A/N: I wish someone had warned me that writing one fanfic would lead to me having a million ideas for other stories. Please R&R, I love hearing what you have to say.

Her smile was tired but genuine as Hermione watched Neville disappear behind a crowd of their friends; they all roared with laughter as he reappeared with a large, pink top hat perched precariously on his head. Garish purple letters flashed across the front of the hat: Congratulations, Prof. Longbottom! Neville himself giggled, his cheeks flushed from all the celebratory firewhiskey. Dean Thomas found the hat particularly amusing - so much so his laughter (and, Hermione suspected, his firewhiskey) caused him to start hiccuping.

Hermione gave Dean a sympathetic pat on the back after he winced from a particularly violent hiccup; the motion had cause some of his firewhiskey to jump out of the glass in his hand, spilling onto the large, well used table at which the group sat.

"Stupid hat." He muttered to himself as he tried unsuccessfully to clean up the spill with the sleeve of his jumper. Seamus Finnegan squinted as he drew his own wand and started poking it into the spill in what Hermione assumed was an attempt to vanish it.

"Merlin, Seamus! Stop that or you'll set this place on fire knowing your track record!"

" 'S a good thing I work for The Department of Magical Accidents and 'Tastrophes then, lass. Clean up me messes, no fuss." He said with a smile. Dean fired finger guns at Seamus in agreement.

Seamus gave up trying to clean the spill and instead began making little circles with his wand in it. Hermione left him to it, looking down at her watch to check the time - she needed to be up early the next day in order to begin work on a case concerning a poor wizard who's Wolfsbane potion had failed him and the results had been quite horrid.

Don't think of it now, Hermione thought to herself, it will spoil the evening.

"It's nowhere near time for you to leave, little lady!" Harry said from her side, catching her checking the time.

"Little lady? Honestly, Harry!" She smiled at him as he wrapped his arm around her shoulder. "How much have you had to drink, young sir?"

"Oh, not that much!" He waved his free hand dismissively, "It's a Friday night and you know I never get a Saturday off, Hermione! Not to mention Neville's just been made Herbology professor now that Sprout has retired. Retired! Has it really been so long since we left and that she's retired! She wasn't that old, still had some good years in her, I'd say."

"It's been seven years since you left Hogwarts, Harry and six for me. Sprout had already begun speaking about retiring when I returned to finish my N.E.W.T.S. I think she was just waiting for Neville to finish studying and get enough experience to fill the post.

Hermione watched as he absent mindedly twiddled with a lock of her hair, evidently not listening to a word she was saying. Not that much to drink, my puffskein. He laughed suddenly before using the lock of her hair to make a mustache.

"Oi, Potter! Getting a bit friendly with 'Mione's hair, aren't we?"

Harry gave Ron a confused look, blowing the temporary mustache off his top lip. "Potter now, am I?"

"When I'm defending my sister's honour from a scoundrel such as you, then you bet you are! Now back away from the hair, or I'll have to pull the big brother card."

In a fit of playfulness Hermione started rubbing her hair all over Harry. He pulled a face as some of it was flicked into his mouth. Ron's eyebrows disappeared into his hairline.

"Looks like it's not you that's the scoundrel, Harry! Maybe I should remove temptation from your path?"

She squeaked as Ron picked her up from her chair and spun her around. He laughed at how flustered the action made her as he sat her back down and went to get himself another firewhiskey. Hermione watched him skip alone to the bar, laughing at his exaggerated movements.

Out of the corner of her eye she caught a flash of blond at the pub's entrance. As discreetly as possible, Hermione watched Draco Malfoy enter the Leaky Cauldron with Blaise Zabini. One or two patrons sneered in his direction, but mostly people ignored him. Draco paid no mind to the sneers and discreetly tried to take up a table in the emptiest corner of the pub. Hermione nearly laughed out loud at the sight of Draco Malfoy trying to not attract attention to himself, especially considering how he had behaved at school. Perhaps he didn't want another Prophet article, she thought to herself. His last public outing, a charity event for the Ministry, resulted in an article claiming all sorts of things - many of which Hermione had found to be utter nonsense. She was fairly confident that he hadn't gone home with all the witches from the Muggle - Worthy Excuse Committee - especially given that the one witch was old enough to be his great grandmother.

Next to her, Harry waved in greeting to Blaise as he walked past them towards the bar.

"Potter. Good to see you haven't come out in those awful auror robes for a change - you should have used those against The Dark Lord; he would have destroyed his own horcruxes just to be rid of the sight of them."

Harry laughed. "Come off it, you git - not every ministry employee needs to wear the fancy, tailored robes you lot in Sports do. Not all of us have to deal with famous quidditch players."

"Aren't you dating a famous quidditch player, Potter? Besides, Granger here works in Creatures and she looks a treat with those pencils skirts of hers." Blaise smiled and gestured at Hermione's outfit.

Hermione had come straight from work to Neville's party. She considered popping home to change but she knew she was flirting with danger if she did - she was so tired she might have just fallen asleep. She tried not to blush at Blaise's words. She wasn't usually one to be flustered by such attention, but a smile like Blaise's would have made her giggly even without the glass of wine she had had since she arrived. She understood how he managed to charm so many female quidditch players when he threw that smile at her.

"You could put in the same effort you know." He continued, "Maybe the Weaslette would be more enthused if you did."

"I don't know if Harry would be able to pull off a pencil skirt, Zabini." Hermione teased. She so rarely had an opportunity to good naturedly rib Harry and Ron; she was certainly not going to pass this one up. She gave Harry a wink. "It's that seeker build, doesn't quite fill things out the same way."

