Hermione had always studied carefully. She had studied books, of course, because she had always loved books.
She had only loved two boys enough to study them, but she had Harry and Ron memorised. She had felt fond of a few other people, and had learned the hidden sides to their character with the same care she used to memorise footnotes—Professor Lupin being a case in point.
She had only ever studied one person because she disliked them.
Professor Snape was an unpleasant teacher, but he did not interfere much with her life. Crabbe and Goyle were easy to read as children’s books—short words and deeply uninteresting content.
Draco Malfoy was different.
If he was a book, he appeared to be like one of Hagrid’s frightening textbooks—impossible to read and quite frequently vicious. Once you’d taken the trouble to wrestle open the book for a glance, there seemed to be a lot of obscenities, written in flaming script and leaving you with the distressing impression that they were in code.
She had kept trying because the bastard kept bothering them, and besides the commonplace observations that he was vain, nasty and far too good-looking for his own good, she had picked up a few things.
The boy was a complete exhibitionist.
It reflected how spoiled he was. He wanted attention so he grabbed at it. Harry got it without trying, and was embarrassed by it. Ron was desperate for it, but had no idea how to get it or what to do with it.
Draco Malfoy arranged matters so everybody looked at him, everybody knew him, and then wore all those stares with the magnificent carelessness of a prince wearing a mantle when he had a dozen like it at home.
Hermione remembered his vigorous impressions of Harry over at the Slytherin table, which some Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs had wandered over to watch. She recalled his loud, head-turning voice hurling insults and reading out Rita Skeeter articles and creating crowds wherever he went. She knew how he could seize attention, absorb all the light in a room, whether it was by pretending he had been savaged by a Hippogriff or mocking a Valentine or just strolling around school in a the-ground-is-so-lucky-I’m-walking-on-it way.
Or by just standing here now, looking at all the stunned Gryffindors with a faintly amused smile on his face.
“Malfoy!” Ron exploded at last. “What are you doing here?”
He tossed Ron a glance.
“Well, I was hoping to catch Potter in the showers for a cuddle,” he drawled. “I’m collecting the entire set of Gryffindor boys, don’t you know.”
There was a thump from the other end of the room. Very few people looked away from Malfoy.
“Malfoy, how could you!” Hermione cried. “Seamus is delicate!”
“Oh, the Irish can handle anything,” Malfoy said dismissively. “And they handle it very well, too. I visited last summer.”
“Lavender!” hissed Hermione.
“Oh? Uh,” said Lavender, tearing her eyes off Malfoy and rushing to help her fallen boyfriend.
Seamus made feeble and incoherent gurgling noises.
“So, no chance with Potter then?” Malfoy inquired. “And here I had my heart set on my very own Gryffindor hot water bottle. I warn you, I shall not sleep. Thank you, Longbottom.”
Thankfully, for the sanity of all concerned, Malfoy had not just expressed gratitude because Neville was going to be his hot water bottle.
Neville looked at his empty hand. His stunned expression was induced either by the fact his coffee had just disappeared, or that Malfoy had actually thanked him.
Draco sipped at the cup and gazed over the rim at the room with innocent silver eyes.
We’re all watching him in slack-jawed fascination, Hermione thought with annoyance. As if he’s a movie.
The worst thing was that it was all much more interesting than moping about a rat.
Malfoy strode over to the fire and stretched out casually in front of it. Hermione was waiting for someone (cough Ron cough) to lose it and kick (and maybe punch) him out. His absolute barefaced cheek seemed to be holding everyone spellbound.
At this point Hermione’s traitorous cat went rushing over to curl on Malfoy’s stomach, purring like the Hogwarts Express.
Half the girls in the room looked madly envious.
“Crookshanks!” Hermione exclaimed.
Malfoy raised an eyebrow. “You really have a talent for naming things, don’t you, Hermione? Poor kitty. Good kitty. Yes, you are a cute kitty.”
To think that Hermione would see the day when Malfoy would be cuddling her cat.
Although to hear Harry tell it, the Gryffindor boys had seen something a whole lot more traumatic.
“I like cats,” Malfoy proceeded in amiable tones, seeming blissfully unconscious that the entire room was gaping at him. “Crookshanks and I got acquainted while I was a rat. He has some good stories. Have you heard about his unfortunate misunderstanding concerning Professor McGonagall in feline form?”
