The Insider

Chapter 51: The Insider

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

“In my fifty-seven years of service to this school,” said Madame Pomfrey, “I assure you, Mr. Malfoy, I have heard all sorts of unlikely accusations leveled at the Hogwarts staircases; and yet oddly, in fifty-seven years of traversing said staircases, never have I once witnessed the kind of violence that students would have me believe them capable of.”

It had to be said: she had a sense of humor, did Madame Pomfrey.

Draco sprawled extravagantly over the hospital bed, taking up as much real estate as he could. His knee wore a rosebud of bandages, its range of motion fully restored, though he refused to admit as much to any of the people who were fussing over him. If he groaned and touched it often enough, the nurses would fetch him hot cocoas from pity.

Hermione, perched at his bedside with an archival copy of the Hogwarts Enquirer, gave a discreet, high, “Hmph,” and he replied with the laziest, slimiest smirk that he could summon while in not-insignificant pain.

“I’m glad to hear it,” he said seriously to Madame Pomfrey. “They’re an existential risk. I’m lucky to have survived.”

Madame Pomfrey did not dignify this by voicing her doubts. She planted her hands on her hips and directed the full force of her instructor’s disapproval at Hermione, who was the weaker target, admittedly. “And you, Miss Granger, you witnessed this… exceptionally dynamic fall?”

Fortunately, the sting of disapproval seemed considerably easier for her to bear when it wasn’t a professor asking. “I didn’t say that,” said Hermione crisply, turning a page. “He was like that when I found him, Madame Pomfrey.” This was true. “I wish I could help you, but I really can’t.”

Less true, but delivered flawlessly. He rewarded her by generously electing to share his third hot chocolate in an hour. She sipped it, idly, while perusing the classifieds.

Madame Pomfrey threw up her hands, as if to vault her own deniability into the rafters, and stalked off to pry apart the Creevey brothers, who had been bundled together in an inseparable knot in one of the other cots ever since they brought Colin back to the Hospital Wing.

Hermione followed her with her eyes. When she was gone, she snapped the newspaper shut and dropped her voice to hiss in his ear. “I hate this.”

“Merlin, fine, give it back.”

She placed it on his bedside table, mere inches out of his reach; Hermione could be downright mean when she wanted to be.

“No — the lying. Anyone with eyes can tell you didn’t fall down a staircase, even Neville never looks this bad, and you spend half your time skating down those banisters like they’re a monorail. Your reflexes aren’t slow enough.”

“You think I’ve good reflexes?”

“Flint and Goyle deserve to be expelled.”

“What they deserve was outlawed by international convention. However, I don’t fancy dancing that particular number again, so I’ll be keeping my lovely undamaged mouth shut about it, and you’ll do the same, and when Colin recovers his inclination to speak, he’ll have our examples to learn from.”

“It’s not fair. You’re hurt. Something should happen to them,” she muttered. “Something. I don’t care what it is. But they shouldn’t get to walk away.”

“Keep your voice down,” he said, though dizzily charmed. Her face was bright with anger, and full of pink blooms like a striated tea rose, and he was still concussed, technically, so none of this counted as admiring. “The walls have ears. And habits of violence.”

Flint and Goyle had been brought in an hour after Draco by a Slytherin prefect, who claimed that an anonymous tip-off had floated up to them and gave them each a paper cut in the nostril.

He liked a bit of fun, did Harry.

Hermione took her lip between her teeth, worrying it. He watched her, his head lolling on the pillow. It wasn’t a crime.

“They can’t be allowed to go on,” she said, after a moment. She didn’t sound happy about it; she sounded like she’d found the solution to an Arithmancy problem floating an order of magnitude off her preferred estimate. “They can’t think they can attack people without consequences. And the prefects won’t… if they can’t do anything about it, they don’t have a reason to stop.”

“A healthy respect for being set on fire might do it.”

“Dennis doesn’t know how to do that,” she said. “Most people can’t do that.”

She said it absently, like it didn’t even occur to her to be smug, which was how he knew she was really lost in thought.

A commotion of hinges and footsteps broke the solemn respite of the Hospital Wing. Robes and voices fluttered at the doors, and a nurse’s complaints failed to deter the two visitors, who swept down the aisle and snapped back the curtain to Draco’s cot with a haste that made both him and Hermione spring back as if they’d been doing something more indecent than plotting vengeance.

Dumbledore and Professor Snape were framed in the curtain. Both were harried. Haste rumpled their robes. There was a bloodless affect to Snape’s face, mirrored in the stiff bar of Dumbledore’s mouth. It looked as though they’d received news of an impending comet angled directly at their heads.

“Merlin. Who died?” said Draco, who never saw a moment he was unwilling to step on.

“Draco,” said Snape, with a thin issuance of breath. “What happened?”

“Took a fall. Why, Professor? What did you hear?”

They had come together, which suggested they’d heard at the same time, and hadn’t parted ways since he’d heard them conferring in the dungeons. He noticed that Crouch wasn’t among them, and he wondered if Mad-Eye had already been arraigned.

“Pomfrey makes a note to inform me,” said Snape, with a curl of his lip that meant he was mounting a sermon, “whenever my godson enters her care; she takes special pains to inform me when he does something especially gormless.”

Draco shifted his leg sourly. “It wasn’t gormless.”

“You fell down the stairs?”

“I — there were extenuating circumstances.”

“Such as gravity, perhaps?” Snape folded his arms and leveled ten volts of straight malice into Draco’s undeserving face. “Momentum? Shocking developments, each to each.”

“Like you’ve never tripped anywhere!” He was outraged. In his opinion, this was a powerfully motivated persecution, and it wasn’t fair.

“Never to the effect of shattering three ribs and a patella. Those of us with the vanishingly little intellect it requires to refrain—”

“Oi, aren’t you supposed to be worried about me? I’m lucky I didn’t break my neck!”

“You are indeed very lucky to have so little to regret, and you will be doubly lucky if you remain so after your mother finishes with you.”

“You’re not going to tell her!”

“Your powers of prediction are uninspiring. Professor Vector must be sorely dismayed in you.”

“Uncle Severus.” He ignored Hermione’s wide-eyed stare of warning. He wrestled himself upright. “Don’t be a ponce. I tripped! I’m fine! Don’t ruin her day over nothing—”

“You are profoundly arrogant to assume the frustrations of raising a witless child are enough to ruin your mother’s day,” snarled Snape, with such venom that Draco flinched back, honestly wounded.

He wouldn’t have said so under torture, but his godfather’s anger was a melee weapon, and he had never received the force of it so directly before. It made something small and selfish in his chest throw its tail between its legs and want to cry.

“Well, that’s—” He found his throat stiff, cleared it, and tried again. “That’s not — that’s just — it’s rude, is what it is, Professor.”

Dumbledore, who had been leaning heavily on a chair by Draco’s foot, at last raised his head. “I concur,” he said quietly. “Severus, please leave your godson to his recovery. You may notify Lady Malfoy as you wish.”

Snape’s parting glance swept over Draco like a sheet of stinging hail, imparting a last impression of the Potion Master’s frankly ludicrous levels of anger and fear; and then he stalked out of the room, sweeping his cloak after him like the dramatic old git he was.

The headmaster relaxed when Snape was gone, though this still left so much tension in his body it was like undoing one knot of a vast, ancient rigging. “I apologize for your godfather, Draco,” he said. “He is a man under enormous pressure. The likes of which do not often make men kinder.”

Draco was tempted to say, I know, with some snide comment about Ministry investigations, but he held his tongue.

Dumbledore adjusted his spectacles and gazed sympathetically at Draco’s injured knee. “How do you feel?” he said softly.

“Fine.”

Hermione made some sort of obnoxious naysaying cough. He huffed.

“I’m fine. Once they let me out of this blasted hospital, I’ll be cartwheeling to class. Happy?”

“Never less so than when in this room,” said Dumbledore. He cast a look over the wing, with its four occupied beds, one still holding the entwined lump of the Creeveys, and shook his head. “For a teacher, to see any student housed here is a notice of profound and exceptional failure.”

Draco frankly could imagine a few more profound and exceptional failures before this one, a lot of them rhyming with Lournament, but held his tongue once more.

“Can I ask why you came, professor?” said Hermione, politely. She had folded her legs and held her back straight, as if she were asking a question in class, bless her. “Aside from an interest in Draco’s wellbeing.” Her tone made it courteously obvious that neither she nor anyone reasonable considered this an appropriate reason for the headmaster to make a personal visit.

“The grievous injury of a student notwithstanding?”

“If that’s the reason, you must spend quite a lot of time in the Hospital Wing, Professor.”

Now it was Draco’s turn to shoot her a wide-eyed look.

Dumbledore’s wry expression only grew wryer. “You may not believe me,” he said, “as is your right, but Mr. Malfoy’s wellbeing is the sole occasion of my visit.”

“Respectfully, professor,” she said primly, “I think I’m going to exercise that right.”

Dumbledore tilted his head, an open smile now gracing his weathered face. “Gracefully done,” he said. “I enjoin you wholeheartedly to continue, if you like. How fare our fellow friends of Buckbeak?”

“—Oh! Moony and Padfoot? They’re quite well. They’re… accessible, at present, if you’d like to go… see a hippogriff. They’re… in an old bolthole.”

“How positively delightful to hear,” said Dumbledore. “I may do just that. These days, one can never spend too much time with old friends.” His eyes slipped into the middle distance, as if he could hear a conversation happening on the other side of the castle, and it was far more interesting to him than their own. Then he patted Draco’s leg, made an excuse, and tottered out of the Hospital Wing.

When the creaking of the doors subsided, Hermione said, “That was dodgy.”

He snorted.

“It was! He spent five minutes talking to you, glanced at the Creeveys, didn’t so much as mention Flint or Goyle—”

“Can hardly blame him, I wouldn’t, either, after what they pulled.”

“He doesn’t know that,” she said, and then frowned. “Or does he?”

“At the risk of sounding like an apologist for the various inadequacies of Albus Dumbledore, headmaster and all-around fop,” he said, “which, for posterity, I am not: even he can’t know what’s going on in all parts of the castle, all the time.”

