The dress Draco chose from Hermione's catalogue of holiday robes did not arrive at Hogwarts until the morning of Slughorn's party.
"It's a Christmas miracle," Draco grumbled when she told him.
She stepped closer to him in the alcove where she'd stopped him to tell him the good news. "Malfoy, either stop being so fussy about it or come with me to the party. I'll throw Cormac over right now."
He sighed and declined, trying to cheer up.
His reasons for not wanting word about his connection to Hermione to spread outside the school were still perfectly good reasons. But in addition to them, Draco needed to remain available to Borgin tonight. The school was emptying for the holidays, making this evening a prime time to arrange a test of Draco's progress with the sham of his cabinet repair project. He had worked on it all term, nervous and sick with self-loathing, caught in a task so vile he had no one to call on but Crabbe and Goyle to disguise themselves and stand watch outside the Room of Hidden Things. They wouldn't be watching tonight.
The repair process was slow -- Draco made sure of it. It meant for some unpleasant meetings where his mother was sent to beg the Dark Lord to be patient with him, but awful as the meeting were, they were preferable to having Death Eaters in the castle for Christmas. After all these months, the cabinet was no longer useless but it was still not fully repaired. Draco was sure of it -- almost sure. He and Borgin would assess the full extent of his progress tonight.
After the test, a report would be made to the Dark Lord, and a little more time would be bought -- more time to keep his mother safe even in her death-drowned house, more time for Snape to pretend to be searching the school for the witch who cast the love charm.
The truth was that the Dark Lord would rather see Hogwarts overrun with Death Eaters than infiltrated by spies. He'd rather have the headmaster killed and the witch who cast the love charm captured through a bold invasion rather than through treachery. It was better for his movement. Treachery was a weapon for spies and cowards, not conquerors like he envisioned himself to be.
When she had finished dressing for the party, Hermione climbed to the seventh floor, to the Room of Hidden Things. Draco always seemed to be able to summon it these days, and he was hidden there tonight himself, making it visible to her. She came through the door to find him on the rug, tossing an apple between his hands, sitting in front of a mass of broken wooden furniture, most of it draped in dingy white dust covers, some in richly coloured velvet.
Light was coming from somewhere but the room was still so dim the pink of her dress may as well have been coloured blue. As he always did at these pre-event meetings for fancy dress parties they couldn't attend together, Draco sprang to his feet at the sight of her. The dress was self-tailoring, perfectly fitted, cut in a low V in the front, slim at the waist, with a full, gathered knee-length skirt. Her arms were bare and she wore her hair down, falling past her shoulders, pinned up and away from her face in the front.
He squinted at her. "Granger, are you blushing?"
She took his hand and let him pull her to him. "Maybe a little. The neckline -- it's lovely on paper, and I'd think nothing of it on someone else, but it's not how I usually dress."
His right hand curled around her waist, a dance hold that came naturally to them even though they had danced in public together precisely once. "It's perfect, a grown up look," he said. "You're not some girl done up in a fancy dress anymore. You look like who you really are: a beautiful woman."
Her hand rose from his shoulder to his neck. "Do you like me as a woman? That's not who I was when you first took me on."
He pulled her tighter and turned them in a circle, dancing in rhythm though without music. "I love you like this, and every other way there is for you to be."
She hummed through a smile, her head on his shoulder. "But being here, dancing in private, it makes me nostalgic for when we were younger. Makes me miss being fifteen and forced into dance lessons by McGonagall to preserve the school's honor at the Triwizard Tournament, all the while scandalized at myself for falling for Draco Malfoy."
"Best scandal ever."
She raised her face to speak against his throat. "Your neck was scrawnier then. And your hair was longer. And," she said, spinning on the end of his arm, settling back into him so his arms crossed in front of her, her back along his chest, "in those days, you weren't so sad."
His head drooped forward, into the crook of her neck, exhaling and raising shivers through her.
She turned to face him. He wasn't ready to stop dancing yet and arranged her arms back into dance posture, stepping into her, nudging her backward through the footwork of a waltz. She didn't follow his lead so much as drift before it, after all this time, perfectly tuned to the pace of his movement, the length of his steps -- her partner.