To a background of gasps and giggles, Hermione said furiously, “You’re making that up, Malfoy!”
“Would I lie to you, baby?”
Hermione choked on her rage.
“This is just like Truly Madly Deeply,” Lavender whispered rapturously to Parvati. “When Lance returned to Priscilla to the shock of all the parish, and then she turned out to be his mother!”
Malfoy grabbed a chair and placed himself in their thrilled midst.
“Lance is Priscilla’s mother?” he said. “But what about the baby?”
“Ah, it’s really Greg’s baby,” answered Parvati, slightly disconcerted.
“But Greg is Priscilla’s son too!” Malfoy exclaimed in an agitated manner.
“Oh no, you see, Greg and Lance were switched at birth,” Parvati informed him sagely, getting into the spirit of things.
“Wait, isn’t Greg married to Frances?”
“Yes, but it turns out Frances is really a man!”
“So that’s what the mystery bottle of aftershave meant! I’d been wondering about that for ages.”
When Hermione had begged for a special TV in order to catch the news, she had not expected that her roommates would get addicted to weird and involved Muggle soaps.
She had certainly not expected that Malfoy would do so.
The entire room was watching Malfoy making extravagant gestures and discussing warped incestuous affairs with great animation.
Well, they’d always suspected these were the kind of things Slytherin were into.
Ron made a disgusted noise and got back to staring blankly at his Potions homework.
Malfoy tipped over dangerously in his chair to have a look.
“You have to add Boomslang skin there,” he pointed out in helpful if utterly condescending tones. “Otherwise you die.”
Ron scowled. “I don’t need your help.”
“No, Weasley, you really do. You bring new meaning to the term ‘inept.’”
“And stop bothering me!”
“I’d hate to be a barrier in your glorious progress to academic failure.”
“Why don’t you leave Ron alone,” Hermione snapped, to Seamus’ hysterical nodding, “and tell us what you’re doing here?”
“Certainly, dear lady,” said Malfoy. “I’m here for revenge. And all the party favours I can carry.”
The Gryffindors looked blank.
Draco reflected that this was not an uncommon look on them.
“Consider this,” he told them brightly. “I get turned into a rat. Tra la la. Who should little Draco suspect? After all, I was in a room filled with my minions, love slaves and—oh, yes—deadly enemies. Hm, this is a tricky one.”
“Maybe the Slytherins just felt as if they had to get rid of you,” Hermione suggested. “I feel such empathy.”
Malfoy pursed that curling mouth, apparently considering this.
“Nah,” he concluded. “We Slytherins are a sweet and simple folk. Why mess around with Transfiguration when perfectly good homicide is an option?”
Actually, the more he spoke the better homicide sounded to Hermione.
Malfoy leaned back in his chair, stretching luxuriously. Every female in the common room leaned in to get a closer look.
Hermione glanced over at Ginny in shocked reproach. Ginny shrugged.
Honestly, redheads were such vixens.
“So I’m going to be hanging around here for a bit,” Malfoy concluded happily. “Bringing a little ray of sunlight into your lives. Ornamenting this tasteless common room. And plotting to capture and torture one of your kind.”
Dean Thomas’s nervous hand struck an extremely discordant note on his guitar.
Malfoy looked thrilled and launched himself off the chair.
Hermione was disgusted to note that he did this with the graceful poise of one aware that everyone who was anyone precipitated themselves off chairs these days.
“Wow, is that a Muggle instrument? The kind that plays Muggle music? Like the Beetles?” asked Malfoy.
Hermione could hear him spelling Beatles wrong.
Dean agreed cautiously that it was.
“Great!” Draco said. “Teach me how to make noise.”
And… that was how it was.
Parvati and Lavender were floating on pink clouds of bliss. Ginny (Vixen!) seemed mildly entertained. Dean actually seemed to be getting friendly with Malfoy. (Never trust a guitar player.) Neville ran errands for him.
Harry was appalled, and Ron kept closing his eyes and wishing it all away. Seamus was having Prozac sent from home.
Hermione was observing.
