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“No.”
“Oh come on, Hermione! You’re the only one who hasn’t done one.”
She shakes her head, curls tickling the sides of her face, and looks up to the shadowed-ceiling with her lips pursed. “No.”
Ron huffs. “And why not?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
Ginny interjects. “Come on, Hermione. It’s not so bad.”
“Yeah!” One of the fifth-year’s she doesn’t know the name of yells. “Live a little!”
Hermione flicks narrowed eyes to the group of Gryffindors sitting around the hearth. “I think I’ve lived enough. Now, ask me for a Truth and move on.”
She’s pleased when Ginny seems to have given up and the boy who’d told her — her, Hermione Granger, of all people — to live a little appears properly chastened. But there’s something about the looks in Harry and Ron’s eyes that makes her shift with discomfort.
They’re not going to let it go.
“Hermione,” Harry starts, in that calming and comfortable lilt of his that she knows is a ploy. “Pick Dare and I promise, Ron and I will be the ones to give it to you. We’d never pick anything that would make you uncomfortable.”
“Yeah!” Ron pipes up, smacking Harry’s knee with his palm. “We would never.”
She really doesn’t believe them. After all, hadn’t Harry been the one to dare Ginny, his own girlfriend, to do an embarrassing rendition of the chicken-dance? Yes. He had.
Hermione had cringed and did her best to look away as Ginny flailed and flapped, all on her own, in the middle of the Gryffindor common room. It had been her worst nightmare and the main reason she’d chosen to only pick Truth when it came to her turn. She always told the truth, anyway. Well, almost always.
“Fine,” Hermione mutters, arms crossed over her chest. “Dare.”
There’s a few whoops and hollers as she says the word and she’s filled with instant regret as the look in Harry’s eyes changes from one of friendship to one of trickery.
Most of the dares have been to kiss him or kiss her. One had even involved two of the sixth-years being locked in a closet for seven minutes, something she could recall being popular in muggle popular-culture. They’d both exited flushed and taming their hair.
She really did not want to know. Nor was she ever going to enter that closet again.
“We dare you to steal a pumpkin.”
Hermione raises a single eyebrow.
“From Hagrid’s pumpkin patch.”
Her mouth slowly drops open.
“And carve it into the shape of a lion.”
She’s confused now. Why would she…?
“And then leave it in front of the Great Hall.”
She’s stunned. This is worse than kissing someone. This is worse than kissing Ron.
This is not only theft, but then bragging about said theft.
“I’m not going to sneak out—“
Ron guffaws. “You’ve snuck out millions of time.”
“—and break curfew—“
“But you’re so good at it,” Harry mumbles.
She glares.
“—all to steal a pumpkin that we have absolutely no use for.”
The common room is quiet as she breathes heavily, annoyed. She had been having fun, obligingly giving a truthful answer to every question asked of her and watching as the other students chose poorly and did a dare they weren’t keen to do.
What a mistake this was.
“We actually do have use for a pumpkin,” Ginny says softy. “Gryffindor doesn’t…have one…yet.”
She huffs and stands, patting her hip for her familiar beaded bag as she tugs out her wand. In that moment, she regrets coming back for an eighth year. If she wasn’t here, she’d be somewhere else, not participating in childish dares.
As she moves, Ron stands and slaps his hands down on his hips. “Oh come on, Hermione. It’s just a bit of fun— don’t leave!”
She turns and feels the stare of all of her classmates. “Oh, but I have to leave, Ronald. How else would I get the pumpkin?”
•──────────⋅☠☠⋅──────────•
The castle is spooky on most nights, let alone near Hallowe’en. It’s so big and cavernous, a chill sweeping through the hall as she turns every corner. Her shoes click loudly on the stone floor, echoing around her as she walks briskly through the halls and down the stairs. More than once she turns to look behind her, eyes wide as she tries to see through the shadows that seems to move along the walls. A shiver crawls up her spine. A tingle shoots up her arm.
“It’s all in your mind,” Hermione mumbles quietly to herself.
She just wants to get this over with.
As she reaches the ground floor, though, she quints as two flickering lights come into view. Carefully and quietly taking a curious step forward, she realizes there are two floating jack-o-lanterns bobbing in front of the closed doors to the Great Hall.
As she gets closer, she notices that one has been cut to resemble a badger and the other, a raven. The candles placed inside flicker and cast ominous shadows against the wall.
Hermione frowns.