“No, I suppose not,” she said. “If it hadn’t been for the Map, even I wouldn’t have…”

She trailed off and grasped the railing of his cot, firmly, as if he were about to slide off somewhere. He ignored the implication and turned his head away from her searching glance; they weren’t going to talk about it. There lay madness. There lay the fact that he’d looked at her in that chamber for three whole seconds and wondered if Merlin himself hadn’t deployed her for his benefit.

Increasingly he got the feeling that if he so much as tapped the dyke of feeling that he’d walled up in the back of his mind, if he cracked the seal an inch, the whole of it would burst forth in flood, and shatter him.

Blood traitor. Blood traitor. Blood traitor blood traitor blood traitor.

It meant death. It meant no more Malfoys. It meant dead men can’t love you, and Draco didn’t need his father’s love, never had done, he’d lived just fine without it for frankly long enough as to make a lesser man resentful, but that didn’t mean he wanted the other thing.

If he didn’t look at her, the voice wasn’t so loud. So he didn’t.

Problem being that he liked looking at her. That was how everything had gone wrong for him in the first place. He liked looking at her too much, and he’d made a habit of it, and now whenever he didn’t, it felt just as bad, only in a different part of his brain.

Other times he thought that part of his mind was a histrionic twat, so there was really no winning, being him.

They kept him in the Hospital Wing for several days. A caravan of visitors made his visit enjoyable, and the myths that arose from his injuries made it even more so. Fred and George started a rumor that he had taken his licks by kickboxing a centaur, a story that the first-year friends of Dennis Creevey carried on fleet feet far and wide over the castle, and made him the subject of much reverence. A healthy crop of flowers and cards sprouted from his bedside, some from Gryffindor, and some, pleasantly, from various anonymous persons with an affection for glitter and pink script; these were flattering up until Ron and Harry got hold of them, at which point the dramatic recitations immediately spoiled any sincere pleasure, and made Hermione scoff so hard she might soon disgorge her uvula.

By the end of the week, Pomfrey discharged him with some Numbing Potion and a crutch, which he used only because it made everyone get out of his way when he came scraping down the halls, and gave him a great excuse to hit people’s ankles. On the way back to Gryffindor Tower, taking the first opportunity to converse without the threat of Pomfrey or her fleet of wide-eared nurses overhearing them, he told the others what he had overheard.

“What a slimy old git,” announced Ron, visibly annoyed. “Just can’t stand to see Harry winning, can he? Soon as anything starts going well, he’s got to stick his greasy nose in.”

“He’s not wrong. Someone did put Potter’s name in the Goblet,” said Draco.

Harry was conferring with Hermione about an old newspaper clipping from a Triwizard Tournament in 1814, barely glanced up at the sound of his name. In Draco’s opinion, the pair of them were wasting their time, as they had not one ice chip’s chance in Tenerife of blind guessing the Third Task before it happened; but as the month of April dwindled to a close, it eased the crawling dread for them to try.

“Better him than Warrington,” said Ron. “Anyway, I bet Snape’s just sore at Mad-Eye. They’re always at each other’s throats, you said so yourself.”

“Not the point where he’d send him to prison.”

“What,” said Ron flatly, “like he did last year, you mean?”

There was a beat while Draco regained his footing. “He never said anything that wasn’t true.”

“Yeah, except that Lupin was a danger to kids. Knowing full well he was on Wolfsbane. Or do you believe that, too?”

“Of course not, but if one attempts to sympathize—”

“Maybe I don’t want to sympathize with him,” he interrupted briskly. “Ever think of that? Maybe I’d rather not sympathize with the old Death Eater over my pals, and Harry’s godfather.”

“Snape is my godfather.”

He must have spoken louder than he meant to; Harry and Hermione broke off, and Hermione’s voice drifted down from the stairs over them. “What’s this about?”

“Nothing,” said Ron tautly. “Finishing off some business from the Shrieking Shack.”

Blood traitor.

Draco’s fingers flexed on his wandsheath. He wanted to run back and jinx Sirius again, for leaving words like that in his head, where it could float around knocking into things and leaving bruises.

“Speaking of which,” he said shortly. “Have they left?”

“Oh, yeah, you wouldn’t know,” said Ron, not quite airily, “seeing as you took off without us. No, they’re staying. Gonna try to watch Harry in the Third Task, if they can find a way to do it. Harry loaned them the Invisibility Cloak, we’re hoping Moony can use it to sneak in.”

“You what?”

“They need it more,” said Harry stubbornly. “It’s just until they leave again. I’m not giving it away.”

“What if you need it?”

“Why would I?” he said. “I’m not gonna be sneaking around much before the Third Task. According to Hermione’s drilling schedule, I’ll barely have time to sleep.”

“They’re adults. They’re more than capable of a Disillusionment Charm. Or a Concealment Charm. Or any other one of a dozen spells that Remus Lupin should know—”

“Oi!”

“Careful, mate!”

“Moony,” insisted Hermione, “it’s Moony, remember, we’re in the castle.”

“Sod it, it’s a stupid name,” he snapped, stalking around the last stairwell.

They had ruined his day. He had been in decent spirits, leaving the Hospital Wing, and prepared to overlook the rather grievous insults against his dignity that transpired at the Shrieking Shack, but Ronald Weasley had punctured that slender balloon of contentment like he was practicing marksmanship. He took the last four stairs in two jumps, ignoring the questionable flicker in his knee, and let his stomps echo in claves of displeasure. They could herald him from the Astronomy Tower. Good. Let them take precautions.

When he reached the Pink Lady, he barked, “Ariadne,” but then was too distracted to hear the Pink Lady’s murmur of, “Oh, no, not anymore,” for he almost tripped over someone on the floor.

Daphne Greengrass was curled in a ball against the Pink Lady’s foot. She had gathered her knees to her chest and took a percussion of little breaths as though her throat was struggling to stay open. She was ruddy and wet as a freshly watered rose, her shirt wrinkled, one sock slumping in undignified asymmetry with its twin, and her CASSIUS WARRINGTON badge winked sadly ajar on her jumper.

She peeled her face up and blinked at him.

“Hello, chaps,” she said. “I’m quite sorry. I didn’t know where else to go.”

“What happened?”

She opened her mouth, closed her eyes, and burst into tears.

“Oh, God,” said Hermione, hurrying up the stairs. Ron and Harry followed, hastened by the sound of her warbling. “Are you hurt? Did the Slytherins do something to you? Who was it? Harry, go get Professor McGonagall—”

“No! Don’t! It’s nothing — I’m not, I’m, no, nothing, nothing’s wrong—”

“Pish,” said Ron, quite angrily. He crouched beside her, doing a none-too-subtle sweep for injuries. “What’s going on?”

“I’m not, no, it’s not, really, I’m not hurt, don’t make a fuss. Please don’t get Professor McGonagall.”

“Fine, but Daph—”

“Oh, don’t everyone look at me like I’ve been expelled from the church,” she said hoarsely. “I only… I just didn’t… nobody was speaking to me, and the common room was empty, and everyone was gone, and I was so lonely, I don’t know why I did it, but I went to a meeting — I’m sorry, Hermione, don’t be disappointed — and it was awful, just so incredibly awful, they’re not like they were last year, it wasn’t a fun party at all!”

“What meeting?” said Hermione, bewildered. “Disappointed? Daphne, what are you talking about?”

“The League of Promising Youth,” said Draco. He prickled with discomfort.

Daphne bobbed her head. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Hermione, I don’t believe in it! I don’t even care about politics! You know me, I don’t give a fig for what they do at the Ministry, it’s all the same to me! It’s all the same, both sides, it’s just hogwash! I was just so sad, and everyone said it was fun, so I wanted to see if — but it was horrible!”

“What happened?” said Ron, fishing a mangy handkerchief from his pocket. She snatched it up and offloaded a full sinus. “What’d they do?”

“It was this dark small room and all these grownups and Sibelius Nott and Theo was there but he was stuck in a conversation with his dad and Cassius, and everyone else had their own little cliques and I didn’t know where to go, and I look around and I see Odin Davis was there — Tracey’s father, you know? The auror? And he wasn’t doing much talking so I thought, well, Daph, just be a sport and introduce yourself, so I went over and gave him the full smile and ‘hullo, I’m Daphne Greengrass, I go to school with your daughter,’ and everything, and he looked at me and I sort of felt he thought I was odd but he gave me a hello and shook my hand and everything, and then rightaway he asked about my scars and I thought well, that’s very rude, we’ve only just met, but I can be a good sport, you know? But then when I told him he started asking me all these questions and it was obvious what he meant and he thought I was some sort of — oh, God — half-breed,” when she breathed it sounded like sand rasping through a pipe, “and I told him I’m pureblood as they come and he said — he said — he said—” She burst into a volley of sobs.

“We don’t have to do this now,” said Ron hurriedly. “Into the common room, yeah? There’s chairs in there. For sitting on. Much better than a floor, you won’t believe it. It’s plush. Here, away from the door—?”

“He said what a waste!” cried Daphne, and buried her head in her knees.

“He did what?” Ron was furious. “He said that to you?”

“Y-y-yes, and then he said something else, and it would’ve been alright if nobody heard but Millie and Tracey had come over and they started laughing, and I, I was so mad I don’t remember what I said even, but I made a scene and I slapped him — right in the face! I slapped an auror! Oh, God, I’m going to be sick — and there was a horrible scene and Theo was yelling and Mr. Davis had his wand out and Mr. Nott looked like he was going to kill me, and so I ran away and hid in a broom closet for a few hours because I didn’t want anyone to find me, you know? And then I only went home when it was late and no one would see me come in but I went to my room and the door,” she was breathing in greedy gulps, “the door was jinxed, it nearly broke my nose, and when I opened it someone got into my room and D-D-D-Duchess — oh, Duchess—”

“Sorry,” said Ron, looking wildly from Daphne to Draco. “What? Duchess? Who’s Duchess?”

“Her cat,” said Draco stiffly.

“She was gone,” she sobbed. “And there was cat fur everywhere.”