She observed Malfoy lying in her bedroom amid a pile of giggling girls, watching Truly, Madly, Deeply with total fascination.
Switching on music as well seemed to give him an attack of joyful schizophrenia.
He cheerfully stole Dean’s guitar, and became good at it within the week. Then he utterly refused to give it back.
When shown Dean’s football posters, he tortured the figures with pins in an effort to make them squirm.
He played Exploding Snap and cheated blatantly. He did not seem to understand the concept of playing fair, even after numerous explanations.
Then he challenged Ron to a game of wizards’ chess, and won. He proceeded to sing his own praises for forty minutes, upon which Ron hit him with the chessboard.
He nicked Harry’s copy of Quidditch Through the Ages and read it from cover to cover, then had a shouting match with Harry about the Wronski Feint, which ended up in them hitting each other with their broomsticks.
Which made Seamus dribble about symbolism and run for his Prozac.
The Slytherins were comforted by the fact that their captain was off in the line of duty, driving the Gryffindors out of their little minds.
Hermione thought every aspect of his behaviour was disgraceful, and that he was quite possibly the most irritating person in the world.
She was horrified by the fact she was getting used to him.
“Tell me, why are you prancing around in your underwear?”
This most Malfoyesque line was drawled by their only specimen of that accursed breed. He was lying by the fire with Crookshanks on his chest, his usual spot (that they should have a usual spot for Malfoy! The shame!)
Dean Thomas looked down at his jeans and then looked mildly surprised.
“Er—have you been at Seamus’ Prozac? Because, um, that stuff’s not healthy.”
“But it’s so fun,” Draco complained. “Anyway, the selfish Irish bugger won’t let me near it. I was just commenting on your state of undress.”
“Undress?”
“If you hope to incite the females into a lustful frenzy, I suggest you invest in a Polyjuice Potion and pay me a scandalous amount for some of my hair.”
“Malfoy, stop your wittering,” said Harry almost tolerantly from a chair.
Did everyone see that? Hermione demanded inside her head. He grows on you! The boy is tall, blond and devastating cancer!
“I don’t understand,” Dean said. “Ah—mother sent me new Levi’s for my birthday. I can wear them in the common room.”
Malfoy laughed his charming—hateful!—laugh.
“Right. ‘Levi’s.’ Like that’s a word.”
He’d said the same thing about “morals” yesterday.
It was Hermione who realised what he was on about, and explained. “They’re Muggle clothes. Remember, like people wear at the Quidditch World Cup?”
Clearly, Malfoys didn’t bother with this kind of subterfuge. Hermione remembered a wizard running around in a dress at the Quidditch World Cup in fourth year. Highborn wizards were woefully ill-informed about the Muggle world.
“Muggles wear underwear in the street? It must be a scene of depravity and public orgies!” said Draco. He looked wistful. “I wish I could go.”
“You’ve never been to the Muggle world?” Ron asked, giving up the pretence that he wasn’t listening.
“Of course I’ve never been in the Muggle world!” Draco informed him severely. “The very idea… My parents would be horrified.”
Ron looked almost sympathetic.
“I know, my parents don’t even let Percy go into Knockturn Alley yet.”
“Oh, Knockturn Alley? Charming place. Played marbles there as a child.”
“With shrunken heads as befits a Malfoy?” Hermione interjected with maximum sarcasm.
Draco smiled dreamily. “I love that game.”
“Listen, I am not wearing underwear!” exclaimed Dean. “Uh. That is to say…”
“It looks just like underwear,” Draco objected.
Harry looked puzzled. “What kind of underwear are you wearing?”
Seamus, who had just come in, looked around in terror and began to hyperventilate.
“You know… Ordinary underwear,” Draco replied. “Long johns.”
Ron choked.
Dean shook his head.
“Look, I don’t care if you Gryffindors wear scandalous apparel with hippos on them and now these jean-underwear things,” Draco said primly.
“They’re not underwear!” Dean snapped. “Look, this is ridiculous. Come up to my room. Uh—you might have to take off your long johns.”
Draco followed, looking rather intrigued.
Seamus hit the floor in a dead faint as the door shut.
Lavender was propping him up when Draco Malfoy returned, wearing a black T-shirt and jeans.
She dropped him.
