Theories of Proximity

June, 4th Year

The Great Hall glowed with a kind of celebratory stillness—summer twilight pooling across the enchanted ceiling, warm and soft as honey. House banners shimmered above their respective tables, caught in a gentle breeze only the castle could conjure. Candles floated lower tonight, casting golden halos over every face.

It was the Leaving Feast, and for once, it felt like it.

Far down the Slytherin table, where the younger students were already sneaking extra helpings of pudding, a trio of third-years leaned close over their plates. Their voices were low, but the kind of low that wanted to be overheard.

“I heard someone rewrote the letter,” one said, flicking a spoon idly against her goblet.

“Doesn’t matter,” another replied. “It made the Board flinch.”

The third snorted softly. “Exactly. That’s what makes it interesting.”

Hermione didn’t catch their names. But she caught the tone—not mocking. Curious. Intrigued, even. That was enough to make her sit a little straighter.

Laughter rose and fell in lazy waves. Plates gleamed with the remnants of roast and pudding. Someone clinked a goblet against a friend’s in exaggerated toasts. At the head of the Hufflepuff table, Cedric Diggory stood, not loudly, not dramatically—just stood, tall and easy and proud.

He’d earned it.

Students around him broke into light applause, a ripple of clapping and cheers that filled the space like sunlight. Cedric stood tall, and for a moment, the room did too.

Hermione watched from her place at the Gryffindor table, fingers curled lightly around the stem of her goblet. The juice inside had long since gone warm. Across from her, Ron was half-laughing at something Seamus had said, his grin wide and loud, like it hadn’t cracked at all over the last few months. Harry smiled too, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

Ginny caught Hermione’s gaze, winked, and nudged a bowl of sugared strawberries toward her.

She smiled, but it didn’t quite catch.

There was joy here—real joy, not the kind forced through gritted teeth. But Hermione felt oddly distant from it, like she’d slipped a few inches sideways from the rest of the world. She looked around the hall, at the students cheering for Cedric, at the soft glow of the floating candles, at the way the banners fluttered gently without any wind.

And she wondered when it had started feeling like this.

Viktor had sent her a letter. Neat, formal script. Gracious, even kind. He’d mentioned summer, suggested a visit, said he hoped she was well. It had made her smile—for a moment. And then it hadn’t.

She wasn’t sure when fondness had started feeling like obligation.

And Ron—Ron had been angry, then contrite, then silent, then loud. An orbit of shifting emotions that never quite found their balance.
She couldn’t tell if it was guilt or something harder to carry.

The applause faded. Conversation resumed. Dessert plates shimmered into place. The night moved on without asking.

Her eyes drifted—unintentionally, instinctively—across the hall.

Draco Malfoy sat near the edge of the Slytherin table, his posture as precise as always, shoulders squared, arms folded lightly in front of him. His plate was untouched. His expression unreadable, but when her gaze landed on him—he looked up.

And then, without hesitation, he nodded once.

It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t apologetic or performative. It wasn’t even particularly warm. It was simply—acknowledgment. Hermione held his gaze for half a second longer than she should have.

Then nodded back.

No smile. No message. Just recognition.

The hum of conversation dipped as a soft chime echoed through the Great Hall—three clear, bell-like notes that hovered for just a breath too long. Forks paused midair. A few heads turned toward the staff table before the rest followed.

Dumbledore rose.

He did not lift his hands or cast a charm for silence. He didn’t need to. His presence had always worked like gravity—quiet, constant, undeniable.

He stood tall, his deep blue robes catching the candlelight in subtle constellations. The faint lines around his eyes were gentler tonight, as if even his worry had chosen to rest for the evening.

"Another year," he began, voice warm and even, "come and gone in the blink of an eye. Though I suspect your professors may argue otherwise—some blinks, after all, are longer than others."

A polite ripple of laughter moved through the Hall.

"But time, as always, has a way of leaving its mark. Not just in textbooks and exams, but in the quiet things. The questions asked. The ideas challenged. The friends made when none were expected.”

His gaze swept the room, soft but keen.

“May you carry with you not just what you’ve learned—but what you’ve dared to question.”

There was a pause, small but deliberate.

And in that pause, his eyes settled—just briefly—on Hermione Granger. Then on Draco Malfoy.

Neither of them noticed. But Severus Snape did. He shifted slightly in his seat, one brow arching in familiar disdain, though he said nothing.

Dumbledore smiled faintly, as if the moment had said more than words could manage. He raised his goblet.

“To the future,” he said.

A sea of goblets lifted in return.

“To the future.”

The feast resumed. Chatter returned, scattered like confetti across the tables. Students leaned into conversation, laughter rejoined the air.

Dumbledore sat back down, slow and measured.

He reached for his cup, but instead of sipping, he leaned slightly toward Snape, voice low, quiet enough to be lost in the din around them.

“It’s always the quiet ones who change everything,” he murmured.

Snape scoffed under his breath, but didn’t argue. He simply looked across the hall, toward a girl with ink-stained fingers and a boy who had stopped sneering and hadn’t yet started speaking.