Harry drew his wand and turned down the stairs. Draco grabbed him by the collar and hauled him back.

“Oh,” whispered Hermione. “Daphne, I’m so sorry.”

Daphne scrubbed her cheeks, but her hands were so wet with tears she only succeeded in smearing them around. “I’m sorry,” she said wetly. “I shouldn’t have gone. I know the things they say about muggle-borns, but I was so lonely I didn’t care. And I didn’t — I didn’t realize that I was — that they wouldn’t—”

“You didn’t realize they were saying it about you, too,” said Hermione. She was strangely calm.

Daphne’s reply was a sob.

Hermione said, “Well, that was a bit of an oversight, wasn’t it?”

“I know,” she wailed, “I know, I know I’m stupid, everyone says I’m stupid, Teddy and Pansy and Mummy and Daddy all tell me so and I don’t listen, I’m just a dumb dummy who never learns—”

“Come off it,” said Hermione, with a trademark briskness that made Ron shoot her a displeased look. “There’s no need for self-pity. You’re not stupid, you were just scared and sad, and besides that you knew full well what you were doing — but I’m not angry at you, Daphne.”

“…You’re not?”

“No,” she said stiffly. She grasped Daphne’s hands and pulled her up with a jerk, and Daphne was so surprised that she went, sailing to her feet like a porcelain poppet. “Anyway, it wasn’t my cat they went after. After all, you won’t soon go back, will you?”

“No! Never — I can’t ever — I won’t ever—”

“Well, there you go,” said Hermione, awkwardly. “Honestly, Daphne, just try to — buck up a little, have some perspective. It’s not the end of the world, you know, and — I suppose you’re an alright sort of girl, deep down and everything. When it matters.”

She extended her hand and patted her shoulder stiffly.

This, from Hermione Granger — whose chief qualifications as a friend included a ruthlessness with homework reminders and a willingness to set one’s enemies on fire — was a gesture of extraordinary emotional sensitivity and nurturing.

Daphne burst into tears and threw her arms around Hermione, who reacted as though someone tried to shank her. She attempted a series of scrambling evasive maneuvers that ultimately failed, and left her floundering in Daphne’s grip.

“Never mind — never mind — that wasn’t an invitation!”

“Oh, just let her, go on,” whispered Harry, “be nice—”

“I can’t breathe, Harry!”

“—good for the immune system, too—”

“Harry Potter, help me!”

“—talking about having female friends—”

“I’m going to jinx your hair blue!”

“Do it, I’ll match Cho.”

They hauled Daphne into the common room, a multi-step process that left Hermione haggard and Ron rather more wet than he’d been on arrival, where she sank into a leather armchair with the airs of an aged queen. A first year game of draughts was scattered to make space, and a small coterie of gawkers came to loiter, including the girls from upstairs.

After a few hours of crying, Daphne calmed. She didn’t say as much, but she grew fidgety and prone to giggles, and resisted attempts by Harry or Hermione to redirect the conversation to serious matters by launching charm offensives against the nearest creature in sight. Four people offered to take her to the headmaster’s office, each rejected; the question of where she would go after she left the Gryffindor common room was flagged twice by Hermione, but only when Ron brought it up did Daphne finally quail and fold into herself with the dignity of a surrender.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I can’t… I won’t sleep there, I just know it.”

“Because they’ll go after you?”

“Because they hate me,” she whined. “And I can’t get up in the morning and walk around and say hello to them. Either they’ll say something, and it’ll be horrible, or they won’t, and it’ll be worse, and either way I don’t know how much longer I can take being the outsider without going mad.”

“…But you have to sleep somewhere,” said Hermione.

Daphne fidgeted.

“I don’t suppose… I mean, it’s not so very long until the end of the school year,” she said, in suggestive tones.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’m very neat, you know, and I’m sure I wouldn’t bother a soul if I just tucked myself in here on the couch—”

“But you can’t just sleep in our common room, Daphne.”

“Course she can,” said Ron jovially. “Lee does it every other night anyway, there’s someone napping all the time.”

“That’s different! It isn’t a dorm!”

“I’ll be quiet,” Daphne assured her, which Draco thought was an impressively gutsy lie. “You haven’t even seen how quiet I can be. You’d be astonished. I’m like a mouse! You won’t know I’m here.”

“That’s well and good, but you haven’t got a bed,” said Hermione, with patience warmed by earnesty, “and we can try to transfigure one for you, but I really think you should think this through first, because it’s not an easy place to sleep, and you’d essentially be camping — we’d like to help, we really would, but you have to think practically.”

Harry and Ron were both at a loss for what to do. Draco, being no richer in ideas, consulted the ceiling for inspiration.

A crowd of fourth years had gathered around in the common room to chat, and unexpectedly, from amongst the whispering many, Lavender Brown heaved a titanic sigh — stepped forward — and rose to the occasion like the morning sun.

“We can squeeze her,” she said, without any particular eagerness. She massaged the bridge of her nose. “It’s a pinch, but I’ve done worse at sleepovers. I’ll share with Parvati tonight, and we’ll like, do a rotation, or whatever.”

Daphne gave a small gasp. Hermione stared at Lavender like she’d announced her intention to join the Red Army.

“You’re serious,” said Hermione.

Lavender shrugged. She looked at Parvati, who nodded. Lavender turned back to Daphne.

“Snore once and you’re out,” she said. “I’m not kidding. I need nine hours or I will kill.”

Daphne put a finger in the air and silently began to weep.

“Stop,” said Lavender, alarmed. “Jesus. Your mascara.”

She ushered a kerchief into Daphne’s hand.

“Thank you,” said Daphne, tearfully moved. “Thank you. Oh, thank you,” and he couldn’t tell if it was for the tissue or the other thing.

Lavender, with a dictatorial style befitting a fifteen-year-old girl, directed the efforts to move Daphne’s bag and things up to the girls’ dorm. Daphne herself bobbed somewhat uselessly in the midst of the crowd, fielding sorrowful looks and sympathetic touches. Katie put an arm around her shoulders, and Daphne fastened herself to the other girl’s side with a quick frightful sound, like a current of air might carry her away.

Hermione drifted over to Lavender and spoke in a low voice.

“That was a very nice gesture,” she said, with a tad too much surprise to not be altogether insulting.

“Yeah, I know,” sighed Lavender. “I’m like, a saint, probably.”

“They’re not big beds.”

“Yeah? And you got straight O’s in Transfig for like, what, exactly? ‘They’re not big beds.’ Jesus. Brightest witch of fuck all, tell you that.”

“Can you even do an Engorgement Charm? Or did you assume I’d do it for you?”

“Can we go back to the part where you were talking about how totally sweet I was, and not being literally parked directly on top of my arse?”

“Can you — never mind. I just wanted to check that you’re sure,” said Hermione, and then, with a gentleness never before directed at Lavender: “Because — you know, no one would think less of you if you weren’t. You don’t have to… prove anything. You know that, don’t you?”

Lavender popped her gum thoughtfully. She tilted her head at Hermione, and then smirked.

“No,” she agreed. “I don’t. But she let me borrow her Maybelline’s Magical No-Mess Mascara wand for the Ball, and honestly, Hermione, there’s such a thing as priorities.”

---

In the last days of May, as the Third Task slipped into the anxiety event horizon, time moved like someone had cut it with paint thinner. Harry drilled jinxes with Hermione during lunches, coming back to the table with singed fingers and quivering legs. At night, in his four-poster, Draco heard him muttering the incantations to himself before he went to sleep.

In the library, Hermione ripped through old newspapers for clues about the Third Task. Draco told her that it didn’t matter, and she agreed with him, but it didn’t stop her. She needed something to do while Harry was sleeping. Ron took an unusual interest in these preparations, too, coming to join her in the library, though he would be the first to call these efforts a waste of time.

The event horizon spanned past the ranks of students. Mad-Eye Moody — who had appeared to retain his place on the faculty, immune to whatever Crouch had said or done to him — had made a habit of keeping Harry after class. When Harry caught up with them, he usually had a new list of hexes or counter-jinxes to research, often ones that didn’t appear on the curriculum.

“Starting to think Snape might’ve had the right idea,” Ron remarked, when a bark of his name sent Harry hurrying off into the Defense professor’s office. “Love the old goat for trying, but he’s kind of showing his hand, isn’t he? Teachers aren’t supposed to help.”

“If you believe that, you must suspect McGonagall, too,” said Hermione, fighting to wedge her textbook in between old volumes of spell compendiums. Giving up, she stabbed her wand in and Shrank them, wedging them in beside three inkwells and enough parchment to handprint a volume of Dumas. “She let us use the Transfiguration classroom to practice.”

“Because she got sick of Potter knocking down tapestries,” muttered Draco.

“Yeah, probably,” admitted Ron.

The Monday before the Task brought with it the last double Potions block with the Slytherins, and Hermione was late. Or her equivalent to lateness, which was bustling in a good five minutes before the bell; whereupon she sat down, ignored the (beautifully and single-handedly arrayed) potion kit in front of her, and bit down on her knuckle, so deeply lost in a warzone of thought that he feared for the integrity of her phalange.

“Idle hands are the boggart’s plaything, Granger.”

The countershot about his own hypocritical idleness was so obvious that she could have probably knocked it off in her sleep. She didn’t.

He set down the stirring wand and looked at her.

Her knuckle was starting to blanch from pressure. She was very pale, a mien that he took for fear.

A claw of unease traced down his vertebrae. He leaned between their chairs, lowering his voice.

“Granger?”

She drew a copy of the Prophet, and smoothed it with uneven hands over the potions table. Furtively, he ascertained that Professor Snape was entangled in Neville’s hash of a Phthisis Solution, and then jerked it in his direction to read it.

The first article was a new release from Rita Skeeter, entitled POTTER VS. WARRINGTON: CLASH OF THE CHAMPIONS. The article above it was much darker: HOUSE-ELF ARRAIGNED IN WORLD CUP DARK MARK INVESTIGATION: “JUSTICE DONE,” SAYS NEW SECRETARY.

