Hermione was having one of those nights. One where everyone and everything seemed to coalesce into one giant irritant. A bugger of a time, as her father would say. Not that the night had started out that way. She had worked so hard on her hair, and had even bent enough to ask Lavender and Parvati to help her with her makeup, and she felt amazing. Knew she looked amazing, especially after watching Viktor watch her come down the stairs before the start of the Yule Ball, eyes wide. She had smiled widely, basking in the glow of attention her admittedly bookish self was not accustomed to, before the dancing had started. Things had been fine, for a while, and then the night had steadily gone downhill. It had started with Viktor's wandering hands, followed closely by his wandering lips. Not that she minded a bit of snogging, she wasn't that prudish, regardless of what her peers thought. It was just... he was so... sloppy. She expected a man (18 years old surely meant he was a man, right?) to be more...refined. To have more finesse, she supposed. Then, a slight irritation had given way to an intermediate one when she caught Draco Malfoy, of all people, staring at her with a strange look on his face. The prat had been escorting Pansy, of course, who had been wearing a shade of red usually reserved for women much older, but it was her that Malfoy had been staring at. She couldn't fathom it and, what's more, she couldn't fathom why she was using so much brain power trying to dissect it, or him. He was probably just thinking of his next slurry of insults.