Nice! I like eighthyear!fics, so you had me at “returning to Hogwarts”.
She may not have been in the story much, but I liked your Ginny a lot. If someone read all my comments of the HD_worldcup fics, they’d probably think (apart from observing that I am the queen of tl;dr) that I'm a big Ginny fan. I'm not particularly, but to me she seems one of the characters who suffers the most in fanfiction, and especially in H/D fanfiction. Anyway, I like the fact that she said "It's all the pressure, isn't it?", and that she was understanding of Harry's indecisiveness. In post-DH fic Harry is often portrayed as not quite knowing what to do now that he actually has a life; a viewpoint which is very reasonable and understandable. The "we'll always be friends" conversation was kind of sappy but pretty realistic, I liked it.
Hermione and Ron, too! They seem to disappear in a lot of H/D fics. I like the fact that they had a presence here, and the trio conversations were great (my fave part of the fic). I thought that they were well characterized here – Ron still casually prejudiced against Malfoy (but somewhat mellowed out) and Hermione as the more objective voice.
"Does he have to get in our carriage?" Weasley stage-whispered.
Ha ha! Good old Ron.
Some nice meta moments, too! If nothing else it'll get me away from these bloody peacocks, Draco thought.
Madam Malkin’s II : (Electric Boogaloo) probably qualifies as a meta moment as well. The camaraderie between Malfoy and Harry was a bit more than I would have expected, realistically, but it was a fun scene. I do think that the development of friendship between them was a bit rushed and a bit too “warm fuzzy” ... I would have built it up more subtly. All the discussion of “is this a friendship” seemed ... well, a bit girly. I must say that I don’t buy Harry’s immediate trust of Malfoy (or at least his willingness to cut him some slack); I can see Harry letting things go (to a certain extent) as water under the bridge, but I also would have thought that he’d retain more suspicion and distrust towards him. Canon-Harry wouldn’t say "He was as much a victim as we were”, IMO.
Still, I really enjoyed this overall. The only thing I really didn’t like was the first scene with the tarot reading, just cause it’s such a cliché (though I know you know this, and were playing off it – it just didn’t jive with me personally).