The Black Lake

Chapter 47: The Black Lake

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

The night before the Second Task arrived on a peal of thunder that silenced the hour-bell.

The study table in the reference section squeezed to fit three, though one made very little use of it. At the nadir of his desperation, with approximately thirteen hours separating him from the frigid waters of the Black Lake, Harry had given up, laid down on the floor under their table, and started reciting any idea that came to mind.

“I should have become an Animagus,” he said. “Could ask Sirius. He’d know how.”

“Smashing,” said Draco. “Ask if they’ll put off the Task for a few years while you sort it out.”

“Cracking useful, innit,” said Harry distantly, as if he hadn’t heard. “Turning into an animal. Could become a fish… a frog, even…”

“A shark,” suggested Draco, tossing down his quill.

“Ooh, you’re right. Shark’s much better.”

“Yes, because life gets much easier when you don’t have opposable thumbs,” said Hermione. “That’ll obviously be worth the years of research you’ll have to put into it, plus the months-long alchemical conversion process, and the registration fee—”

“See, I was all in, until you brought up the registration fee.”

“—and don’t forget lots of juicy nightmarish consequences if it goes wrong…”

“Newts,” persisted Harry. “Eels.”

“Potter?”

“Hm?”

“I mean this from the bottom of my heart,” said Draco, and did. “I cannot overstate the amount of money I would pledge to your campaign to become a newt.”

“Thanks, mate. Knew I could depend on you.” Harry yawned. It was late enough that Madam Pince would soon come creeping around with a candle snuffer and throw them out.

Hermione’s nerves had suffered too much to tolerate the grating of hijinks. She snapped her book shut. “This is ridiculous. Harry, you’re not becoming a newt.”

“What an utterly heartbreaking sentence to walk into,” said Fred, swinging around the corner. “Harry, don’t listen to her.”

“Dream big. Prove ’em wrong,” echoed George, strolling in behind him. “Tell you what, when I was six, I wanted to be a wampus.”

“He’s not lying, he really did.”

“Ran around on all fours for a month before Mum straightened me out.”

“What’d she say to you, Georgie, that did it?”

“That I couldn’t be a wampus until I passed my N.E.W.T.s,” he said wisely, thumbing his nose, “and after that, God help her, it was out of her hands. Wise woman. Funny enough, McGonagall said the same thing. Speaking of—”

“She wants to see you, Hermione,” said Fred.

“Is she in trouble?” Harry sat up, and promptly smacked his cranial plate on the table.

“Dunno,” yawned George, amidst yowls of pain. “Don’t think so, but the old girl didn’t seem happy, either. She’s waiting in her office. Told us to escort you.”

“Actually, she told Ron,” corrected Fred, “but since he’s got a busy schedule—”

“Oh, packed — Sulk, Sulk, Double Sulk, dinner, Stare Out Window at eight, Cry Into Pillow—”

“—don’t forget Long For Harry’s Tender Embrace, that’s a staple—”

“Can’t blame him, though, that’s the Gryffindor pastime. Anyway, he delegated.” Fred rattled her chair good-naturedly. “Up with ye, Young Granger. Don’t look like that, bet you’re getting a commendation or something.”

Hermione was not reassured. She darted a look at Draco. He raised his eyebrow and pushed his chair back — but she declined with a tiny shake of her head.

“I’ll meet you in the common room,” she said. “Get a head start on Eighteenth-Century Charms, there might be something we’ve missed. And start with the appendices, they’re more efficient. And— oh!”

Trailing instructions, she made it only a few steps away from the table before she stopped, turned around, and hurried back to jab her wand under the table.

“Episkey!”

“…Thanks, Mione.”

“You’re welcome.” She turned to Draco. “Don’t let him concuss himself before I get back, would you?”

He lazily saluted.

Her smile was frail and transparent, like waterlogged paper. Then she followed Fred and George out of the library.

He watched her go. What could McGonagall want with her? Exceptional compliments on her paper? A chat about theoretical Transfiguration? A job?

“Jellyfish,” said Harry, thoughtfully, by and by.

He peered balefully under the table.

“Amusing as it would be, watching you transform into a creature that quite literally lacks a brain,” he said, “I do worry about being able to tell the difference.”

---

The clocks announced that it was morning, though the sky gave them little reason to believe it. It poured from midnight through breakfast, stopping playfully now and then for recesses, only to take up again whenever Harry started looking too hopeful about it. Draco dressed in layers of thick black wool — finding himself unexpectedly grateful for Mrs. Weasley’s warm, if somewhat lumpy, emerald jumper — and swept on his thickest cloak, an iridescently waterproof item in petrol black, with a spotted fur ruff and a cavernous hood that shrouded half his face. The sabled mantle broadened his shoulders and more than faintly evoked a viking.

Harry stumbled down to breakfast about ten minutes before it ended and collapsed across from Draco in a pile of wiry limbs. Hogwarts’ finest, he was not, at least not at this particular moment. Going by sight, Draco would set the over-under for his sleep quotient at three hours.

“W’zm’nee.”

Draco relocated a plate of eggs into Harry’s orbit, Summoned a mug, and emptied all that remained in the coffee pot. “Eat,” he said. “Drink. Elocute.”

“Wuzza?”

“That was none of the above. Try again.”

Harry sectioned a gelatinous ovum of egg with his spoon, held it at eye level, and grimly ingested it.

“Have you seen Hermione?” he said thickly, scrubbing his mouth with the back of his hand.

“No. Have you?”

She hadn’t appeared in the common room last night, though they’d waited for her until one or two o’clock. Whatever it was she had to talk about with McGonagall, it had driven them far into the wee hours and perhaps even beyond, for when Draco came down that morning, Crookshanks was still lurking lonesomely in the armchair by the fire.

It needled him that she hadn’t come back. Hermione wouldn’t miss a single minute of preparation, not this close to the wire. And it would kill her if Harry went to the Second Task without saying goodbye.

“No. Stop looking at the door,” said Harry. He shoved up his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

“I’m not.”

“You are. It’s making me nervous.”

“I’m making you nervous.”

“Yeah, you’re not really projecting confidence, here.”

“Confidence in what?”

“Exactly,” said Harry blearily. He refilled the coffee mug. “Did you see her last night?”

“No.”

“That’s weird, right?” He frowned. “Do you think it’s worth a look…?”

He was relieved he hadn’t had to suggest it. “Might as well, I suppose.”

“She wouldn’t like us doing this,” said Harry doubtfully, but he was rummaging through his satchel. “Something something, outrageous invasion of privacy…”

“Yes, yes. She can take it up with us when we know she’s not lying somewhere with her ankle shattered in a trip stair.”

“…And there’s something I wasn’t even worried about until you mentioned it, so thanks.”

“Really?” he said absently, clearing a space for the map between dishes. “First thing that occurred to me.”

The Map unfurled at the whisper of mischief managed, its inkblots flowering into towers and long labyrinthine corridors running into each other in many-axled joints. The whole castle opened up beneath them in a perfect diorama, fully studded, not one room neglected, not one name left out. Unfortunately, this was not an advantage. At this hour, there were so many people moving in so many different directions that the paper practically wriggled with the amount of ink that moved on it, and each name blurred into the ones around it. Draco could hardly pick out his own dot, trapped as it was in the smear of black lettering across the Great Hall. Across the grounds, more names, including several in French and Bulgarian, ran in ceaseless undulating waves that washed up on the shores of the Black Lake, where the names ran so thick it became an unbroken border of black: meanwhile, in the castle, the hallways were packed and streaming with names that winnowed in and out of sight as students dove off down hidden corridors or slid down staircases or simply hurtled along down to their destination. It was not picking a needle from a haystack; at least a needle was not a piece of hay. Finding any particular name on the Map just then would be like finding a single four-leaf clover in a field the size of a quidditch stadium — while sitting in the top box.

“I can’t see her. Can you?”

“Of course not, it’s hopeless,” he snapped, and flicked the Map back at Harry. “Might as well try to Summon the witch.”

He wasn’t worried about her. Obviously, if he was worried about anyone, it was Harry, who at the very least deserved to have all of his friends there to support him while he drowned.

“…Which wouldn’t work?”

“No. You can’t Summon someone, only their clothes. And anyway—”

“HEY! ’ARRY!”

Hagrid came swaggering into the hallway, trailing an eighth sea from the rain-slick tail of his greatcoat.

“Beau’iful day for it, innit?” he inquired, without a trace of irony. “Been out gettin’ the unicorn babies back inna their paddock. Their horns’ll be comin’ in any day now! Anyway.” Hagrid sat down on the Gryffindor bench, which shrieked in alarm at the unexpected load and sent a first-year flying on the other end.

“Nervous, eh, ’Arry?”

“Bit,” said Harry.

“Ha! Tha’s alrigh’. I’d’ve bin worried before I saw yeh take on tha’ Horntail, but I know now yeh can do anythin’ yeh set yer mind ter. I’m not worried at all. Yeh’re goin’ ter be fine. Got yer clue worked out, haven’ yeh?”

“Yes. Well,” said Harry, when Draco made a shrill inquiring noise, “we worked it out, Draco and Hermione and me. Together. Us.”

“Us?”

“They’re alrigh’, you know, those two,” said Hagrid, and Draco could have sworn on his mother that the half-giant winked at him. “Now, no belly for real work, mind. Can’t hardly tell a dugbog from a bowtruckle, neither. But tha’s alrigh’, you’ve got loads of tha’ yerself. ’Spect you’ll be fine. Nothin’ yeh can’t do with a few good friends.”

Except breathe, unfortunately.

“Thanks, Hagrid.”

“Don’ thank me yet! Dumbledore says I’m ter take yeh down to the Lake.” He patted Harry on the shoulder and rose to his feet, sending a cascade reaction down the bench that displaced a sixth year into his porridge. “Give yeh a chance to practice on the way down, eh? Get yeh all warmed up?” He mimed a boxer’s circling fists, grinning; to everyone’s luck, he did not actually feint a punch, which might have caved in Harry’s skull. Harry, oblivious, laughed and hopped up like skull-crunching was simply his idea of a good time.

“Keep the Map,” he told Draco. “See if you can find Hermione on it — come to think of it, you could ask Ron if he’d seen her.”

This last was adorable. Draco’s reply was silent and scathing.

“…Or not, I guess. He, er… well, if you see him, would you let him know where I am? And Hermione, if you find her?”

“Certainly. Any other messages that need sending, while you’re at it? A tax filing you’ve left overdue?”

“Git,” said Harry. “Thanks. Well, wish me luck; hope I don’t drown.”

He sounded like he was preparing to step off a cliff and trying to manifest himself a parachute through force of will.

