Disclaimer: I own nothing!

Italics are flashbacks and letters-thought that'd help.

So, here is the sequel you had to wait a month for. Just a few notes on the story before we start: This story begins where chapter 21 left off. This is the story off all that stuff described at the end, going all the way up to that dance in the epilogue. Also! Updates might not be as fast as they were before August because school is starting for me tomorrow. I hope to be able to use weekends to write this up, but over the actual week I won't have a whole lot of time.

So! Here we go! Enjoy!

Draco Malfoy stood near the gargantuan, looming window on one side of the owlery, late afternoon sunlight glinting off his trumpet as he labored at the daunting task of trying to make the correct note come from the end of his trumpet. He wasn't having a whole lot of success.

"Stupid thing." He briefly considered hurling it out the window. Maybe he could hit that first year Gryffindor down there…nah, it wasn't worth it.

A light ripping sound came from his right. Whirling around, the wind from his robes disrupting the papers, he aimed a spirited kick at the firebird, which was trying to gobble up his sheet music. It squawked in dismay and abandoned its meal. Under normal circumstances, someone would have come up to investigate the irregular but earsplitting squawks the firebird emitted in reaction to being kicked and to Draco's bad trumpet playing. The darn thing wasn't anything like a piano. Luckily, Draco had paid attention in most of his classes, and knew how to perform the muffliento charm. He had been forewarned by Hermione that certain Professors (Snape) didn't appreciate being distracted by loud trumpet practicing, especially at 5'oclock in the morning.

Hermione.

Draco wasn't exactly sure what he thought of the know-it-all. On one hand, he had told her childhood memories, things he hadn't confided to Slytherins, and trusted her to keep it a secret. Despite his firm belief in 'don't believe everything you read,' he seemed willing to believe everything he saw in Hermione's handwriting, everything in her letters. On the other hand, when he pictured Hermione, he pictured a bushy-haired, annoying, bossy girl who was always thrusting her hand up into the air, even at rhetorical questions, light reflecting off the Gryffindor badge on her robes like it glinted off the Firebird's eyes when it was about to ruin Draco's afternoon. At their nightly trumpet lessons, he would simply clam up, go all aloof and polite like he was talking to the children of one of his father's dinner guests while he was actually trying to eavesdrop on the conversation next to him. He didn't mean to, it just seemed to happen. He was working on it, though-forcing himself to give colorful, original answers as often as he could instead of "oh," and "ah."

A year ago he hadn't been feeling any of this pointless uncertainty. This was all the School Board's fault, coming up wing the thickheaded idea to make all the students write letters in the first place.

Glaring at the ceiling, Draco shouted at the building, "I blame you for everything!" The muffliento charm kept his shout from leaving his little corner of the castle. He glanced longingly at the piano in the corner opposite of him.

Returning his attention to his trumpet, he tried again. As if in mockery, a screeching note that most definitely wasn't the one he meant to play burst out of the end of the instrument.

Ugh. Why did this never happen with Hermione around? Because she gave him advice on how to fix whatever mistake he was unwittingly making. At the moment, the only help he had was the firebird, which was 'helping' him by lessening the number of sheets he had to work through this afternoon. Ah well. At least it wasn't his homework. It had been make clear to him by more than one teacher that 'My firebird ate my homework' was too close to 'my dog ate my homework' to be an acceptable excuse.

There was another upside of lessons with Hermione-she kept that annoying bludger of a bird in check.

"Bricturia!"

A burst of gold and silver sparkles flew from Hermione's wand tip like a breaking wave over the firebird. It stopped what it was doing (Rolling in mud) and gazed, hypnotized, at the sparkles like it could decipher the meaning of life by doing to.

Draco grinned, ecstatic to be free of his shadow.

"I don't remember that one from Charms."

"Yeah, Fred and George created it while they were working on one of their new products."

Draco nodded his head, suspicions confirmed.

"By the way, you really shouldn't kick it."

Draco didn't reply-it was his opinion that that darn bird deserved everything it got.