This must be what Ginny was referring to when she said that Gryffindor didn’t have a pumpkin yet. Somehow, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw have already stolen and carved theirs to resemble their houses. That leaves only Gryffindor and Slytherin to provide their contributions.
The familiar feeling of competition expands in her chest and she steels herself, fingers gripping her wand. Well, now that there’s a greater cause, perhaps this isn’t such a bad dare after all.
With a new determination, she slips out one of the side doors that will lead her down to the pumpkin patch. The patch itself is small but she’ll need to be careful with the sound of her footsteps and any use of light— it’s just next to Hagrid’s Hut and, while he’s a heavy sleeper, one wrong move will have him up.
It’s dark and and a little cloudy, a light wind blowing and rustling the leaves that lay dead on the ground, but the moon gives off enough light that she doesn’t need her wand. She’s walked this path hundreds of times since she came to Hogwarts, but never on her own and in the dark.
A crow’s loud caw off in the distance makes her jump, foot slipping on one of the stone’s placed into the side of the hill. She catches herself, heart thumping wildly in her chest.
“Just breathe, Hermione,” she whispers to herself. “You’ve been in scarier places.”
And she has. How many nights had she spent sitting outside of their little tent in the forest, ears trained on every little sound that came from the depths of the woods? How many times had she come face to face with that awful, slimy ghoul in The Burrow’s attic?
As she walks, her shoes disappearing through the mist that covers the ground, she’s reminded of the one time her father took her to a haunted house, before she’d been accepted to Hogwarts. They’d turned a single corner when Hermione had been spooked by a cast member and curled in on herself, begging to leave. When she finally opened her eyes, her father tugging on her hand, she realized all the lights had come on— and they couldn’t seem to turn them off.
They’d taken the early exit and only once she’d left had the lights turned off. Her little bout of accidental magic was never mentioned, but she remembers.
The pumpkin patch comes into view as she reaches the bottom of the hill. There’s no more than five rows of pumpkins growing, but it’s a little hard to tell underneath the growing cloud of mist. As she takes another few steps closer, the light she’d been relying on from the moon suddenly disappears, clouds sweeping in.
With a shaky breath, she holds her wand out and whispers, “Lumos.”
The soft glow is just enough for her to see a few paces in front of her, and she comes to stand on the edge of the patch with a sigh. A shape moves out of the corner of her eye and she lifts her wand to the sky, emitting a sharp gasp at the sight of bats flying overhead.
Bats.
Hermione shakes her head and tries to ignore them. She really does not like bats.
With a careful foot, she steps over a pumpkin and points her wand back down to help her see. In her humble opinion, a large part of the art of pumpkin carving is choosing the best pumpkin available. If the canvas is rubbish, then the carving is rubbish.
For decoration, she likes the pumpkins that are considered to be the odd ones out— the ones with strange white colouring or big, bulbous sides, the ones with scratches and dents. But for carving, the pumpkin has to be perfect.
She finds exactly what she’s looking only two rows in.
It’s big and squat, wide enough for a scene but tall enough for a character. She bends down and runs her fingers over the rind and feels confident that it’s thick enough to allow for some shading. Most importantly, though, it’s the perfect colour of orange and without any blemishes or imperfections.
Standing again, her focus solely on the pumpkin at her feet, she raises her wand and prepares to cut it through the air in the shape of a lopsided Z, the word for the severing charm just on the tip of her tongue.
“Diffindo!”
The sound of the peduncle being severed fills the air, a dull ripping noise, but she stares down at the pumpkin in confusion because, while that was the spell she was preparing to use, that was not her voice.
Hermione spins around, her wand pointed out and breathes in a sharp gasp.
“Evening, Granger.”
Her eyes narrow and her arm stays steady.
“Malfoy.”
•──────────⋅☠☠⋅──────────•
“I can’t believe they sent you.”
Hermione narrows her eyes, wand still pointed at him.
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
He shrugs, dark clothes blending into the darkness around him. The only thing that she can really see about him is the glow of his white-blond hair and the gleam of his grey eyes. She can barely make out the the smirk on his lips.
“I thought for sure Potter or Weasley would do it. You’re just so…”
She drops her wand arm and crosses her arms over her chest, foot tapping. “So what, exactly?”
Malfoy sighs. “So…you.”
Rolling her eyes, she shifts her stance and stands straighter. “Well, I’ll take that as a compliment.”
He snorts. “You really shouldn’t.”
Her eyes follow him as he walks into the patch, seeming to know where to step without looking, somehow managing not to crush anything. He ends up standing in front of her, just on the other side of the pumpkin she’s chosen.
