Halloween

Chapter 4: Halloween

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

On Halloween morning, the castle awoke to the scent of baking pumpkin and cinnamon, sweet apples and brown sugar. A cascade of red leaves descended past the window panes, carried on the back of a fine silver fog, and the first blades of frost appeared on the grass. In Gryffindor Tower, the fireplaces kept the dorms toasty and warm, despite the cool weather outside, and in the night the house-elves had come to decorate the dorms with paper garlands of bats and jack-o-lanterns. When he drifted awake, there was a split second where Draco felt so content that he actually forgot where he was, and he burrowed into his pillows, relishing the toasty, sweet confines of his bed, unimpeded by the cruel bite of reality.

Naturally, reality would not suffer this kind of arrogance for long. He heard, rather than saw, someone peel back the hangings of his four-poster, and light flooded his eyes.

He gave a disgruntled honk and rolled over, tugging his pillow over his head.

“Er, Malfoy?”

He held still and said nothing, feigning sleep.

“Malfoy?” Someone gingerly prodded at his arm. “Malfoy, are you awake?”

“No,” he said into the bedspread.

“Oh, good,” chirped the voice, which he now recognized. “I’m sorry to wake you. I didn’t know whether, um, you had forgotten? What you said? About helping me with my Potions homework? Before Charms?”

Draco gave another long, plaintive honk, and sealed the pillow tighter over his head. If he suffocated, he reflected, he couldn’t be liable for whatever Longbottom did.

This cheered him up enough to open his eyes. Unfortunately, this meant he got an eyeful of Neville Longbottom, snaggle-toothed, round-faced, and freckled like a painter’s smock, already dressed for school and carrying both of their satchels.

“I’ll meet you in the common room?” Longbottom said hopefully.

In response he received only a muffled groan.

It was his own fault for scheduling their lesson in the morning. He’d originally proposed it for Thursday evening, but he’d forgotten it was Halloween, and so there’d be a feast in the Great Hall, followed by parties in each of the dorms. Not that Draco expected to be invited to any festivities, but he didn’t want to be trapped in a room with Longbottom while everybody else ate candy and danced to music. Even if he wouldn’t have been there anyway, there was something particularly dispiriting about the idea.

The Charms classroom was bitterly cold in the mornings, as Flitwick hadn’t been in to light the grate yet. Draco set up the cauldron, lit the burner with a muttered spell that Snape had taught him, and set the water boiling, just to give Longbottom the best possible starting odds. He really did hope that he would succeed, if only because it would let him off the hook as a tutor.

“All right, Longbottom,” he barked, hauling out the chair and pointing at it. “Sit.”

Longbottom sat.

Draco thunked his copy of Magical Drafts and Potions (79th Edition) on the desk. “We’re doing a Cure for Boils. Should be a motivating exercise, since it’ll come in handy for you.”

The boy flushed and rolled back his sleeves. With shaking hands, he began to grind his snake fangs. He was doing it wrong, Draco observed — employing short, choppy strokes of the pestle like he was churning butter, instead of grinding them properly on the side of the bowl — but he held his tongue, since he wanted to see how far Longbottom could go without an outright error.

The answer was, apparently, seventy-four seconds. “Stop,” he snapped, seizing Longbottom’s wrist. The boy froze, his fistful of crushed snake fang suspended over the bubbling cauldron. “What are you doing wrong?”

Longbottom flinched. “I’m… doing something wrong?”

“I suppose that answers one question. I’ll start simpler, so you can understand: what are you doing?”

“I’m adding my snake fangs to the cauldron, like it says in the book.”

“And what were you going to do after that?”

He read doubtfully from the book. “Stir,” he said.

“Yes, I meant after that. The next step.”

“Finely slice my Pungeous Onions,” he read, “and place them in the mixture.”

“And the fifth step?”

“Add a sprinkle of powdered ginger…”

“Do you have powdered ginger?”

Longbottom looked around, as if the powdered ginger might be lurking under his armpit.

“No. You don’t. You have ginger root, which you’ll need to grind in order to get powder. But you can’t grind it at Step Five, because you’re supposed to be stirring vigorously from steps four through six.”

“Oh. Right you are, Malfoy.”