"Draco, I don't feel like I can leave you tonight. I'll get Harry to tell Slughorn I'm ill. I'll stay with you. It's the last night before you go back to your haunted Manor for Christmas and I can't -- I just can't turn on my heel for a stupid party and let you go."
The waltzing stopped. Gently, Draco pressed two fingers into the soft hollow of her throat. She lifted her face higher, expecting to be kissed. He bent toward her but held his mouth just above hers, connecting instead with the motion of his finger tips, tracing a line away from her throat, down the flat of her sternum, not stopping where her breasts began to swell on either side, bared by her dress, her skin smooth and warm, her body falling away from his touch as she let out a shocked breath, but not moving away.
He left his fingers cradled where they were as he told her, "I can't spend the night with you, Hermione." Both of his hands closed behind her, in the small of her back. "I'm dreading all kinds of things waiting for me at home during the holidays, scared I might not survive to the new year. Tonight, I might be too desperate to be closer than ever to you, maybe for the last time. Who knows but I may talk myself into believing the purity clause doesn't matter anymore."
"I won't let us. There must be something..."
He finally smiled. "Are you the one proposing to me now? You've dressed up for it and all."
She closed her eyes and tipped her forehead against his chin. "That's not going to work either, Malfoy."
Almost soundlessly, they were laughing together.
"I'm well enough, Granger. Go to the party, like a good junior Order of the Phoenix girl," Draco said. "Blaise confirmed a photographer from the Daily Prophet will be there. Get your photo taken with Potter and McLaggen, so even if someone does suspect the charm is yours, they might remember seeing you dating someone else and dismiss you as another red herring, the way they've left off looking for Pansy."
She rolled her eyes. "Can you stop being cunning for even one moment?"
"No, actually. That's the best thing about me."
She scoffed. "It absolutely is not."
He was leaning forward, speaking against her lips. "No? What is then?"
"I'm not saying..."
"Aren't you?" he said against her neck, blowing to deliberately tickle her.
She squealed and they were tussling together as he tried to cajole her into revealing what she thought was the best thing about him. They had left off fighting and were kissing ardently when far below them, the clock began to strike.
"It's eight o'clock," Hermione moaned, pulling away. "I'm already late for when I said I'd meet Cormac."
"Go on," Draco said. "I'll find you in the morning. But if McLaggen manhandles you, I'll transfigure all his limbs into tentacles."
She raised her eyebrows. "That's an extremely complicated spell."
He kissed her forehead to smooth the lines there. "Yes, and you're not the only one who can do those. The best one, yes, but not the only one."
"Draco," she said, her arms around his neck again, her eyes open and fixed on his. "You must know that I love you."
She saw in his face that he did, and that he was sad all the same. She loved a boy who was sixteen years old, had lived his entire life on the cusp of war, and if his face was truly so readable to her, she must be able to see that he would die for her, kill for her.
He could say none of that out loud. What he could do was kiss her again, and let her go.
---------------
There was no conceivable reason for Severus Snape to miss his esteemed colleague, Horace Slughorn's party. But if he couldn't skip it, he could at least arrive late, waylaid but urgent business with a student of his house. Before any more of them left for the holidays, he needed to speak to Pansy Parkinson.
On his way out of his office, he found her in the nearly empty entrance hall, sitting at the bottom of the marble staircase, nose to nose in heated conversation with Ron Weasley.
Snape approached with stealth, listening.
"And then I said, 'Really, Mother, he's with me, a Parkinson, how can you keep calling him a blood traitor?'"
"I don't mind if she does," Weasley said. "Rather proud of it, actually."
"And then she says, 'Treachery's not only in practices, it's in principles' which sounds nothing like her and must be something someone trained her to say, the ridiculous monkey."
Weasley pushed the lock of hair that had fallen against her cheek behind her ear. "She won't do anything mad like pack you off to Beauxbatons, will she?"