It reminds her of a standoff, like in the old westerns her parent’s used to watch. Her arm itches to rise again, to point her wand at him.
Malfoy stares at her with his own arms still by his sides. She can see his wand grasped in his left hand and follows it back up to his face. He looks carefully blank.
“Now, if you’ll move out of my way, I’ll take my pumpkin and go.”
Her brows lift incredulously. “Your pumpkin? This is my pumpkin.”
He huffs loudly. “How on earth is it your pumpkin, Granger? I severed it.”
He had, but she had just been about to do the same. Her wand had been raised, the word on the tip of her tongue, the first slash of the lopsided Z already made in the air.
“I had just been about to do it myself when you barged over here, Malfoy— I know you saw me. What did you think I was doing?”
“I really don’t care what you were doing, Granger. I saw the pumpkin I wanted and I’m taking it.”
Malfoy bends down and reaches to pick up the pumpkin but she’s quicker. Her wand is already arcing through the air when she hisses, “Accio!”
The pumpkin slips from under his arms, just out of his reach, to float off to her side. Hermione smiles a winning grin at him, hands on her hips. Just then, the clouds move enough for the moon to shine down on them again.
She can see him clearer now and he looks nearly murderous.
“Give—it—back,” he says quietly through clenched teeth.
Hermione shakes her head. “No.”
He groans loudly and scrubs a hand over his face. His carefully blank look is long gone now, replaced by absolute frustration. His eyes are narrowed and his lips, already thin, are mashed together and white.
“You are the most infuriating witch—“
She cuts him off. “And you are a child.”
“Give it back!”
“It was never yours!”
She looks down to his side and sees his hand clenched in a tight fist, the other gripping his wand so hard his knuckles are white.
“Granger— I swear to Merlin himself, if you don’t give that pumpkin back, I’ll—“
Hermione takes half a step back and smiles sarcastically. “You’ll do what? Curse me? I’d like to see you try, you pompous—“
“You’re the one who’s had your wand pointed at me all night!” He shouts. “Besides— I severed it!”
His voice is loud, echoing across the pumpkin patch and the open space. In the back of her mind, she recognizes that he needs to be quieter, but she’s too busy trying to win this argument.
Her own voice echoes loudly. “Tough—shit.”
Suddenly, the light in Hagrid’s Hut comes on and they both turn, eyes wide and mouths gaping open. Her grip tightens on her wand and she watches as Malfoy turns wildly, eyes glancing off of the dozen or so pumpkins around them.
He points quickly with his wand to another pumpkin of similar size and shape to the one floating at her side, whispering a harsh, “Diffindo!” as his wand cuts through the air.
With a whispered accio, he turns to look at her just as they hear the heavy thump of Hagrid’s footsteps from his home. His eyes are still wide, glowing in the pale light of the moon and he grumbles a single word.
“Run.”
•──────────⋅☠☠⋅──────────•
They make a mad dash up the crooked stone steps haphazardly placed into the side of the hill. She can hear the creak of Hagrid’s door as he finally takes a step outside. Another crow caws in the distance and a handful of bats fly overhead.
“Who’s there?” Hagrid’s voice carries up the hill, loud and gruff with the sound of sleep.
She can just imagine him in his robe and slippers, hair wild around his face and eyes full of sleep. She feels guilty for waking him but desperately doesn’t want to get caught.
She knows, realistically, that nothing would really happen if she were caught, especially not by Hagrid. But the plays-by-the-rules student in her runs as fast as her legs can take her, her lungs burning with the lack of hair.
She and Malfoy both reach the top nearly at the same time and stumble back over to the side door of the castle. He pushes it open with his shoulder, breathing harshly, and nods his head for her to slip inside.
Just as she does, she hears Hagrid’s loud voice again. “Ruddy kids.”
Her pumpkin is still floating beside her as she bends over, resting her palms on her knees, and tries to catch her breath. She can see Draco leaning against the wall and doing the same, the pumpkin he’d quickly severed floating off to his side, too.
When she has her breath back, her cheeks and chest covered in cooling sweat, she glares at the Slytherin. “You just couldn’t keep your voice down, could you?”
He looks surprised and a small, startled laugh slips through his lips. “Me? What about you?”
Hermione looks off to the side and shrugs guiltily. “You started it.”
“Yeah, well…” he trails off and runs his hand through his hair. “You finished it.”