The elf, which formerly belonged to Lord Sibelius Nott (Chief of Staff for the Minister of Magic), was arrested and faces four charges…

“I see Potter’s no longer the favorite.” He slid it back to her and reached for the stirring wand, keeping his tone level. There were places to discuss that, but Potions wasn’t one of them.

Several rows behind them, Theo and Pansy were quietly doing knife work, with swift strokes that fell in almost eerie unison, and conferring in cool low whispers that reverberated with the susurrus of burbling pots. The Potions classroom was a dark, musted, steamy cave of a room, and he blamed it for the sweat that filmed his neck. Daphne was carefully mincing scallions at a table to their right with Parvati, who every so often would peer at her work and wince.

Draco checked again for Snape’s attention and found it diverted. He folded the newspaper in half, leaving Skeeter’s headline intact, and leaned across the aisle.

“Oi. Potter.”

“Hm?” Harry was engrossed in his scallions.

The paper smacked him in the back of the head.

“Ow!”

“Have you seen this?”

“No, see, the problem is, Draco, the back of my head is the one place I can’t see. Confuses me, too—”

“Shut up. Ronald, I’m delegating. Give ‘Seeker’s Reflexes’ over there his news.”

“Sure.” Ron caught the paper before it fell and held it under the desk, scanning it. He whistled. “That old cow,” he marveled. “A week before the Task, too.”

Harry shrugged. “I did tell her to get stuffed.”

“Should’ve used a stronger word, if she was gonna write this anyway,” said Ron. “In for a knut, you know? Let’s see what she says on page seven… oh, good, she’s got a hundred words on Warrington’s pecs. Pass me the scissors, I’m saving this for when I need a laugh.”

“When I need to puke, more like,” muttered Harry. “Draco should offer to introduce her, that’d put her off my case.”

“I can think of no two who deserve each other more,” said Draco, but he was distracted. The line about Cassius’s father bothered him:Warrington (son of Rufus Warrington, the renowned pewter cauldron magnate and senior advisor to the Minister of Magic…

Why was that interesting? Most people in Slytherin had fathers who were either rich, political, or both.

Hermione was silently dicing scallions. She picked up the board and swept them into the pot with a stroke like she was bisecting a jugular.

He drummed his fingers on the table. Warrington had a father at the Ministry. High-ranking. Enough to have Runcorn on a private Floo network, probably. Which would put him in the limited circle of people with knowledge of the Triwizard Tournament. It was a small number. There couldn’t be that many men with seventeen-year-old children at Hogwarts. Nor any as prominent as Cassius. Head Boy, Slytherin Prefect, admitted magical talent.

What went wrong with the Goblet of Fire had never been explained. The Ministry hadn’t told anyone how it worked, had they? They had just hauled it in and said it would spit out a name for every school. There were no established standards of virtue, or even of merit. Well. Dumbledore had suggested them, but that was Dumbledore. Nobody from the Ministry had claimed as such. No one had even said the Goblet necessarily made the decision for itself.

Flora Carrow had known the Second Task was happening in the lake before she was taken hostage. The only person who remotely cared about her enough to say so was Cassius.

Who, of course, could have figured it out himself. All the other champions had done it. He was a Head Boy; he could have taken the egg to the prefects’ bathroom any time he liked.

His fingers slowed to a three-four step.

“How did Warrington know about the dragons?”

“Hah?” said Harry, scrutinizing an advert for a new Comet model.

Draco twitched in irritation and snatched the newspaper back. “Pay attention. I’m talking about the First Task. When we went out with Hagrid, Charles said that Warrington had been there ‘earlier that week.’”

“…Who the hell is Charles?”

“Ronald’s brother? The dragonkeeper? I know your memory’s not what mine is, but please try—”

Ron spluttered. “Charlie? ”

“—to keep up. Warrington was there before Maxime, before you, and obviously before Krum, by extent. That means he knew about it long before you did. Who told him? It wasn’t Hagrid.”

“Might’ve heard about it some other way,” suggested Harry, while Ron kept up a stream of muttering.

“‘Charles’ Weasley, sodding ridiculous, sounds like a pimply old git with sideburns. ‘Aye, forsooth, ’tis my oon brother Charles, and yon eldest, William, of the Weasel Clan—’”

“Merlin, do you ever shut up? I’m working to something.”

Ron snickered and slumped in his chair, gesturing to continue.

“How did he know? Besides poking around in the forest, which, incidentally, few people outside of you lot are inclined to do unless they have to.”

“D’you mean he had a tip-off? Because Charlie didn’t tell him, I promise you that.”

“I’m saying that he knew somehow. His father’s aide to the Minister. How far up do you think the Tasks were planned?”

Hermione spoke, though she was acting much unlike herself in that she had pulled nothing near her weight in the conversation, let alone the usual two-thirds of everyone else’s. “You think there’s a leak, then.”

“Put it this way: if my father were senior advisor to the Minister of Magic, and I were a Triwizard champion, I wouldn’t let him have a moment’s peace until he’d told me something.”

“Fascinating. Well, that’s a mystery that didn’t need solving,” she said coolly, “but thanks for that.”

“Excuse me?”

“Yeah, hang on,” objected Ron, “if Warrington cheated—”

“Then he’s only done the same thing as Harry, and made use of his resources in an otherwise utterly unfair and barbaric game of blood sport. I don’t know what any of you expect to do about it, besides wish him well.”

“Barbaric!”

“I don’t know about that, ‘barbaric’—”

“No? No?” She threw down her knife. “You think that holding four children for an hour under a lake and daring them not to drown doesn’t count as ‘barbaric’? How about locking them in a cage with a fire-breathing monster?”

“I agree with you,” said Ron tentatively, “but Mione — to be fair — everyone else was seventeen.”

“In the muggle world,” she said, with a hard edge in her voice, “adulthood begins at eighteen.”

“We’re not in—”

“I know where we are.”

They completed their potion in silence.

Hermione’s ability to communicate with Draco in shorthand, previously a pleasant convenience and sign of mutual understanding, now seemed a rather mean-spirited and purposeful way to avoid discourse on any subject, because she declined to answer anything with more than a hand gesture or a certain tilt of her head for the rest of the class.

The walls of Hogwarts always had ears, but they never had so many eyes as when one walked beside Harry Potter. Least of all in the immediate aftermath of the Skeeter article, which provoked an entourage of whispers to accompany him to the Great Hall. Perhaps part of it was the unusual addition of a green tie to their melange, because Daphne had tagged along behind them, talking forcefully and constantly about something to do with Paris and hats.

Her strategy failed, not from any shortcoming of her own, but because in the Entrance Hall someone had planted themselves in the center of the room, redirecting foot traffic around them like a current. The person was Theo. Daphne gave a thin groan.

“Right. I’ve had enough of this bloke,” announced Ron. “I think it’s far past time I saw less of him, to be honest.”

“Don’t, don’t scrap with him, please,” whispered Daphne. “Let’s just sneak past. Can I duck behind you?”

“Yeah, sure. Hunker down. Want my hood?”

“Oh, could I?”

“Daph!”

Theo had seen them. He crossed the hall quickly, sparing a jerk of his head for Draco, with a brisk: “Heard you took a bad fall, chap.”

Draco folded his arms and tilted his head.

Theo paused, his eyes flickering up and down. “What?” he said, a touch doubtful. “Didn’t you?”

Draco narrowed his eyes.

Theo checked over his shoulder and lowered his voice. “Listen. I had words with Goyle—”

“Oh, you had words. When’s your Order of Merlin coming?”

“I — alright, not undeserved, but I straightened them out. I mean, it’s not going to happen again.”

“It’s not going to happen again because they’ll need tweezers for what’s left of him if he tries.”

“Noted. Will you forgive me if I push the quaking and weeping for later? I’ve a tight schedule,” he said. “Daphne. Do you have a moment?”

“No,” said Ron.

“Nope,” said Daphne, gazing at the ceiling.

“A moment, Daphne. Really.”

“No, not one, I’m afraid, my dear.”

“I’m not trying to unburden myself here. It’s a logistical meeting. Twenty seconds.”

Hermione’s patience, none too great on good days, was reaching negative readings. When she stepped forward, he bore very little hope that cooler tempers would prevail.

At the same time, there was a part of him — the same part that had seen her drop Flint with one spell, and often returned to that image in idle moments — that was just as happy to let her at him.

“If she’d wanted to negotiate, she would’ve said so,” said Hermione coolly.

Theo’s hand swept at her, palm-out, as if to try and silo her from the conversation. “Thank you, Granger, for that ever-so-helpful translation of a two-letter word, but I don’t have time to discuss—”

“Good,” she snapped. “Neither do I.”

She drew her wand. Draco moved his hand to his own, and Theo stepped back twice.

“What are you going to do,” he said slowly, “set me on fire?”

“Nott, stop.”

“Teddy, come on.”

“Let him,” said Ron, suddenly, and Draco looked at him sharply. Ron hadn’t touched his wand, but his arms were folded.

Hermione lifted her chin at Theo.

“Maybe,” she said. “Depends how quick you are, doesn’t it?”

She stepped forward. Theo stepped back.

“Being a generous man, I’m going to interpret that as a bit of banter, and not a formal challenge.” He smiled thinly. “Though not for my own sake. In fact, if you put me in the Hospital Wing, you’d be doing me a favor. Most rest I’d have in a year.”

“You’d be very welcome,” said Hermione.

She was angrier than he’d realized. In the lines of her body there was a tension so old it had frayed to web-thin cords, and he wasn’t sure that the person she saw at the end of her wand was Theo at all. If she cursed him, it would be magnificent. It would also be horrible. He ought to have stopped her, but he liked being behind her, not between whatever she was pointing her wand at. He felt the chilled wonder of someone watching a shipwreck at a distance.

But if Theo cursed her, he’d put him on the floor.

Maybe Theo knew it, too, because he put his palms to his head and turned around and took three short steps and then flung his hands at the high atrium. “Fine! Fine! No, that’s perfect! Never mind — listen, if one of you happens to get a word in with Daphne in the next forty-eight hours, would you tell her I called? I don’t have time for this juvenile haggling.”

