Good Intentions [gift]
HEY withdrawnred... SURPRISE!!!
Yep, this is exactly what it looks like: the gift that took forever. :D
Title: Good Intentions
Author: silviaelisa
Beta: hoodedcrime
Genre: Angst, Drama, Family
Pairing: Draco/Hermione, mentions of Ron/Hermione and Draco/Pansy
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling. The author of the following story (which is me) has no connection to J.K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishing, Scholastic Books or Warner Bros., Inc. -- No money is being made from this, no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Summary: The road to hell is paved with good intentions, exactly the kind of good intentions that Hermione's parents had in mind when they pushed their daughter away from Ron. And exactly the kind of good intentions that Hermione herself had in mind when she started talking to the blond in the pub, and nobody knows the road to hell better than Draco Malfoy.
Author's Note: The ups and downs with this story were a roller-coaster as my correspondence with hoodedcrime can attest. I struggled with many things and many concepts, so much that I almost gave up on the whole thing... but I feel this story so much that I soldiered through. My dearest callarose, you will notice that I interpreted your advice in maybe a subtler way than you intended, but all was duly noted, and thank you. Here we go, the standalone that almost never was... enjoy!
Good Intentions
*
It was pouring, and she had no umbrella.
In the small country village, people were hurrying to take cover; kids were being ushered inside by cautious mothers and dripping awnings sheltered drenched couples.
Hermione stood motionless in the middle of the main road.
A passer-by sped past her, but the scowl on her face caught his attention and he stopped.
"It's a summer shower!" he shouted with a smile on his face. "It'll be over in a minute!"
He recoiled when Hermione frowned even further; being caught in the rain was the very least of her worries.
It had happened. After years of carefully worded letters and prudent end-of-year explanations, Hermione's parents had at last flipped. And over something as silly and prejudiced as her choice of a husband.
"We've been going out for years, Mum, it's not like I sprung this on you overnight."
She was breathing heavily, struggling to maintain her composure. Her parents stared at her from the other side of the kitchen table as she spoke; listening, yes, but with a disapproving gleam in their eyes.
"No, of course not, Hermione," her father said. "Still... we, well, we thought it wouldn't last, frankly."
"You've never once invited him over for tea..." Her mother looked at her husband for support.
"We put it down to the uncertainty of war," he continued, "and that once the fear was over, you'd realise..."
"We do like the boy, we just don't think he's right for you."
Hermione opened her mouth to counter back, but she found that words would not come. Her father circled the table to get to her side and squeeze her shoulder.
"In the long run, darling, in the long run," he said.
Her parents had spoken in soft voices, but the rehearsed air of their back and forth had infuriated Hermione. She had more or less chosen to tune out and she was now trying to piece together how she had come to stand in the pouring rain of Ottery St. Catchpole.
She was at a loss, unable to comprehend how the happiest day of her life had started to resemble a nightmare. Considering the rather damp predicament she found herself in, Hermione reckoned that day could go down in history as a bad one.
As more people walked past her, she decided it was time to leave the village and step into the open fields just past the old church.
And yet... How was she supposed to go back to the Burrow, where Ron had finally proposed to her not two hours earlier? How to explain that her parents did not approve? That the people whose wisdom and sensibility she had respected and thought highly of had been horrified at the happy news?
That she was only now, a year or so after the war, starting to feel that perhaps they didn't blame her for shipping them off to Australia without their consent.
It took Hermione the long walk from the church to the fence of the Burrow to make up her mind. She wouldn't tell him. She couldn't tell him. Ron had been hesitant in even indicating he would have liked to take their relationship to the next level; such a blow to his ego would destroy any chance they had at making it work.
It had stopped raining, and she smiled a grim smile.
6 months later
The pub was more crowded than she had expected.
She pushed her way through, craning her neck to spot an empty seat. The crowd seemed to come with a party and people of all ages and accents had flooded the area around the bar; a cacophony of sounds and sights she had never experienced before.
Well, maybe once.
She could still smell the pungent reek of feet and unwashed hair that filled the conditioned air of the large aircraft as she struggled to tune out the incessant buzzing of the engines. When she had flown over to undo the spell she had cast on her parents, she had racked her brains over what explanation she could give. She had no idea what they would remember, but waking up months after their last conversation in a city at the Antipodes would most certainly be a shock. To her, just landing in Sydney had been a shock.