“Of course I’m right. Read the recipe all the way through before you start brewing,” said Draco curtly, extinguishing the burner. “It’s thirty seconds of up-front work that’ll save your skin. And prep your ingredients in advance. Even if it’s only measuring.”

“That makes sense,” said Longbottom brightly. “Gee, thank you, Malfoy. I really appreciate—”

“There’s no need for us to talk unless I’ve asked you a question. Start over, try the potion again.”

It took the better part of an hour for the pair of them, working jointly, to wrestle together a passable interpretation of a Cure for Boils. Draco had to stop Longbottom from melting his cauldron not once but twice, usually by shouting at him, and though his intervention had saved the other boy a lot of pain, Longbottom still had the nerve to act like a girl about it.

“D-d-d-don’t yell at me,” he moaned. “I’m d-d-d-doing my b-b-best—”

“I didn’t yell,” said Draco tartly. “I told you not to add porcupine quills while it’s over heat, you daft baby. And you should be grateful, because if I hadn’t, we’d both be on our way to the Hospital Wing.”

“But you d-d-d-didn’t need to sh-sh-sh-shout…”

“Merlin, are you weeping?”

Longbottom scrubbed at his cheeks, sniffling.

Draco curled his lip. “Well, don’t get any tears in the potion, salt water ruins a brew.”

By the time they had bottled and stoppered the homework assignment, other Gryffindors were trickling into the Charms classroom, and the Great Bell was tolling nine. Draco was hot and damp from working over a cauldron all morning, and peevish, because he hadn’t gotten any breakfast. Dealing with the other boy had burnt out the lion’s share of his patience, which was far from plentiful to begin with, and he stomped over to his desk in the early stages of a stormy mood.

Today in Charms they were making objects fly, an announcement which brightened him somewhat. This was a tremendously useful spell, and it marked a departure from weeks of shooting colored sparks out of their wands. They were put in pairs to practice, and to Draco’s relief, he got Granger. It wasn’t so much that it was pleasant to work with Granger as it was that everyone else would have been intolerable: Potter and Weasley would annoy him, Seamus Finnigan would blow something up, and if he got Longbottom, he would end up leaping out the window.

True to form, most Gryffindors found the swish-and-flick motion bafflingly difficult to comprehend. Weasley seemed to think that volume of incantation corresponded to strength of spell, and kept bellowing “WINGARD-EUM LEVIO-SA!” while windmilling his arms.

“He’s saying it wrong,” Granger sighed, and though she might have said it more quietly — Weasley shot a nasty look over his shoulder, he’d definitely heard — Draco didn’t disagree.

“Wrong emphasis,” he remarked, catching his own feather on its descent.

“And movement. It’s Wing-gar-dium Levi-OH-sa, not—”

“Levio SOIR.” It was a somewhat unsporting imitation of a West Country accent, but he could see her repressing a smile.

“Well, quite.”

“You do it, then, if you’re so clever,” snarled Weasley.

Draco smirked and sat back, gesturing to her in invitation.

Granger did not disappoint. She twitched up the sleeves of her gown, flicked her wand, and said, “Wingardium Leviosa.” The feather climbed neatly into the air, guided by the tip of her wand, and hovered at a respectable height of four feet.

Flitwick burst into applause. “Miss Granger!” he squeaked. “Miss Granger, very well done! And Mister Malfoy, is that your feather? Very good, very good! Ten points to Gryffindor!”

By the end of class, no one but Draco and Granger had managed to get their feathers over a foot in the air. As they were pushing their way into the corridor, they ended up stuck behind Weasley and Potter, who had barely gotten theirs off the desk. This was a source of comfort to Draco. The natural expectation of most teachers seemed to be that Potter would excel in everything, and watching them slowly become disabused of that notion had been among the few pleasures of his time in Gryffindor House.

Granger, to nobody’s surprise, was yapping his ear off. “I wish I could hang back and ask him about the theory,” she enthused. “It’s so interesting. I’d like to know how it’s different from other charms of movement. Is it the level force applied? Or is it where the energy is coming from? My dad says there are these things called Newton’s Laws…”

“What, like Scamander?”

Potter and Weasley were talking about something. A tall Hufflepuff knocked into Granger, and she bumped into Draco, who shrugged her off and set her upright with an irritated sound. They were practically on top of Potter and Weasley, now.