“Um… they didn’t look like that on Dean,” Parvati murmured.
“Muh,” Lavender moaned faintly.
Ginny had her eyes shut and was mouthing “I love Harry” to herself desperately.
Turned out there was a world of difference between Dean’s thin and somewhat gangly shape, and Draco’s slim and leanly muscled version.
Draco looked at himself.
“Bit weird,” he said critically, looking downwards. A swathe of silver-blond fell into his face. “Somewhat indecent. There’s that to be said for it, of course.”
He moved sideways experimentally.
“Ungh,” said Lavender.
“Okay,” Dean said. “Do you see now they’re not underwear? Give them back now.”
Parvati appeared to be promising God that if he did she would be good for the rest of her life.
“I think,” Draco replied, surveying the girls’ faces, “I’ll keep them on for just a while.”
“Malfoy, take them off!”
Seamus opened his eyes, and then swooned again.
“I’ll just keep them on for a tiny moment longer,” Draco promised solemnly.
Dean’s trousers had gone the same way as his guitar.
“Hermione?” Harry said in a concerned voice. “Are you all right? You’ve gone all red.”
“Fine! Fine! Never better!” Hermione said quickly, hiding her face in a book. “Absolutely jeans. I mean, great!”
Draco’s jeans caused a sensation at dinner that night.
Several girls seemed to be composing Valentines (on December the fifteenth!) Pansy Parkinson looked disbelieving that all these ritual baby sacrifices were finally paying off.
There was a slightly less ecstatic reaction from Professor McGonagall.
“Mr. Malfoy! What kind of get-up do you call that?”
Malfoy gazed up at her with limpid silver eyes. “My uniform,” he said humbly.
“Excuse me?”
“It says in the rules that the uniform can be altered to suit the student’s preference,” Draco explained innocently. “I checked.”
McGonagall looked at the black material of his shirt and trousers.
Draco gave her a winning look.
Professor McSuddenOddResemblanceToSnape stalked off.
“Oh, I so put the ‘man’ in manipulation,” Draco said. “Longbottom, coffee.”
His cup had been lying by Neville’s elbow for some time as Neville watched the showdown. Neville made to get it, and knocked it over.
They all looked at it.
Well, coffee rarely burns through the tablecloth.
“It seems the rogue Gryffindor has finally opted for homicide,” Draco said in the nasty pause. “Longbottom, different and less fatal coffee.”
“Ah… did you really make those clothes out of your uniform?” asked Neville, trying desperately to start up the conversation.
“Do I look like a house elf to you?”
And Hermione, who had been feeling sick with something like fear, was able to sneer properly at Draco as he sauntered back casually to his own table.
Okay, maybe she ogled too. A tiny bit.
She was only human.
But she didn’t care what happened to him. Not at all.
“I wish he’d get struck by lightning,” Ron said.
“Um, yeah,” Hermione agreed. “Me too.”
Draco did not show up at the Gryffindor common room that night.
Five minutes after his usual time, panic reigned.
“He’s only a little rat!” Ron was shouting. “They’ve done something terrible to him!”
Lavender was sniffing disconsolately into a handkerchief.
“You cannot trust those Slytherins,” Harry was saying darkly.
“They are very bad people,” Parvati chipped in tearfully.
“Have you all lost your marbles?” Hermione demanded. “He’s Malfoy! A.k.a the star of Slytherin, the perpetrator of terrible deeds, the kind of bad person who eats lesser bad people for breakfast!”
“I remember how he used to dip his ickle paws into coffee,” Ron said, looking on the point of tears.
“And how his little nose used to twitch,” Harry added.
Seamus began to twitch all over.
“He’s so cute and helpless,” Lavender mourned.
“Has everyone been on Seamus’ Prozac?”
Ron gave Hermione a reproachful look.
“Fine then,” he said. “Harry, we’ll get your Cloak and wrest poor Fluffy from the grasp of evil!”
“Look, if he’s in the grasp of evil he’s probably going to be ticked if you interrupt them!”
“Some people just don’t care,” Ron added, glaring.
In the end, Hermione decided to go with them. Not that she was at all worried. But someone had to keep those boys out of trouble.
Draco was drifting peacefully off to sleep.
