After McGonagall's dance lesson concluded, Kevin and Hermione fell into step together on the way back through the castle.
Every thirty seconds or so, Hermione would remember his expression during the lesson and lose the battle against laughing. She'd get it back under control and then lose it again.
"I'm glad this is so entertaining for you," Kevin said.
"I'm sorry." She looped her arm through his, still shaking slightly. "I'm genuinely sorry. It was just—"
"You don't have to keep apologising while you're still laughing."
"The face—" She pressed her lips together hard. Failed. Started laughing again.
Kevin stared forward with great dignity.
They were still in that rhythm — Hermione composed, Kevin patient — when a small first-year stepped directly into their path. She stopped, squeezed her eyes shut, and announced at full volume:
"Kevin! Will you be my date for the Christmas ball?"
The corridor went very quiet.
Kevin looked at the girl. She had both fists clenched at her sides, still not opening her eyes, clearly having committed to this and now surviving it on willpower alone.
Beside him, Hermione's expression had gone very still. Not hurt. Not alarmed. Very still in the way of someone who had just been reminded that a situation they'd been assuming was understood was not, in fact, formally established.
"I'm sorry," Kevin said, not unkindly. "I already have someone in mind."
The girl opened one eye. Took in the scene — the hand, the proximity, the general picture. Her face went through several quick expressions. Then she nodded with the resilience of someone who had accepted the odds going in, shot a brief glance at Hermione that communicated something complicated and resigned, and walked away.
Kevin started walking again.
Hermione walked beside him.
He said nothing. She said nothing.
He wasn't looking at her, and she was looking at precisely nothing in particular, and her cheeks had gone a colour she was not acknowledging.
She had not, she realised, been wrong about who the someone in mind was. She was fairly certain of that. But they had been in this extraordinary, comfortable, undefined middle ground for a long time, and he had never actually said it. She had never said it. Everything had been implied and felt and mutual in the way of things that are obvious to both people and therefore, somehow, never stated.
She glanced at him sideways.
He looked over at the same moment.
"What's on your mind?" he asked.
Hermione redirected her gaze to the corridor window. "Nothing."
He studied her profile for a moment.
She was not pulling off nothing even slightly. She'd been perfectly cheerful two minutes ago, and now she was looking at the stone wall outside with the careful attention of someone performing a complete lack of feelings.
Kevin didn't press it. He kept walking.
Then he reached out and took her hand.
Hermione jumped. Not in alarm — in genuine surprise. He'd held her hand before, incidentally, in passing, but there was something very deliberate about the way he did it now. His grip was warm and secure, and it didn't feel like he was planning to let go soon.
"Skip the library this afternoon," he said. "I want to show you something."
It wasn't a question, not quite. The firmness in his voice was new — not commanding, just certain, like someone who had made a decision and was calm about it.
"Alright," she said.
She didn't know exactly what was coming, but she felt it arriving.
He led her out through the castle gates in the early evening, the sky already shifting to copper at the edges. At the edge of the grounds, he stopped.
"Hold on. And don't let go."
She tightened her grip without asking why.
The world folded.
Apparition. The compression and the snap and the wrongness of being nowhere for an instant — and then they were standing on a hillside with the wind in their hair and Hogwarts Castle spread out below them in the last of the sunset light, the Black Lake a sheet of hammered gold, the towers black against a sky going amber and violet.
Hermione caught her breath. Her free hand came up to steady herself, found his arm.
"That was Apparition," she managed.
"You alright?"
"Yes. Just—" She looked at the view. At the castle. At the lake. She looked at Kevin, who was watching her look at it, and something in his expression made her throat feel strange. "It's beautiful."
"Good spot," he agreed.
He produced the tent from his bag — a flick of his wand and it unfolded itself neatly on a flat patch of ground.
"We're camping?"
"Just us. Out here."
He said it simply, without fanfare, but his eyes when they met hers were very steady and very direct.
Hermione felt her face warming. "Fine," she said, in a voice that wasn't quite steady.