He followed Hagrid out of the Great Hall, a pair comically mismatched in size. In the entrance, Hagrid opened his umbrella, and holding it carefully to shield Harry’s head, he ushered him out into the rain.

Draco watched them and found himself wondering who would have collected Draco, if he had been in Harry’s place. Who would Dumbledore have sent for him? Professor Snape? He couldn’t imagine Snape holding an umbrella over his head; he’d be as likely to scold him for forgetting the Water-Repellent Charm. Professor McGonagall didn’t dislike him, but he wasn’t her favorite, either.

Harry had shown up at Hogwarts with nothing, and now he had a small army. How’d he done that? It had to be some sort of skill. Certainly Draco hadn’t ever had the knack.

As the hour crept closer to nine, the Map swarmed with print. He peeled open every flap and pored over it with refreshed intensity. Hermione was not in the Gryffindor common room, where no one lingered but a few house-elves; she was not in the library, nor the girls’ bathrooms, an exercise in extraordinary impropriety that he justified by reasoning that one could just as easily break your neck on a slippery bathroom floor as anywhere else; nor, he found, with increasing unease, was she in the Hospital Wing. She was not in the dungeons, which were empty, nor in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, where, oddly, RONALD WEASLEY was loitering.

He changed tac, and searched for the Weasley twins. Those two at least could give her last known whereabouts. But they were floating uselessly down the lawns, along with most of Hogwarts Castle, to the cluster of black lines around the lake.

When his eyes drifted there, to the very furthest corner of the paper — just where the castle’s borders melted into the uncharted thatching of the Forbidden Forest, which not even the Marauders had dared to plot — he found a cluster of names lurking in a small egg-sized hemisphere to the south of the castle. CHO CHANG… FLORA CARROW… GABRIELLE DELACOUR… HERMIONE GRANGER.

The Map had planted her in the middle of the lake.

Which was absurd. Was he supposed to infer she’d opted for a morning swim? With a cohort of strangers? The Map must have been glitching. With so many people on the grounds at once, it had to happen. Enchantments misfired.

But he didn’t know where else she would be. More to the point, it didn’t matter. She should have been here. Hermione would have mowed her way through ten scores of grindylows just to wish Harry goodbye.

He left the Great Hall at speed.

The doors to the entrance hall floated open, buttressed by arms of icy wind and waves of half-frozen drizzle. He shoved through the packed mass of black cloaks and umbrellas, sidestepped a group of Hufflepuffs puppeteering a paper mache badger, and tripped down the lawn.

A dandelion bloom of fog lingered over the heart of the lake. The rest of it had peeled back from the banks, revealing sets of high wooden stands, dressed in the banners of the four champions.

Though miserable, the weeks of thunderstorms had paid them one favor by melting the ice on the lake, the only remnants of which now clustered in small trimmings of lace around the shores, and dangled in jagged knives from the trees. For the purposes of Harry’s survival, this was an improvement. For purposes of comfort, it was not. The waters bucked and swayed, stained dark by the roof of thunderclouds above them, and the wind ripped big ribbons of water across the surface, like stripping fabric from a dress. Foam crashed each time a wave folded onto itself, and the stands groaned in the wind.

He side-checked a short Ravenclaw out of the way and ripped apart two canoodling Gryffindor third years with relish, sweeping down the mud-slick pathway to the lake like he had a hellhound on his heels. A group of girls in long leather dusters and berets giggled when he swept past them, and one whistled, calling something he didn’t make out.

Rounding the bend by Hagrid’s hut, he sidestepped a rat-nosed Ravenclaw and slammed into a wall.

Or what felt like one, anyway. He went keeling into the side of the hut and slipped on a glassy crust of frost, pinwheeling into the mud.

When he blinked his vision back, starry-eyed and snarling, he found the brick wall was actually a person, though going by expression, the difference was frankly scant: it was Ron. The boy was sprawled across a pumpkin like the centerfold of Redheads Monthly.

“Watch where you’re going!”

“You watch where you’re going,” snapped Ron, shoving himself upright. “What’s got you in such a hurry?”

“One, none of your business. Two, none of your business, and three, how the hell did you get down here? I thought you were in the Defense classroom. Also, none of your business.”

Ron’s nose wrinkled.

“How—” He stopped, winced, and gave a metered exhale. “The Map?”

“No, there’s a tracker on the rod up your arse. We’ve had your location for weeks. What do you think?”

“I’ve got a rod up my—” Again, Ron stopped himself. He placed his hands together and breathed deeply, and when he opened his eyes, they were the clear, fierce blue of whitewater rapids. “Never mind,” he snapped. “There’s a secret passageway from the Godric statue into Hagrid’s cellar. The twins showed me. That’s not important, though. Listen, Malfoy: what’s the plan?”

Draco blinked. “What’s the plan?” he said incredulously. He rolled up into a kneeling position, massaging his spine where Ron had knocked it practically through Hagrids wall. With his luck, he’d have displaced a disc. “Oh, now you’re taking an interest, are you? Have you got money riding on it?”

“Shut up. I know you and Hermione came up with something for him, so what is it? And if you say it’s the Bubble-Head, I’ll give your head another knock, because we both know Harry can’t, and it was a waste of time—”

“You’ve got an exceptional nerve, you know, coming in at this hour—”

“Malfoy!”

“Fine,” he said, startled. “There isn’t a plan. Currently, Potter’s best bet is to part the waters like the Red Sea.”

Ron’s eyes bugged. “He can’t do that.”

“No, really?”

“I just — Merlin, what have you been doing for the past month? You sent him out there with bloody nothing?”

“Fat lot of help you were!”

“I thought you had it handled! I thought you and Hermione would figure it out!”

“Well, next time you take a sabbatical from caring about Potter’s life,” snarled Draco, shoving himself upright, “we’ll be sure to give you some take-home assignments.”

“Oh, fuck you!”

“Fuck you!”

“Fuck you more!”

“Fuck you for running off and leaving him—”

“Fuck you for what you said about Burrow—”

“Fine!”

Ron blinked in surprise.

“But admit you were horrid to Granger.”

“Wh— I didn’t say anything about Hermione!”

“Parents? Animals?”

“Oh. Don’t give me that. You are a shit about her parents,” snapped Ron. “I don’t know why she lets you get away with it, when she damn well wouldn’t let me or Harry do the same.”

“Are you joking? She doesn’t let me ‘get away’ with anything. She jumps down my throat every time I mention blood—”

“You’re lucky you still have a throat, after some of the things you’ve said,” said Ron incredulously, “and she cuts you massive slack, mate, I don’t know how you miss it. You’re a big — big bloody elitist, is what you are. Do you even know how much it bothers her, the way you talk to Daphne?”

“Why,” he said, his teeth gritted so tight they’d soon crack, “does everyone insist on bringing up Daphne Greengrass?”

“Because it’s bad as French, sometimes! The way you get around each other!” Ron threw up his hands. “Like you’ve got this secret club you don’t even bother to explain to us, the airs and the etiquette lessons and the ‘suitable’ dates and everything, and then you’re surprised when we’re offended, like: ‘Gosh, don’t be stupid, you’re so far below us it’s not even offensive for us to exclude you! Oh, but don’t worry! It doesn’t really matter! The only people who really care are, you know, all of our families! But we’re willing to sit with you peasants, so clearly, we’re the good ones!’”

When he was finished his breath guttered in steaming bursts from his nose, like dragonsmoke.

“And Hermione just — takes it,” he gasped. “For you. And I don’t have a bloody clue why.”

Draco drew himself up to his full height. It put him roughly at eye level with Ron.

“What you don’t know about me and Hermione could fill a library.”

A cool splash of light rain stung their faces, like a wave of sand.

“No shit,” said Ron, like he was very stupid indeed.

Draco closed his eyes. It occurred to him how deeply silly the whole thing was.

They were shouting at each other in the middle of a pumpkin patch. Meanwhile, Harry was standing alone on a dock in the lake, the poor bastard, preparing for a Task he wasn’t remotely competent to handle, and Hermione was still missing.

“This is, you realize,” he said, “the worst possible place, or time, to have this conversation.”

“What doesn’t happen now, happens never.”

“What?”

“S’ what my mum says,” he mumbled. “Usually when she wants a chore done.”

There was a sober beat.

“Is she well?”

“Huh?”

“Your mother,” he clarified. “How is she?”

“She’s… good, I think.”

“And your father? Enjoying his work?”

“I reckon,” said Ron, bewildered.

Draco nodded stiffly. “They were generous hosts,” he said. “Custom demands a certain level of reciprocity.”

“…What?”

“They can come for tea,” he snapped.

Ron blinked at him. His mouth twitched.

“Be careful with that,” he said. “You don’t want my mum getting a good look at your inheritance. She’ll be auctioning off Ginny’s maidenhead over sandwiches.”

“Dowry haggling is a hallowed tradition. My mother would give her a fair price.”

Ron snickered. Draco took a deep breath.

“I have said things.”

He stopped snickering.

“Uncharitable things.”

“Malfoy,” Ron began, tiredly.

“I have,” he said, “a talent for it.”

Ron quieted, his head cocked, like he was more interested than offended. “So, what?” he said. “It just ‘slipped out’? I’m not s’posed to take it seriously, because you call takesies-backsies? You were fucking awful.”

“You know, I do actually — never mind. You — it was inconceivable that you wouldn’t take it seriously. That was the point. If someone had said that to me, I would have dueled them.”

“And that’s what you wanted? To hit me? Do you honestly think that’s better?”

“My point,” he said, with difficulty, “is that I am exceptionally good at lying.”

They surveyed each other, furtively.

“You’re such a twat,” sighed Ron.

“Fine then, never mind!”

“I figured it out,” he muttered. “While I was away. I knew I’d botched it as soon as I left, I was a shit. I know. It was my… I started the fight, me and my stupid mouth, but that’s why I felt like I couldn’t… I wanted to come back, but I didn’t know how. I thought maybe — and this makes me sound like a total arse, okay, I know that, but — have you ever just wanted to be missed?”

“Obviously.”

And Ron seemed surprised.

“You’re not the first one to do this, you know. I thought you had remembered.”

“Oh,” he said, pausing. “Yeah. Did you… I mean, but everything’s easier, in second year.”

“Typical Weasley, putting the work off to the last minute.”

Ron snickered.

“Yeah,” he said vaguely. “Like — I dunno. They respected you, though, even when they were pissed at you. And they need you. Harry needs all of us, that’s how he is, he hasn’t got anyone else, and Hermione — I mean, sometimes I think you’ve got remote control of each other’s heads or something, I dunno what all’s going on with that, but whatever it is, ‘need’ is probably in it somewhere. And yeah, I’m jealous of that, sure. No point trying to put the kneazle back in the bag on that one, I guess. But that’s not all it is. You get it, don’t you? How it’s different?” He paused. “And then you come in talking about my house—”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“Okay, sure, but you said it, though—”

“Fine. You called me a twat.”