The Gryffindor common room was winding down, its energy tapering into soft candlelight and half-finished conversations. The fire had burned low, casting flickers of gold against the stone walls. Shadows stretched long and slow across the carpet, broken only by the occasional snap of a log shifting in the grate.

Hermione sat in the armchair nearest the hearth, legs folded beneath her, a book open in her lap but long since unread. The room buzzed faintly behind her—laughter from a game of Exploding Snap near the stairs, Ginny and Dean murmuring over a Quidditch magazine on the couch. Safe sounds. Familiar.

She turned another page she didn’t read.

“—I’m just saying, it’s weird timing.”

Lavender’s voice drifted over the back of the couch, just loud enough to carry.

Hermione froze.

“What is?” Seamus asked, voice thick with sleep or sugar.

Lavender leaned in, conspiratorial.

“That letter thing. The House Unity proposal? You know, the one Granger wrote.”

Hermione didn’t move. She didn’t speak. She just sat, eyes on the page in front of her, spine straight as a spell.

Seamus snorted. “Yeah, didn’t they bin it?”

“Sort of.” Lavender’s voice lowered, but not enough. “But someone said—someone heard—that the Board did get another version.”

Hermione blinked once. Slowly.

“What do you mean ‘another version’?” Seamus asked.

“Different ink. Different script. Like it was rewritten. Disguised. But still hers. Still made it to them.”

There was a pause.

“No name on it,” Lavender added. “Anonymous. But it matched the proposal.”

Hermione’s pulse skipped. Just once.

She didn’t turn. Didn’t look.

Lavender and Seamus carried on, the conversation slipping into speculation and nonsense—probably Theo, maybe a Ravenclaw, definitely not Malfoy, they said, laughing.

Eventually they wandered off toward the dorms, their voices trailing into silence.

Only then did Hermione move.

She closed the book in her lap without marking the page, folded her hands over it, and stared into the fire. The flames had settled into embers, warm and low. Outside the window, the snow was falling again—soft, steady, silent.

Someone had rewritten it. Disguised it. And submitted it anyway.

She could still see the image in her mind: the unsigned scroll tucked beneath the quill. The deliberate placement. The absence of note or name.

She had never asked.

Not even when she could have.

Not even when she wanted to.

But she sat there, quiet in the glow of the hearth, her eyes unfocused, her breath slow, and her mind spinning through what hadn’t been said.

And she knew.

The platform at Hogsmeade was a study in beautiful chaos.

Steam curled thick and silver around the feet of students shouting over trunks and owl cages. The train hissed like it had a mind of its own, eager to depart, uncaring about farewells. Parents waved from the edges. Professors lingered near the carriages with final nods and last-minute reminders.

Hermione boarded early.

She wasn’t in the mood for noise. Or goodbyes. Or the last grasp of conversations that wouldn’t last beyond the summer. Her satchel bumped against her leg as she walked the corridor, searching for a quiet compartment. One not yet claimed. One not expecting her to be anything but still.

She found one, slid the door shut, and placed her bag gently on the seat. Then she moved to the window, and stood.

The glass was cool beneath her fingers. Outside, the castle rose in the distance—gold-tipped towers etched against the sky, unmoved by time, unbothered by change. It looked the same. Perfect. Untouched.

But she wasn’t.

Something had shifted this year. Quietly, yes, but undeniably. A slow rewiring. Not just of what she knew, but what she saw. What she wanted. What she couldn’t stop wanting, even when it made no sense.

The proposal hadn’t gone through. The board had rejected it. The silence that followed had hurt more than the refusal itself.

And yet.

Somehow, she didn’t regret writing it.

The whistle blew—long and low, like a call through fog. Beneath her, the train gave a soft lurch and began to move. The platform slid past the window: students waving, figures shrinking, a blur of motion and sound she couldn’t quite touch.

She stayed at the glass.

Watched until the castle began to fade—first its outline, then its color, and finally the feeling it used to give her.

She didn’t hear him until he was already there.

Footsteps in the corridor. Not hurried. Not hesitant.

Just present.

Draco Malfoy passed without stopping.

He didn’t look in. Didn’t pause at the door. But as he moved past her compartment, he tapped once on the window with the edge of his knuckle.

A single sound.

Soft. Intentional. Unmistakable.

Hermione didn’t turn. Her breath caught, but she didn’t move.

In the glass, her reflection wavered—fractured for the briefest moment—and then stilled again.

She waited until the corridor emptied.

Then she stepped away from the window and sat down.

Her notebook was already half-open on the seat beside her, a ribbon of parchment peeking from between the pages. She flipped past diagrams and drafts, past the old leaflet, past the folded and refolded letter that hadn’t been sent by her hand.

She found the list.

Luna. Dean. Parvati. Theo.

Her quill was tucked into the spine, ready.

She didn’t pick it up.

The last line remained blank.

She stared at it – Not with indecision, but with knowing. She didn’t write the name. Didn’t strike the space through, either. She closed the notebook.Set it on her lap.

And turned her gaze back to the window, where the trees blurred past like ink dragged across wet paper.

Some silences, she was learning, weren’t empty.
They were just patient.