Theories of Proximity

Mid September, 5th Year

The Restricted Section was quieter than the rest of the library—not because it was warded, though it was—but because no one went there unless they had something to prove.

Draco preferred it. The regular shelves were cluttered with gossip and bad posture. In the Restricted Section, no one talked. No one hovered. You came to learn or to posture. He wasn’t interested in either.

Not this time.

He moved through the narrow stacks with one gloved hand trailing along the spines, the flickering lamplight gilding the edges of ancient leather. Half the titles were crumbling at the corners. A few had protective enchantments that snapped faintly at his fingers when he passed too close. He ignored them.

Spell theory, dual-channel casting, frequency-based shielding. He scanned them all until one title caught his eye—not because it stood out, but because it didn’t.

Fundamentals of Dual-Wand Theory and Magical Channeling.

Dry. Obnoxiously niche. Thorough.

He pulled it free. The spine cracked faintly in protest.

Inside the cover: a Hogwarts stamp. A single checkout line. A name.

Granger, H.

Of course. He smirked without meaning to. The book was heavy in his hands. He flipped through the first few pages, half-expecting it to be overwritten with smug commentary. It was worse.

It was annotated. Meticulously .

The margins were lined in fine red ink—tidy, narrow, slightly slanted to the right. Not cluttered, but surgical. Spell equations rebalanced. Symbols cross-referenced. Entire sections flagged with things like “pg. 142 – anchoring pattern vs. alternate grip sequencing – compare field data.”

She wrote like she couldn’t help herself. Like the book was a conversation she hadn’t been invited to but refused to leave unanswered.

Draco stared at the notes, then at the blank corner of the page. His fingers moved before his pride could protest and pulled a quill from his sleeve.

Granger: anchoring patterns are context-dependent. See p. 147, field variables.
He added a check mark beside one of her equations. Circled another. Drew a line between two she hadn’t connected.

Not corrections. Additions .

He turned the page. Found more notes. Wrote more of his own. When the library bell rang an hour later, he didn’t close the book. 

He simply tucked it under his arm—And didn’t give it back.

The library was colder than usual.

Madam Pince claimed the heating charms interfered with the binding spells on certain tomes, so Hermione wore an extra scarf on library days and tried not to lose feeling in her fingers before she finished her revision charts.

She hovered by the returns shelf near the Restricted Section, scanning the titles with practiced efficiency. Foundations of Elemental Symmetry . Spellcasting in Confined Spaces . Wandwork: A Historical Analysis . She frowned.

The book wasn’t there. Fundamentals of Dual-Wand Theory and Magical Channeling. It should have been. She’d requested it back two days ago. It had gone missing just before she was planning to pull her notes for the House Unity curriculum appendix. She straightened. Glanced toward the Restricted Section, then past it.

And there it was–Under Malfoy’s elbow.

He sat at a corner table near the frost-glazed window, head bent low over the open book, quill in hand, posture loose but focused. The spine was cracked gently along the middle, the same page she’d annotated in red just before summer. He didn’t look up.

Hermione stood frozen for a second longer than necessary.

Then turned sharply and disappeared between the Potions stacks, pretending she hadn’t seen anything at all.

She waited twenty-three minutes.

That was how long it took for him to pack up, tuck the book under his arm like it belonged to him, and leave without so much as a backward glance.

When he was gone, she returned to the table. The book lay open. She didn’t sit—just hovered over the page. Her notes were still there.

A bracket she’d drawn around a flawed anchor calculation. A question she’d written in the corner: Could shared core resonance stabilize split-channel casting? Next to it, in lean black ink, slanted slightly to the left: Possibly. Depends on emotional synchronization. See pg. 223, footnote 4.

Her heart stuttered.

Not because it was rude. Not because it was right. But because it answered her.

She turned the page. There were more. Short additions. Clean notations. A few silent check marks. No signature. No commentary.

Just… dialogue. In ink.

Hermione stood there a moment longer, one hand resting on the back of the chair he’d just vacated. She didn’t know what she felt. But she knew what it meant.

He’d read her and chose to reply.

The fire had burned down to amber coals, casting long shadows over the floor. Most of the dorms were quiet now. Just a few fifth-years still lingered in the common room—half-finished essays abandoned on tables, warm drinks cooling on sideboards, the weight of the week settling across everyone’s shoulders.

Hermione sat curled at the corner table, sleeves pushed up, quill in hand, a draft of her revised reform letter spread open in front of her. Two more essays and a list of inter-house project proposals were stacked beneath it, each one annotated within an inch of its life.