“No, I meant that one,” said Ron at once.

Draco waited for offense to settle in, but it drifted over him harmlessly, stinging lightly without taking.

“So what?” he said. “What do you want?”

Ron considered him. “I want you to say something nice about me,” he decided.

“That’s it?”

“Yeah. I want you to say something nice.”

“Fine. You’re good at chess. Square?”

“I — no, I mean — well. Hang on. You think I’m good—?”

“Oh. Not this.”

Ron was perplexed. “What d’you mean?”

“If this is about being needed,” he said impatiently, “then there’s a boy out there who stops wanting to live when you’re not talking to him, and I assure you, he doesn’t feel the same way about anyone else. Also, if you don’t come back soon he’s going to try to teach me to arm-wrestle, and I will quite simply never forgive you.”

A horn crooned from the stands, rippling queerly across the water. A bellow of excitement followed from the crowds.

“Shit!”

“Well said.” He broke into a run.

“Wait — hang on! Malfoy! Draco!”

“What?”

Ron seized his arm and hauled him back, and nearly dislocated his shoulder, at that. He really did have an arm for quidditch. “Here,” he blurted, fumbling through his pockets. He wrenched out a handful of something that looked like shoelaces marinated in bile, and Draco balked in horror.

“What the hell is that?”

“Gillyweed,” Ron said proudly. And, ignoring Draco’s cry of horror, he slapped the pustule of gray noodles into Draco’s palm. The texture was worse than it looked, and that was no small thing. “Get that to Harry and tell him to eat it. It’ll let him breathe underwater.”

“What? How do you know? And where did you find it?”

“Explain later. The Task’s starting. Go!”

He gazed with doubt at the slimy hash in his palm. He had a very hard decision to make: whether to let Harry take his chances, alone, with nothing, or to trust Ron Weasley — a man with no great knack for Herbology, or any other field of magic, really — when he said that he had solved a Task meant for seventh-year wizards of tremendous skill.

He closed his fist around the gillyweed and ran.

“Oi! And where’s Hermione? I couldn’t find her!”

He ignored him and raced down to the lake, his cloak sweeping the mud behind him in a small spray of displaced frost.

The precise combination of acrobatics and violence that carried him to the top of the stands would later elude him, though he had a keen physical memory of his ears clouding up from the intermittent roars and his legs tingling from the strain of a breathless ascent up the stairs. It was the only way into the stands, though he knew Harry would not be there. The judges sat in a gilded box of their own, framed by scores of crowded stands. There was a tent on the dock, tucked under a hemisphere of shimmery Heating Charms. It was gold, and embroidered with the Hogwarts crest.

A harsh wind lifted from the scalloped bowl of the lake and thrust its icy fingers into the stands, snatched a loose red scarf from its owner’s neck, and passed it into the waiting hand of Theo. He was the youngest member by a decade in a box full of Ministry officials, his father among them.

“Lost your seat?” he roared to Draco. “Come up, we’ve a spare! You remember my father!”

Sibelius Nott inclined his face from beneath the deep cowl of an umbrella, observed him, and gave a thin-lipped nod. Behind him sat Brutus Travers, looking small, wet, and miserable, clutching a dragonhead cane, and on Theo’s other flank sat a man Draco vaguely recognized, though not by name, for he had last seen him when he’d dropped a bookshelf on him.

He was an auror. He wore a bowler hat, and a ghoulish scar running up his right cheek, plunging through his eye, and splintering off at his eyebrow. The scarring on his cornea was glassy and thick.

“Draco, this is Odin Davis,” said Theo, “my father’s right hand, which makes him the Minister’s, what, right knucklebone, I suppose? Number one silver bullet stockpiler in Britain, by the way, if you ever need one, just don’t call on full moons—”

“Theodore.”

Sibelius’ mouth moved little when he spoke. Most of the sounds came from growling ululations in his throat. Theo’s mouth, meanwhile, kept running like a carriage careening down a slope.

“He vetted Mad-Eye for the Defense position, did you know? Did you even know Mad-Eye was vetted? Of course, it had to be an auror, after last year, and Mad-Eye was the only one Dumbledore could get my father to agree on.”

“Theodore!”

Theo waved a hand over his shoulder and drew Draco out of earshot. “Anyway,” he said conspiratorially, “the good money’s on Cassius to win it, but I’ve put my whole inheritance on Potter for second place, after that performance with the Horntail, and also to shut Goyle up about Krum. Didn’t want to, mind, but Pans said I had to start showing off these so-called ‘principles’ I’m hiding up my bloomers. Don’t tell her I said that, her darling head won’t fit through the doors. This is all to say I’ll have to snap my wand and kill myself if Potter takes third, so I hope he’s a strong swimmer.”

“He can’t swim,” said Draco, who had heard only half of this. He was scanning the crowd for a way into the champions’ tent.

“What,” said Theodore flatly.

“He can dog-paddle, he’s not helpless. But he can’t swim properly. His m— his family never taught him.”

“He can’t swim?”

“Nott, I didn’t realize you cared. Have you told him how you feel?”

“Draco! Really! Do you realize how embarrassing it’s going to be if Hogwarts finishes last? After what Diggory did at the dance?”

“It’s a low priority at the moment. And — hang on, what’s your problem with Diggory?”

“Are you blind? That business with Macdonald, are you serious?”

“That? I never understood what your problem was — you’re already friends with Zabini, and he’s the loudest rumor in the castle since Godric’s harem—”

“A rumor I’m fairly certain Blaise started, because he thinks it’s funny, and that’s different. Blaise is rich and discreet and irrelevant, he’s basically an upjumped merchant, but Diggory is a Diggory, which is, supposedly, important — but listen, does Potter have any hope? At all?”

“He might. I need to get to the champions’ tent.”

“You’re killing me here,” said Theo, dumbfounded. “Now?”

“Or anytime before the Second Task starts, you know, you’ve at least forty-five seconds to decide—”

“Fine! Fine! Give me a moment.”

Theo wrestled back into the box, clambering without much dignity over Odin Davis’ knees, and grabbed his father’s shoulder. Sibelius cast him off with a sharp gesture of the elbow, and chastised, Theo drew back; but then his father turned his head, and they had a brief, fast exchange in low voices interspersed with nodding, talking like coworkers engaged on a joint project. Sibelius reached into his robe pocket and with an almost bored expression dangled a small billfold of purple leather, hooked on one finger, which Theo plucked out of his hand and made off with. He gave neither acknowledgement nor thanks. Neither of them looked at each other when it was done.

Draco had never known his father, except as a young boy. The proper conduct of fathers and sons, in public, or otherwise, would forever be a mystery to him. If Lucius had lived, it was quite possible he would have treated Draco the same way, and it wouldn’t have meant that he loved him any less. But he couldn’t imagine Arthur Weasley doing the same.

“Here,” Theo said tightly, stuffing the billfold into Draco’s breast pocket. “That’s a Ministry pass, it’ll get you through the wards around the tent. Down the staircase, around the back, second door, and if anyone asks you what you’re doing, just scowl.”

“Thank you,” he said, after a stunned beat. Half of Theo was utterly insufferable, half of him downright decent, and the problem was that he could also be both at once.

“Don’t thank me,” he muttered. “This isn’t generosity, I really do have a bet with Greg. Go.”

Perhaps to relieve any lingering awkwardness of gratitude, he shoved Draco down the stairs.

He plummeted past three rows of seats before catching himself, which both gave him a head start on running and freed from his lips a word that made every man in Sibelius Nott’s box turn their heads.

The wards around the champions’ tent admitted him with a burble of magic. A Ministry attendant squeaked at him as he swept past, and he flashed the billfold without opening it. The attendant quailed and scuttled back, thankfully declining to inspect it any further. The flap to the champions’ tent bulged and parted at the twitch of his wand.

The tent, lit well by camping lanterns, was warm and crowded. Fleur and Cassius lay on sofas around a deep fire pit, relaxed supine like marble statues, adorned with as little clothing as possible to reveal the artist’s talent for form — close-fitting swim shirts and pants that terminated high on the thigh, in pale gold and ice-silver. Behind them lurked the dark idol of Krum, his red undershirt pulled taut across a bear’s chest of muscle, and as Draco swept in, they traded chilly looks.

Harry sprang up from his chair. “What happened? Is Hermione alright?”

“Eez it time to start?” said Fleur, eyeing him with so little curiosity it registered as active disgust.

“Nothing. Possibly. No. Potter, come here.”

Cassius’ eyes followed them as they went.

In a musty corner of the tent, he flashed the slimy contents of his palm, wedged them firmly into Harry’s hand, and then wiped his fingers on Harry’s shirt.

Harry reacted as any cogent person would: he yelped and jerked his hand away.

“Ew! Yuck! What?”

“That’s gillyweed, you ungrateful brat, and don’t drop it. It’ll probably taste worse with dirt on. Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to put that in your mouth, and you’re going to keep it there, and when the Task starts, you’re going to swallow it.”

His eyes swelled nearly beyond the rims of his glasses. “And it’ll work? I’ll breathe underwater?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Magic, idiot.” He had no idea.

Harry grinned. Draco, having been around this block more times than he cared to acknowledge, sighed and held out his arms.

The hug punched open valves in his lungs he’d forgotten about, cracked that disc from earlier straight back into place, and, had he been choking, would have forcefully dislodged any solid objects loitering in his trachea. Harry had a promising career in mediwizardry.

“I knew you’d figure it out!”

“What are you doing back zhere?” Fleur shrilled over her shoulder. “Champions are not to receive ‘elp!”

“Nothing! He’s not! He — er — brought me a bite to eat,” blurted Harry.

Fleur’s mouth thinned. “Personally, I do not like to win by cheating,” she said. “But perhaps zhis eez because I am French.”

Draco narrowed his eyes. “Votre dossier suggère que vous n’aimez pas du tout gagner.”

Cassius snickered.

She whipped her head around, smacking Cassius in the face with several newtons of blonde. “Qu’est-ce que tu m’as dit, petit furet d’homme?”

She was filling her lungs for another run of inflammatory French when the tent flap burst, and in flounced Percy Weasley, followed by Dumbledore, Karkaroff, Maxime, and Crouch.

“Champions! Gather!” announced Percy, who was clearly having the time of his life. “Miss Delacour, Mr. Warrington, thank you! Mr. Krum! Hello, Mr. Potter!”

“Percy, mate, we shared a shower.”