Blaise made an exaggerated gesture of agreement towards Hermione as he gave Harry a teasing smirk. Hermione couldn't help but laugh at the indignant "hrumph" Harry gave as he fixed her with a look of betrayal.

"What's wrong with being built like a seeker?"

"Absolutely nothing, Harry! You know I'm only teasing. Besides, Ginny seems to quite enjoy seekers. There's this one who used to play for Gryffindor that she's particularly fond of."

She gave a suggestive brow lift at her words causing Harry to blush in embarrassment. He turned away to look for Ron muttering that he would look good in a pencil skirt should he ever choose to wear one. Blaise gave her a little wink of triumph which nearly made her choke on the last of her wine. Hermione gave a meek smile and turned to see Ron making his way back to the table through Neville's crowd of well wishers. Neville seemed to have fallen asleep on the hand that was propping up his head, but no one had noticed - they were all playing a very loud drinking game.

Ron managed to muscle his way back to his seat, plopping a firewhiskey in front of Harry and handing Hermione another glass of wine. He had either not seen Zabini or he was trying to ignore him. Hermione suspected it was the latter. While not unkind to his former Slytherin school mates, Ron was never particularly friendly either.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Ron, why don't you greet your former school mate?"

Ron turned to Blaise and gave him a curt nod. "Zabini."

"Weasley, how pleasant to see you. I suppose I better be off to get the drinks. Draco will probably be in tears if I don't come back soon." He gestured vaguely in Draco's direction. "Potter, don't forget that I'll be collecting my winnings next week and Weasley… you were a right fool for letting that one go."

Ron scowled as Blaise gave Hermione a devilish wink before continuing his journey to the bar. Ron was muttering about "mutual breakups" as Hermione turned to Harry and gave him a suspicious look.

"What winnings is Zabini talking about, Harry?"

Harry tried to avoid her question by pointing out that Neville's hat was now singing for he's a jolly good fellow. Neville had not been woken by the hat's loud but squeaky voice; he was now snoring slightly.

"I can hear that, Harry. I can also see that it's now shooting glitter into the air - it's all over both of us. Did you have another wager against Ginny?"

Harry gave her a startled look. "How… how did you know about that?"

"Brightest witch of my age, remember? Also, you were drunk and miserable last time she caught the snitch. I asked why and you told me. It's awfully devious of you. So very un - Gryffindor. Perhaps the Sorting Hat shouldn't have listened to your house request."

"It was only a joke and it was only that one time." He said looking thoroughly dejected.

"One time? I could have sworn that Zabini mentioned collecting winnings next week. Doesn't Ginny have a match coming up? Tuesday night, I believe?"

She tapped her chin in an exaggerated display of contemplation but couldn't help laughing at the look of panic that was spreading over his features.

"You won't tell her? Oh, Merlin - she'd have me fleeing my own bogeys!"

"Rightly so, Harry James Potter! Now, call off the bet and it's all mum on my side."

"Done."

"And take her to that fancy muggle place with the good breadsticks after the game- she loves that place."

"Done." He said shaking her hand, a naughty grin on his face.

Ron was still muttering about mutual decisions and how it was Zabini who was the fool. Hermione rubbed his arm and told him not to be such a worry-wort.

"He was only teasing, Ronald."

"I know, but I hate that everyone seems to think I'm the bad guy."

She gave him a sympathetic smile. "I don't think that; neither does any of our friends or family. You were and still are a wonderful man. Things just didn't work out the way we had hoped they would. Now, stop fretting over Zabini and enjoy Neville's success!"

He gave her a thankful smile before turning back towards Dean Thomas. Dean seemed to have gotten over his dislike for Neville's hat and had commandeered it for himself. He was now trying to make it shoot glitter at Ron with little success. Hermione gave a tired sigh, rubbing the bridge of her nose as she checked her watch again. She'd give it another hour and head home.

Merlin, I'm dreading this case.

She was about to take a sip of her wine when she thought better of it - she needed to be fresh in the morning and more wine was certainly not going to help that. Nor would it help her if Blaise threw her another of his flirtatious smiles.

About thirty minutes or so into her final hour at the Leaky Cauldron Hermione was distracted from George's dramatic reenactment of The Warlock's Hairy Heart by the sudden sound of loud, angry scraping. She turned to see a rather livid Blaise standing at his table, exchanging what Hermione could only imagine were some rather angry words with Draco. Her lip reading skills being poor, it looked as if he was telling Draco to "stop deploying the duck". Hermione wanted to laugh at the idea of Draco managing a small duck army, but the look on Blaise's face made her think better of it. Draco, for his part, seemed completely unfazed by Blaise's venom. He simply looked at his friend and muttered something before taking another shot of his firewhiskey.

Whatever he had said pushed Blaise past anger into a fury. Hermione heard a clear "fuck you, Malfoy" before he stormed from the pub. Draco watched him leave, eyes visibly glazed over from too much drink, before downing his firewhiskey. She watched as he walked, stumbling ever so slightly, to the bar and tried to order another drink. He and the barkeep exchanged a few words before Draco sneered at him and turned to leave. A burly looking wizard nodded his head towards Draco's retreating form, a menacing sneer on his face. The small group around him stood and followed Draco's path to the exit.

"Merlin, just one quiet year. That's all I want." Hermione muttered to herself.

There was no mistaking what those wizards intended to do when they cornered Draco outside and she would never forgive herself if she didn't intervene. Hermione could never stand by knowing someone was getting harmed - even if that person was Draco Malfoy.

"Harry, I'm just going to get some fresh air."

Hermione didn't wait for Harry to acknowledge her before she picked up her bag and threw on her coat, following after Draco and the gang of wizards.

Merlin, I hope I won't regret this!