Across the room, Harry was pacing.

“She’s gutting everything,” he said, not for the first time. “First Warrick, then Flitwick. Now Vector’s had to pull half her spell drills.”

He turned, backlit by the fire. His badge caught the light and flashed once—bright, sharp, accusatory.

“And we’re just… letting her.”

“We’re not letting her,” Hermione replied, without looking up. “We’re responding strategically.”

“Strategically,” he echoed. “With what? Polite essays and perfectly formatted paragraphs?”

Hermione’s jaw clenched. She set her quill down with a soft snap .

“With language that puts pressure on the parts of the system still pretending to be fair.”

“Pretending to be fair,” Harry muttered. “Exactly. So why are we still pretending with them?”

Neville looked up from his Herbology revision, eyes flicking between the two of them.

“They banned a third-year from the library last week,” he said quietly. “For having an unapproved study schedule.”

“Exactly,” Harry said, rounding back toward Hermione. “They’re not just watching—they’re erasing. And you want us to write letters ?”

“Yes,” Hermione snapped, “because those letters get read by the people who write the rules. And if we draft them right, they don’t get to pretend we’re not worth listening to.”

“You think listening is the goal?” Harry said, incredulous. “Hermione, they’re not listening. They’re documenting.”

Parvati leaned over the arm of her chair.

“So what are we supposed to do? Practice spells in secret when we are all inexperienced?.”

"We’ll get there, all right? We’re not clueless," Harry said, trying to sound more sure than he felt.

Dean, who had been sketching something in the corner, finally looked up.

“We could do both,” he said, voice calm. “Build the pressure and be ready for what happens if it doesn’t work.”

Hermione turned toward him, surprised.

“You’d sign the letter?”

“Already did,” he said. “Doesn’t mean I don’t want a backup plan.”

Harry crossed his arms. “We need defense. Real spells. Real practice. Something we can actually use .”

“And we need structure,” Hermione countered. “A foundation for what happens after we resist. Without that, we’re just reacting.”

“You want to write essays while they choke the classrooms?”

“You want to hex your way through bureaucracy? ”

The silence that followed was taut. Not heavy. Not angry. Just full of something breaking open.

Ron, seated cross-legged near the fireplace, glanced between them. He didn’t speak. Didn’t take sides.

But his gaze landed on Hermione’s parchment—neat, insistent, impossible to ignore. He looked at it like it was an incantation written in runes he couldn’t quite read, but maybe wanted to.

Hermione turned back to her scroll. She didn’t argue further.

Harry exhaled, hard. He sat down in the chair across from her, elbows on his knees, still tense.

No one apologized.

No one needed to.

But across the room, Neville muttered quietly to himself, as if to no one in particular:

“I think they’re both right.”

And no one disagreed.

The Charms classroom was filled with the scent of polished wood and the faint, sweet burn of incantation residue. Students filtered in slowly, muffled by early morning fog and not enough sleep. Wands tapped idly against tabletops. A few Ravenclaws whispered over open textbooks, their voices low and rapid.

Hermione sat near the center, her notes already out, quill poised at the corner of her parchment. She glanced at the time—five minutes before the bell.

Across the aisle, a second-year Hufflepuff—Anna Kingsley, quiet, thoughtful—sat hunched over her desk, flipping through a slim copy of Spell Etiquette in Inter-House Environments . Hermione caught her eye.

“Here,” she whispered, sliding a neatly folded sheet across the aisle. “Just thoughts. Early draft. Let me know if anything’s unclear.”

Anna blinked, surprised. Then nodded. She tucked the parchment carefully beneath her book, the edges just visible beneath her notes.

Hermione turned back to her own page, satisfied.

And then—*

The door opened.

Softly. Deliberately.

Umbridge.

She stepped into the classroom with a smile stretched tight across her face, clipboard hugged to her chest like a beloved pet. Her robes today were a deeper pink, almost mauve, with tiny cat buttons at the collar.

She didn’t speak.

She didn’t have to.

The room quieted.

Professor Flitwick looked up from his papers at the front of the room and offered a polite nod.

“Madam Umbridge. Is there something I can—”

“Just observing,” she said, her tone syrupy and final.

She moved slowly down the aisle, eyes scanning desks, lips pursed.

Hermione kept her gaze on her notes, spine straight.

Umbridge paused.

Then turned.

Her hand landed lightly on the corner of Anna Kingsley’s desk.

“What’s this?” she asked, voice honey-thick.

Anna froze. “Just—just a paper. For review. I—”

Umbridge lifted the parchment.

