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The evening started off promising.
Hermione looked unreal. Draco wore the navy robes she once said made him “look like a storm someone would happily walk into,” and they were heading to a trendy little magical bistro in Diagon Alley.
Romantic. Intimate. Definitely not a trap.
“I made the reservation,” Hermione said sweetly as they approached. “Under Potter.”
Draco stopped walking.
Hermione didn’t.
“Potter?”
“Oh—did I not mention? Double date.”
His jaw dropped. “You set me up.”
She patted his chest. “Don’t embarrass me.”
Harry and Ginny were already seated when they arrived. Ginny grinned like she’d been waiting her entire life for this moment. Harry looked like someone who had stepped into a very polite hostage situation.
“Malfoy,” he said with an almost-pleasant nod.
“Potter.”
“Shall we order wine?” Hermione asked brightly, sitting down as if the air wasn’t thick with ancient blood rivalry and light social anxiety.
Draco took his seat stiffly. “Why not? I might as well dull the sense of impending doom.”
Ginny raised a glass. “Cheers to that.”
Things deteriorated at the appetizers.
The menu was entirely in French. Magical French.
Hermione, fluent and smug, breezed through her order. Ginny picked something at random with confidence. Harry looked lost but brave. And Draco?
Draco panicked and accidentally ordered a rare delicacy only consumed by dragons.
The waiter blinked. “Are you sure, sir?”
Draco refused to back down. “Obviously.”
Hermione leaned over and whispered, “You just ordered fire-snail tartare.”
He smiled, dead-eyed. “Excellent.”
Then came the table games.
Apparently, this place had a “bond booster” tradition: enchanted cards that ask increasingly personal questions to the group, designed to “ignite laughter and strengthen magical connection.”
It ignited chaos.
Card one: “What’s your most embarrassing childhood moment?”
Harry: “I once thought I could tame a hippogriff with chicken nuggets.”
Ginny: “I put a Bat-Bogey Hex on a boy in Year 2 because he said Hufflepuffs were boring.”
Hermione: “I corrected a Hogwarts professor on their own subject mid-lesson in my first week.”
Draco, flatly: “I was turned into a ferret and bounced down a hallway.”
Beat of silence.
Ginny spit wine into her napkin. Harry choked. Hermione said, “You’re very brave.”
Card two: “What’s your partner’s worst habit?”
Hermione didn’t even hesitate. “He re-alphabetizes my books when he thinks I’m not looking.”
“They’re not alphabetical!” Draco protested. “They’re in some arcane Hermione System based on ‘emotional resonance and moral alignment.’ What does that even mean?”
“‘Pride and Prejudice’ goes next to ‘The Ethics of Werewolf Legislation,’ obviously.”
Harry nodded solemnly. “Of course.”
And then. The final question.
Card three: “When did you realize you were in love?”
The table went silent.
Ginny smiled and looked at Harry. “Sixth year. He didn’t know it yet, but I did.”
Harry grinned, a little pink. “Seventh. When I realized she’d hex someone for me without asking why.”
Hermione looked over at Draco.
Draco looked like someone had set him on fire and then asked him to dance.
He cleared his throat. “Um. I don’t... I don’t know the exact moment, but... it might have been the first time you stole all the blankets and then kicked me in your sleep.”
Hermione raised a brow. “Romantic.”
“I mean it,” he said, softer now. “You were completely unconscious, bossy even in your dreams. And I looked at you and thought, Merlin help me, I’m never going to love anyone else.”
Ginny made a sound between a gasp and a squeal.
Hermione blinked, surprised—then smiled, slow and smug and glowing.
“I was awake,” she whispered.
Draco dropped his face into his hands.
They left the restaurant two hours later, buzzed from wine and laughter, full of food Draco couldn’t pronounce and definitely didn’t enjoy.
“See?” Hermione said, looping her arm through his. “That wasn’t so bad.”
“I admitted my love in front of Harry Potter.”
“He didn’t hex you.”
“No, but he winked at me, Hermione. Like we’re friends now. Like I’m one of them.”
She leaned up and kissed his cheek. “You kind of are.”
He groaned. “I’ve never been more humiliated.”
“You say that every week.”
“And you keep making it true.”
She beamed. “That’s love, darling.”
And for once, he didn’t even try to argue.