“It’s no wonder no one can stand her,” Weasley was saying, “she’s a nightmare, honestly.”

Granger stiffened.

Potter had the decency to look uncomfortable about this. “I dunno,” he said. “She tries—”

“What, you’re dying to be friends with her, are you?” said Weasley.

“No, but—”

Now Granger was blinking very quickly. “Excuse me,” she mumbled, and shoved past Weasley and Potter. Draco watched, surprised, as she elbowed Weasley on her way through and ran out of the corridor, her shoulders shaking.

Weasley and Potter turned around, wearing guilty expressions. Draco glowered at them.

“I think she heard you,” said Potter, and he had the decency to be ashamed. Weasley couldn’t even muster that much.

“So? She must’ve noticed she’s got no friends.”

Which might have been true, insofar as Draco didn’t really consider himself Granger’s friend — if anything, he was her class partner, which in his mind was a strictly strategic alignment, borne of mutual refusal to tolerate incompetence — but even so, no one besides himself should be permitted to make such remarks about her. It was demeaning to both of them. His father wouldn’t have tolerated an insult to one of his associates, no matter how he felt about them personally.

He called, “Embarrassed, Weasley?”

“Go away, Malfoy.”

He shouldered between them, knocking Weasley to the side. “Bet you wish you had her brains,” he said. “Then maybe your mummy would pay attention to you.”

This was a shot in the dark — large family, youngest son, it didn’t take a genius — but it landed square and true. Weasley started at him, held back only by Potter’s outflung arm. “Shut up!”

“Yeah? Oh, you felt that, didn’t you? At least Granger’s parents are proud of her. I doubt your mum even noticed when she gave birth to you.”

“That’s enough, Malfoy,” Potter said quietly.

Draco smiled nastily. “As for you, Potter,” he said, “you may have the others fooled, but not me. You’re a middling wizard who’s only here because of a freak accident eleven years ago. You’re hardly any better than a muggle-born.”

“Yeah?” said Potter calmly. He stepped into Draco’s face. “Something wrong with muggle-borns?”

He shrugged. “You don’t have me fooled,” he repeated. Then he shoved past Weasley and hurried into the crowd before either of them could hit back.

Granger didn’t turn up for the next class and wasn’t seen all afternoon. This was at first a pleasant reprieve and then a less pleasant one. Draco enjoyed, on one hand, the newfound peace with which he could take his lessons, and the absence of botheration in the hallways between classes. He did not lament the loss of always being the second hand in the air. But he discovered that this silence, once enjoyed, continued well after one stopped enjoying it. No one besides Granger talked to Draco. She was the only Gryffindor immune to his stony looks and sullish, unsociable demeanor. (That, or she simply didn’t notice, which was highly possible: Hermione Granger had the people skills of a sea sponge.)

At the feast, his morale reached an all-time low. The hall was magnificently decorated: thousands of conjured bats swarmed the walls, spiderwebs the size of parachutes swabbed the windows, and hovering jack-o-lanterns cast flickering shadows on the tables below. It smelled of pumpkin and squash and roasted hazelnuts, and down the center of each house table, trays of candy and colorfully frosted cakes rose in pyramids taller than Draco’s head. Some of the students were wearing mummer’s costumes. Several of the students at the Slytherin table in particular were wearing cow skull masks in observance of Samhain, and Draco wondered if there would be a bonfire later that night for the purebloods. He had gone to one of his cousin’s Samhain bonfires when he was very young, four or five maybe, and he remembered it indistinctly as a blur of bright lights, woodsmoke, and enough candy to give Dobby a heart attack.

Granger didn’t turn up for supper, either. Draco sat by himself, picking at a bit of baked potato, while all around him Gryffindor house roared with laughter and camaraderie. By and by he got to feeling so sorry for himself that he became irritated at her. Surely she’d known that if she didn’t come, it would force him to sit alone. Surely she knew it would embarrass him. Didn’t she care for his feelings? Wasn’t he important to her at all?

Parvati Patil, a dark-haired girl with a knack for Transfiguration, asked him to pass the potatoes. She resumed talking to her friend, Lavender Brown, at once. “First-floor bathroom,” she murmured. “Yes, I know, poor thing. She’s been crying for hours… I asked if she’d like me to bring her some food, but she said she wanted to be left alone.”