Just like Parvati was nowhere to be found in the pub, her parents had not been where she had anticipated them to be. They hadn't taken to Sydney, with its tall buildings and dependable ferryboats, their neighbours told her, and they had moved - where, nobody knew.
"What can I get you?"
The bartender didn't seem to recognise her, which suited Hermione just fine. She asked for a glass of gillywater and resumed her perusal of the pub; she had agreed to do this interview and she didn't want Parvati to think she had bailed on her. It was no secret that the former Gryffindor had been trying to get hold of Hermione for months for she seldom lost the opportunity to remind the readers of her column in the Daily Prophet about her wish to 'catch up with her old friend'.
There she was, Hermione thought, ready to catch up. Or to be caught.
She had started scanning the bar for any signs of Parvati now and her eyes caught a glimpse of someone she had also not seen in quite a while: Malfoy. He was sipping what appeared to be a pint of mead, but he was obviously not paying any attention to the contents of his glass. His gaze was fixed and empty, though his furrowed brow implied that his mind was occupied with thoughts far more interesting than the excessive bitterness or sweetness of his drink.
Hermione cast one last look around, took her gillywater from the bartender with a subdued 'thank you', and proceeded to look at Malfoy with what she hoped was a piercing stare. Ron had always insisted that if you looked at someone hard enough, they were bound to feel watched and turn towards whoever was staring at them. Hermione had never heard of something more preposterous, but she didn't feel like sitting at the bar doing nothing if Parvati ran ever more late; testing Ron's theory on Malfoy sounded like a much better plan.
Malfoy's blank expression reminded her of the clueless neighbours she had talked to in the Sydney suburb she had sent her parents to live in. She had chosen it with their best interests in mind; it was a good area, well equipped for a couple of dentists just settling in. Hermione had wondered what had gone wrong, what she had done wrong.
The gillywater was starting to turn more pungent as the effect of the sweetener waned, but though it forced her to sip it more slowly, Hermione's gaze on Malfoy never faltered. It had taken her several days to piece together her parents' departure from Sydney, and was therefore taken aback when, after a mere handful of minutes, Ron's theory was corroborated by Draco Malfoy suddenly shivering from a nonexistent breeze.
He raised his now half-empty glass and inclined his head in her general direction. He had at last taken notice of her and, if he wasn't smiling, at least he wasn't flinching at the sight either.
Hermione offered a small smile in return, raising her own tumbler; she then lowered her gaze onto the scratched counter of the bar and hoped Malfoy would do just the same. Her mind was still in Sydney, poring over the scattered papers in her parents' office. Their colleagues at the dental practice she had found for them had told her little, but the printed copies of various train tickets, car hiring agencies and flight plans told her everything she needed to know.
Brisbane.
"Sorry?" The bartender looked confused. "This is England, not Australia." He looked at the drinks aligned behind him. "D'you know the ingredients? I can make you one."
Hermione's cheeks flushed and she shook her head; apologising, and feeling more embarrassed by the minute, she turned her head away from the man only to meet Malfoy's quizzical eyes. It couldn't get any worse, she thought as she attempted to mouth an explanation to him. The racket all around was inconceivable and Hermione was sure that had she even tried to yell at him, the results would have been even less intelligible.
Malfoy, for his part, rolled his eyes at her efforts and got up from his stool, disappearing into the crowd that surrounded the bar. Next thing she knew, he was sitting by her side, a look of amused annoyance on his face.
"My lip-reading skills are not that good," he said.
"I just ordered the wrong drink," she said.
Hermione hadn't meant it as a justification, but Malfoy seemed to take it that way because he waved her answer away as he gulped down the last of his mead. He made a face, probably at the sharp flavour that had become foul in the bottom of the glass.
She gaped. True, she hadn't seen the bloke in years and true, her own friends had changed a lot since school, but she had not expected it would happen to Malfoy. She couldn't help wondering at his ease around her - she had been a Gryffindor, didn't that mean anything anymore?
Malfoy smacked his lips to get rid of the sour taste of the mead. "Were you even ordering?" he asked. "It looked like you were talking to yourself."
"I was thinking of my parents," Hermione blurted out before she could stop herself.
He snorted.
She glared. "What of it?"
Hostility was the only way she knew how to react to him, it seemed. Malfoy, however, wasn't paying attention, and he replied to her as if she had spoken in the most civil of tones.