“That’s a new one,” said Daphne shortly. Theo stilled.

“Daph?”

“I don’t have time, he says? I don’t have time! Wow, are you busy, Theodore? Too busy for me? I hadn’t noticed! You’d only told me once a day for the past always!”

“Shut up,” he said, with a sincere and breathy hurt. “Don’t be simple.”

Daphne shoved through Harry and Ron and stomped in front of Hermione, who slipped her wand away, blinking in surprise. “Go away!” she snapped. “Just go away! Leave me alone, if you won’t have me, can’t you pick one thing or the other? I’m so sodding sick of you and Pansy and the blessed Mission I could just puke at the sight of you most days, you slimy, callous, weaselly, pompous twat!”

“It’s not my fault!”

“Another new one!” she shrieked. “‘Not my fault’? God! I’ve never heard that from Theodore Nott!”

“Greengrass,” muttered Draco, as the crowd began to form a wide hemisphere, offering an arena for what at least some clearly expected to be a fight. He didn’t know if they were wrong.

Reflected in Theo’s wide dark eyes was Daphne’s glower. He held one hand out, and it was unclear what he was trying to do, to touch her or shake her or stop her or just make a universal gesture of don’t hurt anybody, but it was unsuccessful on every score. “It isn’t,” he said. “It isn’t. You said so, too. You agreed.”

“Go piss on a gas fire, honestly! What the hell did you expect me to say?”

“ You still can’t possibly anything is my fault.”

“What?” said Hermione sharply. “What’s his fault? Did Theodore have something to do with Tracey and Millicent?”

“No!”

“Take your nose out, muggle-born,” snapped Theo.

Draco touched his wand. Theo’s eyes flickered at him, and narrowed.

“Shocker,” he said quietly, like an accusation. It was. There was heat on Draco’s neck. There was heat everywhere. Panic licked up the inside of his throat.

Daphne spat. It landed on the floor.

“I hope Harry wins,” she said loudly. “I hope he thrashes Cassius. I hope they put him on the podium and make your sorry father take a lot of pictures with a half-blood. I hope he invites all of his muggle-borns and half-breeds up with him, the veela and the giant and me, Theo, and the Minister has to shake our filthy hands, and I hope he flays the skin off his fingers trying to wash them afterwards.”

She shoved past. He stumbled, and it didn’t look feigned. The crowd parted around her like she had cast Bombarda.

Theo reached out and snatched her wrist. She hissed and tugged.

“Let me go—”

“Don’t do this,” said Theo softly. “Daphne, you’ll kill yourself if you do this.”

Ron lunged forward and punched him.

Shouts, shrieks, an explosion of movement on all sides, and when the struggle cleared the cloud had cleaved around the wriggling nucleus of Ron — writhing to break out of Harry’s clutches — and Theo, who was hunched over in a crouch, trying to hold the blood into his nose.

All this time Hermione had been getting closer until she was standing in front of Draco. When Theo’s head snapped up, there was a red ring on his eyes, and Draco edged his shoulder in front. If he lunged, he could move between them—

What was he thinking? It was Theodore. They’d flown seeker drills on the sands of the Riviera. He’d kissed Narcissa’s hand, and slept on a beach beneath a starry sky.

There was a film on the world, a bad lens, refracting everything funny. This fear, this deep alien horror in the midst of the familiar, it wasn’t school. This wasn’t how it felt to be here. It was Hogwarts, but it wasn’t. It was his friend, but it wasn’t. His fingers were cold as the nitrogen shackles they clasped on Azkaban inmates and he could feel his wand-handle folding his palm in half.

“Alright, touché,” said Theo, in a voice so brittle you could crack it with a fingernail. “You really did get me. Going for Daphne? Low blow, I wouldn’t have seen it coming. I’ll give you that one for free.”

“Nott.”

“Actually — never mind. Give my best to your mother. If you can find her.”

“What?”

But Theo sidestepped them and vanished down the stairs to the dungeons.

Draco nearly went after him. It took Hermione grabbing his wrist to stop him from tripping down the stairs, his brain hazed with dread.

“Let me go.”

“No, I won’t.”

“Did you hear what he said?”

“It was a taunt. It doesn’t matter. He only said it to be cruel.”

“How do you know?” he demanded, but she shook her head, obviously reluctant to say what they both knew: she didn’t.

Daphne’s breath shuddered. Draco glanced at her, but she was staring intensely and nakedly at Ron, who was quietly wiping a bit of blood off his knuckles.

“Ronald,” she began, faintly.

Harry bellowed. He clapped his hand to his forehead and screwed his eyes shut.

“What’s wrong?”

“Harry?”

“Potter, what’s the matter?”

“Scar. It’s… it’s a bad one.”

Daphne perked up. “Do you need some ointment?” she said, rummaging in her bag. “I always carry some. My scars act up when it rains.”

“Not like that.” He cringed with his whole body. “It’s like… it’s a headache. It doesn’t hurt like normal.”

She paused, ointment pot in hand. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” He shook it out, blinking, and then flinched away from a group of Hufflepuffs who were gawking. Draco gave them a black look, and they scattered.

Lunch had been well-scoured from the tables by the time they found their plates, and the last quart of a tureen of spiced seafood soup was meagerly split amongst them. Draco ate nothing and scraped his spoon in loud fractals along his dish until Hermione tired of it and Summoned the instrument across the table. The food was bad. The mood was worse.

When the dishes vanished there was a collective breath of relief, though it shriveled up and died a sad death when Dumbledore stood up and clapped for attention.

“Good afternoon! Tarry, please, before your next classes; I have an announcement.”

“Merlin,” muttered Ron. “What now?”

“There has been a minor adjustment in personnel,” he cried. “Mr. Ludo Bagman has been called away on urgent business, and he will not be able to join us for the third and final installment of the Triwizard Tournament. He sends his regrets and the very best of luck to all four champions.”

There was a small detonation of porcelain down the Gryffindor table. Fred had dropped his teacup.

“Being that Mr. Bagman served not just as commentator but adjudicator for the Tournament,” said Dumbledore calmly, “his role must be fulfilled with a neutral ombudsman to ensure that the balance of judges remains fair. Should it be necessary, Mr. Odin Davis will fill his place as a judge if Mr. Bagman’s business prevents him from returning to Hogwarts before the Third Task.”

“Oh, Christ,” said Hermione, with a venom that surprised everyone.

“Quiet, please,” said Dumbledore calmly. “Thank you! Mr. Davis will arrive on Friday morning. We appreciate his service very much. In the meantime, I will let the champions continue their preparations. Good afternoon.”

He released the podium, and retreated to the high table. Daphne threw down her spoon.

“Who the hell is Odin Davis?” said Harry, with the resignation of someone lifting a rock he expected to house many worms.

“He’s an auror,” muttered Draco. “And a lapdog of Sibelius Nott, lest you nurse any hopes of fair adjudication.”

“Put those to bed in September, mate.”

“What I don’t understand,” said Hermione, slowly and tautly, “is how Nott can possibly have that level of influence on the Tournament.”

“Political corruption? Well, Granger, it’s quite simple if you want to get into it, it starts and ends with having cartoonish amounts of money—”

“No. Listen. Crouch is the head of International Magical Cooperation, which is jointly running the tournament with Games and Sports. That’s two people he could pay off, and Padfoot says Crouch wouldn’t take a bribe, so I believe him. That leaves Bagman, who just left—”

“Hermione, Lord Nott is the Minister’s Chief of Staff,” said Daphne, not unkindly. “I don’t know who Mr. Padfoot is, but perhaps he’s not wholly in possession of the facts. It may not be like this for muggles, but here, the power system’s quite hierarchical. It’s very easy for him to have a say.”

“I know that, thanks. What I want to know is why Nott would care enough to throw his weight around for the Tournament. I mean, yes, yes, the optics of it all, the politics, and so forth, but they just replaced the Secretary of Law Enforcement and concluded a major investigation, so you’d think they had bigger fish — and Draco, I agree with you, I think Warrington probably is cheating, which raises the question of who at the Ministry is helping—”

“Oh, of course he is,” said Daphne. It was followed by a silence like a rimshot.

Draco raised his eyebrow at her. “Something to share with the class?”

“Theo’s been helping him all year,” she said. “That’s what half of those League events are, is strategy meetings for Cassius. They bring in Ministry blokes and talk about it. Takes a village.”

Four stares leveled her with enough joint force to raze a building.

“That slimy shit,” whispered Ron.

“Huh,” said Harry thoughtfully. “No wonder he was ripping mad when I tied him for first.”

“Are we surprised?” said Draco, intrigued. “I’m not. I inferred that was happening, anyway—”

“I inferred,” said Hermione, “that the Slytherins were helping him, not that the whole Ministry was involved.” She seemed to be trying to fuse her jawbones together by pressure.

“I thought you knew,” Daphne said apologetically, mostly to Ron. “Sibelius Nott has simply oodles of money, that’s how he and Rufus Warrington know each other. I happen to know the Ministry has a backdoor shipping arrangement for the Warrington Company, which is why they killed that bill last September.”

“So Davis is going to pull for Cassius, and that’s that,” said Ron. “Harry hasn’t got a chance. Essentially.”

“Unless someone puts Davis under Imperius,” she agreed. “Mr. Warrington owes Lord Nott enough money to mortgage Gringotts, twice. Not an uncommon situation, I hear, for most people at the Ministry! Nott is loose with principals and tight with interest. My father said he’s an absolute goblin when it comes to gold.”

“Pejorative,” said Hermione, quietly, staring at the table.

“Yes,” said Daphne, “he tends to be.”

“That’s how Runcorn took office, isn’t it,” said Ron, in a stroke of cogence. “Nott bought it for him. Basically.”

“Or funded his campaign, rather, yes. Called in a frightening number of debts to do it, too,” she said, reaching for the tea. “I’m sure that little Floo call had a lot of family accountants walking out of high windows. If he’d had to do another radio advert, I think the national economy would’ve tanked.”

Hermione put down her fork and knife. She stood up and picked up her bag and calmly, without complaint or explanation, walked out of the Great Hall.