“Oh, well. You tried,” said Brown, yawning.

“I felt so bad. She keeps to herself, but I never thought she was lonely…”

“She’s just stuck-up. You can tell she thinks she’s too good for us — Ron only said what we were all thinking…”

The suggestion that Weasley had been elected the vox populi of this wretched assembly, however frivolous, was the last straw. Draco made a snap decision.

“Hey. You two. Are you talking about Granger?”

The two girls broke off, stunned that he was talking to them. Credit to her, Patil nodded.

“First floor bathroom, you said?” He stood up, slinging his bag over his shoulder.

“Ye-es,” said Patil uncertainly, watching him clamber out of the table. “But you might… I’m only warning you, she said she doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

“Bully for her. I don’t care.” He grabbed a pear and a chicken salad sandwich from the table, bundled them in a napkin, and shoved them into his bag. As an afterthought, he snapped: “And Weasley didn’t say what we were all thinking, Brown, but thank you for that particularly revealing remark.” He turned on his heel and marched out of the hallway.

There was no one around the girls’ bathroom when he arrived, which was convenient, because he had no desire to be seen skulking around it. He rapped on the door. “Granger,” he barked. “It’s Malfoy. Come out of there.”

There was no answer. “I know you’re in there,” he added. “Patil told me. This is ridiculous. It’s far too much whinging for one day, and it’s undignified.”

Still, no answer. He banged on the door. “Answer me, Granger. Or I’m coming in. I don’t care if it’s the girls’.”

When this, too, received nothing, he rolled his eyes and kicked open the door.

The bathroom was empty, or at least seemed so upon first glance. A faint sniffling came from one of the stalls, echoing on the tile. When he poked open the door, he found Granger hunched over on the toilet seat, her arms around her knees. Upon seeing him, she knuckled her eyes dry and took a sharp breath.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded. “This is the girls’ loo.”

He folded his arms. “So you’ve been sulking in here all day, have you.”

“You’re one to talk about sulking.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that, and I’m going to ignore it. Granger, get up. Weasley can’t have hurt you that badly.”

She shrank into herself.

“Oh, come on.”

“You didn’t have to come,” she said in a small voice. “You can go back to the Feast. I’ll be fine. I’d like to be alone for a while, that’s all.”

“The Feast is dull,” he said. “Our house is all gossips and idiots. I’d rather be bored by you than by a hundred Gryffindors.”

Her face peeked through a gap in her arms. “What?”

“You heard me. Don’t fish.”

“You don’t think I’m a horrid know-it-all?”

“You’re absolutely a horrid know-it-all. What’s more, you’re stuffy, stuck-up, holier-than-thou, moralistic, and you think you’re better than everyone else.”

Her lower lip trembled. “Go away!” she cried. “You don’t have to tell me like I don’t know! I know I’m awful and nobody likes me, I know I haven’t got any friends—”

“I didn’t say that. Calm down.” He leaned against the stall. “Why do you care if nobody likes you? There’s nothing wrong with being stuffy and stuck-up and holier-than-thou, I should know. And the moralizing is annoying, but at least you’re not a hypocrite about it. I’d be far more embarrassed by the fact that you’ve spent this much time crying over Rolf Weasley.”

“His name’s Ronald,” she sniffled, though she wasn’t crying anymore.

“I’m not going to remember that.”

He gave her the bundle of food from the feast. “There. It’s chicken salad. I chose the nastiest sandwich I could find to punish you for not coming to dinner.”

She took it, tentatively, and then crammed it in her mouth with the haste of someone who hadn’t eaten since breakfast. “Thank you,” she mumbled, chewing.

His tsked and kicked her lightly in the shin. “Chew and then swallow, Granger, were you raised in a barn? Oh, right. Muggles. Don’t answer that.”

“You really are a prejudiced person,” she said reflectively, finishing the sandwich and starting on the pear. He found himself more at peace now that she’d stopped crying, and his morale was a great improvement on the state of things at the feast. “At first I thought it was ironic, but no. You really do think muggles are worth less than wizards, don’t you?”

“Oh, please.”

“You do!”

“Because they are.”

“You’re wrong. They’re people, like you and me.”