“Speak up if you have a question, thank you, Mr. Potter!” said Percy loudly. “Otherwise, silence, please! We’re in a hurry! And you, Mr. Malfoy — Mr. Malfoy?” He peered hawkishly over his spectacles, blinking, and for a moment he resembled his mother very much. “What are you doing?”

“…Leaving?”

“Indeed! Please do!” said Percy, strangled.

Dumbledore smiled serenely at him as he passed. If there he caught a wink somewhere, hidden behind that crag of snow-white beard, then he ascribed it to a hyperactive imagination running on adrenaline afterburn.

He climbed back up the rickety staircases into the stands, and crested a row of seats so packed there was no hope of recovering a good one for himself. He searched the stands, navigating by the ginger constellations of the Weasley clan: Fred and George led the Gryffindor boxes in chorus, while Lee Jordan conducted from his mount atop their shoulders. Ginny and Neville bundled together beneath a fleece blanket near the back. Ron sat with Daphne in a box by the railing. He had loaned her his scarf, and she was swaddled in an unusual shade of red, warm, preening, and happy as a clam.

He wanted to know where Hermione was. He would have seen her by now. She was impossible not to notice, with the hair, and the magnetism, and whatnot.

Across the lake, the fog curdled. He wondered why the Ministry was bothering to maintain the Disillusionment Charm, even now, when it was obvious the Task would be in the lake.

Where was she? It was distracting.

The Map said she’d been on the lake. But that wasn’t possible. She couldn’t be on the lake, and unless she was in the dungeons, she couldn’t be beneath it. The dungeons didn’t extend that far, anyway. She would have to be in the lake. Under it.

Draco almost tore the Map when he ripped it out of his bag.

“WELLLLLLLLCOME TO THE TRIWIZARD TOURNAMENT!”

A hiss of its password sent ink blooming over its pages, slower than it had ever been before.

“Our champions have prepared for months! Studying! Practicing! Training! Learning! AND! It was all! For! This! Moment! Deep in the fathoms of the Black Lake, champions will have precisely one hour to recover something taken from them! Any later… well! They won’t have a second chance!”

Curlicues of ink twined together into the shape of the lake, and one darted across its surface, swirling into a cluster of names at its heart. Hermione Granger.

Flora Carrow had come to the Yule Ball with Cassius. Cho had gone with Harry. Gabrielle Delacour he didn’t know, but he could muster a guess.

And Hermione, of course, had made the mistake of going with Krum.

“WISH THEM LUCK, LADS! We’ll start on my whistle! On the count of three: One! Two! Three!”

People. Something taken. She was in the lake—

“Weasley!”

At least four heads turned. A lash of his wand cut a path through the crowd, scattering people and cries of dismay, and he darted through the fleeting chasm.

“Oh, hello, Draco!”

He ignored Daphne. Most of his brain had been shifted onto autopilot.

“She’s in the lake.”

“What? Who?”

“Look! Harry’s doing something!” Daphne pointed. A wide white screen of rippling parchment so large it must have been skinned from dragonhide had unfolded over the judges’ table, and across this screen spilled a bleary vision of the four champions, flickering between them, in the same way as the World Cup’s Spell-O-Vision projector. First a wide shot of Cassius and Fleur, still standing on the dock, flicking flawless Bubble-Head Charms from the tips of their wands, and executing a pair of nearly synchronous swan-dives into the water; then to Krum, who had done something to the upper half of his body, and now hurtled through the water in a blur of gray, cutting too deep into the kelp for the Spell-O-Vision to follow him; and then, finally, Harry, who was thrashing under the water, clutching his neck. He did not seem able to breathe.

“I’ve killed him,” Ron said hoarsely, transfixed.

“I don’t care. Do you hear me? Granger’s in the lake. The prize is hostages.”

Ron tore his watery eyes from the screen. “What?”

“THEY’RE OFF!” bellowed Bagman. “Now, I said first thing, a Bubble-Head is the way to go with this one, and that’s just what Warrington and Delacour have done. Textbook Charm work, flawless execution — of course, it’s down to them to keep concentration, which will be no easy thing, with what we’ve got in store! Now, Krum, on the other hand, he’s taking a risk with human Transfiguration, devilishly hard, sometimes irreversible if you get it wrong, and he’s done a full head-and-shoulders, which is even harder. He’ll be aiming to get points for sophistication, he lost those in the First Task… and Harry Potter, well, he’s just not having a good time, is he?”

Harry had stopped thrashing and started to sink. His hands floated above his head. Through the green filmy texture of the waves, the light winked through pale webbed slits between them. Rough ridges scarred either side of his neck, and a marbled vein of blood spiraled from one flap.

“What are we s’posed to do?” Ron said helplessly. “If she’s down there, it’s up to Harry.”

“We find Dumbledore—”

“Tell him what? Lodge a complaint, will you?”

“—slap him with a lawsuit that’ll make the Board piss itself, I’ll take this place to the fucking cleaner’s—”

Harry’s eyes opened, and they were luminous, with wide slitted pupils, like a frog’s.

“GILLYWEED!” howled Bagman. “Yes! There’s something I didn’t think we’d see today! Rare as hen’s teeth, only grows in certain underwater conditions, farmed by mermaids, and they won’t sell it for less than a pound of flesh, those greedy gulpies! But Potter’s found some! And he’s moving fast!”

“—or hex his beard into snakes, if that doesn’t work — this is heinously fucking irresponsible— she could drown!”

“Oi!” someone hollered at Draco, waving him down. “Siddown! You’re blockin’ the view!”

Draco wrenched out his wand, and the fourth year paled as he realized his mistake.

Now the projector switched to Fleur. Cassius had dove deep to the bottom of the lake, while she floated near the surface, her swimsuit silhouetted by cool sunlight.

“You’d think that was safer,” remarked Bagman, “but in fact not! She’s very visible up there, which means — unless I’m wrong — ah, but I’m not!”

Grindylows swarmed out of the weeds at Fleur’s feet. Their horned faces leered out of the dark, a knot of tentacles swirling behind each one. They shot tiny, wriggling jets of boiling water from between their fangs, and Fleur didn’t see them until they were too close; one leapt up and snared its tentacles around her ankle.

“Ooh! Bad luck, Miss Delacour! You want to deal with grindylows early. Otherwise—”

Otherwise, they’ll swarm. The voice in Draco’s ear was Lupin’s. It had been a cool, bright day in November, and the D.A.D.A. class had been on a field trip to the Lake, and Lupin had picked his way through the shallows in waders, shouting: They’re pack hunters, grindylows! Nothing to sniff at, if you get one on its own — carnivorous, paralytic venom, but stupid as the day as long. Their real strength is in numbers. Give them five minutes, and it’s not one you’re dealing with, it’s fifty. I — whoops! There’s one, now!

And then he’d reached into the water and hauled one up by the tentacles, shaking it around like a beater’s bat, and laughing as it squirmed helplessly. Lavender had swooned. So had Harry.

It had seemed a lot more helpless in Lupin’s hand than it did now, with three latched to Fleur’s legs, and pulling. She kicked and screamed. Senescent cracks of light flared and soared from her wand, curses that veered shy of the grindylows and blackened nearby fronds of kelp with char.

“She can’t try anything too nasty, or she’ll hit her own legs,” remarked Bagman. Four more grindylows rose out of the weed.

But the Spell-O-Vision changed, and it was Krum, hurtling through the water, as a dark shape of immense size shifted and roiled in the depths below him.

Harry was cutting through the water like something born to it. The same couldn’t be said for Cassius, who was floundering through a kelp thicket, but even he fared much better than Fleur, who had taken on so many grindylows that her Bubble-Head was starting to flicker.

Beneath the screen, the judges had taken to chatting with one another. Karkaroff and Maxime were conferring politely, with occasional gestures to the lake. Meanwhile, Barty Crouch appeared very green indeed, and somewhat thinner than Draco had last seen him. Dumbledore was speaking to him in a harsh murmur that left little room for interjection, his whole body turned towards Crouch, while Crouch himself gazed unseeingly at the lake. At one point he shook Crouch by the shoulder, jolting him, and still Crouch barely turned his head.

What was the point of this thankless misery? The Task was bad enough: why leave him feeling like he was drowning, too? The champions would have done anything the Tournament told them to do. They didn’t need to take hostages. There wasn’t a reason Hermione was at the bottom of the lake. If Harry didn’t make it— if she drowned—

Think. He twisted his signet ring around his finger and bent hard, stabbing a ring of pressure into the flesh of his finger. Pain twinged. It reminded him of his mother and father. It reminded him of the world outside the Tournament. This wasn’t quidditch. There were other games to play.

None of the hostages were purebloods. Scratch that — Carrow was. But Carrow had a stain on her ledger. Hermione and Cho both had muggle parents, and if Theo was right, the Delacours were half-breeds. And why hadn’t they taken Roger Davies, for Fleur? Everyone else’s Yule Ball date had been taken, but for her, they took family. Krum had family, too, didn’t he? He’d barely known Hermione for a month. How did she count as what you’ll sorely miss?

He was going to sorely miss the structural integrity of his skull, if he didn’t save her.

Minutes ticked by. Fleur had turned to panicked hacking at the grindylows with erratic curses that missed as often as they struck true. Krum was fighting something too vast for the projector to capture correctly, with tendrils that kept flickering in and out of view. Harry and Cassius hadn’t been in sight for full minutes. It was hard to think. He wanted to know what they’d used for her breathing apparatus. They wouldn’t make her do her own, would they? They’d give her something to keep her breathing. Her Bubble-Head Charm was strong. Not that strong, though. And Hermione’s focus turned to eggshell under pressure.

The pressure in his head intensified. No use. He was going to stop breathing.

He should never, under any conditions, have felt helpless. That was the point of having everything, wasn’t it? He was heir to fifteen generations of pureblood breeding, an exceptional potioneer, a consummate spellcaster and curse adept, a natural on a broomstick, a perfect swimmer, and he could do what? He could do bugger all. If she drowned then that was that, and a great use he’d been, very bloody grateful she’d be that he’d come into her life. What fucking use was any of it if he was going to stand here like the fat stone legs of Ozymandias with a front-row seat to her murder.

The wind cut a filmy knife of freshwater spray into the air, catching the first several rows of seats. Siphoning Charms erupted over the sea of cloaks like a garden of silvery flowers. Karkaroff and Maxime raised their own wands in defense, Siphoning the spray from the very air, but Dumbledore ignored them, so engrossed was he in his heated conversation with Crouch. Crouch didn’t raise his wand, either. He just kept staring at the lake.