They stand there in silence for a few more minutes before Hermione turns to her pumpkin and carefully sets it down on the stone floor. She turns to look at Malfoy once before taking a seat on the cold floor.
“I’m going to carve my pumpkin, so…” She trails off. “Good luck, I suppose.”
She can feel his stare on her back. “Good luck….really? You’re wishing me good luck?”
“Fine,” she huffs. “I hope your pumpkin is terrible. Is that better, Malfoy?”
To her surprise, he lets his pumpkin rest gently on the floor and slides down the wall, joining it and her. She’d expected him to slither off to some other part of the castle, not to carve with her.
“You’re insufferable, you know that?”
She shrugs and lets the insult roll off her back. “Pot—kettle.”
It’s mumbled but he hears it and utters a very confused, “What?”
“It’s like the pot calling the kettle black,” she says again, a little bit louder.
At his silence, she turns around and see his look of confusion. If she rolls her eyes one more time, they’ll slip from her head all the way down the hall.
“If I’m insufferable than you’re doubly so,” she explains.
While he splutters, she draws her wand around the peduncle and lifts it off before vanishing the mess inside. As a child, her mother would comb through all of the mess and keep the pumpkin seeds, roasting them with a little bit of oil and salt for a snack.
“I am not insufferable,” he finally says, shifting on the ground.
“Then neither am I.”
“You are, actually,” he says. “You’re the most insufferable witch in this entire school.”
Hermione turns around again to glare at him. “Would you just stop talking so I can finish this carving and get away from you?”
He harrumphs and rolls his eyes, hissing out a, “Fine!”
“Fine!” She mimics.
•──────────⋅☠☠⋅──────────•
The lion carving on her pumpkin is striking. The lines are precise and the shading offers something that the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff pumpkins clearly don’t have. She applauds herself quietly, just in her mind, at the way the pumpkin looks.
With a flick of her wand, she conjures a candle and lights it, setting it carefully inside of the pumpkin. With a satisfied nod, she arcs an accio and brings it to float beside the other two, still bobbing up and down in front of the doors to the Great Hall.
She hears movement behind her but ignores it, focussing on making it bob like the others. Once it seems steady, Hermione takes a step back and admires her work. It’s clearly the winner of the three, most likely the four, though she hasn’t seen the Slytherin pumpkin yet.
Malfoy seemed to work just as diligently as she did, quietly mumbling little cuts into the side of his pumpkin, balancing precariously on his lap. When she turns to glance at him, though, she startles and jumps back a step, nearly knocking into the floating pumpkins.
He’s no longer sitting on the floor with his pumpkin, but staring at hers. She stands a little bit straighter, bracing herself for an inevitable insult like the others he’s thrown her all evening.
Instead, he frowns uncomfortably and shifts on his feet. “How did you…do that?”
Hermione tilts her head to the side. “Do…what, exactly?”
Malfoy steps forward and traces his fingers over the shaded area of the lion’s face. It’s not completely cut out of the pumpkin, a thin layer of rind leftover that allows the candle light to shine through. It gives the lion a depth that it wouldn’t have and a level of detail that wouldn’t be possible if she’d simply cut all the pieces out.
This close to him, she eyes his face carefully, crawling along the length of his jaw line and cheek bones. There’s a light layer of stubble there. “I presume you know how to shave.”
He nods slowly, fingers coming up to drag along the skin of his face. “Yes.”
“Try it on the pumpkin.”
He goes quiet, still staring at the Gryffindor pumpkin. Hermione shifts on her feet, unsettled by the silence and the way that Malfoy carefully dissects her jack-o-lantern.
“I could...“
She trails off and looks to the side, teeth twisting the skin of her bottom lip.
“You could what?”
“Well, I could show you how but I don’t know if you’d—“
“Yes.”
His answer surprises her and she stops talking. He turns and leads her over to the wall where his pumpkin sits. She can see the precise outline of a snake, cut out in a way that make it seem real and slithering, in the shape of an S. All that’s left to do are the features and it seems he’s been struggling mostly with the flickering tongue.
He slides down the wall and gestures to the space next to him where she carefully sits, tugging her skirt down past her knees. His pumpkin is nearly as big as hers and almost as perfect, except for the small dents in the one side.
“It’s really very simple,” she says, clearing her throat. “You just kind of…”
With a flick of her wand, a slice of the rind peels off in the shape they’d she’d drawn against the pumpkin, leaving a flickering tongue. It doesn’t leave a very thin rind, so she turns the pumpkin to her adversary and gestures to him.