“But — oh, that’s ridiculous,” he said crossly. “They can’t do magic! What kind of person can’t do magic?”

“There’s nothing about magic that makes you a person,” she said matter-of-factly. “My parents can’t do magic. But they’re still people.”

“The less you mention your parents, the better we’re going to get along.”

“But they’re my parents,” she pointed out, and he hated how reasonable she sounded. “I’m not going to pretend they don’t exist just because you have a problem with them. Listen to you, you don’t even have a reason to dislike them. Have you ever met a muggle in your life?”

“Of course I haven’t. Don’t be absurd.”

“You’ve never been to the supermarket? Or a park? You’ve never gone out in London, just to see what it’s like?” She blinked. “Gosh, you are sheltered.”

“The word you’re looking for is ‘cultured,’” he said loftily. “And of course I’m not going to trounce around muggle London, getting mud and muggle all over my clothes. I’m a pureblood.”

“I don’t like the way you say that word,” she said suddenly, staring at him. “It feels unclean.”

“We don’t have to talk about this.”

“All right, but you started it.”

“Very mature.”

The door swung open. Draco, realizing belatedly that he was still inside the girls’ bathroom, spent a wild half-second casting around for a way to exit, and spent far too long considering the toilet.

A lumbering footstep shuddered the walls. Something made a deafening growl, like an avalanche of stone.

Draco and Granger stared at each other, wide-eyed. Then they moved as one: Granger scrambled to her feet, and Draco slammed the stall door shut, snapping in the lock. He braced his weight against it and drew his wand, though he realized with a terrible jolt that he didn’t know any helpful spells. He might as well pitch his wand at the creature, for all the good it’d do.

The shuffling footfalls of giant legs sent tiles clattering across the floor. The stall shook. There was an explosion of ceramic and metal, and water burst from the remains of what was surely a mangled sink. Granger gave a high whimper, and he clapped his hand over her mouth.

A shadow loomed over the stall. A foul scent washed over them, so thick and putrid that Draco fought the urge to vomit.

He looked up.

It was a horrible sight. Twelve feet tall, its skin was a dull, granite gray, its great lumpy body like a boulder with its small bald head perched on top like a coconut. It had short legs thick as tree trunks with flat, horny feet. It was holding a huge wooden club, which dragged along the floor because its arms were so long.

Draco’s insides turned to ice. Granger threw herself behind him, which he might have been irritated about if he weren’t busy trying to remember which bits of the brain controlled motor function in the legs.

It ripped the door off the stall and tossed it at the window. Glass shattered. The floor was littered with shards of ceramic and broken pipe.

“Draco, do something!”

If he had use of his throat, he might have shouted, Do what! You do something, you’re the real Gryffindor!

What came out of his throat, however, was a much less dignified noise. He could not believe that he, Draco Malfoy, was going to die in a girls’ bathroom with Hermione Granger.

“Hermione!”

Like the world’s least inspiring pair of guardian angels, Potter and Weasley came skidding into the bathroom, armed with nothing but their wits and wands — which was to say, nothing. Draco could have laughed.

The boys took in the scene at a glance. Weasley, without so much as pausing to think, snatched a broken tap and threw it as hard as he could against the wall. It cracked loudly against the plaster, freezing the troll in its tracks. Draco noted (deliriously, it must have been) that with an arm like that, Weasley would make a half-decent Chaser.

The troll swung around and noticed the two newcomers, blinking stupidly. It hefted its club and lumbered forward, leaving Draco and Granger clustered in the warped remains of the stalls.

Weasley wasn’t finished. While Potter cast around frantically for something to throw, Weasley picked up a metal pipe, hefted it, and with a warlike yell, he hurled it directly at the troll. It soared across the room and smacked the troll on the shoulder. In terms of damage this did not much, but the troll heard the sound and shifted directions, converging on the ginger. “Want some more, pea-brain?” roared Weasley, grabbing another tap from the rubble. “That’s right! Over here, you bloody big git!”

There, in the shattered wreckage of the girls’ bathroom, Draco had an epiphany. He found himself, to his anguish, suddenly capable of seeing the virtue in Ron Weasley: that either from bravery, stupidity, or sheer force of will (or perhaps a tremendous combination of all three) Weasley simply did not freeze in the face of danger. He could stare down twelve feet of ugly and still think three steps ahead.

