It wasn't until the assorted detritus from the post-Task party started disappearing that she realized how late it had gotten. Cups and plates vanished to the kitchens, articles of clothing discarded between drinking games returned to their owners, and Hermione found herself utterly alone in the common room, wrapped in more blankets than she quite knew what to do with.

Ginny had tried to drag her into conversations, Lavender and Parvati had surrounded her to gossip about Viktor, and Harry had spent a good half an hour piled in close to her, Ron on his other side as they took a break from the festivities.

She'd meant to be more cheerful, really, and for a while it wasn't even that hard to fake it, but as the crowd thinned out and even the most exuberant partiers stumbled to their beds, she stayed in her nest in the corner of the sofa nearest the fire, trying to forget how thrice-damned cold it had been.

A soft click from the bottom of the boy's staircase caught her attention. Colin, sheepish as he lowered the muggle camera from his face, waved.

"I didn't- I won't share it or anything, but it was a really great shot. Gryffindor in Repose, y'know? The lighting was so…" he trailed off, sitting on the edge of the coffee table to face her with a rueful smile, "Sorry, I did actually figure out how not to be annoying about it, most of the time."

She shook her head, fishing an arm out from her blankets to wave him off, "It's- it's fine, yeah? As long as it doesn't wind up in the papers or something, it's fine."

He looked horrified at the thought, clutching his camera to his chest, and she snorted, and they fell into a peaceful silence.

She shivered, and tugged the blankets closer to her chin.

He fidgeted with the pocket of his hoodie, and screwed up his face for a moment before venturing to speak, "Harry- I heard him say you all looked like you were dead, like you were all perfectly still."

She nodded.

"Was it like being petrified?"

They'd never spoken about that. She and Penelope had shared half a dozen awkward half-smiles, and Justin had made an off-hand comment after arithmancy about how "truly, Granger, you never know where danger will strike, my father always says so".

(She tries not to compare him to Malfoy. Besides being blond and unbearably posh they're really not alike at all, but sometimes it's hard to avoid.")

But somehow she and Colin Creevy, despite sharing a common room and a table in the great hall and crossing paths at least once a day, had never discussed their shared tribulation two years prior. She wondered, just then, if she'd been avoiding him because of it.

"No," Hermione said, shaking her head, "it was like being asleep. One minute I was in the headmaster's office, and the next I was coming up for air."

It wasn't like being petrified at all.

She'd been entirely aware of everything when she'd been petrified, and so, she assumed, was he.

She smiled, fond and sleepy, "Your roommates were a godsend. Ron and Harry always read our textbooks so I could keep updated, which was lovely, but your friends always brought such good books to read to you and they always read loud enough for me to hear."

Colin shifted to the couch, kicking his feet up on the table and blithely ignoring Hermione's warning glare, "My mum's a teacher, she always sends good books."

Hermione hummed, and passed one of her blankets over. He probably didn't need it, and she still wasn't quite as warm as she should've been, but it seemed like the right thing to do in that long, quiet moment.

"Did you tell your parents? About, ah, the petrification thing?" He asked, almost too quietly to hear.

She didn't respond, but mulled over every implication of what should've been a yes or no question. "I think all of us keep things from our parents. This- it's a much more drastic world than the one we grew up in, so it's hard to communicate that difference in… scope, I suppose."

Colin cut his eyes over to her, "So that's a no?"

She snorted, bobbed her head, equivocatingly. "I told them what they absolutely had to know. In- well, in that case, that wasn't much."

Silverware clinked against china plates, an excruciating background track to the heavy silence.

"So. This… Viktor boy." Joseph Granger said, avoiding eye contact with his wife even more effectively than his daughter avoided eye contact with either of them.

"He's a friend. I - well, I doubt I'll have time for anything more than the occasional letter now, it's about to be my OWL year." Hermione took a delicate bite of her chicken, chewed thoroughly, and swallowed. "Goodness knows I'll have bigger priorities than dating."