"No, of course not." She said it forcefully enough for her hair to fall back into her face. "My parents' interest in blood loyalty ends where their prejudice against the French begins. They're not like the Malfoys. But they're still a far cry from letting me spend Christmas at the Bungalow."
Ron made a sound between a laugh at how sweet she was and a groan at how frustrating she was. "Pansy, for the last time, you can't go home for Christmas tomorrow. I'm sorry, love. You're in too much danger. You don't have to change your parents' minds about blood purity or convince them to let you stay with us at the Burrow. I'll just stay here with you. It'll be nice. The two of us, practically alone in the castle, getting to know each other much, much better..."
Ron was just about to succeed in connecting with Pansy's lips for a proper snog for the first time since she'd accepted him. This was how Snape knew the time for him to speak had come. "Weasley, Parkinson, In my office -- at once."
"It was all me, sir. Parkinson did nothing -- "
"Silence, Weasley," Snape intoned. "As Mr. Malfoy has told both of you, a charm discovered in Malfoy Manor this summer was misattributed to Miss Parkinson's making. I can assure you now that, though the identity of the true caster is still -- unknown, Miss Parkinson is no longer suspected."
Ron pressed his hand to his heart as he let out a sigh. "So she's safe to go home for the break?"
"Safe?" Snape repeated. "Those most interested in the charm and its caster are capricious, mercurial."
His eyes tracked between the puzzled faces of Ron to Pansy. "It means they may change their minds and we cannot take their abiding disinterest for granted."
Nodding, nodding.
"If, as it seems, the pair of you are in a," he paused to spit out the distasteful word, "romantic relationship, then make it flagrant. The more clear it is to observers that Miss Parkinson is not involved with Draco Malfoy, the more 'safe' you will be. Now go."
Ron rose giddily up the stairs from Snape's office, seizing Pansy by the hand. "Flagrant -- you can tell what that means just by the sound of it. It means I'm going to snog the living daylights out of you on the train platform in front of the whole school tomorrow. I mean, if you'll let me."
She let go of his hand to thread her fingers into the hair at his temple, over his ear where it was already starting to grow shaggy again. "I don't kiss you for Snape," she said.
Careful, Ron slid his arms around her waist. "Who do you kiss me for?"
She smiled as his face bent closer. "For me."
—-------
The room did not actually go dark when Hermione left, it merely felt like it did. Draco drew in a deep, dusty breath. Quarter past eight -- Borgin would be ready. He tugged on the red velvet cover and the vanishing cabinet loomed into view. It hadn't been made for dark magic but it had a cold, ominous feel to it anyway -- an aura Draco knew well from collections kept under glass in his father's study, before the raids began. He stood at the foot of the cabinet, hating himself for the creep of nostalgia settling over him in the presence of its darkness.
Despite its decrepit state, the cabinet's door slid open soundlessly on its hinges when Draco turned its handle. He set the apple on its dark wooden floor, shut the door, and bowed his head. Wordless magic wouldn't do. He drew his wand, extended it toward the closed door, and prepared to speak the incantation. Borgin's letter said it was "Harmonia nectere passus" -- short, rhythmic, not difficult.
He began. "Hermion-ia..."
The mispronunciation choked him, sending him staggering backward, away from the tall black cabinet door. Hermione -- if he'd miscalculated, and the cabinet was repaired instantly, tonight, it was possible that the Room of Hidden Things could find itself full of Death Eaters mere minutes from now. It was unlikely but not impossible.
He gaped at the closed cabinet door. It was narrow enough that a band of people coming through it would have to come single file, one by one. He wasn't a bad duelist and he could hit each of them with a killing curse until they stopped coming, or at least stun them and send them back.
Couldn't he?
Hermione was in the castle. He had to.
He gripped his wand with a cold, slick hand, cleared his throat and began again. "Harmonia nectere passus."
Though it did not move, the cabinet seemed to shudder, like an old wooden ship borne up on the swell of a tide and back down again. He opened the door. The apple was gone. His breath caught. He had to complete the test, proceed to the second, most dangerous part. He latched the door, aiming his wand again. He would keep it trained on the door not just for the incantation, but for whoever might try to come afterward.