Potter, perhaps thinking the same thing, got ahold of himself and darted forward. He grabbed Draco and Granger each by the arm and hauled with all his might, dragging them toward the exit. “Come on!” he yelled. “Both of you! Run!”

But Draco’s legs were still jellied with fear. On the way to the door he tripped over loose tiles, and Potter’s grip wasn’t strong enough to keep him upright. He went down on his knees, kneecaps smacking against hard floor. Granger skidded to a halt, yanking Potter back in the doing, and shrieked “Draco!”

She hurried back for him. Potter groaned and followed her. Grabbing one of Draco’s arms apiece, they wrenched him upright.

Meanwhile, Weasley was giving a performance to rival the great Spanish matadors. He scattered shrapnel against the walls and the mirrors, distracting the troll with sounds from different locations, having identified — cleverly, Draco thought — that the troll had stronger hearing than it did eyesight. He scampered this way and that around its legs, forcing it to turn around in the confined space, giving it little room to wind up or swing with its club. When Draco fell, the noise made the troll spin around, and its club took out a row of sinks. Weasley threw himself to the side to avoid getting hit by shrapnel, but this put him in a corner, and when the troll swung around again, he was trapped.

“Come on,” Draco urged, herding Granger and Potter toward the door. “We’ve got an opening, it’s distracted! Let’s go!”

Granger gasped, “But Ron—”

“Yes, we’ll get a teacher and come back for him, let’s hurry!”

“We’re not leaving him,” snapped Potter, and he dropped Draco’s arm. Spinning around, he took out his wand — looked at it — probably came to the same realization about spells that Draco did earlier — and tossed it aside. Then, with a yell, he took a running jump and vaulted onto the troll’s back.

“Oh my God,” cried Draco hysterically.

“Harry!” screamed Granger.

Draco couldn’t believe he was going to watch Harry Potter die. To his surprise, he felt rather melancholy about it. Of course, he hadn’t liked the boy, but there was something vaguely depressing about someone surviving the Killing Curse from Lord Voldemort only to get knocked off by a mountain troll.

Oh, well.

He dove for the doorway. He made it about one step before he was hauled back by the scruff of his robes.

“We have to help them!” Granger shouted, wrenching him to heel. “Do something! Throw something! Cast a spell!”

He shook his head, despairing. The poor witch, he thought. The panic had driven her mad.

The troll roared, twisting and flailing its club. Potter was beating the troll’s head ineffectually with his fists, while Weasley shouted and scrabbled his legs on the tile, trying to drive himself further into the corner. The Boy Who Lived was clinging on for dear life, and any second, the troll was going to rip him off or catch him with the club. He had perhaps ten seconds before his luck ran out.

Granger drew her wand. “W-w-wingardium,” she said, but her voice was thin, and her grip was weak. “W-ingardium l-l-l—”

He suddenly saw what she was trying to do. The club made a wide arc and shattered one of the ceiling lights, raining glass and filament on them. He ducked, shielding himself with his arms, and she did the same. The troll gave a mighty shake, and Potter’s legs were thrown free — they wheeled in the air while the troll spun, kicking — but then he found his grip again. The club swung low and almost decapitated Weasley. Granger shrieked.

“Oh, for Merlin’s sake,” moaned Draco.

He ripped out his wand, aimed it at the beast, and executed the same gesture his mother had used to hang Christmas garlands for eleven years: “Wingardium Leviosa!”

The club flew suddenly out of the troll’s hand, rose high, high up into the air, turned slowly over — and dropped, with a sickening crack, onto its owner’s head. The troll swayed on the spot and then fell flat on its face, with a thud that made the whole room tremble.

Potter staggered to his feet. He wiped his nose with his sleeve and sniffed, shaking himself off. He looked for all the world like he’d just come back from a hard Quidditch match.

Weasley shoved himself upright, staring at what they had done. He looked at Draco, and it was he who spoke first. “All right then, Malfoy,” he said, and his voice was remarkably steady. “Good aim, mate.”

Granger let out a shaking breath. “Is it dead?”

