Draco stood next to Ron, pretending to listen attentively as he recounted Neville Longbottom's misfortunes.
"He is so absent-minded! He said he dropped his wand in the Great Hall and spent most of the night looking for it! And guess what? He found it by the kitchen doorway beneath the Great Hall... We all suspected he had dropped it while sneaking down for food... but he insisted he had not been there..." Ron picked up another fake wand and examined it with interest.
Draco smiled and nodded perfunctorily.
Ron was very surprised by the smile and nod.
What a rare sight!
Draco, a Slytherin who is usually quite impatient, was actually interested in listening to his idle chatter today.
This unusually cooperative listener fuelled Ron's desire to share. He excitedly recounted, "And then guess what? He got lost again! This time he swore he had not been to the Potions classroom, but the wand was right behind the door!
Who would go to a place like that, unless he had been kept back by Snape? He was still confused about it and would not admit anything, and who knows what he has been thinking about all this time... He is such a headache, he cannot remember anything, he even has to write the password to the common room down on a piece of parchment, as if he were under a Memory Charm..."
Draco smiled and patted Ron on the shoulder, but his eyes continued to steal glances at Hermione through the gaps in the crowd. She seemed particularly flustered at the moment, twisting a small bottle.
Is she all right? What is she so anxious about?
He listened absentmindedly to Ron's rambling in the background, his thoughts drifting away from the crowd.
Hermione Granger stood once again in front of the shelf labelled "Amortentia," ready to secretly buy a bottle for her whimsical friend Ginny. Standing before the pile of glittering little bottles, she could not resist her curiosity, unscrewed one, and decided to smell it again.
Although she had smelled it once before, in Mr Slughorn's classroom, the memory was somewhat hazy.
Love potions, with their particular connotations, were not just of interest to Ginny and her friends. Her dormitory-mates Lavender and Parvati also frequently mentioned them during the girls' late-night chats, accompanied by peals of laughter.
Any naive young girl would be curious about such a thing and would want to smell it again and again.
She was no exception.
The moment the bottle was opened, amidst the rising, spiralling steam, an irresistible aroma wafted towards her once more:
Freshly mown grass, new parchment, and a very familiar, faint scent of watermelon...
Yes, that is it.
It smelled exactly the same as what she had smelled in Mr Slughorn's cauldron.
An overwhelming sense of satisfaction washed over her. She breathed slowly, her spirits soaring, enveloped in pleasure.
The scent was both wonderful and familiar. So familiar that it felt as though she had smelled it somewhere not long ago. She smiled lazily, her mind pinpointing that happy memory.
It was in the library after an afternoon nap. The scent of freshly mown grass wafted in from outside the window, along with the smell of new parchment on the table, and the faint scent of watermelon from the robe I was wearing... a refreshing and intoxicating aroma.
What had happened to that robe afterwards?
Oh, yes. She rubbed her sleepy eyes, looked the robe over and over, and finally noticed the DM embroidered on the inside... Draco Malfoy.
She had later returned the robe to the boy.
Draco....where is he?
Oh, there he is.
She turned her head and spotted him immediately.
His platinum blonde hair hung loosely over his brow, beneath which were a pair of bright grey eyes... staring intently at her through the crowd.
His black shirt made his cheeks and neck appear even paler. She was certain that if she got close enough to smell him, she would catch a refreshing and intoxicating watermelon scent.
She revelled in the delightful smell, lost in her own thoughts.
The taste of watermelon...
What does watermelon taste like?
Hermione's eyes widened. Her heart pounded, and the description of Amortentia flashed through her mind: it smells different to everyone, according to what attracts them... one can even smell the scent of someone one likes.
The satisfied and peaceful smile on her face had not completely faded, but her mind had already exploded.
Lightning.
A thunderclap.
An earthquake.
A dazzling, almost painful light flashed across her mind.
For a long time, those strange, bewildering emotions that had plagued her, those immense joys and painful heart palpitations...
They were like surging waves, sharp and howling, crashing against the shallows of her heart, leaving astonishing marks... like.
She likes him.
I like him so much that even just looking at him feels like being struck by lightning.
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