It was only the second time Draco had held the trumpet-Hermione refused to let him touch it for the longest time. It seemed ridiculous how much Hermione insisted he needed to know before he even picked it up.

"This is too hard!"

"Nonsense!"

"This should be counted among the Herculean tasks!"

"No! It's like flying-it comes easier to some than others, but anyone can do it with practice! When was the first time you watched a Quidditch match, anyway?"

Hermione was very comfortable bringing up topics that had nothing to do with music. Draco, on the other hand, was a little afraid to. Music was a comfort zone he was none too eager to leave just yet. Everything in due course.

Hermione pulled a piece of paper from a stack next to her into her lap and was busily drawing up a sequence of about three notes for Draco to play.

"Well?" She inquired after her question was met with silence. She looked piercingly at him, like an eagle, daring him to ignore her.

"I'm thinking, I'm thinking." In truth, he'd been hoping to avoid answering. Seeing that this was not going to happen, he frantically threw his brain down memory lane.

"I don't know. I've been watching them as long as I remember."

Frantically he tried to think of a way to steer the conversation back to music. Or at least a topic where he didn't have to actively engage.

If this had been a cartoon, a light bulb would have appeared over his head.

"Could you explain to me what a car is?"

Draco smiled as Hermione jumped at the chance to explain something. He murmured "oh," and "I see," at the appropriate moments, while actually practicing the fingerings of the three note piece Hermione had drawn up. It was harder than it should be. Was piano ever this hard?

Eventually, Hermione realized she had a less than rapt audience, and switched her focus to helping him as he struggled with the sequence. After several tries, giving up at least once and threatening his trumpet, Draco managed to play all the notes correctly in the correct order. However, he felt little sense of accomplishment. The three notes had been scribbled in at random by Hermione, so they weren't exactly one of Beethoven's symphonies.

"This is too short to be any good!"

"It isn't meant to be good, it's meant to teach you those notes! And for your information, something doesn't have to be long to be good-there is a form of Japanese poetry called haiku-"

And off she went, describing something that had nothing that Draco could see to do with music. As soon as he heard her say she would send him a letter with a fuller explanation and some examples tomorrow, he tuned her out and went back to practicing those three infuriating notes.

Back in the present, Draco had reached his breaking point with his trumpet. He thrust it back into its case and repressed the overpowering urge to kick the case like he kicked the firebird.

Hefting the case and snatching his other sheet music from the firebird before it could do any real damage, he headed down the corridors in the general direction of the entrance to the Slytherin Common Room. Perhaps his father knew a good curse to keep the bird locked up in his dormitory-no, he'd better not ask. If he did manage that feat, he would come back from classes to find the room utterly trashed.

On his way, he spotted his father's eagle owl waiting for him, perched on a suit of armor. Speak of the devil, he thought to himself as he relieved the owl of its delivery. Inside was a rather short letter. Draco's mood soured further as he read it.

In his last letter, Draco had mentioned his trumpet lessons in passing, down-playing them as much as he could. He had even tried to find a charm in his spell books that would make his father's gaze just slide right over that sentence, but no such luck. He didn't really want it to look like a secret if his father found out he was associating with a Muggleborn Gryffindor. It looked like the firebird was fresh out of good luck for him; his father's sharp eye had picked out that sentence, and was now inquiring about them. His plan had thoroughly backfired.

'I quite agree that you should accept any and all chances to study a new instrument. Where, might I ask, are you studying in the castle, and who is your teacher?"

How, precisely, did he intend on answering these questions without telling his father that he was getting cozy with a Mudblood? Draco most certainly had no idea. He couldn't just ignore them. On the other hand, he really couldn't think of anything to say that didn't involve Hermione. Perhaps he could say 'a particularly intelligent fellow student of mine?'

The firebird seemed to smile. Draco couldn't help but think it looked as if it were saying 'that's for all those kicks.' Maybe Hermione was right.

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Sorry if this chapter isn't as good-I needed it to set up where the story is now.