'So are you,' he said, which was the flat-out truth. Blaise looked stunning as always, from her tight-fitting coppery satin robes to her six-inch spiked Mundungus Blahniks. Her hair was up, knotted low on the nape of her neck and strung with sparkling charmed lights. He kissed her cheek and she accepted the kiss graciously. Malcolm looked on, smiling with narrow eyes that matched his blue-black robes. Before he could greet Draco, they were joined by Tess Hammond, looking like a brick wall in scarlet robes, and Pansy Parkinson, in her ordinary dress robes, a woolly winter hat, and jeans.
'Pansy,' Blaise drawled. 'You're not going like that, are you?'
'I'm not going at all,' said Pansy coolly. 'I'm staying back and handing out leaftlets. I agreed to.'
'I can't imagine why,' said Blaise, arching her nose into the air, and taking Draco's arm. 'How utterly boring.' And she flounced towards the dungeon exit, everyone else in tow. Draco let his mind go blank as Blaise steered him upstairs and down the hallways that led to the Great Hall. 'I don't know what is going on with Pansy,' Blaise was saying in his ear as they entered the vestibule before the great, flung-open castle doors. 'She always takes hours to get ready, has enough cosmetics to stock one of her father's silly shops — you should see all her lotions and potions — and then she shows up looking like something the cat sicked up on the rug. I ask you.'
'Fascinating,' said Draco with great insincerity, but fortunately Blaise fell silent as they paused to look around at the decorations. Hogwarts had outdone itself this time. Huge sparkling icicles floated in the air, wrapped around with ropes of silvery tinsel. The four huge Christmas trees at each corner of the room were strung with brilliant, flower-shaped glowing lights and brightly wrapped sweets. The heavy end tables that normally decorated the room had been transmogrified into friendly-looking reindeer, although unfortunately they were still no more intelligent than end tables, and kept bashing into the walls. Draco let go of Blaise's hand and jumped to the side as one narrowly missed him with its antlers.
Blaise sniffed. 'Those silly things should not be allowed,' she opined, and glared at the offending creature. 'Go away!' she commanded, and, with a scuttle of hooves, it fled. Draco grinned. Everyone was afraid of Blaise, even furniture.
Blaise returned his smile with a satisfied look, which modified into a concerned pout. 'You will be all right, won't you darling?' she asked. 'I'd stay here with you, but…'
'No, you shouldn't miss your Pub Crawl,' Draco assured her firmly. 'Have a good time.' He looked over at Malcolm Baddock, who was standing with Tess (Pansy having vanished, presumably to distribute leaflets), looking haughtily around the room. 'Take care of her, Malcolm,' he said, and kissed Blaise's silky, jasmine-scented cheek lightly. He walked her to the door, and watched her being led down the steps by Malcolm and Tess with mixed feelings of regret and relief. He probably could have talked Blaise into spending the evening with him in the dungeons, doing what she called 'things I can't tell my father about because he thinks I'm a good girl', which was usually good for killing bothersome thoughts that might otherwise plague him — but he really hadn't wanted to. It required too much dissembling energy, and he was exhausted.
Malfoy. How are you holding up?
He heard Harry's voice in his head, clear and strong, and knew he must be nearby. He turned slowly and scanned the room. He saw Ron first, because he was so tall — his bright red head was always visible above a crowd. He was in the middle of a knot of Gryffindors who were laughing and talking together. Now that the Weasleys had a bit more money, Ron was always impeccably turned out — Draco surmised that the years of frayed and outworn clothes had hung very heavy on Ron when he was younger. He wore sharply cut dark blue dress robes over a charcoal-colored suit, and his Head Boy badge gleamed on his chest. He was talking to a morose-looking Neville Longbottom, sad-faced in orange dress robes. Next to him was Harry, with his back to Draco, holding Hermione by the hand.
I'm just fine, Potter. You?
Fine. Harry turned around, and Hermione turned around with him. You look pretty sharp for someone who isn't going to the Pub Crawl, Harry remarked, and smiled.
You don't look horrible yourself, Draco replied. This was true. Harry had the sort of off-center looks that could veer from boyishly unremarkable to arresting and striking. Right now he looked striking. His cloak was black, lined with dark blue, over a lighter blue shirt and black trousers, and he had managed, somehow, to temporarily tame his hair. How'd you pull that off?
Bit of help from Hermione, said Harry, and Draco saw him (probably unconsciously) tighten his grip on Hermione's hand. She looked up at Harry and smiled, and Draco looked away quickly, but the image stayed in his head. He couldn't see the dress she wore, she was wrapped tightly in a soft white cloak, but he saw the way her dark brown hair fell sleekly past her shoulders, fastened with pins in the shape of white flowers, and remembered the first time he'd seen her dressed up like that, when she'd been fourteen and so had he. He'd never thought of her as a girl before that, much less a pretty girl, much less a beautiful one. Malfoy…you going to be all right?
I wish people would quit asking me that, Draco snapped, with more force than he'd intended. It's just a bleeding Pub Crawl, Potter, not the Quidditch World Cup.
Harry raised both eyebrows (Draco had always felt superior that while he could raise only one, Harry couldn't) and seemed about to respond, but then the Gryffindor crowd seemed to reach a joint decision and began surging towards the stairs in a flurry of boys in dark cloaks and girls in candy-colored dress robes. Hermione stood out among them in her white cloak, like a pale flower in a bed of bright roses. She cast him a brief, searching glance as they went by, and smiled. He did not smile back.
Leaning against the jamb of the huge doors, Draco watched them all spill down the stairs in twos and threes, shouting and laughing, Harry, Ron and Hermione in the rear, standing close together as they always did. At the bottom step, however, they paused, and Harry and Ron turned towards Hermione, who was gesturing urgently. Draco saw Harry nod, and then Hermione kissed his cheek, turned, and ran back up the stairs, her white hood falling back and her dark hair caught by the wind. Her cloak blew back and he saw that the dress under it, like the cloak itself, was all white.
For a moment he stood and just aesthetically appreciated the picture she made: all dark hair and pale skin against the greater paleness of the dress and cloak, as if she had wrapped her dark brunette beauty in a shroud of snow. Her cheeks were scarlet, her eyes very bright. It was a moment before he realized that she was running to him — he stiffened in surprise when she reached the top of the stairs and caught at his hands. He felt the soft wool of her gloves warm against his skin. 'Please come along to Hogsmeade,' she said. 'We want you with us. Harry said you can have his cloak if you want it, so nobody will know.' She paused. 'It's our first Christmas together…do come.'
'We've had six others, you know.'
'No,' she said. 'We haven't. Not together.'
Draco looked down at their interwoven hands. Hers were gloved in white wool, his in black, and wound with his their twined fingers resemble the keys of a piano. He looked up and past her, down the steps of the castle, where Harry and Ron were waiting. Harry was looking up at them, the wind blowing his black hair across his eyes.