Potter stooped over the head, getting far closer than Draco would have liked, and shook his head. “Knocked out,” he said. He glanced around, patting his pockets. “Any of you see where my wand went?”

Wordlessly, Granger bent and retrieved it from the rubble.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, so quiet it was almost soundless.

“You, too, Malfoy,” Potter added, and he patted Draco on the shoulder. “Good thinking, with that spell.”

Draco, whose jaw was still locked shut from fear and adrenaline, gave him a small, jerking nod.

Footsteps clattered from the hall, and the door burst open. (Granger jumped.) Professor McGonagall swept in, closely followed by Snape — walking with a slight limp, it appeared — with Quirrell bringing up the rear. Quirrell took one look at the troll, let out a faint whimper, and sat quickly down on a toilet, clutching his heart. When Snape saw Draco, he did a double-take.

Professor McGonagall swept over them, white-lipped. “Explain yourselves,” she said, in tones colder than a Scottish Yuletide.

Potter brushed a bit of rubble from his robes, suddenly shy.

Weasley looked behind him at the troll, then at McGonagall, like: You’re joking, right?

“It appears one can always trust Mr. Potter to locate himself at the center of attention,” Snape purred. “Nevertheless, if you cannot explain yourself, we will have no choice but to punish—”

“They came to find me,” blurted Granger. “I was here, in the bathroom, during the feast. I didn’t hear the alarm. So they came to get me. Harry, and Ron, and—” She glanced at him, and hesitated. “Draco.”

The fact that this was a lie was not lost on any of the first years, least of all Draco, who exchanged an eyebrow-raise with Potter.

“All three of them?” asked Snape, his expression neutral. His eyes flit between Potter and Draco. “Together?”

Granger swallowed. Then she nodded. “I owe them my life,” she said. “Harry and Ron distracted it. Ron threw rocks, and Harry jumped on its back. And Draco cast a spell that knocked it out.”

“Makes it sound more impressive than what we did,” muttered Weasley, and Potter stepped on his foot.

“You should have found a teacher! What you did was exceedingly stupid and profoundly irresponsible!”

“Respectfully, professor,” said Potter, “we didn’t exactly know that the troll was going to be in here.”

“Yeah,” chimed in Weasley. “We were just trying to get Hermione and go. Honestly, I could’ve lived a long, happy life without ever seeing a mountain troll.”

McGonagall did not find this amusing, but the combined weight of their excuses appeared to move her. “Five points from Gryffindor,” she said. “Each.”

“Each?” cried Weasley.

For Draco, too, this seemed an injustice. He exclaimed, “Professor, excuse me, but how many First Years could take on a mountain troll?”

Weasley pointed at him. “He’s right!” he said, as if he couldn’t believe it.

“And — excuse me, professor, really, but — it’s not Granger’s fault she was in the bathroom, and we didn’t know the troll would be here, and we would’ve gone to get a professor, but we assumed they were all busy, mostly because of the aforementioned troll.”

Weasley was nodding vigorously. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. Yeah.”

“And really, professor, when you think about it—”

“Harry and Ron were tremendously brave,” Granger piped up.

Draco suffered this slight out of common cause with her. “Right, and nobody got hurt, which is remarkable, since Potter got all the way up on its back—”

“Except for the troll, which is rather a good thing, if you think about it—”

“At the very least we oughtn’t lose points for doing a bit of pest control.”

“And Draco was ever so clever with the spell, you’d never know that we only learned it this morning!”

“Well, but it was really Granger’s idea—”

“Enough,” cut in Professor McGonagall, but her eyes were soft.

Snape was staring at Draco and Granger, his lips parted, a very strange expression on his face.

“Five points from Gryffindor each, for Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley, and Mr. Malfoy, given your failure to follow instructions and return to the common room,” said McGonagall. “And five points apiece for all four of you, for an admirable performance in the face of danger… does that seem fair to you, Severus?”

Snape closed his mouth and nodded.

“Very good. You may go.”

They hurried out of the chamber and didn’t speak at all until they had climbed two floors up. It was a relief to be away from the smell of the troll, quite apart from anything else.

“We should have gotten more than five points each,” Weasley grumbled.“A mountain troll! I’ll be washing that smell off for weeks. For five measly points!” He elbowed Granger. “You all right, then? Not still shaken up?”