On the Spell-O-Vision, one of the grindylows leapt for Fleur’s face. Its claws scored the side of her Bubble-Head Charm, and it popped. A small explosion of air bubbles bleached the water around her face and she vanished under them. No one could hear her scream — it was eerie and silent, like Colin’s moving photography — but the stands compensated with a roar of dismay. Bagman was hollering something about keeping calm. The Beauxbatons students were the loudest, but people from Durmstrang and Hogwarts were on their feet, too: it didn’t matter that they were rooting against her. Nobody wanted to watch a young girl drown.

Dumbledore leapt to his feet. Maxime was already up, shouting something at Crouch, but he remained unresponsive, and in any case, Dumbledore didn’t wait on his cue: he swept down the dock and shook out the billowing sleeve of his periwinkle robe, aiming his wand at the lake.

The incantation was lost to the roar of the stands. The effect was not. An invisible cleaver plunged deep into the lake, and towering wings of water soared up like the white pinions of a forty-foot swan. Water surged from the spell’s path in a thousand glistening strands. Spears of foam raced to pierce the iron shield of the sky. The sound followed after a heartbeat’s delay, like the lagging trail of thunder: a clap like a sonic boom. It rocked the stands and brought the whole howling mass of students to their knees, clasping their ears.

From between the wings of water, Fleur rose like a gothic Venus. She was limp, her skin pallid and clammy from water and cold, her hair twisted in soggy rattails, like a dark gold collar around her neck. Her head lolled on her shoulder.

Dumbledore drew back his wand, the other hand outstretched, as if balancing a length of invisible wire. Fleur drifted forward, her toes skimming white foam from the surface of the lake, and floated onto the dock. She settled onto the wood, and her body was still. Then Dumbledore touched his wand to her temple, and there was a flare of light like the striking of a match.

Fleur shot up, rolled over, and vomited about a gallon of water onto the dock.

The water from Dumbledore’s spell plummeted back into the lake. The splash folded up and pounded the stands. Almost too late, Draco threw up a Shield Charm, and water slammed into the translucent shield like the backhand of a great beast. It shuddered, white lights of pressure flickering across the surface, but it held.

Not all students were so lucky. Ron and Daphne caught the full force of it, and emerged from the deluge a moment later, soaked to the bone and gasping for breath. Screams of commingled delight and irritation broke out; some people found the impromptu splash much more charming than others. Ginny was wringing her hair out, cackling madly; Lavender, whose makeup had been turned into something by Monet, was not.

Residual water drizzled from the stands above him, dampening Draco’s hair. Most people had been doused. But even this indignation was met by an approving roar of relief: Fleur was alive.

Bagman was bellowing something about disqualification. Dumbledore had returned to the judges’ table, where he was arguing with Crouch about something. Mediwizards, Ministry workers, and a few teachers, McGonagall among them, were racing down the stairs to the docks as if there was a prize in it for them. Maxime had flung herself to her knees beside her student, and was holding Fleur’s head to her chest with an oddly maternal affect; Fleur, disgruntled, pushed her aside and leaned over to vomit some more over the dock.

“Beauxbatons doesn’t teach Care of Magical Creatures,” said Daphne, breathy with relief. “Poor thing. She couldn’t have known.”

“What kind of bloody school doesn’t teach Magical Creatures?” demanded Ron.

“Their focus is a very — ah — abstract kind of magic, Beauxbatons. No creatures, no Divination, no quidditch team. Easily the best school in Europe for magical theory, though.”

“An UNFORTUNATE END, for Miss Delacour!” said Bagman, far too chipper. “But she seems well! Thank you, Professor Dumbledore! But don’t sit down just yet! I believe our first SUCCESSFUL return may be upon us!”

Fleur’s face suggested that she had a few ideas for an ‘unfortunate end’ of Bagman’s own.

The lake stirred. Bubbles rose from the soup of foam left by Dumbledore’s spell, and colors shimmered under the water.

A pair of heads broke the surface. Disappointment lanced his gut. It was Cassius and Flora, who clung to his back the bucking current and took greedy gulps of air. Flora looked like she had been run several times through a centrifuge with a bucket of soap-water and a weasel. Cassius lifted his arm weakly, to wave at the stands, which had exploded for him; Flora hid part of her face in the water, and shivered.

“WELL! WELL! PLEASE, QUIET!” Bagman was trying and failing to contain the stands. Draco had rarely seen Slytherin so wild. Marcus Flint and Millicent Bulstrode were half out of the box, roaring; Gregory Goyle was doing some sort of fan-dance with his jersey. Theo was on his feet, applauding heartily, but he was quite pale, and Draco wondered belatedly if he hadn’t been anxious for Cassius, after all. It must have been stressful to have the performance of Slytherin House on trial, before the Ministry and all three schools — but Sibelius Nott didn’t appear to be pleased or displeased, either way, so perhaps it was his father’s presence that set him on edge. Fair enough. It certainly did Draco.

Madame Maxime and some Mediwizards helped Fleur limp off into the champions’ tent, while several more waited with Dumbledore, at the end of the dock, to help the pair. Cassius hauled himself gracefully onto land, where Dumbledore shook his hand and said something that made Cassius’ smile flag, just for a moment.

“THE FIRST CHAMPION!” cried Bagman, with gusto. “CASSIUS WARRINGTON, FROM HOGWARTS, HAS SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED THE SECOND TASK! LET’S HEAR IT FOR HIM— oh, well, you’re doing that already.”

Mediwizards swarmed. A blonde woman with an alligator handbag was hurrying down the dock, full-speed, while camera flashbulbs peppered the air with lightning. Cassius leaned back to help Flora from the water — but once she was wobbling upright on two legs, he withdrew his hand and stepped away, with a brisk, cold double-step that made clear its sole purpose was the establishment of distance. He tucked his hands behind his back. Flora ducked her head and let her hair hang around her face, glowering silently, while Cassius lifted his head and his hands to the roaring hundreds. They didn’t look at each other.

Then Madame Pomfrey swept Cassius and Flora under one arm each, and like horses, she drove them fiercely toward the champions’ tent, very nearly bulldozing the blonde woman under her feet. A pair of Ministry workers took her by the arm and led her away, squalling in protest, while the water once more turned to froth.

“AND ANOTHER!” roared Bagman. “OUR THIRD CHAMPION RETURNS — JUST OVER THE WIRE — WHO’LL IT BE?”

He hoped it wasn’t Harry.

As soon as he discovered this feeling, lurking insidiously under his breastbone, he reeled in unhappiness at it, and tried to shove it into a drawer — but it wouldn’t go. It had to be Krum. A mutinous share of his will demanded it. He wanted Harry to live. But it had to be Krum.

The worst part, he thought, was that it didn’t even surprise him, that feeling. It settled in with the faint cold sting of snowfall, seen approaching from a distant sky. He knew the reason. He’d known for a while, really. It was just horrible. Only in a moment as horrible as this could he let the other thing come into his brain, because there was nothing to fear in it now — not like there would be at any other time, anyway — and so he could take it and glance at it, peripherally, with the closest he had yet come to acknowledgement of the thing that for several months had been living in the cellar of his mind.

He liked her. He liked her too much.

Two more heads broke out of the lake. Neither was Harry’s.

Krum burst from the water with a hoarse shout, and latched onto the side of the dock. Hermione clung to his shoulders. He had never seen her less happy in his life, and that included several interludes of mortal peril. She was spluttering, soaked, spitting water and rage, her hair a damp wilderness trawling in the water behind her, a Waterhouse’s Circe to Fleur’s Venus — certainly not lovely, unless you had a taste for drowned cats — but alive, and breathing, in furious good health.

He leaned on the railing and ducked his head in a humiliation of relief.

Hermione clung to Krum as if he were the last buoyant object in the world. The usual irritation swelled and then passed feebly through him like flour through a sieve. He could not give a real goddamn, in that moment, if she was cozied up to Viktor Krum, or even if she went and snogged him — which would still be disgusting — because the wretched dunce had gone and saved her. Which put Draco in the intolerable position of having to be grateful to a man he otherwise wanted to divest of all his toenails, individually, serially, and creatively.

This could not be allowed to happen again. The peril part, or the watching part, or the someone-else part. He refused it. It was not to be borne.

“IN SECOND PLACE: VIKTOR KRUM! COMING JUST INSIDE THE TIME LIMIT — WHOOPS, CAREFUL, THERE—”

Hermione was struggling to get out of the water. She slipped on the dock, almost toppled back into the lake, and was caught at the last moment by Krum and a mediwizard. She snapped at them in displeasure and pulled herself up, but having both the dexterity and upper body strength of a robust twig, she ended up almost hauling the mediwizard into the lake. Krum laughed, and she shouted some more at him. Draco smirked.

Finally they deposited her on the dock, and she crawled up. She surged to her feet and shoved away the mediwizards, grimacing, only for her ankle to twist, knees stiff from the frigid waters, and pitch her immediately face-first onto the dock.

He sucked a breath through his teeth.

Hermione sat up, pressing the back of her hand to her nose, her face a crumple of pain. When she lowered her hand, a stem of red laced the distance from lip to nostril. Krum extended a hand to help her up, and she swatted it away, saying something sharp and inaudible. The mediwizard appeared to have progressed from pleading to orders, and was gesturing for two more mediwizards to come assist him.

She lashed the back of her hand across her lip, a short, sharp gesture of irritation more than pain, and he recognized it. It was his gesture. It was also hers.

If he could have Apparated to the dock, he would have. If he could have performed a Disillusionment Charm, he would have. He would have given her — privacy, at least, or some room to breathe. He would have jinxed one of the mediwizards who kept bothering her, astoundingly, as if she hadn’t just been dropped in a freezing lake and punted out, soaking wet, in front of everyone she’d ever cared about impressing. If asked, he could write an article on everything Hermione would have hated about this situation, and she could have written a book.

The feeling of indignation, none of which was wholly his own, swelled to fill the full breadth of his chest and permeated him with the heat-dizziness of anger. The least they could do was not touch her.

He hated that feeling. It usually meant he was going to do something stupid or dangerous.

Draco eyed the distance between the railing and the dock, judged it, and sighed.

It was a ‘both’ kind of day.

He vaulted the railing.

Several screams broke out. Someone shouted something about stopping him, which was nice, but unnecessary. He floated for a moment in freefall, and landed with a hard shudder on the dock. His knees buckled and he dropped into a crouch — Madam Hooch’s first lesson had been how to land a fall — and then let his momentum carry him back upright, sweeping his cloak out of the way. With admirably little wobbling, he swaggered down the unoccupied dock.

Several people were shouting at him, but he ignored them. McGonagall had managed to scuttle Krum and Hermione back to the champions’ tent, and he swept in after them, tagging on the heels of a group of mediwizards too distracted by their work to bother about one extra head in their midst.

Inside the bustle was so intense that no one paid attention to him. This was convenient, because it meant no one threw him out, but irksome, because it meant that — well, no one paid attention to him.

