diff --git a/tests/pm/test_activation_setup.py b/tests/pm/test_activation_setup.py
index 515383cfd4..9b29291d58 100644
--- a/tests/pm/test_activation_setup.py
+++ b/tests/pm/test_activation_setup.py
@@ -60,7 +60,9 @@ def test_activation_real_setup_pm_lifecycle(tmp_path, served):
         "LANG": "C.UTF-8", "PYTHONNOUSERSITE": "1", "UV_OFFLINE": "1",
         "UV_CACHE_DIR": str(home / ".cache" / "uv"), "UV_PYTHON_DOWNLOADS": "never",
     }
-    for name in ("activate", "setup-hermes.sh", "hermes_constants.py", "hermes_yaml.py", "utils.py"):
+    for name in ("activate", "setup-hermes.sh", "hermes_constants.py", "hermes_yaml.py", "utils.py",
+                 "scripts/_activation.sh"):
+        (core / name).parent.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
         shutil.copy2(REPO / name, core / name)
     for name in ("pm", "hermes_cli"):
         shutil.copytree(REPO / name, core / name, ignore=shutil.ignore_patterns("__pycache__"))