"I'll probably start talking to myself too," he said. "Soon, by the way things are going at home..."
Hermione struggled against herself because, implausible as it was even to her, she was intrigued. She didn't ask straight away - she only caved when he sighed - and then she inquired whether he'd be so polite as to elaborate on his cryptic words.
In those words.
"Might I inquire if you would be so polite as to elaborate on your cryptic words?"
Malfoy widened his eyes, but the readiness with which he replied told Hermione he must have been waiting for someone to ask.
"It's like I don't know my own parents anymore." He looked at her, assessing her. "You must have read it in the papers," he said, "but the trial didn't go so well."
She nodded; it was pointless to tell him she had listened to Harry's first-hand account of all the trials.
"It wasn't easy, but we worked hard to get things back to normal after that..." He fiddled with his empty glass. "I treated my parents to a holiday, I sent them to Morocco... You know, a place far enough that they'd be able to enjoy themselves."
"That was nice of you," Hermione said, but she was thinking of what she had done for her parents.
Malfoy grimaced. "I started going out with Pansy while they were gone."
She nodded again; that, she had read in the papers. It had been the cover story for almost a week for nobody expected Pansy Parkinson to get anywhere in life after her terribly overt outburst against Harry. Hermione had read Parvati's vicious article and had sincerely agreed with her.
"You're still going out, as far as I'm aware."
"No," Malfoy replied. "As of yesterday, we aren't."
The bartender, having noticed the empty glasses, addressed them both before Hermione could extend her insincere sympathy. She ordered Firewhisky and, in the silence that followed the disappearance of the bartender, her thoughts strayed.
On her way to Brisbane, it had occurred to her that many things had happened in her life since she had said goodbye to her parents. Like a gap year, she had told herself, she was now travelling back home to tell them all about her adventures; she only hoped they would see it that way too.
A smoking Firewhisky landed in front of her, and an identical one threatened to topple over until Malfoy held it firmly in his hands.
"So," he began, "where were we?"
Hermione bit her lip, pushing down the memory of Australia, and concentrated on Pansy. Anything to keep her own demons at bay.
"Ah, yes, Pansy," Malfoy said. "My parents did not approve of her, see?" He grimaced. "They didn't think we'd last past the War, my mother especially, she -"
"She thought," Hermione interrupted, "you'd realise that in the long run she wasn't right for you."
He turned to stare at her. "How do you know?"
"Let's just say I've heard it before," she said.
It took more than a couple of Firewhiskies, four blackcurrant rums and a round of something sweet and sour at the same time to loosen Hermione's tongue. Not that Malfoy listened or followed all that came out of her mouth in that liberating slur, having himself drank at least double the alcohol she had downed.
"What do you mean you left, Granger?"
"I couldn't go through with it," Hermione said. "Not without my parents' approval, not after all the doubts they had put in my head--" She choked on the last word and shook her head.
Malfoy nodded. "To meddling parents!"
"Hear, hear."
The clink of one glass on the other was followed by a brief moment of silence; the pub had begun to empty and only scattered conversations could be heard in the wide room. Had Parvati ever showed up? Hermione had forgotten to worry about that, she realised.
Malfoy cleared his throat. "Never thought I'd say this, Granger," he said. "But I'm sorry about you and Weasley."
There was nothing Hermione could say to that; she didn't know if she was sorry for having listened to her parents or sorry she hadn't left earlier than fifteen minutes before the actual ceremony. She ordered another blackcurrant rum instead of replying to Malfoy.
"What's that you were saying about your father?" he asked.
Hermione waved at him through her drink. "Cheese-tasting," she then replied. "Apparently, he picked it up in Australia."
"And you go too?"
She snorted. "Have I got a choice?"
Malfoy inclined his head. "Mother's the same, you know."
"Wine-tasting?"
Unknown logic decreed Hermione's question hilarious to the intoxicated pair and sporadic fits of giggles erupted from their lips for a minute or two. Even more obscure logic made Malfoy gulp down another Firewhisky in an attempt to clear his head; on the other hand, Hermione herself couldn't fault his reasoning.
"You are making a lot of sense for a drunk girl," he said.
"I take it as a compliment," Hermione replied.
"And, hey," Malfoy started with a smirk, "I'm all for cheese-tasting if the opportunity presents itself!"
"Misery does love company, I suppose..."