There were three seconds where four seats remained at the table.

Daphne fretted. “Did I say—”

Draco threw down his silver and stood up. He turned to the table and opened his mouth, temper short, for the shortest excuse he could muster, but—

“Go on,” said Harry quietly. Behind the screen of his glasses, his eyes were cool and startlingly clear. Ron inhaled, and Harry cut him off with a jerk of his chin. Something passed between them. Ron cleared his throat and went back to his soup.

It occurred to him that while Ron might not understand anything — nothing, truly, not one fiber of one thread of it — that lay between Draco and Hermione, there was a great deal he didn’t know about Ron and Harry, either.

Draco made quick work of the distance to the doors, spotted the tail of Hermione’s cloak vanishing up the grand stairwell, and followed it. This course took them up a course of increasingly cramped staircases, which he followed until the sixth, seventh, eighth floors of the castle were spinning away below him in fractals under the bannister, and up the last rickety spiral to the Owlery.

The Owlery was a round stone cask of a room, riddled like a honeycomb with owl berths, from whence a panopticon of great dark eyes peered cooly and judiciously at whatever stirred the door. Straw papered the floor in patches striated with brown, redolent with the acidic reek of all animal keeps, and through the rough-hewn slots in the stone, the queer and changing light of a spring afternoon in the highlands rolled in errant waves over the hills.

Crouching in front of the window was Hermione, a sheet of parchment on her knees, a quill in hand, and some volume of ink already starting to bleed from her haste in writing. She was struggling with it, too, and made soft little noises of frustration whenever the materials failed her, like an agitated cat.

He shut the door. The lock clicked at the touch of Colloportus.

“Oh,” she said, without turning. “You.”

He didn’t know how she had known. His footsteps were dampened by the straw.

“Rather.”

That earned him a cursory glance. “What are you doing?”

“Girding myself to ask you the same question.”

“I’m writing a letter.” She dotted an I, viciously. “To Madam Portia Magnussen.”

“Of the Allegiance for Muggle-Born Wizards.”

“The same.” She swirled something ugly and blotted that might have been a signature. “To see if she can do something about this.”

“…Namely?”

“Mimsy. The house-elf.”

The straw floor was mobile, and it perambulated around the room unobtrusively, rustling in a stray whip of wind.

Hermione shook her head. Her quill was going to crack any minute.

“Listen—”

“They framed her,” she said quietly.

“Yes, and everyone intelligent knows that. No one thinks that a house-elf could summon a Dark Mark, it’s absurd.”

Finally she put down the quill and turned her face up at him. It was small and writ in anguish, and with her kneeling, the distance between them seemed long.

“That’s worse,” she said faintly. “Surely you see how that’s worse.”

“How?”

“Because it means nobody cares.” She was shaking in the hands, but not in the voice. That was steady. It almost always was. “She didn’t do anything wrong, but they’re going to send her to Azkaban anyway, because it’s easier than trying to go after someone really dangerous. And nobody gives a damn.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yes,” she said, louder, “it is.”

“It isn’t.”

“Don’t be dense, I can’t stand it right now.” Her voice cut through his. “I’ll have a row with you, if you like, I’m serious, I’m so far beyond caring you don’t even — because they don’t care. I know they don’t! Because I’ve lived in this world for years, and I know how it works, and they don’t care! They don’t!”

Owls cast off from the parapets, racing the echoes of her voice into the long shadows of the afternoon.

“Fine,” he said shortly. “Have it your way. For the record, I’m not unsympathetic. But this isn’t the time—”

“You’re going to tell me I need to keep my composure?” Her serenity was like a faceful of cold water. “You really needn’t worry. I’ve a lot of practice by now.”

“That’s not what I was going to say.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is. Here’s another one: ‘Granger, don’t be ridiculous.’ ‘Granger, don’t be extreme. ’ Well, I’m not. I’m stating the facts. Mimsy is going to Azkaban for a crime she didn’t commit, and the Ministry is going to say it’s a problem of beasts and wizards, instead of muggle-borns and purebloods, and the person who did it is never, ever going to be caught.” Her hands were white knots. “Never. And then it’s going to happen again.”

“Granger.”

“And then, after that, it’ll happen again. And again, until someone dies, and they’ll say, ‘this was a tragedy! This was a shock!’ But it won’t be. And then it’s going to happen again, and it won’t be as shocking. Because these things happen. And so on, and so on, and then, one day, it won’t be a tragedy anymore. And maybe, that time, it’ll be me.” She shrugged, a jerky little movement. “And they still won’t care.”

He set his jaw and turned his head to stare out the window. He was beginning to feel sincerely angry in ways that made it difficult to look at her.

“If you tell me to keep my composure,” she said, very even and calm, “I’ll never speak to you again. You’re my best friend, and you’ve saved my life, and I’ve saved yours, but if you don’t believe me, I have nothing else to say to you.”

He had a terrible sense that he could say something just then that would hurt her, and that it could break whatever was between them, and it was one of the rare moments when she was angry enough to let him. If he did that then there would be nothing afterward.

No: not nothing. In fact, he could see the path very clearly. He would leave her there and walk down the stairs from the Owlery to the dungeons, and he would go knock on the door and ask for Theo, who would come out, maybe with Pansy, and they would shake hands and he would understand everything without needing to be told and Draco could stay there as long as he wanted without ever saying what it was that had happened. He could spend the rest of his life doing that, if he wanted to. And Theo and Pansy would never ask questions and they would always be kind, because they liked him, and they understood parts of him that he hoped to God Hermione never understood, even though it was part of the reason that she was angry at him.

The idea frightened him badly enough to make him clamp his jaw shut. As if it might come out without him meaning to. His hands were shaking.

Maybe he wanted to do it. Part of him did want to do it, in fact. But thinking about it made him feel dizzy and outside his own body, like watching some other creature use his own hand to pick up a knife and drive it very slowly and gently into his own heart.

“What?” she demanded. “Say something.”

Breathing was the only thing he could do without shaking, so he focused on it.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know… what?”

“I don’t know. What do you want me to say? I don’t know what I don’t know. Would you give me a minute?”

She turned toward him, took in his face, and whatever she saw in it made her take a slow step in his direction. “Draco, tell me what’s wrong.”

Anger to concern in three seconds or less. That was Hermione, for you. Textbook case. First chapter, first page. He could have laughed.

“Nothing.”

“No, not nothing, it’s obviously not nothing. Talk to me. You always do this, you lock down and you don’t tell me anything, and it makes me feel like I’m outside of my own friendship, so just say—”

“What’s wrong is you keep buzzing in my ear.”

Fuck. He closed his eyes and sucked his cheek between his teeth and bit down, hard, until he could taste blood instead of acid, and at least that pain was predictable.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing. I didn’t mean it.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Granger.”

“Do you know,” she said suddenly, like pond-ice cracking, “I had a row with Ron about you, after the Second Task.”

He tipped his head back and let the feelings happen to him. Maybe if he didn’t try to fight the discomfort it would leave him alone. Like playing dead.

“Another one?”

“Yes. He came to apologize to me, and he was pretty nice about it. He’d made a whole list of the things he’d done wrong. A list! Ron! ‘Because I know you like lists.’ That’s what he said. And he said he wasn’t going to fight with you any more, because he knew it made me unhappy, and he didn’t want to do that. Even though, he said, he didn’t like the way you spoke about his family, or mine. And I said: ‘Neither do I.’” She shook her head a little, as if marveling at it.

“Merlin’s sake,” he said lowly. “Now? Really, now?”

“And he said—” she lifted her voice— “he said, ‘I don’t blame you, but why don’t you say something about it, then?’ And I asked him what he meant. And he said, ‘well, you let him get away with it, and you don’t let me.’ And then I got angry. ‘Because it’s not fair,’ I said. ‘He tries.’ And he said, does he? Does he really try?”

“I would prefer to leave Ronald out of this conversation, if we’re going to have it.”

“And I said yes. And anyway, it’s not all his fault, I said, when he’s never been around muggles, it’s hard to understand.” She wet her lips, the tiniest of hesitations. “And he said, ‘Neither have I.’”

Well. There it was.

“Fine.” It was clipped. “Perfectly fair. Good observation. Shall we make a list of the qualities I have that Ronald lacks? For parity?”

“Stop it.”

“Start with how I can hold a conversation with you for more than ten minutes on a subject of your choosing, instead of mine—”

“You’re dodging.”

“Or try how you like me because I’m worse than him, how about that? You like it. You like that I’m meaner than you are, too, because it makes you feel better, because you can’t stand the idea that you might not be the best person in any given room, and I’m your one friend who’ll never fight you for it, aren’t I — Malfoy, he’s the ”

“Stop trying to pick other fights,” she said steadily. “We can have that one, but that’s not what we’re doing now. And stop making this about Ron. It isn’t about him.”

“Though perhaps you’d like it to be.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means what it means. You have a bad habit of comparing us. I notice that Potter never gets a column in these sorts of tables. Why’s that, I wonder? Never made it in the running, did he? Poor kid.”

There was a beat.

“That’s a remarkably nasty thing to imply,” she snapped. “That’s — remarkably nasty, even for you.”

“Yes, well.”

“I compared you to Ron because — because he pointed it out! Because he brought it up! But frankly, you know, if you’d like to go there—”

“Be my guest,” said his mouth, for some reason, while the rest of him violently disagreed.

“—then it’s not the worst comparison in the world! Because unlike you, Ronald has made every effort to make me feel welcome. Outside of Hogwarts, I mean, in the real world. In his home. And it’s funny, because I can name every member of his family, and I didn’t even know how you and Sirius were related until Remus told me.”

“Hang on,” he said, with a very unkind edge of laughter. “That’s lovely. That’s just perfect. So when I don’t know about your family, it’s my fault, but when you don’t know about mine—”

“I’ve told you about my family! Draco! You know their names! You know what they do! You know my cousins, and my aunts and uncles, and you know that I’ve got two cousins and family in Leeds, and my grandfather’s deaf, and my grandmother thinks I go to a special ed school because when I come back over the summers I don’t know basic muggle curriculum, and my mum’s heartbroken because she can’t tell her the truth, and last July we got in a fight and I called her a muggle and she hasn’t looked at me the same way since!”

