candle to me!"
Feather duster: Shall I make myself scarce?
—————————This is the bookshelf on the right—————————
Time blurred at the edges.
They seemed to kiss for a very long while — long enough for the disturbed dust to settle back quietly onto the shelves.
Draco could have stayed there indefinitely. If Hermione hadn't eventually remembered to breathe, he might have done exactly that.
But she had — and she began tapping weakly against his chest, her signal growing more insistent.
He lingered, reluctant, and gently caught her lip between his teeth before finally drawing back.
That last small, unhurried bite pulled a delicate gasp from her. Everything about this was so new, so startling, that she felt warmth flush up through her from her collar to her ears.
The boy who had just been so thoroughly shameless was now looking down at her with a dazed, brilliant grin, as though he might lean in again at any moment.
His lips were already drifting closer. Hermione knew she was in trouble. She was lightheaded, enclosed in his arms, with no clear route of escape.
She instinctively leaned back, trying to put a sliver of space between them — but his arm was having none of it, holding her firmly as though he intended to keep her there indefinitely.
He lowered his head and breathed her in, his expression one of unguarded, unhurried want. He was, she realised, being rather greedy about it — and she finally understood exactly what Pippi the ghost had meant by that word in that ridiculous song.
Before he could find an angle to kiss her again, she tucked her face against his shoulder, hiding her burning lips and her even more burning cheeks from his gaze.
His scent at close range nearly undid her completely. She gripped the front of his robes to stay upright, and she heard him give a low, quiet laugh before his hand began moving slowly over her back — a steady rhythm, helping her find her breath.
It did not help. Not in the slightest. If anything, it made matters considerably worse. She felt, absurdly, like a creature he had caught and was turning over at his leisure, deciding what to do with her next.
"Draco — let go—" Her voice came out far softer than she had intended. His hand on her spine was sending shivers through her.
"No," he said, the word settling into her ear with a warmth that made her flush deepen.
"Please." Her ears were on fire.
Draco sensed her mounting flustered distress and stilled his hand. Had he pushed too far?
"Can you stand?" he asked quietly.
"Yes," she said, with slightly more certainty than she felt.
He released her slowly, steadying her until she had both hands on the shelf and her breath under something approaching control.
Once she had steadied herself, Hermione noticed that Draco had retreated to lean against the opposite shelf, one hand in his pocket, watching her with the serene expression of a particularly pleased marble statue.
He was still smiling — soft and tilted, his gaze fixed on her as though she were something remarkable.
She offered him a shy, uncertain smile in return — and then made the mistake of glancing at his lips. The memory of the last ten minutes hit her all at once. She blinked, looked away, and completely lost the ability to string a sentence together.
He took one small step forward. She took one step back.
"Don't be alarmed — I only want to return this to you." He held out the book, eyes bright with amusement.
The Dictionary of Ancient Runes. It sat in his hand with an air of total innocence.
She would never be able to look at that book the same way again.
Hermione took it. The cover felt oddly warm.
"Right — thank you for fetching it. I — I should go," she said, her face still scarlet.
"Wait — you still haven't answered my question." He extended one arm to block her escape, and she backed into the dead end of the passage, a tall window at her back flooding the alcove with winter light.
"What question?" she asked, genuinely muddled.
Draco suppressed a smile. She looked exactly like a rabbit who couldn't find the entrance to her burrow. The urge to reach over and pull her back into his arms was immediate and considerable.
No. She's rattled enough. He cleared his throat and asked again, "Why were you avoiding me these past two days?"
"Oh, that." Hermione's gaze strayed briefly — involuntarily — to his lips. "I'd heard some rumours. About you and Pansy Parkinson—"
"What?" His expression shifted to something almost comical.
He dropped his arm from the shelf and took a step closer, genuinely baffled. "What exactly do you imagine Pansy and I could have going on? She and Blaise have been together for months."
"But I heard she was crying in the Slytherin common room over her dance partner," Hermione said, very aware of how close he was now, and rather too vividly aware of how tightly he had been holding her not ten minutes ago.
"She smashed her favourite piece of porcelain and wailed about it for the better part of an hour." He looked down at her, something quietly pleased settling into his expression. "I genuinely don't know what those gossips use for brains — Flobberworm paste, by the sound of it."
"Oh." Her throat tightened slightly. She looked up at him. "And those girls who asked you—"
"I declined all of them." He raised an eyebrow, one corner of his mouth lifting. "So. You were jealous?"
"I wouldn't call it that. I was simply — confused." She pressed her fingers against the cover of the Dictionary of Ancient Runes, fidgeting. "My thoughts were all over the place."
"I understand perfectly. When I saw Krum invite you, my thoughts were all over the place as well. Nothing whatsoever to do with jealousy, obviously." He reached out — he couldn't quite help himself — and smoothed a loose strand of hair back behind her ear. "I may have behaved rather badly."
"I turned him down," Hermione said quickly, colour rising to her ears, her expression faintly indignant. "I never had any intention of going with him—"
"I know. I wasn't thinking clearly at the time, and I was not — quite — calm." He let out a breath, his gaze dropping to the collar of her robes, where his fingers gently straightened a small crease that had not been there before the kiss. "I owe you an apology for all of it."
Hermione's breath stuttered.
What had happened to Draco Malfoy? He was being extraordinarily forward. Touching her without hesitation, drawing close without the slightest restraint. Before the kiss, they had been careful around each other — cordial, respectful. Now, it was as though some invisible boundary had dissolved without asking her permission first.
His expression remained as composed as ever, as though the last quarter-hour had been nothing more than a brief misunderstanding. Yet the weight of his gaze told a different story entirely — as if he might decide at any moment to reach for her again.
That kiss had shown her something she hadn't known about him. The urgency beneath his usual cool poise, the insistence, the barely-disguised want. It was thoroughly unlike the Draco she thought she'd understood, and it had left her considerably off-balance.
Not that she had disliked it — she had come perilously close to encouraging it. But reason, when she could locate it, told her she needed space to think — before she found herself willingly back inside that impossible, cedarwood-scented cage.
Hermione drew herself up and slipped neatly past him before she could reconsider. She glanced back at his startled expression — his hand still half-extended — and said, with what she hoped sounded like composure, "It's getting late. I need to get back."
With that, she gathered the Dictionary of Ancient Runes firmly against her chest and walked away through the shelves at a pace that was, in all honesty, barely short of a run.
Draco glanced at the afternoon sunlight still streaming brightly through the windows and chose not to mention that it was nowhere near late.
She was shy.
He leaned partway around the bookshelf and watched her retreating figure until she was nearly at the door. Then he cupped a hand around his mouth.
"So — we've made up, then?"
"Yes!" came the answer, without a backwards glance.
"Stop hiding from me!" he called after her, louder.
"All right!"
She went through the library door at something very close to a sprint.