Their glasses clinked together one more time.
Yep, this is exactly what it looks like: the gift that took forever. :D
Title: Good Intentions
Author: silviaelisa
Beta: hoodedcrime
Genre: Angst, Drama, Family
Pairing: Draco/Hermione, mentions of Ron/Hermione and Draco/Pansy
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling. The author of the following story (which is me) has no connection to J.K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishing, Scholastic Books or Warner Bros., Inc. -- No money is being made from this, no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Summary: The road to hell is paved with good intentions, exactly the kind of good intentions that Hermione's parents had in mind when they pushed their daughter away from Ron. And exactly the kind of good intentions that Hermione herself had in mind when she started talking to the blond in the pub, and nobody knows the road to hell better than Draco Malfoy.
Author's Note: The ups and downs with this story were a roller-coaster as my correspondence with hoodedcrime can attest. I struggled with many things and many concepts, so much that I almost gave up on the whole thing... but I feel this story so much that I soldiered through. My dearest callarose, you will notice that I interpreted your advice in maybe a subtler way than you intended, but all was duly noted, and thank you. Here we go, the standalone that almost never was... enjoy!
Good Intentions
*
It was pouring, and she had no umbrella.
In the small country village, people were hurrying to take cover; kids were being ushered inside by cautious mothers and dripping awnings sheltered drenched couples.
Hermione stood motionless in the middle of the main road.
A passer-by sped past her, but the scowl on her face caught his attention and he stopped.
"It's a summer shower!" he shouted with a smile on his face. "It'll be over in a minute!"
He recoiled when Hermione frowned even further; being caught in the rain was the very least of her worries.
It had happened. After years of carefully worded letters and prudent end-of-year explanations, Hermione's parents had at last flipped. And over something as silly and prejudiced as her choice of a husband.
"We've been going out for years, Mum, it's not like I sprung this on you overnight."
She was breathing heavily, struggling to maintain her composure. Her parents stared at her from the other side of the kitchen table as she spoke; listening, yes, but with a disapproving gleam in their eyes.
"No, of course not, Hermione," her father said. "Still... we, well, we thought it wouldn't last, frankly."
"You've never once invited him over for tea..." Her mother looked at her husband for support.
"We put it down to the uncertainty of war," he continued, "and that once the fear was over, you'd realise..."
"We do like the boy, we just don't think he's right for you."
Hermione opened her mouth to counter back, but she found that words would not come. Her father circled the table to get to her side and squeeze her shoulder.
"In the long run, darling, in the long run," he said.
Her parents had spoken in soft voices, but the rehearsed air of their back and forth had infuriated Hermione. She had more or less chosen to tune out and she was now trying to piece together how she had come to stand in the pouring rain of Ottery St. Catchpole.
She was at a loss, unable to comprehend how the happiest day of her life had started to resemble a nightmare. Considering the rather damp predicament she found herself in, Hermione reckoned that day could go down in history as a bad one.
As more people walked past her, she decided it was time to leave the village and step into the open fields just past the old church.
And yet... How was she supposed to go back to the Burrow, where Ron had finally proposed to her not two hours earlier? How to explain that her parents did not approve? That the people whose wisdom and sensibility she had respected and thought highly of had been horrified at the happy news?
That she was only now, a year or so after the war, starting to feel that perhaps they didn't blame her for shipping them off to Australia without their consent.
It took Hermione the long walk from the church to the fence of the Burrow to make up her mind. She wouldn't tell him. She couldn't tell him. Ron had been hesitant in even indicating he would have liked to take their relationship to the next level; such a blow to his ego would destroy any chance they had at making it work.
It had stopped raining, and she smiled a grim smile.
6 months later
The pub was more crowded than she had expected.
She pushed her way through, craning her neck to spot an empty seat. The crowd seemed to come with a party and people of all ages and accents had flooded the area around the bar; a cacophony of sounds and sights she had never experienced before.
Well, maybe once.
She could still smell the pungent reek of feet and unwashed hair that filled the conditioned air of the large aircraft as she struggled to tune out the incessant buzzing of the engines. When she had flown over to undo the spell she had cast on her parents, she had racked her brains over what explanation she could give. She had no idea what they would remember, but waking up months after their last conversation in a city at the Antipodes would most certainly be a shock. To her, just landing in Sydney had been a shock.