"Harmonia nectere passus."
The same nearly imperceptible shudder ran through the wood of the cabinet. Draco waited. There was no scuffling, no footsteps sounding inside it. He reached out to turn the handle, its greasy metal clicking in the quiet. Inside the cabinet was the apple, now bitten, glistening. And that was all.
-----------------
Slughorn's Christmas party was a glittering mess. Harry had come with Luna but Slughorn soon separated them, parading Harry about the room like a prize pig to show all his friends. The newspaper photographer was indeed there, snapping photos of Harry, including one with Hermione, Cormac leaning into her, one hand on her hip as she battled not to cringe away from his touch.
As it turned out, Cormac had not come along as Hermione's friend but as a bragging, boring, soon-to-be tentacled Lothario.
"Mistletoe has no place in a society of enlightened gender ideology such as ours," Hermione said ducking behind Harry and smoothing her hair.
"Should have come single," Harry mused.
She huffed. "Aren't you chivalrous?"
"Right. Sorry," Harry said. "Where is he? You want him hexed?"
"I am perfectly capable of hexing him myself," she said, batting Harry's hapless fingers away from her tousled hair. "Just hoping to make it through the evening without having to -- "
She was interrupted by a ruckus. Two people large and loud enough to be fully grown men were struggling with each other, coming through the door of Slughorn's office, intruding on the genteel music and conversation, bursting into the warmth and golden light of the holiday lanterns and sparkling dress robes.
One of the intruders was Filch, red-faced and ranting about students sneaking around in the night on the upper floors. The other one was Draco. Seeing him in the yellow light, he looked almost like a stranger to Hermione. His features were always ethereal but what she usually saw in him as angelic now looked worn and wraithish, marred by dark circles under his eyes that she hadn't seen up close, but could discern now, at a distance.
She took a step toward him before Cormac hooked an arm around her waist from behind. She staggered out of his hold but stayed where she stood when she saw Professor Snape billowing in black toward the scene.
Filch claimed Draco had told him he was on his way to the party when he was apprehended, forcing Draco to admit to the entire room that he was "gate-crashing." Hermione winced. It was as embarrassing as it was untrue. She and Snape both knew it. She reckoned Harry probably did too and would soon be clamouring to know what Draco was "really" up to that evening.
Slughorn had consented to let Draco stay but Snape was leading him away, back to the dungeons.
Helpless, Hermione watched them go, her face as full of hurt and longing as Draco's had been full of cold rage as Snape saw him out. At the appearance of sneaky Draco, Harry had no more interest in her. He was withdrawing from the crowd, probably off with his cloak to tail them back to the dungeons. Cormac was amused, actually snickering as he sidling up to her again, one hand on her shoulder, struck with the good luck he'd found in Malfoy making what looked like a jealous ass of himself.
Slughorn was waving for the music to strike back up as Cormac bent to whisper in Hermione's ear. "Well, glad that unpleasantness is out of the way."
She spiked her elbow into his abdomen and bolted for the door.
But there was no sign of them -- not Harry, nor Snape, nor Draco. She clicked over the stone floors in her hard-soled party shoes and found no one. Cold and hugging her bare arms, she sat on the plinth of a statue, and cried.
Unable to eat the next morning, Hermione was close to the first person to arrive on the platform at the Hogsmeade station. She watched and watched for Draco. She was still watching when Ron and Pansy made a stir by snogging in front of everyone. She smirked, muttering to herself, "Penance managed."
She was turning away from them, still smiling, when Draco appeared in front of her, almost as if he'd apparated there. In the crowd, he didn't embrace her, but took her hand, hidden in the ends of their sleeves. She looked up at him in the white light of the winter morning. His face was still worn and tired, but the sense of last night's ghostliness was gone. He looked alive.
"You don't have to tell me what's best about me," he said. "I already know. It's maudlin as hell but the best thing about me is that you love me." He took her gloved hand and pressed it over his left arm, through his coat. "It's what will keep me alive this holiday, until I can see you again."