I’m just a little muffin on a griddle, he thought. Toasty warm and… well, probably not about to be spread with cream and jam, but you can’t ask for everything.
Some stuff you have to steal when people aren’t looking.
He was just about to fall into sweet slumber when he became aware of odd voices outside his door. They seemed to be trying to be sneaky but failing.
Couldn’t be Slytherins. Probably just a dream.
“Where are we going?”
“Well, his bedroom…”
“Oh, I knew this was a bad plan…”
“Wstfgl,” said Draco, an expression of haughty irritation which came out a bit muffled. Stupid dream. Why was he having such a stupid dream? Uncle Ethelfride had started off with funny dreams…
Harry, Ron and Hermione burst in the door.
And then he had progressed to full-on hallucinations.
“Oh, hi, Malfoy,” Harry said. “Um, we were just coming to check if you were alive.”
Hang on, that gormless speech had to be genuine Gryffindor.
Draco clutched the bedsheets.
“Hermione!” he said in horror. “Get out! I’m not decent!”
Harry glanced over.
“You’re wearing cuddly pyjamas,” he pointed out.
“That’s what I mean!”
Hermione, who had been somewhat distracted by the sight of Draco looking rumpled and adorable—that is, stupid!—in his pyjamas, recollected herself and fixed him with a cold look.
“Where have you been, young man?” she demanded.
“Oh, don’t,” Draco begged. “You sound just like Professor McGruesome. I had a headache, and I went to bed. Possibly the most innocent thing I have ever done. Why are you people here?”
“Er…”
“They were frantic,” Hermione explained coolly.
“Oh, you came too,” Harry mumbled in rebellion.
“You were frantic,” Draco repeated flatly.
“Well, this is a dangerous place,” Harry muttered.
“I’m a dangerous person,” Draco said smugly. “And I’ve lived here for almost seven years! You pillock.”
Draco did not believe in beating around the bush.
Just beat the bush. Teach it a lesson.
“Honestly, you people are pathetic,” he continued cheerfully. “Couldn’t you do without me for one night? Why this mad rush to my side?”
Harry, the straightforward one, was looking slightly nauseated as he contemplated the answer.
“I guess… and don’t think I’m not reconsidering this in light of your ‘You people are pathetic’ speech… we might, kind of, sort of, after the rat thing and all, slightly like you,” he concluded.
Draco’s silvery eyes widened.
“Oh.”
Hermione took advantage of the rare moment of Draco’s silence to try and find a way of truthfully denying this shocking allegation.
She couldn’t.
Bugger.
When all else fails, become brisk and capable. This is a weapon of doom.
“Well, if we do—you know, that thing,” she said, “we have a few questions for you.”
Draco looked wary. “Is this like a test? Do I have to submit some sort of project?”
They all sat on the bed.
“Oh, do make yourselves at home. I’m not trying to get some sleep.”
“It’s just to check you’re not evil,” Harry reassured him.
Draco gave him an incredulous look. “What? I am evil, Potter. Coo-eee. Where have you been?”
“We know that you’re a dishonest, amoral prat, Malfoy,” Hermione said.
Draco looked gratified.
“We’re just checking for ‘pawn of the Dark Lord’ status.”
“Malfoys are not the pawns of evil,” Draco muttered. “Malfoys are the lieutenants of evil.”
“Ahem,” said Hermione. “If your father instructed you to grovel in the dirt before your master, you would…?”
“In my new clothes? Sod off!”
“If instructed to perform a rite of darkness, you would…?”
“Forget all about it and wander off for a drink. I don’t do responsibility.”
“Your approach to the Dark Mark would be…?”
“Oh, so tacky and unappealing. Can’t evil be tasteful, I ask you? Not to mention, well, is this person evil? Let’s check out the whacking big mark on their arm. Wicked inconspicuous, I don’t think. Call themselves Slytherins! Ha!”
“This bit is important,” Harry said urgently. “If instructed to cut off your hand in Voldemort’s dark service…”
“Disfigure myself, Potter? You sick, sick bastard!”
The Gryffindor gaggle stopped and looked at each other.
“Well…” Hermione said. “Technically, he passed. But it all seems so wrong.”
Draco preened.
Harry put his hand over Draco’s.