Unfolded it once.

Her smile didn’t move.

But her eyes narrowed.

“Unauthorized material,” she said lightly, “has a way of... interfering with healthy academic focus.”

She folded it again—precisely, deliberately—and tucked it into her clipboard.

“We mustn’t let extracurricular distractions disrupt the integrity of the classroom.”

Anna nodded quickly. Said nothing.

Hermione’s hands curled into fists beneath her desk.

She didn’t speak.

But the space between her ribs tightened.

And it didn’t ease.

Defense Against the Dark Arts ended like it always did: with no homework, no summary, no fanfare.

Professor Warrick gave no closing remarks. He simply lowered his wand, murmured a wordless charm to erase the chalkboard, and waited for the sound of quills being capped and chairs sliding back. The students moved slowly, not out of boredom, but calculation—no one wanted to be the first to break the quiet.

Hermione packed her notes in silence. She could still feel the knot in her chest from Charms class the day before. From the smile Umbridge gave when she confiscated her essay. From the way her fingers curled protectively over her satchel now, like she might lose something else she hadn’t meant to surrender.

Most of the class had already filtered out by the time she reached the door, her bag slung over one shoulder, her steps slow but steady.

“Miss Granger.”

She stopped. Turned.

Professor Warrick stood behind his desk, arms relaxed, hands resting lightly on the wood. He didn’t nod. Didn’t beckon. Just waited—still, composed, like the room hadn’t moved at all.

Hermione stepped closer.

He reached beneath a stack of notes and held something out to her. A small envelope. Sealed. Heavy parchment. No crest.

Hermione hesitated, then took it, her fingers grazing the edge as if it might vanish if she held it too tightly. It was... intentional. She didn’t open it until she reached the corridor. The moment the classroom door closed behind her, she slid her thumb under the seal.

Inside—her essay. Still folded. Still intact.

No red ink. No Ministry stamps. No Ministry anything .

At the top, clipped carefully in place, was a narrow slip of parchment. She stood there for a long moment in stillness. And something like steadiness settling in her chest. Then, carefully—like it mattered—she folded the essay again and slid it back into her bag. Right where it belonged.

This time, it wasn’t going anywhere without her.

The common room was nearly empty, the fire burning low in the grate and casting a honeyed glow across the worn rug. Outside, the wind hummed against the windows, snow softening the world into hush. It was late—too late for conversation, too early for sleep.

Hermione sat at the table beneath the portrait of Emeric the Ever-Ready, her notes fanned around her like petals. A half-rolled copy of the House Unity letter lay open before her, the corners curling slightly from overhandling. Beside it, her names list sat half-filled.

She stared at the next blank line.

Parvati had said no. Neville had hesitated and promised to “think about it.” Even Dean, steady and thoughtful, had only signed after reading it twice and asking three questions.

Hermione’s ink had begun to fade. Her momentum, too.

She reached for her quill, paused, then let her hand drop.

The fire cracked.

A shadow moved at the edge of her vision.

Ginny, barefoot and wrapped in a too-long cardigan, dropped into the seat beside her without invitation.

She didn’t say anything at first. Just looked. Then leaned in to read.

After a moment, she raised her eyebrows. “You’re really doing this?”

Hermione nodded, throat dry. “Someone has to.”

Ginny didn’t ask for a quill. She simply plucked it from Hermione’s inkwell and signed her name with a flourish—long, looping, and unapologetically bold.

“Well,” she said, handing the quill back, “you didn’t ask. But I would’ve said yes.”

Hermione blinked. Then smiled. It was small, uneven, a little tired.

But real.

And for the first time all day, the tightness in her chest eased.

Later that night, the fire had burned low and the castle exhaled into stillness. Shadows stretched long across the dormitory walls, soft and slow, barely stirred by the draft curling beneath the windows.

Hermione sat on the edge of her bed, legs tucked beneath her, one hand curled around a mug gone cold. A single candle flickered beside her, casting a pool of light across her notes.

She turned the pages slowly, not really reading—just letting the familiar parchment whisper beneath her fingers. One corner was bent. She smoothed it without thinking.

Then she saw it.

The spell theory diagram from the restricted book.

Her handwriting—neat, annotated, firm.

And next to it: his—Sharper. Slanted. Thoughtful.

A correction—not smug. Not wrong. Just another perspective.

She lifted her quill.

Paused.

Then wrote one word beneath his margin note: Interesting.

She just let it be. Ink beside ink.

And in that margin—unclaimed and uncorrected—something unfamiliar, and quietly mutual, began to take root.