She had made time, and used up all her remaining effort, to engage each of her friends in conversation. Asking about their lives, what they had been up to while she was gone and, in Pansy's case, how she and Ron had gotten together. It was through her careful, seemingly interested questions that she learned that Susan had gone to the Sorbonne for Healer training; that Harry and Ginny had broken up after she discovered she preferred the company of women ("though I would've welcomed an extra woman to bed, Gin was less than enthused with the suggestion," Harry had joked, causing Hermione to roll her eyes). It was how she learned that Pansy had spent three years in almost total self-isolation in the Muggle world (coming back to Wizarding London to care for Draco and to keep him from "going round the bend" after Hermione "dumped him like old garbage"). She had come back to London and opened a small boutique shop next to the joke shop and had run into Ron, quite literally, as she carried shipment of delicate silk stoles through the back door. Predictably, they had jousted verbally and fought viciously for months before giving into their growing attraction. He'd proposed a year later. Pansy was... harsh. Abrasive, as she always had been. But when she spoke of Ron a softness came over her that Hermione had never seen from the dark haired witch. It warmed Hermione's perpetually cold heart, even as it sent very strong jolts of envy through her. She learned that Theo and Cleo (Jesus that would never not make her cringe) had decided to go steady just before Christmas. She knew he was chomping at the metaphorical bit to introduce her to the group, including Hermione, something that Blaise objected to as it would require her to be allowed into the wards. In return for their collective information sharing, she supplied sparse details about her time abroad. She described her academic pursuits to a highly amused Harry and Ron - both of them had laughed when she had told them she had three Mastery degrees and had obtained them in two years. They had called her predictable. In a way, she supposed she was. She told them nothing of the dead year between finishing her Charms Mastery in India and starting her... training with the Domina. She doubted she ever could talk about that time. Didn't really want to, to be honest. Draco didn't make an appearance at Nott Manor, as far as she could tell. She hadn't heard from him, hadn't seen him, and nobody had spoken of him after he had showed up to talk with her. She had relayed all the details (but for the bit about Blaise) to the rest when they had pressed her for information on what he had wanted, but nobody could determine why he had opted to speak to her. Or what about. They hadn't quite gotten around to that specific topic before Blaise's interruption.