“Granger!”

Hermione heard him. It gratified him that she turned at once — away from Krum, who huddled near a space heater, shivering and scowling at anyone who came near, especially one voracious bottle-blonde woman with a camera.

Her face was drawn and pale, framed by dark wet picots of baby hair. A brave mediwizard had wrangled her into a thermal blanket, which might as well have been a bedsheet, for all he was concerned, so little was it doing to allay her shivering. She stumbled to her feet, still stiff and awkward with cold; she breathed a hard, long sigh, and then — as he opened his mouth to yell at someone for another blanket — and she jumped him.

He caught her. Whatever he had been going to say fell dead in his throat, and the sound that emerged instead was a bleak strangled thing.

“Granger, you’re wet.”

She was. She was soaking, and the cold pierced through the front of his robes like he’d been dropped belly-first in the snow. A hiss of discomfort issued through his teeth. Her arms wound around his neck and her small fingers threaded up the back of his head like chips of ice, leaving a dazzling little map of numbness up his nape. She buried her head in his chest, and her hair soaked through his shirtfront in seconds. All the heat in his body staged a hasty retreat and regrouped in his face.

She was shivering. It was hard to tell if that was the cold, or the shock, or both. It wasn’t like her. He didn’t mind it. Oh, he would be furious at her for getting him wet, in a few moments, but apparently his sense of self-interest was still enjoying its vacation.

He placed his hand on her back and drew his thumb across one shoulder blade. The pressure drew her into his chest, and he could feel her worming her way into his body, seeking heat.

“Shameless,” he said, thinly. If he’d had any more sense he would have said about half a dozen worse things, but he didn’t, clearly, and he was very close to throwing in the towel and filling in the cavity where his sense used to be with something more dependable.

Her nose dragged an ice-cold line against the underside of his jaw. A shudder rolled up his spine, like someone had threaded a needle up his vertebrae.

“Is he alright?” she whispered.

“What?”

“Harry!” Her breath was a cold wash on his ear. “Did he have a plan?”

It was reassuring, in one sense, to suddenly understand her. She didn’t want to be overheard. To give the judges reason to think Harry would cheat.

On the other hand, he hated her, and himself, and also thermodynamics. And he felt more than a twinge of spite.

He palmed the back of her head and threaded his fingers through her hair. Because of their closeness no one had interrupted them, though the mediwizards hovered only as far away as propriety required, and Viktor Krum rubbed his hands impatiently to warm them, his eyes fixed darkly on Hermione. Draco caught his eyes, held them, and he did not bother to school his own smirk.

Dimly Draco felt her breath trip against his throat, once, at the graze of his fingers across her skull, and the swipe of his thumb through the hair over her ear. Vaguely he noticed the fingers of her hand not occupied with his neck increasing from a grip to a vise in his shirt. The place where her embrace had thrown her against him, now secured by a hand at her back, was veiled in two layers of very wet clothes, and it was impossible for her to breathe in without flushing against him. He hoped, somewhat spitefully, that she was having trouble breathing; it might do her good to see how she liked it for a change.

“Yes,” he said softly. Hermione twisted her hand deeper into his shirt — a gesture of triumph, or possibly of anxiety. Then he blew cold air into her ear.

She freed herself with a shriek.

“Draco Malfoy!”

“You asked for it.”

“I hate you,” she said brightly, but there were roses in her cheeks, and the relief made her too happy to be credible. He wanted to laugh, too, for no reason: triumph, perhaps. “You could have just told me.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” he said casually, peeling his soaked shirt from his chest. “Besides, you could have told me you were going for a swim.”

“They didn’t tell me either! They just said I’d be sleeping for a while, and I’d wake up when the Task was over! Anyway, they kept me in the Hospital Wing overnight, so I couldn’t tell Harry it was me.”

“Did they?” He glanced at Professor McGonagall, running a Warming Charm over Flora’s fingers, while the girl hemmed and hawed and tried to squirm away. The professor didn’t look happy.

“No, I—” Hermione dropped her voice. “They said I could opt out,” she said, “but it meant they’d have to get someone else — someone Viktor would care about, to make it fair for the other champions. And the only person they could get, on short notice, is his brother.”

“And how old is this brother?” he said, vaguely exasperated. So she’d had a choice, and she’d done the dangerous thing on purpose. That was typical. He couldn’t even be angry at her, for that, it was too textbook.

He should have gone and developed feelings for something easier to deal with, like a hippogriff.

She folded her arms. The effect would have been more impressive if it hadn’t unloaded enough water to fill a loch and drawn attention to the fact that she was shivering. “I’m glad you asked, because I did, too. In fact, he’s only twelve. It’s far too dangerous for someone so young—”

“Said the fifteen-year-old.”

“An age of difference, from twelve,” she said. He rolled his eyes. “Anyway, I wasn’t going to force someone else to go in my place.”

She said it as if it were simple. Like two and two makes four, moral arithmetic.

“Is that what happened to Davies?”

“Who?”

“Roger Davies. Her date. I’m assuming he had the good sense you lacked, because Delacour’s hostage is a relative of some kind. Not that there’s any hope for them, she lost out to the grindylows after ten minutes.”

“Bad luck,” said Hermione distantly. Her eyes were floating in the middle distance over his shoulder, and fast receding into thought. He had five, perhaps ten seconds of her attention left before she was dead to the world. “It’s a simple Relashio… I don’t know what happened with Roger, I suppose he must’ve opted against. I don’t suppose he cares very much about her, or he wouldn’t have let her little sister… What did you say Harry used, again?”

“Gillyweed.”

“Gillyweed! Where’d you get it?”

“Long story. Don’t praise me yet, he still might have drowned—”

A boom sounded. Bagman’s voice roared blearily through the tentflaps, and Hermione nearly bowled him over in her haste to get outside. McGonagall followed her, almost bowling him over a second time, and once he’d righted himself he joined them outside the tent.

Harry knelt on the end of the dock, flanked by a pair of girls. The first was Cho, spluttering and quite bemused. The second was a short blonde pixie of a thing that Draco recognized from the Three Broomsticks.

Fleur threw herself out of Maxime’s arms and almost knocked Harry back into the water. Cho caught him, scowling.

“Gabrielle! Gabrielle! Is she alive? Is she ’urt?”

“She’s fine,” Harry gasped, but his voice was hoarse. The gillslits on his neck had sealed over, and only a faint thread of webbing lingered between his fingers.

“It was ze grindylows… zey attacked me… oh Gabrielle, I thought… I thought…”

“Come here, you,” said Madam Pomfrey. She seized Harry, bundled him in a blanket like the world’s largest pasty, and almost gagged him with a tall vial of Pepper-Up Potion.

Hermione hurtled down the dock, slipped on the wood, and bowled into Harry with a hug at terminal velocity. Draco wondered why nice things were always happening to other people, and never to him.

“You did it! Thank God, you’re alive!”

“He did it?” said Draco.

“Kind of,” said Harry, strangled. “I lost time — I wanted to stay until all the hostages were gone, but Fleur didn’t come.”

“You haff a water beetle in your hair, Herm-own-nee,” said Krum, significantly.

Draco peered at him in disinterest. He had reintroduced himself to their conference, unwelcomely, and was now holding out another fur-lined robe for Hermione, as if he expected some kind of medal for it. Perhaps he thought he was entitled to her attention because he hadn’t let her drown. He could take that idea and shove it up the same place it came from.

“You,” said Draco sharply. Krum’s eyebrows hiked up at his tone. “You’re the reason she was in the lake.”

The eyebrows plummeted. “I had nothing to do vith this.”

“Right. Because wasn’t a single girl in Bulgaria—”

“I do not condone this,” interrupted Krum grimly. “This vas badly done. I vill speak to Karkaroff on it.”

“Oh, will you, now.”

“Vhat do you imply, pale Englishman?”

“I don’t know. You seemed fairly comfortable in the water.”

He drummed his fingers against his thigh, under the place where the wandsheath rested.

Hermione flicked the beetle away and cast a Warming Charm on Cho’s fingers. She ignored them, and that was probably for the best. “It’s certainly noble, but you were well outside the time limit, Harry. I don’t think you’re going to get full points.”

“Oh, Merlin, well,” rasped Harry, lying spread-eagle on his back, “I might as well just hop back in, then.”

The judges had gathered to confer at the water’s edge with a small delegation of reedy-haired merfolk who had surfaced from the waves. Fleur had many cuts on her face and arms and her robes were torn, but she didn’t seem to care, nor would she allow Madam Pomfrey to clean them. With a trembling dignity, she lowered herself to kneel beside him.

“You saved ’er,” she said. “Even though she was not your ’ostage.”

“Yeah,” said Harry, thickly, regarding the sky as if he wished it would swallow him.

Fleur gave a stiff nod. She bent down, kissed Harry on each cheek — Cho made a sound of distress — then said bravely to Cho, “And you too — you ’elped.”

Cho’s eyes widened. “Erm,” she said. “I dinnae, really.”

It didn’t matter. Fleur seized her and kissed Cho on both cheeks. When she pulled away, Cho was the color of beets, and looked terribly conflicted. Harry, also, looked terribly conflicted.

“Excuse me,” said Hermione, strangled, and Fleur rounded on her wildly — Draco decided warily that if she continued this carnival of promiscuity, he was going to start throwing Shield Charms — but Bagman’s voice thundered over them, offering a merciful interruption.

“Ladies and gentlewizards, the judges have reached our decision.” He clears his throat, running a fingertip down a slip of paper. “Once again, marks for each champion are awarded out of a possible fifty.”

He pauses for a moment, seeming to expect cheers, but the audience is quiet, waiting. He looks back down.

“Fleur Delacour, though she demonstrated excellent use of the Bubble-Head Charm, was attacked by grindylows as she approached her goal, and failed to retrieve her hostage. We award her twenty-five points.”

“I deserved zero,” said Fleur throatily.

“Cassius Warrington, who also used the Bubble-Head Charm, was first to return with his hostage, though he returned one minute outside the time limit of an hour.” Enormous cheers from the Slytherins in the crowd; Goyle leapt up and punched the air. “We therefore award him forty-seven points.

“Viktor Krum used an incomplete form of Transfiguration, which was nevertheless effective, and was second to return with his hostage. We award him forty points.”

Karkaroff shouted something, but he was quelled by a look from Madame Maxime.

“Harry Potter used gillyweed to great effect,” Bagman continued. “He returned last, and well outside the time limit of an hour. However, Mr. Potter was first to reach the hostages, and the delay in his return was due to his determination to return all hostages to safety, not merely his own. He was incredibly brave, incredibly daring, and, if I do say so, demonstrated the finest sportsmanship yet seen in the Tournament, which, one might think, is a virtue worthy of considerable reward—”

“Merlin’s sake,” Hermione muttered.