“Try it— just over the same spot. The rind needs to be thinner for the light to shine through properly.”
Hermione takes a shaky breath as she watches him concentrate, carefully practicing as he draws the same shape over the tongue but doesn’t whisper the spell. Finally, after another three practice tries, he whispers the spell.
It’s perfect. Just as she’d have done it, thin enough for eventual light to shine through but still enough rind that it looks like shading instead of a cut out. She grins and is nearly taken aback when she turns to look at Malfoy, only to find him grinning, too.
“You did it,” she says softly, almost shyly. “I told you.”
Malfoy nods happily and peers at the snake carving. “I did do it.”
Nodding, Hermione pushes herself up to stand and dusts off her skirt, taking a few steps back. With a low sigh, she appraises the floating pumpkins again and turns to head off down the hall to the stairs when she hears something that makes her stop.
“Thank you, Granger.”
Very slowly, she twists around and inclines her head. She’s surprised, obviously so, but doesn’t voice it. “Oh. You’re welcome.”
Malfoy stands and brings his pumpkin with him, setting it just to the left of the Gryffindor one. With a wave of his wand, it too bobs in time with the others, the candle light flickering against the wall.
She’s about to turn and start walking again but he steps quickly over to her, a nervous look on his face. “Let me walk you back. It’s late.”
Her incisor sinks into her bottom lip but she holds in the wince. “Not necessary, Malfoy.”
He ignores her and walks past, heading in the direction of the stairs instead of the dungeons. She stares after him bewildered until he turns back with lifted brows.
“Are you coming?”
•──────────⋅☠☠⋅──────────•
The walk up the stairs is silent. So silent, it feels spookier than it had when she’d walked down all these stairs on her own. She can’t help but glance at him every few minutes, staring at the way he holds his posture and steps with confident, careful feet.
For the first time, she takes in his height and the way he towers over her. She trails her eyes over the length of his torso and the strength of his legs, all the way down to the size of his shoes.
She’s not blind. She’s knows how the other girls at school talk about him, the way they describe him. He’s attractive as far as plain, old physical attractiveness goes. His personality, on the other hand, leaves much to be desired. At least for her.
She can admit that his desire to walk her back to her common room helps. Just a tiny bit.
He doesn’t say anything else as they walk, though, and she does her best not to let her thoughts run truly wild. She doesn’t know how long it’s been since she left the common room but it doesn’t seem like anyone has come looking for her, so not too long.
As they reach the seventh floor corridor that will take them down to the common room, she notices that he slows his steps, fingers clenching into fists at his side. Hermione stops when he does, turning to look up at him.
“You can go— the portrait is just right there,” she says quietly, gesturing down the hall.
He nods. “Right, yeah.”
Hermione smiles awkwardly. “Well…thanks.”
There’s a tug on her sweater as she turns. “Wait—“
“Yes?” She asks, a cool expression on her face.
Malfoy clears his throat and shifts uncomfortably on his feet, his fingers still wrapped in the sleeve of her sweater. She stays still and quiet, not wanting to spook him.
“You’re not…” he trails off. “I just mean to say that— you’re not so bad.”
Her brows lift in surprise. “Oh…”
“I mean, all that stuff I said— you’re not insufferable. You’re…” he shrugs his shoulders, “you’re alright, Granger.”
A small smile slips past her lips and she nods her head. “I suppose you’re not so bad yourself.”
“Yeah?” He asks, a grin brightening his face.
In the back of her mind she notes the way his face opens up when he smiles.
“Yeah. I mean, as far as Slytherins go.”
“Right, yeah,” he nods, a hand on his hip. “As far as Gryffindors go.”
Hermione takes a step back and blushes as a laugh bubbles from her throat. This is not the way she thought her night would go and definitely not the way she thought it would end. But here she is, standing along in a corridor with the boy who had been a thorn in her side for years.
“I should get back,” she says, then. “You probably should, too.”
He nods and his grip loosens on her sweater but his fingers encircle her wrist to give her a light squeeze. “Have a nice night, Granger.”
“You too, Malfoy.”
She turns and walks toward the portrait, her footsteps echoing loudly in the corridor, but his voice carries over the noise.
“We should do this again sometime.”
Hermione’s laugh is loud. “What? Almost get caught stealing pumpkins?”
She turns only when she reaches the portrait to see him standing in exactly the same place. In the dim light of the moon shining through the windows, she sees the wings of a bat as it flaps along outside and catches the way he shrugs his shoulders.
“Something like that.”