She knew what she was agreeing to. Not in any scandalous sense — she trusted him, that was never the question. She was agreeing to the fact of it. The two of them, alone, overnight, with intention. Anyone who saw them return together tomorrow would draw conclusions. Those conclusions would be entirely right.
Night fell quickly after that, the way it does in autumn. The moon came up full and wide, and Kevin waved a stack of logs into a neat campfire that lit itself with a sound like a sigh.
They sat beside it on the grass, shoulders touching, watching the flames.
He took her hand again. She let her head drop against his shoulder.
"The moonlight's beautiful," she murmured.
"Gentle breeze, too."
She lifted her head. "Is that a quote?"
"Something I half-remember."
"What does it mean?"
He turned to look at her. The playfulness was gone — just his face, in the firelight, close and entirely serious.
"I like you," he said.
The words landed in the quiet like the last note of a piece of music.
Hermione stared at him. Her lips parted. She had been fairly certain, almost positive, operating on the reasonable assumption that — but hearing it was entirely different. Hearing it was a specific, irreversible thing.
"I mean it," he said. "Hermione. I like you."
She launched herself at him.
She wasn't aware of deciding to do it. She had both arms around him and her face pressed into the crook of his neck and she was saying something that might have been coherent in her head but was coming out as a series of half-sentences, warm and fierce and completely undignified.
"I like you too — I've liked you for so long — Kevin, I — you're awful, you know that, no warning at all—"
He was laughing, low and warm, arms tight around her. "How would a warning work, exactly? 'Prepare yourself, confession incoming at seven o'clock'?"
She made a sound that was half laugh and half something more embarrassing. "You're still awful."
"You're crying."
"I'm not crying."
"Hermione. Your face is wet."
"It's—" She pulled back just enough to look at him, and he looked back, and she was absolutely crying, silently, cheeks shining in the firelight. "Shut up," she said, with immense dignity.
"Crying because someone told you they liked you."
"Shut up."
He was still smiling. He reached up and brushed the side of her face with his thumb. She caught his hand and pressed it there.
"When did you start liking me?" she demanded. Pre-emptive. Payback.
"Hmm." He pretended to think. "When I first liked you, I suppose."
She glared at him. "That is the least helpful answer in the history of answers."
"It's honestly the best I can do. You don't notice it happening. You just wake up one day and realise you can't imagine not having them."
She went quiet.
Can't imagine not having them.
The fire popped softly. The moon was halfway up the sky now.
"Kevin," she said finally.
"Hm?"
"Nothing." She smiled. Just sat with it for a moment.
He tipped her chin up.
She looped her arms around his neck, and when he kissed her it was slow and careful, the moonlight falling across both of them, and she kissed him back and it tasted like exactly what she'd expected and also nothing like it.
"Your teeth hit mine," she said, when they separated, cheeks absolutely scarlet.
"Sorry."
"Don't be sorry. It was — it's fine. It was just—"
"Better with practice," he said, with complete conviction.
"Don't you dare—"
He kissed her again, and she stopped arguing.
Later — much later — he set up the tent properly and they lay inside with the door open, watching the stars.
She was in the crook of his arm, her breathing steady and soft.
"Kevin," she said quietly.
"Mm."
"Shouldn't we write my parents? Let them know we're — that we're official?"
He considered this. "Your mum would be alright with it, I imagine."
"Mum would be delighted." A pause. "Dad would probably ask you to come over for dinner and then challenge you to something."
Kevin was silent for a moment. "A duel?"
"More likely just a very pointed conversation with a lot of eye contact. But yes, possibly a duel."
He exhaled. "Fair enough."
She propped herself up and looked at him in the dark, and she was smiling in a way she probably didn't know was visible. She leaned down and kissed him once, light and deliberate.
"I want this every day," she said. "Whether or not you're busy. Or I'll be very cross."
"How cross?"
"At least two days of deliberate indifference. Possibly three."
"Devastating."
"Entirely." She was grinning now.
He pulled her back down against him, and they danced briefly in the grass outside to a melody he played wandlessly from his pocket — his dance form still technical and slightly stiff, but they were alone, and she didn't care, and eventually they stopped dancing and just held each other in the moonlight.
She fell asleep first.
---
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