Just like Parvati was nowhere to be found in the pub, her parents had not been where she had anticipated them to be. They hadn't taken to Sydney, with its tall buildings and dependable ferryboats, their neighbours told her, and they had moved - where, nobody knew.
"What can I get you?"
The bartender didn't seem to recognise her, which suited Hermione just fine. She asked for a glass of gillywater and resumed her perusal of the pub; she had agreed to do this interview and she didn't want Parvati to think she had bailed on her. It was no secret that the former Gryffindor had been trying to get hold of Hermione for months for she seldom lost the opportunity to remind the readers of her column in the Daily Prophet about her wish to 'catch up with her old friend'.
There she was, Hermione thought, ready to catch up. Or to be caught.
She had started scanning the bar for any signs of Parvati now and her eyes caught a glimpse of someone she had also not seen in quite a while: Malfoy. He was sipping what appeared to be a pint of mead, but he was obviously not paying any attention to the contents of his glass. His gaze was fixed and empty, though his furrowed brow implied that his mind was occupied with thoughts far more interesting than the excessive bitterness or sweetness of his drink.
Hermione cast one last look around, took her gillywater from the bartender with a subdued 'thank you', and proceeded to look at Malfoy with what she hoped was a piercing stare. Ron had always insisted that if you looked at someone hard enough, they were bound to feel watched and turn towards whoever was staring at them. Hermione had never heard of something more preposterous, but she didn't feel like sitting at the bar doing nothing if Parvati ran ever more late; testing Ron's theory on Malfoy sounded like a much better plan.
Malfoy's blank expression reminded her of the clueless neighbours she had talked to in the Sydney suburb she had sent her parents to live in. She had chosen it with their best interests in mind; it was a good area, well equipped for a couple of dentists just settling in. Hermione had wondered what had gone wrong, what she had done wrong.
The gillywater was starting to turn more pungent as the effect of the sweetener waned, but though it forced her to sip it more slowly, Hermione's gaze on Malfoy never faltered. It had taken her several days to piece together her parents' departure from Sydney, and was therefore taken aback when, after a mere handful of minutes, Ron's theory was corroborated by Draco Malfoy suddenly shivering from a nonexistent breeze.
He raised his now half-empty glass and inclined his head in her general direction. He had at last taken notice of her and, if he wasn't smiling, at least he wasn't flinching at the sight either.
Hermione offered a small smile in return, raising her own tumbler; she then lowered her gaze onto the scratched counter of the bar and hoped Malfoy would do just the same. Her mind was still in Sydney, poring over the scattered papers in her parents' office. Their colleagues at the dental practice she had found for them had told her little, but the printed copies of various train tickets, car hiring agencies and flight plans told her everything she needed to know.
Brisbane.
"Sorry?" The bartender looked confused. "This is England, not Australia." He looked at the drinks aligned behind him. "D'you know the ingredients? I can make you one."
Hermione's cheeks flushed and she shook her head; apologising, and feeling more embarrassed by the minute, she turned her head away from the man only to meet Malfoy's quizzical eyes. It couldn't get any worse, she thought as she attempted to mouth an explanation to him. The racket all around was inconceivable and Hermione was sure that had she even tried to yell at him, the results would have been even less intelligible.
Malfoy, for his part, rolled his eyes at her efforts and got up from his stool, disappearing into the crowd that surrounded the bar. Next thing she knew, he was sitting by her side, a look of amused annoyance on his face.
"My lip-reading skills are not that good," he said.
"I just ordered the wrong drink," she said.
Hermione hadn't meant it as a justification, but Malfoy seemed to take it that way because he waved her answer away as he gulped down the last of his mead. He made a face, probably at the sharp flavour that had become foul in the bottom of the glass.
She gaped. True, she hadn't seen the bloke in years and true, her own friends had changed a lot since school, but she had not expected it would happen to Malfoy. She couldn't help wondering at his ease around her - she had been a Gryffindor, didn't that mean anything anymore?
Malfoy smacked his lips to get rid of the sour taste of the mead. "Were you even ordering?" he asked. "It looked like you were talking to yourself."
"I was thinking of my parents," Hermione blurted out before she could stop herself.
He snorted.
She glared. "What of it?"
Hostility was the only way she knew how to react to him, it seemed. Malfoy, however, wasn't paying attention, and he replied to her as if she had spoken in the most civil of tones.