“I guess you’re on the team,” he said with a boyish smile.
“There’s no necessity to touch me, Potter,” Draco told him in alarm. “You know all that was a joke, right? Do you mind getting off my bed now?”
“We mean, you have to be good now,” Ron explained.
“Ha! Good luck!”
“Well, at least marginally less evil,” Hermione conceded.
“Do I get to sleep if I agree?”
“Yes!”
“Is there a salary?”
“No!”
“Oh… fine then.”
“You see, Draco?” Harry said heartily. Draco looked slightly nauseated. “Isn’t this nice? It could have been like this years ago if you hadn’t been such a prat on the train!”
“I was not!” Draco exclaimed in outrage. “This red-haired lummock laughed at my name! I had to make him rue the day.”
The Gryffindors just looked at him.
“Well, I’m sensitive about my name,” Draco grumbled. “It’s in the school motto, you know. I was called that and then sent here. Parents can be so cruel. Why didn’t they simply call me Neville Longbottom Malfoy and be done with it?”
Ron did not seem to feel Draco’s pain, the unsympathetic git.
“So you spent seven years making our lives a misery because you’re touchy about your name?” he demanded.
“We Malfoys are a vengeful race,” Draco answered.
“You’re sick…” Hermione said, as they left.
The last thing she saw was that disturbingly flattered look on Draco’s face.
Only Hermione was under the Cloak as they closed the door. Harry and Ron turned to face the person staring blankly at them in the Slytherin corridor.
“Hi,” said Harry with his innocent grin. “We were just visiting Draco. I wouldn’t go in there though, he’s in bed.”
A few minutes later, all the Slytherins had to forcibly prevent Pansy Parkinson from committing suicide.
Then they sent an emergency appeal for some of Seamus’ Prozac.
Once outside, Harry, Ron and Hermione exchanged slightly startled looks.
“So… we like Malfoy, then?” Ron said in doubtful tones.
“Seems so,” Harry returned.
Pause.
“So,” inquired Ron, “have the seas turned to blood, and is it a month of blue moons?”
“I’m sure the weather report will inform us,” Hermione said.
There was speculation about the Gryffindor/Ravenclaw Quidditch match.
People wondered whether Ron Weasley would support his best friend or his best girl, and were entertained to see him flying from end to end of the pitch yelling, “Go Harry!” “Go honey!”
People also wondered whether Draco Malfoy would sit in the Slytherin benches or with the Gryffindors he seemed to be spending so much time with.
Another topic of interest was whether Draco would wear his jeans.
He did.
Professor Snape called him a stain upon the Slytherin name. Blaise Zabini called him a sex bunny.
He decided they evened out.
And Hermione was oddly unsurprised to see Draco climbing up the Gryffindor bleachers, waving aloft a huge green and silver flag.
“I claim this seat in the name of Slytherin,” he announced, and sat down beside her. “Hi, darling.”
“Hello, Malfoy,” Hermione responded. “I’ve been researching Polyjuice Potion.”
“Scholarly women are cute,” Draco told her approvingly. “Could you get a pair of those little gilt glasses?”
Hermione gave him a look. He seemed unabashed.
Of course, people who mooned nunneries probably had more sense of decency than Malfoy.
“It seems that you can use the problems that occur using the Potion to Transfigure yourself into an animal to make the state permanent—or at least until the spell is broken in, ah, the traditional—”
“Yes, yes,” said Draco. “Please skip ahead.”
“But it would be very complicated,” Hermione told him earnestly. “I can’t see anyone being good enough at Potions to do it—except for you, and me, and Blaise Zabini.”
“Well, it wasn’t Blaise,” Draco said instantly. “She thinks I’m a sex bunny. And you’re female, so you probably do too.”
Hermione choked.
“If I could just remember some detail about this person,” Draco mused, absently thumping her on the back.
He thought.
That time he had bitten this person…
They’d tasted of something…
Something… He couldn’t quite put his finger on it… But he’d recognise it again.
“Stop… hitting… me…” Hermione gasped.
Draco Malfoy stood up, and made an announcement.
“I have to lick every Gryffindor in the school!”
There was a thump, much like a certain Chaser falling off his broom.
If this sort of thing continued, Seamus was going to have permanent brain damage.