She nodded. “It didn’t hurt me.”

“Not what I meant,” said Weasley, glancing at Draco. Draco arched an eyebrow and said nothing.

“Oh,” she said. “That.”

“Yeah. I don’t suppose… well. Let’s say us saving you makes it even?”

“She wouldn’t have been in there if it weren’t for you,” Draco said, offended.

Weasley grimaced guiltily. “Yeah,” he said, “s’pose you’re right, aren’t you. But still, I mean, it was pretty dangerous—”

“Yeah, so maybe you should feel worse about it,” Draco retorted.

“No, Draco, it’s all right.” Granger tucked her hair behind her ears. “I am grateful to you, Ron. And Harry. We can… I mean, you did save my life, and it’s not like it’s your fault the troll found us. And anyway I wasn’t very nice this morning, I suppose,” she said, though this last part was hard for her, and she tossed it out somewhat haughtily.

But it was good enough for Weasley, who shook her hand. “Bang on,” he said approvingly. “Square, yeah?”

She smiled. “Square.”

Then, to Draco’s shock, Weasley reached past her and stuck the same hand out to Draco. “You,” he said, “are an ungrateful git. You know that.”

“Do tell.” Draco eyed Weasley’s palm as if it contained a foul-smelling species of algae.

“But you did help. Might’ve saved my skin or something, I dunno. So.” He waggled his fingers. “Clean slate. I’m Ron Weasley. You are?”

Draco massaged his nose. He wondered what his mother would say if she could see him now. Shaking hands with a Weasley. The gut rebelled.

Granger tugged at his sleeve, obviously desirous that they should make up.

“Draco Malfoy,” he muttered, and without looking, he limply shook Weasley’s hand.

“Cool name,” said Weasley evenly, without a trace of mockery. “My gran says she knows your mum. You don’t know a Cedrella, by chance?”

He blinked. “Not Cedrella Black?”

“Yeah, yeah. That’s my Granny Weasley. And your mum’s Narcissa Black, yeah? So we’re like fourth cousins, twice removed, or something.”

“Oh, joy,” he said dully. “Hail and well met, coz.”

Weasley grinned. “Yeah. Think they disowned her for marrying my granddad. She was engaged to her cousin, ended up jilting him. It all seemed a bit pervy to me, but then, Weasleys don’t really go in for that sort of thing.”

Draco leered at him. “Never say never, cousin.”

To his surprise, Ron laughed.

They came to the portrait of the Pink Lady. “Pig snout,” said Potter.

The common room was packed and noisy. Everyone was eating leftovers from the feast, and floating platters of candy orbited the crowd like celestial bodies. “Ah, we’ve missed the best of it,” said Weasley, in devastated tones. “There’ll be only scraps left.”

“You had three helpings,” marveled Potter.

“I know, I’m starving.”

“Sweets!” exclaimed Granger. “I didn’t know there would be candy. I wonder if they have Cauldron Cakes. Draco, can you see if they have Cauldron Cakes?”

“Yeah, they’ve got Cauldron Cakes,” Weasley assured her, craning his long neck over the masses. “And Chocolate Frogs, and Bertie Bott’s. Want me to nab some?”

“Yes, please. And some sandwiches, if you don’t mind; I’ve barely eaten.”

“Sure. Harry, flag down some potatoes, would you? Draco, what do you want?”

Draco, who’d been preparing to slink off to the dorms, stopped. “What do you mean?”

“We’re getting plates, mate, do you want anything?” Weasley looked him up and down. “Are you leaving? They’ve got food here.”

“I know,” he said, somewhat stiffly. “I ate earlier.”

“You don’t want to stay for the party?” He nodded to Seamus Finnigan, who was setting up a ceedee player while Dean Thomas flipped through his collection.

“I’m not exactly —”

“Look!” Granger jumped on her tiptoes, clinging to Potter’s shoulders for balance. Potter was laughing and holding her steady. “They’ve got Turkish Delights! Real ones, muggle ones! I haven’t had one of those in ages! Harry, did you ever read…”

Draco looked back at Weasley. He shook his head.

Weasley shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said. “Have a good one.”

“Thanks,” said Draco coolly, and with a last glance, he retreated up the stairs.

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NEXT CHAPTER: 9/4/22

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