The owls were screeching at them, agitated by the sound of yelling, and the flutter overhead silenced them both momentarily.

“You didn’t tell me that,” he said. Hermione sucked in breath like she was dying for it.

“Maybe not!” she said tightly. “Maybe not. But I don’t even know what your father did for a living. Besides ‘be rich.’”

That rankled.

“That’s not equivalent.”

“Uh huh.”

“What he ‘did for a living’ was being Lord Malfoy. Anything else was a courtesy position at best, and the title certainly didn’t matter. I don’t think I even knew it.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“Frankly, yes.”

“Oh? That’s all? When my parents ask where you live, the best I can do is a radius of two thousand kilometers.”

He couldn’t help but scoff. “What, like they were going to visit?”

She barked in laughter and stormed over to the window, her hands knit in her hair. “No! They couldn’t! As you’ve made perfectly clear! No one from my family has ever been invited to your house — even though your mother said she’d invite me, which I was thrilled about, by the way, and I waited all summer for the chance, but that’s not really your fault, because even I can admit I was being a daft idiot with delusions of — delusions of I don’t know what — but that’s alright, I thought, at least I have met his mother, that’s something, though Theodore Nott still apparently knows more about her than I do! So there’s that!”

“You’re not entitled to know my mother.”

She whirled on him. “I’m not entitled to know Molly Weasley, either,” she spat. “But I do. Very well, in fact.”

He turned his head like she’d struck it and breathed and focused on that, the breathing. And the biting down. His cheek was numb so he bit the other one, until that was numb too, and his mouth was full of copper.

Hermione took a sharp breath and swept her hand over her cheek, subtly, like she didn’t want him to notice.

In his head he was standing in the Slytherin common room, and Theo was there, and they were shaking hands — and Cassius had an arm around his shoulders, and Flint and Crabbe and Goyle and Millicent Bulstrode were laughing and smiling at him, with him, and there was no part of Draco that didn’t feel dead.

“There are parts of this world that are dangerous to you.”

She dropped her hands and waited. By and by, she frowned.

“I’m sorry,” she said acidly, “is that supposed to tell me something?”

“There are parts of my life that are dangerous. To you. My family isn’t like the Weasleys. And,” he said unevenly, “the reason you are not acquainted with my mother is not — it has nothing, you understand, nothing to do — with what she thinks of me.”

Hermione paused.

“Is that why?” she said. “She hates muggle-borns?”

There was a hard silence.

“Well, I knew that,” she exclaimed.

“Granger—”

“Is that all? You were scared she’d be mean to me? That’s your answer, honestly? After four years at this school, you think I’m afraid of your mother?”

“Let me f—”

“I mean, maybe,” she said, belligerently, “maybe, yes, I am, but I’m sorry, and your mother seems like an imposing woman and all, but if she’s not going to actually, literally curse me — unless she is, in which case, you might have said—”

“Maybe it’s not about you,” he said sharply, pivoting from the window. “Did you think of that? Did that occur to you? Maybe there are some things that do not, in fact, come down to how Hermione Granger feels about them. Do I astound you?”

“Really! That’s rich!”

“Yeah? Touch a nerve, did I?”

“You’re a real hypocrite!”

“Am I.”

“And you have some nerve suggesting I’m selfish, when everyone in Gryffindor if not the castle knows you’re a greedy, caustic, overbearing narcissist!”

He ground the heels of his hands into his temples.

“But you know what? Fine! I trust you,” she said, and though it was scathingly acidic, it was still sincere. It was a little helpless, in fact, with how sincere it was, and it made him feel odd and nauseous and weak in the legs, which was horrible. “Tell me, then. Enlighten me as to what it is about the way you treat me that supposedly has nothing to do with who I am.”

“My mother is mad.”

He wondered whether it was possible to perform a Tongue-Severing Curse on oneself.

Hermione was staring at him. He didn’t dare look at her, but he could feel it, just the same.

“She has — episodes. She thinks she’s in the past. She forgets the past decade, at least, sometimes more. She calls me ‘Lucius.’ Sometimes,” he said, “it takes hours for her to remember where she is.”

Hermione wet her lips.

“Snape doesn’t know how to cure it,” he said. He braced himself on the window, suddenly exhausted from the strain of simply existing in the world as it was. “His professional opinion is that it’s impossible. To cure her. Even if we knew what she has, which we don’t. There’s no other symptom; it’s not a curse, it’s not a spell, it’s not a haunting, it’s not any disease known to healers. But sometimes she doesn’t know who I am.” He slipped his hands in his pockets. “That’s why you haven’t met.” He jerked his head at her. “And the fact that she hates muggle-borns.”

Hermione pressed her lips shut, and covered them with one hand.

“I’m very sorry.”

“Don’t be. She hates you,” he said swiftly. “Not even you, personally, Granger, but you as a category. As a concept.”

“She’s your mother whether or not she’s a good person, and that’s still awful. It’s allowed to be awful for you and awful for me at the same time.”

He probed the cut in his mouth, and the pain was a solid thing, unimpeachably real.

“In the muggle world,” she said, carefully, “there are doctors who focus on treating mental illness. There are things you can do. Therapies and medications.”

“Yes?”

“Many of them are quite effective.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“No?”

“Not if it’s muggles.”

She folded her arms. “That’s absurd.”

“Yes.”

“She’d refuse help—”

“Yes.”

“Hurting herself, hurting you, rather—”

“Yes.”

“What if it was you?” she demanded. “What if you were sick, and the only cure came from muggles? What would she do?”

He had to think about it.

He had to think for a long time.

Hermione scoffed in disgust. “You’re not serious.”

“Am I dying?”

“You’re not serious.”

“It’s germane. Am I dying, or could I survive?”

“It doesn’t matter!”

“To you.”

“You’re her son!”

“Which is why it matters.”

“You want me to believe that your own mother would let you suffer to make a point about blood purity. That’s how important it is, to her. More important than her own son’s happiness.”

“Than my happiness? Fathomlessly.”

“Well, that’s incredibly stupid,” she snapped.

He recoiled.

She was fucking impossible sometimes, actually impossible, she couldn’t wrap her head around anything that didn’t already fit in there. He wanted to grab her and shake her until she saw stars and sense. His head was a hot dark room full of creatures with teeth.

“It’s not stupid. It’s how my family’s stayed alive—”

“Which has really worked out for them, hasn’t it,” she shot back, and then froze.

But he wasn’t angry at her. What he felt instead was a startling prick of relief.

Because she was impossible. Impossible and ferocious and a lot meaner than anyone gave her credit for. But that was what he would’ve said, too.

Because she was impossible, but it was nice to know that he wasn’t insane. That it wasn’t a ludicrous idea, that thought, and though it stung like salt on a scrape, it was real, and it was honest.

They fought in the same way, dirty, heel to cranium, wands and hands. When it didn’t feel awful, it felt nearly clean. It felt good, in the same way that it felt good to get your thumb on a bruise and push.

He started to laugh. He put his hand over his eyes, and laughed, and it felt good.

“I didn’t mean that, Draco.”

He rolled off the wall. “You did, but it doesn’t matter,” he rasped. “You’re right, anyway. My father’s dead. Fifteen generations of pureblood lineage, the greatest fortune in wizarding Britain, and they knocked him off like they were putting down a dog. Which gives you just a preliminary fucking suggestion,” he said, his voice low and dark and cold on purpose, “of what they’ll do to you, if you let them.”

Her throat moved; he watched it. It was the worst possible time to want to touch her.

“Your position being, essentially,” she said, “that I should run far away, and stick my head in the sand, and let the purebloods sort these matters out for themselves. Like you’re all so good at doing.”

“My position being that you should be frightened.”

“Done,” she said briskly. “Anything else?”

He ground his teeth.

“My position being, more specifically, that you should act like it.”

“Not on your life.”

“Granger.”

“I chose to be here. You don’t seem to understand that,” she said, with a dreadful false calm. “I could stop coming to Hogwarts, you know. I could go to school anywhere. My mum would love me to. But every year, I come back, even though I know it means danger and nightmares and Hospital Wing visits and possibly dying, probably dying, one of these days, and that’s fine, because at least I get to choose how and when I face the people who want to kill me, and I choose now, and always, and with my eyes open, thank you!”

“The wrong choice, in other words.”

“Wrong?” Her voice vaulted into nonexistence. “Wrong!”

He snarled at her. “Yes, wrong, and if you want to stake your life on every sorry creature you find, and run headfirst into every Killing Curse, I can’t very well stop you, but I don’t want it on my hands when it comes back to you.”

“On your hands. On yours. So it’s about you, is it? What you can live with?”

“That’s right!”

“Once again, everything’s about Draco Malfoy, the only victim, the only one with anything to lose—”

“Yes, actually, Granger, the decisions I make do tend to be about me. I apologize if that offends your sensibilities.”

“It’s all about you?”

“Yes!”

“ All about you.”

“Yes.”

“Alright! Alright, fine! Explain that, then. What’s so awful,” she snapped, “what’s so very bad for Draco Malfoy? Hm? I don’t think anyone’s lining up to kill you because of who your parents are. What about this is scary to you?”

They were standing very close together. The warmth coming from her body seeped through the front of her shirt. It was the worst of all possible times to remember what her hair smelled like.

“You need to back off.”

She didn’t. “Are you scared you’ll get shunned by your Slytherin pals? That you’ll end up like Sirius? Pretty frightening, isn’t it, not having a mansion to run home to?”

“Stop it.”

“Make me. Tell me. Go on, do it. What can’t you live with? Say it.”

“Stop it.”

“Tell me! What’s so worrisome to you? What, if I’m dead? Make it easier for you, wouldn’t it?”

There was a thin, feeble string of something, somewhere in him, of name and nature unknown, but whatever it had been, it was gone now. He moved and she was moving and then he wasn’t and he had pinned her against the wall.