“Most of the judges,” said Bagman loftily, while Karkaroff scoffed, “feel that this shows moral fiber and merits full marks. However! Mr. Potter’s score is forty-five points.”

“Moral fiber?” Draco demanded, but everyone else took the good news of this announcement in the spirit it was meant, which was to say, riotous cheering. He’d taken second place, over Krum. With the cumulative scores from the First Task, which now rolled over the Spell-O-Vision screen, that put him seven points ahead of Krum, and only two behind Cassius.

Somehow. Inconceivably.

Cho screeched and tackled Harry. Being that he was already lying down, this couldn’t do much, but she did smack a kiss onto his forehead, rendering him even more catatonic than before.

Draco spun on his heel, flushing.

“When,” he said plaintively, “did everyone at this school become libertines?”

“They’re celebrating,” shouted Hermione, “it’s sweet.”

“It’s not the bloody Folies Bergère!”

“Prude.”

He was about to shoot back a question about just who had been prudish in the prefects’ bathroom, but then he considered how it would sound, and what the natural interpretation might be for any eavesdroppers, and he fell silent abruptly with a constriction of his throat.

The natural interpretation then presented itself eagerly for consideration. He hauled it out in the yard of his brain and shot it.

He ignored Hermione’s querying look.

“The third and final task will take place at dusk on the twenty-fourth of May,” continued Bagman. “In accordance with their rank in the Tournament, each of the champions will receive different standing. That standing will determine their gate of entry into the Third Task. Thank you all for your support! And now: Bonjour! Do svidanya! Goodbye!”

And that was the Second Task.

---

The wind came snapping up the bluffs like a wet towel, slapping them with shards of mist. Hermione shuddered under the patchwork of blankets Madam Pomfrey had thrust upon her. Krum had a hushed conversation with Hermione — which made her giggle in what must have been hysterical discomfort — and slumped back to the Durmstrang ship. Cho departed with another shy kiss to Harry’s cheek, and went with a silent, mulish Flora Carrow to get more Pepper-Up Potion. Fleur and Gabrielle had scurried off into the waiting arms of a blonde witch and wizard who must have been their parents, and Draco felt no sympathy at all for Barty Crouch, whose berating carried all over the glen.

Theo and his father left the stands in a hurry, and were not to be seen on the way back. Draco thought he glimpsed them momentarily through the vast crowds streaming back up to Hogwarts, and called out, meaning to return Sibelius’ Ministry badge — but the mousy head bobbed away, unhearing, and after a moment he decided it must have been Terry Boot.

“Funny hint, about the gate,” said Hermione. “Better than nothing! But why would they only give you a month? I suppose they mean to give you a break from all that thinking.”

“Yeah, fat load of thinking I was doing,” said Harry, with a grin. “Maybe McGonagall noticed you weren’t raising your hand as often, and wrote to complain.”

“Harry Potter, I raised my hand exactly as much.”

“Okay, okay. Sure.”

“Harry! I did. Draco, tell him I did.”

“I abstain,” he said, because, for one, he hadn’t noticed, and for two, he was miserably cold. He cast a Warming Charm that scarcely worked, through the windchill, and Hermione’s head had left a damp spot over his heart where the air burned with particular cruelty on his breast. “What do you suppose the gate is for?”

“A fence,” said Harry promptly. Draco kicked him. In return he was nearly shoved over sideways.

“A puzzle about land,” said Hermione. She fumbled for her notebook and cursed when she didn’t have it. “I think that’s what it’ll be. The First Task was dragons, fire, and the Second Task was water. Following the pattern, the Third Task should be earth, or air. But air would be hard, because you can’t force all the champions to fly, can you? Although I suppose that could be the challenge, scaling something…”

“Blimey, can’t give us a minute’s rest, can you?”

“No,” said Hermione and Draco, at once. “And anyway, this means we’ve got to prepare you for everything. I want to get you up to speed on Banishing Charms, they’re very dependable, and just your type of magic.”

“You mean they’re easy.”

“No, they’re — direct,” she said, valiantly. “Straightforward. Theoretically linear.”

Harry was laughing, however. “You can call me thick, Mione, it won’t be the first time this week. Draco does it about once a day—”

“In the erstwhile hope that it might change.”

“You’re not stupid! You’re honest.”

Draco had something for that, but someone shouted for them.

Behind them, Ron came floundering up the hill. He was disarrayed from a quick escape from the stands, and had made remarkable time of it, too: the greater share of Hogwarts’ hordes still muddled below them on the hillsides.

“Hey,” he said, in between lungfuls. “Hey. Harry — you — you alright?” He swallowed and staggered to a halt, his threadbare cloak battering his legs. “You’re — not hurt, or anything?”

The awkwardness of the past weeks collapsed under the pressure of his anxious stare. It was impossible to hold onto anything else.

Draco remembered how it felt. Being fourth of three. He didn’t enjoy the inside view any more than the outside. It was like seeing a naked reflection, and not a flattering one, either.

Harry sighed.

“Thought I was fine, at first,” he said bleakly. “But the thing is, it’s been two hours, and my right foot’s still a flipper. They can’t get it to turn back. Pomfrey reckons they’ll have to amputate.”

“What?”

He paused; Ron had turned ash-gray and made a sound like a dying frog.

“McGonagall’s been arguing that I should get to keep it,” he continued, “but Fred and George want to auction it off for charity — you know, to raise awareness for totally gullible idiots—”

Ron roared and tackled him into an embrace that was as much a wrestling match as it was a hug. When they freed themselves, Ron turned to Hermione, with the same anxious expression, and she prompted him before he could speak:

“I’m perfectly fine, thank you.”

“Yeah? You’re not — cold, or anything?”

“Obviously I’m cold,” she sniffed, “but I’m not hurt.”

“Yeah,” he said obliquely. “It was bloody mad, putting you in there like that. I can’t believe Dumbledore…”

He trailed off. The three of them stood at awkward orthogonals, shivering in the rancid cold.

“Sorry,” said Ron, after a moment. “I’ve been stupid. I thought you two were… I’m really sorry. I should’ve been helping.”

“Oh, Ron,” said Hermione, nasal and thick, like she had a headcold. Draco rolled his eyes.Oh, Ron, indeed.

“Don’t be stupid,” blurted Harry. “You were entitled. We should’ve told you — I should’ve told you — all of us want you here.”

“No, but it doesn’t matter, right?” said Ron hoarsely. “I could’ve — I dunno, done something sooner, I shouldn’t have left it off. It’s your life, mate. Who cares if my feelings got hurt?”

“I do,” said Harry, very intensely. “I do.”

Ron ducked his head, shuffling his feet. “Well,” he said, “erm. Thanks. I, er — reckon I’ll just — hang with you lot, then. If — oh. And, er, Hermione. What I said about — about you and — you know. I was — that was all wrong, I reckon, I was asking for a hard knock on the head. You’re not… you’re not a thing, like you said. I know that. I was stupid. It’s not your fault I don’t… But I was thinking maybe you could tell me about your hobby — what’s it — Scrumpy? Yeah? And we could talk about that, you know? Maybe?” He wore an embarrassment of hope on his face.

“I love your family,” she burst out. “I love the Burrow. I’m sorry I said anything that made you think otherwise — I didn’t mean it — it’s beautiful, and it’s my favorite place on earth, after Hogwarts. I was happier there than — than I even am at home. It’s wonderful.”

He faintly glowed. “Really?”

“Yes.”

Draco thought, privately and snidely, that she might reevaluate her rankings if she had ever been to Malfoy Manor.

But then, whose fault was that? He hadn’t invited her. He couldn’t. It was one thing to negotiate the question of his mother, which would be a diplomatic ordeal unto itself, but the Manor itself wasn’t all unicorns and nifflers. It was a pureblood house, and it took its identity seriously. There were objects that he’d have to warn her off, rooms where she’d have to tread carefully, portraits he’d have to warn her not to disturb, and all manner of traps and things buried under the floorboards. The pleasure of a stress-free summer holiday was something Ron could offer guilelessly, and he couldn’t.

Then again. Hunting for historical artifacts in a haunted house with nothing but her wits and her wand to protect her might very well have been Hermione’s idea of a good time.

“You can come back anytime,” said Ron, with the shameless eagerness of someone closer to what he wanted than he had ever been before. Draco narrowed his eyes. “Really. Mum would love to have you. Dad adores you. You’re always — always welcome there, you know.”

Hermione gave a wet sigh and hauled Ron into a hug. Ron buried his head in her shoulder.

Draco watched them. He hoped she left his shirtfront soaked.

They drew back. Ron glanced at Draco. Draco lifted his chin. They exchanged a freighted stare.

“Krum’s a knob, isn’t he?” said Ron, apropos of nothing.

“Yes,” he said immediately.

Ron nodded. “Big ponce,” he remarked. “Overhyped, I reckon.”

“Wildly overvalued, as a player.”

“He’s not even that fast, he’s just tricky with it.”

“Put him on a slower broomstick—”

“—he’s not impressive at all. All style, no substance.”

“Exactly,” said Draco.

Ron nodded jerkily.

Draco sighed.

“Potter,” he said, “you might ask Ronald where he procured the gillyweed. Since it was his idea.”

“His — what — you came up with that?” Hermione whirled on Ron. Her obvious pride conflicted with a poorly hidden sense of surprise. “But that’s brilliant! Where did you get it?”

Ron was taken aback. “I didn’t come up with it on my own,” he said at once, hastening to defuse her expectations. “To be honest. I wouldn’t have had a clue, except I overheard Mad-Eye talking about it. I was headed out of Potions, and Mad-Eye had come down to have a word with Snape, and he asked Snape if he had any gillyweed left, because Mad-Eye was running low, and Snape said no, someone nicked it—”

“Nicked it?” said Draco sharply. “Someone stole from Professor Snape?”

“We stole from Professor Snape, last year,” Harry reminded him. “You say that like it’s harder than it is.”

“That’s different. I’m his godson.”

Ron shrugged. “I figured it was Warrington. But he went and used the bobblehead thing, so I dunno where it went. Anyway, I figured that Mad-Eye might have some left, so I snuck in—”

“Into Mad-Eye’s office?” demanded Hermione. “Alone?”

“It wasn’t so hard,” he demurred, but his cheeks tinged with pleasure. “Honestly, I reckon he might have wanted me to do it; he wasn’t being too quiet, with Snape. And all I had to do on the office was ‘alohamora,’ which is pretty weak, for an auror.”

“You think he wanted to help Harry?”