"I'll probably start talking to myself too," he said. "Soon, by the way things are going at home..."
Hermione struggled against herself because, implausible as it was even to her, she was intrigued. She didn't ask straight away - she only caved when he sighed - and then she inquired whether he'd be so polite as to elaborate on his cryptic words.
In those words.
"Might I inquire if you would be so polite as to elaborate on your cryptic words?"
Malfoy widened his eyes, but the readiness with which he replied told Hermione he must have been waiting for someone to ask.
"It's like I don't know my own parents anymore." He looked at her, assessing her. "You must have read it in the papers," he said, "but the trial didn't go so well."
She nodded; it was pointless to tell him she had listened to Harry's first-hand account of all the trials.
"It wasn't easy, but we worked hard to get things back to normal after that..." He fiddled with his empty glass. "I treated my parents to a holiday, I sent them to Morocco... You know, a place far enough that they'd be able to enjoy themselves."
"That was nice of you," Hermione said, but she was thinking of what she had done for her parents.
Malfoy grimaced. "I started going out with Pansy while they were gone."
She nodded again; that, she had read in the papers. It had been the cover story for almost a week for nobody expected Pansy Parkinson to get anywhere in life after her terribly overt outburst against Harry. Hermione had read Parvati's vicious article and had sincerely agreed with her.
"You're still going out, as far as I'm aware."
"No," Malfoy replied. "As of yesterday, we aren't."
The bartender, having noticed the empty glasses, addressed them both before Hermione could extend her insincere sympathy. She ordered Firewhisky and, in the silence that followed the disappearance of the bartender, her thoughts strayed.
On her way to Brisbane, it had occurred to her that many things had happened in her life since she had said goodbye to her parents. Like a gap year, she had told herself, she was now travelling back home to tell them all about her adventures; she only hoped they would see it that way too.
A smoking Firewhisky landed in front of her, and an identical one threatened to topple over until Malfoy held it firmly in his hands.
"So," he began, "where were we?"
Hermione bit her lip, pushing down the memory of Australia, and concentrated on Pansy. Anything to keep her own demons at bay.
"Ah, yes, Pansy," Malfoy said. "My parents did not approve of her, see?" He grimaced. "They didn't think we'd last past the War, my mother especially, she -"
"She thought," Hermione interrupted, "you'd realise that in the long run she wasn't right for you."
He turned to stare at her. "How do you know?"
"Let's just say I've heard it before," she said.
It took more than a couple of Firewhiskies, four blackcurrant rums and a round of something sweet and sour at the same time to loosen Hermione's tongue. Not that Malfoy listened or followed all that came out of her mouth in that liberating slur, having himself drank at least double the alcohol she had downed.
"What do you mean you left, Granger?"
"I couldn't go through with it," Hermione said. "Not without my parents' approval, not after all the doubts they had put in my head--" She choked on the last word and shook her head.
Malfoy nodded. "To meddling parents!"
"Hear, hear."
The clink of one glass on the other was followed by a brief moment of silence; the pub had begun to empty and only scattered conversations could be heard in the wide room. Had Parvati ever showed up? Hermione had forgotten to worry about that, she realised.
Malfoy cleared his throat. "Never thought I'd say this, Granger," he said. "But I'm sorry about you and Weasley."
There was nothing Hermione could say to that; she didn't know if she was sorry for having listened to her parents or sorry she hadn't left earlier than fifteen minutes before the actual ceremony. She ordered another blackcurrant rum instead of replying to Malfoy.
"What's that you were saying about your father?" he asked.
Hermione waved at him through her drink. "Cheese-tasting," she then replied. "Apparently, he picked it up in Australia."
"And you go too?"
She snorted. "Have I got a choice?"
Malfoy inclined his head. "Mother's the same, you know."
"Wine-tasting?"
Unknown logic decreed Hermione's question hilarious to the intoxicated pair and sporadic fits of giggles erupted from their lips for a minute or two. Even more obscure logic made Malfoy gulp down another Firewhisky in an attempt to clear his head; on the other hand, Hermione herself couldn't fault his reasoning.
"You are making a lot of sense for a drunk girl," he said.
"I take it as a compliment," Hermione replied.
"And, hey," Malfoy started with a smirk, "I'm all for cheese-tasting if the opportunity presents itself!"
"Misery does love company, I suppose..."
Their glasses clinked together one more time.