All night and next morning, it snowed. Enough to leave a thick blanket of snow on the ground, and the students came in to lunch red-cheeked and noses running from the cold, worn out from their snowball fights. Malfoy asked her if she'd like to go for a stroll down by the lake after lunch, a badly hidden diffidence to his voice. Hermione told him yes without even having to think about it, and then wondered immediately after when exactly it had been that they had gone from barely tolerating each other to this friendship. Because that was what it was; they were no longer just polite colleagues, but feeling their way through the process of becoming friends. But it didn't really matter when, just that they were, and that it made Hermione happy.