The man at the potions supply shop already had prepackaged kits prepared and was much more versed in the new payment system so it was no time at all before Harry was distracted by yet another shiny thing at the shop next door. Hermione was beginning to wonder if the male of their species was more like cats than anyone had reckoned - it would certainly explain her father constantly getting distracted with shiny things or wandering off when bored. The only redeeming part of this she could see was this time Harry was distracted by something educational.
"What do you think, Hermione?" Harry asked as he flashed those green eyes at her.
She'd been right, the green shirt did look good on him, and they brought out his eyes, but that made them all the more distracting when she needed her wits about her to maneuver through the conversation. She was not going to let him buy a moving model of the galaxy for her, regardless of how pretty it was or how much she'd enjoy it; Grangers pay their own way and it was much too expensive.
"That's very expensive," Hermione said, making a show of her disapproval of the price.
Hermione had found that Harry was much more slippery when it came to evading her reasoning - or just disregarding it, in some cases last year - if she detailed her objections right off the bat. Now they were together she'd decided to turn things around and give a tiny bit of resistance at first so she could hear some of his thoughts and then go about getting him to see the other side a little bit at a time.
While it made for a much longer process than simply beating him over the head until he saw sense, she was not her mother. Besides, she liked talking to him about intelligent things. The difficulty here though was how did she get him to be frugal and safeguard the money his parents had passed on to him, without guilting him into it, while also not stepping on any desire to explore their new world?
"Yeah, but look at it," Harry said as he gave the galaxy he'd found in a large glass ball a little poke, his eyes alight the way Ron's would be for a new broom or Lavender's would be for a cute pair of shoes. "It's all the Astronomy we'd ever need right here. Imagine all the extra studying you could do if we dropped it," he said slyly, as if he were dangling a little treat in front of her.
"Astronomy is one of our core classes," Hermione said, choosing to take the conversational tangent. "We can add classes starting in Third Year, but we can't drop them until after we sit our tests in Fifth. Besides, it's one of the most practical classes we have," she said, adding extra weight to her implied 'even if you buy it for yourself it still won't get you anywhere ' argument.
"Practical?" he asked, finally tearing himself away from the globe in order to give her an odd look. "What's practical about spending half the night freezing while trying to learn something I'll never use?"
Instantly the image of the two of them spending the evening snuggled up in a blanket while looking at the stars popped into her mind. She quickly discarded it though; she was not going to have promised or implied physical contact as the basis of their relationship - that sort of thing wouldn't be healthy for either of them. They were friends who enjoyed spending time together in a more intimate way than was purely platonic; what followed should be in the same vein and not something overtly sexual.
"Do you know what you're going to do once you graduate?" she asked, choosing to fight slyness and bribery with wit and intelligence to see which came out on top.
"You mean besides having a goblin and a lawyer yammer my ear off about investments until I'm ready to scream?" Harry countered; reminding her precisely what was in store in his future.
"Yes," she said, doubling down on her question despite the huge hole he just knocked in her argument. There was no way Harry would be content just to lie around all day with nothing to do; he'd go mental by the end of the week. She might be able to use that future to prove her point though.
"Er - I haven't thought about it," Harry said, flattening his hair as he gave it a bit of thought. "Being an Auror sounds interesting, but so does Curse-Breaking, and I can't deny a Litigator is useful too."
Hermione thought it odd he hadn't immediately mentioned Quidditch, but put that aside for later and focused instead on the logical case she wanted to make.
"And do you know if any of those require knowledge of potions for curing disease or detecting poison? Or even if you need to know which plants are magical, or when those plants would be at their best for use as ingredients for any potion you need to make?"
"How is Astronomy supposed to help with that?" Harry asked.
"I thought you said you'd been studying," she replied; after all, the reason for it was obvious.
"I have been studying, but I haven't read anything like that. We don't even have a textbook for Astronomy," he reminded her.
"It's in the introductory chapter to One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi, it talks all about the sympathies magical plants have to different celestial bodies and how they influence the magical properties they have," Hermione explained. "That's why we take Astronomy in the first place, so we can tell when they're at their peak when we're out on our own."
"Oh," Harry said, probably realizing just now why they were also taking Herbology if they didn't plan to have a garden. "That actually makes sense."
"And that's just the tip of the iceberg," she smiled as she led him away to the ice cream parlor they'd seen the day before. "Sympathies go much deeper than that, they're actually based an old hermetic idea…"
Things couldn't have gotten better for Hermione! She had gotten him to listen to her, be frugal with his money, actually see the point of a class he had completely written off, and interested in the underlying mechanics involved. And now they were chatting about it while eating ice cream and holding hands like a legitimate couple - and he didn't look bored at all - and he hadn't even noticed that she had paid!
No matter what happened at the Hopefuls meeting after this, one thing was absolutely clear - this was definitely a date. Nothing could dampen her spirits after that. Even Lichfield walking by and tapping his watch, only to stick his tongue out at her when she covertly shooed him away had seemed comical; at least he was wearing proper clothes again.
When she had stretched things out as long as she thought she could without making them late, she finally walked with him the short way back to the Leaky Cauldron still hand-in-hand. That wonderfully bubbly feeling lasted a frightfully short time however as the fireplace flared almost as soon as they arrived. She felt her hand leave his as one of the few people she'd seriously begun to detest walked out. Pansy Parkinson had arrived.