Lost Image | dramione

21 | the first date

Hermione hunted through her closet. Formal. This thing was formal.

She felt as though she were preparing for the Yule ball, wondering how to fix her hair and what to wear... but this was not a school ball with her peers. This was a formal event full of rich people who wanted to pretend they cared, people who would either turn their noses up at her blood status or try to befriend her because of her fame.

And she was going to this ball with the one person she could never have even imagined getting along with, let alone going on a... a date with.

She had a moment of imagining herself in fourth year, telling Harry and Ron that she was going to the Yule Ball with Draco Malfoy. The very idea made her laugh out loud.

She tried on the pale blue gown she had worn to dinner with Narcissa before. No. It made her look like a little girl, somehow. It didn't fit her personality, or her current mood.

She pulled out a black number with long sleeves and a lace collar and shuddered. It looked like something Bellatrix would wear. She dropped that one to the ground, kicking it under her bed, blanching.

The red gown Ginny had borrowed was a little too sexy, somehow... she supposed she could raise up the collar, but then the dress wouldn't look right...

She considered her wardrobe again, a pile of fabric covering her bed as she pulled out one dress at a time and discarded them. They were all obviously expensive, but they just didn't seem right.

Then she saw it. It was a bright orange silk dress with tight sleeves and a cape attached at two small points at the shoulders- like a regular dress-robe, but without the extra drag of fabric on the sleeves. When she tried it on, she found that the dress itself was off the shoulder, but with a neckline still high enough to be appropriate for a charity event. There was a belted sash around the middle in a deep teal color, the bright color combination making Hermione think of something Padma Patil had worn to the Yule ball. The design was very "Modern-India-Meets-Medieval-England," with delicate gold looping on the edges of the shirt and sleeves. She rather liked it for its uniqueness, though she did worry that the color washed her out a little. She was never that good with colors.

She smiled, setting the dress aside for tomorrow night. She grabbed her book off the table- she had finished with her internship work for the day. As Wright had said- "You're young, and it's a beautiful, sunny day outside. Don't you dare stay late again today."

Little did he know that she would spend her afternoon primarily reading anyways. She decided on a compromise- she set a sunscreen spell on her skin, changed into cool muggle clothes, and walked outside onto the patio in front of her sun-room.

She had had a little time to check out the back gardens, and had been using the plants as main ingredients in many of her potions. Some of the plants could be dangerous, but those were far back in the green house. She breathed deep, loving the smell of the fresh lavender on the wind.

She sat in a chair on the patio, using her wand to lean it back and extend the legs so she could enjoy the warmth of the sun as she read. She was glad she had a pair of sunglasses- there really were no spells that did what that simple muggle invention did with as much simplicity and comfort.

She sighed, sitting back. Unlike the sunglasses, magic worked much better as a sunblock. If she ended up falling asleep, she wouldn't have to worry about waking up crispy and red. That would certainly clash with her orange dress robes...

She opened her book, reading about the magical inner workings of remembralls, plugging her headphones into the giant old magicked radio. It was fascinating, really, the connection to memory that was almost like a Charm mixed with Occlumency....