She made a noise. With one arm he crossed her collarbones; she couldn’t very well move, though she didn’t try. Her eyes were wide but her heart wasn’t fast, merely stubborn, drumming gently on his skin. If he’d startled her she swallowed it and any fear with the same platinum bravado she’d shown a Hungarian Horntail, five feet even of hair and glower, and if she’d ever been scared a day in her life it would shock anyone looking at her.

He hadn’t meant to hurt her, only to make her stop talking.

“Don’t you ever—” He was floating somewhere in the hot white brainspace where coherent sentences collapsed from gravity.

She swallowed.

“Don’t,” he said, finally, which was, after all, a complete sentence. “Fucking— don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Hermione.”

His tongue made a curse of it. It was a snarl with a bilabial. She went still with a stillness to match the stone at her back, like he’d struck a tuning fork.

Her eyes were so large that the stars in them had orders and constellations. Rhythms and relationships. Her freckles migrated during the winter, but one always stayed on the swell of her cheek. He thought about that, sometimes. He thought about its range of motion, which was great, because she had an inordinately expressive face, and the long course from rage to happiness could take that freckle almost everywhere, right up to the corner of her great smiling eyes. All of her was in there, really, right in the stupidly large deer eyes, where once every so often he — not anyone else — not as well as him, anyway — could peer in and see whatever her mind was doing, for a moment, like glancing through a series of telescopic lenses at the perfect moment to watch a star bloom.

What her mind was doing now, namely, was getting well and truly angry. Once or twice he’d wondered if he was ever so transparent to her, but he didn’t think so. His face didn’t have the same open affect. The idea was queasy and indecent, like walking around offering a handful of marrow to whoever came by.

Reading her was not an intellectual thing any longer, not really. It was more of a muscle, or a retained sense, like riding a broom. If he lived to one hundred and ten years old, he would remember these things from Hogwarts: the western underhand, and the full Windsor, and what Hermione Granger’s face did when she laughed. Even if they never spoke again and she went off to live fast and die stupid in her glorious justly wars and he went to live a very long, relaxing, comfortable life full of people who were nice to him, that was something he’d have to walk around with, all those little expressions — what her fingers did when she was worried, how she touched her mouth in thought. He would die knowing that, probably. One way or another.

She worked her mouth. That was another one.

“I’m sorry,” she said, after a while, though none too happily.

“Yeah?”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“Yeah.”

“I get— you know how I get.”

“Yes,” he said, “rather.”

She touched his wrist, and he eased off.

Owls crooned a mournful harmony. The wind came into the reopened space between them and hollowed it of warmth.

“If it’s ever up to me,” she said, “I’m taking you to a muggle doctor. I’m sorry if that upsets you. But I don’t give a damn about your family’s legacy. You’re too important to me, and I’m not going to let you be hurt by anybody, even if you love them. Your mother can deal with me if that upsets her.”

I’m not going to let you be hurt by anybody. He couldn’t think of the last person to make him that kind of stupid, dangling, big-hearted promise. Certainly none that he’d been capable of believing, and he did believe her. That was the stupidest thing of all. It was a silly, impossible promise, and he seized it and locked it up in his heart, preening over it, like it was a piece of solid gold.

But one couldn’t just say that kind of thing without perishing of embarrassment afterwards — that was a ‘deathbed confession’ sort of item, a ‘letter from the deceased,’ sort of item, if anything — so he said, “If I’m ever mortally injured, I would consider it a sign of esteem if you did not assail my mother while I lie bedridden.”

“Noted,” she said, which was not a promise and he did not fail to notice. “If I’m ever mortally injured, by the way, you should feel free to take me to the nearest doctor, magic or no.”

He shrugged, which was also not a promise. If she were mortally injured, he would be gunning down the doors of St. Mungo’s, and her parents could take it up with the unfriendly end of his wand.

“I don’t care,” he said, with great effort, “that your parents are m— aren’t magical.”

She lifted her head and fixed him with an owl’s stare.

“It isn’t—” He paused, working his jaw. “You — a certain sort of person — it isn’t like — at a certain point, it becomes impossible—”

“Draco?”

“You are,” he said, measuring each word carefully on his tongue, “the finest magical talent of this or any generation.” He paused again. “The world that produced you is beyond reproach.”

Hermione made a stifled, horrible sound. She spun to her right, abruptly, shoving her hands into her eyes.

“What,” he said, alarmed. “Granger?”

“Nothing! Nothing! Shut up! I’m fine!”

“Merlin. Would you give a man credit for trying? I’m doing my best here — I know it wasn’t Keats—”

“I hate you,” she said into her hands. “Oh, God. I’m going to bawl my eyes out, and it’s going to be so damn embarrassing, and it’s your fault. Why did you have to say it like that, I’m going to cry, oh God—”

“Fine. As you like, I’ll say it the stupid way. ‘Rah, rah, muggle rights,’ et cetera, and listen, I’m frankly not behind you on all of it, you’re still going to have to hard sell me on autobomiles.”

“Automobiles,” she said wetly, “you absolute idiot, it’s automobiles.”

“That’s what I said.”

“It is not what you said.”

“It is precisely and exactly what I said.”

“Never mind, you’re annoying again,” she said, but she wasn’t near crying anymore, so he could stop pretending he didn’t know the word.

“I shouldn’t have said that, about dying,” she said, after another pause.

“No.”

“I don’t think,” she began, and frowned. “I don’t think that of you. I never would. I know that if—”

“Let’s not.”

“Yes,” she said, somewhat relieved, “alright, sure.” She tilted her head at him, and then smiled, a little, a crooked expression that probably could have made him jump out the window if directed. “In any case, I’d want to spare you ‘the disastrous inconvenience of finding a new potions partner.’”

She did her imitation of him. It was, as usual, hilarious.

He did not, as a philosophical matter, take life in its concept as a series of irreversible moments; he preferred to think that his options remained generally open, and his course changeable, like a ship given to adjustment by its rudder, rather than a carriage down a series of one-way lanes. But there were some moments in a voyage, inevitably, when one occasioned to look back, and he saw how far the shore now lay — and realized, more or less concurrently, that to row back, to change course, now, would mean wrestling the brute arm of the wind.

‘Traitor’ was a word with a classical pedigree. He happened to know it was the same in French. Traitre. As in traître de sang. As in mort aux traitres. In fact, the root was so old it came from the Anglo-French, who had only nicked it from Latin, anyway: from traditor, from tradere — to hand over. To submit. Surrender.

There were always worse ways to ruin one’s life.

“Are you offended? That was a joke, Draco. I didn’t actually mean it. And honestly, I thought it was pretty good, mys— what are you doing.”

The last bit was muffled by a squeak. He stepped into her and put his hands on either side of her head and held her that way, uncertain of what else to do; he had slashed fuel lines to the part of his brain that governed that sort of intellectual decision-making. Her hair was never unsurprising in its softness, more like chiffon than anything else.

“Hello?” she said, bewildered.

Her hair moved when he exhaled. It stirred back and forth in the tide of their shared breath.

Daphne had made it look much goddamn easier than it was.

So he looked her in the eye and said, “If you die before we get our N.E.W.T., Granger, I’m going to learn necromancy just to make you watch me do it without you.”

“You should be so lucky,” she said, and he had to credit her nerve, because she hadn’t pulled away, not a little bit, not even flinched. Which meant that either she wasn’t bothered, or her stubbornness didn’t permit her to show it, either of which was equally credible, unfortunately. “I’d still get top first as a ghost, and we both know it.”

It was really outrageous, now that he was allowed to think about it, how bad the temptation was to kiss her.

The sides of her face were warm in his hands, and turning warmer. The Owlery had a chill.

Someone pounded on the door.

They were on opposite sides of the Owlery in record time. They might actually have broken some sort of land record, or Apparated; certainly lightspeed had been approached.

“OI! LET ME IN! ARE YOU IN THERE?”

“Alohamora,” he snapped, and the door whipped around on the next blow from the intruder’s boot, hammering the wall with a gong that lifted a small parliament from the rafters, hooting in distress.

Pansy stalked into the Owlery, radiating triumph from her battle with the door. “There you are,” she exclaimed. “My God, wear a bell, would you? I’ve been giving myself a stitch.”

“Parkinson, what the hell are you doing?”

“Great question! I’ve had plenty of time to rehearse my answer, in the several years it’s been since I left the Slytherin dorms!”

Hermione began rubbing a small circle on her temple, discreetly.

“I’ve been trying to find a Gryffindor with a brain cell and enough patience not to jinx me for the tie I’m wearing,” she snapped, “which, unfortunately, limits my options to two, and they both decided to distance themselves from me with literally the largest possible number of stairs! And yet! And yet! Selflessly, I persisted. Why, you ask, I do not know; certainly it was not in my interest, nor the interest of my thighs, which will have to be sectioned and auctioned for meat, so little use to me will they offer after this miserable trial—”

“Not to be rude,” said Hermione rudely, “but do you have a point?”

Pansy sniffed and thrust out her hand. In its clutches rested one more-than-slightly crumpled fold of paper.

Draco took it. It was a page torn from a book, complete with a page number and a title partly obscured by an inkstain. One paragraph had been circled, thrice, in black ink.

“‘…the use of Portkeys can circumvent normal magical permission thresholds, such as Anti-Apparation fields or Floo wards. Because the Portkey creates as a temporary extradimensional thoroughfare between two locations, it does not activate traditional magical defenses against ingress or egress, since the enchantments do not perceive that the wizard has traveled: merely disappeared. Evidence of Portkey enchantments can be detected through a routine magical diagnostic—’ Sod this. Parkinson, see Granger: is there a point?”

“Search me,” she snorted. “Theo said it was important. He was ripping mad, too, and late for a meeting with his father, so you should be flattered he took the time to write a note.”

“He didn’t.”

“Did too, you dunce, turn it over.”

He did. On the back of the page — scrawled in the white box under the end of a previous chapter — there was one word, underlined, in the blotted scrawl of a man with time for no other.

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CUP

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Thank you, thank you, thank you. Next chapter, going up next Friday: “Into the Labyrinth.”

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