“Might not’ve wanted his student to drown, yeah,” Ron said.

“Certainly, but why not be direct? He could’ve offered the gillyweed to Harry whenever he wanted.”

“Guess he wanted to be subtle. Raises less questions. Don’t think the teachers are allowed to help, either, though if you ask me, Maxime and Karkaroff have gone right off that rule, Krum’s shark transformation was way too advanced for a seventh year…”

“Thank you,” said Draco, pointedly.

“Anyway, who knows why he does anything? They don’t call him ‘Sane-Eye Moody.’ I’m not checking the gift unicorn’s horn.”

“No, you’re right,” she said, but she sounded doubtful, and Draco suspected that if it had been left to her, she would have hauled said unicorn in for a biopsy.

As a winter’s midmorning faded into a dull, tinselly clear afternoon, they finished scaling the hill. The path, which had so comfortably fitted four in their first year, now winnowed to a tight squeeze for three, and out of awkward mutual respect, the group broke symmetrically: Harry and Hermione drifted forward, pressing more hurriedly through the cold in their wet blankets, while Draco and Ron found themselves lagging on the path behind.

“It isn’t a trio, by the way.”

At first Ron did not acknowledge him, and Draco thought his voice had been perhaps lost to the wind.

“The article was a pathetic rag,” he said, “and it misquoted my birthday. It hasn’t any interest in the facts.”

Ron grunted. “S’fine. I’m getting over it. We’ve all made up, there’s no use—”

“Peace, Ronald, I’m making a point. If there were any permutation of three, however—”

“Mate, you’re in a ten-foot hole and you’re calling for a shovel.”

“If there were, ” said Draco, flatly, “you wouldn’t be the one outside of it. Surely you realize that.”

The castle was crowned with a faint dusting of snow, the last of the season, and from beneath this jeweling of silver the windows gleamed like gold bangles against the coarse skin of its walls. When the winds blew, the snow lifted and swirled tender fingers around the parapets.

“You’re off your rocker,” said Ron, but it was guarded.

“Modesty flatters no one, and least of all gingers. You’re Potter’s favorite person living. Full stop. And Granger would give her right arm for your sake. They pined like ripe fools for you. And as you said — in second year, you were fine, all three of you. Without me. So I don’t know where you get the idea you’re dispensable. I have a much better claim to it, and it rankles.”

“Harry likes you, idiot.”

“Of course he does. I’m marvelous,” he agreed. “I said he had preferences, not that he was insane.”

“Come off it. You know damn well that Hermione—”

“Is beholden to you in ways that she isn’t to me,” he said. “And never can be.”

“‘Beholden’? Are you joking? It’s not the nineteenth century,” he said incredulously. “She’s a person, she can do as she likes. And so can you, for all your bellyaching.”

“There are things I cannot do.”

If unburdening himself was supposed to bring relief, he was sorely disappointed. The declaration still left him feeling hollow and cold, like the words had emptied out a place in his chest where he was holding them.

“If this is a pureblood thing, you don’t have my sympathy, mate. Boohoo, you’re afraid of your mum—”

“My mother isn’t a threat to anyone. I’m not talking about her. There are people whose minds I can’t change, who have power the likes of which you cannot fathom, and I don’t— I can’t—”

“Merlin, you’re scared.” For the first time in his life, perhaps, Ron sounded sorry for him. “They’ve really got their teeth in you, haven’t they? What do you think is gonna happen? Someone’s gonna pop out from under your bed if you whisper ‘muggle rights’ three times in a mirror?”

“The good name of the House of Malfoy is all that stands between myself and a significant danger,” he said, thinly. “The likes of which I am thankful your family has never contemplated. But it is contingent on my ability to sustain it. There are things I have done to jeopardize it, and — I have walked a very thin line, and I have walked it admirably, but I am approaching the limits of my dexterity.”

Ron rolled his shoulders.

“That’s crock,” he announced. “If someone comes after you, we’ll just whack ’em.”

“No.”

“Whadja mean, ‘no’? You’re the one always bragging about being this great stinking wizard. What’ve you got to be afraid of?”

“It surprises me that I have to explain this,” he gritted, “but if I am — indiscreet — if my name is brought into question — the punishment for my failures won’t fall on me.”

Ron kissed his teeth while he thought about this. Ahead of them, Harry and Hermione were giggling about something together, shooting looks over their shoulders. In the dim light, with their hair stained identically dark by water, they could have been siblings.

Abruptly he wanted to steal them somewhere far away from Hogwarts, put them in a secret room under the world, and lock the door against everything that wanted to harm them. He could pile up charms and locks and then sit outside the walls with his wand out and a curse on his tongue, and then he would never again have to stand on the lakeside while they toiled against something he couldn’t change, drawing desperately on his own thin supply of little luck and less faith.

The feeling inflamed his nerves and seared through up the aching core of him, a rash of yearning so keen it tipped the threshold into pain. He was helpless to it. He was terrified of it. The feeling didn’t care.

What was the point of having power, if you couldn’t use it? It hadn’t saved his father. That felt treasonous to think, but in the reeling aftermath of that feeling, it seemed like only a minor treason, a forgivable one. And it was true. Lucius had never been safe, and his family still wasn’t safe now. The question sunk into the bottom of his mind: what was the point? What was it to be pureblood if it couldn’t save him from that feeling? What was the point of Malfoy, if it didn’t mean my word is Merlin’s?

“Here’s my advice,” decided Ron. “Grow up.”

Outrage kindled.

“Piss off!”

“Wot! You’re being a nancy! Three-headed dogs, giant spiders, dementors, werewolves, Quirrell, Yaxley — dragons, for you and Harry — a murderer, a convict, a hippogriff, and whatever else Harry got in the lake, maybe he socked a mermaid or something — you’re telling me you’ve faced all that, and what scares you off is a pack of snot-nosed anemics with a grudge? Get a grip,” said Ron incredulously.

“You won’t be so cavalier when they’re on your doorstep.”

“Better mine than yours, from the sound of it,” he said. “Least I won’t piss myself if they call me names.”

“I resent you passionately.”

“That’s the spirit,” he agreed. He was walking with a spring in his step, and picked his way across the grass as if each blade ushered him eagerly towards his destination. “Anyway, none of this matters, because there’ll be no trio, or threesome, or what-all. It’s four against millions, alright? We’ve got to band together to meet the enemy.”

“Death Eaters?”

“No, mate. Keep with it. Krum.”

He snorted. The matter slipped into an uneasy state of rest.

Under the archway to the Transfiguration Courtyard, a blonde witch accosted them. She had been there in the champions’ tent, but only now did Draco take note of her, from the starched bottle-green polyester of her pantsuit to the thin, savagely plucked hook of each eyebrow, which perched in a leer of perpetual shock above her cat’s-eye glasses.

“Congratulations, Harry!” she said, beaming at him. “I wonder if you could give me a quick word? How did you feel? Were you worried? Was it fair? Do you think they chose the right girl?”

Draco made a quick deduction. Hermione must have done at the same time, because she gasped and ripped out her wand.

“You!”

“Hermione,” said Harry, in alarm, “hang on—”

“You petty, miserable, jealous cow—”

She lashed her wand. Skeeter leapt clear. The jinx shattered against the castle wall behind it, erupting in a jagged crown of crystal spikes.

“Hello,” said Draco, intrigued. That was a wonderfully nasty jinx; he’d never seen her try to curse anyone before.

Hermione’s hair was starting to crackle the way it did when her anger infected her magic. She was bristling and straining against Harry’s guarded arm, and some part of him drifted into imagination about Harry letting her go, just to see what exciting thing she’d do next. It was a marvelous thing to see. Showing off made her very nearly lovely.

“Touched a nerve, I see!” shrilled Skeeter. “Good journalism will do that, my dear! But my! What a temper! I’m sure my readers would be terribly interested to know that the Gryffindor princess has a mean streak—”

“Princess? Princess?”

Draco laughed softly. It was possible she was going to kill her, and it was going to be absolutely wonderful.

“Hermione, come on,” Harry muttered, “let’s just go—”

“Harry Potter, you let go of me.”

“Let her go,” Draco said coolly. “She’s every right.”

Harry shot him a plaintive look. “She can’t jinx her—”

“’Course she can. I’ve got a great lawyer. Granger, carry on.”

Hermione’s wand wavered, darting her eyes from Skeeter to Harry to Draco, torn between vindication and doubt.

“I know what you’ve been doing,” she said suddenly, and this, more than anything she’d said before, made Skeeter flinch. “I know you’ve been creeping around the castle, and I’ll bet Dumbledore doesn’t know about it. I thought it was Colin, at first, but then you wrote about the Yule Ball, and I realized — it’s you. You’ve been sneaking around, haven’t you, Rita?”

Skeeter pursed her lips.

“I haven’t a clue what you mean, my dear,” she said, with the saccharine condescension of someone talking to an animal about to be put down. “I don’t know who this ‘Colin’ is, but gracious me, Miss Granger, if you’ve been hallucinating a woman crawling around in the walls—”

“Does Dumbledore know you’re around?” interrupted Ron. “Because you’re not Ministry, and you’re not wearing a press pass, so I’d reckon you’re not supposed to be here.”

One of her pruned brows arched impossibly further. “Professor Dumbledore supports a free press,” she sniffed. “But if you’d care to comment, I will gladly take a quote, my dear. To whom may I attribute it? I’m afraid I don’t know who you are.”

Ron bristled. Harry shoved his way in front of all of them.

“Here’s a quote. Write this down,” he said clearly. “I’m not dating Hermione. She’s off-limits, and so’s anything about my parents, or my friends, or me. If you do want to write about someone, here you go: this is Ron Weasley. He’s the best chess player in Hogwarts history, he’s got a right hook like a battering ram, and we shag nasty like rabbits every night. Ask Draco, he watches. If you or your readers have a problem with that, you can, and I quote: ‘get bent.’”

And he dragged Hermione off to the castle, with Ron cackling madly in tow.

Draco waited for them to fade out of earshot. Skeeter was scribbling furiously, and her Quick-Quotes Quill had already covered half a page. She made an inquiring, hopeful noise when he stepped closer. He lowered his voice.

“Count yourself lucky that she missed,” he said. “I wouldn’t have.”

He left her to linger on that remark, reflecting that having power was still good for something, after all.

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-There it is! I hope it was worth the wait.

-Not many notes this week; it’s the end of act 2 of Book 4, and I’m excited to inform you that everything Gets More in the third act.

-It’s not a neat-and-tidy ending, for that fight, but things are finally getting better instead of worse.

-Thank you, thank you, thank you. If you commented in the past week, I’d owe you your favorite magical object from the series. This is a stressful handful of days, so it’s been really great to have someplace to escape.

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